by Orion, W. J.
“We didn’t hatch this plan and come all this way just to be a negative Nancy, Trey.” She rested a hand on the white shell of his chassis. “Take me to the promised land.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
What Do You Get a Seventeen-Year-Old for Their Birthday?
Yasmine and Caleb’s crew from the city relocated their headquarters from Sturgeon Bay to the area they dubbed “Turbine Ridge.” They moved into their own tents and made new lean-tos. Knox somehow managed to climb the closest tower to sit atop its massive windmill and keep watch. With her one leg, she climbed up the ladder every morning and climbed back down it every evening, switching with Bernie.
Caleb shored up their defenses, not for real fear of being attacked, but out of boredom. With the Sturgeon crabs fed and watered from Trey’s stores and the supplies on their downed ship, they were reinvigorated and they threw in with all the assistance they were asked of. Most guarded Turbine Ridge or helped their small population of human wards tend to the meager crops that kept them an inch away from starvation.
After collecting the crab tech donations from the Sturgeon Bay resistance cell, Yasmine picked over the ruins, as she would. Following Trey’s instructions, she went up and down the peninsula with Michelle, gathering all the raw materials she could. DVD players, stereos, car parts; anything that Trey’s chassis nanites might be able to break down and repurpose into repair materials. She and Michelle were gone all night for many nights, searching the sparse towns of the narrow shard of land that poked into the dry lake beds.
Trey—of all of them—worked the hardest. Yasmine and Michelle would drop off three duffel bags of parts each and every night, and he’d put the contents straight into his repair process.
As she relaxed, Yasmine would watch him. He’d search through their loot with excited tentacles and happy, shuffling feet. Parts would get tossed left, right, or back as he assessed their value and sorted them into piles. There were many piles.
Trey would leave them and head back down into the gulley that the ship sat in. He’d stay there, face planted for hours against the area that needed repairs as his chassis vomited a near-invisible cloud of nanites onto the broken ship. The work they did happened so slowly that it seemed invisible to the naked eye; but over time, the changes were unmistakable.
“I’m so tired,” Yasmine said to Michelle as they woke in the later afternoon. The thin orange tent material drew out the worst of the sun’s poison, but the light and heat were inevitable. She wiped a bead of sweat from her forehead. The tent was hot. “We’ve been at this for ten days straight. All night, every night.”
“Maybe,” Michelle replied from the inside of her still-shut sleeping bag, “we should take a night off.”
“We can’t,” Yaz said, resting back on the slight blanket roll she used as a pillow. “Every day we waste here costs someone, somewhere, their lives.”
“You ever like, live in the present?” Michelle asked from inside her fabric cocoon. “Like, realize that you’ve done a lot already, and just enjoy the moment? A moment. Any moment? Just find a way to relax and exist?”
“Not lately, no. I used to watch a lot of old movies in my spare time before. I used to read. Feels silly to have wasted all that time when I could’ve been doing stuff like this.”
“Yeah, I guess,” Michelle said, then threw off her coverings. “Time to eat something and head out then. Got a world to save.”
“Mmhm,” Yaz agreed, and sat up to unzip the door to her tent.
“SURPRISE!” a crowd of people hollered when she poked her head out into the day.
Yaz screeched in shock and fell back into the tent where Michelle laughed maniacally. The other girl clapped as Yaz looked about with crazed eyes, trying to figure out why several crabs and all the people she knew stood arrayed just a few yards from her. They smiled and clapped.
Bald, sweaty, and grinning like a mad hatter, her uncle stood front and center. In his hands he held a plate, and on that plate was a little cylinder of cake.
“On three,” he said. “One, two, three: Haaaaaaaapy Birthday tooooo yooooooo!”
The entire group joined in then. And so it went, word by word, until the song her mother used to sing to her once a year was finished. All joined in, smiling and joyful. Even the alien Sturgeon crabs pitched in, waving their facial tentacles in rhythm with the singing, swaying their large bodies in time, too.
Yaz’s eyes sprouted tears for no reason she could identify as she sat there, and she wiped them away with furious fingers. Frigging… waste of water. Idiot. Stop. She got to her feet a few seconds after they finished singing, and her uncle approached, holding the cake out to her.
“Happy birthday, Yasmine,” he said to her. “It’s vanilla.”
“It looks delicious,” she said, looking at the lopsided, yellow birthday cake. I don’t see Trey. Bummer.
“I wasn’t sure what to make you, but the fact that I could only get vanilla cake mix helped. It might taste like cardboard. It’s way past its date.”
“Ha. When did you plan this? How did you know it’s my birthday? Is it even?” she thought. Yeah, it probably is my birthday.
“I never forgot your birthday,” her giant uncle said. “I was there in the hospital when my sister gave birth to you,” he said, with everyone gathered listening. “I was so proud. I remember holding you for the first time; you were so small. I thought I would break you. When your mom and dad and I had our falling out and took you and went their own way… I never forgot your birthday. I brought this cake with us because I knew it was coming.”
“You’re crazy,” Yaz said, hugging him.
“I am. It runs in the family. Happy birthday.”
“Thank you,” she leaned back and looked at everyone else. “Thank you all. This is… this is crazy.”
“We didn’t get you any presents,” her uncle said. “You can get yourself whatever you want anyway, and we’ve been so busy.”
“Speak for yourself,” Trey’s mechanical voice called out from behind the crowd.
They parted, and the dingy crab plunked forward on all his feet. His tentacles hung from his suit’s face, devoid of life and energy. He must’ve been exhausted. His eyes though… they sparkled deep within, emanating a flicker of light that Yasmine had only seen when the crab was happy.
“The ship is finished. Happy birthday.”
Trey talked about the ship’s repairs like a kid talking about their doll or Magic card collection. He led the entire group down the slope of the ravine until they reached the smooth, rounded hull of the crab starship. He filled every moment with rambling, excited explanations about nanites, composite organics, power conversion systems, water transference, and a litany of other things Yasmine couldn’t even begin to understand.
He stopped when his entourage reached the rearmost section of the ship’s main hull, right where the navigation tentacles diverged away. He gestured with his own facial tentacles at the rear facing of the core body.
“This is where we will be entering. Normally the air lock here works reverse to human needs–expel air, pump in water; but I reversed the system, and reversed the life support inside the crew compartment to do the same. I had to move walls and wiring to make a space large enough for a few humanoid bodies. Not real comfortable, sorry. Crabs will have to stay inside their chassis for the most part, but we’ll be able to funnel out into the ship systems to get some breathing room.”
The other crabs reacted to that announcement with physical displays of excitement. They shuffled about and waggled their tentacles as their eye sensors flashed with happiness.
“Ship systems?” Yaz asked him.
“Yeah, everything we have works in water, right? Inside the walls and behind the controls everything is flooded with water. We can load into those areas through tiny port plugs and swim about behind the scenes. It’ll help refresh our chassis life support as well. Not as ideal as being able to move about the whole ship, but still a lot better than being locked
up inside these ‘fish tanks’, as you call them.”
“How much air is there?” Caleb asked. “Crab ships aren’t designed to scrub air over a long period of time, are they?”
“We have no use for air, so no. But with some effort, I was able to get some of the tertiary systems to repurpose themselves,” he explained. “The ship needs more water than humans do air, and physical space is tight, so… yeah, we’re going to be limited on how much air there is. Based on how long our trip is likely to be, we won’t be able to bring many humans.”
“Two more questions,” Yaz pressed. “Where do we need to go, and how long is that going to take?”
“Several stops,” her crab friend began. “The Sturgeon crab who uses the name Indigo—an old ally—knows of another ship in orbit that we can fly to. There, they can resupply their group and return to Earth. From there, we must head to the Nexus wormhole, which in the big picture is pretty close. We can link up with more crabs fighting in our rebellion and figure out where the harvester fleet is. Make a plan, take action.”
“I feel... super overwhelmed,” Yaz said. “Nexus? Wormholes? Harvester fleet?”
“Trader Joe and I will be able to explain all of that while we’re in flight, right?” he asked the mysterious alien standing near the back of the group.
“But of course,” Trader Joe replied, adding a tip of the hat.
“Very long story short: the Nexus is a space station that has a hub of static wormholes linked to it. Fairly close to here is the exit to one of those wormholes. Humanity has been in the backyard of the galaxy for its entire existence, and they didn’t know it.”
“You’re saying this place is Grand Central Station,” Caleb translated.
“All roads lead to Rome,” Trader Joe elaborated. “And when we reach Rome, we can enlist the help of the senate, so to speak.”
“How long?” Yaz asked Trey. “From Earth to this wormhole?”
“I haven’t fired up the navigational computers yet, but it depends on where Earth is in relation to the sun when we launch. If we’re on the far side… it’ll be a couple days longer. Ten days, let’s say. Maybe more, maybe less.”
“We have enough air for that?” Caleb asked him.
“I vote we bring everyone who wants to go back to the tower back,” Trey said. “Then, after the rendezvous in space with the crab supply ship, we can bring five humans, myself, and Trader Joe. Any more than that and we’re cutting it close.”
“You can fly this?” Yaz asked the crab.
“I can assist him,” Trader Joe explained. “I am well-versed in interstellar navigation as well as wormhole travel.”
“When do we leave?” Yaz asked.
“Pick your five, let me make a few test flights, then we can head back to the tower. There, we gather what you think you’ll need for gear and gather all the food you can for the trip. Not sure what you’ll be able to digest in the galactic environment once we run out.” Trey said. “Leaving here tomorrow is fast enough, and smart. Leave the tower the day after that.”
Caleb climbed up on the central hull of the ship and posed like it was a big game catch he’d just brought down. “Trey, do your friends have a name for this ship?
Trey stood silent and telepathically asked Indigo, the leader of the Sturgeon crabs, the question. “It has a name, but its meaning would be irrelevant to humans. It’s named after a geographic location on our home planet. She wants us to give it a proper name. Something fitting for her new owners, and the journey we are about to undertake.”
“Yaz,” Caleb said. “It’s your birthday. I say you name this bad beeyotch.”
Whoa. I… okay. “I’ve never done this before.”
“None of us people have. Now, what do you want to call her?”
Her brain began to search her memories for ship names from books and movies. “Trey, will we be fighting in this ship? When we take the water back?” she asked the crab.
“I hope not. It’s armed, but not nearly powerful enough to take on a harvester or a cruiser. We’ll need to be in something much larger and far better armed if we’re to fight,” he answered.
“So this ship will bring us to the final war, but won’t fight in it?”
“Can’t say it won’t take part in the final battle, but you’re right, more or less.”
She looked up at the golden afternoon sun as it settled towards the horizon. I got it. “Luminous. We’re taking off in our ship, Luminous. We’re going to turn a light on what’s happening on Earth, and we’re not going to give up until everyone everywhere sees the universe for what it is. Luminous.”
“Luminous; that’s real nice, Yaz,” Caleb said. “Now, Trey, in the words of a famous, fictional starship captain I looked up to as a child: ‘make it so’.”
Happy birthday to me.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Well, She Flew at Least Once, so We Have That
Yasmine hadn’t seen any of the test flights Trey and Indigo performed; she’d continued picking with her new friend Michelle in the area of Turbine Ridge. Uncharted territory was too exciting to pass on for her. When they returned from yet another night of going through civilization’s trash, their imminent departure had been announced. Preparations were already underway, and the two girls loaded into the ship, giddy and terrified.
The interior of Luminous wasn’t so much cramped as it was just not designed well for, and ill-conceived for, the human body’s comfort. Trey had done a bounty of work to get the crab-suited passenger compartment ready, but there was only so much he could do inside the space that was available. Turning the interior of a machine designed to transport thousands of tiny squids into a shuttle for human bodies to travel the stars in was a challenge. Large enough spaces for people to walk about in, or stretch out in, together just didn’t exist in Luminous.
“Ow,” she called out after banging her head on a low hanging pipe made of an unknown stony material. “I’m already bent in half in here. A ten-day trip in this thing? We’re gonna rack up a dozen concussions each.”
“I can mend concussions,” Trader Joe said from a perch he’d carved out atop a length of waist-high tubing. Inside it a warm, blue light pulsed. “But I would first recommend ducking further.”
“Thanks, Joe,” Michelle said as she took his advice. After passing under the pipe that bruised Yaz’s forehead, she crawled over a wooden floor into a rounded corner covered in translucent walling. On the other side of the hard material, Yaz could see the dim luminescence of several squids moving about.
“I think I need stitches,” her uncle said as he rested back on the same floor made of plywood and salvaged planks. “And tweezers. This floor is going to impregnate my rear end with a forest of splinters.”
“I brought tweezers. I always do,” Yaz said. “But I will not help you with splinters on your butt cheeks. Nope.” She tossed her bags on the wooden floor and sat on top of them. She surveyed what would be their tiny home for a voyage of indeterminate time. “Not much room to spread out in here.”
“I’m sorry,” a crackling speaker announced from somewhere nearby.
“Trey? You installed another speaker in the ship?” Yaz asked.
“Call it our intercom. I’m currently loaded into the ship’s systems with two of my friends from Sturgeon Bay. We’re going to power the ship. All three of us have access to the intercom. May I introduce you to my friends? Indigo, please say hello.”
“Hello,” a female voice crackled over the makeshift intercom. She sounded young, like Yaz or Michelle. “It’s… a challenge to cheeseburger, your mashed hot dogs.”
“Um,” Trey said. “She’s going to need time to, you know… train the translator. Like I did.”
Everyone laughed.
“Indigo, take your time,” Yasmine said. “We survived Trey’s learning curve; we’ll make it through yours.”
“It’s quite nice to speak in real time with a human for a change,” she said. “Thank you for your patience.”
&n
bsp; “Patience we got,” Caleb said. “Head room we don’t.”
“I’d also like to introduce you to Delta.”
“Good day,” a robotic voice said.
“He doesn’t say much, so that might be the last you hear from him,” Trey said.
“Nice to meet you, Delta,” Yasmine said. “Trey, are there any windows in this thing?”
“No. Crabs don’t need windows to navigate. When we sync up telepathically with the ship controls, its sensors become our experience. We see what the exterior sees.”
“Bummer. I would’ve liked to have seen Earth from space,”
I can help you with that, Trader Joe said telepathically to her. When we lift off, I can form a conduit with the ship and you.
Why are you being quiet like this?
Trey hasn’t explained to his compatriots what I am. My presence inside their ship could cause them extreme alarm. Until I am told otherwise, I will pretend to be human. Also, I’m fairly quiet, as a rule.
Pretty used to being a quiet human now, aren’t ya?
My people are used to laying low.
“Everyone is loaded,” Trey informed them. “If you’re ready, I’ll take us to the Tower.”
“Do it up,” Caleb said. “Did everyone pee? I don’t see any bathrooms on this boat, and we are not stopping if you didn’t go potty.”
Everyone laughed again, and then the whole world shook.
Close your eyes, Trader Joe thought to her.
Yasmine did. Wait, I thought I closed my eyes? Instead of the reddish-black interior view of her eyelids, she saw the gulley from the point of view of the bottom–where Luminous sat. She turned left and right as her leveled field of vision pitched and yawed to and fro. What’s going on? Am I…? Am I seeing through the ship’s eyes?
Indeed you are, Trader Joe said. Sit back and enjoy the show.
“I won’t fly us too fast,” Trey announced. “The trip is short.”
“Here we go,” her uncle muttered. He grabbed his Halligan and held it tight.
