This installment comes with an unfortunate amount of “summary mode,” but it’s in the service of keeping the story moving, and I think it works.

Content Warnings:  Threats, Guns, Ableism, Classism, Dangerous Flying, Fear of Air Crash, Mortal Despair, Billionairism, Ill Fandom Behavior.

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CENTENNIAL HILLS CONTINUES

by Bébé Mélange

Pep could make supraluminal flight happen if he wanted, but space was vast – even at those speeds – and he had no idea how few and far between civilized worlds were.  He had been prepared to take that journey with a crew of three humans, but adding aliens to the mix changed the variables.  There would be more mouths to feed, more lungs breathing the air, but they could possibly help him navigate to a friendly port in the infinite stars.

He figured out the alien in the dress was the space flight expert, and that they had pressing concerns of their own, and he focused his primary effort on communicating with it.  He was proud to do well at the task, quickly gathering that they were capable of hearing but preferred sign language among themselves, that their names were Tmai and Smar, and that Tmai thought his modifications to the craft would get them killed.

They used drawing on tablets to get their ideas across, in lieu of time to really learn each other’s tongues.  Tmai seemed to understand that he wanted to travel to a world where they would not be attacked, and reluctantly shelved its concerns, for the purposes of getting that journey under way.

The aliens also demanded to quickly determine what food aboard the ship would be edible to them.  Some amount of the military rations were palatable enough for the time being, though they couldn’t eat everything in the sealed packets.

Pep hadn’t slavishly copied the Millennium Falcon’s interior and exterior design, focusing on what was possible within a short production cycle, and what was going to be comfortable for a long ride.  Shammy had never been able to get a good estimate of how fast the supraluminal speed was, and it was unclear if trips in space would take days, weeks, or months.

There was no gun well.  The Falcon had gun turrets on top and bottom of the ship with a passage between them, but the saucer’s critical water and plumbing systems were integrated in that space.  Indeed, despite his hubris, he was canny enough to notice the ship had no weapons of its own, and that adding gun turrets might make them a target wherever they went.

There had been no jets in back, and Pep added them.  A bank of rocket thrusters would help them get a little boost of speed inside an atmosphere, but served no particular purpose in space.  It was just something he felt crucial to his aesthetic.

He had recreated the iconic lounge area of the Millennium Falcon, with its holographic battle chess table and bunk beds.  Conveniently, there were four bunks, which would now hold humans and aliens.  But for his own comfort, there was one boudoir chamber on the ship, that he would be sharing with Scuzz.  It even had a mini hot tub.

Hours had gone by, the ship floating idly in a lazy orbit of the sun.  Eliza and Shammy were having an endless therapy session in the rear compartment, Snar was resting in a bunk, and Pep was learning everything he could from Tmai.  Scuzz was snoozing softly in the cockpit, with her seat reclined.

The alien insisted on showing him all the weaknesses the modifications had introduced, the areas that would need repair.  He was thoroughly annoyed that the ship would be losing its excellent shape, but, again, had the wisdom to accept necessary adjustments to his beautiful dream.

For his part, he insisted on learning how to use the star navigation system, and finding out which worlds were safest to visit.  To his delight, there were thousands of planets that Tmai regarded as safe.  It seemed the galaxy was a peaceful place, on the mean.  Any place designated as a port in the ship’s memory was safe to visit.

Unfortunately, they hit the limit of their communication there.  Pep wanted to know more about the nearest worlds – their government systems, their species, and more – but Tmai could not understand the questions at all, no matter how they were illustrated.  Pep gave up and went with the alien’s first suggestion for a destination – a world called Erbeem 2.  The Eyeknobbian word for two was something like “mubee.”

Pep thought it would be great to have an alien copilot, like Chewbacca or Nien Nunb in Return of the Jedi, but Tmai regarded the cockpit as a dangerous hole in the ship, and wouldn’t set foot in the thing.  The alien accessed the ship systems they needed via an internal control board that had been preserved from its previous design, though normally concealed behind a panel in the lounge.

They were working out the navigation with Pep there, when Eliza and Shammy returned.  Pep heard them approaching and looked back.  “My crew.  Are you ready to rest?  Catch a bite to eat?  Learn how to use the commode?”

“Shamar showed me how to do that, Pep.  What I’m here to do is make demands.”

“She’s serious, boss.”

“Eliza, surely you realize–”

“Maybe your education of American history never quite reached the Vietnam war, but allow me to help you realize something.  You cannot dictate how a sufficiently determined opponent will behave, no matter your position of power, no matter the circumstance.  I can kill you in your sleep.  I can hurt you or your little star trek in a million ways you have not and cannot anticipate or imagine.”

“What do you want, Ms. Banerjee?  I’m busy here.”

“I promise not to kill you if you let me have the master bedroom.”

“That is unacceptable.”

“Sweet dreams, mon capitaine.”  She turned away.

“We’ll talk about it,” he acquiesced.

She stopped in her tracks just a moment, then went to take a seat at the game table.  Shammy slid in beside her.

When Pep turned his attention back to the computer, Tmai had done some work he didn’t see.  “Back up,” he said.  “I need to see how you got here.”  He spiraled his finger counterclockwise in front of the screen.  “Back up.”

Tmai knew what he meant, but it would necessitate repeating a dozen steps in the navigation system.  They narrowed their eyes and tightened their mouth.  “Ogay, Beb.”  They did it, despite their reservations.

“No no no,” he said, “Not that far.  Too far.”

“Mo way, Beb.  Shtob.”  They shushed him with a hand, then withdrew their hands.  “You do it, Beb.”

“Alright.  Thanks, Tmai.”  He raised his reading glasses, looked back and forth between his little notebook and the screen as he worked.

Eliza said, “Can you believe he got the aliens to work for him?”

“He got us to work for him,” Shammy said.  “You really ought ta eat one of these.”

“We had jobs, we had to pay mortgages.  You think they’ll accept his greenbacks for space rent?  What did he offer that thing?”

“I think they liked the beef stew.”

“I suppose they do have a ‘will work for food’ look about them.”

“You notice that one has a gun?”

“No.  No, I hadn’t.”

“I’d say Mr. Ambergris is working for that one, myself.”

“How did you imagine yourself dying, Shamar?”

“Don’t think like that, Eliza.”

“This trip is going to be dreadfully interesting.”

 

The trip was not that interesting.  They found out it was only going to be about a week, and for that time at least, Pep was willing to let Eliza have the boudoir for the sake of peace.  Eliza and Snar overcame their mutual fear of aliens, bonding over their shared sour demeanor.  Everybody was teaching everybody something, and the learning was dry.

Snar taught Shammy and Eliza some Ainavian, and from them learned some English.  Eliza was better at remembering the sign language than Shammy, but worse at making the signs, as they played havoc with her arthritis.

Tmai taught Scuzz and Pep barely anything of Ainavian, instead leaning in to learning English from them.  It appealed to their vanity and Tmai was doing well.

Eliza also took time to try and educate Pep about the computer systems, because that was the ostensible reason for her rapture.  But she quickly came to understand that the billionaire tech genius had an understanding that was as shallow as it was broad.  He might never learn to deal with software issues on the ship.

Shammy, meanwhile, was learning as much as possible from Tmai about how badly his crew had damaged the ship, and what they’d need to do to keep it spaceworthy – assuming they survived the trip at all.  For his part, Shammy showed Tmai all the changes they’d made, and how to operate the tools they had to hand.

Scuzz showed the Ainavians her wardrobe, which was going to be the best fit for them of anything available.  Snar used the ship’s medical supplies to tailor the clothing for a better fit.  They took her Princess Leia outfit, because it was the most comfortable thing to wear over their bandaged wounds, further aggravating Pep.  Tmai got a pair of snakeskin skinny jeans and a flowing fuchsia collared shirt with the sleeves rolled.  They even got a gun belt that had been a cosplay element, more useful for stowing their gun than the collection belt had been.  Both Ainavians went barefoot and commando.

The hardest lesson learned was what Tmai taught to Pep.  It took a lot of communication, subtle and overt, verbal and visual and anything else they could use, but Tmai finally got through his head a picture of what his actual role in outer space would be.  Pep was not going to be the dashing ambassador of a sexy new planet on the rise.  He was not in charge of his salvaged wreck.  Tmai was the captain, and Pep was a slightly useful hitchhiker.

By the time they reached Erbin 2, Pep was in a bitter mood.  Surrounded by ingrates and small thinkers.  But he wouldn’t show it.  No, he was smarter than that.  He would find an opportunity to make something big happen, somehow.

He sat in the cockpit alongside Scuzz.  She was the only one willing to take in the view from that angle.  Shammy might have pulled up a seat behind them, but Eliza and Snar were fretting about the possibility of the ship falling to pieces on them, and he stayed back in the lounge to comfort them.  For their part, Tmai was also in the lounge, actually piloting the ship with no assistance from Pep’s toy cockpit, and working communications as well.

Pep held Scuzz’s little hand.  He was dressed like Han Solo – packing a 9 mm semi-automatic designed to look like Han’s blaster – and she was in a translucent lace chemise, buckskin pants, and strappy little slingbacks.  “This is it, honey.  We’re going to see an alien world.”

“I see it.  It’s all seaweed colored.  You think it’s all oceans full of seaweed?”

The planet filled about half their window as they slowly approached, with cloud cover similar to Earth’s, but a surface beneath that was a very sad shade of green brown.

“Not seaweed as we know it, but perhaps.  The interesting part is when we get down there.  Will they have shining streets and hovering cars?  Millions of minds linked into a vast cyberspace like The Matrix?  Will we be greeted as celebrities for being an unheard-of species, or just be so many strange faces in the crowd?”

“Wow.  That’s amazing.  You have so much imagination.  I guess I do too, but where you’re thinking about cities, I’m imagining an ocean covered in brussel sprouts that sing different notes as the sun passes overhead.”

“That’s beautiful and weird.  I love you, babe.”

“Aww!”

They waited.  Then they waited some more.

“Should I put on some tunes?”

“Yeah.  Damn, we should have made a playlist for this.”

Back at the real control panel, Tmai had transmitted their certification codes, destination preference, and landing needs, and they finally got word back from the surface.  They had been annoyed earlier to discover this wasn’t just any Ainavian ship, it was their own – the computer systems pre-loaded with their certs and everything.  But now they were going to be able to land in a suburb of the city where Snar was going to work – not too bad.  Landing worked in a few stages.  Different elevations had different flight requirements and you had to clear one to move down to the next.

They accelerated the ship straight toward the planet, penetrating the stratosphere.  Tier Komig had a clearance mandate of one thousand thousand units and relative speed restriction based on craft mobility.  The laws were complicated enough you typically needed to have a computer tell you how close you were getting to the limit, or just take it slow.  Many worlds had similar restrictions and Tmai had the experience to push the limit.

In the cockpit, Pep instinctively reached for the controls as the ship pushed into the atmosphere, the path of invisible gases ahead of them bursting into yellow white flame.  The flames weren’t consistent or constant, wicking away to the sides at random throughout the descent.  Pep and Scuzz could tell the flames were about three meters from the hull of the ship – at least, of its core structure.  The pointy Millennium Falcon parts and the corner of the passenger side of the cockpit were immolated.

Scuzz reached out to the burning window as if she might touch it, but stopped shy, feeling the air.  “It’s warm, Pep.  What do we do?”

“Have some faith in our man Shammy.  He figured out how to fabricate materials very similar to the original hull of this craft.  If the core can get through, the rest should too.”

“But the core is not on fire.  Maybe it never is, when it comes in, and because it doesn’t have to be.”

“I see what you mean.  Maybe this is risky, but I have to see it through.  I want to experience every part of this.”

“Honey, I’m scared.”

“You can go back inside if you want.”

“No.  No, I won’t.”

Back at the panel, Tmai watched for any signals of craft coming within clearance.  It wasn’t too surprising that nobody did.  The upper atmosphere of most worlds was fairly spacious.  They slowed a great deal as they entered Tier Gimek, which had a clearance of only a thousand units and set speed restrictions.

The lower they went, the more clearance alerts sounded.  Navigating by instruments was the norm and anybody getting a clearance alert could tell the direction it was coming from on three axes and know the best move to avoid impact.

They entered Tier Miton quickly, but had to slow even more at that point.  Air traffic had to respond to control at that height.  Control told them to enter a holding pattern and it flashed on the screen, looking like a slow whirlwind of blips.  They expertly fell into formation, keeping the new clearance of three hundred units with no difficulty, no alarms.

In the cockpit the lovers both breathed a big sigh of relief when the flames disappeared and the rapid onrush of the ground slowed.  They passed through cloud cover and the cockpit rattled and buzzed.  Pep wished he was driving – to feel like he had a say in his own safety – but it was a foolish instinct and he knew it.

“Hey, now it’s more like being in the chopper,” Scuzz said.  “Except so much higher!  These clouds are hella fluffy.”

“Very nice,” he said absently.  The cockpit he’d added stuck out the right side of the ship, alongside the two pointy parts of the ship’s “prow,” which afforded him a good view of how the hull material there was holding up.  He hadn’t realized it before, but it had gotten burned while on Earth during his reentry there as well – just less badly.  This time the prow was positively blackened.

Scuzz followed his gaze and yelped in shock.  “Oh no.  How are we gonna fly to another world like this?  Or back to Earth?”

“We’ll get it patched, don’t worry.  We got through the worst of it already.”

“Hey!  Look!”

She was pointing starboard.  They saw a cigar shaped craft with spinning lights, venting vapor at random intervals while it sailed through the clouds.

“That’s the first time either of us have seen a UFO in flight,” he said.

“So romantic.”

They sailed in lazy circles under Tmai’s unseen guidance, occasionally spotting other ships in the formation.  The ship dropped through clouds again, with more rattling turbulence, and this time, they could finally see the world below clearly.

Broad, relatively flat islands filled the local waters – each island covered in shades of grey cityscape, the sea between them responsible for the green-brown color they’d seen from space.

“That water is ugly, but I bet it’s full of life,” Pep speculated.

“Fingers crossed for brussel sprouts!”

It was airport-like wait times.  How long would it take?  But eventually they went into a slow diagonal dive.  The “airport” below came into full view.  It was a dense field of solar panels and communications arrays, with small openings for vertical landing vehicles at regular intervals, like boring grey interior courtyards.

Tmai coasted into range and slowed to a very gentle descent.  The ship landed with hardly a bump.  Pep and Scuzz looked at the landing pad.  Blocky robots raced around attending chores.  A few very inhuman aliens worked as well, like horse-sized spiders on the tarmac.

“Wow,” Scuzz said, marveling at them.

“I guess it’s time to see the world.  Let’s go.”

As they came into the lounge they saw Tmai getting up to announce their landing.  The passengers, in the area best shielded by artificial gravity, didn’t feel a thing.  But Scuzz and Pep’s faces did the announcing for them.

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That wasn’t so bad, was it?