An Epic Space Opera by Mark Laporta

To retrieve Caronya, a terrifying mutant brat exiled to deep space, a consortium of humans and aliens have sent the newly minted biomechanoid child, Galwendren. They hope Galwendren can tame Caronya, whose astonishing mental abilities may help defeat the Quishiks. Read Infinity Afterglow from the beginning.

“Docking maneuvers initialized.”

The AI’s voice rang out in the automated probe ship that had carried Galwendren a dozen light years from Seldra. It was within a meter of a comparable ship that, for the past year, had crisscrossed  spacetime on a random trajectory. Despite that, the Jericho’s sensors had tracked down the wandering ship, by locking onto the energy signatures of a stasis chamber stored in its cargo bay. Tucked inside the stasis chamber was a being unique in the known universe: a seven-year-old Dralein whose mind had been genomically augmented by the Quishiks and housed in an a-dimensional skull. 

That extraordinary being was Caronya, daughter of the former Dralein world leader. Still, for the purposes of this exercise, it wasn’t the structure of Caronya’s mind that mattered. It was the insight she had into the mind of Plaandrur, the Quishik Cohort leader. To Galwendren, a biomechanoid possessed of both a phenomenal mind and a childlike sensibility, Caronya also represented the playmate that, at a deep level, she’d been programmed to crave. 

“Hurry up!” Galwendren squealed. 

When the AI was satisfied its airlock was secure, and not a nano-second earlier, it released the locks on either side of its docking gangway and flashed a traditional green READY light. A few minutes later, Galwendren was through to Caronya’s ship. She tapped directly into the second ship’s directory and located Caronya’s stasis chamber in its aft storage bay. With cat-like surefootedness, the carefully crafted biomechanoid crept up to the stasis chamber and paused long enough to take in a few vital readings through her internal sensors. Both the chamber itself and its occupant were still functioning normally 

As Astrid had explained to Galwendren, Caronya would need a period of acclimation after emerging from the stasis field. She had warned the diminutive gynoid to stand back at the storage bay’s entrance, in case Caronya had a violent reaction to being roused and lashed out.

Galwendren giggled. 

“Frightened little muon muncher,” she said. What possible physical harm could a simple organic life form cause her? Then she remembered what Dadren and the others had told her about Caronya’s unusual mind. If Galwendren didn’t win her new playmate’s confidence fast, she could end up as little more than an automaton of Caronya’s will. 

Have to show her I’m a good friend, the biomechanoid thought

And good friends, she reckoned, were fun, taught each other new games and generally agreed that every adult in their acquaintance was a dreadful bore who spent all day making up stupid rules. With a workable master strategy in mind, Galwendren decided she was ready to proceed. Her girlish voice echoed through the storage bay with somber precision. 

“Stasis field shutdown protocol Jericho0138-TE/67,” she said.

Galwendren’s reflexes made her step back as the chamber’s seals unlocked and a rush of air from the ship’s recycled atmosphere seeped into its narrow confines. It was still a few minutes before the stasis field, racheted down by discrete intervals, would finally dissipate. Galwendren fidgeted, her childish patience stretched to the limit until a faint mental signal touched her language centers.

Who are you? said a weak voice in her mind. What … you’re from the Jericho. Why are you here all by yourself?”

“I came to play, Silly,” said Galwendren. “You gonna sleep in that dopey stasis chamber all day?”

In spite of her disciplined mind, the biomechanoid gasped, as the stasis chamber’s twin doors flew open and a pair of furry hands gripped its left edge. Galwendren watched Caronya pull herself up, fling a leg over the side of the chamber and roll out onto the probe ship’s carpeted floor. Galwendren laughed. 

“You fell real good,” she said. “You must have been practicing.”

“Help me up, GalWednesday,” said Caronya. “Or whatever your name is. Craters, couldn’t they give you a better name than that?”

“Look who’s talking, Clonya,” said Galwendren. “How many copies did they make of you, anyway?”

By now, the biomechanoid had reached Caronya’s sprawled figure. She bent down, grabbed hold of her new playmate’s skinny right arm and pulled her to her feet. 

“Ew, you’re covered in yucky stasis fluid,” she said. 

“Shut up,” said Caronya. “Clean.”

Galwendren’s eyes widened as the fluid disappeared and a fresh outfit materialized around the Dralein’s diminutive frame. 

The Dralein wore a traditional Dralein school uniform on her diminutive frame, a jumper-like affair of cottony maroon cloth over a yellow top with a stiff collar. Caronya’s light gray fur was carefully brushed, and, at the curve of her left ear, a small red silk bow seemed to peek out inquisitively.

“How?” she said. 

“Oh please,” said Caronya. “Anybody with a brain can do that. Sorry about yours.”

“That’s OK,” said Galwendren. “At least I don’t have ugly red little Quishiks running around in mine.”

Caronya’s face broke into a broad smile. 

“They are ugly,” she said. “And smelly too, I bet.”

“Smelly Squishiks,” said Galwendren. “Squishy, squishy, squishy.’

“Icky squishy,” said Caronya, “and sooo whiney. But you can’t stop them, you know. Nobody can.”

“Maybe you can’t,” said Galwendren. “Cause you’re scared of them. Scairdy! I’ll bet you look for them under your bed at night. ‘Mommy! Help! A Quishik is hiding in my closet!’ You’re such a little baby.”

“Am not,” said Caronya.

“Prove it,” said Galwendren. 

“I can make them do anything I want,” said Caronya. “Only that’s no fun, ‘cause it’s too easy.”

“Hah!” said Galwendren. “It’s only hard because you’re scared.”

“I’ll show you!” said Caronya. “Later, when it really counts. They’re too hungry now, so it wouldn’t be fair. Did you know they were sick?” 

Galwendren rubbed her eyes with her fists.

“Oh boo-hoo-hoo,” she said. “Poor little sicky-icky-squishy Quishiks. Somebody get ‘em a hanky!”

Caronya giggled. 

“You’re bad,” she said. “I like you. Wanna be friends?”

“Sure,” said Galwendren. “And if you tell me a secret about the Quishiks, I’ll be your bestest friend in the whole universe.”

Caronya’s face darkened. 

“Hey, I’m not stupid, like you,” she said. “You only wanna be friends so you can go back to your Jericho family and tell them everything.”

“Uh-uh,” said Galwendren. “I’m not telling those hoomy-woomys anything. They smell too bad. But OK, then I won’t tell you my secret about them.”

“What?” asked Caronya. “They don’t have any secrets. I know everything they know.”

“Oh yeah?” asked Galwendren. “So tell me what a Kadervax is.”

“Not fair,” said Caronya. “There is no such thing.”

“Guess you’ll never find out then,” said Galwendren. “I dunno, maybe I should go home. It’s getting stinky in here.”

“Wait,” said Caronya. “OK, you first. Tell me your secret and I’ll tell you mine.”

Though it wasn’t strictly part of her mission and though she’d only learned of the Kadervax by studying Dadren’s mind, Galwendren revealed the existence of the frame-shift device in this timeline. 

“Really, there’s two of them,” she said. “Only, nobody’s supposed to know.”

“Sounds like a silly toy,” said Caronya. “I could do that. I could send you to, like, any point in time or space if I wanted to. Except it’s really sooo boring. I mean I’d have to count all the particles in your body to get the field strength right. I’d rather eat a Cerynthan water beetle.”

“You’re gross,” said Galwendren. “Funny and gross. What about the Washy-wishy-Quishy?”

Galwendren’s internal systems set themselves automatically to RECORD, as Caronya explained that the Quishiks were easily ensnared by random data streams.

“I don’t get it,” said Galwendren.

“Didn’t think you would,” said Caronya. “Well, Dummy, the Quishiks want to control everything. If you send them a random data stream with, like, a teraflop of variables, you know what they’ll do? They’ll stay up all night trying to find a pattern in the data so they can predict it.”

Galwendren stamped her foot.

“Liar,” she said. “How would you even know that?”

“Cause I tried it once, you dried-up Dralein drone-head,” said Caronya, “after one time when whiney old Plaandrur was mean to me and wouldn’t give me a ride in her dopey battle cruiser. Took her and the rest of the Cohort an entire arc to give up and I still didn’t get my ride. Got my revenge though. They couldn’t do anything else the whole time.”

“Bet you’re still mad at them,” said Galwendren. “I’d be still mad, anyway. And I’m getting real mad now, thinking about how those ugly red things hurt my best friend.”

Caronya smiled. 

“OK,” she whispered, “but you can’t tell anybody I told you. Plaandrur would get crazy angry.”

“Friend promise,” said Galwendren. 

But a nano-second later, she had transmitted Caronya’s insight directly to Jonas Frey onboard the Jericho on a secure channel.

“Hey!” said Caronya. “Who are you sending signals to?”

“Nobody,” said Galwendren. “Just my butt. You should try it. Feels good.”

Gales of laughter filled the probe ship, as it and Galwendren’s vessel continued their random, conjoined journey through spacetime.

^^^

This concludes Episode 35: Terrifying Mutant Brat. A new episode of Infinity Afterglow appears every Saturday. Read Episode 36 now.

Read Ungent Draaf’s earlier adventures in Mark Laporta’s novels Probability Shadow and Entropy Refraction, which are available at a bookstore near you, on Amazon and at Barnes & Noble. Mark Laporta is also the author of Orbitals: Journeys to Future Worlds, a collection of short science fiction, which is available as an ebook. 

His new novel, from which this episode is excerpted, will be published by Chickadee Prince Books. To pre-order, contact Orders@ChickadeePrince.com. 

Image by Kalyee Srithnam.