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“Are you really that dense, or are you joking?”

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Asks the burly woman sitting in her security forces issued combat uniform. Tucked tightly into her dressing alcove on the mezzanine over looking the main flight deck. An enormous dry dock packed with mechanics doing repairs to all of the vessels stationed inside the sector. The young man is currently helping to bolt her into her multi part suit. “I just didn’t know what all the hub-bub was about. That’s all.” Pouts the small man, with large brown puppy dog eyes and a well worn cracked leather apron loaded with tools on it. “You silly prick. The drums are beating.” She barks in anger. “Huh? I don’t hear any drums, that warning klaxon and the alarms I hear, but no fucking drums!” He replies, earnestly without a hint of sarcasm, though he is pulling her chain, hard. “I’m speaking metaphorically – dip shit. Someone’s gone and pissed off an admiral, and now we’re heading off to war.” She is shouting over the loud peal of the intermittently sounding alarms, and the deep booming klaxon horns. As they approach the time to depart the warnings get closer and closer together. Like the contractions of birth, except it’ll involve the gushing of newly retrofitted attack vessels out of the dry docks all across the refurbished Torus Station. “But, I don’t get it. We’ve done nothing but science and exploration for centuries, why go to war now? What could be so bad as to warrant that.” Asks the diminutive armorer stuffing his hands inside the chest of his leather apron. Feeling the warm rough edges scrape across the skin of his exposed hands. It’s his default position, as he waits for his security personnel to run their internal diagnostics before he can bolt their helmets into place, and fully load out their projectile weapons canisters. “I have heard, via the grape vine, that the insurgencies mole capabilities has affected the admirals personally. Which means it now affects us all. Hey, gimme some of those exploding tip fifty caliber rounds for the shoulder cannons yeah? I like the added punch. Makes door breaching easier than just the shotguns, and I don’t have to get as close to the doors.” The woman remarks, with a wink. Though they bicker back and forth the woman from the security force rather likes her armorer slash valet. “If that’s what madam Mimi wants, that’s what she’ll have. I’ll make a note of that on your requisition forms. No doubt you’ll get them. I’ll flag you down if you don’t, before you get stowed away onboard the Gallant Mistress.” No longer looking at Mimi, but toggling through screens to order up the additional weaponry for her fifty caliber shoulder cannons. “Not with the Gallant Mistress this run, I’m bumped over to the Righteous Chord. Sounds as though we’re taking just about everybody who can fight with us.” Mimi exclaims. “Us too madam. Us too. No good having you out there fighting if you have no one around to repair your gear, or suit you lot up properly.” Their happy banter is slowly fading as the full weight of what the next few months of stasis transit, and then fighting may bring. Brian the valet & armorer will not go under. He’ll be awake for the two month trip making final adjustments and calibrations to the fighting gear. Though the advancements of the nanotech have jumped forward in leaps and bounds, he will still have to administer them individually to each fighter in the battalion that fall under his care. In all he has to repair and dress, undress fifteen members of the elite security fighting force. He somehow always manages to linger when it comes to Mimi. He laughs, but Mimi doesn’t hear him while she is engaged in her comm’s check, and HUD systems calibration. Mimi, not the name he would have guessed for the six foot eight behemoth of a woman infront of him. What kind of mother would think to name this giantess Mimi? The woman needs to give her head a shake. Though, in all honesty, she’s most likely dead. As for Mimi, she’s intimidating out of her weapons suit, and positively monolithic inside it.

The alcove where her suit hangs is like a two car garage, except with chains, hoists and pneumatic Jack’s to lift and lower her armor onto her. He is a modern day Squire to the black clad knight before him. He has still not untethered her from the external life support, as he himself is running triple checks on her aiming reticule, and GPS beacons. He has to climb a ladder to bolt the helmet down from the top, and attach her instrumentation cables in. It’ll be another hour or two yet before she gets loaded into the ships storage like a rifle magazine loaded with all the other walking tank like suits of her combat group.

Reaching over the lower rungs of the ladder to begin to climb up the racking that Mimi is held up against as the suit is still in idle mode, Brian catches Mimi’s eye, and gives her his biggest puppy dog eye wink and nod combo that he can manage. She laughs and looks away. The clicking of the winch lowering her helmet lets her know it’ll be lights out for her momentarily. When next she wakes, she will be deployed for all out war. The air quality inside the helmet is cool and fresh. The smell of oils and lubricants, and welding gases disappears as the helmet clunks into place over her head. Brian can be heard, muffled through the thick concrete glass, using an impact wrench to torque down the bolts to her helmet. Through the five inch thick dome she can see him bang on it three times with his open palm. The wet smack let’s her know she got all the weaponry she’s asked for. Inside the helmet she smiles broadly. Looking up she still smiles though she knows he can’t see her through the golden mirrored outer finish of her helmet. On the HUD a thirty second count down appears in green text across her entire field of vision. With an audible ping the numbers begin to count down with a slight click, as though it were an analog flip clock from centuries ago. As expected a shockingly cold pinch can he felt in the base of her neck. Her blood stream fills with the cool liquid, she doesn’t see the end of the countdown. Soon a pink viscous fluid will fill her lungs and other open cavities so that she can withstand the brutal forces associated with a crushingly hard thrust burn and the bone breaking deceleration to reach the outer edges of the solar system where UB313 awaits.

Part Sixteen: Ghost of the Dirty Starling.

You want me to do WHAT? In this gig-economy!

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You’re off your tits mate. And other such fun snippets of dialogue I either overhear at the school drop off, or television, movies and think. Ha. That gives me an idea. But not so much today.

It’s Thursday, my dudes. Not quite the weekend but it can be seen and felt from here. Although with working from home, and for myself, it all rather feels the same. Well, maybe now that my wife and kids are back to school (for however long that manages to last) the weekends will feel a slight twinge of otherness to them, with the house full from sun up to sun down.

In other news Valentine’s Day is just around the corner, followed closely by a week or so is Family Day, then we have March break, and the slow drag into springtime! Yay! Which is a lovely thought, but we have six weeks of horrible sub zero temperatures, snow, ice, freezing rain and slush to wade through first. Can 8 just say this though. I’ve enjoyed all of the blue sky sunnies days we’ve been having. It’s really something wonderful to be cold and yet have that gorgeous open blue sky overhead. What little heat we can feel on our faces directly from the sun is welcomed with open arms.

Rather than doing a grocery pick up like usual, or a delivery; I actually went inside a store yesterday. For the first time in a number of weeks. Good and empty, given our current pickle (pandemic obvs’) to grab a bunch of ready made meals for my wife to have at work. When it’s quiet, and no one else is around and you forget you have a mask on, it can almost feel normal-ish. I can’t recall the last time I took my kids to wander around a mall to just look at what’s new, visit a play place, or have lunch out together. I think we’d have still been using a stroller and rear facing car seat for my youngest the last time I did that.

That’s what stings right now. I was looking forward to taking my kids out of school surreptitiously to go to the mall and have an afternoon together and do something fun. But I don’t want to add even a scintilla of additional exposure over and above what they all ready face. In the years to come, I hope to be able to resurrect that mental health day time together. I miss that time doing something fun one on one with either of my kids. Lego land, Square One, The Bass Pro Shop, a Massive Disney Store, or Toys R Us. I used to love just going for a walk around, while the weather outside was horrendously cold. Get some excercise, mock youth fashion trends, because I’m older now, and I’m keen on my late nineties/early two thousands fashion choices that I made that suited my body type and wallet.

Trust in me – just in me… where’s my copy of The Jungle Book!

Also – the gig economy sucks balls. I don’t want to HAVE to turn every hobby into cash flow, that’s just part time work, on top of your day job. That’s no way to live. I get the Type A’s who are physically incapable of resting might be drawn to that option, but you have to have down time to recharge. You’ll burn yourself out. For what an extra couple of bucks, but no time to read, draw, paint, sew, play an instrument or relax. I get that wages sort of suck, and have done for ages, but that type of self deprivation isn’t sustainable in the long term. I hope you can find a happy medium. Or strike it rich! Or discover a wealthy patron who will fund you in the event of their death.

“This is the strangest feeling.”

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She thought to herself. All around her there is a calming warmth, like a snug blanket wrapped around her. But not quite, almost akin to floating in a very warm pool of water, where you know you are wet, but you don’t feel wet. There is a hum about her too, comforting, like a soft electrical tingle in her finger tips and toes. Even though it is pitch black and she can not see she is not scared. No, she thinks, at the edges of her consciousness she is terrified, but she feels compelled, externally, to not panic. Like someone is whispering sweet nothings in her ears just below what she can make out, but the warmth of breath on her neck, and the sense of someone caring is tangible. The oddness of it all envelops her. She is oddly disquieted by the lack of her heart beating in her chest. Surely at peace as she is, the constant thrum of the lub-dub of her heart, and the sound of blood rushing in her ears should be present. What had happened? Why couldn’t she remember where she was or what she was doing. The warmth and floating sensation persists. The blackness around her could stretch for miles. Or it could be a mask. Either way her eyes are unseeing. Is she waking up in a med pod? Did she fail her mission to obtain the asset? Questions are tumbling around in her mind. A brief pinch in her head, like the beginnings of a head ache, but now its gone. What was she just thinking of? The float is warm. She could just drift away, off to sleep. “YES” – the warmth speaks, like honey in her ear. Oozing around her, the suggestion to slip away, go to sleep, just rest – relax. Feeling herself giving in to the sensation of gently rocking, somewhere in the blackness she can hear her mother singing a lullaby. A gentle finger moving a lock of hair from her face. The warm embrace, the touch of warm soft skin on skin. The slight hum of electric static from an off turned radio. The clicking of the rocking chair upon the orange sun lit floors of her bedroom. Oh!, she thinks, I don’t know if I’ve ever had that memory before. So nice. She’s a teenager, rolling over in bed, away from her opened blinds, snuggling against her comforter, “I don’t want to go to school” she moans. The warmth begins to ebb away slowly, a cold chill nips at her fingers and toes. She shivers, nakedly from the cold.

The darkness begins to recede, in its place a swirling mass of shadows and smoke. She coughs deeply, and begins to choke. Hard wracking coughs that assault her lungs. She can feel her eyes begin to bulge, her neck straining, her finger bones pop with the strain. She isn’t choking but suffocating in the grey white cloud. “She might need the atmosphere we detected K”. Garbles a voice echoing from every which direction. “Yes – Yes! We did notice that too.” Replies the same voice. “Best be quick about it then K.” It answers in reply. “Too right K.” It says, still having done nothing but remark upon her strangled state. “Oh thank you K.” The woman lay on the ground asphyxiating. With an audible whistle the room begins to fill with a mixture of oxygen and nitrogen and various other gases. The same as the tiny yellow morsel they had consumed, in which they found her. Gasping for her life she lies upon the ground heaving and floundering. Trying to catch her breath and get her bearings. “Your friends are dead.” The room vibrates with the words, but no one is inside the room. With a cracked and dry throat she croaks. “I know.” The room itself begins to shrink, and reorganize. No longer a cube of three meters to a side, but an elongated hall, all illuminated in the same silver grey and off white. The hall ends at her back but stretches out into a pin point of light in front of her. Without getting up she is pushed forward, gently. “The man inside with you had significant trauma to his brain. Tell us, did you have anything to do that?” Asks the echoing voice quietly. “No! – no, I was trying to fix the sabotaged cockpit flight controls. Richard’s was murdered by our pilot Zeke.” The walls shimmy in response. The forward pull of the hallway speeds up. The woman has the distinct sensation of traveling without moving. It is disconcerting. “Tell us, what of the man partially welded to your hull?” Enquires the echoing voice. “I don’t know? I assumed Zeke was trying to sabotage us so that he could obtain the asset by himself. Keep the glory for his own.” She responds with a dry bark. “Wait – did you say welded? What welded? How is that possible?” She exclaims. The hallway starts to expand, a large yellow and black ship begins to uncover itself from the wall. The hall disappeared behind her, a large rectangular room containing her ship The Mangelo has arranged itself around her. She approaches the rear of the ship where, near the top side, the propellant storage tanks are located. Too physically weak to climb, she realizes she can’t recall when she last ate or drank anything. The ship before her appears to sink into the floor, raising her up to see the top of the vessels hull. There, frozen in place is the body of the pilot. “Can you tell if the power is still on with the ship?” She asks aloud. “We have rendered the core inert.” Responds the echo. Crawling over the pipes and exposed cabling on the hull she can see that the pilot, Zeke, had unfortunately braced himself to work by putting one boot under a secured conduit and then leaned over another cable bundle to switch the engines over to the reserve tanks, causing the current to arc, welding himself in place. Dying of electrocution painfully, in the process causing the overload of the capacitors and resistors blowing out the control panels in the cockpit. It wasn’t sabotage, at least on Zeke’s part. Just an unfortunate accident stemming from their second hand pilfered vessel, and shoddy rushed schedule to assemble it all. “So how did Richards get a pipe in the head?” She mumbled. The deep echo voice rumbles.”The analysis of the data from the biometric recorder seems to suggest he was trying to pull a stuck valve open on a holding tank, when is grip failed, slipped off the wrench and impaled himself. His gps tracker shows him flopping around.” Responds the voice dryly. “Which caused the machinists lubricant to dribble into the cistern.” She says, flatly. A little numbed by the revelation. Suddenly there is a violent rocking motion to the room, as the woman tumbles over sideways falling to her hands and knees with a violent thud, the room shrinks down into a cramped sphere, only slightly larger than the woman if she were to crouch. The light within the grey white room begins to shimmer into a dazzling brilliance. “Would you like to know what your wrist biometric unit says – Racquelle?”

Part Fifteen: Ghost of the Dirty Starling.

I hurt myself yesterday

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Trying to clear a path for my kids to toboggan down a really good hill at our family farm property. Caught a ski and flipped onto my elbow/shoulder like a forty something out of shape idiot, and now have a sore arm/elbow/shoulder. What’s worse is that I feel guilty for sending my kids back to in person learning. Ugh. It’s been really hard to sleep and it weighs heavy on my mind, all day, every day. No bruising as of yet from my physical fall. Probably won’t be any. Takes a fair amount to make me bruise up. Not as much to make me feel guilty.

Day 41, and what have we learned? Still not very eloquent or graceful with the written word. Feeling less concerned about the quality or quantity of my writing. At this point I’m aiming to have chapters done, not perfect, but a chunk at a time finished and uploaded for all to see. It can be an adrenaline rush once I get on a roll and I can see just over the horizon for something unexpected coming my way. I have a ways to go yet to wrap things up. I won’t give a quantitative answer to chapter count, but I know quality wise where I’d like to hit, and how I think I might wrap the story up in a nice little bow. I believe I had twenty two chapters for the first book, plus various one off shorts, and book two already has a few one offs written and compiled along with the twelve chapters I’ve written for book two.

I wonder if I’ll try to do something similar in another universe or if I’ll keep coming back to this well repeatedly. All the best to you for 2022! Keep on writing and sharing!

The Chronic-What!-cles of the suburban dad.

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Ha. No, nothing that cool or awesome I’m afraid. Just me and my thoughts to keep us warm. Like a nice pair of wool socks but for your brain and eyes. We’ve had more snow, of course. Not the massive dumping of a week ago, but enough I’ll need to shovel out the driveway, walks and back patio areas to try to stop the basement from flooding during the February and March thaws. That’s the fun time of year when we get snow, then ice storms then heavy rains and a weird heat wave in the span of a week two months in a row, and it will wreak havoc on everything. But not there yet, still clearly in the midst of sub zero temperatures, wind chill, ice and the occasional snowfall. The wind chill also brings us great hits such as snow drifts on major roads, white outs, the nauseating feeling of traveling without moving when driving at night, and the snow is blowing through your head lights like stars as you jump to hyper space a la Star Wars. The only reason we suffer through it is that it kills off many warm weather bugs, spiders and snakes and such. If we still had Australia’s selection of deadly bugs and reptiles plus this bitter cold I’d have left years ago!

I think I may be closing in on forty continuous days of writing. Which at first seems like a lot, but most likely has accumulated little more than a few thousand jumble letters. I’m willing to bet that because I write on my phone rather that at a computer the process is slower than it could be, but if I’m at my computer I am usually working on paid stuff, so that isn’t a fun position for me to write in. That’s for working, writing is for fun.

I like to be able to curl up on a couch or chair and write at will. Perhaps my next step would be to set aside a specific time of day to write but I feel that as long as I am writing something I don’t much care when I do it. I also find that after I get my initial post put down on paper (such as it is – electronically) all of a sudden the pressure is gone and I can day dream about which in the current roster of characters can advance the story in a fun, or interesting manner.

The rest of this sunday will be spent preparing for my kids school week. Waiting on responses to work projects, either feedback or approvals and releasing work to commercial printers or external vendors and suppliers.

“Hey! Shush… keep it down…”

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“I can’t hear what’s coming in over the radio.” Fusses the plump man in yellow coveralls. “Jimmy? Jimmy Wu is that you in there? Why is it so dark? What are you talking about?” Whispers the petite woman crouched down at the door beside Jimmy, in a the dark broom closet in an unused portion of the HR office on deck 19 of The Dirty Starling. Jimmy is hunched over his wrist communicator trying to dial in the frequency of his remote audio transmitter. “I told you Janice, I hid my negotiators recorder and broadcaster in the specialist communications bay after that mechanic got cut in half from the containment breach. The place was a mess, and had some seriously weird activity going on. Plus I heard from Jones, the director that they had an actual ghost in their department. I took a nose around but didn’t see one though.” He pouted. “Oh, that’s a shame. I’d have loved to have met one.” She too scrunched up her face in disappointment. Her heavy lids almost closed with the contortion of her lips. “Well, as I was meandering around I deployed my audio unit and have been surreptitiously recording the conversations from inside, over the last few months. It’s getting wild Janice! Bonkers even.” He shuffles from his squat position to instead sit directly on the floor and place his back against the cool wall. Taking the hint that they’ll be there for a while Janice sits down on the opposite wall. Their feet overlap in the middle of the small unused supply closet, littered with brooms and empty musty boxes. Jimmy cranks up the volume so they can both hear it. Janice says “Why don’t you just broadcast the signal to my communicator?” Looking aghast Jimmy says “Don’t be a silly goose – Janice, if I broadcast it there will be an official log of the recording. I’ve got to do this on the down low, otherwise it’ll be re-education for the both of us.” Janice smirks at Jimmy and waves the comment off. They both readjust themselves and wait while the audio begins to build again. At first there is only a smattering of small talk, and some quick bursts of spoken activity. The line eventually goes dead. “Don’t worry about that.” Says Jimmy. “It can be hit or miss. But the reason I called you here was I had an Omega level code orange flagged to my attention regarding a debrief with the ghost. It’s here! Today. Supposed to happen any minute now.” He gesticulates wildly and his ankles knock against Janice’s. “Ouch, watch it Wu!” Janice exclaims.

A kilometer down the hallway, on deck 19 of The Dirty Starling a gaunt and exhausted skeleton of a man in fresh beige coveralls is lumbering towards his debrief in the cavernous communications terminal. The massive doors are closed tightly, there is no one to be seen in the halls within several hundred meters. The lights are a startlingly bright blue white. The cables and pipes that run under the floor grates are the only colorful things in sight. It’s all very drab and serious, and grey. With a loud thunk, and a ratcheting click the doors peel open slowly. With a thud they come to rest about eighteen inches apart. The ghost must squeeze through the large metal teeth that maintain the registration of the doors. It is an awkward and claustrophobic fit. The three foot thick doors are icy cold to the touch. The interior of the room is near black, the only source of illumination are the buttons and dials from the control boards. All over head lights are off. With a loud click one lone spotlight shines down in a white yellow cone on the floor. “Step into the light please Mark.” A bodiless voice commands from the darkness.

Stirring from their sleep Jimmy Wu and his pal Janice sit bolt upright, their hearts are pounding. “Did you hear that? Whose voice is that? I don’t recognize it, do you?” Whispers Janice. “Oh I heard it all right. Now be quiet, this is going to get interesting!” Chuckles Jimmy. Tapping a few buttons on his HR select wrist communicator, he runs some diagnostics on the voice from the audio broadcast. On his blue green LED screen a whirling pattern appears. The machine is searching and the app is thinking.

“I have it on good authority Mark that you were successful in locating my asset. But, you sent a message. What was it?” Growls the heavily modulated voice from the dark. “I’m sorry, sir or Madam. I don’t know what you’re talking about.” The quiet response is mumbled. “Of course you know! Tell me, what did you send? Was it a warning, an alert? Answer me before I put you through a recycler!” Shouts the voice in a terse response. “I’m sorry sir, I’m just a generalist, I haven’t spoken to anyone, or sent any messages, covert or otherwise – sir.” The meek voice wavers, whether from fatigue or otherwise is not immediately discernible. “He’s got an Ultima level cognitive block in place – very useful in these covert operations. Give him the key word and his subconscious will spill it’s data core openly. You can cross reference any multitude of points of information. It’s a nifty bit of engineering.” Speaks a second deeper voice. Although given the modulation used it could be anybody on the other end of the line. “I don’t have a key? What key? I was told the ghost would search my coordinates, locate the assets and report back. I said to specifically not send any messages have any type of communications with it. That was of the utmost importance!” Shouts the original, now maniacal voice. “How’d you do it without a key? That’s not possible.” Responds the second lower voice in a breathy tone. “I commandeered his time and sent him the quadrant to look through, same as I would for any duty roster change!” Screams the first speaker. “Wait – you didn’t use encryption or a key word? Oh fuck!” The voice cuts away to a gurgle, there are sounds of gunshots and bones crunching broadcasting over the line.

“Sir – we have at least two more listeners on the line.” Says a soft but firm voice over the audio broadcast. “Uh. Find them and eliminate them please. Are we on Vox? For fuck’s sake turn that shit of…..” The line goes dead a second time that day in the HR broom closet on deck 19. Janice and Jimmy are frozen in place. “They don’t mean us do they?” Asks Janice. “They couldn’t possibly. I used a remote audio broadcaster. They’re a dime a dozen onboard this ship. It’s not registered to me specifically, just our department.” Shrugs Jimmy. “Maybe they could trace the outgoing signal of the broadcast unit, not that they know it’s us?” A heartbeat later a quiet peep chimes in from Jimmy’s wrist communicator. The voice diagnostics are complete, and a red flashing flag is present on Jimmy’s LED screen. Before he can cancel it, a matching beacon pops up on Janice’s wrist communicator too. Sitting so close together for so long the HR consultants private chat app has linked them together. In the green blue glow of their wrist communicators the two share an ashen grimace.

In the bright yellow halls of the HR department on deck 19, loud boots and the metallic clink of assault rifles can be heard.

Part Twelve: Ghost of the Dirty Starling.

Sprinkled across her field of view

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Is a smattering of dim flecks of light. Distant stars, far further than her own native sun. The Mangelo has been coasting for some time now, aiming for Pluto’s Lagrange point 5. But with only the slimmest quantity of fuel left in the sabotaged external tanks Racquelle is fighting for her life. Desperately trying to locate team ETA and their small search and rescue vessel Lil Boat Peep. After discovering the treachery onboard The Mangelo three days prior, the tainted rations & water cistern, Racquelle has been trying to devise a plan to not only keep the ship on course, work through the damaged cockpit, but also solve the water and food supply issue. She hasn’t slept more than a few hours over the last three days, and dehydration is making her life hell. Her ability to perform manual labour is limited in scope, and painful to endure. Her last move was to cut back the output of the heater and hope that there was enough moisture in the air to condense on the walls and panels so that she could collect it with some rubber sheeting she’d hung before collapsing into the captain’s chair, and passing out from exhaustion.

A brilliantly dazzling explosion of light burns through the eyelids of the sleeping Racquelle. Her hair is damp, and her seat is a puddle of cool water. With a flinch she slides off of the chair to bury her rough cracked lips into the cushion to unceremoniously slurp up the puddle of water. It dribbles over her chin and collects at the neck ring of her space suit. She holds the mouthful of water in her cheeks and tries to slowly swallow only a small portion at a time. Trying desperately not to vomit up the precious water. Her wrist communicator is flashing amber alerting her to her near fatal state of dehydration. The notification for hunger is still in the late stages of green, almost to yellow. She could last another twenty one days without food if she absolutely had to. Taking a deep breath, her chest heaving, the urge to vomit subsiding Racquelle can see nothing but grey and alabaster shapes outside the view port of the cockpit. Struggling to stand up, her legs shaky, she crawls back up into her chair, and moves the control panels to face her. The radar screen is showing a city sized green amorphous blob just outside The Mangelo . But no sign of the rescue tug Lil Boat Peep. The communications panel has a lone flashing blue notification. Something has been calling her in her sleep.

Racquelle toggles a switch on her armrest to display the notification on the swing armed screen above her head. It has no video, just an audio file of a strange metallic machine screaming tone. Like a tin can through a grinder. Pulling up a few diagnostics of the signal she can tell that the message originated from the direction of earth and not from the behemoth parked outside her window. Reaching up Racquelle pushes the screen out of her field of view. Slowing getting to her feet she steps over the jury rigged cabling and exposed wires littering the floor of the cockpit. She stands by the front view port and stares at the writhing grey off white mass before her. The vessel is so large it covers one hundred and eighty degrees of her vision out the window. Up and down, and side to side. Nothing but a shuddering, wriggling and writhing metallic surface.

“Hungry”. The message appears like frosted smoke across her view port. “Yeah – sure.” She says aloud. “I could eat.” She dead pans to herself, assuming that she is hallucinating rather vividly due to stress. “I hunger.” With a soft chuckle Racquelle retorts. “No, no, no – dickhead. I’m the one that’s hungry.” Staring slackly at the glass the message fades as though it were never there leaving no trace. “Yah! That’s what I thought.” She gives her head a shake. Droplets of water splash onto her control console, dripping down her neck from her hair.

The alabaster skin of Kelvin wriggles itself into four meter thick tendrils and reaches out hungrily to absorb the tiny black and orange morsel into itself. Kelvin has needs for raw materials and ejectable propellant mass. In the span of a few moments, or were they days, a week or instantaneously, The Mangelo and it’s occupants are consumed entirely.

As the off white tendrils leech over the ships hull Racquelle shrieks in horror. The silence that follows is deafening.

Part Eleven: Ghost of the Dirty Starling.

“Hey Marko! What the fuck bud, you too good to answer your pages now?”

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Sneers the greasy looking mechanic in rumpled red coveralls. He’s used an over ride key card on the crew quarters door. The grey green lump of human that is currently out cold on the raised bed doesn’t stir, at all. In fact the body is so still it doesn’t even appear to be breathing, let alone functional enough to answer a page and report in for his duty rotation. Stepping across the threshold of the most spacious single occupancy room the mechanic has ever seen. Large though it may be, since it is kept sparse and unadorned it comes across as positively massive. Standing in the center of the room, the bisected doors begin to close. The change in cabin pressure from the hall and the closing door wafts the rancid smell of rotten meat, body odor and foul breath right to the mechanics nostrils. It clings to the soft palette and inside of the nose like an oily scented film. The greasy lank haired mechanic gags on the stench. Looking closely at the ghost on the bed he can see clumps of dead skin gathered in ragged lumps on the man’s pale dirty feet. He looks like he hasn’t bathed in months. He smells like he’s been sleeping in his own filth and waste for a year straight. With a ear splitting peel the greasy mechanics wrist rings again to remind him he has to get the ghost named Mark, up and ready for his next rotation in the next few hours. He flicks off the notification on his wrist communicator and finds the lighting panel for the room. With hesitation he begins to poke around getting the bathing unit ready for the nearly dead ghost. Walking around the side of the raised bed he leans against the lower desk, and pulls out a couple of drawers to stand on, as no step stool can be seen inside the room. As his line of sight comes parallel to the comatose man, he can see that he appears to have been unceremoniously deposited onto the bed with little thought given to comfort or his own safety. Limbs akimbo, neck turned harshly to his left, looking in towards the padded wall and away from the door. If his wrist biometrics unit wasn’t flashing green, you’d easily assume he was dead. The beige uniform is strained, torn and falling apart at the seams. “Dude, what the fuck were you up to? You smell like shit buddy boy. If you’re here with me at all, I’m just gonna pull you down from your bed and strip you down to your skivvies. God I hope you guys wear skivvies. Then I’m going to run you through two or three wash cycles to clean you up. I have an Omega level code orange on you my man. If it were up to me I’d leave you in the sick bay, or a med pod for the next month, but those orange fucks don’t play that way, you get me? Huh? Shit… I’d swear you were dead… umph! Jesus, heavy too.” With a lot of writhing, wriggling and unflattering pulls using leverage the mechanic drops the ghost named Mark to the hard metal floor. He turns the puddle of man and clothes about looking for a safety pull cord that should be poking out from under a stitched patch. Locating it to the rear behind Mark’s left armpit, he rips off the patch to expose the yellow triangular handle. Grabbing it firmly he pulls the twelve feet of molecular fiber cord out of the uniform coveralls and it falls apart along the seam lines. The smell that erupts out of the split clothing is horrendous. The body is covered with pustules, open pressure sores and deep tissue rashes. His skin dyed black with rot from faeces build up that the suit was unable to filter or remove via catheter. “They’ve done a real number on you bud. Come on, this might sting a little, sorry to drag you around your room like this.” Pulling the dead weight of the unconscious man from a pile of his tangle of limbs to orient him for bathing in the shower cubicle. “If you’re alive in there, listen, I’m going to key in an antiseptic scrub, wash and rinse cycle as well, for after the wash. It’s gonna hurt like a Son of a bitch, but you look as though you need it. The orange mafia don’t care to smell anything less than perfumed roses when you have a debrief. You can thank me later. Maybe a shot of adrenaline when the cycles are complete will help you out eh? Why not. It’s on the house uh! Company money, well spent I’d say.” Clicking away on the control board outside the showers the mechanic types in the resource codes he was given, triple checking against his wrist communicator to be sure. He presses the initiate button and walks out of the room.

A opaque cream coloured bag expands out of a hole in the wall, the naked man is enveloped within it soundlessly. A viscous pink gel floods the bag from multiple directions. A soft glop and slurp can be heard, muffled by the membrane. The sticky goo oozes over the man pulling sixty days worth of dead skin, waste and dirt along with it, to be filtered and pushed back through again. Cleaning every surface as it goes. As the gooey mass get sucked from the ghosts nasal cavity he gulps in a deep and startled breath. He twitches and shakes as he comes to. With the pinch of a syringe to the base of his neck his eyes pop open as adrenaline floods his veins. He pushes backwards frantically as though trying to hide inside the wall. His heels crack the tile lining the floor, his finger nails push off his cuticle with the strain of his panic. He can not remember why he is so afraid, it’s like a blood memory buried deep within his bones. “I’ve seen a god, and it was not benevolent.” He whispers weakly from cracked lips into the empty room, a small trickle of blood from his ruined fingers dribbles down the drain in the center of the wash cubicle.

Part Ten: Ghost of the Dirty Starling.

I had an interesting thought about a character yesterday.

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While writing part eight of my current short story series I introduced a new female character named Racquelle whom I rather quite like. I can see going off on a story tangent with her fairly easily, but the arc of the story I’m telling doesn’t really require her in that way. I suppose I could pocket her for some other stories later on. Or kill her off and use her daughter or niece to fill that space in a future short story series. Tough call to make. I can see her adding alot of humor and toughness to what I have planned, but I feel like she will need another two or three self contained problems to solve to use her properly if she is to live. Which could potentially hoop my plans, like a rough finger in the bum. What to do what to do. I know the broad strokes of what I want to happen and where the whole thing is to lead. It spans the galaxy, time and humanity as a whole. That’s alot of ground to cover for an interconnected short story series by an amateur writer. I think I’ll give in to my penchant for ballooning stories and characters. After all that’s how I wrote the first book chunk. Letting the people created within find their own ways to fix a problem or create new and interesting ones. All while heading ‘roughly’ in the direction I planned. But perhaps in a haphazard manner. I’m about to get busy with work, and I’m on day 36 or 37 of writing everyday, so I want to keep the momentum up, and the discipline in place. The habit of just writing nonsense blog posts was what triggered a vivid daydream, and hatched the second chunk of this series, so bonus points for perseverance I guess. Do I – kill off Racquelle unceremoniously, secret her away for a later date, involve her more deeply in the coming story, or ignore her for the sake of the initial story line I had half baked in the first place? If she works for me, like Ms Taylor did in book one, then she may stick around for a while, and do some crazy shit.

“You dirty, dirty bastard. What have you done!”

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Bellows the navigator aboard team Theta’s modest search and rescue vessel The Mangelo. She is furiously toggling switches and flipping frantically through a cluttered control board of dials and buttons. An ear splitting siren is screaming over the ships pa system. The pilot, now missing, went to the restroom and just vanished off of the ship. But not before dumping the ships fuel, and tainting all of the rations. The oil canister he must have secreted aboard the ship is lying overturned next to the now ocher coloured water cistern. It’s green label is well worn, and partially fading. It sits stark against the rust brown floor grates in the cargo compartments yellow overhead light. “Richard’s! Did you have any part in this – you slick silver fox fuck. You greasy – gods be damned bell end!” Roars the navigator as she continues to arrest the vessels endless supply of alarm bells and warning klaxons. Constantly shifting between control boards, the captains chair terminal and the read outs situated at her own post. As far as she can tell they are still on course, the trajectory she plotted out is perfect, though now with the loss of fuel and the weight of the propellant missing it could turn too steep an insertion to Lagrange point 5 out beyond Pluto and Charon’s gravitational pull. That’s an awfully dark and remote place to float with no fuel and tainted, spoiled rations. The course called for several corrections over the coming weeks as they waited for further instructions and a final destination. Unforgiving is an understatement, untenable an apt description- suicide more like it. “That thick fuck. What was he thinking?” She has begun to mutter vehement curses under her breath as she works expertly to stave off the flow of fuel pellets and propellant leaking out of the containment tanks on the exterior of The Mangelo.

Rustling in the rear of the cargo bay brings the navigator, Racquelle to a standstill. The clear ring of aluminium piping falling onto the metal floor grates is unmistakable. Followed by the sounds of heavy food bins tumbling and the muffled shout of someone swearing magnificently. More bangs, pings and thumps can be heard in the now cluttered cockpit. Racquelle had to pull a bunch of the main bus wiring out of the panels in order to reroute power and environmental functions around the alarms triggered by faulty equipment. Seems Theta’s flight commander had a nefarious plot to hatch as he had taken it upon himself to cut cables and conduit in a seemingly random fashion.

Racquelle couldn’t make head nor tails of what he’d cut or why. There wasn’t much about what he was planning that made any sense at all. We all knew what failing Dr. Jang would do for us, we’d end up spending the rest of our miserable lives kept prisoner in the doctor’s grotesque surgical bay, being eviscerated via needless surgery and bouts of straight up torture. The man’s eyes gleamed as he poured over the mangled lumps of his favourite specimens, still somehow alive, as he gave his orientation speeches to the newly initiated at UB313.

The sound of somebody clumsy waddling through the central gangway of The Mangelo, clumping along like a cunting great Clydesdale with lead weights for shoes brings Racquelle up short as she catches her breath while staring out the cockpits view port. Standing slouched over her NAV terminal is a man in black shiny coveralls. His face is burgundy and his grin is lopsided. Breathing heavily he mumbles and his face goes slack. He topples over the radar – Lidar view finder lands face first upon the ground. A two inch pipe poking out of the back of his head. The fracture surrounding the wound leaking brain matter and copious amounts of blood mingled with wiry grey hair. His name tag reads Richards. He was the medic and second in command aboard The Mangelo.

“What the fuck is going on here!” Racquelle leans her head against the view port, feeling the icy chill of the concrete glass cool her forehead. The empty black void outside hides a great deal. Many people in better situations than this have succumbed to the siren song of betrayal and intrigue.

Part nine : Ghost of the Dirty Starling.