Tag: more odds than ends (Page 2 of 27)

The old woman poked the fire with a singed stick, letting her skirts skim dangerously close to the coals. She’d long since learned that the natural fibers wouldn’t catch easily, and the goats that wreaked havoc on the harvest still streaked across the plains in abundance.

If they’d been able to stay in contact with Old Earth as planned, they’d have had a thriving textile export trade. Alas, the journey had been wreaked with fear sufficient to terrify a young girl.

Even now, Alice thought. It had been sixty years since her parents had shoved her stumbling across grease-scented tarmac reflecting white-hot engine heat, promising to follow. Sixty years of daily prayers that her parents would follow. Sixty years of daily prayers that they wouldn’t follow a second ship, that the first ship, her ship, had escaped their surveillance.

Sixty years since she remembered her parents’ faces, if truth be told, which is why she would not admit the words aloud so as not to make it true. Though Alice supposed it wasn’t, because that’s not counting cryo time, because no one ever did.

Long enough to forget the need to stay wary. Long enough for tales to begin the slow fade into legend, for the colony’s elders to pass on.

Her grandchildren were old enough to know the truth, now, and to understand the need to fear the shining omens in the sky that beaconed an arriving starship. From the stars came invaders, coming to claim what she and so many others had fought valiantly to build.

She settled into the rocking chair her adopted uncle had carved for after the news of her firstborn, smoothing her skirts over her knees with long practice. Once, it had been unfamiliar, a far cry from the silky unnatural things that had sustained their journey here.

She cleared her throat and stared into expectant eyes. “We grew up in fear of robotic kind. To be fair, we came by it honestly. That was until the appearance of the biotech…and that’s when the robots saved us.”

Dead leaves rattled in the freezing wind. June glanced upward, distracted by the moaning of two branches rattling. “We’re almost there.”

“Good.” Peter waved a hand at a bit of nothing that turned into something vaguely glimmering as it stuck to his palm. He rubbed it against a nearby oak trunk. “The sunset’s letting me clear the cobwebs from this clearly oft-ignored path, my lady, but it’s also a bit of a time marker.”

“Say it with that Irish lilt all you want,” June answered. “I’m aware that looks like a haunted trail. That’s intentional.”

“Seems likely to work.”

***

Hmm, that’s not quite working. Let’s try that again.

***

Dead leaves rattled in the freezing wind, skittering across cracked pavement, scurrying under June’s truck like paper-light mice.

The sudden damp chill suited the New Hampshire evening as well as her mood. Her morning had started as gloriously as the sunrise, or at least had been filled with copious quantities of caffeine and hope.

Brittle laughter rose in her throat before she smothered the outburst, as inadequate for the evening as her leather jacket now seemed.

She’d come into the semester filled with optimism and a slight sense of confusion, armed with her father’s syllabi and memories as guides to fight a desperate battle to prove herself before getting mistaken for a student yet again.

She’d wound up with a sword, fought off literal living dead men, and turned it to her advantage. Whatever waited for her – and Peter – in the tunnels was linked to the universities’ ominous miasma of increasingly strange and bloody events.

Surely, she could handle a single man being obnoxious.

Straightening, she gave the ancient, battered truck a reassuring pat.

The dean might be intent on driving her away from campus, but she wasn’t going anywhere. It was time to find out why.

“As soon as I have a spare moment,” she said out loud, and swung into the driver’s seat.

***

Well, that’s better, or at least more satisfying. Thanks for the twofer on dead leaves, Becky! My prompt on the dragon upgrade request went to Cedar, and check out more over at MOTE.

“Evans,” came the bark in the space station’s corridor.

Major Lindsay Evans couldn’t have stopped the automatic turn on her heel to respond if she’d tried. Not after three tours working for the same gruff general. He might be a pain, but she knew his quirks—and his skills at war were, she hoped, learnable to a close observer paying attention.

“Sir,” she responded politely, and waited, fingers hovering over datapad and thankful they were in a no-hat, no salute zone. General Farrokh tended to dive right into the weeds and skip over protocol, which was fine when it was the two of them in his office and otherwise awkward as she held the salute until he noticed. Usually with a deep sigh of exasperation, but he was the senior officer; it wasn’t like she had a choice.

His lack of pretentiousness was why she liked the old bat, even if it was partially for the sheer entertainment value of seeing his other subordinates squirm with discomfort. He—and now she—took great pleasure in ensuring things got done, with just enough politics to sneak past official censure.

“What’s the count?”

She tilted her head at his office door, then followed him into the entryway and his inner sanctum. Closing the door, she kept her voice soft. “Forty thousand, Sir.”

He sank into his chair and growled. A wave of his hand indicated she should sit.

Yes, she thought, he did fit the old photos of leaders with cigars. A shame they weren’t permitted on station thanks to all the air filters and fire risks, but someday, planetside, she was getting a photograph. It’d be a retirement gift, whenever the day came. Whenever the war was over.

“Forty thousand,” he rumbled. “Damn.”

Lindsay straightened. “Sir, I’m afraid I wasn’t clear.” She cleared her throat, punched her datapad, and mirrored the display to the aged screen with a fingerprint dent in the lower right hand corner. “The past week has been rather disastrous, boss. There’s no denying it was a complete Charlie Foxtrot.”

“Forty thousand men and women every day.” His hands covered his eyes in momentary denial. “Every. Damn. Day.”

She sat in silence, staring at the screen’s undeniable data.

“There’s little enough that can be done from a position of power,” Farrokh rumbled finally. He leaned back, tugged a battered locker door open, and from inside the vast depths pulled a bottle filled with amber liquid. “You learn that, when you’re in power. You protect who you can. You fight losing battles to protect those you can’t. You do what you believe, long as you can.”

He poured two glasses. “The thing I hate, and have the least amount of patience with, is the backroom dealing that breaks a good plan into something untenable. Politics that don’t understand reality.” He nudged a tumbler toward her, as quietly furious as she’d ever seen him. “The need to always take one more step up before you can actually fix things, only to find out that you’ll likely never reach the heights you need, because the system tends to win over any one individual.”

The glass was cold in her hands, the bourbon smoky with a hint of stone fruits. She held it in trembling hands, worried her numb fingers would let the treasure slip.

“To our honored dead.” General Farrokh saluted her and drained his glass. He faced the data, stoic.

She did the same, savoring the burn.

“This loss was preventable,” came the whisper, and she realized that he was crying, a single tear that symbolized terrible resolve. “This — this, I can fix. This, I have the power to do. I can’t save the dead, Evans. But I can keep it from happening again.”

***

This week’s prompt was from Parrish Baker, who is now responsible for everyone’s Blue Oyster Cult earworm (which is exactly as it should be, as that song is an epic classic): 40,000 men and women every day.

My prompt went to TA Leederman: It had been a firefly moon, and that meant…

“Everyone hates the self-checkout line,” Regina said wearily. “It doesn’t work properly. It’s eliminating jobs. It’s unpaid labor by the customer. We get complaints at least once a week.” She tipped her head, striving for the optimism she’d promised to get herself through one more holiday season shift. “Not every day for a few years now, though.”

“This is a new complaint, boss.” Opal’s eyes were wide. “You know the latest software upgrade?”

“Ugh.” She wrinkled her nose. “The AI one last month? Yeah, we got a bunch of complaints after that, too. Turns out some people actually read the fine print as they’re checking out. Including that guy who covers the camera with a plastic bag every time.”

Opal shrugged and pointed. “Well, that one seems to be learning faster than the others, but the rest might learn from it if they’re networked at all.”

“What?” Regina nudged the CLOSED sign out of the way and began pressing the touchscreen. “What do you mean, this one’s learning faster?”

“That’s the only checkout station we’ve gotten complaints about so far.”

She stopped, UPC book in hand. “Opal, tell me more about these complaints. What exactly happened? Wasn’t this version supposed to eliminate of the whole ‘please rescan your item’ nonsense that everyone hated?”

A heavy sigh from the teen. “That’s what the rep said. But it started off with a lot of errors. You know, telling people they hadn’t put something in the bag, but they had, and making a human clear the error still. And, um, I think a lot of people got really irritated with it.”

“So?”

“So they swore at the machine, and now the AI assistant for self-checkout has learned to cuss. Or at least that one has.”

Regina caught herself and limited the obscenity to mouthing the word.

“It’s mostly ladies who seem offended,” Opal pointed out, tugging on a blue pigtail.

“Right.” She straightened. “Well, the latest study says they’re doing the majority of the grocery shopping still. Let’s turn this machine off. I’ll contact the software guy and get him on this straightaway. One down shouldn’t back up the lines too much.”

Across from the women, a man with a newsboy hat broke into laughter. He bagged his last item and snagged the receipt, still chuckling.

Regina made eye contact and raised an eyebrow.

“Don’t that beat all,” the man said, zipping his leather jacket. “The machine gave as good as it got, eh? Defending itself. And still wished me a good day!”

She winced. “Opal.”

“I know.” Another sigh, the kind only a seventeen-year-old could supply sufficient weight to, the kind that drowned the world in a limpet mine’s worth of sorrow. “Shut them all down.”

***

This week’s fun prompt was from nother Mike: The AI help line for the self checkout worked fine, until it learned to cuss…

Mine went to Becky Jones: He had the personality of an unhappy slug in seawater, but they needed his skills.

Find more, over at MOTE!

“It’s been a long year,” Kevin said. He squeezed her hand, breathing in the mixed scents of melting snow, sticky fir, and burning peat, overlaid by his wife’s citrus soap. “Are you ready?”

Mari let out a prosaic sigh. “Oh, how stereotypical.” She gave him a wry smile, as much as her face allowed these days. “Hard to help it, after all these months.”

“Hey,” he began, and stopped. Twining his fingers with hers, he spun her into his arms and held his wife as tightly as her fragile body would allow.

“Soon,” came her voice, muffled by his suspiciously damp shirt. “Soon.”

“Two more months of treatment,” he vowed. “And then the hunt’s back on full-time.”

A sniffle. “It’s silly, isn’t it?” Fragile fingers rose, clutching a crushed yellow ribbon.

“No, love.” Kevin pulled back and looked into her brimming eyes. “The ribbon’s a symbol. Just like our wedding rings. Things have meaning when you give them meaning.”

“Hope,” Mari said hollowly. Then repeated it, softly, but with more conviction. “Hope. I know the police have given up finding her alive, but the twin bond has never served me wrong. I still think we’ll find her alive.”

“Then we tie the yellow ribbon round the Christmas tree,” he said firmly. “For Hope, because we have hope.”

***
This week’s prompt was from nother Mike: Tie a yellow ribbon round the Christmas tree, it’s been one long year…

Mine went to TA Leederman: The wreath survived, if blacked by fire.

Find more, over at MOTE!

“Dismissed.” Major Stella Jager snapped. She waited for the Class Three Spacer to brace to attention and leave her office — scurrying, as he should. Her tongue-lashing was only the start of Spacer Davos’ problems after getting so scuttled on station that he’d tried to steal one of the lifeboats. He’d waltzed in, trying to explain, as if he’d skipped right over flight safety training rather than what should have been instinct after five years in the service.

Come to think of it, she hadn’t seen or participated in a single emergency drill since she’d arrived last week. It should have been automatic as soon as she’d gotten to temporary quarters, let alone her permanent apartment. She’d assumed it had been the influx of new personnel overwhelming the system.

Stella turned away from the hatch opening. She took a few precious sections to rub the bridge of her nose and exhale sharply. Given the shenanigans that seemed the norm on Apezel Station’s weekends, the quick reset was the best thing to a break she’d get in the next few hours. Sparing a pang of longing for the homemade soup currently resting in the chiller alongside a glass jar of moldy jam and three packets of sauce from her predecessor, she called up the next file instead. “Send the next pair in, Lieutenant Petra.”

“So,” she began, and blinked. Both of the Spacers were covered in splattered grease, so much so that she could barely discern facial features or rank insignia. The female wore a makeshift sling. The male had a cut over his eyebrow, where the blood had smeared before it coagulated. “Have you been to medical yet?”

“We’re fine, ma’am!” came the chorus.

“I’m going to shorten this and cut you over to medical,” Stella said grimly. “I want the BLUF of what happened first, though.”

The one with the cut moved his lips through the acronym. Slowly.

“Bottom line up front,” hissed the sling.

Stella’s eyebrows were somewhere in the vicinity of the satellite ring above the station. What kind of military establishment had she encountered, to not recognize basic acronyms?

And how in the heavens would they get from this muddled state to be able to fight the war headed straight for the colony they’d sworn to protect?

“Uh, ma’am, the instructions were actually perfectly clear,” the male said. “Just misunderstood.

A quick look at the file said his name was Dean Zachiras. “So what happened, Dean?”

“My fault, ma’am,” came the female’s voice. “Afraid this is my first week on station, and I’m used to the Welder aircraft. The war declaration screwed up assignments and training, so I’m supposed to shadow-train on the Sylph with Dean and make up for it later.”

“You’re not the only one in that position,” Stella said to — Violet Dunham, apparently. “Go on.”

She swallowed. “I didn’t realize the psi it called for in the book was total pressure, not additional pressure.”

“And I’m not familiar with Welders, so I didn’t realize the manual didn’t articulate the difference.” It was Dean’s turn to swallow. “Kaboom, ma’am.”

“Very much kaboom,” Violet agreed. “Not just the Sylph’s tire, but everything nearby enough to get caugh.”

“We’ve got it sorted,” Dean offered. “Replacement tire’s on, the crew chief is inspecting for additional damage, and we’ve even got most of the hangar cleaned up already.”

“Crew chief’s orders.” The sling bobbed, its cloth the cleanest item Violet was wearing.

“Get to medbay.” Stella let out a sigh and followed the two out of her office. “Ell-tee.”

“Station’s not right, ma’am.” Lt Janine Petra studied her with wide eyes. “And all of us newbies aren’t helping figure out where the problems are. Forward deployment seems like less an adventure and more of a sitting duck situation.”

“Mmm.” She leaned against the chiller, then skipped over the memory of lunch. “And we need to make sure we don’t break what does work in the process. I can’t fix stupid, but that’s not the problem.”

“Not with those two,” Janine said. “The one before? Eh.”

Stella straightened and twitched a hand at the junior officer. “Let’s go find this crew chief.”

***

Thanks to AC for the prompt this week about a perfectly clear yet misunderstood problem! Mine went to Parrish Baker – see what she did with assassins avoiding handshakes here. And don’t forget to check out the rest of the MOTE crew!

“All right,” Lena said, and came to a slogging halt in the middle of the swamp, no matter that the water came up to her thighs and she was damned afraid she might be sinking further. “Stop it.”

Matt waved his arms to avoid a collision, which managed to splash swamp water over the rest of the group.

Lena wiped mud from her nose and flicked it toward a curious toad. “Look, we’re all slogging through this mess, wondering what else could go wrong. So let’s stop wondering, and figure it out.”

Ingrid raised a tentative hand, as passive as her pale, shadowy form, then pointed. “Perhaps we could move to that lump of slightly drier land, boss?”

She sighed. “Fine. But we talk as we go.”

As usual, Matt was the first to complain. “We crash landed. Immediate mission kill.”

“But we lived,” Lena countered grimly.

“The transponder’s dead. Cracked beyond repair.”

She grabbed a vine and pulled herself up, then silently congratulated herself for not strangling Matt with the sturdy creeper. She gave him a hand instead. The slug didn’t even notice her unusually tight grip.

“But the ship knows we’re here, and we left sign that we’re alive.”

“Which we had to destroy thanks to the locals who are chasing us anyway,” Ingrid casually offered. The lithe woman made the mud look like an accessory she’d chosen to apply.

Seth followed her, tall and blocky, squelching as mud fell off in clumps. “Including that tentacle thing. Though I’m more worried about the locals not following us in here.”

“We’re still alive,” Lena said through gritted teeth. “So let’s figure out how to stay that way. Start problem solving. They’re waiting for us.”

“I think our training suggested that toad is edible,” Mike said with longing.

She handed him a nutbar. “Let’s save that for when we’re more desperate. Food poisoning isn’t something we can afford right now. And everyone hydrate!”

***

Hmm, how does our team get out of this one? Perhaps it’ll continue next week. Thanks to Leigh for the prompt on what else could go wrong – the most dangerous question!

My prompt went to Becky on desperation. Find the links to everyone’s sites and more, via More Odds Than Ends, the free and open challenge where you, too, can play along. See you next week!