Orion: Star Guardians, Book 1

by Ruby Lionsdrake

  A distant screech came from somewhere outside, or maybe there were holo speakers somewhere to go with the holo display. The sound reminded Juanita of the velociraptors in Jurassic Park.

  “The rest of our very short lives,” Tala grumbled, turning her attention back to the tools.

  Juanita didn’t know how to address that pessimism. This still seemed like a grand adventure to her, albeit it would be a more comfortable adventure if people weren’t getting killed left and right.

  “Is there anything in there that might be aspirin?” Juanita waved to the kit.

  “Probably, but I can’t read the writing on the ampules for the jet injectors.”

  “Hyposprays.”

  Tala’s eyebrow twitched.

  “Too bad the ear translator doesn’t do anything for reading,” Juanita said.

  “Maybe if I tried to read with my ears.”

  “Was that… a joke?”

  “Sarcasm.”

  “A sarcastic joke?”

  “Call it whatever you like. I wouldn’t feel safe guessing at what in here might be the equivalent of aspirin.”

  Juanita watched someone walk in front of the lake, but it wasn’t anyone she recognized. She wondered if Orion was out there helping those people or if he was in a cell. Probably not the latter. He’d still been walking around free when Tala and Juanita had gone to the brig.

  “I ate the steak,” Angela announced randomly.

  Juanita couldn’t decide if she sounded triumphant or disgusted. Maybe both.

  “Did you like it?”

  “God, no. I was just so hungry that I was shaking. I thought it would help. I’m not sure it did. I still feel kind of shaky. And I’ve got a headache. I think that’s caffeine withdrawal.”

  “Drink a lot of water,” Tala said. “Assuming you can find some that’s safe.”

  “That’s the kind of superior medical advice you get from someone who spent eight years in doctor school,” Juanita informed Angela, smiling.

  But her smile turned to a frown. Angela did look a little pale, even in the poor light.

  “Your liver is probably running low on its glycogen stores,” Tala said, ignoring Juanita’s comment. “You may get some symptoms of hypoglycemia until it realizes it has to switch to gluconeogenesis to create glucose from fat and protein. It shouldn’t take long. You should feel better in a couple of days.”

  “Should,” Angela said, looking worried.

  Juanita didn’t think that had sounded like anything to worry about, but then, she hadn’t understood half of what Tala said. She thumped Angela on the arm, trying to make her feel better, or at least distract her from her concerns.

  “Maybe if you have a smart liver, it’ll do that thing faster than normal.”

  “I’ve never noticed any of my organs displaying notable brilliance,” Angela said.

  “No? I’m pretty sure I have a clever gallbladder.”

  “Do you know what the gallbladder does?” Tala asked.

  “No, but mine does it cleverly.”

  Angela still looked worried. And pale.

  “Do you have any pre-existing medical conditions?” Tala asked her.

  “I had asthma as a kid and was sick all the time. Getting out of my parents’ old house and not living with their cats all the time helped. I’m allergic to cats. And lots of other things too. Juniper is evil.” Angela sniffed experimentally. “My sinuses have actually been super clear here.”

  “I didn’t notice any juniper trees in the corridors,” Juanita said.

  “The ship seems free of dust bunnies and cats,” Tala said, “and if there are environmental allergens out on that planet, I imagine they’re so different from what we have in Arizona that your body will consider this a lovely vacation. It usually takes a couple of years to develop new allergies in a new environment. That said, I wouldn’t put anything out there into your mouth.”

  “I wasn’t planning to go exploring.” Angela closed her eyes and leaned back against the wall. “Not until this headache goes away.”

  “Make mine go away too,” muttered someone nearby who must have been listening. Indigo. She was lying on her back with an arm flung over her eyes. “Or bring some coffee. Can that alien rock make coffee?”

  A few more longing murmurs for coffee came from around the room.

  “Some electrolytes might help you feel better,” Tala said. “In addition to water.”

  “There are those tablets in sickbay supposedly,” Juanita said, eyeing the holo display. “Maybe we should go hunt for them. And maybe along the way, we’ll stroll past a door that’s open to the planet, and we can take a look outside.”

  Tala gave her a sour look. “You’re like those clueless girls in horror movies that hear a noise in the basement and then go down to check.”

  “Does that mean you’re not coming?”

  “Yes.”

  “Angela?”

  “I’ll go with you. Maybe there’s coffee out there.”

  Juanita shucked her blanket and stood up. “At the least, I bet there are fewer crabby doctors out there.”

  Tala sighed, and Juanita expected a lecture.

  “I’m sorry,” Tala said.

  Juanita nearly fell over in surprise.

  “I have a caffeine headache too,” Tala said, smiling faintly. “And I can’t see this like an adventure the way you do. My mother texts me every day. She’ll be worried about me. And I have a cat. I didn’t get a chance to ask a neighbor to feed it or anything before getting yanked away from my life.”

  “Oh,” Juanita said. “My parents will be worried too. You don’t have kids or a husband, do you?”

  Tala had never spoken about either, but it seemed that by her age, she should be married.

  “No. There was never time. My job was so busy that it wasn’t conducive to meeting people outside of work. And inside work, well, I had some unpopular opinions. Nobody was sad to see me go.”

  “Oh.” Juanita noted her one-syllable response as less than adequate, but she didn’t know what else to say. “I’m trying to sell one of my novels, so I don’t have to work in a workplace and worry about people’s opinions.”

  “If you publish a novel, won’t you have to worry about everybody’s opinions?”

  “Well, only the opinions of those who read it. And those will be my peeps.”

  “Like they’ll know what a light saber and a tricorder are?”

  “Exactly.”

  Angela shifted her weight and looked toward the door.

  “We’ll see if we can find something like coffee to bring back,” Juanita said, waving and heading for the exit. “We may not make it very far if that ensign is outside,” she warned Angela.

  “Maybe he’ll get the tablets for us.”

  “That won’t get me to a door where I can look outside.”

  “I see my welfare is your top priority here.”

  “Naturally.” Juanita stepped in front of the door, fearing it would be locked and wouldn’t open for her, but it slid aside as easily as a supermarket door back home.

  And Ensign Bystrom wasn’t standing outside. Nobody was.

  “Nice,” she purred, striding out. “I was worried I’d have to flirt with him and compliment him on his tight ass so he would let us go explore.”

  “Are you good at that? Flirting?”

  “No. That’s why I was worried.”

  “That one guy, Orion, seems to like you.”

  Warmth flared in Juanita’s cheeks as she remembered the kiss. “Maybe.”

  “I guess there’s no point in flirting with anybody. We’re going home soon, right?”

  “I imagine so. Tala has to feed her cat.”

  “Hopefully, someone will go to her apartment when the police and everyone realize we’re all gone.”

  “Yeah.”

  At the first intersection, Juanita paused, looking left and right. There was the ladder well they’d used the night before. But she didn’t want to go to the brig no
w. She wondered if that man had ever been questioned, the first officer.

  There weren’t any plaques or maps on the walls to direct them.

  Juanita cleared her throat. “Computer, which way to sickbay?”

  Angela shot her an incredulous look.

  “It works on Star Trek.”

  “Sickbay is on Deck 1 aft,” a man’s mellow voice came from the wall.

  Juanita bounced on her toes, pleased. Though she wasn’t entirely sure that voice had been computerized. What if one of the Star Guardians had answered her from the bridge? What if they were being monitored?

  “Are you the ship’s computer?” Juanita asked.

  “I am Eridanus. I am the ship.”

  If that was a computer, it had a very dry tone.

  “Is Deck 1 up or down?” Angela asked.

  Juanita looked at her.

  “Oh, like you know.”

  “I was going to assume down.” Juanita also figured that if there was a door to the outside, it would be on the first floor. Assuming the ship didn’t have transporter beams. That had always seemed a little farfetched.

  “Deck 1 is down,” the ship said, sounding even dryer than before. “Do you wish me to light the passage to show you the way?”

  “Yes,” Angela said as Juanita said, “No.”

  “Yes,” Angela said more firmly, “and if there’s coffee on this ship, we’d appreciate you lighting the way to coffee.”

  “I do not know what coffee is.”

  “Damn, I was afraid of that.”

  A green circle appeared on the deck to their right. They started walking toward it, and it moved ahead of them, leading them to a ladder, then turning holographic and three dimensional to bounce down the rungs. When they didn’t follow promptly, it bounced back up, then bounced more slowly down.

  “I think the ship thinks we’re stupid,” Juanita said.

  “I’m not sure it’s wrong.”

  “Speak for yourself.”

  Noise like a vacuum cleaner or maybe a pressure washer rumbled on the first deck. As they followed the green ball, now appearing flush with the deck again instead of in a three-dimensional form, Juanita caught a whiff of some damp vegetation. It smelled nothing like the juniper and pine from home, nor did she recognize it as anything else familiar.

  They came to a T-intersection, and a breeze whispered in from one side. The sphere led off toward the right, but a door stood open at the end of a corridor to their left. Light and trees were visible through it.

  Juanita jumped up and down. “There it is.”

  “That doesn’t look like an electrolyte tablet or coffee,” Angela said.

  “It’s an alien planet. I have to record this.” Juanita touched her phone in her pocket. She hadn’t used it since her quick check the day before, so she should have some battery power left.

  “I don’t.”

  Juanita waved her toward the sphere, which jittered back and forth impatiently as it waited for them.

  “Go, find sickbay. Get some tablets for the others, too, please.”

  “How will I know which ones are the right ones? Doc Tala couldn’t even find aspirin in her kit.”

  “Ask the ship.”

  “Eridanus,” the ship corrected in that same dry tone. It seemed to be the only one he—it—had.

  “Eridanus will help you.” Juanita jogged toward the exit, not looking back.

  “Tala is right. You’re totally that horror movie girl.”

  “I’m not going outside,” Juanita called back. “I just want a look.”

  Even if she had wanted to go out and explore, she doubted she could get far with all those men working outside. They would inevitably catch her and tote her back to the rec room.

  But when she reached the door, a big heavy hatch that reminded her of an airplane door, Juanita didn’t see anyone. The ship had landed in something that looked like a peat bog with clumps of bladed vegetation similar to grass rising here and there. Trees rose a hundred feet away, and the lake she’d seen was off to the right, as was the front of the ship.

  Juanita leaned out, peering in that direction, expecting to see the men that had been working out there earlier. There were hoses leading from the ship to the water, but she didn’t see the people.

  A screech sounded, similar to the one she’d heard earlier from inside. It was much louder out here, and all the hairs on the back of her neck rose. The noise seemed to come from the trees straight ahead of her.

  “I am definitely not going outside.” No horror movie endings for her, no thanks.

  She pulled out her phone and recorded the vista. The trees growing up out of the soggy land, with water lapping at their raised roots, didn’t look much different from mangroves, but the green sky visible above them was definitely different. The water of the lake had an emerald green cast that she had never seen, either.

  After recording the area, she experimented with taking a picture of herself in front of the background. The picture of her standing in the hatchway wasn’t that exciting, so she turned around and leaned out as far as she could to get one with the green sky above her.

  “Is that some kind of ritual unique to humans of your planet?” a voice asked from below.

  Startled, she fumbled her phone, and it slipped from her fingers. Afraid it would fall in the water, she lunged, trying to catch it as it fell. Her foot slipped on the hatchway, and she tumbled backward. Even though the ground was only a few feet down, she flailed and twisted ungracefully, afraid she’d hurt herself.

  But she landed in someone’s arms.

  “Orion,” she blurted.

  Belatedly, it occurred to her that the voice had been familiar.

  “You remembered.” He smirked, his teeth white and grinning above his goatee.

  “A ritual, yes.” Juanita turned in his arms, trying to see where her phone had landed. “It’s called the selfie. It’s extremely important to humans of all ages on my planet.”

  “Are you looking for this?” He shifted so that he held her up with only one arm—an impressive feat—and showed that he gripped her phone in his other.

  “Yes!”

  He handed it to her.

  “You’re my hero.” She grinned and kissed him on the cheek.

  She hoped for a smile in return, but the humor faded from his face, and he set her down.

  “My brother informs me that’s a problem.”

  “Your flint-ass brother can sit on his thumb and rotate.”

  He blinked a few times. Juanita wondered what the translator had done to that phrase.

  “He is fairly flexible,” Orion said.

  The screech came from the trees again. Was it closer this time?

  Juanita rested her hand on Orion’s bare forearm, glad he was here now. And also glad he carried that big bolt bow and his full collection of knives. Did knives work on pterodactyls?

  “Those are fire falcons. The birds of prey that this ship is named after.” Orion nodded toward the craft.

  Juanita hadn’t seen the ship yet from the outside—Hell, she hadn’t seen much of the inside, either—and decided she would have to walk out a ways to get a better view of it, but there was a wing sticking out of the side above them, and it reminded her a little of the Klingon Birds of Prey, except that it was a fiery orangish-red instead of gray or green.

  “It’s probably more likely to get pulled over and given speeding tickets,” she murmured.

  “What?”

  “Nothing. Are your people familiar with this planet? You must be if the ship is named for the birds.”

  “Named and designed after them, but no, actually. This planet is in the database, but this system hasn’t been explored thoroughly. It used to be a cul-de-sac since the gate leading to your system was dead.”

  “Dead?”

  “Yes, there are lots of dead gates out there. Usually, as near as our cartographers have figured, ones that are very far apart. We think it was once possible to take a single gate from on
e side of the galaxy to the other, but those are dead now. If you fly through one, nothing happens. Most of the locations closer together work, so crossing the galaxy is still possible. You just have to take a lot of shorter trips. And because the wormholes weren’t placed in convenient and linear ways, it takes months to traverse the entire galaxy.”

  “No non-stop flights, huh?”

  His forehead wrinkled.

  “Never mind. Interstellar drift?”

  “What?”

  “I assume if the gate system is really old, the stars will have drifted apart since it was created. The changes would be less significant with systems closer to each other.”

  He was staring at her now, his forehead still with a crinkle to it. “Your people don’t have spaceflight. How can you know that?”

  Juanita thought about mentioning that it had been explained in an episode of Stargate SG-1, but said, “I’m smart,” instead, and winked.

  His eyebrows arched.

  She really was bad at flirting.

  “What I don’t understand, however,” she said, “is how people—and aliens—could have been cruising all over the galaxy for—you said centuries, didn’t you?—and we never saw signs of it back on Earth. Gaia.”

  “Centuries, yes, and the Zi’i were out there for tens of thousands of years, according to them. But they originated on the far side of the galaxy and didn’t learn how to use the gates until recently. We actually showed them, inadvertently.” He tilted his head. “If your people haven’t been out here in spaceships using the gates, how would you have seen our worlds and learned of life out here?”

  “Well, we have big telescopes, and we’re always looking for signs of life in space. We’ve been sending out radio waves for decades, hoping for a response.”

  “Radio waves? Maybe in a couple thousand years, we’ll get your message.”

  “Oh, right.” Juanita knew the size of the galaxy and that they were looking into the past when they looked out onto the other stars, but she tended to forget about such things when she was imagining Kirk, Spock, and McCoy zipping from solar system to solar system at Warp 5.