Stowaway star runner, p.1
Stowaway Star Runner, page 1
Stowaway Star Runner
C.G. Harris
Stowaway Star Runner is
book two in the Viraquin Voyage series.
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Copyright © 2022 by C.G. Harris. All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
First Printing, 2022
Hot Chocolate Press, Fort Collins, Colorado
Cover design by: 100Designs
WWW.CGHARRIS.NET
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
The Rax Trilogy
The Judas Files Series
About the Author
Chapter One
There are some things you just don’t expect to find on your first trip into the cosmos. The secret to true happiness, a Starbucks drive through, a baby koala. As it turned out, the universe was full of surprises, and I found myself ill prepared to handle the very first one.
The world stopped spinning, and everything went still. Earth was no longer visible on the ship’s front viewscreen and I looked over at Lois who stood to my right. Her eyes had gone as wide as mine as we did our best to rectify what had just occurred.
“Are you okay?” I did a quick check of all my own appendages and then examined the bridge. The icy blue walls, the touch screen panels and even our three captain’s chairs seemed to be intact. “What happened and ... wait ... what is that smell? Is that your feet?”
I simultaneously pinched my nose closed, hiccuped and waved a hand in front of my face. “Come on. We’re on a spaceship. It’s not like we can roll down the windows and let in some fresh air.”
“I believe the infant Lois is holding has folded us to another location in space.” The new voice belonged to Buttercup, our space-faring battleship, and the not so artificial intelligent personality of its operating and navigation system. The name fit in the way you named a Rottweiler Fluffy. Too bad the irony seemed lost on her.
“The olfactory side effects and diaphragm spasms are likely a result of the fold as well. They should dissipate momentarily.”
“My feet do not smell.” Lois shuffled backward in her bright red pumps and let out a loud hiccup of her own.
Her yellow cardigan and plaid skirt were a contrast to her red-rimmed glasses and shoes, making a conservative, yet standout statement for someone with such a small stature. At least she made a statement. My six-foot four frame, black t-shirt and jeans said nothing except big, tall and boring.
She cradled the infant Viraquin in her arms. An adorable squid like baby that could have taken the Hallmark toy market by storm. It had tiny, stubby tentacles below an adorably fat body and a pudgy little face that would make the Grinch giggle with glee. A blue bioluminescent wave danced beneath its pink skin, matching its bright blue inquisitive eyes, and a tiny grin seemed perpetually poised to gurgle happy little noises in response to everything it saw.
Lois rocked the baby in her arms and sniffed, taking in a lung full of air as she turned her head from side to side. I crinkled my nose in disgust and tried to breathe through my mouth.
“I don’t know what … hic … Ben’s talking about.” Lois sighed in ecstasy. “All I smell is hot apple pie.”
“Ugh.” I shook my head trying to escape the offensive odor. “Are you kidding me? I don’t know … hic … what you put in your apple pies, but I am never eating one.” I walked toward Lois to check on our tiny passenger. “Do we have any idea where the mother went? Or where we are for that matter?”
“I know next to nothing about how the Viraquin folds through space.” The sine wave that offered a visual representation of Buttercup’s voice pulsed on the main viewscreen at the front of the bridge. “No one does. I don’t even understand how this infant moved us here.”
“So, we save the mom from the marauding robots, then she leaves us with her space folding baby bomb?” I ran my hand over my head with frustration.
The marauding robots in question were the Scavid; an artificially intelligent life form who wanted to harness the Viraquin’s incredible ability to travel and use it as a weapon. We destroyed one of their ships to save the mother, but when they got wind of our new travel-sized companion, they would likely stop at nothing to obtain it.
“The mother had no choice,” Lois defended. “She was dying. I’m sure she folded away in order to survive.”
I patted the infant on its dome head, which caused it to flicker with bioluminescent light. “What about our … hic … location? Can you tell where we are? How far did we go?”
“Stand by.”
Twitch, our resident mascot, glided in and landed on my shoulder, sniffing the air then huffing it out again as if he smelled something too. Twitch was a Chitterwall. An alien creature that resembled a cross between a flying squirrel and a red and blue macaw. He had beautiful plumage when he wasn’t using his color-changing ability to camouflage himself against a background. He was intelligent and the best thief I had ever seen in my life. He also loved me and seemed less than thrilled about Lois, which as a biologist, left her more than a little frustrated.
“Navigational bearings are showing that we are somewhere in the ...”
She paused, raising my anxiety level from a twelve to a fifteen. “In the what? Don’t tell me we’re in some sort of enemy territory.”
“We are not in enemy territory,” Buttercup answered. “At least not so far as I can tell. We are actually in the Adlet system.”
I looked at Lois. She shrugged at me, still rocking the baby Viraquin in her arms. “What is that, like a million miles from earth?”
“More like two hundred twelve trillion, give or take a few billion.” Buttercup corrected. “The Adlet system is home to the Peeri.”
I blinked in astonishment, not knowing how to respond to any of that.
Much to her credit, Lois turned her gaze toward the screen and smiled. “I know you’re trying to help, but this is all new to us. Can you explain a little more?”
Buttercup groaned, making her visual sine wave reverberate with annoyance.
“The Peeri are what you refer to as Faeries.”
I felt my eyes widen with recognition as I looked toward Lois. Her mouth fell open and we both peered at the baby Viraquin. Prior to our unscheduled departure from Earth’s solar system, we discussed how to catch up to the baby’s mother. Considering her unique proclivity to travel anywhere in the very large universe, it was hard to predict where she might have gone to heal and recover. Buttercup suggested we might visit a race of aliens who had a reputation for knowledge. A race Lois and I recognized as looking suspiciously like the fairies we were accustomed to seeing in movies and fantasy novels. That was when baby went all supernova, folding us to a strange galaxy and giving us the hiccups and smelly feet.
“Wait,” I said. “None of this makes any sense. How did this baby even understand what we were talking about? It’s a baby.”
“I am unclear how, but the infant has somehow folded us across space, eliminating the considerable time it would have taken us to travel the same distance using my Warpstream drive.”
I shook my head. “For the sake of conversation, I’m going to pretend I understand what a Warpstream thing is. More importantly are we saying this baby can fold us anywhere ... at any time?”
Lois lost some of her grin as the implications of that statement hit her.
We both looked at the baby and it erupted in a giggle that made us jump.
“Okay.” I clapped my hands together. “First thing we need to do is avoid any stimulus that might cause it to warp ... fold or whatever.”
“Her,” Lois said.
I raised an eyebrow. “Excuse me?”
“She is a she, not an it.”
“Annnnd how do you know that?”
“I am a biologist.”
“And I’m a nurse. So what?”
She rolled her eyes as if that should be explanation enough. When I blinked at her, one eyebrow still cocked into the air, she went on.
“I studied Cephalopods most of my professional life. Granted she is an alien, but she has tiny little tentacles much like an octopus or a squid. A ma
I gawked with my mouth half open not knowing what to say.
“You asked a question, and I gave you an answer.”
I snapped my mouth shut and took a breath. “I stand corrected. We need to make sure we don’t do anything that would cause her,” I enunciated the pronoun for effect, “to fold into space again.”
Lois nodded. “And we need to give her a name.”
“What?”
“A name,” She repeated. “We can’t just keep calling her She all the time.”
“Alright,” I sighed. “We will give her a name ... later. Can we figure this whole space travel thing out first? I mean, if you don’t mind.”
Lois narrowed her eyes and glared at me but didn’t say anything else.
“So, what did we do to make her fold to this location?” I said, ignoring her stare. “We mentioned ... F-A-I-R-I-E-S.”
“I don’t know if spelling out the word is going to make that much difference,” Buttercup said. “The infant can’t even speak.”
Lois snickered then stopped as she caught my eye.
“What then?” I huffed “How did she know to come here?”
“I projected an image of the Peeri on the viewscreen before she folded us through space,” Buttercup said. “Perhaps she intuited our intent somehow, though I am not sure how she could have known about the Peeri or the system they inhabit. Perhaps she perceived it through the Nexus.”
“Okay,” I said. “Pretend Lois and I are from Earth and have no basis for anything you’re talking about. Just act like we understand as much about space aliens as this baby ... actually, pretend we know less.”
“I apologize,” Buttercup said, but she still sounded annoyed. “Sometimes I forget you are both ignorant to many of the common terms I am familiar with.”
“Ignorant seems like a strong word.”
“Again, I apologize. How about oblivious, uneducated, nescient, green, birdbrained ...”
“Alright, you made your point.” I held up my hand. “Just tell us about the Nexus.”
“The Nexus is the term for the biological connection all advanced races have achieved with technology. The same way you connected with me. Most humans cannot do it ... not yet, but perhaps this infant can. She may have gained the information using a Nexus ability I am not familiar with.”
“Maybe.” I shook my head. “But wouldn’t you know if she had connected with you? I mean it was a big production for me to do it. How could a baby make a connection without us knowing?”
“The Viraquin is a species no one knows much about.” Lois cooed at the little baby. “Maybe it has abilities we aren’t aware of.”
“That is a frightening thought,” I agreed. “She’s full of enough surprises.”
I peered at the little bundle wriggling in Lois’s arms and saw bubbles streaming out if it’s mouth. “Should you get a tissue or something?”
Lois broke out in a wide grin and looked up at me. “That’s it.”
“What’s it?”
“Bubbles. Her name is Bubbles.”
My face went slack in astonishment.
“It’s a good name.”
I shook my head. “You want to name her after drool.”
“Bubbles.” Lois insisted, her voice turning to that grinding tone she reserved only for arguments and disasters.
“Fine.” I raised my hands. “Bubbles L. Drool it is.”
Lois bared her teeth in a snarl to say something back, but Buttercup interrupted the conversation with an alarm.
“Incoming spacecraft. I am receiving a distress signal. It appears to be a stasis escape pod. The designator identifies it as a Peeri vessel. Shall we respond?”
Chapter Two
“We have to help them.” Lois stared at me as if her statement was the only possible answer.
“We don’t even know who that is,” I countered. “What if it’s a serial killer jettisoned by the crew to get them off their ship? Or maybe they’re infected with a terrible flesh-eating disease?”
“You’re being ridiculous.”
“Every alien in the universe will want to get their hands on this baby, and you want to pick up the first hitchhiker that happens along? I’m not the one being ridiculous. We need to protect little Bubbles here. We need to protect ourselves for that matter. We can’t just take on every alien we see.”
“Actually, we are required to respond to the distress call by law.” Buttercup chimed in. “The A.S.S. mandates any ship within hailing distance must render aid if possible. We are the closest ship. I detect no other signatures in the area.”
A.S.S. was the unfortunate acronym for the Allied Space Syndicate. The enforcement arm for law and order in the galaxy. I made it a point to mock the name every chance I got.
I groaned. “Does anyone see a big ‘ol ass floating around out there? I know I don’t. Who’s going to know? We’re in space.” I waved my arms wide by way of example. “No one is going to see us. You said it is a stasis pod. Will the occupant survive until the next ship arrives?”
“That doesn’t matter. We will know,” Lois said. “How would you like it if someone left you out there in the frozen darkness?”
“If it were me, I wouldn’t know any different because I’d be asleep in my own little stasis dreamland. So, I guess I’d be fine to wait for the next luxury ship full of supermodels to come along.”
“Very funny.” Lois rocked Bubbles in her arms and shook her head.
“I’m only trying to keep our little friend here safe.” I tickled the smooth, warm dome of Bubble’s head, eliciting another giggle and an array of bioluminescent light across her skin.
“Besides, we still don’t understand what caused her to fold us here. What if she decides to jump again? We’ll have a stranger on board and no way to get them home.”
“There is one consideration you are both overlooking,” Buttercup said. “Not only are we bound by law to rescue this pod, it also has a royal signature. As in, the occupant may have a royal lineage to the Peeri. If that is the case, the reward for rescuing such an individual could be significant.”
“I feel like you should’ve led with that information.” My eyes went to the floor as her words sunk in. We were a rogue ship with no funds or backing by any official government. I wasn’t sure how things operated in space, but I would bet my life it wasn’t free. Having some cash, or whatever aliens used, in our pockets couldn’t hurt.
I turned and walked over to my captain’s chair, resting my hands on the back. Twitch rode faithfully on my shoulder as I stared at the icy blue walls that made up the majority of Buttercup’s hull and the starry expanse of space displayed on the viewscreen.
“What are we talking about here, I mean how much money? What do space people use out here? I assume PayPal isn’t a thing.”
“I do not know what a Pay Pal is,” Buttercup quipped. “But no, it is not a thing. Most elevated civilizations have adopted the galactic credit as a universal form of payment. However, this pod may be far more valuable.
I raised an eyebrow in curiosity. “Valuable how?”
Lois walked over to stand next to me, and Bubbles reached out with her tiny little tentacles. I looked into her big blue eyes and wanted to melt. How could a squid be so adorable?
“I think she wants you to hold her.” Lois sounded giddy at the prospect, and she practically poured the alien infant into my arms before I had a chance to say no.
Bubbles wriggled and giggled in my grasp, making herself comfortable, then she peered up at me again, making little bubbles as her skin rippled with light.
