by J. Naomi Ay
“Is there anything bad about the Empire, Dad?” Gwen asked.
Thad thought for a moment. “Well, the SpaceNavy doesn’t do as many vessel inspections as Spaceforce. I guess that’s a definite strike against them. Katie will have to find a new source of employment if and when she ever comes back.”
“What’s going to happen after he’s dead?” Gwen continued. “This whole empire is built around one guy.”
“No, it’s not,” Thad said. “It was started because of Ron and he can overrule stuff when he thinks it's crap, but for the most part, every layer of government in every country and planet within the Empire is a representative republic with elections just like the Alliance. After he’s gone, assuming he’s not immortal, it’ll revert to a Constitutional republic and then in another few hundred years, it’ll be filled with corrupt fools and blow itself up just like everybody else. Look, it only took the Alliance two hundred years to implode.”
Nobody responded, not even Tim.
“Okay, I’ve got work to do. I still run his hospitals,” Thad waved and signed off.
“What are we going to do, Tim?” I asked.
Tim shrugged and swallowed his beer. “Absolutely nothing. I’m not about to leave my tomato plants just because the Allied fools have been replaced by Rehnorian fools. Fools are fools no matter which government they represent.”
“Okay,” I agreed and Gina and the kids nodded, as well.
“I didn’t think he even liked Rozari,” Janet said quietly. “He always complained how hot and dry it was.”
We all looked out the window at the dark grey skies and the streets puddled with water.
“It’s raining now,” I said.
Chapter 10
Jerry
“So then, this pterodactyl thing started circling above us like a huge vulture, just looking for one of us to pick off and go eat. I told Katie we needed to get the hell out of there, and she was all for it, but the ambassadors were insisting they had to reach some kind of agreement first.”
“I see,” Tuman said thumbing through the sandwich case for his favorite tuna fish salad sandwich. I already had my veggie sprouts. I had thought about skipping a sandwich and eating just Tempeh with greens and maybe some melon for dessert. At the last minute, I went back to my sprout sandwich. I was a creature of habit, unfortunately.
Tuman and I had been meeting a couple times a week now for lunch. He and I would pick up sandwiches or sometimes he would get a hot lunch like a fish taco or a burger, and I would get some soup. I never looked at his burger with envy, not even once.
“I guess Ron had them all figured out already though because the agreement they reached was with him. A few months later, Altaris became part of the Empire,” I continued my story.
“Ron?” Tuman tossed every sandwich in the case aside. “I guess I’ll have to have egg salad today. The tuna fish salad always sells out first.”
“Maybe next week, we should eat lunch earlier,” I replied, getting my iced green tea out of the refrigerated case. “Yeah, we all called him Ron back then. None of us knew. Well, we knew he was weird, but none of us had any idea he’d end up as this.” I held up the coin I would use to pay for my lunch. It had Ron’s face engraved on it which by itself was pretty weird.
“Mhm,” Tuman responded as we headed over to the cashier. “I have changed my mind. I think I would rather have chicken.” He turned around again and went back to the sandwich case. I followed him and waited while he thumbed through the sandwiches yet again. I was thinking about my afternoon appointments, the pregnant mother who was coming for yoga instruction and the old guy who needed some honeysuckle tincture for his arthritis when a voice behind me called my name.
“Dr. Moonbeam,” he said. “You are a fraud! I am dying, and it is because of you!”
I turned around, and there was the Talasian with the case of acne. His acne had gone from bad to worse. Maybe it wasn’t acne after all. He was now completely covered in white pustules, some of which appeared to be swelling, bursting, and oozing greenish pus. Behind him stood two other Talasian guys, friends of his who looked like they were ready to blame me for his condition as well as the lack of world peace.
My first thought was that there was obviously an underlying mental disturbance in this guy that was manifesting itself in his skin. My second thought was that my jaw hurt really badly after his big fist connected with it. I fell on the floor and banged the back of my head against the sandwich case. Damn, that hurt.
Laying there on my back, I woozily watched as Tuman took a knife out of his pocket and showed it to the Talasian. The Talasian wasn’t afraid as he and his buddies all took out guns. Tuman, fortunately, wasn’t stupid and backed into the sandwich case, arms raised in surrender.
I thought about the Talasian and his acne, and I remembered once reading about a variant of impetigo specific to Talas which could spread to the brain and cause madness and violence. There wasn’t a flower or yoga position that could counteract it. This guy needed some serious meds.
“What’s going on here?” The owner of the store cried, racing over to us. One of the Talasians grabbed him and held his pistol to the guy’s head.
“I’m going to shoot, Dr. Moonbeam and then we’ll shoot you,” the sick Talasian declared, now pointing his guy at my own head.
Strangely, I was very calm. Maybe it was because I was already concussing and my head hurt like hell or maybe it was just the years of Spaceforce training finally kicking in.
Tuman had tried to sneak away until the third Talasian pointed his gun at my friend. I saw Tuman’s eyes flicker to the right and though my own vision was blurry, I inconspicuously glanced that way too.
In the corner of the deli, crouched behind the cheese counter, a woman was creeping, a large stick like a broom handle in her hands.
While the Talasian was raving about acne in his brain and the other guys were taking bets on who would bleed more, the woman slipped behind the bread counter and past the beverage cooler to come up behind the guy holding the grocer. She made some kind of a scream, the martial arts kind of Hi Ya and whacked the broom handle down on the Talasian’s head.
The Talasian spun around, dropping the grocer and fired his pistol at the produce guy, fortunately missing him. The woman screamed again and leapt into the air, knocking the Talasian in the solar plexus with her feet and then following up on his neck with stick, first one side then the other. The guy dropped his gun and clutched his stomach and then toppled over completely as the woman snatched up his pistol from the floor. In the meantime, his buddy who had his own gun trained on Tuman, turned around to watch this and ended up with Tuman’s knife at his throat. Tuman grabbed the gun away from him and forced him to the floor, sitting on his back to keep him down.
“Drop it!” The woman said and aimed at the pustuled one.
“I need to kill him,” the Talasian said. “If I kill him the acne in my brain will go away.”
“Not likely,” the woman replied. “Just drop the gun and then go to a real doctor.”
“Hey,” I protested. “I am a real doctor.”
“Shut up,” the Talasian said and turned his gun back on me.
“Last chance,” the woman called. “Drop it now.” The guy on the floor by her feet let out a groan so she whacked him with the stick again and he shut up. “Drop your gun.”
“No!” The chamber clicked. I didn’t care. Really. My head was hurting, and I was watching this from some higher plane. I imagined that the woman with the Talasian’s gun was Katie who had come to rescue me from wherever she had been hiding.
A gun shot sounded, and my head hurt even more. I was sure I was dead now. I was floating above the grocery store, gazing at my veggie sprout sandwich, the sprouts falling out and crawling across the linoleum like little worms. Someone was screaming. It might have been me. There was warm sticky blood on my face. I swiped at it with my hand and looked at it curiously. It was greenish, turning yellow. Talasians bleed green, I con
sidered. I bleed red. This couldn’t be mine.
“She shot off my hand! Help me, Doc! I’ve lost my hand!” The Talasian was yelling and shaking me so even though my head hurt, even though I was probably dead, I tried to sit up and look at his hand. Yep, she shot it off. Was there a Yoga pose for losing a hand?
“Dr. Moonbeam,” Tuman said. “Help the man.” I caught my breath and tried to focus my attention on the bleeding stump of the pustuled arm. “You need to make a tourniquet. Use this.” Tuman took off his shirt and using his knife, he cut it into shreds. I started to wrap the stump to staunch the bleeding as a bunch of police and medics came in. I did a pretty good job considering I didn’t have any sealant or even a medical kit. The medic himself complimented me as he fingered the bump on the back of my head while the Talasian was loaded onto a stretcher.
“Well, I used to be in Spaceforce,” I bragged. “After that I was head of ER operations at SdK Rozari.”
“Did you treat them with flowers?” The Talasian yelled as the medics carted him away.
I refused to go to the hospital as my dizziness was abating, and my head hurt but, not beyond anything a skullcap tincture couldn’t resolve. The other Talasians were handcuffed and escorted out, and then Tuman, the grocer and I were taken outside to speak with the police.
“Where’s the woman?” I asked the officer as we sat down at my favorite picnic table.
“The sandwich lady with a broom handle?” The guy smirked. “Took out three Talasians bad guys while the three of you stood around like numb nuts?”
“I took out one of them,” Tuman shrugged. “Sort of.”
“Does anybody know who she is?” I asked, my heart suddenly beginning to race. I tried to remember what she looked like, but my vision had been foggy and she had some kind of hairnet or scarf on her head.
“Yeah,” the grocer replied. “She works for me. Her name is Anna King.”
“Anna King?” I repeated.
“Anna King,” Tuman smirked.
“Anna King.” The officer jotted into his tablet. “Where does she live?”
“In a beach shack down that way.” The grocer pointed.
“A beach shack?” I said.
“Anna King, that’s very clever,” Tuman chuckled.
“I’ll need to go talk to her.” The officer stood up. “She’s got to make a statement. The Talasian may file charges.”
“She saved my life,” I protested.
“I know,” the officer replied. “The prosecutor will take that into account. She won’t be charged. We’re under Rehnorian law now. In the old days, she might have gone to jail for this.”
“I have a feeling she is about to,” Tuman said.
“What does that mean?” The officer asked.
“I suggest you contact the Imperial Guard before you approach her.” Tuman glanced at the courthouse. “They are looking for her. If you go there without them, she’ll run away again. I think we are all tired of her running away.”
I looked at the courthouse banner with Katie’s face smiling down on us, and then I put two and two together and came up with five. I took a coin back out of my pocket and now studied Ron’s face and then Tuman’s. “Your famous nephew,” I concluded.
Tuman just smiled.
Chapter 11
Katie
The Talasian got off a shot which fortunately missed Charlie, the produce guy, but scraped across my arm on the way there. It wasn’t deep, but it was bleeding and hurt like hell. I probably needed some sealant, as I dripped blood all over the sand as I stumbled toward my shack.
At one point, I stopped and ripped up my apron, tying it around the wound and tightening the ends with my teeth. The blood quickly soaked through. I got home and sat down, propping my arm up on a stack of books and pressing the rest of my apron against it to try and staunch the bleeding. To make matters worse, this was the same arm and about the same place that I had been shot at once before by Prince Akan. I had a feeling this wasn’t the only old wound I had just opened up.
Heavy footsteps sounded on my front porch, and a half a second later someone was knocking.
“Go away,” I yelled in English. “Leave me alone.”
“Open the door,” a man said. “Quickly, before they come.”
I was too tired to get up, and I didn’t want to move my arm, and I wasn’t about to open the door anyway. “Get the hell off my porch,” I cried. “If you try to break in, I’ll shoot. I still have the gun.”
“Please,” the guy said. “I just want to help you. Anna? I promise I won’t hurt you. There’s blood on the steps. I’m a doctor, I can help.”
A doctor? I didn’t think there were any doctors in this town except for that quack Moonbeam whose Holistic Health Center was right by the beach. “Do you have any sealant?” I called. “I just need some sealant.”
“No, I don’t but let me take a look. At least I can clean it and wrap it. If I have to, I can stitch it.”
“Oh, damn,” I sighed. It was hurting like hell, and I didn’t have a lot of strength to argue. Frankly, I was getting tired of fighting. I was tired of running. I was tired of arguing and I was tired of making sandwiches. Maybe it was time to go back. “Alright, come in, the door’s unlocked.”
The door opened and Dr. Moonbeam walked through. He knelt on the floor by my feet and gently removed the apron bandages.
“I can fix this,” he said softly and looked into my eyes.
I looked back into his and nearly passed out.
“I told you, I’d always take care of you, Goldie,” he said. “And I will.”
Chapter 12
Tuman
When I first came to Derius II, I believed myself to be on the far reaches of the galaxy. I thought myself beyond the grasp of my family and especially my nephew. Like a great octopus though, he reached out in all directions, and whether he knew it or not, sucked me in to one of his tentacles.
I had an octopus this morning. It was delivered to me by a fellow fisherman, and I had paid him five precious dollars for it. I was going to cut it up and put it on my iced table to sell to the blue tourist people who came to the market and desired such a thing. Personally, I found octopi absolutely revolting.
I had just set the great ugly creature upon my chopping block and was proceeding to skin off the outer layer when Dr. Moonbeam happened upon me and invited me to join him for lunch. Happy to have an excuse not to dissect the octopus, I placed it carefully back in my cooler and set out with this odd human fellow. He had far too much hair on his face and far too little on his head. He had a nervous habit of pushing his glasses up his nose every few moments even when they had not slipped at all. He also had a tragic fascination for my niece, the Empress, whose picture adorned the town square though she, herself, had long since disappeared.
I watched his face closely whenever he began to relate a story to me of my niece and himself and their lives in the Allied Spaceforce. It was obvious, though I hoped not equally as apparent to everyone, that he had loved her. Even now, his feelings were plainly written upon his face. It was interesting too, how he spoke of my grand-nephew, the Prince Shika, with both adoration and devotion choking his voice.
I was conflicted then on what to do about him for I knew the secret to her whereabouts. I had fished the coast and these waters for many years and nearly nine years ago, saw the spaceplane that crashed in the ocean not far from these shores. I felt the wave that brought the woman and the Talasian man ashore as it rocked my boat and sent me flying from my chair. It also tossed one of my best reels into the water. I headed ashore to where the two bodies had washed up, but before I could anchor and launch my tender, the police came and took them away.
I did not know who they were or how they came to crash on this planet until early this year when the Emperor became our overlord, and it was announced that his lady was here.
I saw her the first time whilst I was still out at sea, fishing the waters by the cottage that sat directly on the shore. I had se
en this cottage many times throughout the years, and I had watched the tenants as they came and went. It was the perfect location for someone to hide away, and had I neither boat nor marina to settle in, I would have chosen exactly that spot.
When she arrived at the cottage, I knew her instantly for her looks were quite famous by then. Even so, she was known to me in a way I could only say, resonated in my soul, as if we had met in a past life.
I did not believe in coincidence, where we are and where we have been is all part of a great plan. I was here on Derius for more than twenty and five years, separated from my wife and children, my father and brother, and all that I had known, solely for the purpose of awaiting her arrival so that I might assist in changing the galaxy yet again.
Dr. Moonbeam had preceded me to the steps of the cottage, and I could hear his voice inside. There was blood on the porch, and the door was slightly askew. I pushed it open further and went inside. The doctor was stitching the lady’s arm with a needle and thread as she sat in a chair clutching tightly to a half gone glass of beer.
“All done,” the doctor said, now dabbing at the wound with a cloth. The lady winced and then swiping at her tears, she looked up at me and cried, “Now who the hell are you?”
Before I could answer, she made a move for the gun which lay on the table next to a pile of bloody cloth. The doctor reached for it quicker and snatched it from her grasp, tossing it to me. I removed all the bullets from the chamber and then pocketed them, putting the useless pistol upon the kitchen counter.
“Give that back!” She ordered, pulling away from the doctor and rising unsteadily to her feet.
“No, you don’t, Katie,” the doctor declared, pushing her back down. “No more playing with guns for you.”
