“Inbound Three-Forty-Seven, you are cleared for final approach on flight path tango four-eight-one, pad delta-eight. Welcome to Ceti Alpha Seven.”
“Thank you, Flight Control.”
Nanami turned the final approach over to the newly-christened Beagle’s flight computer and the planetary traffic net. She glanced over at Kodachi who was gaping in wide-eyed amazement at the brown-and-blue sphere swelling in the forward viewports. Beside her, in contrast, Ranma just looked bored, his arms folded over his chest, as if he’d been travelling between the stars all his life.
“Ceti Alpha Seven. Or, as the unofficial galactic guide called it; ‘Mudpie’. Sound promising, doesn’t it?” Nanami drawled.
They’d not headed for the nearest civilized outpost to the hidden site of the Repository; instead Nanami had plotted a more circuitous course that would take them past several worlds and come up on a more remote location to touch base. It had taken them extra time to get there, but hopefully, if any word HAD gotten out about the destruction of the Repository, nobody would connect the arrival of their ship at this more distant location with possible survivors.
They’d used that time preparing. Once Nanami had come out of the hiding she’d gone into those first couple of days, then shakily told her companions to please knock off the sex games for the sake of her sanity, everybody had soberly gotten to work with the understanding they still had lots to do to insure their survival. The three had gone over the ship from end to end, taking an inventory of what they’d brought aboard (Kodachi had brought along a selection of clothing, odds and ends, and some barterable valuables, while Ranma had concentrated on survival gear and foodstuffs to supplement what was already on the ship), as well as what was stocked aboard (Nanami had been taken aback at the selection of women’s clothing in Carthy’s quarters, and found herself hoping that it simply meant the man had a woman in every port, and not something more sinister). They’d inventoried a selection of weaponry, including a few more firearms found aboard ship, with reloads; not an army’s worth, but still enough to do some hurt. A nice little pile of credit sticks and barterable trinkets. They’d discarded the more incriminating and illegal personal possessions of the ship’s late owner, just in case they were boarded and subjected to an inspection at some point in the future.
Besides doing the best she could to decontaminate the ship(including a harrowing effort to expose the interior of the ship to vacuum), Nanami had familiarized herself as much as possible with the ship’s systems. Though no hardware geek, she tried to see the onboard technical manuals as guides to anatomy and biology, and the ship as a new organism to study and understand. It helped, but not much, but at least she wasn’t likely to eject the entire onboard fuel supply while trying to turn on the running lights.
The two original hybrids had also done their best to acquaint themselves with the modern age of Starfaring Humanity. As expected, the late Carthy didn’t stock a lot of educational material aboard for his recreational reading, but there had been enough to give them some ideas of how the modern culture was like. They also spent the time reacquainting themselves WITH themselves; the urgency of their escape past, the two clone-hybrids had spent time practicing consciously reshaping their bodies, at Nanami’s prompting of what Kodachi had previously demonstrated. The hybrids were soon able to qickly assume a wholly human appearance, but could readily regrow a tail or other specialized physical features in moments with some concentration. Then too, they’d spent a lot of time in introspection, recalling what they could of their past lives.
The Black Rose and him? Who’d have thought?
Other discoveries were no less amazing. The who changing appearance, for example. Ranma wondered how far they could take it; so far he hadn’t been able to grow wholly new features or appendages aside from what they’d already done; he wondered if perhaps there was less conscious control and more instinctual response to circumstances at play there. He’d have to look more into it in the future. Actual PHYSICAL adaptation to situations as an extension of Anything Goes? THAT sounded promising. Also, to his joy in the shower, he’d discovered that his Jusenkyo curse was apparently gone; evidently dying and rising again had done SOME good, though he doubted he’d ever recommend the process as a cure.
That got him thinking; did Jusenkyo even EXIST any more? Nanami had said a lot had changed on Earth in the four hundred or so years that had passed. but surely SOME things had remained? Were people still getting cursed at the Pools of Sorrow? Were there any Chinese Amazons left?
Was there anybody left of who they’d known back then?
He wrenched his thoughts away from that line of thought. They’d find out, one way or the other in all good time. For now, though, it seemed that the waiting of traveling (without having to swim oceans or ride on the top of trains) was coming to an end. He perked up as the ship began entering atmosphere.
Kodachi was rather more excited. Though she tried to retain the decorum proper to a lady of her station, she couldn’t help but be amazed at the place she had found herself in. She was actually among the stars! She was travelling from planet to planet, across the galaxy! Though she had remained aloof of such starry-eyed speculation and plebian entertainments when she had been growing up the center of of her own universe back in distant Nerima, she did admit to a fascination with the stars, and a desire to dance among them as she did under them across the rooftops of her hometown. And now she was! She, Kuno Kodachi (or was it Saotome Kodachi, a part of her mused?) was flying among the stars! Had ever a member of her family done so, come out this far?
That exuberant thought suddenly sobered her. HAD any Kunos survived the massacre in Nerima, survived to one day take part in the great outward migrations as Humanity had ascended into the galaxy to spread from star to star? Or had her family line died then and there? Was she the last of her bloodline? The records aboard the ship did not address any of those issues.
Kodachi resolved that one day, when they had the chance and access to the appropriate resources, she would find out what had become of her illustrious family line.
In the meantime, her thoughts turned to the latest addition to the family line standing next to her as she felt a tingle of warmth and mischief. My, how her brother would have reacted!
She was smiling broadly as the ship descended through the clouds.
They’d made the approach over large mudflats under a hazy brown sky, seen the large towers of ore smelters and converters, massive piles of mineral rich sand being bulldozed up, and large evaporating pools beside a sluggish-looking brown sea. The spaceport wasn’t far from a low-lying collection of modular buildings and gridwork streets that had to be the local community, the specks of ground transport making their way down the streets, or out into the country, to the evaporation-mines, settling pools, and the distant greens and browns of what looked like cultivated fields. Then they’d descended onto a hard-top tarmac to touch down besides cargo lighters and intersystem shuttle-haulers and waited for the official greeting party.
To Nanami’s annoyance, the planet hadn’t had an outpost of the Colonial Marines. Apparently the wartime pressures had led to the CMC being pulled out recently to serve other, more urgent, fronts. Instead, the colony had to depend on a mercenary security firm, some small cop-corp playing warrior. Upon landing, the Beagle had been boarded by armed and armored men and given a search for obvious contraband (making Nanami happy she’d insisted they ‘sanitize’ the ship), and checked the hull spaces for hitchhikers (there were none). As slapdash as the corp-cops looked and rude as they acted, Nanami’s respect for them went up a notch even as her anxiety pegged up a similar notch. The mercs had apparently heard enough Bug-horror stories that they at least went through the motions of looking for drones and eggs, poking their burn-guns here and there while the crew and passengers stood off to one side under the guns of a nervous-looking trio of gunners. Of course, if they had been REALLY on top of things, they’d have inspected the ship OUTSIDE the atmosphere, even before the Beagle had hit atmosphere.
Just don’t ask us for gene-scans, Nanami thought, Or you’ll get the shock of your lives, boys and girls.
Ranma had borne the scrutiny of the authorities stoically, and had borne the thinly-veiled looks of appreciation shot at Kodachi quietly, if grimly. Kodachi for her part had preened under the attention, and that had actually helped defuse some of the tension of the inspection.
Finally, the boarding team sergeant had declared himself satisfied with the inspection and the (dummied-up) travel papers of the Beagle and its complement, brusquely repeated the ‘Welcome to our little corner of the universe’ spiel, and he and his men had clomped off the ship.
As soon as the inspection team had disappeared down the gangway, Nanami had turned to her companions.
“Okay, people, Mudpie’s a corporate colony; little corp by the name of Kessler Amalgamated Minerals runs the place. This may be their one-trick pony colony, but don’t make trouble insulting the local Company. We’re supposed to be life support techs on our way out-Arm, but don’t get involved in tech-talk with anybody. I’m going to go over to what they got for a trans-com and see if I can’t download some news and send out a few feeler messages to some people I think I can trust. I’d ask you to stay with the ship, but I figure that’s not going to happen, so at the least stay close to the ship and try to stay out of trouble?”
“We’re not idiots.”
“Nope, just centuries out of time. Take the comms if you go out.” Carthy’s ‘yacht’ had come with a nice selection of personal gizmos, including several nice personal electronic organizers/communicators, for the exec who needed to stay in touch, or the refugees who needed to be wary.
Kodachi tossed one of the Blackberry-like devices up in the air, balanced it spinning on one finger, and cocked an eyebrow at Nanami.
Nanami scowled, then grinned at the display, picked up several of their acquired credit sticks and headed for the hatchway.
“Don’t do anything I wouldn’t. I MEAN that!” She tossed over her shoulder before she debarked.
Even though since the wars with the Predators and the Bugs had broken out in earnest the Colonial Marine Corps had FINALLY been getting the sort of extensive funding and advanced equipment they SHOULD have had all along as the armed services of central authority, the corporations still, more often than not, kept the best toys they developed for themselves.
The long lean dark ship that now circled the blasted, nameless, place that was once the location of Yutani-Umbrella’s secret lab, was cousin to the planet in that it showed up on no official records. It had no registry, it had no registered name, no official existence. No licenses had ever been filed for its construction, or its fitting. Though the size of a CMC destroyer, it appeared in no starship identification databases. Its very existence, if ever acknowledged, would have violated over a dozen fundamental Interstellar Commerce Commission charter laws regarding armaments and systemry.
Invisible probes poked and prodded the still cooling ash on the planet below, searched the lake of molten glass, and tapped the plains frosted by misted metal condensate. Optics peered through the thin, hazy, atmosphere at blast-darkened landscape and erupted ground, scrutinizing fallout patterns and debris fields. Other unseen sensor vanes swept nearby space for survivors.
They found them. Objects found drifting in orbit. One, two, finally three lifepods, drifting in the darkness, weakly returned the search scans and answered the hails. The ship swept up to the tiny vessels, took them inside a large bay, bringing them inside to the light, before the bay doors slid shut.
Some time later, a smaller hatch briefly opened in the side of the dark ship, and several smaller objects emerged, accompanied by a small puff of quickly dissipating vapor. The ship accelerated past, leaving the small objects behind in its wake.
Abandoned jetsam, the bodies tumbled towards the planet below, the dead world’s thin atmosphere more than sufficient to friction-cremate them.
Read the comments on this episode
(Posted Thu, 21 Jan 2010 00:26)
Questions? Problems? Suggestions?
Send a mail to addventure@bast-enterprises.de
or use the contact form.
らんま1/2 © Rumiko Takahashi
All other series and their characters are © by their respective creators or owners. No claims of ownership of these characters are implied by the authors of this Addventure, or should be inferred.
The Anime Addventure is a non-profit site.