Tag: fiction

prompt: I stared at the crowd and told the biggest lie of my life.

available at Reedsy

I stared at the crowd and told the biggest lie of my life. It was what I was expected to say after all, and I’ve never handled that kind of pressure well.

“This is an immense honor, and I’m grateful that the selection committee chose me for this mission. I’m ready to go.” My voice cracked a little, which the news reporters wrote off as emotion. My friends, though, know my tells.

While I sat in my prep room in the pre-launch lounge, a conference vidcall to me flashed on the screen. I answered to see my closest friends from all over the world on the call.

A cacophony of congratulations, take-cares, be-safes, and other banalities cascaded over each other until the chatter died down. Finally, one of the six took control of the call.

“G, you a bad liar girl,” she said.

“Melody,” another said, “that’s hardly fair. What do you think she should have said?”

“She shoulda’ said hell to the no, Leeza.” Melody shook her head. “G’s ’bout ready and happy for this as a mutt goin’ to get his nuts cut.”

“Glenna, ignore her. Mel’s just upset that you’re leaving.” Leeza’s previous smile faded.

“I ain’t the only one. We all upset.” Melody sighed and leaned closer to the camera. “You coulda’ turned it down.”

Leeza brightened back up. “Meantime, we’ll plan a bash when you get back. We’ve got six months, let’s all meet up in California for a beach party. It’ll beat the London weather for sure.”

The feeling that this would be the last real-time conversation I’d ever have with them weighed on me like an elephant on the chest. “Mel, I had to accept. The selection committee didn’t have much to work with. Ballsen, the second-best finisher in the training and evaluation, crashed the simulator on landing all but two out of seventeen times. He didn’t actually pass the training criteria. Not to mention, he’s borderline delusional with his religious stuff, seeing angels and demons and such. He passed the psych eval by two points, compared to my seven-hundred-twelve.”

“Y’all passed by seven-damn-hundred?” Melody asked. “Sounds like I could pass that test! That, or he the sane one and the test is to see who crazier.”

The laughter of the others was genuine, lightening my mood, even as the tears began to flow. The reality was on me. This was it. “I’m going to miss you all so much.”

Gunther, the lone male in the gang, overcame his shyness to get the group’s attention. “I’m very sorry, but I need to log off for work, now,” he said. “Talk to you all later, and I’ll see you soon, Glenna.”

Before I could correct him, he’d logged off. Maybe it was just a slip. We’d planned on meeting over the coming weekend, while he was in North America for work. Of course, that plan went by the wayside when the mission date got moved a full month earlier.

The call cut off and a notice to prepare replaced it on the screen. If they hadn’t bumped it a month, I would’ve had time to prepare. Instead, I was pacing back and forth, doing my best not to shake.

The door from the decon room opened and three techs in clean suits came in, pushing a cart with my gear for the launch. Everything I’d need post-launch was already sterilized, bagged, and stowed on board.

One of the techs stepped in front of me, waving his blue-gloved hand in my face to get my attention. I snapped out of my daze and looked at him. Behind the hood was a familiar face.

“Gunther! How?”

“I told you I would see you soon.” He winked, then went about helping me suit up in the vac suit I would wear. “If you want, I can go visit Melody instead this weekend and give her a spank.”

“Not necessary,” I said. “The spank, I mean. You should try to get the rest of the gang together, though, while there’s still time.” He fitted the helmet, locked it in place, and checked the seals. “I thought we’d have time before I left.”

“I thought this too,” he said, checking off items on a digital clipboard. “Today was supposed to be a pre-mission equipment check, but something has the top brass in a…,” he waved his hand in circles.

“In a tizzy,” I said. I knew what it was but was sworn to secrecy.

“That.” He put the clipboard on the now empty cart, and turned back to me. “Any message you want to pass to the gang, just send it with the regular equipment reports, and I’ll be sure to pass them on.”

“Thanks, Gunther.” A panicked laugh bubbled up that I had to fight to control.

“What is it?”

“What happens if I cry when I’m all sealed up?”

“Same as if you puke. You have to wait for the pumps to clear it out or live with it.” He gave me a light punch on the shoulder. “Just don’t puke, though.”

“I won’t. Too scared.” I surprised myself with the sudden honesty.

“If anyone can do this, it’s you.” Gunther patted my helmet and said, “Alles gut. Good to go.”

I joined the others of the crew on the electric tram that took us to the crew elevator. All of us knew what few others did. We would ascend to the crew cabin, take the boost to high-Earth orbit, board the brand-new ship built with the designs the aliens sent us, and take off on what was likely a one-way trip.

The way the others put on smiles and pretended everything was normal while we were in sight of the cameras helped me do the same. Once we were closed in, though, the facades dropped.

“Jake,” I said, “I’m not ready for this.”

“None of us are,” he said, “but that’s life.”

“We may not be ready, but our vitals look good,” Ella said. “Of course, some of that is down to the beta-blockers.”

“Amazing what they’ll do to make us look good for the cameras,” Jake said. “Terry, how about you? What’s your status?”

“I feel like I’m walking to the gallows, but can’t stop myself,” she said.

The radio crackled to life. “We have your vitals and telemetry. Everything clear on our end. T-minus seven minutes. Mission Commander, go or no-go?”

Jake checked his instrumentation. “Mission Commander is go,” he said.

“Pilot, go or no-go?”

“Pilot is go,” I said, after checking my indicators.

“Medical, go or no-go?”

“Medical is go,” Ella said.

“Science and engineering, go or no-go?”

“Science and engineering is go,” Terry said.

“All crew are go, all systems are go, T-minus five minutes and counting. Last abort window in forty seconds.”

The abort window passed by without notice, and we took off on possibly the last chemical rocket lift from Earth. The drive we’d built in space from the alien plans was only half, the gravity generator being built on the ground was the other.

Once we’d linked up with the ship and boarded, the transfer shuttle disconnected and set itself into a stable orbit away from us. We got into our positions and Jake confirmed with ground that we were all set.

“Glenna,” he said, “coordinates are set, engage the W-drive.”

“Engaging.” No sooner had I pushed the button than the light from the sun, the moon, and the Earth stretched and folded into red and disappeared. We were the first humans to break the light speed barrier. We hoped we wouldn’t be the last.

The minutes passed in silence as every rattle and hum of the ship made us tense, until we dropped back into normal space. The autopilot put us on a one-gee retro burn for 193 minutes until we bled away almost all our speed, settling in at 500 meters per second.

Engine cut-off left us once again weightless, and we all breathed a heavy sigh of relief. “We’re in one piece,” Terry said.

“I just hope we’re in time,” Jake said.

“We should be near the signal,” I said, hoping it wasn’t all for nothing.

“I have a fix on it,” Terry said. “Sending coordinates to navigation.”

“Glenna, get us there. Any signs of life?” Jake asked Terry.

“Underway now,” I said.

“Yes!” Terry cheered. “The message just changed. Translating now.”

Jake slapped his chair. “Time to target?”

“Orbit match phase in nine minutes.” I watched as we approached a massive object that could only be seen by the light it blocked.

“Translation complete,” Terry said. “All power off except life support. Damage to the hull, EVA suit storage is in vacuum. They can’t do a transfer without repair. They also want to know who we are.”

Jake took a deep breath. “We’ve come this far. Any concerns?”

When none were voiced, he set the communications to translate on send. “This is Mission Commander Jake Ingstrom, in charge of the first mission of the Interstellar One. We’ve come from Earth to assist. Request permission to dock.”

Instead of an umbilical dock, they opened a large bay on the ship as they began powering up. With the lights on, the ship became more visible. It was easily the size of a skyscraper, but spherical.

With a deep breath, I took manual control. “Let’s hope I don’t pull a Ballsen here and smash us into their deck.”

I caught snippets of conversation around the edges of my concentration. I heard Ballsen’s name in conjunction with words like “creepy” and “crazy” and “seriously unhinged.”

I did it just like the simulations, letting the auto-controls correct for the artificial gravity while I made a feather-light decent on the deck. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. I don’t know what that sudden thump and ten-centimeter drop at the end was.

The door that dwarfed our ship behind us sealed shut and we could hear the rush of air against the hull as the dock was pressurized. When Terry gave us the all-clear on the air, we couldn’t wait to get out of the ship and meet our benefactors. It was probably unwise for all of us to pile out at once into the bay, but we did.

The aliens were tall, thin, looking like a Giger-esque monster, but not frightening. They walked on four limbs, their back bent at a ninety-degree angle above the forward pair. Moving up their body, three sets of arms on separate segments were in constant motion, while their two huge, black eyes surrounded by six small eyes moved about in subtle, independent movements. For as alien as they were with their centipede-like body plan, there was something about the way they looked at us that immediately struck us as being people, not just creatures.

They all carried a device in one of their six hands that translated their speech to English, and vice-versa. The alien commander took us to where the damage had occurred. A micrometeorite had punched through the ship just inside the main airlock. Damage control had sealed the area off, but the long suits with too many limbs and bubble helmets hung just past the sealed bulkhead.

After some consultation — and a crash course on how to use the aliens’ tools — Terry and Jake headed out for a spacewalk to patch the holes in the hull. Ella stayed on the radio with them, leaving me with the alien commander. I couldn’t pick up either his name or the name of his species, as they were in their weird, burbling language which all kind of sounded the same to me, but I called him Bubbles.

He showed me the controls for the pilot, which would be impossible for a human to operate as it required four feet and four hands, leaving two hands to work the console. Finally, we stopped in what looked like a mess hall or canteen.

Bubbles turned to me, all eight of his eyes doing that subtle rotation thing to look at me. “Your planet didn’t have four-space drive last I looked, and now you do. How did you get here so fast?” he asked.

“We started getting the messages a few years ago. Once we translated them, we learned it was plans to build a W-space transceiver, four-space or whatever.” I tried to remember as much as I could about four-dimensional space, but it wasn’t much, so I decided to skip it. “Anyway, once we built it and were in contact with the sender, we got plans for a W-drive. We spent the last year and a half building a test ship in orbit and were meant to take a one-way W-space trip, followed by a six month return trip through normal space.

“We were close to making that test run when one of our W-space transceivers picked up your distress call and the responses that no-one could come as they were all too far away. Twenty-thousand lives on the line, and the closest W-space capable ship was right there.”

I pushed the thoughts of my friends out my mind. “Instead of heading out just a short way and going back home, we maxed out our fuel load and made the transfer all the way here to Alpha Centauri B. We all knew what we signed up for, but we all agreed it was the right thing to do.”

I smiled a little. “Plus, we were kind of hoping you’d put in a good word for us humans when you get back home. Whoever sent us the plans has been very helpful, and we’d want to be friends rather than enemies or, more likely, an annoyance that you decide to swat out of existence.”

He made a sound I hadn’t heard from him before, his translator just saying, “Laughter.”

Bubbles got himself together and said, “We’re more alike than you know. We saw your lack of fuel to make another transfer and wondered at your altruism. Seeing that it’s based, at least in part, on selfish concerns is settling. That is something we understand.”

He moved one of his hand-claw things to my shoulder and set it there, waiting for a response. When I didn’t flinch or swat it away, he continued. “Even better than understanding your selfish altruism, however, is the awareness of it you show. This gives me great hope for your people.”

Jake, Terry, and Ella entered then, the first two covered in a sheen of sweat. “We fixed it, and your people are already in the area assessing further damage to suit storage and the airlock,” Jerry said.

I voiced the question we all had. “What do we do now?”

Terry muttered something, then said, “Before we left, I plotted a three-way slingshot around Alpha Centauri B, then A, then Proxima Centauri, followed by a Solar capture, braking around Jupiter and then again around the sun into a high parking orbit over Earth.”

“How long will that take?” I asked.

Terry looked at her feet and her gaze stayed there. “Twelve years. Assuming Proxima doesn’t decide to flare while we’re close and cook us all with X-rays.”

“With six months of food, if we ration, we last what, eight, nine months?” Jake asked.

“We could stretch it out to a year,” Ella said, “but we’d still be dead of starvation long before we got there. Of course, it wouldn’t take a year to run out of water, both for drinking and for oxygen, even with recycling. It’s not 100 percent efficient.”

“Can’t we beg some fuel from the aliens?” I asked. “Then repeat the W-drive transfer in reverse. Back in time for breakfast.”

“That would be the optimal course,” Bubbles said.

“We can’t refuel without disassembling the reactor.” Terry wore defeat like a heavy cloak. “Everything about this ship is a prototype. That’s why the W-space transfer was only one-way.”

Bubbles gurgled something with some of the other aliens without activating his translator, then turned back to us. “We have decided that we cannot let you die. If you wish, you and your ship can come with us to the shipyard around our star. We can help you refuel and maybe provide some other tech to make your return possible.”

“Sounds better than mailing our own corpses back to Earth,” I said.

“We cannot guarantee that we can complete the work on your ship,” Bubbles said, “but we will try.”

“Good enough for me,” Jake said. After getting a nod in the affirmative from the rest of us, the decision was made.

For two months, we worked alongside the aliens getting the I-1 ready to return. The main engines were removed, along with the fuel cells, and replaced with the aliens’ version of the gravity thrust they were working on back on Earth. The entire inside of the ship was sprayed with a nano-polymer that could provide gravity within the ship.

Due to the way the reactor was built, there was no way to add external fuel storage, so the space saved by removing the fuel cells was filled with trinkets and tech, including some translators, from the aliens. While some of it made me think of handing a thirteenth-century scientist a cell phone, a lot of it was, for lack of a better word, souvenir kitsch. Another thing we seemed to have in common.

We spent a few days with their astrogation folks and came up with a flight plan that minimized our time getting there, while maximizing our remaining reactor fuel. Most of the fuel spend was in translating to and from W-space, while the gravity drive would sip from the reactor, and could even be run from the massive battery they installed in one of the old fuel cell slots.

A week later, in front of the cameras and a crowd again, I told the truth. “It feels so good to be home.”

prompt: Write a story in which the first and last words are the same.

available at Reedsy

Patience. That’s one thing I’ve never been accused of possessing in any quantity. Makes my choice of career a little odd, but helping people solve their problems makes me feel better. Maybe it’s just a way to ignore my own.

After starting from the bottom as a junior assistant in the Ambassador’s office, I’d made it all the way to the Ambassador’s right hand woman, Senior Chief Aide. From there, it was a small step to go to work for myself.

These days, I’m known as a troubleshooter, broker, agent or, if they’re being blunt, a fixer. The name fits, so I don’t care. You have a problem, I help you fix it. Whether it’s organizing a party for a bunch of dignitaries from hundreds of light-years distant, clearing up that little vacation indiscretion or arming and outfitting an off-the-books special forces op, I’m your gal.

This job, though, has me wondering if I should’ve turned it down. It was Ambassador Odobwe that hired me, though. After working with him for a dozen years, I trusted him and jumped at the opportunity to do a job for him — after I got past the shock that he would even need a fixer.

Turned out, his need for my services was entirely around protecting a visiting alien under the guise of showing her around and offering a place to stay. With the same skill that Oumar Odobwe could sell tap shoes to a snake, he had convinced her that it was a way to help immerse her in human culture during the short time she’d be at the Coalition of Human Planets Embassy.

The “Chip” — CHPE — was, like all the Galactic Union embassies, an entire city on one of the artificial planets placed around a main sequence star just at the inner edge of the Scutum-Centaurus arm of the Milky Way galaxy. The planet had about half the gravity of Earth, and at sea level had about the same amount of atmospheric oxygen as Denver or Johannesburg. It took a little getting used to, but having artificial gravity in our homes and offices made things more comfortable for humans.

“What is she?” I asked.

“Colomoran,” Oumar said. “Colloquially known as—”

“Fluffy,” I interrupted. “Not part of the GU, yet, right?”

“Correct.”

I checked the arrivals board to see what time her shuttle was arriving. “Are the lizards going to let the fluffys join — or are they still trying to block them?”

“The Manorians are still blocking their application.” Oumar sighed. “They’ve taken over one of the Colomoran colonies. It looks like they’re trying to find a reason to get the GU to join their war against them.”

“So,” I asked, “what’s so special about the fluffy that’s coming today?”

“She’s the third in line for the ascendancy. Her mother is the current Ascendent, and her mother’s twin is second.”

“Target for kidnapping, then.”

Oumar nodded his head. “Both for political and monetary reasons.”

“I just now figured out what you meant when you said ‘Patience’ when I asked her name. You weren’t admonishing me like the old days. The fluffys are all named the noun forms of adjectives. Her name is Patience.”

Oumar laughed. “I knew you’d get there eventually. Her shuttle is landing now, she’ll be her in a minute. I’ve had the pleasure of meeting her via subspace chat. I think you’ll get along well.”

She looked like something out of a children’s cartoon. Standing just 125 centimeters tall, with a soft, downy fur in bright green and blue, she had large, yellow eyes and a short muzzle with floppy ears. The fur atop her head had been styled into a large puff, and the fur on her ears was puffed out as well, making her look a bit like a poodle.

“Oumar!” she squeaked, bounding across the terminal, her ears flopping as she ran. She didn’t stop until she was directly in front of the ambassador, then her head leaned back as she raised her gaze to meet his. “I knew you were tall, but wow!”

She might have been royalty, but she didn’t show any of the entitled brat I’d expected to see. “Oh! You must be Sylvia! It’s a pleasure to meet you.” She gave a little bow, then jumped back with a start. “Oops! I’m sorry, I didn’t introduce myself. My name is Patience.”

I gave her a slight bow. “Pleased to meet you, Patience.” I spotted the green stripe on her shuttle ticket that meant her luggage would be brought out to her. “Shall we get something to drink while we wait for them to bring your luggage?”

She looked around the terminal. “Do we have to wait? Can I just go get it myself? I’m not feeble, you know.”

Oumar laughed. “I need to get back to work. I’ll see you for our meeting tomorrow afternoon. Until then, Syl will see to your needs.”

“Thank you, Oumar.” Patience gave him another bow before turning back to me. “They haven’t brought my luggage yet, I’m going to get it myself. Where?”

I led her to the luggage carousel and found a porter looking for her bag. I showed him her ticket and told him not to worry about it. She squeezed her way next to the wall where the bags were coming out on the belt and kept peering into the hole, looking for her luggage.

When it came out, she’d pulled it off the belt and was making a beeline for the exit before I caught up to her. “What’s the rush?”

“There’s so much to see, I don’t want to waste any time,” she said.

“You’re here for eight days, I’ll help you make the most of them.”

We dropped her luggage in my apartment and her constant carrying on about foods she wanted to try led us to brunch at a diner. I picked a spot near the emergency exit in the back where I could keep an eye on both it and the main entrance.

After a big meal where she easily ate twice as much as I can, we caught the ground shuttle to the museum. Probably not my best decision, but she was insistent. Of all places in the Chip, the museum was second only to the shopping center for non-human traffic.

Tentacles, feathers, scales, fur, you name it, there was a creature in the museum that fit the description. Patience didn’t seem to be bothered by the presence of the majority of them, including the group of lizards — Manorians — I steered us away from. When a small group of fluffys entered,  looking like a rainbow of bright colored fur, she grabbed my arm and asked to leave in a hurry.

Not certain as to what spooked her, I led her out a side entrance and into a nearby park where we had visibility and multiple escape routes. Once she’d calmed down, I asked her why she was scared of the fluffys.

Her energy seemed to drain all at once. “I know Oumar has me staying with you to protect me,” she said, “but he’s worried about the wrong thing. It’s not the lizards I need protection from.”

“What do you mean?”

“My sister, Acceptance, has already made one attempt on my life. She’s not happy that I was chosen before her for ascendency.” Patience sat on the bench, waited for me to sit next to her, and leaned against me. “My father was trying to deal with her while I was on ‘diplomatic missions’ but she’s fled the planet.”

“What does your sister look like?” I asked.

She looked at me like I’d sprouted a second head. “She looks like me, of course.”

“How would I know that? You all have different colors of fur and different patterns—”

“Almost all of us are identical twins,” she said. “About three percent are singles, and half a percent are triplets or quadruplets.”

“Your poor mothers.”

“What? Oh, no. Our mother lays a single egg, and the zygote inside splits … usually.”

“So, your mother, who became the Ascendent, and her sister both hatched from the same egg at the same time?” I asked, then felt stupid for asking.

“Obvious,” she said.

“I mean, how do you choose who’s first in line?”

“The same way the names are chosen; the name sorting order. The first to take a step after hatching gets the first name, the other gets the second.” Patience sniffed. “Our names, like most, rhyme in our language, and sorted into alphabetical order, my name comes first.”

“Your aunt doesn’t seem to mind not being the Ascendent. At least, not that I’ve heard of.”

“My translator does not know that word. My what?”

“Aunt. Your mother’s sister.”

“Ah, we say second mother.”

“Right. I’ll file that away in my memory.”

“She doesn’t crave it for the same reason I don’t.” Patience seemed to stare off into the distance. “The Ascendent is outfitted with cybernetics, and her mind is directly connected to the world computer. What you do with AI, we do with organics, with the Ascendent as the arbiter of decisions and advocate for the will of the people.”

“Organics?” I asked. “Are there other fluffys … uh, Colomorans … connected to this world computer?”

“Fluffy is fine, slick-skin,” she said with a waggle of her tongue. “Others connected? Tens of thousands. For those who choose it, it confers a great honor on them and their family.”

“Can they change their mind later? Disconnect?”

She flipped her ears back and forth. “No. Once connected, the only way to disconnect is brain disease or death. Since Mother ascended, I haven’t been able to speak to her about anything. There’s too much noise from the computer in her head to focus on anything else.”

“I’m sorry.” I put my arm around the little creature and gave a light squeeze. “And I’m sorry your sister is a … well, not a nice person.”

“Thank you.”

“Is there anything I can help you with before your meeting with the ambassador tomorrow?” I asked.

“Just be there, I guess. I’m meeting with the lizards — that’s what you call them, right? — to beg forgiveness and sue for peace.”

“Beg forgiveness? I thought they were the aggressors.”

“So we all thought, until Father uncovered my sister’s plot. The initial attack wasn’t Manorian soldiers, they were mercenaries hired by Acceptance to kill her way to the ascendency.”

I was taken aback by that. “That means, from their point of view, your people declared war out of thin air and began attacking.”

“It does.” She looked up at me with those large eyes. “I have to make it to that meeting tomorrow. I have the proof of my sister’s treason, and the terms of surrender authorized by the Ascendent.”

“You’ll make it, all right.” I looked down into those eyes and felt the incredible weight that had been placed on her slight shoulders.

After a couple hours rest, no doubt to digest that huge meal, she was back to her nearly frenetic self. While Patience didn’t exactly match her name, she did try mine.

After the initial meeting with the lizards, an emergency convention of the GU was called for the following day. I flew with Patience and Oumar to the meeting on the second planet from the star. Patience got up in front of the entire Galactic Council to repeat the entire apology and surrender to the lizards.

She laid out the plot, how her own sister was the culprit, and offered the reparations her mother had approved. The meeting adjourned for two hours while the Coalition played arbiter between her and the lizards.

When the GU reconvened, the matter was settled. The lizards were appeased, the fluffys didn’t have to give up quite as much as they feared, and the block to their entrance to the GU was lifted. In light of those developments, Patience updated the duration of her stay from days to indefinitely.

While the fluffys built their own embassy city, she stayed with me, until long after it was completed. It was the capture of her sister on a lizard world that finally allowed her the peace to live among her own people.

I still took jobs for others and was often busy, but we always found time for each other. Until last week.

We got word that her mother was ill, and she left for home. The official story is that her aunt — second mother — would ascend in four days’ time. At that point, she would be the first and last in line for ascendency until her own egg hatched. I didn’t even hear who the father might be. She wasn’t coming back, I knew.

I took a break from work and arranged passage to Colomor. Even when she wasn’t living with me, she’d been taking up space in my life … in the best possible way. Now, the world seemed a little emptier. Besides, I needed to find out who the father of her children was, because if he hurt her….

For once, I agreed with Oumar’s constant comments about what my life needed. For once, I felt like I needed it too. Patience.

prompt: Center your story around an important message that reaches the wrong person.

available at Reedsy

“Greg, come up right away. Oh, and tell the analysts to drop anything they’re working on right now, this takes priority.” She returned the handset to the cradle. The hard-line communication system was older than anything else in the building. In fact, it was older than anything on the moon that wasn’t in a museum or itself a tourist attraction. It was secure, though, and that mattered most.

The swarthy, mustachioed man burst into her office with a harried air and unkempt hair. “What is it, Grace? Did the signal office pick something up?”

Grace turned her monitor around to show Greg. “Not exactly. I got copied on a conversation thread, that I don’t think I was meant to be included in. Sent from the office of Pritnan Antinan.”

“Who the hell is that?”

“If the sound of that name didn’t give it away, he’s from the Nannanan Exclave.”

“I figured that, I just don’t know that name.” Greg studied the message closer and began to point out the other names. “But that’s the Ambassador’s aide, that’s their security chief on the station, and I think that’s their Premier.”

“Right on all. Pritnan Antinan is their Minister of War.” Grace shook her head. “I can’t figure out what this would be about, or why my name would be in the Minister’s contacts. We met here, briefly, at the gala last year. Charming enough for a mass of tentacles, if a little intense, but that’s all I know.”

Greg produced a data crystal and tapped it to the screen. “I’ll get this downstairs to the analysts. We’ll get it decrypted, and then you can figure out what translator to call in, since you’ll have to read them in.”

“The analysts can’t—”

“No. They have one job. Don’t try to confuse them with others.” Greg stopped halfway out the door. “I didn’t know they even had a Minister of War.”

“Seems wholly unlike them, right? They have a Minister for everything they do, and everything they try to avoid at all costs, like the Minister of Disease.”

Greg just grunted and ran back to his underground office. “I’ve got a hot one for you two,” he said.

“Thank you, Greg,” Analyst One said. “We look forward to assisting.”

“How much data do we have?” Analyst Two asked.

“A message thread. Looks like a dozen or so messages, some of them pages long.”

“May I suggest Analyst One begins overall parsing while I start with the shortest messages first?”

“Whatever works best, A-Two,” Greg answered. He tapped the data crystal against the stack of machines in his office, marked ‘A-1’ and ‘A-2’ before sitting at his desk.

“You’ve probably already realized, but the messages are between Nann-Ex members, so I’m unsure what the language will be,” Greg said.

“That’s odd,” Analyst Two said. “These short messages all correspond directly to English and decrypt as such using a simple replacement cipher. There’s really nothing here to challenge us.”

“How do you figure that?” Greg asked. “I’m looking at the encrypted message and the English, but I’m not seeing how it lines up.”

“Does this help?” Analyst-Two asked, displaying the English text written in the symbols of the Nannanan common language.

“The entire message chain is ready for download,” Analyst One said. “If that is all, we shall return to our previous assignments.”

“Thanks,” Greg said, tapping the crystal against his terminal to download the decrypted messages.

He sat beside Grace as they read the decrypted messages together. “Their English is atrocious,” he said.

“It’s not used outside human space. Maybe they figured they’d be able to better hide what they were talking about.” Grace paused. “We don’t have a ship with my name, but that’s what this message says. Is it possible the routing AI passed it on to me when it identified my name?”

“Possible,” Greg answered. “We set up all the infrastructure for the Nann-Ex. Of course, that depends on whether they left it on the default settings.” He paused. “Yeah, that’s probably what happened.”

“I’m more worried about this,” she said, “here. We’re going to war against ourselves?”

“What would make them think that?” he asked.

Grace picked up the handset of the relic and clicked the buttons it rested on a couple times. “Get me General Ochoe.” She listened for a moment. “Good morning, General. We have a worrying message from the Nannanan Exclave. … Sure, come over. I’ll start a fresh pot of coffee.”

As she hung up, Greg was already moving across her office to the coffee pot. “I got this. Extra strong, just like she likes it.”

The general came in as the coffee maker dinged, signifying it was ready to dispense. “Looks like I’m right on time,” she said, putting her Marine Academy mug under the spout. “No cream, no sugar.” The coffee maker filled her mug.

Greg offered her the seat he’d been using, next to Grace. “Something odd’s going on in Nann-Ex.”

“Hello, Greg, Grace,” she said.

Grace took the hint about the niceties. “Hi, Nandi. This message chain is concerning.”

The general sat and sipped her coffee while reading through the messages. “Their English is about on par with half the junior officers.” She chuckled. “This is obviously about the training exercise on Breton. The ship they misidentified as the Grace Alvarez is the Greta Andreesen.”

“How do you figure that?” Grace asked.

“Because the Andreesen is part of the OPFOR for the Breton Resolve exercise, and auto-correct is a thing that will forever haunt us.” Nandi leaned back. “I think we should bring a couple of the Nannanan higher-ups in as observers, including Minister Pritnan.”

“You can do that?” Greg asked. “I know you’ve got some pull, but I didn’t realize—”

“I served with Evan — the SecDef — when we were both butter-bars,” Nandi cut him off. “I’ll send a message and let him know that we should be including them in several training exercises. At least until they get the concept.”

“I don’t understand.” Grace said. “Surely they train.”

“That’s one of those things that was redacted from a number of reports. When the Nannanan were still under Kalari rule, ‘training exercise’ meant something else entirely.” The general sighed. “The Kalari Empire would take the fresh troops along on a sure-win mission in order to get them blooded. It was usually against weak resistance forces, and usually from their own home world.”

“Oh,” Grace closed her eyes. “Damn.”

“Let Ambassador Ritnannan know that we’re inviting his people to the exercise. I’ll call Evan, and we’ll have Minister Pritnan on his way to Breton by this afternoon. Thanks for the coffee.” Nandi stood, downing the last of her coffee, then left the office as though it had been nothing more than a casual chat.

“I’m curious about something,” Greg said. “Can you load up the original message?”

“Why?” she asked, even as she loaded it.

“Examine headers.”

Grace followed his instructions to peer into the formatting of the message.

He chuckled and pointed. “Yep, default settings.”

There, buried in all the metadata from the communication software was the log line, “Contact added to CC; Name found in translation.”

prompt: Center your story around something that doesn’t go according to plan.

available at Reedsy

A gash appeared in space, disgorging hundreds of ships of the Royal Fleet along the edge of an asteroid field. As soon as the last ship had emerged from L-space into real space, the gash faded from local timespace.

“Attention all ships of the Queen’s Expedition: We claim another system in the name of Queen and Empire this day. Let the Empire rejoice, and all others weep, for the presence of the Royal Fleet.” The communication device clicked off. “Scans, full fleet, full sweep. Route concerns to weapons and security, and all planetary and stellar scans to science.”

“Full scans, aye. All scans and telemetry linked.” The combat commander looked bored as she watched data scroll from left to right on her screen. The minutes passed by with the hum of a flagship bridge on another routine mission.

“Scans returning now.”

“Report.”

“Nothing from security or weapons, all flagged possible targets eliminated as false positives,” the combat commander answered.

“And from science?”

The science officer didn’t raise his head from where he studied his screens of text and images. “As expected. Planets one through three ideal for mining, including extensive atmospheric mining on the second and average atmospheric mining opportunities on the third.

“Best colony location is fourth planet, although atmosphere is thin. Gravity wells on two and three are too extreme for extended stay. But….”

“But?” The admiral’s antennae twitched. “Out with it, science.”

“The things weapons and security called false positives — based on the last few minutes of scans, they’re not natural. These signatures inside the asteroid field are moving under their own power, not in phase with orbital physics. These are ships. Two of them have reversed their direction.”

The communications device clicked again. “All fleet, all fleet, shields up, unknown vessels, contact starward inside the asteroid field. Combat stations.” The admiral clicked off the device. “Comms, hail on all channels and patch through any response immediately.”

“Hailing all channels, aye.” The communications officer’s antennae drooped in a way that indicated he was focused on something. “Radio communications, no known language or protocol.”

“Science, report on targets.” The admiral stood tense behind her chair. “We don’t want to start a war with our allies. Any idea who we’re looking at?”

“Negative, Admiral. What little we can scan of them before they hide behind the asteroids matches nothing known to the Empire.”

The admiral took a deep breath she was unaware she’d been needing. “Combat commander, you’re in charge.”

“Combat in command, aye. Helm, full standby power for maneuvers. Weapons ready in Fire On Open configuration, lock on nearest targets flagged by science.”

“Weapons FOO, aye. Obtaining locks … locking … locked on thirty-one targets last known locations. They’re cowering behind the larger asteroids.”

The combat commander’s antennae stood in anticipatory tension. “Comms, patch their radio communications through. Even if we don’t understand the language, we might get the mood.”

“Aye, Commander. Patching now.”

The sound of the radio communications from the unknown ships came over the speakers on the bridge. The science officer closed all eight eyes and focused on the sounds coming from the radio transmissions. The speech was guttural, clipped, and lacking in tonality. He listened to the different voices, and how efficient their messages were despite their vocal limitations. He began to notice certain sounds repeated and thought they might be identifiers for the different speakers. One two-syllable sound was repeated at the end of every message, as if to say, “I’m done talking now, someone else can talk.”

“They can’t multiplex their communications,” he said. “He raised his hand when he heard the sound again. That sound means they’re done talking and someone else can transmit.”

The admiral sighed. “Figures we’d end up in a system with primitives. Anything science can get on them, let me know. If any survive, they’ll be added to the Empire’s labor pool.”

“Aye, Admiral,” the science officer said.

The radio communications went silent. One of the primitive ships maneuvered out from behind an asteroid and turned face-on to the flagship. Lights blinked on the primitive ship, and the flagship sensors picked up pulsed, long-wave laser scanning the ship.

The combat commander gripped her chair. “They’re marking us for targeting. Helm, evasive action! Weapons, full hot now! Fire at will.”

The radio chatter from the primitives started up again as the flagship moved with a speed and grace her size belied. Energy weapons blazed at the ship still sending out its pulsed laser beacon but did very little damage. The ship retreated into the asteroid field once again.

“Science, what kind of shielding is that?” the combat commander asked.

“No energy shield signature, looks like ablative atmospheric shielding.”

The combat commander’s antennae twitched. “They take something that size into atmosphere?”

The combat commander, admiral, weapons officer, and science officer were still pondering their next move when the automated weapons systems began firing as a collision warning blared. The weapons broke the asteroid into pieces just in time for it to tear through the hull in hundreds of pieces.

As one, all seventy-four ships of the Royal Fleet were destroyed in a matter of minutes. A last, desperate L-space message was beamed from the last ship to die. “System held by primitives, they’ve killed us all.”

#

“Lucky, don’t go out there, they look mean. Over.” The voice on the radio belonged to her coworker, Amir.

She laughed and keyed the mic. “Don’t sweat it, man. I’m just going to try to get a read on the size. It looks tiny from here, but you know, it’s hard to tell when they’re outside the belt like that. Over.”

Lucky piloted her mining barge out from behind the asteroid Amir was parked against and fired up her LiDAR. No sooner had it started confirming that the ship was half the size of her barge, than the ship pivoted and squirmed in a way it shouldn’t be able to. Then the rays started.

Her re-entry shield heated up and began sloughing off as she got back behind the asteroid as fast as her tub could go. “They fuckin’ shot up my re-entry shield. Over.”

“So much for non-hostile intents. Q crew, y’all know what to do. Over.” Grayson, the foreperson, was far more subdued on the radio than usual.

“Yeet rocks at the bad guys!” someone yelled on the radio, a moment before keying back in and adding, “Over.”

The assortment of barges, tugs, diggers, and corers went full burn against the asteroids they hid behind, doing a hard ninety-degree burn at the last possible moment to get away from the impact. Within minutes, the alien fleet was an expanding cloud of detritus.

“I’m not going to be able to land,” Lucky said, “will have to put into dock at Mars Orbital for repairs. Over.”

“That’s gonna fuck the wallet,” Grayson said, some of their usual jollity returning. “Alright, folks, gather up all the trash from the broken toys. We’re gonna more than make up for Lucky’s shield with the new tech. Over.”

“Roger, chief. We’re already on it. Over.”

“Thanks, Diggity. Let’s get rich. Over.”

“Grayson, Corporate here. Sending half of P crew along with half of R crew to assist. Over.”

“Corporate, we got it handled. Two, maybe three barge loads from all their ships. Where should we deliver? Over.”

“I’ll cancel the call for assist. They want it straight back to home base. Landing at GSC. Sorry, Lucky, you’ll have to sit this one out. Over.”

Lucky sighed and keyed her mic. “Roger, Corporate, I’m heading for Mars Orbital now before something important breaks. Out.”

“Q Crew,” Grayson called over the radio, “squawk 0011 to vote full share for Lucky. Over.”

The radio chirped dozens of times. “Corporate for Lucky. Over.”

“Lucky, go for Corporate. Over.”

“Unanimous vote from Q Crew, you’re getting a full share from this haul. We’ll see you at MO. Out.”

“Enough ass-grabbin’ already. Let’s get this shit loaded and get it back home. Out.” Grayson sounded gruff, but the hint of playfulness was never far beneath.

Within a matter of hours, the once mighty Royal Fleet was loaded into three mining barges and headed back to Earth at a standard half burn. Grayson piped some music into the comms to entertain most — and annoy a few — of the miners.