Flash Fiction #300: Catchin Can/Part 2

(Continued)
Tana felt rock and dust brushing against her and gave a startled cry.  Alika looked up and screamed in fear, throwing herself away from the equipment as a wall of rock came down.

"Back -- back to the fighter," Krisin ordered. He grabbed their lasers and pulled her away.

"The ship is trapped --"

"Have to hope the equipment is damaged --"

"Do more than hope.  Give me my laser, Krisin!"  Then she dropped her voice.  "Did you see Lisel?"

"No."  He stopped and looked back where the rumble of rock had started to lessen.  "Damn."

They went back.  Tana mostly ignored the pain in her leg, grateful that Krisin hadn't insisted she go to the fighter and wait.  He might have been right to do so because she slowed him down.

She could, however, shoot.  When something with odd flashing lights started to crawl out of the rock, she shot it.  More than once.  And the next one as well, while Lisel left her leaning against a boulder half the size of the fighter where she could shoot to her heart's content.  Being in a bad mood and having things to shoot at helped.

Where the hell was Lisel?  Not under the rock.  He wouldn't have -- unless he thought it would save them.  Tana didn't like that thought.  She shot at rocks.

She wasn't certain what Krisin was doing until she saw he had a scanner in hand and ran it over piles of rock.  The way he shook his head made her fear that they would not find --

Rocks fell from the top of the pile.  Tana aimed and fired --

"Will you stop shooting at me!" Lisel shouted.

She grinned with delight and watched as he poked his head out, ears laid back and eyes narrowed.  When he saw she'd lowered her weapon he squirmed out and began pulling something behind him.

"Lisel --" Krisin began.

"Here. Take this."

Alika rolled out and slid down the pile of rock, tied up in cloth and cords, a gag over her mouth.  Her eyes stared at them, wild and angry.  Accusing -- they had, after all, lied to her.

Lisel quickly made his way down as well.  He looked bruised and blood showed in a few spots.  He favored his right hand, and she thought some of the claws had been torn off there.  Krisin had taken up Alika and gave her a vicious shake when she tried to pull away.

"We had better go," Lisel warned with a glance at the rock.  "If I set things up properly, we're going to lose gravity soon.  And air, shields, probably the stability of the rest of the rocks --"

Tana turned, a hand on the rock beside her.  Krisin pushed Alika ahead and Lisel, despite his own limp, got hold of her. They hurried, but even so, the rumbled of disaster started before they reached the fighter.  Alika looked back with open fear and stopped fighting, which allowed Krisin to push ahead and get the fighter open.

Tana still didn't think they'd make it.  The wind had started, a sign of lost atmosphere.  She gasped at the air, an involuntary reaction, like falling into water and wanting one last breath.  Krisin's hand held tighter and he pulled her along -- not that she fought, but the erratic wind and failing gravity made it hard --

Oh, they reached the ship.  Lisel had shoved Alika back behind the seats -- not a comfortable spot.  Good.  Krisin shoved her in and across to the controls.  She hit her leg and nearly blacked out, but the sight of the rock falling and explosions made her grab Lisel in and key the door shut.

Rocks hit the canopy. A small crack -- but they had no choice. She keyed the engines on, powered them up to full, and shot out of the trap as fast as she could.  Behind them, the asteroid exploded, sending more rock after them.  It pinged and banged, and she watched the crack grow a little wider.  So far, it did not give way.

"Part of the controls are out," she said, tapping at the board.  "We're going to be flying without any scanners or communications."

"I have faith you'll find the way home," Lisel said from behind.  He handed up the first aid kit.

"Thanks."

A medpad to her leg helped dull the pain and allowed her to concentrate.  The one thing neither of them mentioned was how there was likely weres in the area.  She kept them close to big asteroids when she could, doing the computations in her head, aiming back toward the sector where they'd left the Belgium.  It would not be in exactly the same place, but she hoped it hadn't moved far.

Alika made some sound of protest in the back of the fighter.

"You would be wise to shut up," Lisel said with such a snarl that Tana felt the hair on the back of her neck rise. 

Alika went silent again.  Tana didn't trust her, though. She opened the first aid kit and handed back a hypo.  He gave a quick nod and then rather ruthlessly jabbed it at Alika's arm.  The woman protested for a moment and then went silent.

She was coming back around again by the time Tana finally spotted the Belgium.  Their craft was not responding well by then.  With no communications, all she could do was aim for the bay and hope for the best.  Lisel knocked Alika back out again when she started to kick and snarl.

"Good work," Tana said.  "This is not the time.  We need to get her in and get the Captain.  We don't want a lot of show before word spreads."

"Leave her here," Krisin said with a glance back.  Brave man since they were just going in the bay.  "Call the Captain to us."

"I don't know --"

"She'll come to us," Lisel said.  "Or I'll go get her."
That sounded like trouble ... but they had trouble anyway.

"Let's do it."

To Be Continued....

Flash Fiction #299: Catchin Can/Part 1

Note:  I have dropped in on Tana's little scout ship and her crew a few times before.  If you would like to read the sequence here are the previous flash fiction pieces:

Flash Friday # 106 -- The Replacement

http://zette.blogspot.com/2014/08/flash-friday-106-replacement.html

Flash Fiction # 141 -- The Outpost

http://zette.blogspot.com/2015/04/flash-fiction-141-outpost.html

Flash Fiction # 161 -- Illusion

http://zette.blogspot.com/2015/08/flash-fiction-161-illusion.html

Flash Fiction # 211 -- Team work

http://zette.blogspot.com/2016/08/flash-fictoin-211-team-work.html

"That looks like a good hiding place," Tana suggested as she tapped the screen.  "I can't see how far the opening goes, but the asteroid is stable, and I think we can slip just enough of the fighter inside that we can stay out of sight and keep watch."

Lisel leaned forward to look at her screen, his cat-like whiskers brushing against her cheek.

"Ack!"

"Sorry, sorry."  He pulled a little to the side, but not very far. Did he do that on purpose?  She'd started to believe that Lisel liked tormenting her.  "Can't get a good read through that rock.  It's pretty dense.  Wish we could see farther in there, but that's the best spot we've seen in days."

Krisin grunted agreement.  Tana turned the craft in that direction, scanned everywhere around them, and then swept over and down toward the opening.

The cave went farther than she expected.

And they were not the first to take refuge here.

"Out!" Lisel shouted and hit the power back to the engines. 

Tana had already started the pivot, but a shield flared up in front of the ship, and Lisel cut power before she even cursed.  They couldn't throw themselves against that wall.  The fighter would tear apart before it went through.

"Not weres," Krisin reported.  "Breathable atmosphere.  Shall we go pay a visit?"

Tana mumbled something impolite and hit the release on the door.  It swung up and out, showing them a bit more of the cavern.  Laser cut, beyond a doubt.  She could see lights in the distance as the three of them climbed down.  The air tasted better than what they got on the ship, and she could feel the slight sweep of a breeze.  That probably meant a relatively small area and not many people.

She had her weapon in hand, ready for trouble.  Tana would rather have faced weres than humans, though.  She had no doubt the weres would be enemies.  Having to decide if she trusted humans always put her in a bad mood.

They had gone several yards when she realized their catchin partner was not behind them.  She started to look back and stopped herself.  She trusted Lisel and having him not go in with the two of them made her feel a bit better.

The equipment looked odd.  A single cot rested against the wall to the right.  Was there only one person here?

"Stop there," a woman said from somewhere behind lines of flashing equipment.  "Drop the weapon, Tana, or I swear I'll shoot you.  And you, Krisin -- the same."

Did she know that woman? Tana couldn't place the voice, but she didn't doubt the order and dropped her pistol.  Krisin did the same only a moment later.  He frowned at Tana.

"Where's the other one?  Your catchin?"

"Didn't come out this time," Krisin said with a bit of a snarl.

"I should believe that?"

"Look around," Tana replied with a slight wave of her hand.  She could see a bit better now and picked out three shapes, all of them with lights behind them.  The woman who spoke was the tallest and easiest to track, even while she paced in the shadows.

The woman finally gave some signal to her two silent helpers.  They rushed out past Tana and Krisin, moving so fast that she barely had a glimpse of them.  Definitely not human.  Metalic, she thought.

Then the woman stepped into the spotlight.  A rather dramatic move and it suited her.  Tana did know her, and it wasn't for any good reason, though she supposed that was to be expected by now.

"Alika," she said with a nod of her head.  "We thought you dead years ago."

"And I'm sure you mourned, too," Alika replied with a snarl. She moved oddly, but then considering her ship had been blown to hell, that wasn't much of a surprise either.

"The captain sent out ships to find your body. They never did."

"No, they didn't.  I had other help."  She stopped as the two shapes rushed back to her.  Bots of some sort.  Interesting.

Other help?

And how did she know about Lisel, their catchin crew?

Krisin had caught on as well.

"We've lost a lot of fighters out this way lately," Krisin said.  His voice stayed calm, but Tana could hear the rage just below the surface.  "That's why we were sent here.  You have a contact on the Belgium.  Does that person know you work with the weres?"

"Oh yes," she said and smiled.  Part of her face didn't work.  "Where is your catchin?"

"Back on the ship --" Tana began.

Alika lifted a pistol and fired.  The light burnt across Tana's leg and she gave a cry more of surprise rather than pain.  Krisin grabbed her before she fell and that kept him from going for his dropped weapon, which was what Alika had expected.  A flash of light scorched the floor where he would have been.

"Didn't -- didn't your person tell you Lisel was injured?  Attacked?  A few days ago.  Didn't want him along if he's not ready."

"And he's not been happy since it happened," Krisin added, the snarl clear in his voice this time.

"Ah.  I had heard."  Alika sat the pistol down again.  "Well, the two of you are quite a catch.  My friends have been happy with all the kills lately, but you two -- you are high up in the line.  You know codes I can't otherwise get.  You can get us aboard the ship."

"It's not going to happen," Tana replied.

"And you think you can hold out against me?"

Tana tried not to look nervous -- or too nervous -- as the bots came out from behind her equipment again.  They moved slowly this time, waist-high pieces of metal an flashing lights in colors that didn't look normal.

She hoped their catchin could do something.

And the ceiling fell.

To Be Continued....

Flash Fiction # 298: Mother Nature's Revenge

(This is little drabble was inspired by a rather funny meme on Facebook -- but then I wondered if we're all laughing too much?  I'm looking at another five to eight inches of snow this weekend....)

"I miss spring," Marc said as they trudged through the snowdrifts.

"You shouldn't have made the joke," Rory countered.

"You're the one who shared it.  Besides, how was I suppose to know she was on the Internet?"

"Are you joking?" Rory said.  "Mother Nature is everywhere!  And saying she is Bi-Polar and off her meds...."

"Well, it was funny," Marc countered.  "It's not my fault she doesn't have a sense of humor."

A cold wind blew down the road followed in quick succession by lightning, hail, a torrential rainstorm, and then a sudden blizzard.

"Marc, just keep quiet, okay?"

Linda

During the school year of 1967, my friend Lynda said to me that there was someone I should meet. "She writes, too."

So she took me across the classroom and said, "This is Linda."

We talked. We were both 13. We had all the same interests. We were writing what would later be called fan fiction for all our favorite shows. We exchanged Star Treks and High Chaparrals. We had lunch together every day and several classes together.

I'm not sure how long it was before I realized that our skin color was not the same. It didn't matter, not then, and not later -- not to me and not to her.

By the next semester, I'd moved back to Iowa again. This was part of the constant yo-yo movement my parents did between the two places. This time, though, I was miserable in school. Then my father decided it would be far easier to move back to LA without his wife and two daughters. We had no income. Before I turned 15, relatives had found me a full-time babysitting job that started as soon as I got home from school until 3 AM and all day Saturday. Three children, the youngest 1-month-old when I started. I wrote late at night there, waiting for the mother to get home from her night shift as a nurse. By then I had started writing my own original stories, but there was still a bit of fanfic tossed in.

Linda and I wrote each other. We shared stories still. We wrote stories together, too, sending stuff back and forth. She was a bright spot in a miserable few years.

I was 18 when dad came back and decided we should all go to LA again.

I went to the same school as Linda. A lot of our old friends were there. 1972 and the school had been large enough to get caught up in the race troubles sometimes. During one of these, Linda and I went to the admin. She called her mother -- and her mother told the person in charge to let her daughters leave.

I remember the woman looking from Linda to me and back.

And she let us go. We walked to Linda's house.

After that, I spent a lot of time at Linda's house. My mother and sister had gone back to Iowa, and I did not get along with my father. Linda's mom, Dorothy, treated me like I was her child. Linda's older brother, Lonnie, was a little longer coming around, but he did. In fact, Dorothy later started telling people that she had three children and they just kept getting lighter.

The day after graduation my father kicked me out of the house for not already having a job. This after years of supporting his wife and daughter because he never sent any of the money he was supposed to.

I called Linda.

I moved in with them. I was the only white person in the neighborhood. It didn't matter.

We traveled all over LA, Linda and I. To the beach (Leo Carrillo was a favorite), China Town, here and there. Dorothy talked to my father and later called him a lying bastard. I was not going back. Instead, she got me enrolled in a local tech school for secretary training. Linda did nursing school, but it never suited her.

We wrote. We went places. We did insane (and sometimes stupid) things, but we did it together.

I will not say it was perfect. Linda was the most stubborn person I ever knew. If she decided something, that was it. I remember her getting mad about something and storming off into the house, leaving her mother and me on the doorstep. Her mother turned to me and said, "Yeah, I know. Can't live with her, and can't live without her."

But you could work around those times, and then we'd be off doing something goofy Going to China Town, splitting up, and then meeting at the fountain and pretending we hadn't seen each other for years and we'd always planned to be here. Yeah, silly. Imaginative.

Dorothy paid for both of us to take Kung Fu lessons, and not from just any place. Sil Lum Kung Fu on Van Nyes Blvd had some well-known teachers. (Some of them were later in Big Trouble in Little China, among things.) Linda met Lloyd. Things began to change as she went

And I was not always there in LA. I would get messages -- my mother needed me. If I didn't come back and take care of her, it was my fault if she died. (Yeah, they pulled this a few times, relatives who told me that all the problems at home were my fault for not working hard enough.)

I would stay in Iowa as long as I could stand it and then run back to LA for a while. Then back to Iowa to take care of things. Then to LA. Those were the only times I cared about and remembered -- but yeah, things were changing. Linda had a boyfriend.

I went to Iowa for a longer stretch.

Linda and I stayed in touch. Then we got this insane idea. I had a vacation coming from my job. Let's both get a 15-day Greyhound Bus Pass and traveled.

Yeah, I only thought we were crazy before this. Linda came from LA to Sioux City. We spent a day there and then hit the road heading east. I have a few sharp memories of the trip:

Me pointing out the window and saying, "Look! Cows! Being from LA, I know you never saw such things." Doing that maybe a few too many times.

At one stop, Linda misunderstanding what I said, and when I corrected her as we got on the bus, turning to me and saying "Well, fine. Then the engagement is off!" and handing me one of her rings. That won some amusing reactions. So we repeated it when we loaded onto other buses.

We went to Washington DC, but not anywhere near anything worth seeing. We went to Toronto, which was beautiful, then Quebec, which was foreign, and then back to Toronto where we sat on a bench overlooking the lake and napped in the warm sun. Sleeping at night in a bus between stops was taking a toll. We headed west. Fargo -- the night crew had duct-taped one of their workers to a column. Montana, where one old guy kept asking people if they knew why Butte was named Butte. 'Cause it's on a butte!' he'd says and laugh.

He got off at Butte. We did not.

Montana. Time with some really nice people who took us on a picnic into Glacier National Park.

Pointing out to Linda that we were leaving the town of George in the state of Washington.

Back to LA and a few days there before I went on alone to Sioux City.

Our lives went on. Linda had a daughter. I got married. Linda married and had two boys. We kept in touch, but not as much as before. I took two trips out to LA and visited with her for a while. But our worlds had gone different ways. That was only natural, you know. We couldn't go hiking through LA. I had no reason to run back to LA to escape to my fun life. Email got us in touch again. She talked about her sons, her house, her job. She talked about making quilts. Honestly, I could never imagine her doing anything so normal. Then we both found Facebook and a better way to contact each other. I was devastated when her mother unexpectedly died of a heart attack.

I helped Linda publish a few books through ACOA. Her vampire stories were often just fun.

I had always imagined that as her kids got older, she and I might take one of those nice sedate bus tours to some place and relive our insanity.

I always imagined that we would write more books together.

I never imagined a world without her.

Linda died on March 31, 2018, after a long fight against cancer.

This doesn't do justice to our times together. I just know the world is less for her passing.

Flash Fiction #297: Pets

Professor Truo watched the twelve top students from Starden Station's 312th Unit who had shown an aptitude for learning Ancient Earth systems.  They didn't give him much hope with those blue stripes painted in diagonals across their faces, though this was better than last year's style of dotted faces.  Truo prayed to the gods of fashion that the multiple eyes style never returned.  All those faces filled with blinking eyes had given him nightmares for years.

"Welcome to Late Industrial Age Humanity, Advanced Course." People didn't yell in their enlightened age, and neither did he -- but he could speak loudly when needed.  He had their attention.

Only two eyes each blinked at him.  Cascades of multi-colored hair drifted about their heads so that they'd moved the chairs farther apart.  The students were so apt to change appearance between classes that professors no longer tried to name them or distinguish if they had a gender preference. Professors called them by their chair numbers, and Truo let the scanners tag answers into proper files.

He longed for the old days of electronic education where teacher and student never interacted with each other.  How much he had appreciated those students!

Times had changed. Besides, these twelve were the best of the best. Things could be worse.

"Because you are the highest of the academics in your range, you will attend lectures that will further your understanding of that dark and dramatic time of the Late Industrial Age.  Today, we begin with a look at one aspect of home life that people of our era find incomprehensible.  This is the time of the Fur Children, the Fur Babies ... the golden age of the pets.

"You know that pets came in a wide range from reptiles and snakes to large creatures typically still found in the wilds.  The Fur Children, however, manifested mostly in two compact forms.

"This is an image of a dog and the immature version, called a puppy. This branch of life, which were also called Doggos and Puppers, came in a variety of sizes, colors, and fur types as you see in these holographs.  As you can see in this magnificent set of images, they were often adopted as Fur Children, dressed in human outfits, taken to special parks, and sometimes placed in the same sort of pushed buggies also used for fully human children."

Eyes blinked.  Got wide.  Blinked again.  Truo doubted most of the station's population had ever understood the full range of dog shapes and colors, let alone their place in human society.  They were many generations away from Earth, and even for him, the idea of such creatures, wandering around at according to their whims troubled him. 

"These are cats, and the immature version which is a kitten," he said.  "Cats did not seem to acquire the same range of species names as applied to the Doggos, possibly because they were more independent.  Nonetheless, there are numerous signs that cats too were 'adopted' and dressed as humans and taken out in buggies.

"For many years, archaeologists believed that this aberrant behavior was the result of a drop in the birthrate, and those archaic humans needed the psychological and societal ties of a full family.  They brought such Puppers and Kittens into their homes and pretended to make them human.   This would have been a mass societal lie, accepted by a majority of the population -- but we've seen those illogical concepts before in this time frame.  These people already acclimatized to accept blatant untruths.

"However, in the recent past, a substantial amount of evidence shows that Fur Children were found in homes along with several human children as well as in homes with only a single male or female -- that is, they were present in every type of human home life at the time.  Also, there were a substantial number of households without either human young or Fur Children, and these non-pet homes show no sign of suffering from discrimination.  Also, pets of all sorts were often abandoned and lived wild.

"With these revelations, we are forced to admit that Fur Babies and Fur Children were not required in society.  Yet they grew in number. Yes, Chair Eight?"

"Could it be that these --" Eight waved a hand at the array of antique dressed hologram creatures in the air to the sides of Truo -- "were not alive?"

Looks of appreciation spread to the others.  Eight had just come up in the ranks.

"Excellent question.  In fact, many archaeologists hold to this belief despite obvious signs to the contrary made apparent in the last century of archeology.  There was, for instance, an entire income-base created by the manufacture of special pet foods and they even had their own separate medical system."

"But the cost of medical care in those days...." Chair Two said, eyes staring again at the creatures.

"Exactly, Chair Two.  Like much of the material we have managed to excavate from this age, there seems to be no true logic in these actions.  We live in an age where we understand everything, except the actions of our own ancestors.  It is incomprehensible for us to see how they could adopt these creatures and treat them, despite their limited intelligence, as part of their family unit --"

"But they're cute!"

Truo turned to Chair Three.  He blinked several times. "Cute?"

"Look at those little furry faces and big eyes!  Don't you just want to hug them?  I could never choose between them.  Could you have both?"

"Ummm ... apparently, yes?"

"Wonderful!  I can see them dressed as station crew, prancing down the corridors?"  Others smiled.  "How fun it would be to deal with something that was not always a challenge to your position in life!"

There was no logic to it ... but the Fur Babies finally made sense. 

"I suppose we still have some Pupper and Kitty DNA." Twelve said

Truo suspected they had a class project.  He also thought they were about to change their world.