© J.B. Norman — Published by Emona Literary Services™
“Frang it,” Kathryn Starstone mutters, looking up from the readout on her tablet. She turns to her robotic assistant. “Is anything on the ship still working?”
“Life support systems are not operating at peak efficiency but are functioning within acceptable parameters, Captain,” the robot tells her. “Additionally, the turn signals operate on a separate circuit unaffected by recent overloads of other systems.”
“Thank you, Wembley,” Kathryn says through grit teeth.
“I live to serve, Captain,” the robot says with a bow. The robot was programmed to behave like a butler, so Kathryn and her sister decided to name him after their own childhood butler. Frankly, the resemblance is uncanny.
“Hold this for me,” Kathryn says, shoving the tablet into Wembley’s metal hands as she stalks towards the ship.
“There were plenty of new ships on the lot, Kathryn,” she scolds herself. “But no! You just had to go for the vintage piece of junk!”
She begins hammering her foot into the hull of the old, battered ship, hoping perhaps to beat it into compliance. All she really manages to accomplish is hurting her foot.
“Ow,” she mutters, slumping to the ground.
Kathryn looks up to see her best friend, the Alvaraean princess Amarantha, the daughter of the Duke of the Third House of Vallda and twenty-seventh in line to the throne of the Ljósálf System: important enough to be fabulously wealthy, well-bred, and well-educated, but obscure enough in the grand scheme to Alvaraean politics to be freely able to spend most of her time slumming it up travelling around the galaxy with a star-pilot.
Her full legal name is ‘Amarantha Marcellinou yl tres-Vallda yn Vanr.’ Or something. Kathryn is just glad that she usually just goes by ‘Amy.’
“Is everything alright, Captain?” Amy asks.
“No,” she mutters, “everything is not alright. Everything is borked. The weapons are offline. The sublight drive is overloaded. The FTL drive is clogged.” She glowers at the ship. “Because the whole ship is a rusty piece of junk that deserves to be melted down into scrap!”
“I, uh, I don’t think the ship can hear you, Captain,” Amy notes.
“If that—” She glances back at the ship. “—piece of junk—” She turns back to Amy. “—had a butt, I would kick it from here to the Lohengrin Verge.”
“Well, good for the ship, that it does not, in fact, have a, ahem, butt,” Amy says.
Kathryn and Amy turn towards the door of the docking bay as it hisses open and Kathryn’s little sister and official Unofficial First Mate steps inside.
“I’m back!” Dunstella declares, carrying a bucket nearly as big as she is. “I brought food! It’s called fried chicken! I’ve never had it before, but it’s greasy, so it must be good!”
“What is a chicken?” Amy asks.
Wembley steps forwards.
“A chicken is a domesticated bird popular on many human worlds as a source of meat and eggs,” the robot explains. “They look like this, Princess.”
He projects a holographic image of the creature in question, a small, fat bird with strange fleshy bits on its face.
“Oh,” Amy gasps. “What a horrid creature! Do people really eat these?”
Hungry and entirely unperturbed, Dunstella reaches into the bucket for a hunk of chicken and takes a big bite.
“It’s good!” she exclaims. “It tastes just like Fengarian Hypergator!”
The full list of my February 2022 Realmgard Short Scenes (plus two for January) is here.
The master list of all my Short Scenes is here.
If you’ve enjoyed my content, please consider supporting me through Ko-fi or Patreon, or through Paypal by scanning the QR code below:
Follow Realmgard and other publications of Emona Literary Services™ below:
Subscribe to the Emona Literary Services™ Substack newsletter here.
