Chapter 2.1
Approximately 30 minutes later, a disheveled Justine Rushing staggered into the escape craft’s tiny crew quarters. Visibly winded, the former agent of the FBI required a solitary moment for rest and repose. A second or two to gather her fomenting thoughts before pressing forward with her highly unorthodox day.
To accomplish this simple feat, she needed a place to sit and stretch out. Her bed, the one she had chosen for herself nearly two weeks ago, sat farthest from the entrance but closest to the small table that now served as the group’s common area desk.
“Justine!” An excited voice echoed from somewhere else inside the ship’s tight confines. “You’re not quitting already, are you? What about that promise?”
“I’m tired, Foster.” She yelled out through the still open hatchway and into the small assortment of rooms beyond. “I need some rest.”
Without warning him, Justine fired three quick level one shots from her Slinger into the darkness. Not powerful enough to damage any bridge equipment, the warning shots were merely intended to sting her opponent. The resulting plasma rounds lit up her face, exposing a mildly amused yet frustrated visage.
Shortly thereafter, a series of excited yelps comically rang out in response, to which she calmly replied. “And I think we’ve done enough of that for today.”
Only slightly burned from her wrath and never one to take a hint, Foster answered her unorthodox warning with a muffled “please”. The whole scene reminded Joseph of those old TV shows he watched on Retro TV. The ones where the kid would always bug the mom incessantly about their friends being able to come out and play.
Never one for nostalgic touchstones, this flippant disregard for her decision was greeted with one more shot and a rousing “NO!”. Which was immediately followed by the loud slam of a pressurized door being firmly shut from the inside.
“I never should have started playing that stupid game with him.” She admitted to herself as she made her way across the cramped sleeping quarters. Stopping just short of the crude metal cot, she hesitated for a slight moment before plopping down on the extremely rigid layer of cloth the Seerchin designers liked to pretend was a mattress.
Lamenting every night uncomfortably laid upon it, she dropped her Slinger onto the only piece of furniture adorning their bedroom. An ancient metal table covered in streaks of reddish-brown rust. The piece of futuristic hardware was soon shadowed by one of Foster’s upgraded smart phones and a small silver piece of plastic.
Justine carefully propped the phone against her gun, so the camera could properly record her makeup free face then spat. “Space travel sucks!”
Calmness almost instantly broke over her smudged face. These impromptu vlogs had started out as a simplified version of a captain’s log, documenting the minutia of everyday life on the small yet massive ship. And at first, they were mostly positive and completely upbeat.
But ever since Joseph revealed their trip to his planet was much further than he originally thought, these confessionals had grown more antagonistic by the day.
“I’m sure if I was on the Enterprise right now, with dozens of holodecks to choose from and my own private quarters to sleep in, these last two weeks would have just flown by. As it stands…” Justine’s thoughts scattered as she readjusted her ponytail.
“Not that there aren’t things to do on this clunker of a ship. Hoover’s hard drive is practically overflowing with movies and TV shows. Apparently, the little shit kept a running tab on what Foster wanted to catch up on after his release and recorded it. There’s probably enough to keep me busy for a couple of months.”
Frowning into the camera with an overtly disgusted face, she decried. “But I didn’t follow these two morons into space to watch television all day. I followed them to find some adventure, to see other worlds, to see the universe.”
Lying just behind her was a small, hard foam pillow which she wrested easily from its perch and stuffed it into her lap.
“The only interesting thing on the horizon is a refueling station Joseph keeps yammering about.” Justine tugged at the pillow’s coarse ends, searching for other thoughts to include in her daily record. “Apparently, it’s the halfway point from the black hole to his planet. I just hope it’s black hole free.”
With her initial thoughts digitally inscribed away, Justine rolled over on her back and stared straight up at the ceiling. And once again she wondered, was that metal plates affixed above her once black but now streaked with brown Earth type rust? Or had the ceiling been once brown and now found itself streaked with black flecks of space rust?
“It’s not all doom and gloom though.” She returned to her video diary. “There’s always Prince Albert to keep me company.”
Smiling for the first time since entering the room, she leaned over the side of her pitiful excuse for a bed and procured what appeared to be an oversized metal soup can from beneath it. “I don’t think I’ve introduced my little friend and his home on any of these videos yet.”
Justine swiveled the container from side to side in a theatrically overdone movement. For the briefest of moments, she looked like one of those infomercial sales people making sure their audience got a better look at the merchandise. Once this simple task was accomplished, she continued.
“Joseph says the Seerchin are a predatory species who prefer their food still breathing when they eat them. That means,” She placed the container on the table then started whispering something inaudible against the metallic coating. Suddenly, as if by magic, the can began to tremble and shake like something from within was trying to vehemently escape.
“This little fellow’s been trapped in here for over one hundred thousand years.”
“Apparently,” Justine retrieved the trembling can back from the table’s surface and rested it on the pillow like she would a pet cat waiting to be soothed. “These food containers have a similar type of hibernation technology as the stasis tubes. In fact, he says Prince Albert would have gone right on sleeping if we hadn’t ignited the ships engines and woke him up.”
After a few moments of rocking, the can grew quiet and still.
“I wanted to free whatever this is as soon as he told me. But Foster and Hoover theorize too much time has passed for the guy to survive outside of the field. Not that their theories are always correct.”
Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
“Still,” She tapped her fingers softly against the hermitically sealed lid and sighed. The normally stoic agent paused a moment to compose herself. “No matter how badly he wants to be free, I can’t bring myself to take the chance he might die.”
“So, I just talk to him every day like there was no can.” Another smile broke across her face. “You know, try and keep him company.”
As she held the mysterious can, she couldn’t help but wonder how much longer the human rations they got from the space station were going to last. Not that she minded eating things that were once crawling around on the ground. After all, one of her father’s favorite traditions when fishing was to eat the first catch raw. Really raw. Like just filet knife for gutting, some fresh water for the cleaning, and a strong stomach was all he needed.
And of course, being the ever-good daughter, Justine indulged her father’s rather disgusting habit. Still, it wasn’t like she liked raw fish that much, not if there was a Long John’s Silvers nearby.
“And it’s not like I’m complaining. But...” She smiled one more time before placing “Prince Albert in a Can” gently back under her rack. “Come on. Three million light years from home and the only alive aliens I’ve seen are locked away in oversize lunch boxes.”
She fiddled with the camera, adjusting the frame so it was tight on her face.
“You also may have noticed this video is happily Hoover free for the first time.” Justine said, referring to the many times before in her VLOG’s when Hoover would project his own running commentary over her thoughts. Needing to explain the change of pace, she retrieved the small sliver of plastic and placed it up to the phone’s camera.
“Foster tinkered around for a while and came up with this.” She flipped the device repeatedly in her hand until every square millimeter was caught by the camera’s optics. “It’s a flash drive with a receiver built into its base. That means, whatever I record over the phone’s camera gets downloaded directly into this device. And since there’s only a receiver and no transmitter, the feed goes only one way.”
Sliding into a wholly self-satisfying grin, Justine couldn’t hold back her excitement as she placed the drive back onto the table with the gentleness of Indiana Jones handling a golden idol head.
“That means...” She shifted the camera slightly. Almost as if she was trying to make sure the person on the other end knew she was talking to them. “No more Hoover perusing over my personal thoughts and making his snide little smart-ass remarks like a cheaper version of Mystery Science Theatre 3000. Heck, you can’t even access the drive unless it’s physically plugged into the phone or Foster’s tablet.”
A hurried rapping echoed throughout the tiny quarters forcing her to stop mid thought.
“Stop doing that, Foster!” She screamed loud enough for him to hear her through three inches of unknown bulkhead.
“Ever since he modulated the Slinger’s to emit a low amplitude pulse, all he’s wanted to do is run around the ship’s superstructure playing electric paint ball. Foster thinks his reaction time in the corridor was pathetic to the point of almost getting us killed. Which is probably true, but now he thinks he needs some actual tactical training in case we’re ever in that type of situation again.”
Justine’s lips curled into a sarcastic grin.
“Which he does, but there's a time and place for training like that. And it doesn’t include ambushing me every time I turn a corner. Besides, how long can someone want to run around this monstrosity playing Gravity Tag?”
A few more quick raps at the door provided all the answers needed for that particularly redundant question.
“Still,” Justine swiped the phone from the table and allowed herself to fall lazily on to her back while maintaining the camera’s ever watchful eye trained on her face. “I’ve been stuck in worse places for a hell of a lot longer. Plus, there’s always the small fact that in a little more than 2 weeks, we should all be standing on another planet… full of eight-foot-tall felines.”
Her smiling face quickly deteriorated into a sullen frown.
“Not that Joseph’s particularly excited about the prospect of returning to his home planet. Every time I ask him about Solon and how he came to really end up on Earth, he just turns and walks away in a hurry. And forget about asking him about the name Mevani or that book he burned so cryptically back at his house. Because whatever secrets are hiding within that man’s past is closed tighter than an asshole at a proctology convention.”
She laughed at her off kilter attempt at humor.
“Foster is jazzed though, when he’s not chasing me around the ship trying to hit me with one of those annoying electric paintballs that is. He seems fixated on the idea that something terrible and mysterious still lies ahead for us. He’s like a kid hoping there’s a monster waiting in the closet.” She paused, looking pensively into the camera. “But to be honest, I’m just excited about getting out of this tin can and seeing some actual aliens in the flesh.”
Her face became brooding and wistful as another troubling thought passed through her mind.
“There’s something else which hasn’t panned out the way I thought it would. Something that really shouldn’t bother me the way it does, but…” Her hesitation exploded briefly into a three-word outpouring of unrequited feelings. “That idiotic idiot…!”
Justine shot an angry look toward the camera but held her tongue when it came to unleashing the full fury of her innermost thoughts.
“But I’m not going to dwell, not on things I’ve whined about multiple times before on these videos. Not even if the teenage girl in me just wants a carton of ice cream and a copy of Notting Hill. Although having a firewall preventing Hoover from making fun of me does make it tempting.”
Two weeks trapped inside the tight confines of a mysterious ship with a person she had feelings for was starting to take their toll on the normally levelheaded Agent Rushing. And things were becoming testy between them because of it, at least on her side of reality. This anger was partially due to Foster’s frustrating lack of interest, but mostly because that lack of interest was annoying the shit out of her.
So, with feigned deadly force, she attacked the Seerchin mattress without mercy over and over again until the moment passed into unforgettable memory.
“Whatever’s happening between us, he seems hell bent on not acknowledging it and I refuse to make the first move.” Justine turned her scowling face back toward the camera and hissed rather softly. “No matter how much I want him to kiss me again.”
Allowing herself a moment to regroup, she blew out a long-exasperated breath then followed up with a secondary yearning.
“Still, there’s always Solon to look forward to. I mean… a planet full of eight-foot-tall tigers who can build anything that flies in the sky. That fact alone sounds awesome enough to forgive the spineless wimp for his cowardice.” Justine wistfully looked beyond the camera lens, to the bulkhead above and beyond that, space. “I wonder what’s going on there right now. Is it more exciting than this?”
A few more loud bangs on the door forced her tired body into action. Sill holding the camera to her face, Justine snatched up the Slinger and thumbed the controls to a still modest level two.
“Fine!” she yelled sternly, picking up the flash drive and marching headlong for the door. “He wants to play soldier like a big boy. We’ll play soldier like a big boy.”
Justine shoved everything but the Slinger back into their places then smacked the door controls open with her clenched fist. Without allowing him to prepare for what was coming, a very tired and fed-up woman unloaded a barrage of frustration in his general direction, caring very little for the outcome.
“I just pray wherever we end up is a hell of a lot more exciting than this place, Joseph.” Her hopeful words fell on the deputy’s nonplussed face.
“Agent Rushing,” To say he was trying his best to stay out of their affairs was an understatement. “Dairy Queen would be more exciting than this place.”
“True,” Thinking only slightly about a slice of delicious ice cream cake, Justine smirked at the alien’s completely rational and logical statement. “Come to think of it, does your planet even have ice cream?”
“No,” the words shot out of his mouth faster than a plasma ball set to level ten. And the look on his face told the sad story of Earthly pleasures forever lost. “My people aren’t big on sweets.”
“No sweets, huh?” Justine’s smirk twisted into something best left to the worst horror movies of the 80’s. “That’s unfortunate.”
For the first time since they began having their tournaments, Joseph was interested in something the former FBI agent said. “Unfortunate for whom?”
“For him.”
With that ominous warning, she started to tromp toward the open hatchway. While somewhere beneath their feet, in that cavernous subfloor, Foster felt himself tremble in fear.
