by Mike Luoma
Chapter Five
Alibi spends the next two hours calculating a jump to the outer reaches of the Junzias system. There are too many asteroids closer in to safely jump in blind. But if they jump into a distant orbit they'll need extra fuel to make the trip from distant orbit into the closer planets like Junzias.
They can skim a gas giant if he can find one in the system. Alibi's mind crackles with mental energy as he figures out how to put it all together. But the details on the outer gas giants in the Junzias System are too sketchy.
"Aw, this is no good," Alibi grouses.
"Whassamatter?" Piccolo asks, half asleep in the other chair on the bridge.
"I need additional information not available in the ship's usual systems," Alibi tells him. "Do you know if your friend had any archival storage on this ship?"
"Beats me," Piccolo answers unhelpfully. "Maybe back there in one of those storage compartments?" He nods at the back wall of the bridge, marked by the panels and handles of built in storage. "He had some stuff back there, extra charts, memsticks and things."
Alibi gets up and walks back to the storage bins mounted along the back wall of the bridge to look for memory sticks or something that might contain more stellar information. He slides open a small drawer. Empty. He pulls open one of the larger, floor level drawers.
A severed arm sits in the drawer, covered in black-crusted blood, amid strings of shredded flesh, arteries and tissue.
"Unh!"
Alibi jumps back from the drawer. Hot bile rises up in the back of his throat as he turns away, trying not to vomit, trying not to breathe.
"What the fuck?" Piccolo says. Alibi can't respond.
"Shit," Piccolo says as he comes up behind him and sees the contents of the open drawer.
"Huh," Alibi manages to get out. "That's an arm!" He can't help but state the obvious.
"Oh man," Piccolo says with an uneasy treble in his voice. He steps up and opens the next drawer to the right. Empty. They both heave a sigh of relief. Piccolo moves down the row of drawers to the right and opens the next one. He jumps back, reflexively whipping his head away from what lies in that storage drawer. He starts coughing as he holds back an urge to throw up.
Alibi can't help himself. He has to look. Somehow, knowing it will be horrid makes it easier to look inside.
"Woah," Alibi gasps. The severed head of an older man stares up, lifeless, mouth open in a silent scream. The hair is matted with dried blood. Shredded trachea trail from the jagged neckline and curl back up underneath.
Alibi looks away.
"Kronborg," Piccolo says.
"Did the Devrizium do this?" Alibi asks.
"How should I know?" Piccolo says. "I've never seen anything like this, man! Shit's fucked up!"
A grim thought occurs to Alibi.
What do I really know about this guy?
He looks suspiciously at Piccolo. "How do I know YOU didn't do this!"
"Me?" Piccolo responds, surprised and stunned. "You think I could do something like this?"
"I don't know. I don't even know you," Alibi says, but he's starting to lose his suspicions.
"You think I could tear a guy's head clean off?" Piccolo protests. "I ain't strong enough!"
The question makes Alibi look at Kronborg's severed head again. He winces, looks away.
"No way," Alibi admits. He looks around the bridge. "Guess that explains the smell."
"Not entirely. Already smelled pretty bad before," Piccolo admits with a nervous laugh. "Should... um, should we open more drawers?" he asks Alibi sheepishly.
"Aw... shit. I guess we should. Guess we oughta clean it up, after all."
They open the rest of the storage drawers built in along the walls of the bridge. About half of them are now occupied by various body parts of the late pilot Kronborg.
Alibi makes his way back to the front of the bridge and calls down to the engine room.
"Kit, can you come back up here? We've got a problem."
The cat man meets them in the corridor outside the bridge. Alibi and Piccolo tell him what they found.
"They ripped him apart!" Piccolo exclaims.
"The Devrizium," Kit explains. "Devrizium Justice. They make an example out of those who violate them. The Devrizium rend." Kit lets out a soft hiss. "They truly render a verdict. They execute violators. Tear them apart. Then they 'seed' them back on board their ships. Eventually, they would have left this ship in a gently decaying orbit around the port at Tek'Ti'Karn. As an example."
"Why only put him in half the drawers?" Alibi asks.
"They were probably saving the rest of the space... for you," Kit says, nodding at Piccolo. Piccolo gulps.
"Are there any Extra-Vehicular Activity suits on board?" Alibi asks Piccolo.
"How should I know?" Piccolo answers defensively, shaken by what Kit has just told him.
"I saw a couple of EVA suits down in the engine room," Kit says. "At least two. Why?"
"I was thinking it might be easier to clean this up in low or no G and a vacuum," Alibi explains.
"Then it is too bad there are none that will fit a Dakhur physique," Kit says with some satisfaction. "I cannot help you. I will have to seal myself in the engine room while you two work in a vacuum in the rest of the ship. So sorry I will not be able to help."
"You don't sound sorry!" Alibi says with a nervous laugh of his own.
"How would you know?" Kit says.
The three head to the engine room. Alibi and Piccolo suit up in two of the three EVA suits Kit has found. They leave Kit in the sealed off engine room and head for the bridge.
Piccolo stops at the airlock in the corridor outside the bridge and opens the inner door.
"What are you doing?" Alibi asks him.
"Opening the airlock," Piccolo answers him as if he was an idiot. Alibi walks over and knocks Piccolo's gloved hand away from the door's controls with his own gauntleted fist.
"Not a good idea," Alibi says. "Ever hear of explosive decompression?"
"Sounds bad," Piccolo says.
"Yup. Bad," Alibi answers. "Happens when you open an airlock wide open on a fully pressurized ship. You know, like you were about to do."
"Oh."
"We'll clear the air slowly, from the bridge. Let it seep out and let the lack of pressure stabilize."
Piccolo closes the airlock's inside door.
"Gotcha."
Alibi starts the slow bleed of the atmosphere when they get back to the bridge. Once the air is gone, he switches off the gravity as well. Then Alibi and Piccolo set about the grim work of collecting the remains of Kronborg, drawer by drawer.
They collect his parts in two of the largest drawers. Alibi finds memory cards as they work, and puts those up on the pilot's seat for later reference. After they've scoured the remaining drawers and piled up the pieces, Alibi and Piccolo take the two filled drawers back out to the airlock and launch the remains of Kronborg into space. A small disposable rocket pushes each drawer out away from the ship and off into deep space.
"Shouldn't we say something?" Piccolo asks Alibi.
"I don't know. Like what?"
"A prayer for him, or something?"
"What was he? NcC?" Alibi asks Piccolo.
"I have no idea."
"God bless you, Kronborg," Alibi prays, "Whatever God you might have preferred. Amen."
"Amen."
They repressurize the ship. Alibi and Piccolo get out of their EVA suits and head back to the bridge.
"I think it smells a little better," Piccolo observes.
"It is only a question of degree," Kit says over the com. "It is still quite horrible."
"I found some memsticks when we were cleaning, Kit," Alibi tells him. "I'm going to take a look through them, see if they've got the stellar mapping I need."
Alibi hunkers down in the captain's chair and sorts through the extra data he recovered looking for information on the gas giants of the Junzias System. Piccolo breaks out scrubbers and begins
cleaning up the rest of the bridge while Alibi works.
Alibi finally comes across the information he needs on the orbital positioning and chemical makeup of the gas giants of Junzias' system. He gets back to his calculations, double checks them, and soon has a new Transpace point mapped out, ready to go.
He calls up Kit in the engine room and breaks the good news.
"I've got it, Kit!" Alibi says over the com. "Is the Transpace drive ready?"
"Ready to jump when you are," Kit tells him. "Although I am not."
"I've done the math and checked it twice, now, I promise," Alibi tells him. "I'm sure we'll be fine!" Alibi adjusts the controls and checks his entries before announcing, "We're jumping!"
They jump. Kronborg's ship flashes in and out of Transpace intact, and far enough away from the nearby gas giant that Alibi feels vindicated.
"All right! You see? It worked," he proclaims, victorious.
"Never doubted you, man," Piccolo offers his congratulations.
"So. We are not dead?" Kit notes over the com. "Good!"
"I'm going to head us into that gas giant so the ship can scoop up some raw materials for fuel," Alibi announces. "Then we can make our way in towards Junzias."
Junzias was once an Eldred world. As they travel in from the distant orbit of the gas giant, Alibi focuses half of his attention on entries about the planet and the Eldred in the ship's archives. He's also remembering all the times his Aunt Anita told him about the Eldred, those she called the "Killer Blue Koalas from Outer Space."
"Your father helped kill the koalas!" Alibi can hear her in his head. "It was only fair. They were trying to wipe us out!"
"You reading up on the planet?" Piccolo asks, looking over Alibi's shoulder, interrupting his thoughts.
"I was listening to my aunt," Alibi tells him, "in my head," he explains, when Piccolo gives him a puzzled look.
"Oh," Piccolo says, looking a little less puzzled.
"She knows a lot about the Eldred. Fought them in the war," Alibi tells him. "She and my father helped wipe them out."
"I thought the Eldred died because the Ancient Enemy died, you know? That frozen guy. I remember reading that in school," Piccolo tries.
"Dolomay. Yeah, I used to hear all about him growing up. Him and my father, 'BC'. It was always 'BC this' and 'BC that'. Dolomay this and that," Alibi complains. "The Eldred's existence was somehow tied into the life of the 'Ancient Enemy', and Dolomay was the last of them. The Eldred thrived and stayed alive while he was frozen, but once he was dead they just began dying out."
"So, we're going to a dead world."
"Not if my sources are right," Kit pipes in from the engine room over the com. "They say the Tek'Tah have cleaned up the world with their new wealth, but do not publicize the fact. It is not a dead world. But it is hiding!"
"Yeah, I wonder where the Tek'Tah are getting this 'new wealth', huh? Evidently the human slave trade must be pretty profitable!" Alibi says with disgust.
"What are they going to do with her? What are they gonna do with my sister?" Piccolo wonders out loud. "Why do they want humans, anyway?"
"It may be your similarity to the Ancient Enemy," Kit suggests. "Your like has not been seen in the civilized universe for quite some time. Word of your discovery is still rippling across the civilized worlds along with the news of the defeat of Dolomay and the Eldred. There may be a market further in towards the central planets. Perhaps they are selling humans to buyers of exotics on some far off worlds?"
"Great," Alibi says, "Human beings in alien zoos and private menageries. How quaint. Miss Kay doesn't deserve that. No way."
"It is all because the Eldred were the peacekeepers," Kit says, "the law enforcers. Now that they are gone, there is no one left to stop groups with power from doing whatever they like."
"Your old, peaceful overlords," Alibi says sarcastically.
"We did not know how beneficial they were until they were gone. Killed off because of a battle in some backwater distant part of the universe," Kit observes.
"Must be some inferiority complex you've got there, makes you keep disrespecting our home turf!" Alibi says with a little real pride. "Maybe the center has shifted? Ever consider that!?"
"You humans have no idea... Maybe the Tek'Tah are right!" Kit jokes. "You do think you are much too special. You have no idea how much 'there' is out 'there'!"
"Great. Now you're siding with them?"
"Absolutely... not," Kit responds, playing with the pause.
"Are we there yet?" Piccolo asks. For some reason, it makes both Alibi and Kit break into laughter.
"Another three hours," Alibi tells him.
"Gah!" Piccolo gasps in exasperation. "Can't we go any faster?"
"Not in this stinkpot," Alibi informs him. Piccolo grumbles under his breath as he goes back to the other chair on the bridge, sits down, and pouts.
