Lifeboat
And the things they carry...
I wrote Lifeboat for the Alien Family Traditions open call. While not accepted for the publication, it was a fun little palette cleanser to write. Most of my stories include a fair amount of destruction and death, as the Good Guys (tm) fight the Bad Guys (tm) in defense of the Fair Innocents (tm) around them. This one I went in with a plan to write a story about a found family doing something that wasn’t violent. The original plan was a deep space rescue mission, but it changed as I wrote, and it became something entirely outside my plan as the story developed. That was a lot of fun. But it all started with the scene it started with. Some soldiers who grew up in wildly different places doing the whole “hurry up and wait” thing that anyone who has ever carried a weapon for Uncle Sam knows so well...
2322
Hyades Cluster
Interstellar Space
Lifeboat
“I spy with my little eye,” Reina whispered in a thoughtful tone. Her gengineered orange feline eyes flicked throughout the compartment with mischievous energy.
“Juro por Dios,” Alejandro purred in resigned Spanish. “If you say something black…”
Jack glanced over at the furry midnight-black felinoid wearing a nice black business suit sitting across from Reina and chuckled. Scientists called them Lucas Felino. The residents of San Lucas preferred Loco Felino when they were angry. Which was most of the time. They’d been in the middle of a long civil war when humanity’s colonists arrived, so Jack understood the angry part. Alejandro was the only one he’d spent significant time with who appeared calm and collected most of the time. He’d grown up in a human household, which made San Lucan Spanish his native language. The blood-curdling yowls he could let rip, in fluent Spanish, when he tore his way into battle were… surreal did not begin to cover it.
They could make a man reevaluate the meaning of life as he knew it.
“Something purple,” Reina finished with a perfectly stereotypical Neko wink.
Jack’s eyes flicked over to the purple-skinned woman sitting across from Reina. Multiple others did the same and Anna blinked big, guileless white orbs where most humans kept their eyes. Her particular branch of the Peloran race was designed to walk around in outer space without a suit, and her eyes could see as easily out there as others could inside a starship.
“What? Is it something I’m wearing?” She ran her hands down the white business suit covering her body. Then her hands came back to her purple face and she made a perfect act of looking surprised.
“Oh… this? No, no. I’m more of a lavender.” She pointed across the compartment with a sweet smile. “There’s your purple.”
Jack sighed. Lavender was a flower, not a color. But he followed her hand to look at Dylan. Dylan’s dark leathery skin bordered more towards blue than purple under most lights in Jack’s experience, and most people found his solid black eyes to be more than a bit unnerving. The Arnam were a bit cagey about whether they were an entirely unique race or just another Peloran offshoot, but they could also live in space almost as easily as they went the other way. Dylan grew up a hundred or more feet underwater in the depths of Rainy Lake, where it was completely dark to Earthborn human eyes. Even Jack’s Northern Minnesotan blood found it unbelievably cold and dark down there when they were kids.
Jack’s eyes moved up to see the wig Dylan generally wore when he was above water. He let out a long breath. It was purple today.
Dylan mirrored Anna’s innocent look for several seconds before taking the wig off to reveal the hairless dome beneath it. He quickly hid the offending article inside his dark blue suit with one hand and pointed the other across the compartment with a smile.
Every eye followed it to look at the humaniform bird standing against the wall. Owain had arms and legs like a normal human, and no wings at all, but the bird head atop his frame jerked back and forth at all the eyes looking at him in a way that most humans called… squirrelly. The feathers sticking out of his black suit were so black they looked purple under bright lights. Owain crossed his arms and a very birdlike sigh escaped his beak. Then he began emitting a series of caws and chirps and other sounds that most human vocal cords could not replicate. Just as he could not replicate human words.
A voice from his armor translated his native language into English. Actual, by God, English. Not American. Complete with the stereotypical upper crust British accent. It was surreal to hear a Thunderbird speak. Not what scientists called them. Or historians for that matter. Definitely not what they called themselves, but almost nobody could replicate that word.
“I do believe we’ve all seen sufficient examples of purple,” Owain said and his burning red eyes blinked in a peaceable manner. “So I spy with my little eye... something white.”
Every eye twitched back to Anna’s white business suit with amused looks.
She sighed and just shook her head.
“Fine, fine, fine. You found something white.” Then she pointed straight at Jack. “But that goes for you too, you know.”
Jack looked down at the white business suit any Republic of Texas businessman would be happy to wear into a meeting and smiled. He knew he looked good in it. They all looked good if he was being honest. “Yeah, but I just wear white. Your eyes are white. So right back atcha.”
“And there you go, using my superior gengineering against me yet again,” Anna whispered in a regretful tone.
Everyone in the compartment displayed some example of the old Albion gengineering. Whether they came from abandoned projects like Alejandro or Owain’s people, or the more successful Peloran supersoldier programs that resulted in Anna and Dylan. Even Reina and Jack sported modern Peloran uplift treatments. Reina had taken the Neko-mod versions that turned her into a genuine catgirl, while Jack took the generic version that kept him looking like a Mark One Earthborn human. He didn’t even have to hide the pointed ears Anna and Dylan displayed when they weren’t actively trying to hide them.
“He who fails to use an advantage to their advantage shall surely lose the game,” Jack returned with a wink.
A transmission tone filled the compartment before she could respond. It was a single long tone that lasted for exactly two point three seconds before cutting out and disappearing into the background radiation of the universe. That particular tone had only one meaning.
Stand by.
Jack glanced around at his compatriots and they returned his gaze. It wasn’t often the Republic of Texas Marine Corps Fighter Attack Wing 112 came together like this these days. The Hyades Cluster was full of threats that needed attention. Worlds destabilized by nearly twenty years of invasions and liberations and old grudges finally allowed to burn in the open. Warship squadrons coming out of the black to raid the shipping lanes. Sometimes they knew the war might as well be over. Sometimes they didn’t.
Things always got the most dangerous in the last days of war.
That’s why the Cowboys normally worked alone these days. Talking to the local businessmen or politicians in their nice crisp suits. Helping local law enforcement deal with problems. Coordinating with local system defenses to keep the threats at bay while the Alliance fleets fought greater enemies elsewhere. The Cowboys rarely had the chance to be the tip of the spear these days. They were the cleanup crew, picking up the pieces the fleets left in their wakes, helping the locals build functional societies out of the wreckage.
But today was different. Today the Cowboys awaited orders to move in strength on a target worthy of their combined attention. Six manned starfighters in just this salient. Over a hundred drone starfighters lying doggo around them. Millions of tiny solar sails with itty bitty little sensor and memory platforms spread out all around them to keep an eye on local space. The entire formation mimicking dead spots in interstellar space until the orders to launch the attack on the next Shang installation arrived.
Shang bombardments had left scars on nearly every world they touched. Jack couldn’t remember how many they’d burned all the way down to Winter Contingency levels, their atmospheres filled with so much ash that even sunlight could no longer warm them. They’d impacted everyone in the compartment. Anna lost her entire battalion. Jack, Dylan, and Reina lost their families and hometowns to their first strike on Earth. Owain and Alejandro lost more friends and compatriots than they could count with their boots on. Today they played games as they waited for the opportunity to do onto the Shang as the Shang had done onto them. Today they floated out beyond the fringes of the Hyades Cluster with the only family that mattered.
The kind of family that understood what they were doing out here.
The sound came without warning. It scrapped over the hull like a giant piece of sandpaper. Then the lights went out. The data usually running over Jack’s contacts cut out and he blinked once. Still nothing. The darkness was so complete and utter that even his vision couldn't pull anything out of the darkness. He tapped the side of his head twice. Still nothing.
“Betty?”
(End of Preview)
Look for it to show up in Outerworldly - A Fiction Collection From The Cosmos (Volume 1), to be published this year.