Ancient Birthright (2 page)

“Oh... It’s French. I should have known.” The corners of his mouth quivered suppressing his teasing grin.

“That’s why I’m still here, still at the school that is. We had a French Club meeting, and my advisor wanted to talk to me afterwards.”

Beldon bent at the waist and rubbed his legs. “It feels like a thousand needles are being jammed in my legs. I think I’ll just lean against these lockers for a while and enjoy the agony.” Come on Dumas make your move. Say something to her or she’s going to leave… Anything.

“Well, I have to be going. My mom’s picking me up in a few minutes,” Cindy said walking away.

“Yeah, okay. I’ll see you in class tomorrow.”

Smooth Dumas. You’re the smartest guy in your class, and you can’t even figure out how to keep a girl talking. “Thanks for your help. There’s no telling how long I would have been trapped in there if you hadn’t come along. You saved my life.”

She turned around but continued to walk backwards. “You’re welcome. Next time you go looking for an apartment, give me a call. I’ll tell you if I think it’s too small for you.”

Beldon’s knees wobbled as he watched her push through the front door. She said he could call her. He’d never had a girl tell him he could call her before. Cindy wasn’t as well-developed on top as Marcie Goodwin, the best-looking and most popular girl in school, but Cindy was a whole lot smarter, and she’d helped him. He had the feeling that Marcie would have ignored his plea for help unless helping him would have benefited her in some way. Marcie would most likely have laughed at his predicament and walked away since he wasn’t one of the beautiful people in her circle.

Chapter-3

Colony ship
Universe Explorer
: Transjump plus 0years, 0 days: Present day

Every nerve ending in Caraa’s system fired one final time. The bridge of the colony ship
Universe Explorer
slowly came into focus as her eyes coalesced from the data stream reconstruction. She knew the nerve spasm was a physical indication that she’d made it through the transjump without a dropout leaving a portion of her body spinning through space as unresolved data elements.

The five other souls on the bridge reacted much the same before they resumed their duties. The data to reconstruct the ship and its contents had traveled for 126.8 years at the speed of light to reach this point well outside the Treterra star system. Any closer and the gravitational pull of planets and the home star would cause problems during materialization.

“Secure from transjump stations,” Command Prime Jamz Garuu ordered.

“All sections secure from transjump stations. Report status,” Operations Prime Caraa Garuu relayed over the ship-wide comm.

“Start the damage and dropout check after all stations report status, Ops Prime.”

“Sir, all sections report ‘After Transjump Checklists’ complete,” Caraa said as she pressed the commbud a little tighter into her ear. “All crew, all crew, check for damage and dropouts,” Caraa’s voice boomed over the audio system a moment later.

“As soon as the D&D check is finished, get an all-souls’ roll call.”

“Yes Sir. D&D check complete for all sections. Cargo section eleven reports two crates free of the hold-down netting. They estimate three truebeats to contain the problem. Fuel stores report a potential dropout, but they are having problems confirming the extent. A complete survey will be conducted as soon as we have spin.”

“If those are the only problems, then we were lucky this time,” Command Prime Garuu said.

“Let’s get the all-souls’ roll call finished so we can do our spin up.”

Caraa moved to stand in front of the roll-call screen. “I hope our luck holds, and we didn’t lose any souls this time.”

“All souls, all souls...roll call,” echoed through the ship.

The display showing the names of all members of the crew and passengers started turning green as each person on board pressed their “Itsme” button to the reader closest to their position. Four truebeats later, all but two of the names were green. Drickk Pamdss and Saigg Garuu were the exceptions.

“Crewman loader Drickk Pamdss, do you need assistance?”

“Sorry Ops Prime, I was helping tie down the crates in bay eleven and couldn’t get to a reader.” The roll call board flashed as Pamdss’s name switched to green.

“Understood, return to your duties. Passenger Saigg Garuu, do you need assistance?”

A truebeat passed without a response to either the page or the roll call order.

“Passenger Saigg Garuu, respond immediately,” boomed, with more tension evident in Caraa’s voice.

Caraa’s face flashed gray then black.
No. Not Saigg. Not our son.

“Caraa, go check his quarters. I’ll order a ship wide search,” Jamz said, his face the washed out gray of worry.

“All crew, all crew this is Command Prime...begin full ship search for passenger Saigg Garuu. He has not responded to the all-souls’ roll call,” Prime Garuu ordered as he roamed the bridge and scanned the VH or video holographic displays.

Caraa remembered the outbound transjump when fully a tenth of the crew had died from the massive loss of data caused by the magnetic bubble that trapped the ship’s data reconstruction stream for more than two-hundred-million home-planet star cycles.

Caraa launched from the bridge and hit the passageway wall with a resounding thump as she changed direction by kicking off the resilient dark-green fibrous surface. Within truebeats, she was at the hatch to the family quarters. It took several demibeats to maneuver her body in range of the hatch actiplate so she could get the door open.

The hatch opened, and she pulled her way into the family cabin. A few forgotten objects floated about the main room. She’d made a detailed sweep of the room before reporting to her pre-transjump station on the bridge, ensuring everything was stowed and secure. Caraa grabbed a vest as it floated by.

This junk belongs to Saigg, of course. She fumed.

That kid frustrates me to the point I could just… I don’t know what. How can I get him to pick up his stuff and put it away? He has to be alive. I’ll even quit nagging him about leaving his things all over the cabin if he’s just all right.

Caraa latched onto the back of the couch and used it to push off toward Saigg’s door, snagging a fingerless glove, foul smelling boot, and a broken thrustboard binding on the way. Hand stretched out, she pressed the actiplate and the hatch silently retracted as she latched onto the bedroom’s doorframe. A blizzard of clothes, electronics, databuds, half-eaten food, and a mass of writhing three-inch long lizards called skinks, flooded from the bedroom into the living room.

“Saigg, if you’re in there, you better be unconscious. If you’re not, when I get my hands on you, you soon will be. I told you two cycles ago to clean up this mess and get your room stowed for transjump. Saigg, dammit, answer me...or so help me, you’re going to be cleaning out waste-recycle units for the rest of your life.” Caraa’s voice cracked with fear.

“I’m here, Mom. I just can’t get to the Itsme reader. I’m a little tied up and haven’t figured out how to get lose,” replied a belligerent teenage voice with a hint of panic.

Caraa pushed the mass of Saigg-junk out of her way and pulled herself into the cabin. Saigg was hanging with his head almost touching the floor. The long lacing from a thrustboard soft boot tethered his left leg to his bed. His right leg was looped through the cord he’d stretched across his room to hang his thrustboard and other treasures. The covers from his bed wound around his body trapping both arms and keeping him from floating close enough to any stationary object to use it for leverage to get loose.

She pushed off the wall and none too gently slammed Saigg onto his bed as she latched her hand to the bedframe. She pulled a small claw knife from her boot and clipped the lace binding his left leg. She slashed the right leg free of the restraining cord. The released tension on the cord snapped the thrustboard board into the wall and out the open hatch. Caraa released the bedframe and with a fierce pull, yanked the bedcovers. This had the effect of launching her to the ceiling where she rebounded and crashed back into the bed while Saigg unrolled from the covers, spinning across the room, gathering clothes, food and a large bubble of sweet drink that had been floating in the middle of the constellation of junk. When he crashed into the opposite wall, he managed to catch the leg of his desk with his tail and pull himself to a stop.

“Answer roll call immediately. The entire ship’s crew is conducting an all-out search for you,” Caraa growled, slipping back into her bridge-speak command voice. “We thought you were wounded, or worse, from a dropout.”

Saigg pressed his left hand and its embedded Itsme button against the reader.

An announcement came over the comm a moment later. “All crew. All crew this is Command Prime. Passenger Saigg Garuu has been located. Return to normal duty stations and prepare for spin.”

“I need to get back to the bridge. Get over here and strap down for spin up. I can’t talk to you right now. If I did, I don’t think you’d like the consequences. When I get back, this room better be spotless, all trash properly disposed of and...if I find even one crumb of food hidden in here, you will not, I repeat, will not, eat for a seven cycle. Oh yes...you’re grounded until you’re fifty.” Caraa straightened the ops prime sash that went from right shoulder to left hip before she pushed off and sailed out the door.

#

Saigg slid into his bed and pressed the tie-downs into the holdpads with an angry slap.

I don’t know why she’s so upset. I was the one who was stuck and couldn’t answer roll call. You’d think I did it on purpose just to tick her off. What’s the big deal? So I forgot we were going to transjump. It’s not as if we haven’t been through it before. You’d think I’d planned to sleep through it. Why can’t she get a life and quit bugging me?

The ship slowly started to spin as the reaction mass engines began their task. Unfortunately, the direction of spin forced his entire room full of loose items to settle on top of him, as he lay strapped to his bed. The clothes didn’t bother him, but when his full waste receptacle of food containers, moldy food and partial disposacups of sweet drink floated over and deposited its contents on his head, he voiced his opinion of the unfairness of the universe, “I never did anything to you. Why do you feel the need to dump everything on
ME
?” As if in answer, he felt a vibration in his ear. It took a moment to realize one of the skinks was clinging to his ear and thrumming its mating call.

An hour later, his mother’s voice came over the ship’s comm. “All souls, all souls. Spin up complete. Rotation stable. You are clear to resume normal activities.”

Saigg shoved the mound of clothes off his body. The sticky fruity smelling mess from the waste receptacle was another matter altogether. He turned the receptacle upright and peeled food containers and goo from his face. It would take him hours to get everything organized and back into the piles where he normally stored his stuff.

“Where did all the skinks come from? This place is crawling with them. Why are they in my room?”

Then Saigg remembered the color on his mother’s face and kicked a pair of shorts into the corner he used for dirty clothes. His room held the standard bed, desk, chair and wall of flush mounted storage drawers and lockers found in every sleeping chamber on the ship.

A third cycle later, Saigg heard, “Passenger Saigg Garuu, report to Command Prime on the bridge, immediately.”

“Oh, butt nuggets. Now what do they want? I’m cleaning my cabin like she told me.”

He peeled off his trashed clothes and jumped into the refresh unit. Truebeats later, he was hunting for something presentable to wear, something not covered in sweet drink, or that didn’t smell like an overfull waste-recy bin.

Most of the crew did not wear clothing, but he and his friends had adopted the garish garments as a statement of their individuality.

A bright yellow shirt-vest with torn sleeve and baggy gray shorts were the only clean items he could find on short notice. Shoving the rest of the mess out of his way, he slipped on his favorite thrustboard soft boots tying the lace on the right boot and emitting a groan of frustration when he discovered the lace on the left boot was a casualty of his mother’s wrath.

Entering the main room, Saigg found his sister Karonna lounging on the long couch, while his younger brother Davvie sat on the grass colored organic floor covering. He was using the couch for a backrest as the two watched a replay of a recording of their mother rescuing him.

“Where did you get that?” he yelled.

“Davvie mounted a vidcorder in your room before the transjump. We wanted to see what was going to happen when you ignored mom’s order to stow your stuff,” Karonna answered.

“Give me that databud. You two are going to pay for this when I get back.” I can’t believe the miseries of my life did this today, he thought.

“You better go. I think Dad and Mom are planning to have you clean waste units for the rest of your unnatural life. If you keep them waiting, they may just decide to process you
through
one of them,” Karonna said, as she tried to contain her laughter.

“Dibs on his room if they do,” Davvie yelled.

“Why don’t you suck space,” was the only comeback he could think of as he ran out the hatch and headed toward the bridge.

Two truebeats later, as he approached the bridge hatch, the humiliating vid came to life on the ship-wide network screens.

Retribution swirled through his mind. They are dead. They are so dead. I will find them. There’s no place on this ship they can hide from me. When my friends see this video, they’re going to rag me for the rest of my life. And the females. What chance will I have of ever getting a mate? Mate...hell, what chance of even getting a female to talk to me again—Ever. My life is over. Just kill me now and put me out of my misery.

His steps dragged as he moved onto the bridge. The vid playback was ending with the waste receptacle of trash landing on his head and a skink clinging to his ear. The bridge crew had it displayed on the wall-sized main video holographic screen. The entire five-member bridge crew was laughing so hard it was a wonder the ship didn’t shut itself down from inattention. He stopped and waited for Command Prime and Ops Prime to stop laughing and acknowledge his presence.