Take me Back to Mimas
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Kat left in the morning, after a night in Miles’ arms on the nuclear-warmed hilltop, when her watch rang. She said something about breakfast, Beau and the crops, but Miles’ fuzzy brain couldn’t catch much. She left, whistling Take My Breath Away.
It took Miles a while to fully emerge from torpor, the bright Saturn burning his retinas. Child of Mimas, he wasn’t used to it.
“Wow! You totally ‘Kirk-ed’ her!” a short shadow shouted in front of him. “To be fair, she was into you to the max, buddy.”
“Tatyana? What in the Sam Hill?”
The teenage nurse was wearing her full Spock disguise again. She was hopping towards his direction, like a jolly rabbit in the prairie—yet a mischievous fox expression was printed on her scared face. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to creep on you,” she said, a finger up her nose. “Well. I was actually.”
“Can you turn around while I’m putting my clothes on?”
She snickered. “You ain’t got nothing to hide, stud. I already saw you naked while I was looking for your dog tags on the Congo.”
“That still makes me uncomfortable,” Miles insisted, grabbing his pants and jacket spread in the grass glittering from the pinkish dew.
“Alright…” she heaved before turning. “You done?”
“Been less than five seconds!”
Tatyana blew a raspberry.
Once done, Miles asked: “What are you doing here early in the morn?”
Done playing with her bulky terminal, the girl faced him, but still couldn’t look him directly in the eyes. She rummaged through her bag for a while then said: “First, I just uncovered this in one of my pockets. It’s yours, I believe.” She threw him a small trinket.
Miles caught it. “What is it?” he inquired. “Oh.” It was the pachinko ball he found on Enceladus—in the brasserie where the Hemingwest family massacred the yakuza. He thought he lost it while flying away Black Comet during the war. “It turned… orange?”
Tatyana shrugged. “It’s rusty. The ball may be in Venusian steel, your journey through the void kinda ruined it. Something to do with the bad coating. Probably Chinese-made, my dad would say.”
“Blood.”
The nurse blinked at Miles, then immediately looked away. “Anyway, I wanted to talk to you.” She sat next to him, and closed her bag filled to the top with vegetables and healthy snacks baked by Kat.
“About what?”
“I have been working on something for the last few days while you were busy screwing our lovely host.”
Miles jumped. “Tatyana!”
“Do I make you uncomfortable?”
“Again: yes! ”Miles insisted. “What’s your project about?”
“Who cares, it failed…” she heaved. “But I’m 94% sure it would work with the proper materials. And the appropriate tools. And 2% more luck.”
“What are you talking about?” he asked, confused.
“This,” she answered, tapping his bare chest. “Wow. Hairy… and sexy.”
“Remember what I told you about making me uncomfortable.”
“Sorry. Teenage. Hormones. Patrick Stewart with a Hawaiian shirt phagocytizes my dreams and thoughts…” she went on, shivering. “I meant: I can fix this. Your problem. I just need some more stuff.”
“Stuff? Like what?”
“Pricey hardware and some pharma gears.”
Miles buttoned his jacket. “I’m still not sure if—”
Tatyana jumped on her feet, scaring the man. “Geez, buddy! Dr. Bitch’s s right. I was right too. I knew it the second you came back to life on the boat.”
“What?”
“You’re a whiny little—” she exploded.
The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
“—bitch.”
“Don’t swear! But sh’yeah…”
“Listen, I’ve been through a lot, and—”
Fuming, the girl immediately went on a rant: “Yeah, duh! Who doesn’t? We’re in a goddam Moon-ruled dystopian solar capitalist empire, and in the middle of a civil war killing millions of more or less innocent folks. Life ain’t fair. It sucks, even. This is not the Magic Kingdom, buddy!”
“It ain’t that simple.”
Tatyana furiously grabbed the lethargic pilot by the collar. She was way stronger than she seemed. “Listen, Mr. Maverick. You can be happy with Miss Kat—a smarter and sexier version of Maren Jensen, on a private moon covered in bluegrass with a new fucking heart buzzing with poetic feelings. Getting fucking laid all night long…”
“You just swore you know. Twice.”
As a response, she bellowed something in Ukrainian.
“Thrice?”
The girl imploded. The moon tilted a little bit on the left, making a few sensors inside the underground farm going haywire.
Sagacious, Miles nodded, and she let him go. “What you described does sound like a fairy tale,” he heaved.
“Yes, lucky you.”
“Will Fate help? I mean, I guess surgery’s involved in your project.”
“No,” she said, completely serious all of a sudden. “It’s just a tiny add-on that will sustain your lungs with oxygen, and strengthen your heart to pump blood more efficiently. While purging all the scraps, metal and stuff dotting your muscles. Regular sci-fi stuff. Do you read pulps?” She paused, sitting down again. “But since you brought Dr. Bitch on the table… let’s talk about Dr. Bitch.”
“What about Dr. Bit—Fate?”
“She’s weird, buddy. She’s, like, super weird. I already told you. And I’m telling you again.”
“She also has her problems.”
Tatyana pondered. “Still. She’s mean. Lawful evil all the way up the compass.”
“You’re also kinda special.”
“Yes. But I’m not mean.”
“By no means.”
“Stop,” she said, rummaging through her bag again. Right after, she handed him badly penned notes covered with oily peanut butter and sugar-free protein powder. “Here’s the list of the stuff I need.”
Miles took the half-crumpled papers. “The drawings?”
Tatyana rolled her eyes. “I work with computers and soldering irons. I can’t write properly on paper,” she grumbled as Kat approached from afar. “Beau added some words in English there. And there.” She pointed to even more badly written technical terms rigged with typos. “You’re heading to New Patrie, right? To drop her. Pick what I need there. And come back quickly. You only have a few months left according to my last calculations.”
“I’ll ask a friend—Edith—for the pharma-gear. The rest could be found in any… astroport—two rad-probe? And a Merrimack reactor? Why?”
“You wouldn’t get it,” the girl heaved while getting up.
“I know what engines are for: not surgery on humans. Are you sure about that? At this point, is this even possible?”
“Sh’yeah… There is a way out of every box, a solution to every puzzle; it’s just a matter of finding it,” she said while climbing down the small hill, tapping on her right temple.
The nurse withdrew, leaving Miles alone with his stubborn pants zipper. “I am surrounded by loonies,” he grumbled, breaking the pull. “Shit!”
“You’re also a strange bird, you know…” Kat opined, hands on her hips. Beau accompanied her.
“Already back?”
She seemed tired, for both good and bad reasons. “I need to help Uncle Tom and Eliza with the mossy filters around the tomato plants. Some nasty parasites cluttered the charcoal particles, and the whole harvest could be doomed if we don’t act quickly. My teachers lied back in the days. Aeroponics is no fun.”
“You’ve been to college?”
She raised a dirty eyebrow. “Yes. Someone was required to go to school. Couldn’t send Pierre. Why do you think they called him Shrimp—Darwin blesses his heart. Why are you asking?”
“Ever heard of Elizabeth Cady Stanton School?” Miles inquired, pondering about Fate’s tutelage.
“Who doesn’t?” Kat laughed.
Beau intervened: “It’s part of the e-League. Cyberspace online school—through the interweb. Despite being private, it’s Techno-founded, and expensively good.”
Miles nodded.
“What did Tatyana want? Go there? She may have the talent for a bursary.”
“Nah. She just craved to save my life a second time.”
“And?” Kat asked, coming closer.
“I agreed.”
Kat remained silent, but something in her eyes looked like fireworks on the fourth of July. Sadly, a veil of sorrow swallowed them when Miles told her he had to leave.
“Mimas, right?” she quivered.
“Yes. Drop Fate. Get the resources the girl needs.”
“You sound terrified,” she went on.
“I am.”
“What’s scary about your home world?” Beau asked.
Miles looked at the ship bay. “The things I left there.”
“Your past?”
“Hope…”
Miles laughed. Canyon Creek. The Alliance. The Freedom League. All but forgotten miserable twists and turns. The new matter filling him with dread appeared to be something else. Something smaller, yet as powerful as a thermonuclear core. And redder than a dying sun.
“... but also a duck.”