I wrote this out of my love for Star Trek. It's set first on the eve of the events of Star Trek: Generations (Kirk's death) and then flashes back to Scotty's history. CBS/Paramount says I may not make money off this story on pain of lawyers' nasty letters. To which I say, "Make no money? Just watch me!" Here you go, folks. A taste of Trek...

 

 

             Dry rot. Figures, in a 74-year-old boat. He’d be spending most of the winter high and dry in the yard, ripping out Marcail's ancient planks and beams, most of the transom, stanchions, cleats ... och! All by hand, if ‘twere done right. He narrowed his eyes and pursed his lips. “Right, or not at all,” Scotty ruminated to himself. What the hell else was there to do in retirement besides marry an old sloop with a half-rotted arse? Or watch the occasional new Enterprise begin her long dance in the heavens…

             “You look like my Baba Vania on Sunday.” Back from the bar at last. What the hell was that little-boy grin doing on this grown man's face? Of course, it had always been there. “Sunday vas dry in Baba's house. Luckily for us, today ees Tursday,” Pavel said, swinging two obscenely large and garishly decorated cocktails onto their table.

             “Next time, let the waiter handle the order. I just asked for a wee dram o Scotch, lad.”

             “Eet's in dere. Along vit wodka, jeen, and ...” Pavel squinted, as if that helped, “someting.”

             “It's blue.”

             Scotty sampled the outlandish concoction--not as bad as he thought. The glowing blue drink complimented the fried mozzarella sticks (definitely not McCoy-approved) on the table. When was the last time they'd been in Finnegan's? Was it just after the A's shakedown cruise? Or was it all the way back to 1701's big refit? Those were long nights of drinking and arguing over specs with Will Decker. Those memories seemed clear as a morning after a storm, but he couldn't reconcile how many years had passed. Now, he shared a drink with Pavel to prepare for the launch of a new starship on a mission the two of them would only witness in Starfleet reports.

             "She's got a Sulu at de veel and a good keptin on de breedge.”

             Scotty grunted under his breath. “Harriman's got the numbers on paper, sure enough. But he's not skippered anything this complex.”

             “No vun has. De B is de new golden child, packed vit all de new doodads, set to do every meeshun Starfleet Command can dream up.”

             “With a captain who'll ne’er say no to the brass.”

             “Not everyvun’s a Jeem Kirk who can break de rules to fit his ideals. Harriman lives in de real verld. Besides, de B eez not our vorry.”

             “Aye, that's true. I'm just the engineering adviser. They won't even let me review the daily reports.”

             “Keptin Harriman von't disappoint de Admeeral.”

             “Retired,” Scotty pointed out, for no one's benefit but just to say it. “Och, tis one thing to bend a rule to please the queen, another to toss out the rule book because it cannae give ye what ye want." His face darkened. “That’s just beggin’ the devil for a dance.” Scotty held up his right hand, forefinger, ring finger, and pinky bent down, to underscore his point. On any other human hand, the gesture would be obscene.

             “In thirty-someting years, I don't tink I've ever seen you do… dat.”

             Pavel was staring at Scotty's right hand. He looked, too, a little surprised to see himself openly displaying the socket of his long-absent middle finger. He refused to allow a doctor to properly regenerate it. He'd worn the occasional prosthesis over the years, even been fond of one with a miniature built-in tool kit. In the end, though, he’d grown tired of watching his native flesh age around the cybernetic digit and learned to do without.

             “I suppose dere's a story dere ...”

             Scotty took a long sip, then replied, “Aye, there is.”

.....................

             "Scotty, the Qing emperors never had a magician as talented as you!" Skipper Liu rarely smiled, but the steeping chrysanthemum tea did the trick. "I don't even want to know how you got the protein resequencers to get this just right."

             Knowing how Scotty had actually pulled off this trick made Monty smile.

             “Something amusing you, Engineer?”

             “No, Ma'am. Sir.”

             “Skipper.”

             “No, Skipper.” Suddenly, Monty wished he hadn't tagged along with Scotty this morning. He'd rather be outside, checking the hull for dust scoring, a serious piece of maintenance. He'd rather be anywhere at this moment than standing in the confined space of Skipper Liu’s ornately decorated cabin, under the severe countenance of a jade phoenix staring daggers into his innards.

             “Stick close to Scotty and watch. That's why you're here.”

             Scratching his scalp through his wild red mane, Chief Lyle “Scotty” Bell piped up, “Oh, Monty's doing more than watching. He's already shown me Starfleet's latest methods to coax another .97% out of our dilithium matrix."

             Skipper Liu's eyes measured the young man, up and down. "Then, the Cixi is getting something out of my deal with Starfleet after all. I was afraid you were all spoiled by serving aboard ships with unlimited resources. It's a different story when you have to count every crysto-plexi patch and every erg of power.”

             Montgomery Scott, “Monty,” shifted his weight and looked at the deck. "I'm not technically in Starfleet yet, Ma’am--Skipper. I'm still in the screening process, a sort of transition between the merchant marines and the fleet. Right now, I’m on break, trying to gain experience out here in real space and I’m learning a lot aboard Cixi.”

             “It’s pronounced Cixi.” For the life of him, he couldn’t hear the difference. “It employs third tone. Cixi. Whenever you say it, Crewman, it comes out: sushi. She’s a ship, not a spring roll.” Monty made a mental note to learn Mandarin. How hard could it be?

             She refreshed her flower tea from an unglazed clay pot, a tiny pig adorning its lid. Lifting the cup in her delicate hands, she took another sip and ate a bite of reconstituted Jian Bing while clicking through several reports on her screen. Monty noticed that she kept her gooseneck monitor twisted just enough to keep him from getting a good look. "SE 19754 T: I believe that makes you Starfleet. I have you listed you as an engineer adviser for the brief time you’ll be with us. We'll have to see if you learn anything worthwhile for your next captain.” And then a wicked look crossed her face. “Of course, you could jump ship and turn your back on the Cixi and Starfleet, too."

             His voice quavering like a poorly tuned hyper-spanner, he said "I don’t think so, Skipper." He looked around for some place to fix his attention, quickly passing over the unsettling faces of the bubble-eyed goldfish ogling him from their small aquarium and finding a bronze lion-dog thing sporting a dour expression like its jade cousin. Scotty had told him their captain’s cultural accoutrements were chosen with a purpose: the Skipper’s corporate benefactor admired ancient Chinese culture, so Skipper Liu, who grew up between worlds on freighters, mined deep into her own heritage to create a pleasing persona. To her credit, she gathered, organized, and assimilated the cultural flotsam, learning the differences between Han and Manchu aesthetics, sampling each new dish, even learning to genuinely appreciate the dizzying, dazzling productions of the Beijing Opera, so as to avoid presenting mere clichéd affectation.

             Her dark eyes darted over yet another set of readouts without looking up. "In the past three years, I've lost four crewmen to the companies on Deneva Prime. Now, the leadership is breaking ground on a shining new city on the hill. They need engineers, especially talented ones.” Monty silently hoped his face wasn’t somehow betraying his plans. He’d been reading whatever he could find about the nascent Denevan capital. Officials were proudly playing up their vision of art-centric architecture with open sunny plazas and shady niches. Monty scoured the computer to find more details about the massive power nodes under construction there and in the planet’s other major cities. Deneva Prime was the anchor planet of eight adjacent sectors, thanks to one of the richest mining operations in the Federation. It spread throughout the Deneva system’s massive asteroid belt, which swung a wild 80 degrees off the plane of the ecliptic, the remains of some doomed colossus. If these newest specs were correct, then The Great Belt could be home to a series of solar and ore-powered energy generators. Dozens of small stations would power Deneva Prime and her immediate colonies, with the potentially dangerous generators kept safely off-planet. The lambency of Deneva’s golden age would only intensify, beaming prosperity to scores of worlds.

             Seeing Monty appear adrift, Scotty made a polite remark and promised to keep a close eye on his protégé. Skipper Liu nodded and waved them out of her cabin. It wasn’t until later that Monty realized that the skipper had been probing him to get a sense of where his loyalties lay, no mean trick since he hardly knew himself.

             Life aboard Cixi quickly fell into a routine played at breakneck speed. True to her name, this fine, imperious dowager demanded constant attention. Monty was one of fourteen engineers out of a crew of twenty-seven. They worked long hours each day just keeping all the major systems operating nominally; much of that time making certain the new, state-of-the-art systems played well with the vessel’s more venerable components. Monty ran through dozens of micro tapes, meticulously absorbing the specs of each device as well as the myriad improvisations aboard this ship.

             Even in a post-scarcity age, starships consumed resources. Currency was out of vogue in most parts of the Federation. But trade had proved to be an ever-expanding universe. They could requisition basic comestibles and other essentials on Deneva Prime or at the nearest outpost, but Skipper Liu aspired to do more than just get by. She had her crew do favors whenever possible, or carry specialty items that were not strictly kosher under maritime law. The miners, who shared a handful of overworked shuttles between many installations, were grateful for the extra supply runs. Bottom line: Cixi could call in favors from dozens of people system wide. Skipper Liu also employed some good old-fashioned horse trading to gain little extras, such as three refurbished phase cannons to ward off cheeky independent operators out of the nearby Orion systems. The Trame Incursion era relics were obsolete and required a great deal of upkeep. But they still packed a punch.

             The Great Belt consisted of exactly 931,963 far-flung rocks above pebble-size. Of these, barely seventy were large enough to support a mining operation/power plant, habitat, and crew. Cixi’s cargo bay six held two such habitats, each roughly twice the size of the recreational shuttle Monty’s family had used on holiday years ago. The habs had eight miners sharing one head. Almost every work stop included emergency plumbing of the sort Monty chose not to list on his curriculum vitae.

             During the few hours each week they had free, Scotty inculcated Monty in the fine art of pleasing the boss. His first attempt failed miserably. Monty went to raise the overhead in the skipper’s rack. He gave her another four inches, allowing her to sit up in the cramped bunk. Skipper Liu responded by dressing him down for entering her cabin without permission. Monty quickly sought to redeem himself by repairing an elaborate relief of the Cixi that had worked free of its mountings in the mess. For two weeks, the model sat leaning precariously on a countertop, her chambered hull resembling a highly-fecund termite queen. Monty cantilevered the heavy facsimile into the bulkhead, carefully avoiding the web of relays and conduit embedded on the other side. It cost him most of a night’s sleep. He worked slowly, careful to muffle the drilling to keep from waking the day shift. The following Sunday, Skipper Liu joined her crew for lunch, as per her weekly custom. Monty watched her face for any glimmer of approbation, instead finding her as inscrutable as a Vulcan mystic. Then, as she rose to leave the mess, she paused beside the sculpture and ran a finger over the small brass plate added by Scotty that read: MS-8178 Cixi – L. Liu, Master and Commander. Then she was gone. Scotty and Monty volleyed a grin. It was nothing, but it was everything.

             “You’re doing it again, Monty.” Nthanda Chambers reached one hand behind her as she squeezed her head and shoulders into the access panel, inelegantly located waist-high in the bulkhead.

             Monty handed her a newly recharged poly-bonder. After a beat, he asked, “Doing? I dinnae think I’m doin’ anythin’ but handin’ you tools.”

             “And staring at my butt, Mr. Scott,” came her voice through the open hole in the bulkhead. That was followed by cursing in an African dialect he did not recognize. “That’s what happens when somebody overclocks the pattern buffer trying to input a recorded matrix… on a Mark-II freight transporter. Tell Scotty it would be easier on the hardware if he just grew chrysanthemums in hydroponics.” Nthanda finished replacing the seared data chips. Monty felt his face redden as she wriggled to extricate her upper torso from the cramped space. He couldn’t help but look. There was just something about this woman’s callipygous stern section that captured his eyes like a black hole. His own sophomoric simile made him blush deeper crimson. As her face came into view, her startlingly intelligent, earthen eyes robbed Monty of the power of speech. “It’s OK, just don’t let Skipper Liu or Scotty catch you,” she said.

             He would swear she gave him a come-hither look. No, that was impossible. Why would a beautiful woman set her sights on a 23-year-old Starfleet hopeful? Didn’t she usually hang out with the tall security chief… or had something happened there? Was there a chance? The deck threatened to turn to liquid beneath his feet.

             Nthanda gathered up the tools, neatly slipping the poly-bonder into a loop in her vest along with a magnetic probe. The bulky ensemble could not conceal her bonnie figure as she made her way to the service tube.

             “‘Scotty’ Bell and ‘Monty’ Scott:  too confusing.” There was that mocking smirk again. “It’s bad enough having two Scotsmen on one ship. When you two get to talking, I can’t cut the brogue with a particle blaster.” Montgomery Scott, holder of three master’s degrees in engineering and warp theory, had a great comeback for her ... which leapt to his dry tongue about three seconds after she climbed down the ladder to deck three.

             They serviced three more asteroid stations over the next two weeks, dropping off supplies and assisting the miners with maintenance. There was precious little time in the ship’s schedule for Monty to try and be alone with Nthanda, though she seemed open to that possibility. He sat with her whenever their meals coincided. Then, he enjoyed a lucky break. They spent three days overhauling the main motor on the ship’s grappling claw together, exchanging intimate dialogue only an engineer could love.

             Their conversation drifted from work to life in general. Once, Nthanda mentioned a child, but quickly clammed up. He didn’t press, nor did he find the courage to ask about other things he wanted to know. It was easier and more enjoyable to let their hours together set their own course.

             She was never overt, but did manage to brush her body against Monty from time to time as they worked in cramped quarters. When her hand touched his inside the duotronic bowels of a bridge workstation, she smiled and made a cute remark. “Mind on your work, Engineer.” She obviously enjoyed his awkwardness. Growing up with three older sisters hadn’t really prepared him for attempting an actual relationship with an older woman. But what was he thinking? How much of a difference did five or six years make?

             The roiling emotions didn’t end there. It was a small ship. His crewmates figured out the situation quickly enough and teased him mercilessly, especially Pinuoul, whose bright penny complexion and pink Ithenite-style fez distinguished the diminutive navigator, a Dayen, as one of only three non-Terrans aboard. She never said a word, but made smoochy noises whenever he turned his back. So much for maintaining professionalism in the workplace. Why did he let it get to him? Nothing had happened between him and Nthanda. At least not yet…

             Skipper Liu was in engineering, checking a spike in the readings from the port warp nacelle. Suddenly, the board flashed then went dark. A second later, the whole ship juddered. More jarring was the blare of the ship’s klaxon. Monty knew the situation before the instruments snapped back to life. “Someone hit us with a low-intensity, highly focused meson beam. It created a slow energy build up.”

             “And damn near destroyed my nacelle. Battle stations! I want blood, gentlemen. We need to send a message to these bastards that we don’t screw around.” Everyone knew who she meant. Orions were usually satisfied to cheat on trade deals, but lately they’d become more aggressive, as Deneva’s wealth grew to irresistible levels.

             The skipper ran to the bridge trailing Mandarin curses while crewmen dashed from one compartment to the next with chaotic purpose. Monty grabbed a tool kit--he needed a damned tool vest--and headed to his action station at the aft phase cannon. The jury-rigged controls were here, rather than on the bridge, so this part of their defenses was up to him and Security Chief Paul Obasanjo. Standing beside this imposing man, Monty felt a flush of… something, but he put it out of his mind and focused on the immediate crisis. He suspected the Orions would probably go after the rear cargo sections, hoping to isolate them long enough to knock out the transporter shields and beam out everything they could get. They’d have to move in close, though, and he and the chief would be ready with a wee surprise.

             This enemy captain had made an ally of guile. He had chosen a rock not much bigger than his vessel, hugged it close, and maneuvered to keep it between him and Cixi’s sensors. He likely had mounted a small scanner on the rock’s opposite side like an ancient periscope. He definitely spotted the Cixi first. In fact, Cixi’s targeting scanner picked up the incoming missiles before it offered a firing resolution on the Orion vessel. The ship’s computer called out a sickening countdown to impact. “…four… three… two…one” before the missiles found their mark and rattled the ship with wild concussive force. The shields held against three of the low-yield warheads, but the fourth breached their defenses and cut into the hull. The scream of tearing metal-ceramic sent shockwaves all along Cixi’s 238-meter length. Nthanda led the damage control party, sealing off the exposed sections, while the air filtration system worked to scrub the atmosphere of the acrid fumes.

             Monty hoped these bloody brigands enjoyed their one good shot, as he and Obasanjo locked on and fired. The cannon’s beam torched through the attacker’s sheltering rock, sending fiery bolides in all directions. A debris cloud dispersed, revealing the Orion ship with her characteristic necklace of spinning nacelles. It appeared to have suffered only light damage, but was holding position, its captain possibly planning his next move.

             The phase cannon’s firing array hissed, overloaded and useless. Anticipating this on the quarter-century old refit, Monty had stashed two spares nearby. He scrambled to yank out the control assembly and install a new module. “Like changin’ a fuse. You can target her engines now, Chief. I dinnae think the ugly beastie has much in the way of deflectors.”

             “I’ll target her bridge,” the security chief stolidly trumped his suggestion.

             “One well-placed shot will lay her out like a holiday grouse.”

             “I believe you heard the skipper, Engineer Scott.” He felt the chief’s anger, and not just against the Orions. A grim scowl on his ebony features, Obasanjo unleashed the second salvo directly at the ship’s bridge. This time the phase cannon’s control assembly held together long enough to turn their attackers’ brain center into slag and plasma. Bodies tumbled into the void on a lonely journey without end. Minutes later, the damaged vessel hobbled off and out of range. Monty could only imagine survivors in their engine room scrambling to make repairs while dealing with the loss of their captain. He said nothing, but couldn’t help but feel that Obasanjo’s strategy made no sense. They’d drawn blood and the Orions were not simply going to forget it. Even if one ship was out of commission, others would step in.

             The truth about space battles is that winners and losers part ways in a very short time. The excitement was over. Now, the port nacelle needed about four hours’ attention, the breached cargo area about seven.

             At 23:30 hours, after a final check of systems in engineering, Monty headed back towards the cabin he shared with Scotty, who promised to be along shortly. He could barely drag his feet, and could not shake the feeling that he’d been part of bloodshed that could have been avoided. He was lost in reflection walking through companionway C-2, when Nthanda’s soft hand reached out from the shadows and pulled him into a storage locker. What followed surprised, terrified, enervated, and amazed him.

           “Wha first shall rise to gang awa, 
           A cuckold, coward loun is he! 
           Wha first beside his chair shall. fa', 
           He is the King amang us three!

          “We are na fou, we’re nae that fou,

          But just a drappie in our e’e!

          The cook may craw, the day may daw,

          And ay we’ll taste the barley-bree!”

 

             The melody hovered about uncertainly like a young wifey on her wedding night, the volume swelled to painful levels, and the brogue left onlookers bemused. Still and all, Scotty, Monty, and the boys and girls from the good ship Cixi sang from their hearts so fervently that Rabbie Burns could hear them in far-off Dumfries.

             Trading her drab duty fatigues for pearls and a hip-worshipping cinnabar qipao, Skipper Liu joined her raucous crew in a homely pub in the old fourth ward of Deneva Prime’s burgeoning capital. “I can’t tell if you’re too drunk to sing or too sober.” Some saluted, which was not a Cixi custom. She admonished them to be back to the sole shuttle on time or forfeit a month’s credits. She drank a round with a darkly handsome Denevan wearing a finely-wrought silver bracelet of twin dragons before the two left the pub together.

             “This is how we do it in Aberdeen. How are ye holdin’ up, lad?”

             “I thought we knew how to drink back in Linlithgow. I’ll have to give Aberdeen a try,” Monty answered and drained his pint of dark stout ale.

             “A scion of Linlithgow, eh?” Scotty said, much too loudly, stopping nearby conversations. “I visited the great castle on a school outing once.” He looked around to make certain he owned the room. “I kissed a braw raven-haired lass, then kissed her buxom ginger friend.” A pause. “And rode home with one proud grin and two rosy red cheeks!” The crowd laughed and made rude noises.

             Nthanda chimed in. “You might have gone home with more had you shown some manners.” She moved to stand with Monty, drawing a boozy “oooooh!” from their shipmates. At that point, Obasanjo, who had remained on the edge of the action, downed his drink in one gulp and left the pub.

             Monty waited until they were in the next tavern to ask the obvious question. She didn’t hesitate: “Paul and I have a past. In fact… we have a daughter. But she is mine; I raise her. Paul and I are--“

             “Friends?”

             “History.”

             She had said that too easily, somehow. “Where’s the wee lass now?”

             “With my sister in Pretoria. You’d love Charlene. She’s a four-year-old charmer. And smart! She pulls her toys to pieces to get to the lithium cells--she calls them dilithium--and puts them back together perfectly.”

             “Takes after her ma.”

             “This is my last run for now. If I’m careful, I’ll be back to her soon… and with a lot more to offer her than a mother’s smile.” Monty wanted to ask more, but she stopped him with a kiss. As he tried to pull her closer, she pushed back. “I’m afraid that’s all for now. I loved the other night, but it really is a small ship.”

             “Aye, all ships are small.”

            

             Monty piloted Cixi’s workhorse shuttle on their third and final trip to the mining camp on Asteroid D-47, affectionately dubbed “Camp Lulu” in honor of the miners’ patron saint of questionable cargo.

             “My parents thought it sounded like poetry,” explained Skipper Lulu Liu, who took second chair on this trip. “The first one who smirks will find himself walking back to sector 001.”

             The go team consisted of six members: the skipper, Monty, Scotty, Obasanjo, another security guard named Marks, and the cook and life-support tech Gaj, a pugnacious Tellarite who nervously dipped into a small bag for a pinch of pungent herb and sucked it up into his snout with a grunt and a sigh.

             The camp’s bare-bones construction belied its potential for producing ore; it lacked even some basic features, let alone luxuries. On their last visit, “Camp Lulu” consisted of a pressurized landing bay which held numerous work skiffs and adjoined to a small storage chamber. An interior hatch led to an enormous airless vault, a natural cavity inside the big rock formed eons ago, where the miners stored valuable mineral ore by the ton. Despite the installation of artificial gravity, the work required the use of hard suits, which consumed time and cut productivity. The crew hab provided their only shirtsleeve environment, containing communications, work stations, minimal living accommodations, and a compact but powerful PXK reactor.

             The shuttle slowed to a crawl over the asteroid’s scarred and broken surface, barely 800 kph, and swung around the plant’s external superstructure. A dozen kilometers beyond, they followed an encrypted short-range beacon to the main landing bay, carefully concealed in the rockface. The enormous exterior hatch yawned back about 45-degrees from the cliff, revealing the red glow of lights inside. Monty’s instruments barely showed energy readings, even with the hatch open. He knew the miners did what they could to shield their main base from unwelcome eyes.

             It took longer to unpack the shuttle than he had hoped, even with all eight of the miners and most of the Cixi contingent helping. Gaj and Obasanjo begged off the duty, saying they had work to do on the waste reclamation system. No one challenged them on that, although Monty wondered just how many mission specialties Chief Obasanjo had, beyond security and ship’s weapons. “Jack of all trades, master of none, if you ask me,” he thought, then realized he was being jealous.

             “Wait til you see our new home. We turned on the heat and made the final pressure tests eight days ago. We’ve been living like kings ever since.” Camp Leader Cam Bennif beamed with pride, spreading his arms in a sweeping gesture as they walked past the trans-hatch lockers containing the helmeted work suits. He passed out hard hats and some basic gear, but that was all. Bennif explained that his crew had just finished super-compressing the native rock to fill in every possible gap, trapping the atmosphere. It had taken plenty of effort and ingenuity to coax air and water from the asteroid’s secret depths, but, nearly three billion years after cataclysmic volcanism produced this stone, the vault held breathable air for the first time. This was only one of many such attractive vacancies hidden throughout The Great Belt. What the miners had done here, crews could replicate in hundreds of other places, providing living space for new multitudes.

             As they stepped into the expanding darkness, there was one more surprise. “Would you do the honors?”

             Skipper Liu gladly took the remote from Bennif and keyed in the command. In an instant, the boundless, inky-black vault flooded with brilliance. Banks of lights shone down from the ceiling, an impossible distance above them. The eye could now see that this natural cavity went on for several kilometers, with recesses stretching beyond the visible horizon. Used to life aboard the confines of Cixi, the visitors struggled against vertigo as their senses adjusted to the enormous scale. Mountains of ore stood ready to be used to fuel the energy production units. Vehicles and equipment looked like toys in the distance. The floor of the vault held an even grade, thanks to regolith churned out by the kiloton from the ore hoppers.

             “You brought dinner, right?”

             “I brought the ribs you asked for,” said Skipper Liu. “I was afraid we were going to have to eat them standing up, squeezed cheek by jowl in the hab.”

             Bennif grinned and pointed to one of a series of old-fashioned tents. “All the comforts. The mess hall is open. The grill is out back.”

             “Ribs! Let’s sloch!” Scotty was practically drooling.

             Dinner was nothing short of a banquet, as miners and spacemen exchanged news, gossip, and tall tales, while licking sticky fingers. One of the miners begged the Cixi crew to bring him a box of starter soil, so he could create a self-sustaining farm inside D-47. He swore that within five years, they’d turn the place into a real colony, the first thriving city in The Great Belt. No one doubted it.

             Skipper Liu proposed a toast with some 120-proof baijiu she’d brought. “To boldly taking on great ventures, with all the risks and rewards that go with them.”

             The crowd responded with a hearty, “Hear! Hear!”

             Bennif pontificated, “Many great projects can be measured in human sacrifice.” Turning to the skipper, he continued, “It’s said a million men lie buried beneath China’s Great Wall.” Then, to Monty, “Starfleet Academy itself stands in the shadow of the Golden Gate Bridge, whose construction claimed eleven lives - ten in a single accident. It’s a grim fact of life: all our planning cannot protect us. In the end, we choose to either risk everything or to stay home.” A mood-killer, the team leader’s speech prompted people to drain their cups.

             After the gathering finished off the last of the food, people spread out. The miners showed off their tent city, complete with workshops, multiple showers, and surprisingly clean latrines. The miners and go team members then formed sides for football. The miners had easily improvised the goal nets from plentiful cargo webbing and tubing. The ball was originally designed for use in a sub-freezing vacuum. It came from a Mars-based company that discovered a ready market in colonists who insisted on indulging in competitive sports in the most inhospitable of places. Free to clash without hard suits, the miners whooped and howled with each bruising impact of body on body.

             The young Starfleet loner proved to be a one-man assault force. Scotty tried to keep up, but lost his footing on the sandy pitch. He reclaimed his pride with a diving save, which Monty relayed into the net. Catching his breath, Scotty said, “I’m sorry your bonnie jo coudnae join us on this trip. I have her re-aligning the comm array.”

             “What? We did that two days ago. Anyway, she’s nae me jo. I guess I dinnae ken what she is.”

             Scotty passed him a flask. “Now that is about as fine a description of the opposite sex as ever I heard: ‘I dinnae ken.’”

             “That goes both ways, me laddybucks,” chimed in one of the miners, mocking their accent. “You men are as big a mystery to us as the heart of a magnetar,” she said as she grabbed the ball and gave it a great kick. That tied the score between Team Cixi and Team Lulu.

             Scotty leaned in to Monty, “Ne’er you mind. Two hearts beating as one and all that romantic twaddle. You’ll work it--”

             At that moment, a klaxon screamed into life. This was getting all too familiar. Bennif ordered his men to find out what was going on. Skipper Liu made a quick head count. “Twelve. Where the hell are Obasanjo and Gaj?”

             Monty answered, “They’re working on the waste reclaimers.”

             “Who the hell asked them to do that? There’s nothing wrong with ‘em,” hollered Bennif, who should know.

             Skipper Liu’s communicator chirped twice as loudly and twice as fast as usual, a setting Monty had never heard before. She turned her back so that he couldn’t hear the skipper’s conversation with the ship, but he definitely heard her curse loudly. “Incoming!”

             People froze, waiting, but not for long. An odd snick sound raised to earsplitting levels resounded through the multi-billion-year-old rock walls. The impact raised clouds of dust from the floor and ore piles and collapsed several of the tents. A second impossibly loud stone-on-stone snap accompanied another major jerk that swept over the cavern’s volume. Then a third. That was followed by a slowly grinding earthquake. Monty corrected himself: asterquake. Then a localized explosion hit, not far away. Then, nothing but the sound of anxious breathing.

             Half-a-dozen tricorders appeared in the hands of miners and members of the go team, their sensors producing a dissonant whistling. “Report!” cried Liu and Bennif at virtually the same time.

             “Meteors. Three direct hits,” came the answer. Engineers on both teams got into an argument about the source of the meteors. Some suggested a magnetic rail gun. Others insisted a rail gun would have to be kilometers long and would therefore be impractical and tough to hide anywhere in the Deneva system. They felt the better method would be to use a ship’s grapple to tow one or even three rocks then deftly sling them on an intercept course with D-47. That might require strapping portable attitude jets to the space bullets. In any case, it meant someone had to provide exact coordinates to aim the rocks so they could strike the asteroid’s shell above Camp Lulu. One of the miners delivered more immediate news: “There are micro-fractures all through the strata. We’re venting atmosphere.”

             “Listen up!” ordered Skipper Liu. “Miners, get to the shuttle. Scotty, Monty, find Gaj and Obasanjo and then get to either the hab or the main lock. Move!”

             One of the miners came running back from the direction of the main landing bay with a distressed look on his face. After a quick conference, Bennif told the others, “The bay is open to space. Somehow, the outer hatch is open and non-functional. So is the hatch to the storage area.” Monty knew from the specs that that shouldn’t be possible. He also knew that their options were drying up. The miners’ shuttle was in use at another asteroid camp, and the work skiffs lacked an independent air supply for an operator. With the vault breached, that left them only one safe haven.

             “The hab?” Skipper Liu, Monty, and two miners ran to the prefabricated unit, which stood more than one hundred meters away from the mess tent. Smoke and residual flames confirmed this was the source of the explosion, the one that had followed the impact-triggered temblors. An overpowering stench emanating from the hab confirmed that the blast had been fatal. Once inside, Monty located Gaj, or what was left of him; most of his face was missing. Obasanjo lay against the opposite wall, badly burned and moaning in a semi-lucid state.

             Skipper Liu looked at her security chief and said in a flat tone, “Paul, we messed up.”

             Scotty came inside. “I’ve got the miners prepping their hard suits. It’s the only way to get them to the shuttle. There’s just one hitch.”

             “Let me guess,” Monty sighed.

             “Ten working suits, plus a pile of non-working ones stripped for spare parts. Fourteen of us.”

             “Thirteen,” Monty corrected, gesturing to the gooey, charred remains of Gaj. 

             The skipper attempted some gallows humor. “Next place we stop, let’s make sure they have proper air-locks.”

             “I estimate we have about twenty-five minutes left before we black-out. I have one last idea, Skipper.”

             “Monty, I need you on the shuttle,” Skipper Liu shot back. “I’ll stay here with Scotty and Marks.”

             “Skipper, I can make this work,” Monty pleaded.

             She started to object, but saw his determination and judged it to be an essential asset right now. “Fine. Scotty, you pilot the shuttle! And that’s enough second-guessing on everyone’s part.” She had chosen the three potential sacrificial lambs. Marks looked less than enthusiastic.

             For the next fifteen minutes, the two team leaders hustled their people into the suits, an agonizingly slow procedure, even ignoring safety checks. They could now open the revolving lock between the vault and the other chambers long enough to get the suited personnel through. “One at a time, maybe two.” Monty grumbled. At best, they could save ten. Three were in serious trouble. All of Cixi’s EVA suits were currently stored onboard their shuttle, but opening the main hatch a second time would negate any chance of rescue. Likewise, trying to get three unsuited people across the airless landing bay would not end well.

             With everyone suited up, Scotty made sure his friend, the skipper, and Marks were well back from the hatch. The nanosecond it opened, the stone giant exhaled with hurricane force. It took ninety seconds to get the ten people--two carrying Obasanjo, whom they had quickly stuffed as gently as possible into a suit--to the other side and reseal the hatch. Monty used the time to signal the ship. He rechecked the remaining pressure and calculated that they now had less than four minutes before they passed out. The camp had emergency breathers, but those were designed to aid in case of caustic leaks inside pressurized areas. Trying to breathe through a mouthpiece while surrounded by vacuum would only provide them with an especially painful death.

             “Nthanda, it’s time for a miracle.”

             “I’ll do my best.”

             “Beam us up, lassie!”

             “Uh--”

             “I know. It’s a freight transporter. I need you to cross-connect in a specific sequence to boost the resolution.”

             “Monty! This thing was built to move building supplies, meat and vegetables. Dead meat. If try to beam up so much as a chicken, it’ll come through… wrong!” They both knew this model of transporter had limited use. It could read and reassemble molecules, but it hopelessly scrambled active neural patterns. Livestock suffered irreversible cerebral damage, materializing on the pad, flopping to the deck, writhing and dying within minutes. There had never been human trials on the Mark-II. It simply lacked the resolution found in the high-end model transporters that were standard on all Starfleet vessels.

             “That’s the third time my ears have popped,” chided the skipper. “I would appreciate action soon.”

             “Nthanda… listen to me. You need to cross-sequence bank-A to sub-matrix-delta. Now, that’s going to overload the buffer. But it will hold long enough for you to be able to transfer all the data to Cixi’s main computer. You’ll want to tie-in to a good heuristic algorithm. You get that from a subspace tie-in to Starfleet Corps of Engineers main medical library computer, or Memory Alpha. Use my serial number as a password. From there, you can download the whole kit and caboodle back into the stream re-integrator. It coudnae be more simple.”

             Nthanda was no coward, but Monty could hear the emotion in her voice. “Monty. I can’t do this. Maybe you can, but I am just not up to your level on transporters. I will not push the buttons that kill three people, including you and my skipper.” Monty began explaining his plan again, more slowly, but she shouted, “It’s a goddamned freight transporter!”

             “So, ship some goddamned freight!” Skipper Liu and Monty looked at the terrified man in the red coveralls.

             “Lad, if you ken some way outta this…”

             “Beam down one of the habitats we have in storage,” suggested a clearly terrified Marks.

             “That I can do!” shouted Nthanda’s voice over the communicator. “Locking on to cargo bay six now.”

             Skipper Liu barked the order: “Energize!”

             The thinning air in the ancient stone chamber rang out with the familiar carrier wave of Cixi’s powerful if not terribly bright transporter. They looked up as one nearby volume came alive with effervescent sparkles, trillions of infinitesimal stars shot from the ship above them to –

             “Crap!!”

             The hab materialized about fifteen meters above the floor of the cavern. I hung in mid-air for a split-second like an ancient animated comedy, then plummeted. It crashed to the cavern floor, splitting open like an extra-large egg, throwing useless gear and debris all over the ground. Marks sat down where he was and put his face in his hands.

             “What the hell happened, Engineer Chambers? Report!”

             “I’m getting interference on the transporter’s targeting scanner, maybe from some magnetic ore. I can read the vault, but it’s indistinct. I thought I had the coordinates right, but-- Oh, God! That’s why we usually haul the habs into place the hard way.”

             Monty jumped in, “Don’t quit just yet, lass. We’ve got one more hab onboard.”

             “If I guess wrong again, the same thing will happen, or else it will materialize inside a wall or the cavern floor. I need a site enhancer and we don’t have any onboard.”

             Panting visibly now, Skipper Liu pressed Monty. “Engineer Scott, I am breathlessly awaiting your next magic trick.”

             “We dinnae need a site enhancer. We just need to brighten up the picture.”

             “How do we do--”

             “Lass, are ye ready to give it another go with the second hab?”

             He heard the whirs and chimes of the transporter’s controls over his communicator. “Yes. Ready.”

             “Watch your scanner like a hawk.” His own eyes were beginning to sting from the drop in air pressure and he could feel his thoughts getting fuzzy around the edges. “You’ll see what you need in about five seconds.” Monty already had the back off of a tricorder and was furiously fiddling with its intricate guts in a way they were never meant to be fiddled. He simultaneously ran away from his crewmates in the direction of the football pitch. As the instrument began to issue a soaring whine, Monty wound up for a windmill pitch to throw it like a grenade. A split-second before he released it, the overloaded tricorder went off like an old-style roman candle. It painted the surrounding terrain with energy easily read by Nthanda aboard Cixi, who immediately beamed down the second hab. The blast also mangled Monty’s right hand, splaying bone, flesh, and sinew in ways that exceeded critical design parameters. He dropped to the ground screaming in pain, clutching his ruined hand in his good one and feeling his consciousness slip away. The last thing he remembered was seeing the hab spring into existence on solid ground, about three centimeters from his nose.

             Monty lay in his rack for two days, each heartbeat sending a painful throb through his bandaged right hand. Cixi had neither sickbay nor surgeon. As the ship’s designated EMT, Pinuoul had done a fine job repairing Monty’s three shattered fingers. The fourth was entombed on the asteroid below, buried somewhere under the most beautiful habitat in the universe. She assured him he’d soon have full use of his hand. Starfleet would doubtless suggest regenerative therapy, but somehow, he knew he’d refuse. He owned this wound. This new normality would serve as a reminder.

             Scotty tried to be a good roommate, but there just wasn’t much to say. He dutifully fetched snacks from the galley and scrounged up technical manuals to help his friend pass the hours. Skipper Liu stopped by to check on him. After some idle conversation, Monty allowed his tortured thoughts to form the questions he did not want to ask.

             “D-47 took three solid, well-aimed, ballistic hits. Someone on the ship must have found a way to signal the Orions.”

             “That’s right,” admitted his friend.

             In his head, an insistent voice said: “Wait. You knew? But you were in the camp. Who…?” Monty tried very, very hard to push away the rest of that thought.

             So, the pirates had hoped to damage the mining operation just enough to drive out the crew, then slip in and load up on a fortune in refined ore and maybe some mining hardware. Without witnesses, the bandits could blame any of a dozen other parties for the theft. Deneva’s wealth attracted attention from very far away. Finishing the thought out loud, Monty said, “So the Orions had an agent on the go team waiting to signal them once everyone evacuated, but he never got the chance.”

             Skipper Liu fielded this one. “That was Gaj, who, as it turns out, lied about his expertise with demolition equipment. He tried to set the charge onto the casing of the hab’s pergium reactor. But he triggered it prematurely and the heat exchange unit went up right in his ugly face.”

             “Gaj lied to… Obasanjo? Or to you?”

             “Both. Obasanjo learned that Gaj had serious drug and gambling debts he was trying to pay off through dealings with the Orions.”

             Scotty pulled up a chair and sat closer to Monty. “Lad, things got a wee bit mucked up.”

             “Obasanjo was on our side?”

             Scotty answered, “Still is.”  

             “Too many moving parts! No wonder your plan went tits up.”

             “A colorful, but accurate assessment.”

             “Why? Why do all this?”

             Skipper Liu maintained phlegmatic patience. “To delay the power relay stations from going online. I have a… friend… on Deneva who tried to convince the leaders there of the need for a defense grid for The Great Belt, a series of drones and defensive satellites.”

             “Pricey.”

             “Lucrative.”

             “And the Denevan leadership didn’t bite.”

             “They did not. So, my… friend… decided to arrange for a demonstration, a sort of proof-of-concept display. He quietly maneuvered the Orions into doing what they planned to do anyway, but at a time and place where casualties could be kept to a minimum.”

             “Tell that to Gaj.”

             “—was an herb-addled idiot. He probably figured on there being enough suits for everyone to evacuate. Also, I didn’t count on him sabotaging the outer hatch. I had hoped to warp away in Cixi, then double back in time to catch the Orions as they tried to steal the ore.”

             Scotty added, “All we really needed was proof of their treachery. We got more than we planned.”

             Skipper Liu held up one hand to cut him off. This was her confession. “So, you’re right. We took risks we should not have. In any case, it’s done. The miners will have repairs completed in just a few months. We’ll help. Meantime, this morning, the Denevan leadership signed off on a full defense grid.”

             He could feel a tone of insubordination creeping into his voice, and did not try to hide it. “You could have come to the Federation for help. Deneva has full protection.”

             Scotty made an odd face. “Och, they’ll send a patrol to orbit Deneva Prime. But, safeguarding scores of flying rocks 270 million kilometers away is another story. Oh, one day… maybe when those big beautiful Connies we’ve heard so much about start rolling outta space dock, things could change. That’s in the future.” He put a hand on his friend’s shoulder. “Monty, I’ll tell ye no lie: I love your idealism. But the sorrowful truth is we cannae daydream about a perfect world. We have to make things work in the here and now. Hate it. Hate me. That’s what we do.”

             Monty felt as if he’d aged a decade in a few days. He didn’t hate Scotty. But somehow, he didn’t look at his friend quite the same way anymore. Monty released a slow breath. “And the Cixi gets new upgrades and maybe first dibs on some new trade routes.”

             “Your lessons aboard my ship went further than I had planned, Engineer. I trust those lessons include loyalty to your crewmates.”

             “I take your meaning, aye.” Until that moment, Monty had not known whether he would tell Starfleet all he had learned. Having made his choice, it was as if his whole body suddenly unclenched. He actually felt relaxed for the first time in days. In fact, an insistent whimsy rose in him. “Still, it was nae here I learned loyalty, Skipper. I’ve been a loyal member of the Tartan Army since I was a lad.”

             Scotty saw the blank look in Skipper Liu’s eyes, and interpolated, “Football, Skipper. A good Scotland fan.”

             “Ah.”

             He was writing a letter to his sisters when Nthanda came to his cabin. Their small talk faltered. Monty tried to fill the void with polite inquiries about her daughter, and about Obasanjo’s recovery.

             “The skipper plans to ship him to a proper hospital planetside once he’s strong enough. He should make a good recovery.”

             “So, where does that leave us?”

             She took Monty’s bandaged hand and held it to her chest. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I guess I hoped this would all play out without you catching on. That was stupid. The whole plan was-- Look, I played my part. I have a daughter and a future to think about. I wish things had been different. I wish-- There are just some things you can’t fix, Monty.” She started to leave, then stopped, closed the cabin door, turned down the lights, and faced him.

             “As for us… you… and I… are right here, right now. All alone together.” He knew that look. He liked that look. “Unless you’d rather not?”

             “Och, lass. I’m maimed, nae dead.”

.....................

             Their drinks were long empty. “She sounds like qvite a lady.”

             “Aye, that and more.”

             “Did she stay on de Cixi? Or go to Deneva?”

             “Neither. We shared a trip back to Earth on the Iroquois. And then we said our good-byes. We’ve stayed in touch off and on over the years. I requested her daughter for my engineering staff on the Enterprise.”

             “Lt. Charlene Chambers. Of course!” A beep from his communicator interrupted Pavel. An old friend had run into Captain Kirk at a bar not far from there.

             “I thought Jim was still observing crew training and simulations at Jupiter station. I wonder what he’s doing in town so early.”

             “Looks like de rumors are true. Dey must have moved up de launch date on de Enterprise-B.”

             Scotty’s hands whipped over the comm screen at their table. A quick check of some changes in the duty roster confirmed his fears. “Tomorrow?! When were they planning to tell us? She’s nae ready.” His voice flared and trilled. “She’ll fly arse over teakettle. Does braid make officers daft?” Scotty rose from his seat and started for the door. Pavel followed him into the brisk San Francisco night.

             “And I know Hikaru vanted to see Demora off on dis woyage, but Excelsior ees still somevere around Epsilon Eendi.” Then, patting Scotty on the back, “Vell, ve can sort eet all out ven ve meet up vit de Admeeral. Eet’s a shame, though. I hate to leave Finnegan’s. Eet reminds me of a leettle place een Podolsk, outside Moscow.”

             “Nonsense,” he said calmly, his angry squall having passed as quickly as always. “You cannae spend your whole night in one bar, lad.”

             They decided to walk the few blocks to meet up with their former captain and friend.

             After a minute, Pavel asked, “So, eef Bell vas ‘Scotty,’ how did you go from being ‘Monty’ to ‘Scotty?’”

             “That’s a story for another time. Let’s just say, her name was Marja and when she called me Scotty, I coudnae want for any other name.”

             “Details, Mr. Scott,” demanded the Russian. “I vant details!”

             “I’ll trade you, Pavel,” said retired Starfleet engineer and boatwright Montgomery Scott in a lilting tone.

             “Vat did you have in mind?”

             “One for the lasses of our youth. Jump in anywhere--”

             Pavel recognized the classic tune, and the two turned heads as they spread song beneath the cool and distant stars…

                   “Ae fond kiss, and then we sever;

                   Ae fareweel, alas, for ever!”

 ###

If you enjoyed this story, please SHARE, but, whatever you do, don't make money off of it!

 

Details

Published: 23 April 2024

    

 

     “We’ll make a million bucks!” Lance says, holding up a piece of costume jewelry. mid-level laughter

     “Two million. It’s easier to divide by two!” Dack says. cheers and giggles

     The two big-haired teens in their shiny, oh-so-baggy clothes do their happy dance, joining arms and cavorting about the candy-colored set until a buxom blonde walks in on them, wearing an obvious old lady wig, cat glasses, and floral dress. “Have you got my thingie? My Big Vince wants to see how you spent all his money,” the woman says in a nasal voice that twangs up memories of 1930s motion picture clichés.

     “Your own personal laser-cosmetics kit is ready. We’re… uh… just working out the bugs, Miss Trixie,” says Lance to her.

     “Bugs!? I hate bugs!” huge laugh

     Bibi clicked pause, her charm bracelet rattling on her wrist: a horse and a choo-choo train for the kids, a dolphin for Bibi, and of course a jester for me.

     “Who’s Chesty McBigguns?” she asked, nodding at the blonde on the computer screen.

     “You know. Shyla Hastings. She married that producer, spent all his money in France.”

     “Get the cash before gravity gets you. Lucky the air conditioner wasn’t on or she’da blinded people.”

     “We had to use a ton of Band-Aids.”

     “You had to? Oh, doctor doctor!” I squirmed and she loved it. Seventeen years of marriage meant she knew exactly where to aim her shots.

     “Just watch the damn show!” I hadn’t seen this stuff in decades. I’d moved through time, but my show hadn’t. I clicked play.

     Lance holds up the very fake diamond ring that would be two hundred carats, if real. “The ring takes a ho-lo-grammic picture of you.”

     “Holographic. I have an app that’ll do that.”

     “Shhh!”

     “Then the computer over here,” Dack explains, walking over to a gigantic box festooned in Christmas lights, “creates the perfect image of you, complete with clothes, make-up, and hair style. Then, it zaps it onto you like a new skin. It’s like a shopping spree on Rodeo Drive, only it’s made out of electricity."

     “She’d be extra crispy.”

     “Suspend your disbelief!”

     “Ready?” Dack asks.

     “Turn me on!” Trixie says. whoop whoop!

     Dack pretend-hits a bunch of buttons, while stock sound effects bring back memories of Lost In Space. The camera cuts to a close-up of Trixie. With a star wipe, she’s transformed: the glasses vanish, her hair becomes a youthful blonde and two feet taller, and she’s suddenly spilling out of a low-cut red sequined dress. canned gasps, as if we’d spent two-hundred million on cgi

     Trixie’s dark-suited boyfriend with slicked-back hair, Big Vince, walks in, looks at Trixie, and gestures an ‘okay’ with his thumb and fingers. “Dolce bellezza! At’sa one hota number!” the crowd goes wild

     “You think he’s Italian enough?” Bibi snickered, her green eyes crinkling at the edges in that way she had. “Oh wait, I know him. He did those commercials for years and years.”

     “We were going to make him a regular, but… Yeah, he decided to pitch laxatives.”

     “Well, shit.” She was so damned fast. If only we’d had writers like her…

     The kids tromped into the room. Never looking up from his phone, Tyler plopped himself on our ugly worn couch. Becca checked out the computer.

     “Recognize the skinny hunk?” Bibi asked.

     “OHMYGOD, your hair! Daddy!” Becca burst out. “Do you still have that earring? I want it!”

     I paused it again. I was going to make a big speech about how Daddy’s show was coming back, but Becca was instantly off somewhere and Tyler was in phone-zombie mode.

     Bibi had pulled some strings at the studio; she was in Licensing, but knew everyone in Distribution. She made twice what I earned these days with my sporadic commercial voiceover work. It was some kind of deal where they took old failed shows (lost classics!) and bundled them for streaming, super cheap. My show, The Adventures of Lance and Dack, would live again, if only on tiny phone screens.

     “Oh, I didn’t tell you,” Bibi said. “Gerry’s family signed off on the project. That should be the last hurdle.”

     Gerry. If he hadn’t demanded more money, we could have run for ten seasons instead of two.

     I didn’t want to think about that. I turned back to the computer. “Hey, I haven’t seen these episodes since we taped them. These are the unaired ones from the end of season two.”

     play

     “Lance! We got a problem!” Dack says, jumping around like a maniac.

     “What?” Lance says/I say.

     “My machine works too well!”

     “Dack, what are you talking about?” I was overacting, so was Gerry/Dack. We were both pretty wasted that day. We’d gotten word of the cancelation.

     “Check it out!” Dack puts one of those big rings on my/Lance’s finger and hits a button on the fake computer thing. A star wipe later, and I look like Trixie. That is, my body is hers and she‘s/I’m/we’re wearing a black bra, slip, and stockings, but it’s my face under a ridiculous blonde wig.

     “Dude!” I yell. giant laugh

     “My machine recorded Trixie in… intimate detail. I can even remove the underwear.”

     “DON’T YOU DARE!!” huge laugh

     “Big Vince is gonna kill us!” as the laughter and applause drone on, the screen fades to break

     pause

     Gerry was right. We deserved more money, but to ask for it in those days was suicide. The brass paid out our contracts, but didn’t even air the last four episodes. For good measure, they made some phone calls.

     Suddenly, we were poison. Gerry took it hard. I watched from the check-out line as his descent played out on tabloid covers: parties, cocaine, arrests, hookers, porn tapes, more arrests, and finally a bloated body under a blanket.

     And what did I do? I’d only ever known acting since I was eight. I was the cute kid selling cereal, the wise-cracking adolescent guesting on cop shows, the teen being saved by Bruce Willis (look it up on IMDb, mother-f***ers!). Then, Lance and Dack. Then cancelation. Then self-pity and Courvoisier. I hit rock bottom in my twenties, and stayed there for years, doing things on the street I don’t like to remember while my loving parents sued me for control of my residual checks.

     Eventually, I got it together, met Bill W., and found a new way to live life as a wonderfully ordinary non-famous guy. Then, I met Bibi and I told her everything.

     “Don’t get dollar signs in your eyes.” Snapping me back to reality, she said, “It’s just enough to pay some bills, and for one special project.” Bibi was all about helping me tether my grandiose dreams.

     “What’s that?” I asked her.

     She bent down, opened the lower drawer of the desk, and pulled out an eight-and-a-half-by-eleven inch box. Removing 377 pages, she said, “This.”

     “Babe, no. I’ve already offered it to thirty publishers. I got twelve rejections plus eerie silence from the rest.”

     “Which is why we’re using some of this money to self-publish your book.”

     “It’ll never sell.” I’d checked into self-publishing. It took years and lots and lots of books to build a name. The money would never be much.

     “What matters is that you do it,” she said. I was staring at her. Maybe she thought I was giving her bedroom eyes. Maybe I was. “What happens at the end of the episode?” she quickly changed the subject. “Does Big Vince choke you both to death with linguine Alfredo? That’s the real reason the show ended, isn’t it?”

     She hit play.

     Big Vince holds a comically large gun on Gerry and me. We’re so damned young. Trixie stands behind Big Vince, cowering, but gorgeous.

     “Idiotas! Everywheres I go, low lifes got deir eyesa all over my Trixie! Dis gadget is gonna costa me a fortune… ina bullets!” laughter Gesturing with the gun, he adds, “Startin wit youze two!” uh oh!

     “Wait, I got… a biiig… brain!” It was Gerry’s catchphrase. He never really nailed it. laughter anyway

     Gerry puts a big ring on Big Vince’s fat finger and hits some buttons on the computer. A star wipe later, Big Vince’s fat face is riding atop a bronzed mass of muscles in tight trunks.

     Trixie and Big Vince both look down at his new young body. He smiles, and says, “Aaay! I’ma one hota number!” huge laugh, cheesy theme song, credit roll

all life’s problems solved in twenty-two minutes

     Stop.

     A middle-aged man looked back from the shiny black screen that flashed my exciting youth seconds earlier. Not bad; greyer, a little heavier--OK, a lot heavier--a little sad around the eyes maybe.

     Bibi walked off to start dinner. OK, I got it, my little show from umpty years ago wasn’t as big a deal as I wished. Still…

     I was here. We were us. It was real. 

     I followed her into the kitchen and, walking up from behind, said, “She’sa one hota number!” I moved in for the smooch. Bibi spun around to face me and intercepted my eager lips with a raw tilapia.

     She giggled and snorted and shot me her guilty little girl face in that way she had. Fish juice dripping down my chin, I stood there, applauding my partner in comedy.

 

If you enjoy this story, please share. And please check out my novels, including Goody Celeste and Zebulon Angell and the Shadow Army.

Details

Published: 21 April 2024

     It's hard not to see an octopus on a screen and think, "What a great pet that'd make!" Well... be careful what you wish for. Along with being super smart, octos apparently have other surprises:

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/boy-ends-up-with-50-octopuses-after-family-buys-pregnant-pet/ar-BB1lBJym

     I invite you to read a complete short story about wily octopodes and dolphins, also on this site:

https://chrisrikerauthor.com/news/novels/a-free-sample-and-a-story-unto-itself

     And, of course, I hope you'll check out Come the Eventide, the story of how dolphins are trying to save stupid humans from our own foolishness.

https://www.amazon.com/Come-the-Eventide/dp/B084GRHPKQ

https://www.amazon.com/Come-Eventide-Chris-Riker/dp/1631834525

 

 

 

 

Details

Published: 14 April 2024

          A trip to Newport can mean many things, especially shopping and hitting the best bars and restaurants on the East Coast. I urge you also to take a moment and consider the lighthouses in the area. Each has a story to tell. One favorite of mine is Rose Island Lighthouse near Newport Bridge. I've taken my kids there and have many fond memories. So much so, in fact, that I had to set a pivotal chapter of Goody Celeste at Rose Island Lighthouse. I invite you to take a look here:

https://roseisland.org/

          Now that you've visited Rose Island Lighthouse, I hope you'll check out more of Rhode Island's magic in the pages of Goody Celeste.

https://www.amazon.com/Goody-Celeste-Chris-Riker/dp/1665307072

Details

Published: 10 April 2024

 

          "Do we really want to blow up a hospital?” someone asked as the kids of MT-829 shuffled back, drained and swaying on their feet in the November swelter. It was an old question. A hospital, a pizza parlor, a nail salon, a piano factory? Yes, they all had to go. This was the gig the Cadre had assigned to them, and no one wanted to disappoint the Cadre.  

           Laura checked the settings for the third time, her fingers playing across the screen as if plucking out Schumann’s Concerto in A on her grandmother’s Steinway. She knew how to operate the control pad, even if its inner workings remained a mystery. Six weeks of training covered field operations and enough safety protocols to keep from accidentally melting the kids, but not much more. She drew heavily on her experience as a teacher of piano and of English.

           She pointed out the quirks on the pad screen to Wart, who was listening to music on his headset. She nudged him hard, and he took it off.

           “Pay attention,” she admonished as if he were her… what? Child? No, she dismissed that thought, telling herself instead that these kids were on loan. No permanent attachments. “The trit-pros have to be within forty meters. Any farther out and we’ll have to turn them up to full blast – which’ll create an infernal mess.” She felt more confident with this command thing; not too different than herding students through Bradbury or Orwell. “Check the targeting scanner again, Wart.”

           He did as he was told, moving about in the fidgety way of teens. “Why do you call me Wart? My name is Bobby!”

           She shot him a smile. Laura would not be using that name. He asked again whether he could key in the final signal; Laura reminded him for the thousandth time that on big reductions like this one they chose by lottery. Wart pursed his lips; five weeks and he’d not gotten a turn on a really big one. Laura was grateful for that.

           Crassus Health Care Systems Hospital was a monster: a tower sprouting wings, hive-like parking decks, and outbuildings in all directions. It covered four city blocks and required their full complement of trituration projectors (trit-pros), carefully arrayed in a perimeter. A ghastly pale teenager, Juanita, a frequent lottery winner, walked up in loose-fitting boots; her thin lips bore a hint of pleasure at being chosen.

           Laura made one final check to see that all members of Mitigation Team 829 were wearing their protective head gear. Without its noise cancellation software – which Wart had altered to pump his head full of music – she’d have a squad full of fence posts. They were good. Twenty souls focused on her through the masks. Laura pulled on her own gear then nodded at Juanita to do the honors.

          One feeble finger, skin barely holding in its skeleton, tapped on the screen. Laura’s guts burbled inside of her. She fretted over whether she had moved the team back far enough, out of range of the collimated waves. Yes, of course, or else they’d be dead.

          The structures targeted for removal absorbed the powerful sympathetic vibrations. Fish scale windows sounded a C8 note as they sprayed out into dusty nonexistence. Trapped automobiles screamed, then curled into a fetal position and died in a puff of metallic flakes. Concrete, stone, and brick and mortar began to shimmy in the afternoon light. The liquefaction was modern performance art on a grand stage. The towering central monolith hung for a moment, then surrendered to gravity, its subordinate buildings following its lead, as everything in sight defused into granular uncreation. The air filled with the sound of unmaking and the land below their feet grumbled. Crassus Hospital returned to its constituent material, a powdery cascade settling into the earthy gash where its foundations had been.

           They put in long days; she tried her best to slip in some teaching. “Now,” she said pulling off her helmet and headset as the heavy dust cleared, “a quick lesson.” Very quick. “Let’s practice our imagery. A candy bar for good similes or metaphors.”

           “Mrs. Witten!” Mattie screamed for attention. “The tower crashed to the ground like a murdered giant!” Apt albeit violent. Laura rummaged in her kit bag for a brightly wrapped snack filched from an abandoned store on Sockanosset Cross Road. She tossed the sugary ingot to the girl.

           “The stone giant fainted like a diva in the final act.” Ibriz had skill. She vowed to push the solemn-faced boy harder in his studies. Almond Snickers for Ibriz.

           Wart grinned his Wart grin and spoke: “Having watched his fellow Olympians pass from this life, Hermes surrendered his temple to oblivion.” Oh, Wart. She knew she shouldn’t have favorites, but Wart was special. She was not going to let herself tear up. She would not do it. She pulled out a bag of Warheads Extreme, super sour junk Wart loved, and handed it to him.

           Much as she’d like to expand on their lesson, they couldn’t stop working. They had to keep moving. At this rate, they’d be stuck in Cranston, Rhode Island through the holidays – not a happy prospect. If she hit her quotas – there was zero chance of exceeding them – she might work up the courage to ask the Cadre for more school supplies, maybe a portable classroom to take from city to city. No more picking a new meeting place every day.

           Mitigation Teams went where they were told. There were worse jobs than being a sapper. The Venom Wranglers moved in first, capping gas lines and containing nuclear, chemical, and biological facilities. The Wranglers had a high mortality rate; terminals usually took that job. Squadrons of drones handled the onerous task of animal control. And then there were the Ferrymen, who went door to door searching for the fallen. She didn’t like to think about that gig. Every city they went to had its lime fields and crematory pits. The stink of the Ferrymen’s work hung in the air.  

           “I always dreamed of seeing Beijing or Kuala Lumpur or Paris. Why can’t we blow up the Louvre instead of the ass end of Providence?” Wart whined.

           “You’re too young to be cynical.” Laura checked her control pad to ensure it was recording the tonnage and general composition of the pile they’d just created. There was a fortune there in the anthropogenic dust. For someone. “You’ll see those places,” she told Wart. Maybe, she told herself. With luck. “They’re not on the list. We only erase the abandoned ones, like Cranston.” Third biggest city in the smallest of the former United States. The population plunge made for hard choices.

           Everything was going to plan. Laura keyed in the call for the fist-sized dredgers to swarm in their billions, rivers of iridescent scarabs flowing to and from their latest jobs around the vanishing city. Self-replicating, tireless, the bots did yeoman’s service. They’d dig through the heaps and separate the useless carbon from the fine metals, recyclables, and rare earths. They’d stockpile anything of value for the future. The busy bugs also transported toxic waste cross country to waiting stellavators, titanic mag-lev needles that shot the most mephitic bits into space.

          The big picture was overwhelming in scale, but simple in theory: clean and restore; keep a bad situation from getting worse. Maybe nature would forgive foolish humanity and pull its final punches. Maybe not.

          Loading up into the vehicles, she noticed some of the kids, Barry, Johnnetta, and Lika, trading items they’d found: a coin, a sparkly diamond cross necklace, a pair of dentures.

          “Don’t load yourself down with souvenirs,” she chastised them in a voice more drill sergeant than schoolmarm. “Learn to see what really matters.”

          Orphans, all of them. As the world emptied out, billion by billion, governments withered and snapped apart. Unfettered by laws, a nebulous Cadre of wealth and power arose to fill the gap. It found these lost boys and girls and signed them up for work.  It gave them supplies, good tech, bad boots, and medical care. In exchange, the Cadre was literally banking on a future boom time of cheap real estate and raw materials. Free labor creating valuable stockpiles of resources. Assuming anyone survived, of course. Best not to question the methods or motives of these men.  

          The team moved on to some quickies: restaurants along Park Avenue as well as the road itself. “Nevermind window shopping. It’s all junk now! Keep moving!” Wart barked at the others. Wart, all fifteen years of him, was her Border Collie, cajoling or bullying the other kids to keep them in line. In remission, he had all the energy of any other teenaged boy. Her job was to keep Wart focused so he could oversee the others. It should not take more than ninety minutes to render a dozen shops this size into useful mounds of stuff.

          Ah, stuff. The stuff that dreams were made of. Careers, families, riches, more riches. Stuff. When her sappers were done, those dreams were erased and the stuff was returned more or less to its original form, sorted, stacked, ready for use. One day, this re-booted land would attract new dreamers. She thought about that day: it could happen.

          As they were setting up, DaShawn ‘Doc’ Kegler pulled her aside. The title was honorary, though he had military medical training. The salt-and-pepper hair, handsome face, and active build were all his. Doc was a welcome sight, one of her fellow grown-ups as well as another unwilling member of the ‘Lucky 13,’ the percentile who showed no signs of any of the new illnesses. 

          “Three today,” Doc said succinctly. Tests on three of her kids had come back positive for something bad. There were scores of exotic illnesses spawned by a hotter, wetter world. These children had lost families to disease, starvation, or war. They survived only to face this.  

           “All new?” she asked. Laura looked into Doc’s eyes. There was trouble there.

           “No. Two are new cases. I think we need to send them back to base. The other one is…” She knew before he even said it.  

           The prospect of death was nothing new for any of them. Each had lost friends and loved ones. The bond to the sweet unnoticed ‘normal’ had snapped. She hated this festering wound. She’d happily lay down her own life if it would satisfy the sniggering gods, but no higher power jumped at the offer. Not a whisper.

           As the light faded, she drove her kids to the elegant and soon-to-be demolished Edgewood Manor B&B on Norwood Avenue. Two adult chaperones kept the adolescents from getting frisky. Laura didn’t like these old places – too many ghosts. She preferred her yurt, set up outside next to a waist-high wall of stones stacked in the New England fashion.

           By the time she made it back there for the night, Laura felt as if someone had used a trit-pro to pulverize her skull. She pulled off her grit-covered work clothes, washed in a basin, then reached into her personal bag and found her purple diary. As she stroked the small book, her eyes fixed on the silver Sacred Heart ring on her finger. She got it when she was a teenager, back when she knew everything with certainty. Her beliefs had changed through her life, she was forever trying new ways of seeking. She kept the little ring, moving it to the third finger of her left hand two years ago, after she buried an engraved pair of gold bands in her garden while Robert’s dog Lexington looked on.

           “No. Stop. Live in the present,” she said to the air. Silver Sacred Heart ring. Unlike the city around them, it was worth more than its melt value. She’d once thought of passing it on to her children before turning away from the idea of having them. She might give it to one of her young charges when they got old enough. “If they got old enough.” She tried selling herself a hearty, ‘new medical breakthroughs happen every day.’ Of necessity, she deflected her feelings for the many faces that joined the team only to fade and vanish.

           Too much thinking.

           Laura arranged her crystals around the diary: one amethyst, two rose quartz, and a tiger eye, and lit a small candle. Fumes from the guttering flame freshened the musky skins and fabric of the yurt with the scent of jasmine. She turned to her digital piano keyboard and set the playback for one of her own performances, Liszt’s ethereal Sonata in B Minor, then began her Reiki exercises. Pressing her palms together in front of her heart, she bowed. “My intent is to…” She couldn’t find the thought. To do what? Survive another day? Be happy? No, those were negatives in disguise. She tried again. “I will be one with my world.” Good enough.

           Clearing her mind, she began her movements while regulating her breath. It was important that she keep herself fit. Still a lot to do. Her work-weary muscles protested as she eased into the familiar motions to brush away the spiders, unblock her chakras, and let the energy flow.

           Finally, it was time to write this day into her diary. Her spirit fox had something to say. Some called the fox a trickster, and she’d certainly fallen into many of his emotional traps over the years. Robert had helped her to recognize that the fox was also a teacher, a role she’d held in the real world and now in this in-between life. The fox counseled adaptability.

           That meant optimism, something the dredgers would never find in a billion piles. Finding a bright future these days required a stubborn, foxlike determination to make it happen. She looked over what her hands had left on the page. Hmm. Seems like the peacock contributed some thoughts. She was most used to the fox taking lead as her spirit guide, but there were others, including the gaudy bird who bestowed intuition and awareness. In this case, the peacock told her that some opportunities were available. Her owl days, rare as they were, gifted her with silent wisdom. The opportunities she hoped for carried the risk of loss. Fox, peacock, owl. In her mind this totem bestiary warred with itself. If the ship that was her life had a figurehead, a bow spirit, it would have many furry and feathered faces.

           And the ship would sail in circles, she told herself. Enough thinking. She closed the diary and went to sleep.

           Cranston was stubbornly clinging to the world the next morning. They kept discovering new, old pockets of civilization within its borders.  Laura allowed herself a distraction, a stroll through the little white library on Wilbur Avenue. In its long history, the one-story clapboard building, fronted around the girth of a sheltering oak, had been a schoolhouse then a library. Leaving its reading stock in place, the library’s staff had taken pains to ensure it was orderly and clean inside. Walls gleamed as if they’d just been painted. Why? Among the children’s literature, she found the book she was looking for, an old copy with a bedraggled cover and notes scribbled in the margins, meaning it had been well-loved. Someone had turned down the corners of several pages. She read to herself about quests and love and great destinies.

            As if on cue, Wart appeared at her shoulder. “We can zap this place later today if you like. We’re set to go with the boats.” He said it meekly rather than blurting it out as he usually did.

            “Thank you, Wart.” They looked at each other like partners in a comedy act. “You talked to Doc?”

            “Yes. I’m going to Boston base camp,” the boy said, as if pronouncing his own execution order.

            Her mouth hung slack and stupid for several beats. “The recovery rate is getting better all the time,” Laura tried, putting a hand on his shoulder. He pulled away sharply.

            “Don’t deuce me! I just got the whole speech from Doc. Why you gotta deuce on me too?”

            “I’m not – whatever you said. I’m not lying. You have to have hope. Focus on the work. You are helping to build a bright future.”

            “No.” He threw his hands wide to indicate the library and the city beyond. “We’re not building a future… we’re covering up past mistakes. The human race blew it. It’s done!” Wart added a final pronouncement with a ferocity that blasted through Laura’s Supergirl defenses. He said, “I’m done!”

            It was too much. How dare he give up on the world, on himself! Not Wart. Anger flared like a thousand terrible suns. Her hand was suddenly above Wart’s head. She swung down with all her strength. He did not move. Surely he had enough time to react. Her reflexes weren’t as fast as a boy’s, she told herself. Wart was waiting for the blow, wanting it.

            Her hand dipped low just in time, missing his face and pounding his shoulder instead. “Fine!” she yelled at top volume. Dragging Wart out of the library, she said, “You win the lottery today.”   

            Her words burning in her own ears, she shoved him into a vehicle. An awkward ride later, they joined the team at the water’s edge. The rising tides of Narragansett Bay had claimed much of the Edgewood Yacht Club. King Quahog held court. The clubhouse was submerged up to its roof. A two-master wedged itself, bow to the sky, into the second floor dining room. Other sailboats showed evidence of storm and neglect; a few were mere masts and rigging sticking up through the surface. Little Sunfish clung stubbornly to lines lashed to sunken pilings.

            Laura made one last head count and double-checked that the team members were all wearing their protective gear. She punched Wart in the arm. Hard. He thumbed the pad’s flashing red circle…

            …and the devil sang jazz.

            Gulls squawked off in terror like angels escaping from hell. The flooded clubhouse took the full brunt of this man-made hurricane, collapsing into splinters and spume. Crunching fiberglass hulls leapt from the water like dolphins as the projectors boiled the swells into steam. Had they still been alive, the captains would have burst into tears at this spectacle. The kids began jumping around and hugging each other in joy. Their loudest applause erupted as Wart, with Laura’s permission, boosted the signal to full. A Coast Guard cutter lay at anchor just outside the marina, while a streamlined superyacht kept station in the bay. Both did St. Vitus’ dance as the trit-pros gripped them without mercy. The ships gyrated like all other targets; now at full blast, the trit-pros made them do more. The two vessels flamed up like oily rags touched by a lit match. It was wasteful to produce this much fire and smoke – but, what a show! 

            The creators of the trit-pro system had done their job well. The projectors contained the squall to the target area while the destruction within it was absolute. Everything died down within a few minutes, leaving a messy sluice of flotsam and islands of grit.

            “That felt good.” Wart was smiling and crying. He looked at her in a certain way because she was doing the same. A lot was coming out of both of them. They felt good. And awful. The reality was that Wart was sick and headed to an uncertain round of treatments. She hugged him closely while the other kids watched, dropping any pretense of drill sergeant stoicism.

            The heat wave finally broke in mid-December. There was no chance of snow, but at least they weren’t dripping with sweat all day long. They left I-95 and I-295 in place for future through traffic, but spent their days turning local roadways into a dull grey powder. There were no Wal-Marts, pawn shops, or Del’s Lemonade stands left to drive to anyway. The place was beginning to look like the first page in a new story.

            Wart returned from Boston after a month of treatments. He looked too small for his coveralls, tired, moving like an old man. For a day or two, he and Laura exchanged niceties, nothing more. She was scared. There was no telling whether this treatment would be any more successful than the last. Her owl counseled caution, distance.

           “Damned owl!” When you are most in need, give. She had learned that lesson on her own, without the help of her metaphysical menagerie. Much to her surprise, she valued empathy even though it got in the way of delicious self-pity.

            Laura called MT-829 together on Christmas Eve. They had met their mission goal with time to spare – time she had plans for. The Cadre had filled her requisition as hoped and the grown-ups had set everything in place that afternoon. “We’re ready for The Works,” she announced to cheers from kids and adults alike.

            The dredgers had finished, leaving neat piles of dross and exposed fertile soil across the expanse that had once been Cranston, Rhode Island. The stage was set.

           There was no lottery tonight. Every kid was a winner – and for once, she felt that was a good thing. In truth, she did not know if she believed in miracles the way she had when she was a little girl. When it came to these kids, though, she decided that anything was possible.

            People crowded around Laura’s little piano keyboard. With massive speakers scrounged from somewhere, it did a mean impression of a pipe organ. She played while Doc led the team in singing Handel’s Messiah. Doc had many talents.

            As the final ‘hallelujah’ echoed into the crisp night, Laura brought up her pad, set to glowing a festive green and red. “Honor system. Raise your hands. Once you’ve had a turn, lower your hand until everyone’s gotten a chance. There should be plenty for everybody.” She looked at the rows of rocket launchers. Christmas? More like the Fourth of July.

            It was time to get started. Laura almost called out Juanita’s name aloud. She was gone. Gone like so many of Laura’s kids. Keep it positive, the peacock told her, this was a happy night. She took the hand of a shy girl whose hair was falling out in clumps and told her to fire the first shell.

            Off whizzed the rocket, blazing a comet trail across the sky until it passed above the cremains of Crassus Hospital. KTACKT! SSST! WHOMFF! Like an oversized Roman candle, the round exploded, illuminating the moonless vault and pelting the ground with high velocity projectiles.

            The next kid stepped forward. It was Wart. As his friends whooped and yipped, he pushed the button and his rocket flew off on a new trajectory. Over and over, waves of joy swept the team as young hands fired new salvos in all directions. This was no mere amusement. The payloads were seeds, packed in protective shells. The blast fired life-bearing bullets deep into the soil. Come the rains, the nutrient-laced shells would dissolve and the seeds would awaken.

           Humans had messed up. They had taken all they could and left the world wobbling uncertainly on its axis. Now, it was time for people to fix things by using the finest technology on Earth, developed over billions of years: trees. Primal tech to scrub the air. Splendid oak and elm, hemlock, sugar maple, bountiful apple trees, cottonwood, plus breathy cedar and their conifer cousins. Trillions of them, eventually, all over the planet. Trees would reclaim cities that once banished them.

           This became the team’s mantra: it could happen.

           Laura, who was not so old after all, stood before the young faces. She said, “I want you to think about tomorrow and the coming year. One day, all this work will be done. What then? You. All of you are our real mission. Starting Monday, we’ll have school every morning for three hours, using one of the vehicles as our mobile classroom.” This last bit had been the fox’s idea. The head gear could expand the school day. With Wart’s help, she would input music into the noise cancellation software: Peter and the Wolf for scouting missions, bombastic Wagner for demolitions. She caught herself and thought, Maybe not Wagner. I’ll work on the playlist.

           She’d sell the idea to the Cadre… somehow.

           No.

           She would do it quietly, without asking permission. Even if the Cadre objected, it was easier to apologize. It was time now to set aside valueless fears, take what mattered, and build something new. Something better.

           She reached into her kit bag and pulled out a copy of the book she’d taken from the library. “We’ll begin by reading this book by T.H. White.” Laura looked at her star pupil, who smiled back. “It’s about a boy named Wart who dreams of honor and justice and a future in a shining city on a hill.”  

###

If you enjoyed this story, please share it with friends. Feel free to check out more stories and novels, here on ChrisRikerAuthor.com

Details

Published: 29 March 2024

Think you have a tough job? This guy's been on his feet for 2,200 years. How does he do it?

     Readers of Zebulon Angel and the Shadow Army know I love the Terracotta Warriors. They're just cool. Scientists are still discovering amazing things in the site where Qin ordered his shadow army hidden. It's been more than two millennia, but Chinese footwear appears to have something to teach us...

 

 https://www.newscientist.com/article/2390687-terracotta-army-shoes-reveal-secrets-of-ancient-chinese-footwear/

     You can see how our hero, Zebulon, came to visit Emperor Qin in his Night City... in...

https://www.amazon.com/Zebulon-Angell-Shadow-Chris-Riker/dp/1637107056

https://www.amazon.com/Zebulon-Angell-Shadow-Chris-Riker/dp/1637107056/

 

Details

Published: 24 March 2024