Hold My Beer

by Karina Fabian

  Space Traipse:

  Hold My Beer

  Season One

  Karina L. Fabian

  Laser Cow Press

  Rockledge, FL

  Copyright © 2019 by Karina L. Fabian

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, without prior written permission.

  Karina Fabian

  Rockledge, FL

  www.fabianspace.com

  Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.

  Book Layout © 2017 BookDesignTemplates.com

  Space Traipse: Hold My Beer, Book 1/ Karina Fabian. – 1st ed.

  ISBN 978-0-0000000-0-0

  To my dad for giving me a love of puns and Star Trek. Love you!

  Space: It’s huge! You think Texas has big skies? Ain’t nothing compared to the view out the viewscreens. And it’s just full of wild places and interesting peoples. These are the adventures of the HMB Impulsive. Its mission: to explore those new and interesting worlds (wilder the better!), to seek out new peoples and to boldly do what no one else has the guts to do! Don’t believe me? Hold my beer!

  Contents

  Best Laid Plans of Vegetation and Cybernetic Beings

  Polarity Panic

  Foot in the Door

  Day in the Life

  Rest Stop

  Best Laid Plans of

  Vegetation and

  Cybernetic Beings

  Captain’s Log, Intergalactic date 676767.67 and how cool is that?

  The Union Fleet has redeployed to Sector 7 in order to confront another incursion by the Cybers. Meanwhile, HuFleet has been left behind to patrol the other sectors and take up the slack. Frankly, I’d rather we be there in the thick of things, but after the unfortunate incident with the Cognitives, we’re not invited. I guess it was worth it; we won the battle and seeing an emotionless species worked into a frothing frenzy is a memory I’ll treasure forever.

  At any rate, the Impulsive has been assigned a diplomatic mission. We’ll be hosting the engagement ritual of the Clichan prince to a princess of Kandor. Although the same species, the two worlds have been at odds for some time, and it’s hoped an arranged marriage between the children of their leaders will bring peace and stability to the area. As an amateur xenologist, I’m especially interested in the courtship ritual, which must be carried out on neutral ground.

  Captain Jeb Tiberius shrugged his shoulders inside his dress uniform, trying to coax the fabric to loosen up. The replicator had overstarched it again. Ah, well, it was only for a few minutes. Once he greeted the prince and passed him off to Lieutenant Loreli, he could make a quick change before the meeting with Security. Loreli, of course, looked perfectly comfortable, not to mention perfectly perfect, in her green, skin tight outfit, despite the stays and the 5-inch heeled boots. Once again, he admired her training and was glad he didn’t have to do it.

  The velour material played well even with the utilitarian lighting of the ship, with shadows and highlights that accentuated her curves and complemented the smooth bark of her skin and the aloe-shaped leaves that adorned her head where humans would have hair. Ever since they’d rescued her from that greenhouse and released her from the confines of her pot, the Botanical had thrived.

  Loreli watched the teleporter pad, aware of his scrutiny but feigning obliviousness. Such training!

  Behind the teleporter console, Crewman Dour tapped buttons. “The Clichans report ready to meet their fate,” he said.

  “By all means, zap them over.”

  A shimmer and a tinkling like the excited jabbering of the fairy folk of Midsummers Nine, and two figures appeared on the dais. Prince Petru dressed in the torn finery in the aquamarine that indicated royalty of his planet – frayed long-sleeved shirt held by a patchwork vest, his pants equally unraveled at the bottom and bearing parallel slashes from mid-calf to mid-thigh. Edor, his advisor, wore drabber shades of blue and his material was intact. They patted themselves, as if ensuring everything had transported in place. From the console, Dour nodded approval.

  Jeb stepped forward, hand outstretched. “Gentlemen, welcome to the Impulsive. I’m Captain Jeb Tiberius.”

  The prince grabbed his hand and shook it in both of his. “Petru, Crown Prince of Clicha. Your device is extraordinary! When do we get one?”

  “That would not be up to me, Your Highness, but I could put in a word with the Union if you’d like.”

  Edor stepped off the dais with considerably less enthusiasm than his sovereign. He said, “Please forgive the prince’s indiscretion captain. He can be…”

  “Impulsive? That’s how we like ‘em on this ship. Of course, we have a saying, ‘Your right to swing your fist ends where my nose begins,’ so please keep it in mind, and we’ll get along just fine. May I introduce you to our xenologist, Lieutenant Loreli? She’ll be handling the arrangements for your courtship ceremony with Princess Katrin.”

  “What are you?” the prince asked. His voice held awe and admiration.

  Loreli quirked a smile. “A xenologist, as the Captain said. But my species is known in the Union as the Botanicals. We are plant-based life-forms as opposed to meat-based like yourself.”

  “Loreli will escort you to the VR deck where you can pick the scenario for your meeting and courting your true-love-to-be,” the Captain said. “If you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a meeting with our security officer and chief engineer.”

  “Is something wrong?” Edor asked. “We’ve heard reports that the Cybers…”

  “No need to worry. They’re halfway across the galaxy, and the Union forces are on the way to take care of them. No, this is ship’s business. I’ll see you at the reception. Lieutenant? Gentleman?”

  At the Captain’s outstretched arm, Loreli led them out.

  From behind his console, Dour muttered, “You’re welcome, really.”

  ***

  The lazivator doors opened to the bridge, but Jeb paused a minute before entering to admire the view and give the reader a chance to visualize the setting. Like most iGotThis class vessels, the bridge was a small compact bubble with a 360-degree view of the space through which it traveled. Of course, the view was digitally generated; the bridge itself nestled securely in the center of the saucer section under multiple deck plates and shields. Most species thought the design overkill…until they met the kind of crew that generally gravitated to HuFleet.

  Let’s meet a few of them now.

  To the right, in a horseshoe-shaped console that manned sensors, communications, and ship systems and could be tied to engineering and command functions by flipping the switches installed under the main console, Ensign Ellie Doall stood, fingers flying over the touchpad screens. Was she recalibrating the sensors? Scanning for potential threats? Tallying the latest ship’s pool? Jeb never quite knew, though he guessed – and accurately – that she was doing more than one of those. Regardless, if he needed anything, he could count on her to already be on it by the time he asked.

  On his left, in a similarly shaped console, Minion First Class Gel O’Tin stabbed one of his tendrils at the security board at a significantly slower pace than Doall. Probably following the progress of their new guests, or trying to, if the greyish blue of his gelatinous endoplasm was any indication. O’Tin didn’t have a lot of experience with bridge duty yet. Not to mention the fact that the human interfaces baffled him easily. There were times when his technical incompetence exasperated Jeb, but there was no disputing the Globb
al’s talents in a fight. O’Tin absorbed punishment…then he absorbed his foes.

  Almost dead across from Jeb, the helmsman, Tonio Francisco Cruz lounged at his console, feet up on the edge while he told a story to First Officer Commander Phineas Smythe, who sat in one of two revolving chairs in the center of the room. Judging from how his hands were moving, Cruz was either relaying an atmospheric dogfight from his Union Air Force days or a fight he’d had with his grandmother. In the recessed alcove to his right, three extra crewman half-listened while they played cards.

  “Then she hit me – Bada-bam! Glancing shot to my port thrusters. I had to make an emergency landing in Dona Tortella’s tomato fields. I stunk of marinara all summer. I’m a-telling you. You don’t snitch my nona’s tortellini or her hovercrafts!”

  “Your grandmother was quite a woman,” Commander Smythe remarked dryly. “I wonder. If we invited her aboard, could she break you of the habit of putting your feet on the nav console?”

  “Sorry, sir,” he said. “Orbit’s just so boring. Put her in the right spot and stick her on autopilot. Doall could handle it from her console.”

  “I have,” Doall answered. “Captain on the bridge, by the way – or at least in the lazivator.”

  Cruz’s feet came down with a thump and Smythe spun the command chair to face the back. “Sir! Are our guests aboard safely?”

  Captain Tiberius strode in, but paused just past the double-horseshoes of Security and Ops. “Well, Dolfrick would insist they died in route, of course, but they seem fine now. I left them in Loreli’s capable hands. Are LaFuentes and Deary waiting for us in the briefing room?”

  Smythe nodded. “There has been giggling, sir. I fear the worst.”

  “Well, we’d better get in there before they devise some creative new way to blow up this ship.”

  “Or someone else’s.”

  Jeb shrugged. “Don’t care so much about someone else’s, as long as it’s the right someone else. Cruz, why don’t you come join us if you’re so bored?”

  Immediately, a relief crewman jumped up from the card table to take over the helm. Cruz and Smythe joined the captain, and they headed to the briefing room.

  As Smythe said, there was giggling coming from the room, the maniacal giggling of creative minds in collaboration. On an engineering marvel or mischief? Probably both, and that suited the captain just fine. The greatest advances in human science came from someone saying, “What the hell? Let’s give it a try,” and he encouraged that attitude in all his crew.

  Of course, as soon as the door opened, the giggling stopped and whatever 3D image they’d been looking at was wiped away with a sweep of LaFuentes’ hand.

  “I hope you gentlemen have something good,” Captain Tiberius said as he took his seat.

  “O, vera, Captain. You gonna love this!” La Fuentes half stood out of his seat in his excitement. “See, I was having this nightmare…”

  “Nightmare?”

  “Yeah, it was intense! I was back in the Hood and the zombies were coming and we were trying to get to the Union evac point, right? And we’re all piling into my cousin’s ZAT, you know, the Zombie Apocalypse Truck?”

  “We’re familiar,” Smythe said, “The same kind of vehicle you like to take on away missions, the one that only recently crashed through two Halderan establishments, a herd of cattle and a small hill.”

  “I rescued our people from the Halderan, though, and those cattle spat corrosives.”

  “They certainly did as the ZAT’s front blade threw them aside.”

  “Exatamente! Just like the zombies in my dream – getting knocked out of the way, that is.”

  “You really drove trucks on a spaceship?” Cruz asked.

  “The UGS Hood* was a generation ship, man. It was bigger than that town your nona lived in – tomato fields and all. But you’re missing the point. That blade is wikadas. So anyway, in my dream, we plowing through zombies and mi abuela is praying and uno primo is screaming but another’s all ‘Ten pins, man!’ And then the zombies turn into Cybers, and we’re in space. And then it hit me. We need a wikadas blade for the Impulsive.”

  “The Cybers are on the other side of the quadrant,” Smythe said.

  LaFuentes rolled his eyes. “Says Union Intel. You think they’re going to concentrate on one spot? Sooner or later, we’re going to run into a swarm. I want us to be ready.”

  “All right. How do we attach a blade to the hull of the Impulsive outside of a trip to dry dock?” Jeb asked.

  At this point, Chief Engineer Angus Deary took the briefing. He activated the 3D image they’d been snickering over earlier. The Impulsive rotated over the table. Damn fine ship, Jeb thought as he again paused to admire this ship and give the reader a chance to see it from the outside.

  The iGotThis class vessel had four warp engines – two for drive, two for reverse – flanking the wide flat operations section, known as Other One. The saucer section, so shaped because why the hell not?, housed command, primary sickbay and main quarters. It, too, had independent warp, though those engines stayed dormant until the two sections separated. A thing of beauty, despite the dings and dents from too many years of flying through subspace phenomena without stopping in dry dock for a buff. Personality, Jeb liked to call it, but really, a visit to dry dock meant having outsiders’ crawl all over his ship questioning every modification. That inevitably led to months of Deary yelling and a mountain of paperwork to fill out, justifying every harebrained alteration that saved their lives.

  Alterations like LaFuentes and Deary were suggesting today.

  Deary touched a button and the Impulsive was shrouded in a bubble representing its deflector shields.

  “We don’t need a physical blade. We alter the deflector shields and reshape it.” To demonstrate, he reached out and “pinched” the shield in front of the ship with his fingers and pulled it away. The shield pulled into a cone.

  La Fuentes tapped some buttons on the table and the Impulsive rammed an asteroid, shattering it into a dozen pieces.

  “Or, if we’re dealing with a cyberswarm…” Deary used both hands to manipulate the forward shield into a blade. This time, the simulation sliced through the swarm of Cyber ships, flinging some aside while shattering others with satisfying pyrotechnics.

  “’Ten pins, man!’ indeed,” Smythe commented.

  LaFuente’s eyes were almost as bright as the explosions in the simulation. “Yeah! But what’s even better is you’re actually deflecting stuff. The only thing hitting anything dead-on is the blade itself, and if they’re shooting at us, it’s all at angles to the deflector. You know, glancing blows.”

  “Play that again, half speed,” Jeb said. It was even funnier in slo-mo. “So, what will it take to outfit us with a wikadas blade?”

  Deary shrugged. “Ach, we just need to reprogram the deflector controls. Might have to reroute power to make sure the points of contact are reinforced. Permission to enable reroute to life support for extreme emergencies?”

  “No problem. We have enough ambient heat and air for half an hour after they turn off. If we aren’t out of the battle by then, we’re probably goners anyway.”

  “So we can do the modification?” La Fuentes asked. “Like, now?”

  “We have an easy cruise to Kandor. Engineering should have the time. Beer me.”

  “Yes!” The security chief and chief engineer high-fived.

  Jeb tapped the console and his ship with its wikadas blade plowed through a cyberswarm battle. The enemy’s shots glanced off the reshaped shields while the ship zig-zagged through the swarm like a ZAT though a zombie hoard. Pow! Boom! Splat!

  He loved his job.

  ***

  Loreli stood at the control panel and scrolled through the virtual reality deck settings. The diplomatic offices of both planets had given her several suggested environments in which to place the royal courtship and multiple scenarios, romantic and otherwise, where the prince and princess could meet, conflict, and eventually recon
cile.

  It was a fascinating twist on humanoid mating. Many of the scenarios the Clichans provided would have easily made plots for human romances, particularly the kind Ellie called “romcoms,” but Loreli’s observations had shown her that most human relationships began with friendship and attraction. The Hierarchy chose mates based on complementary support, rather than conflict. The Bonks were all about conflict, but they were straight up about it. Only the Clichans had codified it to such ritual: meeting, judgement, inciting incident, conflict, mutual appreciation, resolution, love & matrimony.

  This was going to make a great presentation for the Xenologists’ Symposium next year.

  If she ever got to see the ritual through to completion. In less than 30 minutes, Prince Petru had declared every suggestion unsuitable for the most important romance of his life.

  The heir apparent paced the length of the VR room, expressing his emotion through motion, as most fauna species did. He didn’t have a lot of space for pacing; the room was set for “Space Pirate and His Captive” and the captain’s ready room was crowded with treasures, beautiful jewelry on display and a large wardrobe of women’s gowns. Petru himself was dressed in the full regalia of an Alurian captain – or the VR equivalent. In reality, he wore a Greensuit, a simple jumper made of material that accepted the computer’s commands to create the image of any number of costumes. Once they had settled on a scenario, Loreli would have the appropriate garments made.

  Petru would have looked quite dashing and romantic, if he didn’t pace half-hunched over and if he’d stop slapping at his plated hair with the palms of his hands. Just exiting adolescence, he had the wiry physique that often came with youth. He also had a pimple, carefully camouflaged but not invisible.

  Was that why he was nervous? Many species considered acne attractive, a symbol of youth, indulgence and hormonal excess, but the Clichans, like humans, found them embarrassing. She made a note to take him to sickbay. The doctor could clear it up with a simple ointment and a pituitary suppressor.