The Chronicles of Clyde: Ghost Ship Read online

  The Chronicles of Clyde

  Ghost Ship

  By

  F.E. Arliss

  Many thanks to my stalwart editors, Haskell Erwin and Lea Walker

  Table of Contents

  Chapters:

  1)Out of Here

  2)Who Am I?

  3)Living Up to the Names

  4)Arrival

  5)Reality Bites

  6)Sitting Ducks

  7)Weapons and Worry

  8)Short Memories

  9)Chivalry

  10)Consigned to Clyde.3

  11)Left for Dead

  12)Life Goes On

  13)Houston We Have a Ghost

  14)Alien Avalanche

  15)The Enemy of Our Enemy Is Our Friend

  16)Course Correction

  17)Osmirian Audience

  18)Mine Trolls

  19)The Plan Unfolds

  20)Deja Vu

  21)Digging Deeper

  22)Mirage

  23)Hung Out to Dry

  24)Tanked

  25)Keep Your Friends Close

  26) Signed, Sealed, Delivered

  27)Mirage Morphed

  28)Idolum Experiment

  Chapter One

  Out of Here

  Lavender Mullens had always been taught to be polite. She was done with that. So far, polite had gained her a lousy husband, a low paying job, a boss that was an idiot, and a harping set of in-laws that always wanted something. Usually, that ‘something’ involved money or hard labor. She wasn’t doing any of that anymore. Lavender wasn’t afraid of hard work, but she wasn’t doing it to help other people get ahead anymore . She was going to do it for herself.

  As a matter of fact, she’d filed divorce papers on her pig of a husband. Really, David was a pig. Since they’d married ten years ago, at the way-too-young age of 22, the guy had grown a beer belly and a beard. Just the sight of his wobbly-fat belly, covered in sparse sweaty-hair, was enough to make her want to vomit.

  She supposed she’d never loved him, or for that matter, even liked him much. Honestly, she’d been young and easily molded. Her mother had liked him. That was the thing. She’d wanted to please her mom. She’d wanted to please everyone back then. Now, she didn’t really care that much. Too many years of being worked hard, rarely complimented, and forgotten until people wanted something, had caused Lavender to decide that she was done with all of that.

  Then there was the beard. Beards were a ‘thing’ right now. You’d think he could at least have braided the horrible scraggly thing into a cool Viking weave with beads. The guy at the comm depot at work had a huge beard, but he combed and oiled his and it looked really good. Could David be bothered to comb and oil his? No, of course not, his was just a wild sprawl of coarse, wiry hair with stains down the sides of his mouth from the ‘chew’ he’d started using to give him energy at work.

  Frankly, if he’d just move his lazy ass off the couch at night to help her with the house and mow some grass, he might have gotten a little exercise and been able to get through a shift at the factory without the disgusting wad of brown, shit-looking-stuff poked into the side of his mouth like a horrifically obese chipmunk.

  Her mother would be appalled if she knew what Lavender really thought about her, David’s parents and David. She be even more appalled when she found out that Lavender was not only divorcing David, she was leaving the entire planet behind. It was now or never, as far as Lavender was concerned. She was 32 years old, still fit and attractive, and with her brown hair now cropped into a supermodel’s short angled cut, she was a knock-out. Lavender had always been athletic and that was now paying off.

  She wanted a life of adventure and reward. If she died getting it, so be it. It had to be better than just hanging around on an over-crowded planet with a bunch of crooked bureaucrats milking the life out of Earth and her people. Or for that matter, her husband and his family milking the life out of her. Though if the reports were correct, and of course David’s family and her mother said they weren’t, there were only a few more months to go before the planet went into anaphylactic shock and started dying in a spectacular cascade effect of radiation poisoning. They had never been right about anything and she wasn’t going to start trusting them now.

  She’d signed a three-year contract to be a general laborer on one of the far-flung mining asteroids in the newly discovered ‘jeweled belt’ on the far side of UZ627. Affectionately called Uzi by its inhabitants, UZ627 was the new ‘Earth’ a million light-years away. Found by accident when a space rover went off course after having been impacted by an asteroid, Uzi was a new world almost identical in composition to Earth.

  A few years after the first colonization project went out to Uzi, they’d discovered the asteroid belt. It was full of huge quantities of unidentified minerals that had promising uses. Many cutting edge scientific manufacturing programs were fighting viciously to get their hands on these rare and possibly priceless minerals. Even the Intergalactic Guard had been introduced to some uses for the new minerals by an alien species they’d met in these new explorations, and wanted to grab some for themselves as well.

  The world was changing...well, the universe or universes, were changing. Nothing was as it had been, and Lavender wasn’t going to wait around doing nothing like the rest of her head-in-the-sand family and friends. That was the only good thing to come out of this 10-year joke of a marriage. David had taught her to drive all manner of heavy equipment, trucks, motorcycles, hover-cars, and zero-G lifters. That was her ticket out of the marriage and off the planet.

  Lavender had gone to the DMV and gotten licensed for every type of equipment it was possible to test for. With those licensures in hand, she had a future.

  One of the new species was an aquatic species called the Gatekans. Their planet, Gateca, was a water world. They looked a bit like up-right octopi with long rubbery arms and legs and bulbous heads with large eyes. They could come out of the water and converse on land for a time, but eventually, they had to get in the water again for survival.

  One of the requirements of the contract for equipment operators had been that they needed to be able to swim to an appropriate degree to pass a ‘water proficiency’ test in case contract-work took them to Gateca. Lavender had spent hours working out and then sitting on the bottom of the community pool to increase her lung capacity. She’d also taken a series of swimming lessons that David had constantly poked fun at. He had not been complimentary about her appearance in her swimsuit either. Jerk!

  Although, over the course of the continued workouts, swimming lessons and bottom-sitting exercises, Lavender had lost almost twenty pounds and was looking incredibly fit. Now David complimented her in her suit and tried to put his beefy paws all over her. Ack! No! Get off you big oaf, was all she could think.

  She’d been saving money secretly for the last three years, waiting for this day to come. Her family would have been appalled at sweet, malleable Lavender’s ruthless plan. It was here now, and though her palms were sweaty and she was nervous, nothing was going to stop her. Lavender, grimly determined, thumped the button on her slender personal tablet and sent the finalized divorce decree to her husband, the courts, her mother and David’s family all at once. Thank God they didn’t require agreement of the parties anymore. You could just shuck a husband like you were taking out the trash.

  Originally, she’d wondered why David didn’t just divorce her if he thought she was so plain, fat and unattractive. Then it dawned on her...she wasn’t plain. She wasn’t fat. She worked hard and kept a clean house, clean clothes for them and food ready on the table.

  She was a programmed humanoid drone that did housework, brought in a wage as an office
manager at the local National Property Registry headquarters and submitted to sex occasionally out of guilt. If he’d had to purchase those services, she’d have been worth a fortune. When that thought had dawned on Lavender, she’d set down and figured out what her services had been worth over the years. She’d submitted that bill, along with a bill for sexual services, with the divorce decree to the courts several hours earlier. Sex work was a legitimate career now, and by George, she was getting paid for the time she’d put in on her back under that fat cretin.

  It was sad how much she’d come to despise David. Since she’d never really loved him, she supposed that was normal. In a way, she felt sorry for him. He’d been a decent looking fellow when he was younger. Now, ten years later, he’d be lucky to find any woman that was even halfway presentable, let alone a beautiful babe like herself.

  Lavender also sent a copy of the withdrawal slip she’d used to take the ‘billed services’ amount out of their joint retirement savings at the bank. Having checked with the local ‘free attorney’ that what she planned was legal, Lavender blocked all comms to her family and David on her tablet, tossed it into the ‘crusher’ posted at the entrance to the recruitment station, then walked towards the hover-bus that waited for new recruits to transport them to the shipping and equipment operators federation. She was out of here!

  Chapter Two

  Who Am I?

  Lavender’s stomach flipped as the thrusters that had helped them burst through Earth’s atmosphere disengaged from the shuttle. Left now to forge ahead into space on their own power, she went to settle into her new quarters. Lavender was very happy with her bunk-mate, Judy Lippen, another Midwest girl bent on getting away from an overworked life on the family farm. Sons still had it easier, they were just expected to work the fields, they didn’t have to have babies and clean house all at the same time. When Judy had explained why she was onboard, Lavender could only smile and nod. She knew exactly what Judy was talking about! No one would believe these old-fashioned ideas still held sway in midwestern 24th century Earth!

  Now they were sitting in a ‘new recruit’ seminar and staring at each other over the top of a small polymere, fold-down table. Recruits were arranged around the walls of the narrow conference room in groups. They’d been extensively briefed on the new ways government worked on Uzi and were all trying to come up with new names. Yes, new names!

  It seemed that the government on Uzi appreciated the fact that some of them would want to reincarnate themselves into a new person. It was a fresh start on life. The recruits who wanted to retain their own names had been released for the day. Those of them that wanted a clean slate, were arranged in pairs trying to come up with the right name for themselves in this new life.

  So far, Lavender and Judy had simply stared at each other. Finally, Lavender said, “Well, who do we want to be? I want to be the antithesis of what I was,” she stated firmly. “I’ve got no intention of being the tranquilizing effect that my name represents. ‘Lavender’ for Pete’s sake. I’m like a tonic for other people’s ailments. It’s revolting.”

  “I want to be strong enough to stand up for myself and a great cook,” Judy said. “This signing on for Uzi was the first thing I’ve ever done for myself. Mom backed me up, though Dad was really mad. Mom said if I stayed on Earth I’d be old before my time because of pollution and hard work. Better to take a chance on Uzi or the mining asteroids. Better to cook for a high wage, than to cook for free for a bunch of people who take me for granted. That’s what Mom said,” Judy sighed forlornly. “I miss her so much already.”

  Judy had signed on as a cook. She’d been in awe when Lavender had informed her that she’d been accepted as an ore-hauling pilot and loader, with approvals for the water planet of Gateca and had passed tests for several different types of equipment operator licenses. “Oh my gosh!” Judy had squealed. “You could go anywhere and do all kinds of cool stuff. I’m stuck as a cook!”

  She’d brightened into a radiant smile when Lavender had assured her that everyone and everywhere needed a cook. It was just a fact. People ate.

  Staring at each other now over the names they’d written on the tablet in front of them, neither Lavender nor Judy had a good name. They’d tried all sorts of odd names and the names of people who they admired and none seemed to fit. Finally, Judy said, “I think we need to just use our old names, but in a different way. I’m Judy Lippen. If I use most, or part of my old name I could be...Jud Pippen; YJ Nili; Penni Jud, or something like that. What do you think?” she asked Lavender.

  She continued, “Lavender Mullen could be something like...Venla Lume; Darla Nell; Ellen Derven…,” she trailed off. “What do you think?”

  “I like the name Penni for you,” Lavender admitted. “It suits you. Do you like it?”

  “Ummm, yeah, I do. Ok, so Penni...what?” Judy asked.

  “How about Penni Jude?” Lavender asked. “It kinda has a ring to it. Or you could be Penni Pippen. That’s a name no one would forget when asking for the best chef in three universes,” she added with a grin at Judy. “Let’s plan big. You’re a chef, not a cook. You want a name people can remember!”

  Smiling hugely, Penni threw back her head and laughed. “I love it. Chef Penni Pippen rides the galaxy! Thank you, Lavender, for coming up with it. I love it!”

  “Actually, you came up with it,” Lavender said with a laugh. “You just didn’t put it together.”

  “Now we need your name,” Penni added. “What are your big dreams? Remember, no backing down to mediocrity. This is our big chance to change our lives and other people’s perceptions of us. So, go big, or go home! That’s what my mom would have said,” she added soulfully, clearly fighting down grief. Many people said that the ‘cascade effect’, a watershed moment when a chain-reaction of radioactive poisoning began the planet’s death, was not going to happen. If it did, Penni would lose her mom. It was a heartbreaking possibility.

  Lavender nodded, “I agree. I want to live a life of adventure. I want to be a terrific pilot and go to new planets and meet new species. I want to have a wonderful life of friends and discovery. That’s the kind of name I need...daring and memorable.”

  “Ok, so we’ve got Lavender Mullen. If we look at all the configurations we can make, we’ll come up with something,” Penni added.

  “I am so NOT an Ellen,” Lavender said. “Or a Darla for that matter. On the other hand, I’d quite like to be Dare. Like a ‘dare’, because this is what this new life is about...daring to be more. Yep, let’s do that. Ok, Dare...what? I want to feel like I can do anything,” she added with a sigh. “I don’t want to feel limited ever again.”

  “Well then, I think we’ve got it all,” said Penni, with a shy grin. “Coming out here was a dare. But you don’t want to have to ‘dare’ ever again. You want to have nothing to lose, to have everything at your feet, right?” Penni asked, wrinkling her nose in inquiry.

  “Yeah, I guess that’s pretty much it. Seems like a lot to ask, doesn’t it?” Lavender sighed.

  “So don’t ask,” Penni said firmly. “State it. As your name...Daer Null. We can leave the ‘e’ off of dare, and add it before the ‘r’, so it’s not so obvious,” she added, with a grin. “Though anyone with half a brain will get it, maybe,” she added giggling. “You aren’t daring anything...you’re taking the universes by storm, Daer Null!”

  Lavender started laughing, too. It felt good to laugh for a change. “I can’t be Daer Null, it’s a ridiculous name!” Lavender protested.

  “Like Penni Pippen isn’t?” Penni giggled, raising her eyebrows. “It is ridiculous. But it’s also memorable and friendly. It will be a great name for marketing my cooking skills. You know it’s true,” she added, glaring at a still laughing Lavender. “Daer Null, sounds awesome! It’s like a superhero name. You’ve got to keep it!” Penni wailed.

  If this name could make her laugh, make her feel happy and powerful, Lavender supposed she ought to keep it! “Ok, I’m Daer Null, pilot ext
raordinaire; and you are Penni Pippen, masterchef. We are out to conquer the known worlds!” They both burst into fits of laughter, drawing curious looks from the other befuddled ‘namers’ littering the sides of the room.

  Chapter Three

  Living Up to the Names

  Ok, so maybe naming themselves these fabulously memorable names hadn’t been the best idea, Daer thought, flopping onto her bunk in exhaustion. On the other hand, it was making them live up to the monikers.

  They had six months to get to Uzi, even using fold-drive technologies, so they each had been assigned a roster of practice self-defence sessions, lessons in their chosen areas, and work apprenticeships.

  Everyone expected Penni to pop out fabulous food every single time she put on an apron. So far, she was living up to the crew’s expectations, though at night, she hunched over her tablet learning new ways to present dishes and reading about new molecular cooking practices that could be incorporated into her dishes. That is, if she could keep from groaning over her injuries.

  It would be fair to say that self-defence was not Penni’s strong suit. Some of the other recruits had started taking advantage of that weakness in order to score points for themselves. That hadn’t set well with Daer.