“Cat the Bounty Hunter?” Tarke pushed off the front desk and bounded out the door. With all that had been going on, Tarke hadn’t seen the latest episodes. Perhaps she’d made it into the episode with Frankie. She could only hope.
“Thanks, Jerry... No problem, Tarke. Anything for an old friend... Hey, do you want to ditch this joint and join me for an adventure involving Sossios Zadra, Cat the Bounty Hunter, and poisonous soda?... Oh sure, let me just tell my boss to skagforge himself...” Jerry mumble-whispered as she pretended to be busy while the screen loaded.
TWO
Patav didn’t remember what she’d been dreaming about, but she did remember what punt-kicked her awake. Her one antenna twitched and her two eyes fluttered open as she lay sprawled, covering nearly half the futon-covered floor of the small dormitory room. Fury and frustration rippled through her body. She turned over to find the source of her trouble.
While anger is one of the more commonly misplaced emotions, here it had taken a few wrong turns. First, the wrong being was experiencing the anger. Patav had been innocently sleeping, experiencing something rather flat prior to the emotional spike. Secondly, the being to whom the feeling belonged had directed it toward something harmless, in this case, a rebellious tuft of fur on her left arm she violently patted down. Rapcorhian fur was relatively low maintenance. It was short, didn’t tangle, and repelled water. Tussocks were common, and often used to differentiate one multiple from another. Solely as an empath, Patav couldn’t be sure it wasn’t about the tussock. As Lorav’s triplet, she could be sure. Something else was bothering her.
The women were broad-shouldered and broad everything else too. To say they’d been cut from the same cloth would be accurate if by cloth one meant body, as Rapcorh litters were often conjoined at birth. Lorav’s off-center antenna waved in agitation. Lorav often didn’t fuss about her appearance, especially whilst on the ship. Anything fallen to the wayside was often overshadowed by the outrageous appearance of their first mate, who’d recently turned captain.
And there. There was the place for the anger.
“It’s only temporary,” said Patav as if reading Lorav’s mind.
“I know. I just want it to flatten out. It’s in my field of vision,” Lorav replied as if she couldn’t read Patav’s mind.
Lorav pulled a brush with coarse bristles off the inset, backlit shelves which held the pair’s belongings. The pair owned uncomfortably fewer items than one would consider necessities, especially when considering the lengthy hauls attempted by the Atalanta Empress, despite sternly worded letters from the Intergalactic Shipcraft and Safety Review Board, passionate pleadings from two or three concerned mechanics, and a revocation of their AAA membership after their thirty-third tow request. No matter if the hauls were successful or left them stranded, Rapcorhs still kept minimal items. Some said it was because their mental abilities kept their focus on higher planes of existence. For example, Patav had been woken by her sister’s emotions, and Lorav knew what Patav thought of such an intrusion without Patav hurling a pillow into the back of her head.
But no, the pillow was hurled.
It was Lorav’s anger after all. Patav just gave it back.
Others said Rapcorhs kept minimal items because their mental abilities enhanced life’s intricacy, so they didn’t need to fill their days with banal, material items to distract themselves from the weighty existentialism that tore at most souls.
And still others had no particular opinion one way or the other.
Lorav said her apologies regarding Patav’s current state, which was some ratio of awake and angry that made it difficult for her to fall back asleep. Patav felt no remorse from her sister, nor from herself for the precise pillow attack that had stealthily given Lorav another tussock.
She was the weapons specialist after all.
Lorav circled back around. “Sure, Frankie hires her school-BFF as her first mate, whatever, but did she really intend for her to captain the ship?”
“That’s what first mate... is,” said Patav for the fifth time.
“Yeah, I just always thought she had an actual contingency plan. One where Tarke won’t fly us into a supernova.” She pressed down harder on the tussock she knew.
“Well, you’re the pilot, so I think that’s on you to not fly us into any star—super, nova, or not.”
“You know what I mean.”
“No, I know how you feel. Do you know what you mean?”
To say Lorav and Tarke had an antagonistic relationship would be fair. For as much as Lorav and Patav were the same, whatever bits were different made Tarke intolerable to just one of the triplets. If one were to say it was the mind-reading part, she would not be wrong. If one were to say it was their completely polar lives, she would also not be wrong.
“Are you jealous?”
“You tell me, Einstein.”
“Are you using Einstein as a general insult? Because it doesn’t really fit here. You should brush up on your Earth insults. You hear them all the time from Tarke.
“Yeah, but I listen to Gail too, and she gets me all confused,” said Lorav, her mouth forming a frown underneath her flat nose.
Although three of their crew had grown up on Earth, only one was human. With a sample size of one, it was difficult to determine what was the dumbness of the species in general, versus the woman’s own deficiencies, and now possibly added senility as was common for members of her species of a certain age.
Lorav put on dark shorts and pulled a silver crop top that matched her fur from the shirt’s tucked spot on the shelf.
“Not that one,” said Patav, mindlessly. “Mine has a stain on it.”
“We don’t have to always wear the same thing,” came Lorav’s clearly prepared answer.
They never had to wear the same thing, but on Rapcorh, all multiples matched their multiples. Clearly, it had been pushed upon their culture so that multiples didn’t buy just one, but one for each sibling. With a duplicate wardrobe and years of conditioning, they hadn’t given a second thought to wearing the same.
“Well, OK.” There was no point arguing with someone picking a fight. Patav brushed her teeth and worried about what she might wear instead. She settled back on the floor, topless, avoiding the decision for now. Legs crossed underneath her. She relaxed her large ham hands on her hams, and waited for her sister to join.
“I think I pass today,” said Lorav. She reached for the first rung in the tube extended from the ceiling’s center at an awkward angle. Climbing hand over hand, she disappeared. The metal submarine—or super-atmospheric, in this case—door clanged as Lorav left a pained Patav.
It was unusual for one of them to avoid the morning ritual of meditation, but it was a privilege they granted each other without question. Today, Patav had questions.
Meditation helped clear their minds and resolve any thoughts or emotions—important, because a brain could feel overwhelmed and panicked with its own thoughts, and even more so with the thoughts or feelings of all others within an 1100-foot radius of the triplets. Oftentimes there were thoughts or emotions one didn’t want to sit with that caused an avoidance. It took time to sort out what was yourself, but it could be a distressing process, one they didn’t necessarily want to do. However, neither ever left the other alone.
Sorting out feelings of distress, Patav hoped they were not heading toward a supernova. Maybe black would be appropriate.
#
Patav eventually settled on a shirt the same color as the one Lorav wore, but with an illustration of a supernova on its front. For those who’d survived such a phenomenon, the shirt was probably in poor taste, but no one had come forward yet.
With her first step onto the bridge, Patav felt as if she’d been gutted. She was last to join the room, and the crush of their loss and the despair of their morning avalanched upon her. She braced herself against the door frame and gasped for air as if it had been pressed from her.
“Were you raised in a barn?” asked Gail
.
Despite her overwhelm, Patav anticipated receiving Lorav’s small smirk over Gail’s nonsensical comment, but it didn’t come. At least the bit of humor brought a small reprieve and opportunity to gain composure. The anxiety was more than palatable. The fear was more than looming. It rested on her like several bulky blankets. Her feet dragged across the floor and when she settled into her bucket seat, tears fell along dark tracts on her cheeks where previous tears had paved the way. Everyone seemed to ignore her, but a quick glance from Quaja revealed she had noticed the differences in arrival and appearance by the sister set.
THREE
Quajalimk—everyone called her Quaja—had indeed noticed the differences in arrival and appearance from the sister set. The entire ship had been in a bit of turmoil recently, and signs the inseparable pair were coming unglued could be a harbinger for disaster. Xavier-class courier ships like the Atalanta Empress were known to be small on the outside, and also small on the inside. As such, any small thing could upend them.
Quaja wrapped several tentacles along the metal frame of the beach chair bolted into position in the first row from the Xtremely Unnecessary Definition™ windscreen. She did this, not because she expected the ship’s velocity to suddenly change (although, oftentimes it did), but because it was simply in the Kieron’s nature. Kieron were famously tactile creatures, and their tentacles literally and figuratively had minds of their own, as brain cells called kieron existed in both the Kieron skull and the Kieron tentacles. And so, her tentacles wrapped because they enjoyed the coolness of the aluminum-steel alloy, and her tentilla explored the metal’s rough spots and indentations. These weren’t the only tentacles that were satisfying their innate desires. Others were knitting intently. Frankie had recently found her a knitting pattern for a Kieron Kozy, a species-specific Snuggie™ which was a blanket with arm-sleeves for those who wanted to both be warm and read a book. And still, another grouping of tentacles carefully manipulated the resistors of a circuit board. Tentacles wrapped around the metal frame grounded the static electricity generated from the knitting away from the delicate circuits. She found pleasure in the small electrical pulses.
Having once been hunted by the crew in a ridiculous attempt to escape a fertisrat invasion and make rent, Quaja was now their Chief Mechanic. Chief was synonymous with only in most instances on the Atalanta Empress, and in this particular case, it was also synonymous with Chef, because Quaja often prepared elaborate meals for the crew with careful attention paid to texture and a varied palate.
Two console stations alongside her low sling chair made for the first row. One for Lorav, in charge of navigating and making the ship go places. The other for Patav which made the ship shoot weapons that made no sense in the expanse, but had been so ingrained in the genre, it was difficult to avoid them. Lorav’s singular floppy antenna listed as she stared intently at her console, possibly hoping that a planet would leap out at her and say, “Here! Here! Your true captain is here!” Or, perhaps to ignore her sister’s entrance.
In the center, the too-large bucket seat sat empty, which never happened if Frankie or Tarke was present. Even prior to Frankie’s abduction, Tarke sat there anytime the captain wasn’t on the bridge, despite having a perfectly good seat to the right of it. Even as Tarke’s seat now, no one dared sit center. However, Gail risked sitting in the right-hand seat as they waited for Tarke. She had no ambitions to be first mate. They’d all jump ship before Gail took the helm—including Gail, herself. No, she only took the opportunity to sit instead of standing in the back.
Standing in the back wasn’t as awful as Gail complained it was. She wore mechanical pants that supported the weight of her body and its modifications. Additionally, they could be configured for chair-free sitting, using a lever system, similar but not at all the same as the overstuffed recliners found in twenty-three percent of Earth burial mounds. While many of her peers were being waited on hand and tentacle on senior citizen cruise/assisted living ships, the human octogenarian had chosen post-retirement work in space. Her pelvis, hips, and arms had been replaced with bronze bionic counterparts that complemented her brown skin. Her spine had been reinforced with titanium. She was now Cargo Supervisor and Mover of Really Heavy Things. At one point she had fought to be Chief Cargo Supervisor and Mover of Really Heavy Things, but she had lost.
Gail kept her mechanical arms and hands inside the seating area at all times to not bother any of the flashing buttons and touch screens. Tarke had warned her some time ago that an accidental press of a button could cause a catastrophic cascade of events. This, however, seemed unlikely since Tarke fell asleep face-down on the console on the regular. The top of the console had a worn mark in the knock-off Gunmetal Gray™ paint where she often propped up her feet. Underneath the mark, switches had been taped in place to prevent inadvertent activation. Blond fur stuck to the adhesive strips’ curling edges.
If Lorav’s side glances weren’t already interpreted as contempt, the roughly whispered, “Pull it together,” to her sister confirmed it.
“This isn’t just me. Why don’t all of you pull it together. I don’t like being the dumpster fire for emotions!” erupted Patav.
“I think that anger is all yours,” responded Lorav.
Sisters always knew how to push buttons, and did so thoughtlessly—treating their sibling in a way they’d never treat another sentient lifeform (or human). It was what sisters did.
“I’m frustrated that Tarke hasn’t returned,” lied Quaja, trying to defuse the situation. “Should we send someone to the station to see if she landed herself in jail along with Frankie?” She gave a small smile.
They all pondered the likelihood.
“Do we know if Tarke has any warrants?” asked Gail, delicately.
“She wouldn’t have gone down there if she had warrants,” guessed Patav, trying her best to ignore the spat and the emotions like her co-workers.
“She might not know she has warrants,” said Lorav. “Hell, she might know and still have gone.”
“Mevix,” cursed Gail. “Sorry, nickel for the swear jar.”
Before the crew could ask the Earth octogenarian what she meant by nickel and jar, they heard a bounding along the ship’s interior corridor. As it drew closer, the four-leg gallop could be distinguished.
Ka-thump.
Ka-thump.
Ka-thump.
POW!
With no indication of slowing down, and an apparently unsuccessful attempt to disengage the door’s mechanisms on the fly, the four-legged canter had quickly met an end. When the doors opened, Tarke stood tall on two legs, unruffled except for a slightly reddened nose.
“Quaja, make these automatic doors automatic,” commanded Tarke.
Quaja put away her knitting and electrical work to do the acting captain’s bidding. Patav stifled a small cry, as everyone connected the non-automatic automatic doors to a claim made by Frankie, who believed manual doors would prevent surprise-boardings, which had been true for a particularly terrifying episode in which skeletal bags of fertisrats tried to gain entry to the bridge.
She settled into the captain’s chair before assessing Gail in the seat to her right.
“May I sit here?” asked Gail.
“You’re not my first mate. You’re not even my… seventh mate.”
“No, of course not.”
“Then yes, but only for ten-minute increments,” she said, then, directed toward the on-board computer, “Compi, how long has she been sitting?”
*Most humans begin sitting unassisted at the age of eight Earth months.*
“Compi, turn off,” whined Tarke.
Gail didn’t answer either, but she engaged the exoskeleton pants’ sitting-mode and hovered just over the seat. Tarke slipped her paw-hand underneath to make sure there was room between the two. She nodded her permission.
“Was she there?” asked Lorav.
“No, not at all,” said Tarke, distractedly, moving things on Frankie’s console screen.
“What’s the plan?”
“DELETED!” announced Tarke as she palmed the console and swept all of Frankie’s shortcuts and maps off the screen. “Woman doesn’t have a single entertainment channel...” She reached over to Gail and her old console. “I know where she is. Or well, we will.”
With a flick of her wrist, the newest episode of Cat the Bounty Hunter began to play on the windscreen.
“Can we skip the theme song introduction?” asked Lorav.
“No.”
FOUR
While Cat might have been a satirical name for a human bounty hunter, it was actually an on-the-nose name for a Cardalol, which were often described as “cat-women” in space opera genre fiction, disregarding biology, evolution, and ecology of the species which indeed had another gender. Original authors found the male counterparts equally sexually attractive, and not knowing what to do with that information—they blatantly ignored near half of the population.
Cat was of that forgotten demographic, and thus played a human on TV. Nevertheless, he was, in all respects, quite attractive to the male science fiction writers. Thin and lanky, he exuded independence, had a great sense of humor, and was a great hunter. He was someone you’d like to have beers with on Sunday, after a successful hunt on Saturday. He looked like someone who wouldn’t get bent out of shape if you hassled him as best bro-friends do. He had a utility belt with a lot of cool-looking weapons which perfectly framed his substantial but not intimidatingly sized package. His wiry gray hair and chiseled features had softened and smoldered, aging the Cardalol like a very fine wine tucked in the cellar of the world’s most interesting man.
Cat’s ship was like most reality TV show ships, in which the fourth wall had been extended out so cameras could get all the correct angles. The ship’s interior had been painted in alternating matte and glossy blacks, which was not only super cool to the male audience demographic, but also allowed Cat’s silky gray body to really shine in contrast. Console lights flashed in a dancing pattern that was completely inaccurate to anyone who actually had any experience with such consoles. Those who found industry inaccuracies distracting did not stop watching the shows, but instead nagged fellow viewers who didn’t really care.
Atalan Adventure Pack: Books 4-6 Page 7
