the area behind the panel, making it breathable. Steffy was suffocating though. Control apprised her that time slipped away as dew in the morning. But if she pulled out too soon, Little Miss Mouse would die along with their last chance. Except for agony, she could feel nothing. Failure is always an option. The price of doing anything worthwhile.
Something tapped her on the chin making her eyes fly open. Little Miss Mouse grinned at her and held the part in her paws.
“Control,” she snapped trying to see that the mouse was a mouse. Not someone who could grin at her. “We are good to go!”
Control cheered in a most un-Canadian like manner. “See you inside, Commander.”
She jerked her hand out of the panel, slammed on the glove not wanting to look at what was on the end of her arm, and fumbled the panel back into place with her tools.
One last trick. Command the door to do its job. And to do that job, it had to slide open just enough to let her in. She squeezed through. Then it slammed shut, the shock causing her to stumble. She caught the little blue ornament on the way inside. The inner airlock door opened and hands caught her pulling her to safety. Her crew dragged her up to the bridge stripping off the suit even though it blistered their hands.
“Where is it?” Tan, the chief engineer demanded.
She held out her good hand which cradled Little Miss Mouse. The creature was not in very good shape. But the little mouse in turn cradled a part for a system that had so many redundancies it was almost ludicrous they needed some part from outside the ship. Redundancy was no protection against failure. The part probably survived because it had been on the outside of the ship.
Tan carefully took the device from the mouse.
“Still not liking mice?” she asked the chief engineer.
“I hate mice,” grimaced Tan. “But I am loving that mouse. I am going to marry her.”
Did Little Miss Mouse twitch and squeak at that?
Steffy didn’t look at her hand as the doctor wrapped it up. The smell told her all she needed to know. The doctor did what she could for the tiny mouse feet and singed fur.
“Okay, people,” Steffy said to the crew. “What do you say we finish this up and head for home?”
She struggled to her feet. Injuries to the crew meant that everyone was needed. Including her.
She sat down in the ruins of the command chair.
“Tan,” she said into the intercom.
“I’m done, Commander. Just try not to shake us up too much, I think the bubblegum and spit will fall into the engines.”
Without the “nail”, the kingdom would have been lost. Still could be lost.
“Roger that. Get us to the drop point, Yuko.”
After what seemed like too long, Yuko, the navigator announced, “On point.”
“Package ready?”
“On your mark, Commander.”
“Mark.”
Charity shuddered, giving up its precious cargo.
“Package is away and is on course. Launch is perfect.”
The package dropped towards its target. The cargo made up almost the entire ship. The tiny remnant left behind was their lifeboat.
Without the mass of the package stabilizing them, the lifeboat bucked and squealed. The package moved towards the anomaly. Countdown had already begun for detonation. She put the little ornament that she’d almost forgotten next to Little Miss Mouse who dozed in a coffee cup.
“Let’s go home, people.”
Her one good hand flew over the controls. Other members of the crew worked their systems manually. They threw the book out the door as they rewrote chapters coaxing the ship to perform above and beyond, to save their lives.
“Okay, Commander,” someone said. “We’re at unity.” One by one: The first part of getting the hell away from this star. But far from being on escape trajectory. They worked navigation and helm to correct.
“Noah’s ark.” Two by two. They were getting closer.
The whole ship screamed. Gravity was starting to fluctuate.
“Triquetra Knot.” Three by Three. She wondered who had come up with the crazy jargon of space flight. It didn’t matter. They were close but still not close enough. And the time between the next shout out dragged on.
“Off Road!” Four by four. A little loud. A little triumphant. A little panicked. They were running out of time and the ship felt like it was trying to turn everything inside of it to mush. Others were frightened. She wasn’t. Her mom’s designs would keep them together. She knew it.
“In the pipe!”
The crew shouted out together, “Five by five!”
“Punch it!”
The ship was finally aligned and they hit the thrusters. The ship burst free from the sun.
“Got you,” the Jyrn captain said scooping them up in a tractor beam. They sped away from the star and the Package did its thing. She put her head down next to Little Miss Mouse who cradled the little blue ornament. The ruins of her hand…
“Yea!!!” Steffy screamed, jumping out of his lap and running around the room her arms held out wide making whooshing noises. “We saved everyone!”
She ran by the fireplace where the stockings hung, close to the Christmas tree, then right by where the little mouse family was starting to pack up so they too could go to bed. The little ones had fallen asleep after the first few words of the story.
“Did you hear, mommy?” Steffy hollered, leaping into the lap of her beautiful and kind mother who wrapped her daughter in her strong arms. Putting aside her engineering drawings which looked like so much nonsense to him, his beautiful wife hugged the little girl tightly.
“I heard, Steffy!” her mother said snuggling her up so the little girl giggled. “You are going to be the greatest astronaut ever!”
Frowning, he looked at the story he’d written and just read to her.
“You know, Steffy, don’t you want to be like, you know, a princess or a doctor or maybe a vet?” he asked. He held both her hands squeezing them to make sure they were in good shape.
Steffy jerked her hands free and wiggled her fingers at him.
“See, they are just fine.” Then she scowled. “Which hand was it, daddy?”
Uh oh. “Well…”
“Dad-dee! You leave out the most important stuff all the time!”
He sighed. “Well, I don’t want either hand…”
She slapped her hands to her forehead. “It’s just a story, daddy. And I can be a princess and an astronaut at the same time.”
“Yes, but somewhere nice and safe.”
The Jyrn who had been working with Steffy’s mom on the spaceship designs chuckled in a way which reminded him of a disposal gurgling on a lump of fat.
“No safety in great adventure,” the alien rumbled, leaning back and stretching its multiple tentacles and blinking its huge compound eyes. It was the stuff of nightmares. Or Halloween. How many little kids in their little Jyrn costumes had shown up trick or treating? Nothing was too horrifying when a buck could be made.
“Thanks,” he muttered as his beautiful wife and the alien showed Steffy the designs of that part of the ship. Completion was a decade or more away but the spacecraft still looked amazing. He hoped they’d hurry before his lovely daughter could grow up.
The mouse on the mantlepiece gave him a little salute before yawning and straightening his suit. Everyone was sleepy. Maybe he could work into his story that the aliens would have special medical expertise to save Commander Steffy’s hand. Yes, that would certainly work. And seemed reasonable and somewhat believable. A machine that regenerated human limbs! True, the gifts from the Jyrn had not included any medical advances. Human physiology mystified them. But Human limb regeneration seemed plausible. The machine could even shoot sparks out and have lasers and go boop-de-boop-de-boop.
The little mouse quirked an eyebrow at him and shook his head.
He sighed and went over to the tree and stared up at the little ornament. He’d almost forgotten about the glowing, blue
orb. If an ornament could save a ship, then, what the heck, he could have a machine that regenerated Human limbs. He went back to his MacBook.
The Forgotten Ornament laughed and winked at the mouse and once again, shone out its message for all who would be willing to hear:
Peace, Love, and Joy.
Chapter 2
About the Author:
Leslie R. Lee writes fiction, takes photographs, and tries not to spend too much time on the Internet. You can contact him at:
E-mail:
[email protected] Twitter: https://twitter.com/lrlee
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Blog: https://leslierlee.typepad.com
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