Galaxy Cruise: The Maiden Voyage Read online

  Varlowe dropped a hand on his shoulder, pinning him down. “Leo, I’d like to introduce you to Rip Skardon.”

  “Admiral Rip Skardon,” the man growled.

  “Retired,” Varlowe noted. “He’s been with my family’s cruise line since he left the service.”

  Leo nodded. “Hello, sir. It’s been awful to meet you. Goodbye.”

  He tried to leave, but Varlowe’s grip tightened. “Stay.” She spoke to Leo, but her eyes remained locked on Skardon’s. “We value your company.”

  “Well, I don’t want to be a bother,” Leo said. “Or collateral damage.”

  Skardon looked Leo’s body up and down as if he were planning the best way to disassemble it. “I never thought I’d see the day when a member of the WTF executive board would be caught fraternizing with this kind of vermin.” His voice was like hot steam roiling from a furnace on the verge of explosion. “I demand you return to the Opulera before you further sully your family’s name with this hairy—”

  “Oh lighten up, Skardon, before you pop a gel sac.” Varlowe plucked the champagne off the bar. “I’m sure you’ll love Leo once you get to know him. Why don’t you have a drink with us?”

  “I will not,” Skardon said, eyeing the bottle. “The last time I tasted American swill it made me so sick I nearly died.”

  Varlowe nodded. “Then we’ll make yours a double.” She turned to the bartender. “Hey, can we get some glasses over—”

  Skardon ripped the champagne from her hand and roared, “Enough of this nonsense!”

  He raised his massive arm and hurled it to the floor. In an instant too brief for any living thing to register, a number of things happened. As the bottle left Skardon’s hand, a tiny snap of his wrist caused it to flip in the air, doing a full 180 before it hit the deck. If it had impacted at an angle of just ten more degrees it would have shattered. Or five more degrees. Or one and a quarter. But the bottle landed directly on its cork, completely perpendicular to the floor. The spongy material compressed as it absorbed the entire force of Skardon’s enraged throw. In that moment, the carbonated fizz of the beverage rapidly expanded against the stopper, popping it out and launching the glass upwards like a booze-powered rocket.

  The bottle blasted straight up and smashed clean through one of the rusted pipes hanging from the ceiling. With a piercing squeal, a cloud of pressurized pink gas vented into the room. Skardon looked up at the damage just in time for the falling bottle to clock him on the cranium with a comical ponk that folded him like a deck chair.

  The singing glacier’s watery eyes rolled to the ruptured pipe. “Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaa…”

  “Gas leak!” a lizard screamed. “Let’s get the huck out of here!”

  Leo didn’t have to be told. He had already bolted three steps toward the exit the instant Skardon’s unconscious body hit the floor. But just as he was about to cross into the corridor, a heavy, airtight metal slab fired from the ceiling and slammed into place in the doorway.

  “Gas leak detected,” a pleasant electronic voice intoned. “Compartment sealed for guest safety.”

  “Safety?” Leo shrieked, pounding on the door. “How is this safe?”

  Pink vapor billowed around him, burning his eyes and choking his lungs with the stench of petrochemicals and rotting fish. The sounds of various beings coughing and squealing and thrashing in agony filled the cotton-candy cloud.

  “… aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaas,” the glacier said.

  “Help!” a voice screeched. “Gahdamn it! Somebody help me!”

  Leo furiously blinked his watering eyes and spotted the Krubb bartender on top of the bar, hopping on his tiny, insectile legs. Both long, spindly arms were extended overhead, but he couldn’t quite reach the big red shutoff valve on the ruptured pipe.

  “I’m on it!” Leo shouted.

  He darted across the lounge and sprang onto a barstool. Unfortunately, it was the barstool designed for tails. The moment his shoe hit the slick plastic his leg plunged through the funnel, dropping one foot through the stool, one foot to the side of it, and his testicles squarely upon its edge. He howled and tried to catch his balance against the bar, but only managed to tumble forward and splash his head into the fishbowl of garnish slugs. He sucked a startled breath, and the burning in his lungs was momentarily extinguished as they filled with briny water.

  “Leeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee,” the glacier said.

  With a spluttering snort Leo jerked upright. The bowl caught on his skull as he lurched back, spilling its contents over his body as it settled over his head like an old-timey diving helmet. He windmilled his arms and tried to catch his balance with one leg firmly rammed through a stool that made it five inches longer than the other.

  Each staggering step punched him in the groin as he clomped through the crowd. Some of the aliens were still writhing and screaming, others lay sprawled unconscious on the floor. Leo’s hands banged impotently against the fishbowl as he tried to wipe the toxins from his clenched eyes. In a desperate attempt to dislodge the stool, he raised his trapped leg and spun himself around. All he managed to do was take out two cat people and a sentient eggplant before blindly smashing the stool into the window.

  With a squeal like cracking ice, the wounded glass shattered and blasted outward as the lounge’s pressurized atmosphere vented explosively into the vacuum of space. Leo cursed and tried to shield himself as bottles and pint glasses sailed through the air and pelted him on their way out.

  “… eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee…” the glacier said.

  Leo lurched forward and grabbed a railing around a raised seating area as the howling wind lifted his feet and pulled his body parallel to the ground. With a sharp rip, the stool yanked free of his leg and flung itself through the window, taking his pants and one shoe along with it.

  Before he could lament the loss of his trousers, Leo’s fishbowl helmet was peppered with a hail of mangled flowers. He twisted his head inside the clouded globe to see Varlowe clinging to the edge of the bar, screaming and thrashing as the rushing air ripped the blossoms from her horn crown. Her thumb slipped, leaving her dangling by three slender fingers. Leo gasped. Freaky alien or not, she didn’t deserve to die like this.

  “Hold on!” Leo shouted. “I’m coming!”

  He gritted his teeth and strained as he flexed his biceps and tried to pull himself toward the railing. He did not get closer. At all. “Dang, I gotta start working out.”

  With a shriek that barely carried in the thinning atmosphere, Varlowe lost her grip and flipped end-over-end across the lounge toward the ravenous, sucking maw of outer space.

  “No!” Leo screamed.

  He made a desperate grab as her body whiffed past him, but only managed to lose his own grasp. His scream echoed in the fishbowl as he sailed backwards toward certain death.

  Just as Varlowe was about to enter the deadly void, a heavy, airtight metal door fired from the top of the window and slammed into place in the empty frame. She hit it face-first with a grisly thwack. Half a second later Leo hit it feet-first and dropped on top of her like a pro wrestler throwing a body slam.

  “Hull breach detected,” a pleasant electronic voice intoned. “Compartment sealed for guest safety.”

  Leo pushed himself upright and gasped for air as overhead vents replenished the lost atmosphere. Across the room, the Krubb bartender hung limply from a claw, still gripping the closed valve in the ruptured pipe. Beings twitched and gagged on the floor, but the toxic pink gas was gone, sucked safely into space.

  “… eeaaaaaaaaak,” the glacier said.

  Leo coughed and rolled off the cruise boss’s bony body. “Varlowe!” He lifted her head and looked into her metallic eyes. They were cold and empty, completely bereft of any sign of life. As usual. Leo waved a hand in front of them. “Hello? Are you like… alive?”

  With a sharp hiss, the emergency door sealing the archway to the corridor shot upward, vomiting five armored security troopers into the lounge. Their
heads swiveled as the featureless black masks of their helmets assessed the situation. With tensed reflexes, each of them drew a stun pistol and pointed it at Leo’s head.

  “Freeze, you filthy mammal!” one shouted. “Unhand that woman!”

  “Wait!” Leo leapt to his feet and raised his palms as he backed away. “I can explain everything!”

  The guards’ weapons squealed with building charge. “You’ve got two seconds!”

  Leo was pantless and soaking wet with a cracked fishbowl over his head and confused purple slugs slowly migrating across his face. At his feet was the limp, apparently lifeless body of the heiress president of the Waylade Tour Fleet, bleeding profusely from a broken horn on her forehead. He cleared his throat.

  “It’s actually going to take much longer than that.”

  A sizzle of pure electric agony blazed through Leo’s body as all five guards fired their weapons.

  Chapter Two

  The next morning, Leo’s joints were stiff from a night spent cramped in a dog kennel between a snoring centipug and a farting lymphound. He had been happy when his captors had hauled him out of his cage, but less happy when they’d stuck a gun in his back and marched him through the public promenade of the Jaynkee Spacedock.

  “What’s happening?” he asked. “Where are you taking me?”

  “We’ll be the ones asking the questions, fur turkey!”

  Leo scrutinized the two security guards shoving him down the corridor. Their armor blotted out their forms and shielded their faces. Aliens gathered in the concourses chortled and hid their children’s eyes as Leo was paraded past them wearing only one shoe and zero trousers. He tried in vain to pull his T-shirt down over his tighty-whities.

  “Fine! Then ask me a question!” he squeaked. “Let’s clear this up so I can go home!”

  “Shut your gahdamn tooth hole!” a guard barked. “The only place you’re going is the Opulera.” He shoved Leo into the gangway tunnel leading to the Ba’lux cruise liner. “Apparently they want to deal with you themselves after what you did in the Exhaust Port Lounge last night.”

  “I didn’t do anything! I swear!”

  Desperate as he sounded, it was true. He hadn’t done anything. And that’s exactly what he’d tell them. He was just an innocent human rodent minding his own business when a string of comic mishaps led to him standing over the dead body of the wealthy and powerful heiress of the Waylade Tour Fleet.

  Oh, he was so screwed.

  The guards hustled him all the way to a suite high at the top of the immense ship. The wall between the corridor and the room was an expanse of glass, as was the opposite wall between the room and space, creating the ambiance of an aquarium perched on a windowsill on a starry night. In the far distance, Eaglehaven glittered like a jewel. In the close distance, a meeting was in progress inside the darkened room.

  A nervous-looking Ba’lux man stood in front of a large holoscreen, presenting a slideshow. His grim expression and the graph labeled “Waylade Tour Fleet - Financial Report” with its downward plunging arrow told the whole story.

  A baroque conference table was circled by high-backed chairs. In one was a sour-faced Ba’lux woman, identified by a gold nameplate as Noxi Kersa, Hospitality Chair. Next to her was a man Leo recognized with a surge of panicked terror.

  Retired Admiral Rip Skardon leaned on the table, drumming his three heavy fingertips on the wood. He seemed unscathed by the incident in the karaoke lounge, save for a swollen, champagne-bottle-induced bump over one eye.

  The guards shoved open the doors and hauled their prisoner into the dimly lit room. Noxi Kersa gnashed her teeth. “What is the meaning of this interruption?”

  Skardon looked from the holoscreen to Leo and his empty eyes went wide. “You!” he roared. “How dare you show your face on this ship after what you did!”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about! I didn’t do it! It was an accident! I’m so sorry! You can’t prove anything!”

  Leo lurched for the door, but the guards grabbed him and turned him back around.

  “I apologize for the intrusion, sir,” a guard said. “We got a call down in animal quarantine. We were told to bring it here.”

  Kersa crossed her brawny arms. “You most assuredly were not. None of us requested that disgusting American.”

  “Actually, one of us did.”

  All eyes turned toward the chair at the end of the table as its occupant leaned forward into the light. The slender orange woman wore a gauzy yellow dress under a long cardigan and a green apron. An enormous purple bruise stained the crown of her head, and a blob of hardened blue medi-gel clung to her scalp around the base of a horn.

  “Varlowe!” Leo gasped. “You’re alive!”

  “Yes, I am.” She smiled her piranha grin. “Thanks to you.”

  The twitchy man giving the slideshow gestured at Leo. “I’m sorry, who is this creature?”

  “He’s a hero,” Varlowe said breathily.

  “He’s a saboteur,” Skardon said simultaneously.

  “He is no such thing!” they shouted in unison.

  Skardon banged a heavy fist on the table. “This terrorist rodent initiated a chemical gas attack upon us and an entire lounge full of innocent travelers!”

  Leo cringed as every empty, copper eye turned to him. “Um, okay, that’s not entirely accurate.”

  Varlowe leaned back in her chair. “Oh stuff it, Skardon. We both know that isn’t what happened.”

  “Thank you,” Leo said.

  “When you broke that pipe, Leo was the only one in the room calm enough to take action,” Varlowe said. “While the rest of us were freaking out, he executed a brilliant plan to vent the toxic gas into space.” She glared at Skardon. “Neither of us would have survived without his quick thinking and bravery. We both owe him a blood debt.”

  Leo considered it and shrugged. “That’s not entirely accurate either, but I’m gonna go with that one.”

  A low growl sounded menacingly in Skardon’s throat. “I owe no debt to this disgusting, hairy thing.” His eyes stayed locked on Varlowe as he spoke to the guards. “Have this criminal disposed of.”

  Armored hands clamped on Leo’s arms, squeezing out a startled squeak.

  “He’s not a criminal. He’s our guest of honor. Let him go.” Varlowe waved a hand at the officers. “You are dismissed.”

  They released Leo with a shove and closed the doors on the way out. Leo stood awkwardly in the dim light of the screen, twisting his bare legs. “Uh, you guys don’t happen to have any spare pants, do you?”

  Kersa ignored him as she turned to Varlowe. “Madame President, for what purpose have you summoned this…” she waved a hand at Leo. “This?”

  “He is the key to turning our fortunes around,” Varlowe said pointedly. She stood up, crossing to the holoscreen presentation. As she passed, she pulled off her knee-length cardigan and handed it to Leo. “Please, have a seat.”

  Leo stuffed his arms into the sleeves and stumbled toward the empty chair next to Kersa. She bared her teeth with a low, guttural growl. “Okay, yeah. So…” He took a step away from the table. “You know, it’s probably actually better if I just hang back over here.”

  He quickly fastened the sweater as he ducked into a corner next to a large planter with a decorative purple-fronded palm tree. Lanky as he was, Varlowe’s tailored garment barely stretched around him, leaving bulging keyholes of his T-shirt and hairy thigh pushing between the buttons. Kersa held him in her murderous gaze for a long moment before turning away. Leo perched on the edge of the planter and let out a tiny sigh of relief. He sucked it back in hard enough to pop a button when something grunted at his side.

  An ornate wooden wheelchair was parked in the shadows next to the tree. And in the chair was the most ancient Ba’lux Leo had ever seen. She seemed less like a person and more like a deflated pile of orange meat. Her forearms rested on the arms of her seat, the sagging flesh
hanging over both sides like soft dough. The copper domes of her eyes were dull and matte, and the skin of her scalp hung loose around the cracked points of her horn crown, revealing yellowed crescents of exposed skull.

  “Oh, hello,” Leo said. He gestured to the planter. “I’m sorry, was this seat taken?”

  The old lady just frowned and let out a short, wet fart. Leo scooched to the far side of the pot and pressed against the wall. Up at the front of the room, Varlowe strolled past the panoramic windows that separated them from space. The docks sprawled into the distance behind her, bustling with traffic. She gestured to the holoscreen and its dismal graph.

  “It’s no secret that WTF Cruises has been on the decline for some time now,” she announced. “Back in the day, we used to be considered the gold standard of space tourism, but in recent years, we’ve lost our edge. Our guests have moved on. If we’re going to survive, we need to take drastic action.”

  “For once we agree,” Skardon said. “The only way out of this downturn is through aggressive expansion. That’s why I’ve created a plan to build new luxury spaceports across the Four Prime Systems, giving us total dominance of the galaxy’s tourism infrastructure.” He grinned eagerly. “We’ll smother the competition to extinction and ascend to our rightful place as rulers of the deep-space cruising industry.”

  Kersa pounded the table. “Hear, hear!”

  “Pfft, you two are so basic,” Varlowe snorted. “Typical Ba’lux, thinking the solution to every problem is balls-out imperialism.”

  Skardon snuffed and flattened the broad satin lapels of his vestments. “At least we respect our culture. We haven’t turned our back on three millennia of custom and tradition for a ridiculous, tasteless fad. Unlike some people.”

  A derisive chortle of agreement clucked from Kersa’s throat as she eyed Varlowe’s wardrobe. The president’s bony cheeks burned red with anger.

  “That attitude is offensive and uncalled for,” Varlowe growled. “Just because they are from a different culture, it doesn’t make my ceremonial robes any less valid than yours.” She reverently stroked her green apron, tracing her fingers across the round pictogram on its chest. The stark black and white image showed a two-tailed mermaid wearing a crown with a single star at its center. “This is an ancient symbol of my spirituality, and I will not have you disrespect it.”