Christmas on the Anvil

by Michael Penmore

  Her communicator beeped. She fished it out of her pocket and scowled in anger, “What?!”

  “Nadie? What’s going on? Zach called me in. Is everything all right?” It was Rhys. Just the man she wanted to mouth off.

  “Very funny, hahaha! You’ve had your laughs. Tell me, how on twelve colonies did you manage to bring this menagerie in here?”

  “What menagerie?”

  “For sand dragons, Rhys!” Nadie changed her investigative tack. She couldn’t find anything out of place in the animals so she approached the sleigh instead. “How did you stash a nine pack of reindeer inside the Anvil without me ever noticing? And why they ain’t giving any signatures on the scans? Is it something in their reins? Or did you load a big ass dampener into that snazzy bag?”

  As she was saying this, Nadie arrived at the side of the sleigh. She felt a tingle in the air. When she reached in with her hand, a cold bubble-like wall materialised and repelled her. She couldn’t pierce the unexpected barrier no matter what she tried. Kicks, stabs and punches were all ineffective. Some kind of a force field was protecting the sleigh from unauthorised access.

  “Nadie, I have absolutely no clue what you’re talking about. Reindeer? I wish! Do you know how hard it is to find a real-life reindeer on Earth? How would I get nine of them in the middle of space? What do you see in there? Tell me. Do you need me to come?”

  “No!” She opposed him fiercely. Now she felt not just like the only reasonable person on the ship, but the butt of a cruel and undeserved prank as well. “Stay where you are. Don’t show your face or I will punch it to the centre of the Sun, I swear.”

  “OK. OK. Calm down, your iciness. I didn’t mean to rile you up—”

  The speakers came alive in every corner of the cargo bay and drowned his voice out. Loud music started playing and a singing emerged soon after the opening chords, joyfully announcing the first signs of Christmas everywhere you go.

  Nadie jumped in the air and twirled around. She looked at her five and ten, six, seven, eleven and four o’clock but there was no one to be seen, no one except the reindeer. The tune kept blasting, loud and cheerful, announcing Christmas to all and sundry. She hated it!

  “Rhys, stop doing this or I’ll shoot down every darn speaker on the ship!”

  “I’m not playing it. Someone beat me to it. Maybe it’s Hetty?”

  “Don’t lie to me. If you’re lying to me, I’ll go up there and stomp on your neck—”

  “Captain, I’m picking up a major energy discharge in the mess hall,” Zach Gorman breached into their conversation.

  “You mean the dining hall,” Rhys said.

  “He means the kitchen!” Nadie’s iron will kept her from hyperventilating on the spot. “I’m gonna see what it is and I swear I’ll punch its fuzzing lights out. Why don’t you make yourself useful and kill that piercing racket going into our heads?”

  Without waiting for their answer, Nadie pressed the off switch on her comms and ran out of the cargo bay. As she left them, the reindeer were clamping and stomping to the rhythm of the music. They were mocking her. And the song got louder, and its joyfulness turned more nauseating with every step she made. The singer spoke of dolls for a pair of girls called Janice and Jen.

  “Janice and Jen are gonna get mighty disappointed this year!” Nadie reached to her waist with every intention of shooting down each and every source of the invasive noise she could locate. But the blasters weren’t in their customary place.

  Nadie cursed out loud and considered doubling back to her quarters so she could arm herself, then she thought better of it. The navigator could bring down this nuisance without wasting any firepower. No Christmas was going to get under the skin of Nadine Chu. She would show all the happiness and glitziness in the universe who’s boss!

  She steamrolled into the kitchen. Immediately, she had to turn away her head and cover her eyes. The illumination—the word light didn’t quite cut it—was so strong she kept blinking away tears for ten seconds, maybe more.

  “What... What in the shonk is this?”

  “I nipped out to the larder for some cranberries, it was just for a minute, no more, and when I came back here she was already standing in this spot! I swear, it’s a proper Christmas miracle! Isn’t she super fantastic jubilastic?!”

  What was that even supposed to mean? Hetty was making up words again. Nadie ground her teeth as her vision finally adjusted to the brilliance in the room.

  The ship‘s mechanic who squealed out those words had put on a white dress with glittery silver snowflakes on the bottom. She had mounted a stepladder in an attempt to touch the light source—a shining star the size of a ripe melon. The ornament sat atop the largest, most thickly coniferous Christmas tree Nadie had witnessed in her entire life.

  The star shone like the real thing. The kitchen basked in its glow like a hospital ward where nurses had put every blinding light on. The tree both preened and sagged at the same time. It almost scraped the ceiling. Thick branches were weighed down by a load of wood and metal trinkets hung from them. There was a lot of round glass sprinkled with glitter, and tall and fat pinecones looking like someone had stuffed them to overflowing with honey. Among this bric-a-brac sat real candles, burning white.

  “What are you doing, Snow White?! You wanna burn us all out of existence?!” Nadie poured her boiling frustration on Hetty and leapt to put out the miniature flames. She killed them one by one with her fingertips, burning and blistering her skin in the process. After that, she needed to soak them in cold water at the kitchen tap.

  “Ohhh, you ruined them. And they were so lovely.” Hetty mourned the dead candles as she climbed down the ladder. But she wouldn’t be her childish self if she didn’t find something else to get excited about. “Presents!”

  The young mechanic got down to all fours and wriggled her butt under the tree. She was right. Brightly wrapped packages sat under the trees lowest branches. Nadie resigned herself to the notion that Rhys had gone totally bats and splashed their limited resources on Christmas surprises for everyone.

  “Leave them where they are,” she carped. Not that she cared about keeping the parcels intact until morning. If Rhys wanted to keep that tradition, he shouldn’t have put the presents under the tree so soon. But she would never hear the end of his grief if she allowed the girl to get to them now before everyone else had gathered to watch.

  Also, as reluctant as she was to admit it, she was impressed by the lengths the Captain had gone to this year. Real life reindeer, snow, enormous Christmas tree. If only he could draw the line on music! Those speakers had finished the previous tune and were already playing the next. There was a small improvement compared to the hallways: the volume inside the kitchen didn’t threaten her eardrums with sudden popping.

  Someone else entered the kitchen in quiet mode. Nadie was alerted when she heard a female voice sing the words along with the PA. Praise the stars, the woman was better at it than Rhys and his caterwauling.

  “Look who’s decided to join us. Do you know anything about this, Miss Poole?” Nadie addressed the singer. Jane Poole was wearing her black top and grey cargo trousers, the same she came in at the very start of their unscheduled acquaintance.

  “No, but I can tell you one thing: whoever put this tree up has done some seriously good work. I like it.”

  “I knew I wouldn’t see sense from you.” Nadie turned away from the passenger in time to see Hetty squeeze backwards from under the Christmas tree. She had a big box in her hands.

  “This one has my name on it! Can I open it? Can I? Can I?”

  “I don’t know if you can,” Jane said like some old-fashioned schoolmarm. “But you may.”

  “Wait a minute,” Nadie held out her hands to both of them in a signal to stop. “You have no authority here, Poole. You leave that thing alone, Hetty. I’m sure our jolly Captain wants you to wait until everyone’s had their portion of hot potato gravy and Brussels cheesecake or some other world infamous poisoned de
licacy.”

  “Yuck,” said Rhys. He arrived just then and stopped next to Jane, hands on his hips in a cocky fashion. His eyes kept going up and up in admiration of the big Christmas tree from the bottom to its glowy top. “Holly mistletoe! That’s a beauty! Who put it here?”

  “Quit it, Rhys. I know it was you,” Nadie stepped up to him and stabbed him in the chest with a finger.

  He stood his ground. “Nope. And I’m sure it wasn’t you either. Jane?”

  “I wish but I don’t even know where to get a small one.”

  “Hetty?” The mechanic didn’t hear Rhys at all. She was shaking her big box, trying to guess what the rattling inside it meant for her. “Oh, a gift? You can open it if you want. I’d love to see what’s inside too.”

  “Yay!” Hetty tore off the wrapping paper like a hungry hamster who’d just left its wheel and had leftover running energy. When the wrapper was down, she paused and looked under the tree again. “Jane! I saw one with your name on it! Get it out! Get it out!” She waited until her new best friend retrieved her own, much smaller parcel. It was flat, like a book perhaps. “You open yours and I’ll open mine. Together like two besties.”

  “OK,” Jane got to the task.

  Nadie wasn’t convinced by Rhys’ denials. “You’re not fooling me. It was you. I have no idea how and when, but you got this tree here. And the reindeer, and the sleigh. You’re a shonking Christmas maniac, Rhys.”

  “Why thank you, Nadine. I love Christmas almost as much as I love being stuck on the edges of known universe with you, guys. But I didn’t have anything to do with this tree. I think the nearest joint that peddles anything similar might be Flora Junction. And we haven’t been anywhere near that place in, like, three years? Give or take.”

  “You found a way. You stashed it somewhere.”

  “For three years?”

  “I wouldn’t put it past you.”

  “I don’t plan that far ahead.”

  “Right! For a moment I forgot you're a prime rep of the think later kind. Then you got it from somewhere else. You went to Lindano behind my back. Or maybe it was one of your stupidly bad deals with Bodiye. Or you met some Christmas crazy ravagers and bought this oversized geranium for an arm and a leg. It’s got you written all over it, Rhys. Admit it! It was you!”

  “Na-uh. It wasn’t me and it wasn’t Hetty or Jane. Maybe Malcolm somehow...”

  “WOOOOW! THAT IS ONE TOTALLY AWESOME CHRISTMAS TREE!”

  “OK, so it wasn’t Malc,” Rhys said after Hetty’s brother beelined through the door straight to inspect the tree’s wicked branches…

  Hetty opened her cardboard box. She picked up a shiny new drone—an exact replica of the Anvil. She never got to finish her own project after Gared Drake shot it down. The girl went into a full-blown ecstatic rant about it:

  “Weee! See!? It’s the Anvil! I bet it flies straight and sideways and wherever I tell it to! Wow! See those lights? It’s got neural interface! Wait. I don’t have the jack. No worries! Got a remote here. I’ll fire it up in a jiff!”

  “Better read the manual first,” Malcolm told her. The engineer ducked down by the box and took a peek. “Strange. No instructions.”

  “I’ll figure it out by myself! What did you get, Jane?”

  Jane eyed her present suspiciously. It was a book with a spaceship on the front cover. The title said: Sigma Protocol. Someone had attached a handwritten note which she read:

  Dear Sigma,

  I really think you should read this book.

  Yours,

  Santa.

  Ps. Tap here for the ebook version.

  Psssst. It’s only 99c!

  “A book? Cool! See what I have!” Hetty grabbed her toy and started running through the room with it, pretending it was in flight and showing it to anyone she encountered.

  “Yeah. Happy days,” Nadie spoke in a deflated voice when Hetty paraded the thing in front of her eyes. She didn’t understand what the fuss was all about, but there was little she grasped about Hetty and her moods on a regular day. This day was as far from normal as a dragonfly is from being a dragon.

  She had quite a lot to say to her CO who had let this happen. “Rhys, assuming it wasn’t you who set up this totally idiotic, may I say perfectly Dreyfus-esque jackass display, ain’t you the slightest bit concerned? Someone set this up. It may look innocent and sweet to you but what if someone—and this is just a crazy idea, but bear with me for three seconds—IS ROAMING THROUGH THE SHIP TRYING TO TAKE OVER WHILE WE’RE DISTRACTED WITH SHINY THINGAMABOBS???!!!”

  Rhys covered his ears and put on his annoyed face. Nadie responded with a dreadful scowl. The Captain composed himself and said:

  “You’re right. We’ve got a mystery on our hands. If it wasn’t any of us, and Zach didn’t suddenly get overwhelmed with feelings of love and generosity for all mankind, then we’ve got to investigate this one. Hetty! Put down that drone and start locking this place up. Whoever’s responsible might want to return to the scene of their... kindness?”

  “Aye, aye, sir!” Hetty stood to attention, saluted him and ran amok trying to find a good place to settle her miniature Anvil. She knocked a few things down before she chose the very middle of the dining table.

  “Malcolm.”

  “Yes, Captain?”

  “Do what you do best. Lock down the engineering just in case. The reactor is the most vulnerable spot on the whole ship.”

  “I’m on it,” the engineer needed no repeating. He just nodded his head and dashed out to where he came from.

  “What do I do?” Jane asked for instructions. She had the look of a sceptic, or maybe it was her expression of concern. Her status on the ship remained unclear, but she wanted to make herself useful somehow.

  “Go to your room and lock the door. Don’t move until someone comes to get you.”

  “Are you punishing me for something?”

  “The way I see it, you may be responsible for all of this,” Rhys pointed to the tree with a big smile forming. “And if you are, just admit it now and I’ll give you a big thank you and a small hug for everything that you did because it’s stellar. That would be another proof of how very resourceful and really unpredictable you are.” This was the moment Rhys stopped smiling and got down to brass tacks. “But if it wasn’t you then I don’t want a rogue agent running around the ship, disregarding my orders and doing things your way while we deal with a potential crisis.”

  Jane just shrugged, expression unchanged. “And what am I supposed to do all alone in my little room?”

  “Sleep. Sing some carols. Get into a Christmas spirit. Something. Anything. You can catch up on reading that new story you got. Just stay put until this... this crazy happy celebration is properly investigated. Can you do that for me? Please.”

  Jane appeared to be thinking about it. She looked down at the book she was clutching to her chest, then straight at Rhys. “Did you give me this?”

  “No.”

  She probed his face, then came to a decision. “OK, I’ll stand down. For an hour. That’s how long it should take me to read the book. Then I will come out and start searching my way. Do we have a deal?”

  “One hour is plenty,” the Captain shook on it. As the passenger exited, he turned to address Nadie who stood and watched as the conversation happened. She enjoyed this familiar, businesslike man who showed everyone that he ran this ship and no one else. Especially to her liking was what he did to that upstart Jane Poole. But it wasn’t a perfect takedown. The please at the end took a lot of power out of it.

  “Nadie, you will—”

  “Go with you and search the ship,” she cut him off before he ruined the moment by giving her some half-assed bogus assignment. “No negotiations.”

  “Just what I was going to propose,” he rallied. “First we need to—”

  “Arm ourselves,” she ran ahead of him again, verbally and literally. Rhys was forced to follow her into the hallways. “We might need to use force. Whoeve
r’s doing this gotta have some seriously strong equipment. We’re going after them blind. We don’t know who they are or what they want—”

  “Spread the Christmas joy?”

  “Focus, Rhys. They can be hiding anywhere. Better grab some nocto from the stash.”

  “Night vision? OK, you’re the boss on tactical deployment. You want a big rifle?”

  “Heavy iron just slows me down. I prefer my blasters. It’ll be good for you, though. Won’t require much aiming of you, wonky eye.”

  “Haha, you’re so funny.”

  The current song reached its natural end. And again, the blissful silence didn’t last for long. A blast of notes replaced it, suspiciously upbeat, extremely outdated with synthesizer beats. It was the universally-recognised seasonal jingle. Nadie grew fretful as she knew what travesty of lyrics was going to follow in the empty corridors before Mike George, or whatever the singer’s name was, even began.

  “You gave it away this time!” she turned to face Rhys, now running backwards. “Only you could have played the most overused Christmas single of all time! You have no shame, playing this brainwashing pulp! This preferred mind sponger of the Science Consortium!”

  “It’s not me! I told Zach to cut off the sound but he can’t do it!”

  “I just wanna WHAM you right now!”

  Rhys skidded to a stop, leaned against a bulkhead and spluttered with laughter. It was a hysterical cackle of someone who couldn’t stop himself. Between the bursts, Rhys squeezed out a few words, “Wham me! Precious!”

  “What?!” Nadie was restless, lost between believing they had a genuine intruder on the ship and the fast-growing belief that Rhys was leading her down an elaborate garden path. She was the non-believer so he rubbed his customs in her nose. Was that it? She paced back and forth past the Captain, raring to get her guns and bring some serious vengeance on the Anvil’s malfunctioning loudspeakers.

  “Come on! You said it on purpose, honey bottoms! Wham me! Hahaha—oomph!” Rhys staggered back and barely kept standing on his own when Nadie whammed him right between the eyes.