A dutiful, ace soldier from Mars faces a dilemma. She can accept an offer from an infuriating gen-eng man from Venus, grab her loyal cat + dig up her inner rebel and maybe become the first human to explore the Galaxy. OR she can keep flying security...
Time Stamp: 11th of the 3rd month, year 2696 CE, same place, same time
Location Stamp: Space cruiseliner Solar Wind, home port Mars, owned by the Stellar Cruises Inc., destination: Jupiter, Solar System, Milky Way Galaxy
When I scratched the image, half-dozen of red error messages blinked into existence. What can I say? Even the tech not designed to kill me, hated me with the passion of a thousand burning suns.
"Thank you for your input, Miss Gorelko," Shameel said acidly and turned to the only alien in the room. "Lola! Wake up!"
***
File Excerpt: Lola of Mym species
A tube-like, six-and-half feet long body of an overgrown caterpillar or maybe a centipede. Has six limbs, each ending in six spindly digits. Is experimenting with prime-colored nail polish lately. The rabbit-like head ends in a twitchy nose with whiskers. Fluffy turquoise to green fur.
Fitness level: unknown.
Special physical abilities: As a mym, Lola hears the full sonic spectrum with language consisting of one to three sounds words, indistinguishable to a human ear. Lola's rate of communication is super-fast.
Character: Lola has never been noticed in any objectionable behavior in the Ven-Mar space, except fibbing to spare lowly humans' feelings.
***
Shameel's voice startled Lola from her sad contemplation of the error messages. It was she who had blared into my ear earlier to summon me here, but I couldn't bring myself to gloat at this reversal of fortune. Lola lifted two pairs of her forelegs up and the messages disappeared like magic. The tiny red dot, however, continued to pulsate off the port bow.
"Magnify," Shameel commanded.
Lola waved her nails some more--twenty-four of them, clipped short in compliance with the safety regs, but painted neon-yellow--and the section of the image with the suspicious dot telescoped out. I surreptitiously glanced down at my hands, with two chewed off nails. The rest were okay, if au naturel, and sized large, just like pretty much everything else about me.
I glanced back at the screen. It was obvious now that the dot was a small ship, built for speed in a teardrop shape. Disappointment tugged at my gut: the only similarity between this beaut and the raiders' brigantines was its size. The warlords of the Belt lived in a galactic junk-yard and cobbled everything, even their clan space stations, from refuse. The finished product never looked sleek, but what they lacked in grace, they made up for in bad attitude...
"This doesn't look like a raider." I looked at Shameel hopefully. "Unless they changed their ways?"
After fighting the raiders for six dreadful years, shooting a rogue raider out of the sky would be sweet... The meds that the military put me on kicked in, stilling the kitters. Damn, I hated when that happened, but I couldn't secure a decent civilian job without it.
Shameel scowled and nodded at Lola.
"The pursuing ship is not of the Ven-Mar's make," she said in a small voice. Technically, the Asteroid Belt wasn't Ven-Mar, that was the whole point of the damn war, but it wasn't like Lola to pour salt on our wounds.
And I was right about her. Once the image rotated, to show off the unknown ship's smooth hull, Lola said, "At first glance, the ship appears to be a Gum-nebula's brig."
My recollections of the galaxy's layout outside the Ven-Mar space was fuzzy, but I was pretty sure the Gum Nebula wasn't among our closest neighbors in the Milky Way.
"I'll have to re-scan the hull's composition to be absolutely sure, Sir," Lola added.
"Get Mikado to go over it with you," Shameel ordered to my surprise. "I want to make sure it's not a refurbished job. The raiders buy every piece of scrap they could lay their hands on, so maybe it's salvage and they use it for spying."
I gave Shameel a sideways glance. Did he also itch for another showdown with the old enemies?
"Sir, I can..." Lola's delicate green nose twitched. No other mym had this rabbit-like twitch in my (admittedly limited) experience with her master-race. "Sir, it's unnecessary to involve the Science Corps and Dr. Mikado. I can do the work."
By the end of the last sentence Lola was practically pleading, which gave me a pause. I didn't brush shoulders with Mikado before, but how bad could an astrophysicist be?
***
File Excerpt: Mikado, a Clone from Venus
Mikado is a cloned worker from Venus with anomalously high intelligence. Scarred face. Employed by the Stellar Cruises Inc. to get a tax break for supporting advanced research in astrophysics
Fitness level: looks to be low, but looks can be deceiving
Character: A recluse, mainly confined to his lab, a workaholic, a polymath. Prior to the dislike expressed by a mym coworker, no red flags on file. Worth a closer look.
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