Providence – Part 1
I’ve lost the thread of where I was going with Washed Up. I had a lot of things I wanted to do with the development of Mother and the plant-styled antagonist which dominated the planet that Agnes washed up on. I wanted to make it into a galactic struggle with Agnes caught in the eye of the storm, but reality came crashing through my writing plans like a wrecking ball. I had a podcast to finish, and that takes priority.
So here we are, lost in the shapeless and formless void between stories. An infinite number of possibilities reach out, begging for travelers and the life they bring. It’s my job to pick one and set out towards the horizon, building the road as I go.
Providence – Part 1
The explosion went off with a lack of cacophony that was borderline offensive. In space, however, explosions didn’t create much in the way of sound. What they did make was a bunch of light and color and as this one was larger than most, it made for quite the spectacle. A kaleidoscope of colors bursting forth in rings within rings, radiating outwards in a cloud of debris which had once been a large troop transport and was now so much pulverized metal and frozen flesh.
A cutter, nearly invisible against the backdrop of blazing pinpricks and inky blackness, sped away from the scene of the crime. The pilot, a leathery veteran by the name of Janet (her last name is her own business so back off if you know what’s good for you) let loose a whoop and a malicious cackle as she caught sight of the carnage her kinetic missiles had caused out of her port windowpanes. She didn’t relish killing people, but it was war and death was inevitable. She did delight in the almost magical display that an overloaded hydrogen-fusion reactor created as it gave up the ghost. No matter how many missions she had under her belt, no matter how many times she had staged this play, it never ceased to entertain her.
She spun up the cutter’s secondary reactors and their heat signatures rose at a rate which would’ve alarmed anyone who didn’t pilot a highly modified and equally illegal war rig this far into contested space. Eventually her power readouts informed her that she was either about to die horribly or they had created enough energy to make a door. She tossed the dice and was rewarded when the space in front of her began twisting and whirling like the stars ahead were flushing down a toilet. Eventually only smooth emptiness remained in a circle twice the diameter of her cutter, and she punched her comically over-large engines and rammed the door at break-neck speed.
It was barely fast enough. Instead of smashing into a thousand pieces against the door she had created, her ship broke through several layers of previously iron-clad physics and was soon weaving through traffic in the vast tunnel everyone called the Tube. It had a long, boring scientific name describing all the various functions and probable locations of the extra-dimensional pipework that underpinned reality, but Janet wasn’t one to get lost in the details. Let the scientists and philosophers debate such matters, the Tube worked for her. Janet was on her way home to yet another fat paycheck, a few months of leave to tinker with her lovely cutter, and some illegal racing to keep her blood pumping at an appropriate rate. The chaos of her life fit perfectly within the broader insanity of the meltdown in the Milky Way.
She zoomed past the larger rigs which made up the usual Tube traffic. Ships like hers weren’t supposed to have engines or reactors big enough (or stable enough) to both make and break a door, so she always had to avoid their disbelieving, lumbering reactions to her tiny ship as she zipped about. She only had to pass a few hundred hallways, yet the thought of navigating traffic in the Tube for a full day made her groan. There were certain luxuries even she couldn’t cram into her beloved rig, and the necessary space and extra power constraints of an AI deck had so far eluded her. She needed the stealth and surprise the cutter offered. Bigger ships like that transport could smash her to bits should they ever notice her silhouette against the backdrop of stars when their sensors were feeding them nothing but smooth sailing.
She snuck between two large autonomous cargo vessels and a huge smile played across her face as she caught sight of the clan insignia splashed large across the vessel to her starboard. It was the bright green cranes against the blue waves that marked it property of clan Inoue. Cackling once again at her own good fortune, she shot a comm wave towards the AI tending the cargo rig. It responded to her communique by opening a small docking bay day hidden at the rear of the kilometers long vessel. She wasted no time guiding her tiny ship into the private quarters reserved for the upper management of clan Inoue. That dalliance with Toshiro, fifth in line for succession, continued to pay dividends. She never would’ve gotten the private entrance codes and her biometrics imprinted on the AI without it. It was a shame that Toshiro’s wife had been so upset with her choice of lovers. Instead of joining them in bed, the jealous woman had chased her stark naked from Toshiro’s office at clan Inoue’s HQ while wielding a large section of pipe. Wives were fickle creatures who were best avoided, but the thought of what could have happened if she had simply joined them instead still haunted Janet’s dreams.
She settled her ship next to the small personal shuttle which was already present and her grin became something more at home on a feral hunting cat than any human being. She went through a speedy shut-down sequence that still managed to ensure she wouldn’t be incinerated anytime soon and sprinted across the war machine to the exit ramp. Once she reached the bay floor, she morphed her dash into a confidant swagger and rode it across the twenty meters separating her from the personal quarters off the private dock. She opened the door, sauntered into the spacious living quarters, and planted her hands on her hips. A woman in a comfortable evening robe stood, her alarm quickly draining into gleeful delight as she sized up her intruder. She was small in stature, but only a fool would see that as a sign of weakness. Her brown skin and hair blurred as she slammed into the stocky Janet, and kisses rained down upon every part of Janet she could reach. Janet laughed, picking up the smaller woman and whirling her about with joy at their unexpected reunion.
“Miss me Toshiro?”
Toshiro planted a smoldering kiss on the still forming question, and any further discussion was discarded along with her robe and Janet’s flight gear.
Oh yes, fortune favored Janet indeed.
To be continued….
Janetfully,
The Unsheathed Quill
