Volatile Cargo - Original Sci-fi, A short story of some length Options

[Colonel Mustard]

This is (yet another, I know) a new project I'm starting to keep my writing hand in while I go about editing my novel into something fit to submit to an agent (for those who missed it, I completed a novel! Hurrah!). I'm writing partly because I want to write something while I edit, and also because I quite enjoy the novel's characters and want to write some more of them. So what this is is a prequel of sorts about Captain Julia Marthan and the crew of her ship, the Marco, detailing a week(ish) in their lives and one of the jobs they've run; I won't be touching on any of the major content of the novel, though they share the same characters and universe.

I'll be posting up brief chapters as rapidly as I can, so sit back and please enjoy.


Volatile Cargo

Chapter 1

As always, Blight was misty. White water vapour choked the world, floating moisture shrouding its single, damp colony of the hopelessly optimistic name of ‘Prospect’, a viscous airborne mucous of chill, low cloud loitering on the jetty of its dock. It got everywhere, soaking into clothes, caressing the skin with clammy tendrils, perspiration dripping into the eye even though the temperature left one with no inclination towards sweating.

“I hate this place,” Julia muttered, more to herself than anyone else. She flicked worthless jewels of moisture off the dark blue naval jacket she wore. The damp was making the already battered brocade on the smuggler’s coat look even worse for wear, and had soaked into the tricorn her she wore as well, a severe undermining of her attempt to look swashbuckling; as it was she merely looked wrung out. “Of all the worlds I’ve ever visited, it has to be the worst, no contest.”

“What about Zwarget, captain?” Yun asked. Unlike Julia, he seemed not to be bothered by the mist or the damp, his stance easy and relaxed with the long duster he wore seemed to keep out the worst of the weather. A hand rested on one of the revolvers on the gunbelt he wore, and the barrel of a carbine poked out from over his shoulder. From experience, Julia knew that there would be a pair of sawn-off shotguns at his up, covered by the coat, a knife at his boot and probably a holdout pistol or two tucked in some concealed pocket of the mercenary’s jacket.

“Nah, Zwarget just tried to kill us,” Julia said. “This place is depressing, thought.”

“So you prefer a homicidal planet to a dreary one?”

“Yeah. Homicidal’s more interesting, if nothing else.”

Yun just shook his head and scanned what they could see of the jetty for any approaching company. Behind them, the starship they came in on hovered, the Marco tethered to the large wooden pier with its cargo bay door resting on the flat surface. The large glass dome of the vessel’s prow and bridge was misted and slick with damp, as was the rest of the ship’s brass-coloured hull, the swallowtail sweep of its wings dripping with water as if the vessel itself were discomfited and sweating. The large zeppelin balloon that kept it suspended in midair sent the ropes connecting it to the ship creaking as a faint breeze blew into it and nudged it a few inches along.

“You’d have no idea that there’s a whole bloody colony at the end of that pier, not with all this mist,” Julia remarked.

“I don’t like it,” Yun said. “Makes things too quiet, too easy to hide in. Could be anybody out there watching us and we’d have no idea.”

“So you’re feeling edgy,” Julia nodded. “Nothing new there.”

“There is no need for alarm,” a third voice rumbled, this one coming from the fifteen foot, four-armed colossus of steel and brass that had stood behind the pair without speaking. “My sensors detect no untoward activity in the area around us.”

“In mist this thick, I wouldn’t like to rely on just sensors, Dravvit Klomar,” Yun replied. “Besides, they’re not infallible.”

“Pah, you doubt too easily, Mr Yun,” the immense Machtoro said. “Besides, captain, I can see someone coming on heat vision; two humans and khusi.”

A few moments later, four people emerged from the mist. Three of them were human; two bulky men lugging a crate between them, one tall, graceful and pale-skinned woman. The last was a khusi, carrying almost as many guns as Yun had, though it had enough arms to use them all at once, and its mandibles twitches as the multifaceted domes of its eyes looked them over. By the lack of egg-sacs clinging to its abdomen, Julia guessed the alien was still in the male phase of his life.

“So much for your sensors,” Yun muttered.

“Julia!” the woman at their front exclaimed in delight, stepping forward and grabbing her in an embrace. She placed a kiss on each of the captain’s cheeks. “How are you, my darling? And Mr Yun and your Machtoro are with you as well, how wonderful.”

Dravvit Klomar scraped the metal hoof of his foot along the jetty in displeasure at being called Julia’s, but Madam Sangue ignored the gesture. Yun merely nodded a greeting to her, knowing that any talking would be best left to his captain.

“I’m well,” Julia nodded. “Wondering how you put up with this world.”

“Oh, a number of reasons,” the new arrival replied. “It’s near some favourable Inverse currents, the League doesn’t hold any authority here and there’s a great deal of degenerates and curs here for me to employ. That and the lack of sunlight certainly helps.”

“Eh, suit yourself,” Julia said. “So, what did you want to see me about, Madam Sangue?”

“A delivery I want you to make,” she replied, gesturing to the crate. “I need you to bring this to a gentleman by the name of Mr Aloysius Cranmer in New Olympus. I don’t want it going through customs, and I don’t want the crate to be opened, tampered with or have its contents damaged.”

“A delivery to Mars, eh? Sounds simple enough,” Julia said as Madam Sangue’s two human lackeys advanced and placed the crate down on the damp planks of the dock. There was a whirring and thumping as Dravvit Klomar stepped forwards and picked it up with the lower pair of his hands, the huge machine lifting the load with ease. “Dravvit Klomar, get that aboard, stow it somewhere where it won’t be found easily.”

“It should be easy,” Madam Sangue replied. “But this is important, Julia, and I don’t want you failing this, not with the amount of money running on this job. After all, if you do...” she looped an amicable arm around the smuggler’s shoulders. “I’ll cut your throat and drain you dry, and that would be a terrible shame.”

“No pressure then,” Julia said. “I’m going to need more details than a name in New Olympus, though.”

“Of course, of course,” Madam Sangue nodded, handing Julia an envelope. “Everything you should need is in here. Read it carefully, Julia.”

“Don’t worry, I will,” the Marco’s captain replied. “One last question; what’s this job worth to me and my crew.”

“Provided all goes well, three thousand Sovereigns,” Madam Sangue said.

“Three thousand?!”

“I take it that that will be suitable motivation?”

“Gods, yes.”

“Wonderful. Remember, Julia,” Madam Sangue smiled, and her smile was a smile of frightening needles. “Don’t let me down. Everyone would be very upset if that happened, you most of all.”

“Trust me, I know,” Julia said.

“Just making sure, my darling, just making sure,” Madam Sangue said. “Now, there are three thousand Sovereigns waiting on that delivery, and perhaps a bonus if you make it quick, so why don’t you head off on your way, hmm?”

She kissed Julia on the cheeks once more.

“Best of luck, Julia, and do try your hardest to make sure you’re successful,” she said. “I’d hate it so very much if I had to kill you.”

“Not half as much as I would, trust me,” Julia said.

Madam Sangue laughed at this.

“I’m sure of that, darling,” she replied. “Now off you go.”

As Julia boarded her ship, Yun lingering a moment to untether the Marco from its dock, Madam Sangue left, accompanied by her henchmen into the mists and back to the colony that formed the capital of her galaxy-spanning criminal empire. The ship’s cargo door whirred shut, and its engines flared as it began to rise upwards and out of Blight’s atmosphere.

The Marco was on its way to Mars.

[Colonel Mustard]

New chapter time! Hurrah!

Rohirrim: You can be sure that I'll share some Amazon links, even if it's only so I can have some of your sweet, delicious money

Ghastley: Yeah, Madam Sangue is rather...European, isn't she?

Chapter 2

The gentle wave of uncolour and peering eyes broke over the domed prow of the Marco as the ship entered the Inverse, breaking out of the bounds of Matterspace. Julia blinked and grimaced at the discomfiting sight of the transition between her own universe to the ancient battlefield of the Reality War, her eyes struggling to perceive the sight of colours that existed outside of four-dimensional space. As it was, it appeared as a roiling sheen of milky blue from which occasional, bizarre shapes would half-emerge, groping or biting at the glass. She returned her attention back to the controls, not particularly concerned; Inverse Sprites were disquieting to look at, certainly, but they were harmless, and when she hullwalked in the Inverse she had suffered nothing worse than the occasional curious prod.

She adjusted control levers to nudge the Marco onto course, leaning back on her chair. She checked the course-indication instruments, making sure that the status readouts were all fine; that was habit more than anything else, ingrained in her from her old academy, and considering that Gorom, her engineer, were good at their job she really had nothing to worry about.

“Course check, Patterns,” she said, glancing over her shoulder to where the diminutive pyal was sitting in his chair.

There were a few moments as the Marco’s navigator checked their course, and from the empathic implication from See-Patterns-In-Stars she knew that the ship was indeed going in the right direction, and that it would arrive just outside of Mars’ gravity well in four days.

“Wonderful,” Julia nodded, pulling back a lever by the helm chair she sat on. It retracted back to the rest of the bridge, pulling out of the Marco’s domed front. She stood up on the foot of deckplate that was now before her, stepping around her chair.

“Bridge is yours, dear,” she said to Farko, giving the broad shoulder of her first mate, co-pilot and husband a squeeze. “I’m making some checks.”

“I’ll make sure nothing happens to the Marco in your absence,” he replied.

“That’s my man,” Julia said, swinging the door open with a creaking squeak of metal.

She set off, striding down the corridors of the Marco on her way to the cargo bay. Julia was the sort of person who could only stride; the sheer confidence and force of personality that she possessed meant that merely walking was impossible. Her boots had the habit of clanging against the deckplate, and she walked with a level of self assurance that left her as irresistible and unstoppable as a good-natured hurricane. Her height, striking features and the mane of brown hair that brushed her shoulder blades helped this further, and the overall impression that one got with Julia was of a woman who was imbued with an irrepressible abundance of sheer vitality

She stepped onto one of the ladders that allowed access to the Marco’s three decks, wedging her boots against the edges and sliding down. She stopped at deck two, pausing at the regular ringing noise that reverberated through the ship’s corridors, halting her descent and stepping out onto the corridor with a frown.

In the medical bay, the domain of the Marco’s resident physician Hans Rathskeller, the doctor was crouched before Ivris, the askriit sat on the examination table with a foot held out.

“What’s going on?” Julia asked, a farce of bafflement playing across her features.

“’E’o, capt’n,” Doctor Rathskeller managed to grunt, glancing around. There was a hammer in his hand, and nails were poking out from between his teeth.

“Arrit korzon, captain,” Ivris said, raising her head to bare her throat in her people’s traditional gesture of greeting and respect. “I’m re-shoeing, and Doctor Rathskeller was giving me a hand doing it; trying to shoe myself is never easy.”

She waggled her other foot to show the iron crescent on the bottom of her hoof.

“I see,” Julia said. “Wondering what that noise was.”

She frowned.

“Are you sure that Doctor Rathskeller’s the best person for this, Ivris?” she asked. “Wouldn’t you want a...a vet or something? Or a horse shoe specialist?”

“With all due respect, Captain,” Doctor Rathskeller said, removing the nails from his mouth so he could speak properly. “The health and wellbeing of the crew is my responsibility. Ivris may not be sick, but if her shoe was left in for too long then there will be complications, so as her physician it’s my duty to assist her in changing it. And it’s farrier, by the way”

“Besides, he’s done this before,” Ivris said, the askriit shrugging her thin, bony shoulders. “I’ve walked him through it and he knows what he’s doing.”

“I’ll leave you two to it, then,” Julia shrugged. “Carry on, doctor.”

“Indeed I shall,” Doctor Rathskeller said. “Now, where were we?”

Julia headed off back to the ladder, detour completed with her satisfied curiosity. There were a number of people who would have considered Doctor Rathskeller a strange choice for a ship’s doctor, what with him having been dead three hundred years, but Julia looked at it differently; that was three centuries of medical experience under his (very tight) belt, and a near-endless supply of entertaining anecdotes to go with it. It was true that he was now just a skeleton held together with strands of barely-visible vital energy, but he knew what he was doing and had been just about everywhere in the galaxy. Julia also found the idea of a doctor who received a reminder on basic anatomy every time they looked in the mirror to be an incredibly reassuring one.

Ivris, on the other hand, had not been picked for the ship’s crew out of need but had instead joined up partly by her own initiative. She was certainly useful, even if she held no particular position aboard the Marco beyond the general odd jobs that any working starship needed doing, though her position as a Kiazor, a rank of her people that was somewhere between a diplomat and a lawyer, gave her expertise that had come in useful more than once. The fact that she had come with Dravvit Klomar certainly helped; the huge machine served as her bodyguard and was fanatically loyal to her, not to mention he was good for heavy lifting and looking intimidating.

Her boots thumped against the deckplate at the bottom of the ladder, and she made her way to engineering. As she pushed open the door, the familiar scents of grease and hot metal assailing her nostrils, one of Gorom’s eye symbiotes turned around from where it was examining the engine, a free arm organism of the q’relli waving a greeting to her as she enter. Moved by their dozen arms, Gorom clambered away like a brawny blue spider, the gestalt of multiple self-aware body parts facing their captain.

“Captain,” the mouth organism that spoke for the collective said. “What can we do for you?”

“Just checking in,” Julia said. “You were saying something about the Gravitic Generator needing checking up, and I was wondering if it was all alright.”

“Yeah, it’s fine,” Gorom replied, glancing over to the whirling blue ball of energy contained inside a cage of delicate brass wires that hummed with arcane energy. “It just needed a bit of recalibrating, that’s all.”

“Glad it was nothing major,” Julia said. “Hate it when the gravity goes awry. I kept finding stuff in the weirdest of places last time it happened.”

“As are we,” Gorom replied as they scuttled towards a large tank tucked away into the corner. A glass was pulled from somewhere, and the tap set into its side was twisted. “While you’re here, captain, try this.”

Julia took the glass that was proffered from one of Gorom’s seven-fingered hands and downed it in one; experience taught her that that was the best thing to do with one of the engineer’s concoctions. She spluttered as the moonshine burned down her throat, blinking back tears; not one of their good brews.

“Gods, that’s got a kick like an angry askriit,” she said, once the worst of the coughing had subsided. “What in the hellplanes is in it?”

“Well, there’s-”

“Actually, on second thoughts, don’t tell me,” Julia said, blinking back a few more tears. “Don’t think I want to know. Makes me wonder why you bother brewing this stuff; decent liquor isn’t that pricey, you know.”

“It gives us something to do on long journeys,” Gorom replied. “Besides, I like the flavour; fewer taste buds than you humans and all that.”

“Well, if I ever need paint thinned I’ll just go and help myself to a glass or two of this stuff,” Julia remarked. She briefly frowned in confusion as she noticed Gorom’s use of ‘I’, before she realised that the mouth organism was speaking not the collective it was part of but for itself. Or possibly himself or herself; Julia had no idea, and considering that q’relli had four sexes the odds of a random guess being correct were not in her favour.

“Very funny,” Gorom said, skin rippling a faint turquoise in annoyance at the jab. “Anything else you needed, captain?”

“Nah, just seeing how the gravitics were holding up,” Julia said. “Don’t let me keep you, Gorom.”

“I’ll speak to you later, captain,” the q’relli replied.

Julia stepped out of the engineering deck and, for the sake of sheer paranoia along with the desire to make sure that those three thousand Sovereigns became hers, headed to the cargo bay. She had a package to check on.



This post has been edited by Colonel Mustard: Jan 1 2014, 09:25 PM