It had appeared large from the boardroom windows of the Opulera, but to see it like this, racing up to it from what would have been water level—had the ship been born into its best, most logical life—was like looking at a mountain range with engines. The polished gray chromasteel of its hull stretched to the edge of Leo’s vision on every side.
“What do you think, Captain?” Varlowe asked. “Ready to take command of your vessel?”
Leo’s stomach plunged into his boots. “Command it? I can’t even see all of it.”
Varlowe smiled. “Don’t worry. Before long you’ll know every inch of her.” She clapped her hands and sprang from her seat. “Oh! That reminds me. I have to give you your tabloyd.”
“I already have a tabloyd.”
Leo pulled his folded device from the back pocket of his jeans. Over the years it had permanently taken on the curvature of his right butt cheek.
Varlowe shook her head. “That old thing won’t do you any good on board. You need an official WTF tabloyd with your command credentials.”
She plucked the crinkled screen from Leo’s grip. Before he could argue, she replaced it with an elegant white box etched in gold filigree. He held it in both hands, appreciating its satisfying weight and balance. A bit of blue ribbon stuck out from the front edge, and Leo instinctively gave it a tug. With a soothing purr, the box transformed, separating its lid into long, triangular segments and retracting them in sequence, like synchronized swimmers kicking their legs before plunging into the crystal depths. The retreating lid exposed a sheaf of rich purple satin that dissolved upon contact with the air, giving off a fresh lavender scent and revealing the glimmering white, legal-pad-sized page of a top-of-the-line tabloyd. A chorus of warm, ghostly voices sang out from everywhere and nowhere at once.
Welcome to Tabloyd. Your world. Flattened.
“Dang,” Leo muttered. “That is a next-level unboxing experience.”
“I know, right?” Varlowe plucked the device from its cradle and folded it in half three times, turning it in to a stiff, narrow strip. “Even cooler, it can do this.” She took Leo’s hand and whacked the strip against his wrist. Upon contact it curled up, fitting itself to his arm like a slap bracelet. “That makes it official! Welcome to the WTF family!”
Varlowe beamed. Leo frowned. Varlowe frowned.
“Leo, are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. It’s nothing. Okay. It’s something.” He cast a glance out his window and drew a shaky breath. “Just to be totally clear, if I finish this cruise, Skardon won’t be able to destroy Eaglehaven, right?”
“Ugh.” Varlowe rolled her eyes. “Him and his stupid expansion plans.” She shook her head. “Don’t let him intimidate you. He’s harmless.”
“Harmless?” Leo said incredulously. “He’s threatening to turn my entire world into Doodie Depot!” His voice trembled with frustration. “This whole thing is crazy! He can’t just demolish an inhabited moon because he wants to!”
Varlowe shrugged helplessly. “He can, actually. Galactic eminent domain laws. You know how it is.”
“I don’t. And I can’t believe—” Leo grabbed his armrests as a sparking green light flashed outside the window, sending a dull wumph shuddering through the small craft. “What was that?”
“Edge of the sphere,” Varlowe said casually. “Nothing to worry about.”
Despite her vague assurance, Leo’s grip didn’t loosen. The chauffeur was bringing the shuttle in low over the deck of the Americano Grande, close enough to see the rich, natural wood of its decks. Empty beach chairs and bamboo cabanas fully stocked with liquor stood starkly exposed to space in a surreal parody of the ocean-cruising experience. Varlowe rose from her seat and stretched her back. “Anyway, you don’t have to worry about Eaglehaven.”
“I don’t?” Leo asked.
“Of course not, silly. When we win Madame Skardon’s little contest, I’ll remain president and your moon will be totally safe.” She gazed at him with a smile in her empty eyes. “I promise you, I will never let any harm come to the last children of the planet America.”
Leo cringed. “Yeah, about that. Contrary to popular belief, the planet my people came from was actually called—”
A thump ran through the craft as it touched down on the deck.
“Oh! We’re here!” Varlowe cheered.
Leo peeked out the window. They were parked in the center of a broad sundeck, the shuttle door at least thirty feet from the closest airlock. He assumed it had some kind of telescoping gangway, like some ships he’d seen on the spacedock. If it did, it didn’t seem to acknowledge they had landed.
“Let’s go check out your new ship, Captain MacGavin!” Varlowe gave Leo a salute with one hand and dropped the other on the door’s release lever, completely failing to notice the airlock disengaged warning. Leo sprang out of his seat with a yelp.
“Stop! The airlock isn’t—”
Varlowe cranked the handle and the heavy door swung open with a sharp hiss, revealing the inky black sprawl of space. Leo screeched and grabbed the nearest seat before explosive depressurization could blast him into the void. He gritted his teeth and clenched his eyes against the furious stillness. Wait. Stillness? He opened his eyes.
Varlowe stood in the open doorway, regarding him with a raised brow. “Are you, uh…” She waved at the door. “Are you coming?”
Leo did not release his vice-grip on the upholstery. He took a tentative breath. The air had notes of paint and industrial sealant mixed with the salty tang of sea breeze, like sitting in a new car parked on a fishing pier. He blinked in confusion. “Space is different than the last time I was here.”
Varlowe laughed. “Super cool, right? The ship has its own atmosphere. Its magnetosphere dynamo is a prototype from the Geiko Techlabs, understood only by the top engineering brains in the galaxy.” She grinned like a self-satisfied goblin. “I had to back up a dump truck of money, but it’s the new ultimate in spacefaring luxury. Come check it out.”
She hopped out of the shuttle and onto the deck. Leo cautiously followed. The sensation was like stepping out of a closet into the center of a pro football arena. Just a staggering expanse spreading out in every direction. But he wasn’t looking at thousands of tiered seats full of spectators. He was gazing at the infinite cosmos. The sheer, humbling scale of it untethered his brain from his body, and reality itself. His knees went weak and he grabbed a deck chair, unsure if it was to hold himself up or to just prove he still existed in the corporeal plane.
“It’s very impressive,” he squeaked. “In a nightmarish kind of way.”
“If you like this, wait until you see the inside!” Varlowe waved a hand and strolled toward a large set of doors. “C’mon.”
Leo let go of the chair and took a hesitant step, then another. His breath came in rapid puffs as he put his hands up to shield his eyes. “Just focus on the door. Don’t look at the void.”
His pace quickened and he chased Varlowe off the deck, through the doors, and into a room he would have called enormous, had circumstances not forced him to compare its size to the entirety of outer space.
“Welcome to the Rushmore Concourse,” Varlowe said. She raised her arms and did a lazy turn. “The gateway to the Americano Grande.”
Leo gaped as his overtaxed brain made sense of what it was looking at. The atrium was a cavernous chamber, cutting through the six decks above in massive oblong circles all the way to a colossal, domed skylight window at the top. Walkways stretched around and across them, glowing with pale blues and cloudy whites like a sky on a sunny day. The bottom floor, where he was standing, was a manicured park, complete with patches of green grass and a pond with a fountain. All around its edges were small shops and cafes and reception desks for various cruise services.
But the thing that captured Leo’s attention was the towering sculpture at the back of the Rushmore Concourse. Four enormous heads of gray stone were carved into a faux mountain
like larger-than-life deities. He squinted at them. “What am I looking at here?”
Varlowe’s smile dimmed. “Don’t you recognize them? They’re four of your planet’s most beloved rulers.” She waved a hand at the monument. “They are your champions, my friend.”
Suddenly, Leo recognized the faces of John Deacon, Roger Taylor, Brian May, and Freddie Mercury.
“That’s Queen.”
“Yes, they’re all queens,” Varlowe chuckled. “This is a replica of an ancient monument celebrating the sovereigns of the American monarchy.”
“I don’t even know how to start unpacking that.”
“I knew you’d love it.” Varlowe grinned, continuing her march through the concourse. “I’ll give you the full tour later. First I need to introduce you to your crew.”
The words sent flutter of dread through Leo’s belly. His crew. The people he’d be commanding. As captain. Of this ship. Of this enormous, terrifying, apparently stadium-rock-god-worshiping ship. He adjusted his collar and swallowed hard.
Things were suddenly getting real up in here.
He followed Varlowe into a spacious glass elevator. Next to the door was a screen of buttons, each labeled with the name of a deck and its amenities. Varlowe swiped the tabloyd around her wrist at the panel and a new column of options appeared under the heading Authorized Crew Only. She tapped the one for Command Level and the elevator accelerated upward with a vigor that left Leo’s stomach in his boots.
“Your first officer is expecting us.” Varlowe sighed. “I admit, he wasn’t my first choice, but since you’re new to the cruise industry, the board thought they should pair you with someone experienced to show you the ropes.”
Leo felt a flicker of relief. “Oh, that’s great, actually. I could use all the help I can get.”
The elevator slowed to a gut-lurching stop and the doors whooshed open, revealing a broad, circular lobby. To the sides of the lift were a few offices and meeting rooms, and directly across the room was a round, armored door. In front of it stood an imposing Ba’lux officer in a crisp, white WTF Cruises command uniform. He didn’t look at them when they entered the foyer, as he was preoccupied with a strange semi-spherical device in his massive hands. From his profile, Leo could fully appreciate the bulk of the man’s barrel chest and monstrous left arm. His orange face was leathered with age, and the horns of his crown were dull and chipped, as if they’d done their fair share of impaling. Leo took a steadying breath.
Don’t jump to conclusions just because he’s a Ba’lux. Maybe he’s nice.
Varlowe approached the first officer with a breezy wave. “Good morning, Commander.”
The man whipped toward her with a savage quickness and predatory snarl, revealing a head that mostly wasn’t there. The entire right side was a void of blackened scar tissue, as if someone had taken a giant, white-hot ice cream scooper and dug out half of his skull.
Leo shrieked and bolted back into the elevator. Or at least he tried. He ran face first into the closed doors three times, too terrified to acknowledge their presence.
“Silence that creature!” the officer roared. “Or I’ll silence it for you!”
He raised a metal fist. His whole right arm was a twisted mass of mechanical parts, laced with bundles of cable and transparent tubes surging with viscous fluids. Leo wailed and pressed his back to the cold metal of the elevator door. Varlowe cleared her throat. “Leo, allow me to introduce you to your first officer, Commander Rexel Burlock.”
The monstrous Ba’lux lowered his fist and glared. Leo stared back, forcing himself to swallow his terror. He cautiously inched forward, still gaping at the man’s conspicuously incomplete head.
“Um, hi. It’s a pleasure to, uh…” He glanced at Varlowe and gestured vaguely at Burlock. “I’m sorry, is he all right?”
Burlock growled and palmed the device in his organic hand. He clapped it into the empty void in his head and gave it a quarter turn downward. With a loud clack it snapped into a set of sockets in his skull and whirred to life. It was a mechanical prosthetic mirroring the intact side of his face in tarnished gray metal, complete with horns. But where the copper dome of his Ba’lux eye should have been was a round black lens that spun left and right as it found focus.
Varlowe turned to Leo. “The commander is a decorated veteran of the Ba’Luxi Prime Imperial Navy who joined the Waylade Tour Fleet after his retirement.”
“Not retirement,” Burlock grumbled. “Discharge. I was forced to leave the service.”
“Because you died in combat?” Leo asked.
“Because of the gahdamn tabloyd-tapping bureaucrats and their ban on mechanically enhanced soldiers.” He shrugged and muttered under his breath, “Plus, the whole ‘war crimes’ thing.”
Leo choked. “I’m sorry, war crimes?”
Varlowe nudged him forward. “Commander Burlock, allow me to introduce you to Leo MacGavin, your new captain.”
“Captain?” Burlock said incredulously. “That scruffy thing can’t command a ship!” The orange light in his eye lens flared. “Is it even housetrained?”
Leo raised a finger. “I prefer he.” Burlock bared his teeth and growled. Leo flinched. “You know what? It is fine.”
Varlowe positioned her reedy body between Leo and the bulging hulk. “Actually, it’s not fine.” She turned on Burlock. “You will address him as Captain and follow his orders.” Her eyes fixed on his. “I know your military background has taught you to respect the chain of command, and Leo is your commanding officer.”
“Was this approved by Admiral Skardon?” Burlock snuffed.
A storm rolled through Varlowe’s face. “Skardon’s opinion doesn’t matter. I appointed Leo, and I’m the president of WTF cruises.” She put her hands on her hips. “Do you need to be relieved of duty to study your command hierarchy?”
The first officer spoke with all the warmth of a granite slab sliding down a glacier. “I do not, Madame President.”
“Awesome.” Varlowe turned to Leo with a smile. “Now that you two are besties, Burlock will introduce you to the bridge crew. I’ll be back later to see how things are going.”
She headed for the lift. Leo gasped and scampered after her. “Wait! You’re leaving me?” He cocked his head and whispered. “With him?”
“Just for a bit. I have to go finish up some last-minute paperwork with the dock master. It shouldn’t take long.”
She punched the button on the elevator pad. Leo squeezed himself between Varlowe and the door. “But shouldn’t you finish our tour first? There’s a lot of ship I haven’t seen!”
Varlowe waved him off. “Don’t worry, Burlock knows his way around. He’ll help you cut your teeth.”
Leo glanced over her shoulder. Burlock flicked his mechanical fingers, unsheathing serrated claws from their tips with an unsettling schling of metal on metal. Leo clapped a hand over his mouth. “I’m not sure he understands idioms.”
The president smiled and squeezed Leo’s shoulder. “Don’t be nervous. You’re in charge here. You’re the captain!” The elevator whooshed open and she stepped inside. “I’ll be back in time for the Bon Voyage Show. Have fun!”
With that, she tapped the pad and the doors closed, leaving Leo alone with the simmering cyborg. Burlock stared at Leo for a long, cold minute, blades out, mechanized eye clicking and whirring. Leo rocked back and forth on his heels and fidgeted. “So, uh, I guess you’re gonna introduce me to the crew?”
The commander eyed him with disgust. “Is that supposed to be an order?”
“Yes? I mean, if it’s not too much trouble.”
Burlock shook his head and muttered under his breath. “Gahdamn civilians.” He flicked his blades back into his fingers and gestured to the huge, circular door. “Command bridge is here. After you, Captain.”
Leo sidestepped around the behemoth, awkwardly maneuvering to keep his back to the wall. A glowing lockpad next to the door read Authorized Crew Onl
y. Relief prickled in Leo’s chest. For once he knew what to do.
“Ah yes. Credentials.” He nodded knowingly at Burlock. “Captain’s credentials.”
He waved his WTF tabloyd band at the pad, just as Varlowe had done on the elevator. The pad farted an error tone. The door did not open. Burlock’s brow lowered. Leo chuckled nervously.
“Dang. Okay,” he chattered. “Maybe it’s not turned on?” He tapped the surface of his band and a holographic interface blasted out of his wrist. It was a pudgy pink heart with a single button labeled “dial.” As it appeared, the device shouted in a gleeful, childish voice.
“Call Mommy!”
“Ack!” Leo squeaked. “I guess this thing has some apps pre-installed on it.” He shook his arm, but the heart just bobbed behind it like a balloon tied to his wrist. He let out a strained laugh. “Awk-waard!”
Burlock’s eye narrowed. “It looks like you don’t have senior staff credentials.”
“So it does.” Leo yanked his sleeve over the hologram and gave a sheepish nod toward the lockpad. “If you don’t mind, could you maybe get that for me?”
“Sure, no problem,” Burlock said.
“Thank you.”
“While I’m at it, do you want me to wipe your arze after you go poo-poo?”
Leo blinked. “Excuse me?”
Burlock clutched the row of gold buttons that ran down the front of his jacket. “Would baby like me to whip out a teat and feed him his din-din?”
Leo’s face flushed. His voice came out in a tremble. “No, just opening the door will be fine.”
The first officer straightened his uniform over his bulging chest. “Forget it. No unauthorized crew on the bridge.”
“But I’m the captain!”
“That’s not what your tabloyd says.”
“Varlowe literally just told you—”
“Admiral’s rules. No access without proper credentials.”
Leo bristled. “Fine. How do I get proper credentials?”
Galaxy Cruise: The Maiden Voyage Page 4
