Excerpt

THIRTEENTH MOON : A STAR*LITE FANTASY

[An escape pod from the Shuttle Exogamy crash-lands in a forest.]

“Captain!” the ensign saluted.

Calvin Theseus Falco, handsomer than all the marble-carved statues of himself, radiating a personal musk that perfumers around the galaxy struggled in vain to synthesize. “At ease, ensign. Status report?”

The ensign quickly wiped the corner of his mouth – how embarrassing. “Our escape pod was knocked off course by a chunk of the ship, then battered around in the asteroid field. I don't know what planet this is, and the processors are beyond repair.”

Sandy brown hair in perfect formation, hazel eyes that changed with his mood and a jawline that had been registered in the transgalactic trademark office. “An escape pod..?”

“You hit your head on the steering console when the Exogamy took her first impact.”

The grey button-down and black kilt of his uniform were standard issue, but looked meticulously tailored to his sleek dancer frame. Falco stood precisely five foot eleven and a quarter, and his jackboots elevated him to a perfect six feet. “I don't feel...injured...”

“Your head is fine, the console was completely demolished. Without your lightning instincts the ship was drifting out of control and getting pulverized. It was protocol for an ensign to drag you onto a pod, she followed you.”

“...My ship...” Falco looked slowly up and out, his two-thousand-lightyear stare penetrating the sky as his body gracefully shifted into eulogy-stance.

“Captain. Request permission to--”

“Exie...”

“Why were we speeding through an asteroid field? All of the charts said 'asteroid field' when we were sixty thousand kilometers away - and closing in. Now the ship is destroyed and--”

“...Gone. I was in the academy when she was built. Bony and scrappy with hundreds of workers handling her inner parts, I would gaze out the window during...pointless history lectures and say, 'No matter how many times these guys nail and drill you, nobody will ever know you the way I will.' As first officer on the shuttle Proboscis when she was christened, I took shore-leave and watched an admiral...pop a champagne bottle on her big, round, powerful rear-engines... I've never formally admitted this, official charges were dropped, but...that night I knocked out the personnel guarding the ship, went to the bridge and...told her how I felt. And urinated on the captain's chair. Then I broke into the admiral's house and urinated on him, just so there'd never be any mistake she was mine. She was planned to me, in the stars, in the reverberations of the first supernova. I've explored uncharted females all over the galaxy but there is no love like the love between a captain and his ship.”

“Captain, this is very...informative...but she may need medical attention.”

Falco cocked an eyebrow quizically, then realized “she” could also mean the unconscious navigator. “She's a fembot. If she doesn't reactivate in four minutes, give her a slap on the backside.”

“...That works?”

“It works with my coffee-maker and I think they're manufactured on the same planet. My ship is...dead...”

“I was there.”

“All we have left is...”

“Each other.”

“The pod. Ensign, what's the status of the pod?”

“It won't fly. Communications are out, we were way out from Syndication space. How will they find us?”

“When I fail to file a captain's report the Syndicate will disperse my pension to sponsor a shareholders' gala. Fortunately I still owe Federation-Loan six billion spacebucks in academy debt. When I miss my next payment, they'll send a Collector to get me working again or...sell my pelvis to a museum.”

“When is your next payment due?”

“Not for almost a year but don't worry. They once dispatched a collection officer to spring me from a maximum security asteroid.”

“Where you'd fooled the Globulon warden to put you in deep confinement with the spunky Space-babes of Saturnalia! I read the story you wrote in Captain's Log magazine. But I didn't know how you'd escaped.”

“I'd spent months...formulating a plan. It takes time when you're trapped in a cell with eighteen alien hookers, some of them can survive on human sweat. But before I could initiate my escape the cell door blew open. A collector, dripping a rainbow of blood, threw me in a bag over his shoulder and battled his way out. When the bag came off I was back in the captain's chair, transferring a late payment. With collection fee.”

“My father wouldn't let me take academy loans. I had to work my way through, walking hybrid pets. Got hospitalized by an iguano-rangutan-garoo...ended up in debt anyway.”

Falco's attention partially returned from the cell and the space-babes. “So it all worked out in the end.”

“I know this may not be the best time, but...” The ensign pulled a tiny comic book from his shirt pocket, “could I have your autograph?”

“I always have time for a fan.” Falco pulled out a holo-monacle to magnify the book, “Ah yes, the Big Dipper in Deep Space Double Issue.” He inscribed it 'to my good friend' then paused and squinted at the ensign, “Hey, you're not selling these, are you?”

“No, sir.”

Falco jotted a letter F and handed it back, “Right – you say that every time I sign one.”

“We've never met, sir.”

“Oh?”

“Ensign Claudio Rivera, security, first month on the ship. My name came up for landing party on the Gargantua Nebula but the Crisco vaccine gave me an outbreak of pimples. The dispatcher said I wasn't up to handsome-standard for a mission.”

“You're the lucky one then. All the handsome security officers I brought down were baked into a living pie and eaten by King Corpulus. I was only spared by order of his daughter Obessa. 'Obessa,” Falco quoted from his story, “'she made me wish I had bigger eyes...'”

“'And bigger hands.'” Claudio joined him to complete the line, “Yes, in Starbuck magazine issue four sixty-two, 'That's No Moon.' I've read all your stories. My favorite is the 'Sponge Sisters of Seraglio-sphere.' Is it really true? The triple exfoliation?”

Falco's lip curled, “They can scrub the meat off a man's bones. Fortunately I'd...just been moisturized by the mud-maidens of Meteor Omega.”