Page 65 of Experimental Voyage
Waldren chuckled. “They’re fun to watch, but no, I wasn’t even able to catch any of them.”
I wouldn’t tell him of the circumstances of how we’d caught—and ultimately lost—a bunch of them. “We’re agreed, then. Palta, Squeakers, and my death horses are the ultimate companions. Has Squeakers behaved while I was stuck on this wretched little planet?”
“She’s been good. She does do a check of the ship for you daily, though. I’m going to have to insist you remain on board my vessel to keep her happy. And if you do need to leave, you’ll have to take her with you. She still can’t fly, but I have a little backpack carrier for her, and she loves it. It has clear sides so she can look at everything. I’ll get you one of your own. I’m not sure how we’re going to transport your death horses in spaceports, though.”
“Carefully and with appropriate clearances, I presume.” I gave all the animals little kisses. “Yes, the death horses can be ridden. Yes, we can get lessons before we leave, especially if I have a huge repair job on this ship. No, you can’t steal either one of them, but if you want death horses of your own, we can introduce candidates to Plague and Pestilence to see who gets on with them. Pestilence would probably let you ride him with no problems, though. Plague gets jealous.”
“I’d be interested in trying to ride them, but I’m not going to ride often. I’ve learned how to ride from the Veloc, and it’s notmy favorite activity. I’ll do it if I must. You can handle your death horses. I’ll just watch and help groom them.”
“Well, that is something they willnevertire of. Pestilence lives for the brush, and he’ll forgive all sins if you comb out his coat.” I cradled Squeakers, petted Palta before evicting her from my lap, and stood. “How have things been going with Melody?”
“They’ve been going well. Before I tried to refit my ship, we made a few forays to the world. Squeakers has a few friends now. They live with some Veloc on Veloci Minor, but when we’re there, she visits with them. I’m afraid we might end up with breeding populations of the birds, which is going to cause us more than a few problems. They have zero survival instincts, so they have to be kept as pets.”
As I never wanted to see the birds understand the meaning of fear, I nodded. “Are they still breaking their beaks?”
“I think that part of their society will always remain, but rather than condemn themselves to death, the birds seek out the ship. The second trip, we had six birds break their beaks and show up outside carrying a crab leg each. The other birds gave them the crabs after they broke their beaks.”
The selflessness of the birds would never fail to amaze me. “The machines worked on them?”
“Yes. We treated the broken beaks once we got them to space, and we set up each bird with five crabs. I carry ten cages with me suitable for them on the ship, since we don’t think that many break their beaks at any given time. In a pinch, I have a larger cage that can hold an entire flock of them, but feeding them would be complicated. We’re registering the owners of each bird, much like the Andean mountain cats are registered, as they’re demonstrating sentience beyond most wild animals. They understand the concept of sacrifice for the sake of the others, and that means they get special protections.”
“Like the death horses. Not quite sentient?”
Waldren nodded. “Are they registered?”
I nodded. “The school helped with that after handling their sentience testing. They’re barely below sentience, so they’ll be heavily monitored. Plague and Pestilence will be easy enough to track. They have to be registered for all flights and get tickets when aboard passenger ships, and they’re barred from being treated as cargo.”
“That’s the same with Palta. It just means I have to file a form stating they’re on board the ship when I submit my flight plans.”
That would simplify things. If I had my way, I’d be stowing away on Waldren’s ship often, although there would be nothing secretive about my presence on board his ship. Given some time, I’d relocate from my quarters to his quarters until he received the message I was interested in pursuing a relationship with him. With that decision made, I cuddled with Squeakers again before setting her down. “With all that out of the way, please show me everything you’ve broken. I want to make this ship shine.”
Somehow,Waldren’s friends and family had managed to damage every single system on the ship. I expected it would take me at least three weeks to bring everything back online and confirm the ship and everyone on board would survive the rigors of space. As something had gone wonky with his life support system as well, I began with doing a full diagnostic on his computer system.
While it took me several hours, I located the software glitch, and after checking over the manual with my link, I made the corrections to bring that back online.
In his attempts to correct other systems, he’d played with the settings, doing more harm than good before he’d given up. While he might curse me later, I did a full reset of the system to factory settings, reconfigured his life support system, and ran a diagnostic test. Once everything worked, I checked through his other systems, bringing them back online one after another.
After ten hours, I sought out the owner of the ship, who played with Palta and Squeakers in the cargo bay while my death horses napped on the lawn beside the landing pad. “I have good news and bad news for you.”
“Hit me with the bad first, please.”
“There’s definitely something wrong with every upgrade you attempted to install.”
He sighed. “The good news?”
“The rest of your woes were software related, which I fixed through a factory reset of your ship systems and reconfiguration. Once I get your upgrades repaired, you can reconfigure your baby, but for now, her primary systemsarefunctional. Technically, we could probably secure flight clearance at this point as long as all upgraded systems remained offline for the voyage.”
Waldren raised a brow. “That’s not good news. That’s great news.”
“The rest of the bad news is that you might be stuck here for a few weeks while I get those upgraded systems repaired.” I checked the bay and outside for the Veloc, discovering the feathered murder machines had fled. “Where did they go?”
“They’re visiting with some other Veloc on the planet. They’ll be back tomorrow to confirm you’re still here. Are you sure you want to participate in that madness?”
“I absolutely do want to participate in that madness. That madness is when I get to attack Veloc at my whim and try to rob them of their baubles.”
Waldren regarded me with wide eyes. “That’s going a little beyond assaulting them to enjoy how soft their feathers are.”
“It’s like some little switch gets flipped in my brain, I forget how soft they are, and decide Iwillhave their shiny baubles instead,” I admitted. “I think I went psycho because of having been tossed into the walls and ceilings so many times. But I got a bauble. I stole it fair and square, and it’smine. And I want to steal more baubles. But the one I stole is going into my hair when it’s time to participate in that madness, and I will make the defeated Veloc add it to my hair once I’ve finished robbing them.”
