Distant Atmospheres Daily 1000

Kevitch Stood on Three Legs at the Stove and Stirred a...

One Hundred Days of 1000 Words a Day--Day 1, October 26, 2024

Kevitch stood on three legs at the stove and stirred a pot of melted paraffin was with a wooden spoon; his fourth leg, back and on the left side, was pulled up against his flank. The ship's officer of day opened the door to the galley and stood in the opening. "Something wrong with your leg?" he asked.

"No, no," Kevitch responded, dropping his leg to the deck. His hoof made a sharp clatter as it made contact with the metal floor and weighted.

Sullivan stepped up alongside Kevitch, peering down at the pot. "You're going to burn that," he said.

"I'm not going to burn it."

Sullivan moved over to the sofa and sat down on it. The sofa was made for Me'loon anatomy and had the distinctive curving front and ridges on the back for Kevitch's two wings to rest comfortably; it was not especially comfortable for humans, but Sullivan sat with his back upright instead of leaning back against the ridges. "The king will be here--when? Tomorrow?"

"He's not a king, he's a prince," Kevitch said. "And yes, he is to arrive late tomorrow."

"Prince. So he's the son of the king, then?"

"Um, well, yes. Not exactly, but yes."

"Not exactly." Sullivan fidgeted this way and that. "It's impossible to get comfortable on this thing," he said. Then he stood up. "So what is he, exactly."

"It's hard to describe. What are you doing down here, anyway? Aren't you supposed to be driving the ship?"

Sullivan had wandered over to one of the photographs on the wall and was inspecting it closely. It was lines jagging wildly this way and that, no discernable pattern or intention. It appeared to be something that a toddler would draw on a wall with a marker he wasn't supposed to have. "I am driving the ship. What the hell is this?"

Kevitch pulled up his two front legs and stepped over to the sofa bipedally, on his two back legs. Then he sat down, his body fitting between the ridges and the curved front. "That is what we call the A'dee lu Fnaa. It's a historical document. Um, sort of like the Magna Carta, I guess. Do you know what the Magna Carta is?"

"So this is writing?"

"Yes. Quite a good reproduction, as a matter of fact. So--Magna Carta. Does that ring any bells?"

"Not really," Sullivan said. "I'm an engineer, not a librarian."

Kevitch made a sort of tinny rumbling sound somewhere deep in his chest, something between a cat's purr and silverware falling on a tile floor. It was the Me'loon equivalent of a human snort, the kind sound one might make to express surprise and contempt. "You're an idiot."

"Hey, don't forget, I outrank your feathery ass," Sullivan said. He turned and stepped back toward the door. "I just stopped by to tell you that there's a Priority Four message for you in the comm center."

"Really?"

"Yeah. It's audio only. I listened to it, but I can't make heads or tails out of your language, so you'll have to go down there and listen for yourself."

"Priority Four, you say?" The Me'loon stood and folded his feathers back into their resting position. "Now, who would be sending me a Priority Four message?"

"I looked at the transmission, but it's not in plaintext, and I don't know the code."

"Okay." Kevitch stepped over to the stove, turned the burner off. "Let's go down and I'll take a look."

"Sure," Sullivan said. He passed through the open door and stood to the side of the narrow passage as Kevitch moved past him, and he followed. Down the passage, down the ladder to the bottom of the ship, then down another passage, and then the two of them stepped into the ship's communication center, where two crewman were on duty. One of them, also a Me'loon, was busy working a panel with his two front legs while he stood on the rear legs; the other one, a Sheel, was inside a transparent hydrocarbon tank on a floating platform The Sheel was moving around the other end, it's sensing stalk raised up out of the hydrocarbon fluid, monitoring several pieces of equipment. The sensing stalk turned when Sullivan and Kevitch entered and the floating platform's computerized voice activated. "Commander Sullivan and Lieutenant Kevitch. To what, pray tell, do we owe this honor?"

"Vetchy here's got a message," Sullivan said.

The Me'loon working the panel looked up and spoke. "Ah, yes. Kevitch Lieutenant," he said, inverting the name and rank as a gesture of respect. "You do have a P4 message, it's Me'looni audio." He raised a hoofed hand above a button on his panel. "Shall I play it?"

Kevitch waved his own hoof. "Certainly."

The Me'looni crewman pressed the button and then the speaker on the panel sounded. It crackled at first, and then a series of noises emanated from it. To Sullivan and the Sheel, it sounded like white noise mixed with the sound of a dump truck grinding its gears. It went on for some time, perhaps three minutes, and then it slowed down in tempo and volume, like an orchestral piece ending, and then it was over.

"Hmm." Kevitch said.

"You need it again, Kevitch Lieutenant?" the crewman said.

"No." Then to Sullivan: "Commander, I think we better wake up the captain."

"Wake the captain? It's three o'clock in the morning. Why would we wake the captain?"

"Because the captain is going to want to greet His Majesty. The Prince will arrive in less than an hour."

"What?" Sullivan said. "How is that possible? We're monitoring the line he arriving on right now, there's no ship all the way to the turn."

"The Prince is not coming on the line," Kevitch said. "Come on, I'll explain on the way to the captain's quarters." The two of them strode out of the communications center, leaving the Me'loon and the Sheel to their duties.

When they were gone and the door behind them was closed, the speech synthizer on the Sheel's platform sounded again, this time in Me'looni--more white noise and gears grinding. "Why is the Prince coming in an automated transport?" he asked. "Those are dangerous, aren't they?"

The Me'looni answered in his own language. "Yes, but the one he's in has special protocols. And it's the regular ships aren't really big enough anyway."

"Big enough? Big enough for what?"

"That," the crewman answered in English, "is an answer that only the captain can have." He went back to his panel. "And Kevitch should be telling him about that in about five minutes."

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