The COMPLETE Reluctant Adventures of Fletcher Connolly on the Interstellar Railroad: A Comedic Sci-Fi Adventure Read online

  … unless they believe—as I believed myself—that Donal’s lost it. That he no longer has what it takes.

  I don’t believe that anymore. What I see in front of me is a man who’s just very distressed by the whole situation. He feels things more than I do, more than I allow myself.

  That said, he’s clearly had his last straw. We can’t continue on like this.

  Fortunately, we don’t have to.

  “We’ve just got to get back to Arcadia.” I say. “Offload the A-tech and we’ll be laughing all the way to the bank.”

  I throw open the door of the freezer. Suckass’s heat feels like a hug.

  Uznadze is sitting on one of the kitchen counters, shooting the breeze with one of Trigger’s assistants. “Is anyone down at the flitters?” I demand.

  I’m terrified that someone will find Morgan’s body, which is still in the cargo pod of my flitter. They wouldn’t even have to get very close, considering the smell of him.

  “Oh sure, yeah, boss. Toroshelidze keep watch.”

  I have to get down there, I can’t leave it any longer, but now here comes Saul to update us on the progress of the repairs. Harriet’s with him. She brushes past me, straight into the freezer, and the lovelight is burning in her eyes. I must have been blind.

  The repairs are finished, Saul says in his roundabout way. The Captain comes clanking out of the freezer, looking like a skinny snowman, his exoskeleton all coated with frost. “We leave for Arcadia at midnight, ship time,” he announces.

  And then he unzips his exoskeleton.

  It crumples to the kitchen floor, a puddle of A-tech with an angular weld in the middle, and he steps forth like a great baby with hairy legs and stubble. “I’ll just go and tell Penelope,” he says, his voice wavering only a little. “Coming, Fletch?”

  I can’t. I have to go and dispose of Morgan’s body.

  But it’s obvious the Captain needs moral support.

  If I let him go by himself, he might end up giving in to her. Telling her about our find, just to keep her quiet, as he’d see it. And she’d tell GS. I know she talks to them regularly.

  We’ve got no comms with Earth out here, unless we fire a message capsule into orbit and send it skidding along the Railroad all the way back to Arcadia. But once we’re back on Arcadia, there’s the interstellar postal service, only two days round-trip. She could blow the gaff on us before Sakashvili has a chance to arrange the auction. So Donal has to keep quiet.

  Oh, feck. I’d better go with him. Toro-what’s-his-name can stand guard for another few minutes.

  “Sure, I’ll come,” I say, and we head down to the control deck, stopping off along the way for the Captain to put on some clothes.

  CHAPTER 8

  All control decks look like dungeons to me. You can paint ten thousand computers in cheery colors and stick vases of plastic flowers around the place, but it’s still a cavern with ten thousand computers in it. Screens flash and blink, chimes go off, and AI voices say terrifying things such as “Turbine status: Manually shut down due to a boiler feed pump issue.”

  I generally try to forget that we live on top of a 2.3 gigawatt nuclear reactor.

  Of course this stuff is mother’s milk to Penelope. She’s sprawled in her couch when we come in, making numbers dance.

  The instant she sees the Captain, she rolls out of the couch and goes to her knees, head bowed, eyes downcast.

  Penelope is 49, a few years older than us, but being a stacker, she doesn’t look it. Her long slender limbs are milky pale, her baby-doll negligee skims taut cleavage, and her jawline is as fine as the blade of a knife. I can’t help mentally comparing her with Harriet. Guess who loses.

  “How may I serve you, Master?”

  Penelope can talk like an ordinary person over the intercom, but put her face to face with Donal and it’s ‘Master’ this, ‘Master’ that. I’m really not sure about those nootropic drugs they take. Penelope’s whole personality seems like a side-effect.

  “You may get up,” the Captain says.

  She stands up.

  “You may fetch me a beverage.”

  “What kind of beverage, Master?”

  “Ah, iced coffee. And one for Fletch.”

  Ah God no. I don’t want to be drinking iced coffee, I want to transact our business and get out of here, but I know he’s softening her up. I say, “I’ll have mine hot.”

  I’m chilled enough already.

  “He’ll have his hot,” the Captain repeats.

  She moves gracefully to her little kitchenette. Miss Penelope doesn’t eat and drink in the mess with us proles. “Would you like milk and sugar, Master?”

  “Nah, just black.”

  “I’ll have milk and sugar,” I say.

  “He’ll have milk and sugar.”

  “One spoon or two?”

  “Two,” I say.

  “Two,” the Captain repeats.

  “Yes, Master.”

  See what he has to go through? I’d choose Harriet, too, even if she has got a face like the back of a bus.

  When Penelope has served our coffees, Donal just crashes it out. “Penelope, we will be returning to Arcadia at zero hundred hours, ship time.”

  She’s standing in front of us in her ‘servant’ posture, head bowed, hands demurely folded. You can see her true age in those hands. I’m looking at them and so I see the knuckles whiten with shock at the Captain’s announcement. No wonder. We were supposed to explore fifty planets down this spur, or until we found something, and as far as she knows we haven’t.

  But all she says is, “Yes, Master.”

  “Will you be able to get the ship ready for launch?”

  “Yes, Master.”

  “If you need more time, let me know.”

  “Yes, Master.”

  “Is our propellant situation OK, then?”

  “Local foraging has yielded sufficient propellant for an estimated four orbital round trips, Master.”

  By this she means that Saul’s lads have been collecting rainwater and feeding it into the splitter, which gives us hydrogen for the engine.

  “Very good,” the Captain says. Seemingly at a loss, he shuffles his feet, takes a sip of the unwanted iced coffee, puts it down dangerously near a keyboard. I’m trying to telepathically beam at him that our mission is accomplished and we can get out of here now. “Well,” he says.

  The door hisses and Ruby peers around it. “Boy, this place is a mess,” he says, eyes going wide.

  Apart from the fact that he’s not supposed to be in here, he does have a point. Plastic flowers and a cheery paint job are our contributions to the décor, but Penelope has also made her own contributions, e.g. dirty underwear dropped where she took it off, used mugs and crockery laid down wherever she finished with them, cuddly toys, souvenirs, and then there are the dildoes and restraints lying around.

  Ruby ducks under the anti-grav bed, Penelope’s little luxury. Not so little, actually. It’s a king-size, currently hovering near the ceiling. I can’t help cringing as he stops underneath it to pick up an energy bar wrapper.

  “You can leave that, Ruby,” the Captain says. He sticks his jaw out. “What do you want?”

  Ruby straightens up from under the bed. “What’s this I hear about going back to Arcadia?”

  “Ah yes,” the Captain says. “You’ve heard correctly. We are returning to Arcadia.”

  He is shite at this. I wish I hadn’t told him anything. The Butterfly-zillas could have stayed in the freezer until we explored fifty planets out, turned around, and came back, no one any the wiser.

  “Why?” says Ruby, predictably. “There are dozens of worlds still out there to explore!”

  Then the Captain surprises me. He roars at Ruby, “Because I’ve lost six of my men and women, that’s why! I can’t continue this exploration with only two scout groups! Unless you’d like to put together a scout group and lead it yourself, Mr. Ruby? Huh? Would you like to do that?”

  Ruby ph
ysically flinches. “Uh, no. I don’t think, um, I’m not cut out for scouting.”

  “And yet you were assigned to this ship as Deputy A-Tech Scout. Look at Fletch, he’s not afraid to get out there and get his hands dirty when the need arises.”

  Leave me out of it, I think to myself. The whole point of being management is you get to do the easy bits and leave the dirty work to others. On the other hand, it hasn’t really worked out like that recently.

  Ruby shoots me a poisonous look, but decides that hypocrisy is the better part of valor. “Of course I’d be happy to field a new scout group, Captain, if that’s what you think we should do. But can we spare the manpower from ship-crucial operations?”

  “We cannot,” the Captain says. “And that’s why we’re going back to Arcadia! Any more questions?”

  Penelope twitches.

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake say what’s on your mind, Penny!” the Captain snarls. “I mean, you have permission to speak.”

  That’s all she needs. “I have no problem with the change of plan, Donal. You’re the captain and I respect your decisions. But I do have a big fucking problem with your lies!”

  Oh Christ, here it comes—

  But of course, she doesn’t know about any A-tech stashed in the freezer. She’s barking up a different tree entirely. “We’re going back to Arcadia so you can run off with that bridge-and-tunnel guidette!”

  Harriet is an American just like Penelope. What’s a bridge-and-tunnel guidette? Your guess is as good as mine.

  “Penelope, if you’re implying I would ever leave the Skint Idjit, you’re very much mistaken,” the Captain says coldly. “I love this ship. Didn’t I build her with my own hands—”

  “With my money!”

  “If you want your investment back, you can have your investment back!”

  Oh Christ, Donal, SHUT UP! He’s thinking he could return Penelope’s $1,500,000 investment in the Skint Idjit after we auction off the Butterfly-zillas. At the present time we don’t have anything like that kind of money. She knows it and so does Ruby, whose eyes and ears are on stalks.

  “I don’t want my investment back,” Penelope says, suddenly tearful. “All I want is to be treated the way I deserve.”

  I can see it is on the tip of the Captain’s tongue to tell her to get stuffed. But …

  … no stackee, no flyee.

  And so he steels himself to play his role one last time. He steps towards Penelope, takes her by the hair, and swats her across the bottom. “That’s what you deserve for speaking to me like that.”

  “Sorry, Master,” cries Penelope.

  “I’ll make you sorry,” the Captain says grimly, rolling up his sleeves.

  Me and Ruby make a hasty exit. Out in the hatchway, at the foot of the ladder that leads up to the crew deck, our eyes meet. For the first time ever, we are of one mind. “Oh my God,” Ruby says. “That is one hell of an unhealthy relationship.”

  “You’re telling me.” I gesture for him to go first up the ladder.

  “If she’s unhappy, why doesn’t she just quit?”

  “Maybe she will.”

  “I mean, she’s a volunteer. She doesn’t have to be here. I don’t know why anyone volunteers for this shit.”

  “I think it’s a mix of things,” I say. “They see it as sticking up for the little guy, keeping the independents flying, so that the whole exploration industry doesn’t fall into the claws of the investment banks.”

  But even independent ships like the Skint Idjit need funding, of which Jacob Ruby is physical proof. I give him a dirty look, and he blushes. “Activism is a form of narcissism,” he mutters.

  “Maybe, but in Penelope’s case it was mostly that she fell for Donal.”

  And now that she knows he’s cheating on her, maybe she will quit. That’d be the best of all worlds, really. I see the sense of what the Captain suggested, about repaying her investment as soon as we’ve been paid. All the same I can see my share getting smaller and smaller as the (still-theoretical) money gets spread out thinner and thinner. The Georgians, the Captain, and he’ll want to share it with Harriet, and now Penelope, who’s next in line, the fecking ship’s cat? Not that we have one—except for the treecats, which have already cost us a fortune in frozen meat, and Harriet will probably insist on keeping them if the money’s there for it.

  Well, I’ll still have enough for a medium-sized planet, as long as the backers don’t get wind of our discovery. And that means making sure Ruby stays blissfully ignorant.

  “I think I’ll go help Trigger with the supper,” I say.

  There will be a slap-up supper for our last night on Suckass, as is Skint Idjit tradition. Trigger will need to be getting things out of the freezer. I’ll help him with that.

  CHAPTER 9

  T-01H55M and holding. I finally sneak away to bury Morgan.

  Sakashvili is waiting impatiently by the flitters. “All right, you can go,” I say. “Stay off the vodka. I need you to keep an eye on Ruby.”

  “That dumb American. Who care what he do?”

  “If he finds the Butterfly-zillas, we’re toast, idjit. Don’t let him near the freezer. Radio me if he’s acting suspiciously.”

  “Yeah, yeah.” Sakashvili beetles off. He’s pissed that he’s been stuck out here while everyone else was eating and drinking and making merry.

  I know I should have come earlier but it was a great atmosphere, everyone delighted to be leaving Suckass at last, dizzy with relief that the Captain seems to be back to his old self.

  I don’t know what went on in the control room after I left. The Captain looked a bit pale when he emerged, but a dram or two fixed that.

  I check that the flitters hide me from the Skint Idjit. Then I heave Morgan out of my own flitter’s cargo pod.

  If you’ve never handled a corpse that’s been lying for 36 hours in tropical heat, you’ll find this hard to believe, but it’s true: I lose my supper then and there.

  He doesn’t even look like Morgan anymore.

  But he is Morgan and I am bloody well going to give him a decent burial. He should have had 1/3rd of a fortune. Instead he’ll be getting six feet of Suckass. But it is all I can do for him now.

  It seems to take me an hour to reach the treeline. We should have parked closer to the geraniums. Morgan was a big guy and he seems heavier dead than he ever was alive.

  I lay him down under the geraniums and trot back to the flitter for my entrenching tool. My mouth tastes of puke. My shadow stretches before me.

  On any ordinary planet I would have the option of doing this under cover of darkness, but on Suckass, as previously noted, it’s always day. I feel conspicuous. Mercifully, there’s no one in sight except for Sakashvili, attaching his flitter to the cargo winch. I have my radio on, and through the static I hear the skirling of a violin. Good old Captain! I suggested that he might get out his fiddle and give them a bit of a ceili, and it sounds like he’s doing it.

  I attach the entrenching tool to my belt so I can carry that and Morgan at the same time. Peeping out of the shade, I see a group of six flitters circling in to land.

  Scout Group C—the South Africans—is back. That makes everyone. We could theoretically launch any time now.

  Sure enough, Saul’s voice crackles out of my radio: “Resuming countdown. T minus one hour fifty-five minutes.”

  Better get cracking.

  I carry Morgan deeper into the geraniums. It is dim here, amidst the shifting dapples of reddish light. Twenty yards, thirty yards … I’m scared of losing my way. This’ll just have to be good enough.

  I dig.

  It goes fast enough for the first foot or so, but then I hit the roots of the geraniums. These turn out to be as tough as steel. My entrenching tool has an axe edge and an electric saw edge. I start off with the saw edge but it takes too long to saw through each root. The axe works better. I stand with my legs apart, pull it straight back over my head, and swing it straight down. Lift. Swing. Lift. Swing. I fe
el like my dad, swinging an axe on our farm at home. Oh, he wasn’t a farmer. No one farms in Ireland anymore, except for a few boutique dairy operations. But we had an old wooden boat and when it got beyond repair, Dad chopped it up for firewood. I remember being impressed at how smoothly and powerfully he swung the axe. When he finished, he said to me, “Well, I didn’t do a bad job, did I? Maybe it’s in the genes.”

  Maybe it is in the genes. And here I am, the great-grandson of Irish potato farmers, digging a grave for my friend, 2.3 kiloparsecs from Earth. What happened?

  The work is good. Soothing to my soul. I shovel the chopped-up roots and soil out of the hole. Another round of axe work, some more shovelling, and now I’ve got a vaguely rectangular grave about three feet deep. I’d like to go deeper but my arms are shaking, sweat’s pouring off me, and I decide this’ll do.

  “Come on, Morgan, in you go.” I tumble him into the hole.

  Leaning on my entrenching tool, I feel like I should say something, but I don’t know what, apart from sorry. Sorry you aren’t coming with us, Morgan. When I get my planet, I’ll name a continent after you.

  “T minus forty-five minutes. Propellant level sensor checks complete,” says Saul on the radio.

  This can’t be all. There has to be something more.

  I fold my dirty hands in an attitude of prayer, and begin haltingly: “In the name of our Lord, may his soul rest in peace, and, uh …”

  “Idjit, that’s not it.”

  The Captain’s voice spins me around. He’s stomping through the trees, wearing his party gear—Wranglers and a short-sleeved cowboy shirt with pearl buttons.

  “You need to be on board for the countdown,” I snap.

  “I just want to say goodbye to him. I was the one that offered him the bloody job. He wouldn’t have been here otherwise.”

  Donal is carrying his violin.

  “Are you going to play that?”

  “I thought about it.”

  “I can’t remember a fecking thing about funerals.”