Page 23 of There’s an Alien Down My Chimney

I ripped my eyes away from the worrisome sight of the sun filling the viewscreens at the front and the three ships chasing us at the back. Checking Ru’s face, I could see his eyes dart rapidly left and right as if he was dreaming. His body was alert and tense, his chin held up at a jaunty angle, and his lips pursed in thought. Those were good signs I hoped but I had no frame of reference for what he was even doing. I had run my fingers through his hair more than once, and never noticed a port for that cable, had I just missed it? Though to be fair, I had been focused on other things when touching his head.

There was some kind of alarm blaring, and now the computer was announcing that our shielding was failing. I was pretty sure that was bad, and that it was the proximity of the sun. Behind us, the three ships pulled back, and while it was a relief to no longer be chased… I wasn’t sure if I was imagining it or not, was it getting warmer in here? “Ru? Are you sure…”

Like we were struck by lightning, blue suddenly flashed across my vision. I struggled to blink away the dancing spots that marked my vision, everything seemed to be dancing around me. “Made it,” Ru said, satisfaction filling his voice. The alarms had stopped screaming, but as I looked at the viewscreens to figure out where we were…

“Oh boy… Something is still chasing us!” I said, pointing at the screen despite knowing that Ru couldn’t see it. A black vessel was swinging around a floating, broken chunk of metal, red streaked across its sides. What were clearly the barrels of some kind of weapon system stuck out from the top of the ship, those glowing tips indicating they were primed to fire.

As if that wasn’t scary enough, I was rapidly realizing that while space was vast, this particular place was pretty damn crowded. Staring at the field of broken spaceships floating around us, I was filled with dread that I might hit something.

Ru’s hand came down on a button that had been blinking green, I was surprised he had noticed in all of this chaos. “Fuck off Yatzel, I already have it aboard, you’re too late,” he growled, and I realized he’d just answered some kind of call. The voice that came back in response was indecipherable, just a garbled mess I couldn’t even discover words in. Ru seemed to understand it just fine, “No, and don’t even think about it.”

As he spoke, green lines lit up on the screen with the star charts, and I clutched my fingers tightly around the yoke, pushing the throttle and darting along the route Ru had just provided. This was harder than out in open space, I had to make the Scintilla, which was much bigger than anything I’d ever flown, turn and twist through gaps I feared she wouldn’t even fit.

I heard some kind of growling from the alien I couldn’t understand, it sounded an awful lot like he was right here on the ship with me. His vessel didn’t keep up however, Ru was sending me through such tight twists and turns, that it seemed the other pilot couldn’t keep up.

I was breathing a sigh of relief when the Scintilla broke free from the massive field of debris we’d been in. Then that sigh stuttered as I stared at the space station that floated in front of us. Like a spider, it had many arms pinwheeling in many directions, it sat crouched over the debris field, watching the comings and goings of many different small ships.

The station had a round center, much like a disk, which seemed to gently rotate, while big or small vessels, whole or being built, hung off the many arms. Ru’s course pointed us directly to one of the arms, indicating a spot where I suspected he intended for us to dock. “Ru…” I whispered, still in shock at how incredibly big this space station was. It was quite possibly, almost the same size as Earth’s moon.

He didn’t respond so I repeated his name a little louder, scared that something was wrong. Checking the screens to make sure that the strange ship hadn’t followed us out of the debris field yet, I spun around in his lap to look at his face. Same as before, eyes darting from side to side, his mouth pursed in concentration, but when I talked to him… He didn’t respond.

I looked back at the massive station floating in front of us, the Scintilla was flying towards it at a slow pace, the direction I’d pointed her at. I didn’t have faith that I could dock the ship myself, but if Ru was hurt, I’d have to man up and get it done somehow. A station that big had to have medical personnel that could help.

Remembering the instructions he’d given me, I bit my lip and dug my fingers into the thick black and red hair at the back of his head. Brushing along the cable, I felt the touch of heated metal at the back of his skull. It felt wrong like I could hurt him more doing this, but as he told me, I pulled the plug out and hoped for the best.

“Ru, wake up! Please,” I begged him. The seconds seemed to last forever as I stared at his face, desperate for him to wake up. I felt for a pulse at the base of his neck, relieved to discover that it was thumping steadily against my finger. I even checked the plug I’d pulled free from his head, but it was already cooling to the touch and didn’t smell burned. The fragile-looking filaments at the tip seemed extremely alien to me, but at least they were very tiny.

The longer he stayed out of it, the more panic was clawing at me, what if he never woke up again? I couldn’t stand the thought of never looking into his eyes, hearing that deep voice, and seeing the sexy smirk curling his lips.

When his eyes blinked open, it was like my own heart restarted, furiously pounding in relief. He groaned, a hazy, confused expression on his face. “Fuck… I feel like I went a round or two with a bottle of Aderian wine,” he complained. I had no clue what Aderian wine was, and I was pretty sure I didn’t want to try it after that endorsement, but he was back, he was alright and that was all that mattered.

Chapter 17

Ru’ol

I shook my head, trying to clear the cobwebs that clung to my mind after that final rough ride. If Stella hadn’t unplugged me from the nav-console, I was pretty sure I’d have lost myself inside the machine, distracted, and confused. She’d brought me back, and from the looks of it, she’d brought us to the edge of the debris field. Even better, there was no sign yet of Yatzel and his Raptor.

“I thought I lost you!” Stella said, her voice shaking as she struggled to free herself from the harness strapping us to the chair. I assisted by pressing the release and she nearly tumbled from my lap, righted herself, and then spun around to straddle my legs. She cupped her small hands around my face, “You didn’t respond… I thought I’d have to dock this damn ship on my own.”

I felt full of regret that I’d scared her and also incredibly relieved that she’d remembered my instructions and brought me back. “I’m sorry, you won’t ever have to go through that again. I hated every second of it,” I assured her. It wasn’t entirely true, I had felt that brief moment of awe when I’d opened the connection, but that awe didn’t outweigh all the bad memories, the risks.

“Good,” she nodded, and then she turned sideways in my lap to indicate Strewn just ahead of us. “Are we really going there? It’s mindbogglingly big…” I heard the excitement in her voice and her curiosity. My little adventurer was ready to see what my time and my part of space had to offer.

“Yeah, we’re going to dock over there,” I said, and I pointed at the arm of the space station where I rented a berthing spot for the Scintilla. I could see that there was a big Star Class Cruiser parked in the spot next to mine, an unfamiliar one with a freshly painted name on the side.

Stella needed a little coaxing before she put her hands back on the ship’s controls so I could instruct her how to dock her. She gave me this sassy eye-roll that I loved, indicating that she thought I was crazy for letting her do it. I had confidence in her skills, not many pilots as green at flying a spaceship as she, could have pulled off the routes I’d plotted for her to fly, but she had.

She nosed the Scintilla around the big bulk of the Star Class Cruiser, the letters spelling out ‘Vagabond’ filling up one of the viewscreens as we passed the vessel. Half a dozen dockworkers were crawling over the outside of the ship, working on repairs. They were supervised by a Kertinal male in a spacesuit that didn’t bear the Strewn insignia, so the male had to belong to the ship itself.

As Stella maneuvered the Scintilla into her spot, I helped her with the final docking procedures, and everything went off without a hitch. We’d work well as a team out here, once she got confident she wasn’t going to hit anything with the ship, or maybe I’d finally go and check out that patch of land I had been awarded back on Ker.

“What now?” she said, her eyes huge as she looked at the viewscreens. The arm that led to all the vessels was protected by a transparent cylindrical cover, she could look straight into the crowded area, and witness the many different alien races. Her pale cheeks had a soft pink glow to them, it was clear she was excited to see all of this so I smiled, pushing away the mild headache.

“Why don’t we go get you a proper translator installed?” I tapped the emergency one curled behind her small, rounded ear. Her eyes went huge as she touched the bit of metal, warmed by her own skin. I could understand that fear, when I put that thing on her, it hadn’t gone the way it was supposed to. That’s why I was making sure I was paying for the best doc to install the best implant this time.

She agreed cautiously, and then the two of us studied the artifact for a moment. We couldn’t just leave it like this inside my ship, but I’d have to contact my buyer first to line up a meeting, he tended to be a little secretive. It looked innocent now, powered down it was just a black cylinder lying on the deck. It wasn’t even all that big, I guess I could just hide it, for now, it had no power signature when turned off.

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