I was rooting through my old files and found the little short-short I wrote for the Odyssey Slam and realized that Millennium Potion readers would probably enjoy it, so I’ll just post it on my blog. I used Dallas and Millennium Potion because I was tired of writing dark, negative stuff, and I was desperate (this was written approx 6 hours before the Slam story was due) to produce something I could use. Here ’tis. 900 words. Read ‘em and weep. (Well, no, not really. I hope you laugh a little. Or at least crack a smile…)
Final Flight of the Bloody Mary
By Sara King
Dallas stared at the captain’s console and couldn’t stop grinning. “It’s all mine?”
“It’s haunted,” Admiral Wiston said again. His voice was a small, yet distracting presence in the back of her head. In fact, it sounded a lot like the voice that nagged her whenever she was about to pull another set of questionable flight maneuvers at high speeds through the ‘Tope’s shipyards.
Dallas began petting the chrome trim along the edges of the instrument panel. A ship of her own. Nobody to tell her to slow down, nobody to yell at her after she’d brought the vessel safely to port. Her own crew, her own orders, her own way…everything she’d ever wanted since she’d been a little girl, when she’d spent her free time crashing toy blocks together on her nursery floor.
“I’ll take it.”
Admiral Wiston touched her elbow. “Just stop and listen to me a moment. It’s haunted, Captain Kay. Drove its last three captains completely batty. Two of them are undergoing psych treatment on Eriod. A third became a violent alcoholic. The service discharged him under the condition that he remain under house arrest for the next five years.”
“Uh-huh,” Dallas said. Her eyes snagged on a round depression in the captain’s armrest. “Oh my God. Is that a cupholder?”
When he didn’t respond, Dallas looked up at him. Admiral Wiston was staring at her. “I don’t think you understand the implications of your situation.”
What pretty red carpet, Dallas thought. I wonder if that’s why it’s called the Bloody Mary.
Admiral Wiston continued to talk– –a quiet nasal whine dampened by the glorious shine of the captain’s console. She only caught the end of it. “…you must have really ticked off someone back at command. I highly recommend that you do not accept this assignment.”
She grinned at the cushy captain’s chair. “Hey, that looks like real leather.”
Admiral Wiston looked at the chair and flinched. “You don’t want to sit in that chair. Last time somebody–”
Dallas sank into the chair and sighed. “Feels great.”
Admiral Wiston paused, then continued, “–was stupid enough to sit in that chair, they ended up vomiting blood. They use that one, over there.” He pointed to a tri-legged stool someone had bolted to the floor.
Dallas looked over her shoulder and winced at it. The hard steel seat looked extremely uncomfortable. “Why would anyone use that when there’s a perfectly good one right here?”
Admiral Wiston stared at her. The silence stretched out to uncomfortable proportions. Then, with a smile, he said, “I’m sure you’ll do just fine, Captain Kay. Let me know if you need anything before you leave port.”
Dallas beamed at her new ship. “Okay, thanks.”
#
Two years later.
Dallas shrieked above a haze of smoke and noise. “Someone get him to the infirmary! Fischer, take his place on the guns. West, get me our new trajectory. Gaben, get me a damage report, then find my idiot copilot and get him in here.”
Dallas ran her fingers along the console, trying to even out their wobble. It was difficult, with only half her stabilizers still attached. She had to fire a number of calculated counter-blasts from her docking equipment in order to control the spin.
BEEP, BEEP, BEEP, BEEP…
“And someone turn off that alarm!” Dallas cried.
She was so engrossed in correcting their spin that Dallas didn’t realize her crew wasn’t following directions until she looked up to find out why the alarm was still going.
Her crew was standing in a semicircle of shocked silence.
Ventana– –who had been gouged and bleeding by shrapnel only a moment before– –now stood beside her security officer, eating a doughnut. He had a hand over his face and was looking off to his left, hiding a grin.
The rest of her crew was half-turned from their stations, giving her the same look they would give a dying circus clown.
Even though the alarm continued to sound in her head, Dallas said, “There’s no rebel warship, is there?”
Everyone on the bridge shook their heads.
Dallas sighed and dropped her hands away from the flashing red-orange controls, reclining in the captain’s chair to the creak of leather. She put a hand over her eyes, ignored the hiss of escaping oxygen and the continuous shaking and sudden rumbles as missiles exploded against the hull.
“Idiot copilot, eh?” Randy said, sitting down in the chair beside her. He was grinning from ear to ear.
Dallas gave him a dark look from under her fingers.
“Well, at least that one was quick,” Randy said. “Maybe it’s giving up.” He swung his head far to one side.
Randy’s head continued to swivel in a circle until it came back to face her from the opposite direction, a scarlet glow in his gaze.
“Maybe,” Dallas said. She closed her eyes again. “Everyone else doing O.K.?”
“I will eat your soul,” Randy rumbled in a thousand voices. He cackled.
“Pardon?” Dallas said.
“I’ll check,” Randy said. He shook his head. “Thank God this mission’s almost over. I can’t wait to get outta here. At least the ghost only haunts the captain–I can only imagine how bad you wanna jump ship.”
“Are you kidding?” Dallas reached out and stroked the console. “This baby just needs someone who understands her.” The console bit her hand and she kicked it with her foot until it let go. She smiled at Ryu. “See? It’s a great ship.”
:D
-Sara King
http://www.kingfiction.com/
Proud Graduate of Odyssey ‘08
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