The Forlorn Social Club
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Harmless solar winds have been hitting Saturn’s rings for two rotations. Tsunamis of atomic particles relentlessly brushed the magnetic field. They caused minor geomagnetic storms through each of the gas giant’s four regions. Huge green and gold colored drapes waved across the black skies as the sleepy ice meadows of the magnetodisk glittered like never before.
On this particular morning, a rainbow-like aurora reflected against the Forlorn Hope’s armored windows. A strong smell of coffee filled the cockpit swapped into a command bridge. It mingled with the scent of burning bread coming from the floating portable oven plugged on the dashboard.
Wham! gave “Jim” a buzz as he dashed from the control panel to grab the slightly charred toast. Picking up buttercups with his other hand and bringing a round jam jar with his foot, he whirled around upside down. Whistling, he landed on his seat before wrapping himself in his colorful blanket. When the coffee machine’s telltale lit up, he bent over to swallow a few gulps of the greenish-black liquid bubbling from the spout. He poured himself a mug before clipping the aluminum lid.
Some space travelers made a religion out of coffee. The Alliance man remembered a guy he used to work with on an ice hauler during his childhood. Funnily, this taciturn XO bore the name of Jim, and could talk about the brewed drink for hours. Forlorn Jim hated coffee. But thanks to its bitterness, the sugar pills he had to crunch every morning—to stay focused during long travel or high speed maneuvers—didn’t taste so bad.
The angry duck dozed on the radio above, a piece of nutri-bacon tucked in his beak. The snoring feathered danger had plundered the kitchenette during the night, making his usual hazardous mess in the process.
His breakfast over, the pilot dived into the gangway towards the hold. Every morning and every evening, he monitored the woman’s recovery . The rest of the time, he’d say he trusted the module. But he remained mistrustful of the girl because of what he witnessed during the surgery.
The radio cassette sputtered in the cockpit. Heartbreak Hotel accompanied the pilot along the corridor before he took the opportunity to unlock a small cabinet between the pressure gauges and the broken washer filled to the rim. There, he had stored his little tin medi-box shaped like a swan, his sugar pills and the “Star Trek-style” P-90.
He entered the hold and immediately looked at the medical bed. Lying on an uncomfortable plastic mattress and securely strapped in, the woman waited for him. When their eyes briefly met, she turned her gaze away to the slats above.
“Finally, awake?” he asked.
She didn’t reply.
“How are you doing?”
The woman scratched her throat before answering: “Fine.”
He held a laugh that became an inelegant cough.
“Who is warbling?” she inquired.
“Elvis.”
“Who is Elvis?”
He appeared offended. “The King. A god, even”
She slowly turned her head towards him. Her hair fluttered in the microgravity, wavering from gray to white. A violet spark ignited the copper-colored nano-ring around her iris. The implants on her cheekbones slightly turned red. She grew angry. “From the Moon?”
“No,” Jim reacted. He couldn’t imagine centenarian Lunar oligarchs prancing around over Tutti Frutti. “Elvis is a good god.”
Cold audience, she didn’t laugh. Quickly, questions snapped: “Why am I tied up? What happened? Where—drat…” The rest appeared to be another set of incoherent Japanese.
Before the pilot could answer, she turned white again, and closed her eyes. Her face implants stopped glowing. Her blood pressure dropped, triggering an alarm from the medical module. The ECG also started shrilling.
“Easy there…” her host said, slowly approaching her.
“Untie me.”
“Not a chance.”
She swallowed, triggering another noisy jump on the sky blue electrocardiogram. “Why?”
“We gotta talk first.”
“Talk? Do what you want to me—or untie me. At once!”
He sighed. “If you promise not to attempt anythin’ stupid.” Her angry look counted as an answer, and he lessened her ties while pressing the appropriate square-shaped button on the medical module. His finger had hovered for a moment over the large Mandrax one. “Are you hungry?”
This time, her stomach growled in response.
The pilot gained momentum on the bed’s frame and propelled himself towards the passageway. On his way to the cockpit, he grabbed the machine gun. With the weapon slung over his shoulder, he climbed the last few rungs and discovered Napoléon nestled on a seat against the wall. The feathered copilot was watching his morning VHS of Howard the Duck on the armrest’s monochrome monitor.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
“She’s awake. Still recoverin’. Yet able to chat.”
“Quack!” he reacted, raising the volume with his alula.
“I know you don’t care, you brat.”
He quickly grabbed a Thermo-Tupperware on the dashboard and a cup of coffee he tucked underneath his large sweater. He also took a medi-shot from the first aid box beneath the pilot chair.
“Quack?”
“Too weak to be a real threat.”
When he went back downstairs, the pilot found the young woman sitting on the bed. Her trembling fingers were feeling the useless bandages around her already healed abdomen. She raised her eyes and saw the weapon hanging from his shoulder and the wobbly Alliance badge on his oversized pullover. “Am I under arrest?”
“Do I look like a cop?” he messed around. His thumb pushed a slide switch on the TT’s lid, and the plastic holder started heating.
“You are an Auxiliary of Justice.”
“I’m an Administrative Assistant. Insurance representatives don’t even carry a pen. Besides, you don’t have—technically—a reward on your scalp. For you don’t wear any FID to begin with.”
Her angry glare turned into a scared one. In the cockpit, the cassette was rewinding while the speakers only displayed static.
“Although a Techno-offense remains, I don’t care much,” he continued as he thrust the hot Tupperware and coffee cup at her. “You should be wearin’ gloves—just sayin’...” As they swirled across the hold, the pilot rummaged through a drawer to pick up a fork and a spoon. “On what team are you?”
“Chopsticks.”
“Culturally inappropriate for what’s comin’.”
The girl opened the TT to find a piece of steamy sweet potato pie. He threw the pronged utensil at her and she started eating.
“How is it?” he asked after a while.
She grimaced. “Nutrigel remains disgusting whatever the shape it takes.”
“Made it myself. With real potatoes from Mimas.”
She mumbled through the spongy yet divine-smelling food. “I thought people from the Core could not cook.”
“Ugh! I ain’t no Martian. I’m from Saturn I. The sweet potatoes are sent monthly through a delivery probe by a friend. Pies bring back cheerful memories of my childhood in Nouvelle Patrie.”
“You are a melancholic romantic,” she laughed coldly. “Wait—In Search of Lost Time is the name of the book, correct?” She half-opened the lid of her cup with her thumb. “The euro-gaijins from the Core call this reminiscence phenomenon Madeleine de Proust…”
“Quack!” intervened the intrusive duck upstairs, making the girl jump as she sipped coffee.
“What is wrong with him?”
“Nothin’…” the pilot whispered as his copilot made an entrance. “Napoléon can pitch a hissy fit at French people, smart alecks and pleonasms.”
“Quack!”
“You make up a peculiar duo…” the woman sighed as she finished her meal. Sipping another round of brew, she furtively glanced at the P-90.
He caught her furtive look. “Still not loaded,” he avowed before turning around to show the rifle on his shoulder. “I’ll give you back your lethal Blast-a-ball if you promise to behave.”
“What happened after Saturn II?”
“You got hit. An Oreo-sized rivet scrambled your intestines and spleen into a fruit punch. The barely reliable module predicted a 15% survival rate—or twenty minutes of hellish torment before you gave up the ghost.”
She sighed as he threw her the medi-shot he took on his way. “The bandages. Are they yours or the machine’s?”
He glanced at his shaky scars-covered hands. He still had dried cyber-blood and red plasma tucked under his nails despite multiple trips to the bathroom.
The woman lowered her head and swallowed. “You know then…”
“Yep. I almost left my fingers in you.”
“What?”
“My bad. Came out wrong.” Crossing his arm under his sweater, he leaned against the rungs of the passageway. “Your body nearly swallowed my whole hand when I reached for the shrapnel. The moment I wanted to get it out without guttin’ you any further, the wound healed itself—formin’ an odd shiny scar the color of your hair and nails. Is that the work of your synthetic skin—like the one pulsin’ on your neck every time you blink?”
The woman felt the small hexagons on her jugular, then the back of her cervical vertebrae over her roll-neck. “Yes. Sort of. Anything else occurred?”
The painkillers injector snapped, and she shivered. Jim caught the empty medi-shot she threw back.
“Was I supposed to step upon another curiosity straight out of Ripley’s…” The girl remained silent, and he continued, before making his way to a drawer built into the adjacent wall: “What are you?”
“The whole solar system is full of mutants and robots. Nothing really surprising about me compared to those. Why would you care?”
“I don’t know… No FID. Locked inside a rusty ship. Owning a prototype gun mysteriously out of ammo. Quotin’ some smart French fart, meanin’ educated… yet wanderin’ with unfriendly Titanian gangsters. In serious trouble with a quite psychotic hitman dressed as a Martian corpo…” the man enumerated. “Why would I care, indeed? I’m just bein’ shot at before pretendin’ to be a frontline surgeon!”
“If I talk you will sell me back...” The woman winced, the palm of her hand against her forehead. Her odd power forbidding her from being on a drip, the blood loss was claiming its toll.
He heaved a sigh. “Would be an easy run, easy money. But they fired at us and killed a lovely mech back on Enceladus…” Opening an expired jerky stick he tried to reassure her: “I do hope you understand you’re completely safe here. Ain’t no Richard Ramirez. The hold’s all yours. You’ll find a bath module stuck between the reactor access hatch and the life system. Fresh clothes are folded in a locker midway in the passageway to the cockpit.” He then threw her the P-90. “As I said… not loaded,” he continued as she checked the magazine. “However, I’m fixin’ to know who I’m dealing with. We’ll finish this conversation after your shower. Hot steam and cold water will rejuvenate you like a Martian thorn.”
Cracking her neck, the woman laid back on the bed. “I could also use another slice of pie…”
Jim smiled.
“You can call me Fate,” she said.
“Nice to meet you, Fate.”
She closed her eyes. “Thank you…”
“Miles.”
“Thank you, Miles.”