Prologue to an Epilogue

CHAPTER 4

Jim fell heavily to a window seat on the space galleon and stared out at the etherium with some contempt. Several other students floated into the carriage around him, but he was too lost in his own venomous thoughts to pay them much heed. It wasn't until he felt a hand upon his shoulder that he realised the cries of, "Hey, hey buddy?" had been directed at him. He turned, suprised, to stare into the face of a pretty young human girl, whose hand he noted with some pleasant shock, was still on his shoulder. He stared at her dumbly for a moment, drinking in her beauty. She seemed a few years older than him - seventeen or eighteen, maybe - with flowing blonde hair and bright blue eyes which reflected her warm, wide-toothed smile. No girl had ever smiled at him like that before. "Uh, hi," he managed, still gaping at her like a bug-eyed Sombonian.
"Aren't you Jim Hawkins?" she asked, still grinning expectantly at him. He nodded.
"Uhm, yeah, I am..."
"Wow!" she breathed, sitting down so close to him that their thighs pressed lightly together. "Is it true?"
Jim blinked. "Uhm, is... what true?"
Another girl - a brunette in a wonderfully short skirt - sat opposite him. "D'uh, the stuff they're saying about Treasure Planet?"
The blonde leaned closer to him and whispered excitedly, "Were you really there?"
With a grin of summoned confidence, Jim began to relate his adventure to them, growing braver and wittier around the girls as they giggled and gasped at his stories. Elizabeth, the blonde, seemed to actually be flirting with him - with him! - and he found himself exaggerating some of the more exciting moments to see her squeal with delight and suspence. The brunette (Victoria) he noted with a pang of disappointment, was later joined by a boy a little older than Jim who appeared to be her boyfriend. He sat as quietly enthralled in Jim's story as the girls, however, until Jim came to his miraculous one-man attempt to save the hundreds of lives on the Legacy by racing against time and fate towards the impossible map on his self-built solar surfer.
"You surf?" he interrupted brightly. It was the first thing he'd said since, "Hey, scootch over."
Jim eyed him warily for a moment. "Yeah."
"You any good?"
"Yeah."
Elizabeth giggled again, and Jim felt himself growing bolder.
"You know," the boy - Thomas, he found out later - began, "some of the students at the Academy set up this surfing team. It's run by the Prefects, but it's really cool. We race against each other, swap tips, that kind of stuff, but it's kinda... elite. We only let the coolest guys into it... You interested?"
Elizabeth was smiling at him again, her leg pressing against him almost encouragingly. He grinned. "You bet!"

The reigns in Doppler's hands were the least of his concern, in spite of the fact that he was supposed to be driving Delilah who - though faithful and toilet trained - certainly wasn't intelligent enough to pick the way home. The journey back across to Montressor from the Spaceport had been in extended uncomfortable silence - but at least on the bus-ship there had been other tourists, and most importantly other places they could go.
Sarah Hawkins seemed to be pining for Jim already, curled away from Doppler against the side of the carriage, whereas the captain, who occupied Doppler's thoughts rather than the navigation, stared blankly at the darkened scenery of the area. One leg crossed neatly over the other, hands clasped in her lap. She was also quite oblivious to the way the doctor had been looking at her, which was probably for the best.
He allowed his gaze to rove, for the millionth time, over her legs and hips, stopping there in case he happened to meet her eye - or a set of claws - further up. As he was mentally reprimanding himself, an indignant voice invaded the silence.
"Hello? Are we there yet?" B.E.N. called down. Strapped to the roof, the motor-powered noisemaker had been remarkably silent for the bulk of their journey. He must have blown a gasket, keeping everything he thought to himself for over twenty minutes.
Doppler groaned audibly, though he hadn't meant to. It earned what he hoped was a glance of empathy from the captain, which he would have returned had she not looked away just as quickly.
"Not long now," he replied to B.E.N., clearing his throat guiltily as he tried to scrub his mind of Amelia's anatomy. It didn't work, nor did it help that she shifted her weight suddenly - brushing against him briefly as she leaned out of the carriage further. At least they were home now, and in one piece. Delilah deserved a few extra Purps in her feed for getting them home without humiliating Doppler completely. He shuddered to think how the conversation would have gone, had he taken them the wrong way...
"Wrong turn? Delbert, you drive this way all the time!" Sarah would say. And he'd have to admit he was too busy looking at... er, nothing, to notice all the entirely familiar surroundings would have changed. Yes, perhaps an extra bucket of purps...

Amelia sighed as the carriage pulled up once more at Doppler's house. Home, sweet home. Doppler smiled uncertainly as he hopped to the ground and offered Sarah Hawkins his hand to help her down, too.
"Well... home, sweet home!" he laughed nervously, and Amelia rolled her eyes. To Doppler, the silence that followed was unnaturally long. He found himself staring at Amelia, almost with a longing, wondering what had severed the connection he was certain they had shared back on Treasure Planet. Somehow, he had done something to make her turn from him, and he worried they would never be that close again - or closer.
"Doctor," she said briskly, interrupting his thoughts as she refused his outstretched hand and leapt to the ground herself. "If I may have a word?"
"Oh, intercourse - I mean of course! Of course..." Doppler hit his forehead with his hand and cursed under his breath.
Sarah, looking between them shyly - and trying not to laugh - felt out of place and unwanted. With a small "oh", she hurried into the house. They were alone.
Turning so she wouldn't have to look at him, Amelia reached to stroke Delilah's mane. Upon the realisation that Delilah resembled a large slug, her fingers curled back into her glove and her arm collapsed at her side. She stepped away quickly, watching with suspicion the eyes that followed her on stalks. "Uh, oh yes, Doctor, regarding this whole business with the media," she began, collecting her thoughts.
"Yes?"
"I think it would be wise if we stopped releasing statements about... what happened." Amelia paused, carefully choosing her next words, not wanting to reveal anything she would later regret. There was an empty block in her memory of the events after the fever had made her practically delirious. She could guess, from the way Doppler grinned at her sometimes, that she had said something she would rather she had not.
"The media... will only make fools of us. It would be better - for our reputations, of course - if we chose not to comment to any reporters. Rhonda Frost, especially." She had pronounced the name more testily than she had meant to, and a long silence followed.
Doppler shifted uncomfortably. "Uhm, yes, why?"
Amelia, frustrated that he hadn't taken her words as an order, sighed as she tried to think of a way to explain it again. "That insipid leech of a woman is trying, quite transparently, to corrupt our story into a scandal!"
Doppler frowned, his trusting nature betraying him yet again. Amelia still had difficulty believing he had almost told a group of blood-thirsty scavenger pirates about the map.
"I wouldn't go that far..."
"Wouldn't go so far?" Amelia glared at him incredulously. "She practically sold herself to you!"
Doppler, flustered, burned red at the comment. "Now you see here, missy... miss... ma'am..."
Amelia waited, eyebrows raised as he bumbled his sentence into oblivion. "Well?"
"How could you be so... catty, you... jealous feline?"
"Jealous?" Amelia repeated, her ears flattened against her head. "Doctor, need I remind you," she hissed dangerously, "there is more than just your personal- your... position at stake here?"
"Captain, I, erm, I didn't mean to offend you!" he stuttered nervously.
"Offended?" she snarled, her eyebrow arching. Quickly composing herself, she repeated with less emotion, "Offended? Doctor, I am far from offended."
I passed by offended about five minutes ago, she admitted inwardly.
Doppler, desperately wringing his hands, searched for the right words. "Uhm, Captain I, uhm..."
Seeing her opportunity to escape the conversation, which didn't seem to be going to her advantage, she smiled haughtily. "While this conversation is stimulating, Doctor, I have more pressing matters to attend to." Amelia spun on her heel, intending to storm into the house, but Doppler followed her stubbornly. "Would you just shut up and let me apologise?" he yelled with suprising strength.
Taken aback by his sudden forcefulness, Amelia turned to look him in the eye. "And what, precisely, are we appologising for, Doctor?"
"I don't know!" he snapped, irritated. "But you seem pretty wound up about it!"
No response at hand, Amelia simply narrowed her eyes at him, saying more with that action than her deceptive tongue ever would. She turned away again and reached for the door. Hardly meaning to, Doppler grabbed her arm, pulling her to face him again. As if it burned him, he threw her arm back and clutched his rebel hands together. She tensed, not sure how to react to his touch. He had never grabbed her during an argument before - in fact, they hadn't touched since they were back on the Legacy. They stared at each other for a moment, like scared school children. Doppler was the first to break the terrible gaze, choosing to stare intently as his feet instead. He cleared his throat to cover the silence. "Well, ah, I hope you... accept... my apology... yes."
"Doctor, how can I accept an apology completely vacant of meaning?" Amelia asked, resisting the urge to play with her sleeve where Doppler had caught her arm.
"I don't know what I'm apologising for!" Doppler looked as though he might be at his wits' end.
"Then why are you apologising?"
"Good question! I mean, really - I haven't done -" he stopped, his eyebrows perched so high on his forehead they looked like they might regroup with his hairline.
"What sort of dribbling lunatic apologises for something he doesn't realise he's done? Doctor, I think you might want to get that head of yours examined."
"You! I... YOU!"
"Witty as ever, Doctor. It's getting late, so I suppose we must have crossed the border of sentient conversation. Goodnight."
With that, Amelia finally made her escape and slipped into the house - leaving Doppler, jaw firmly slackened, standing outside with Delilah.

The journey to the Academy had picked up considerably with the company of Elizabeth, Victoria and even Thomas, in spite of his boyfriend status to Victoria, and Jim was suprisingly happy to be talking to people his own age.
As the ship had docked, Thomas had gruffly suggested they discuss surfing more at supper - meaning he would have someone to sit with, and none of them had made fun of him! He was halfway through congratulating himself when he had to stop abruptly in his tracks - he had almost passed the H dorm.
He checked the register outside, all the last names began with H. Near the top he spotted his own name, 'James Pleiades Hawkins - HA'. He scowled at the sight of his hideous middle name on display to the world, various scoldings from his mother coming to mind. He shrugged the feeling off, glancing between the two wooden doors. The one to the left had 'HA' engraved on a plaque, to the right, 'HB'.
Was he supposed to knock? He decided not to. He dragged his suitcase forward, cursing his over-attentive guardians. He had enough accessories with him to provide for everyone in his year, he was sure.
"You must be Hawkins!" was the first thing Jim heard when he entered the dimly lit dorm room. Bunkbeds lined the walls, and the only window was at the far end - lending a strangely eery gradient to the lighting in the room.
"How'd you know?" Jim glanced around, fifteen faces turned towards him - not one revealing a single clue about who had spoken.
"You're the only one not here already," the same voice sounded again, and a chubby cadet sat up on one of the top bunkbeds.
"Oh." Jim scuffed his way across the room, sitting tentatively on the last free bed - the bottom one, next to the window. He could tell why it was empty - there was a cutting draught blowing across it.
"Hey, Hawkins!"
Geez, did that guy never let up on anybody? He already had the draughty bed! Jim glanced across at the portly looking cadet, who was padding towards him. He noticed this time around that the boy was intensely freckled, and barely human. He looked like a half-breed of a human and something with gills. Jim didn't like to think about the mating rituals involved in the boy's creation.
"I'm Roy Hall." A cool, clammy hand was suddenly shaking Jim's roughly.
"That's a great grip you got there, Roy." Jim yanked his hand free, eyebrows peaked in the centre of his forehead. What on earth did Roy Hall want to bother him for? He had to worry about when he would find time to build a solar surfer, to try out like Thomas had suggested.
"Yeah. So I heard some stuff 'bout you on the ship over," Roy's tone sounded deliberately conversational, and Jim realised he had the undivided attention of everyone in the room. Oh, so Roy was the spokesperson, was he? The short straw?
"Really? Know where I can get a solar sail?" Jim tried to steer the conversation, hoping he could diffuse their little plan before it got to full swing.
"Why would you need one of those?" Roy asked indignantly, wincing as a boy from the bunk above Jim's whacked him and hissed, "Ask him, you moot!"
"If you wanna know about Treasure Planet..." Jim heaved a sigh. "I'm not in the mood."
Apparently this wasn't the response they had hoped for, but almost a full day of travelling and talking about his adventure was enough. He turned his back to the room, rolling onto the bed. He quickly realised that his mattress felt like a plank and the pillow a brick as he squeezed his eyes shut.
"Fine then, Hawkins." Roy spat Jim's last name out as if he had just kissed Mr. Snuff. "We don't even care."
"Whatever." Jim could feel a headache coming on. Why hadn't he been born James Pleiades Zxigmeister, or similar name that would land him in the 'Z' dorm by himself? He tried to sleep, ignoring the chorus of snide comments about uppity first years with no respect for their roommates.

When Jim finally woke, it was to the sound of a loud buzzer cracking through the empty dorm. He remembered hearing all fifteen of his roommates decide to go exploring together - one or two older kids, in third year they had said, were offering an almost free tour. They had poked at him for three entire minutes, hissing, "Hawkins! Wake up!" and insisting he had to go with them. Jim had pretended to have died in his sleep, his head still pounding, and they'd finally let him be.
Now it was dark, even with the cursed window at his head.
He decided the buzzer was summoning him for food, and had to bite his tongue before he said, "C'mon, Morph - grub's up!" It was going to take a while to get used to life without his protoplasmic sidekick around.
With a heavy sigh, he stumbled out of the dorm. The place was deserted, and there was no one to tell him where to go. He wandered aimlessly, passing by a variety of empty dorm rooms and growing ever more hungry and impatient with each passing minute. Damn, this called for old-fashioned logic. The galley had been on the lower deck of the Legacy, so the kitchen was probably below decks here as well. Thinking of the Legacy dredged up the memory of Silver again, and Jim scowled sourly. He should be out there, just like him right now. He'd be creeping into kitchens, stealing food and whatever silverware he could lift...
Jim headed down a flight of stairs, lost in silly pirate fantasy land. Half the things his imaginary self did would have had Jim in jail three times over by now, and he knew he'd never take to doing many of them. It didn't stop him pretending though, for a little while, even just inside his head.
He rounded a corner, mid-imaginary-chase, and was confronted quite abruptly by a wooden door. His distorted reflection in the dark pane of glass set in the middle looked rather sheepish as the fantasy melted away.
Jim pressed against the window, cupping his hands around his eyes so that he could see through. Ah! Yes, he'd found the kitchen. The chef had his back turned, although Jim was almost disappointed to find that it wasn't a portly cyborg who was hard at work inside. No, it was a flabby, pale looking alien - and Jim had to say, though it was embarrassing, that the behind he was faced with looked rather familiar. He shook the feeling, and threw his weight against the door.
It was far more compliant than he had expected. In fact, it flew open so quickly that Jim almost landed upon his face.
The chef on duty squealed in surprise, and as soon as Jim heard the sound he knew exactly who it was.
"Mr. Snuff?" he exclaimed incredulously, fixing his tousled hair.
The Flatulan native beamed, apparently quite proud of himself for escaping the inferno of Treasure Planet and Captain Amelia. Jim hadn't a clue what Snuff was saying, but whatever it was it involved many a large hand movement and the occasional bounce off the floor. From the smell of the food on the go, Jim thought it was a wonder the cadets weren't wasting away.
"I kinda missed dinner," Jim interjected at the first gap in Snuff's animated monologue. "Any chance I could get something to eat, real quick?"
Snuff saluted, snatching a bowl from the top of a wobbly pile. It swayed dangerously, and Snuff looked as if he might be praying it wouldn't fall. When it didn't, he went about filling the bowl with chunks of meat and vegetables - still chattering away.
Jim glanced around the kitchen then, determined that if he didn't see it made the food would be much easier to eat. He wondered how Snuff had escaped from the Legacy - he hadn't been on Treasure Planet. No, probably left to guard the Legacy with that bastard Scroop. He must have escaped when they got to Cresentia! Perhaps Snuff was more cunning than he looked... or sounded.
A kitchen porter clattered in from a side-door, which apparently led to the dining room. As it swung back and forth, Jim spotted the rows of empty tables, covered in dirty dishes. She looked rather disgruntled, muttering something about 'bloody cadets' and their 'disgusting eating habits'. She was human, about the same age as Jim's mother. He felt a pang of guilt as he thought of Sarah Hawkins. She'd been doing the same job as dish-washer for most of her adult life.
"Oy," the woman growled at Mr. Snuff. "You gonna help me, Sammy?"
Sammy? Surely not Mr. Snuff's first name? Jim narrowed his eyes at the chef, realising when Snuff threw him a pleading look over his shoulder that it must be a fake identity he was using. Damn pirates.
"Sorry," Jim cut in, trying to look as innocent as possible. "I missed the meal, so... Sam here was making me something. I can help you."
The woman grunted, looking him over in his pristine uniform - clean but wrinkled from sleep. "Best not. Wouldn't want ya getting dirty on yer first day."
Oh, great, was it that obvious he was in first year? Jim tried to shrug the comment off, accepting the bowl with a curt "thanks" from Mr. Snuff. It looked like space-kill, but Jim ate it anyway - there and then. He handed Mr. Snuff the empty bowl, and turned to leave.
"See ya around, pal," he called over his shoulder, grinning at Snuff with a quick backwards glance. At last, a familiar face who knew Long John Silver. Maybe things wouldn't be so bad there after all.

If its eye had not been made of black, Arctonian plastic, Amelia would have sworn the robo-constable was glaring at her with stubborn defiance. It took all of her stern self-discipline not to put a dent in its metal face.
"The R.L.S. Legacy," she said with summoned patience, "is my ship. MY ship. I OWN it. Legally, it is mine."
"We cannot allow you possession of the vehicle at this time," the robo-constable repeated. "It will remain in police custody to be stripped and searched owing to the... suspicious circumstances."
Amelia had been trying for a near half-hour to stop the damn filthy brutes from impounding her ship. At first, it had been taken into custody to be "checked out", which she had been forced to deal with for the past few weeks, but now they were talking about putting it in a robo-constable impounding lot, meaning she would be stuck living with Doppler indefinitely. She had no money to move out, no income to come in, and above all, no where else to turn anyway. She needed that ship back!
"Um, if I may, um, intervene for a moment?"
Amelia let out her sigh in a long hiss, rolling her eyes as Doppler leapt to her "rescue". Why he had insisted on coming she would never know, although she imagined he would have been slightly put off had she asked to borrow his carriage and rode into town without inviting him. She had tried.
The robo-constable's automated voice seemed to grow louder (and angrier): "The issue is non-negotiable! The vehicle remains in custody until thourough investigation has proven it to be void of any illegal transport devices or other substances, or-" It paused, the jagged speech lines leaping across its plastic mouth twisting into what was almost a leer. "Or you are convicted. Have a nice day."
Amelia leapt forward, ready to argue again, but the robot turned quickly on its wheel and sped away. She and Doppler watched from the window of the robo-constable station as the R.L.S. Legacy was clamped onto a police vehicle and towed away. Amelia hardly remembered the last time she felt so useless. She tensed as Doppler placed what she could only assume to be a comforting hand on her shoulder.
"It will be all right," he soothed - or tried to.
"Doctor," she sneered, "how can it possibly be all right? My ship has been impounded by animatronic imbeciles! They'll tear her apart the good-for-nothing, electronic, egotistical battery-powered goons!" Amelia ended in a shout, punching her fist against the window. The impact jerked the holographic blinds to life and various images of outside scenes flickered across the screen, blocking the fading view of her ship before it disappeared into the etherium.
Doppler bumbled on behind her, his attempt at reassurance enough to rival any village idiot.
"And what's their number one weakness?" Amelia cried over the doctor, refusing to be consoled. "Water! I tell you, what's the world coming to when it's policed by robots who can't even get across a puddle?"
She sank onto a stool and buried her face within her gloves. The anger out of her system, she was left with an overwhelming sensation of nothingness. She now had no job and a reputation so poor she could scarcely get legal work which didn't involve serving deep fried vegetables and artifically flavoured juices. She was entirely dependent of a man she scarcely knew who frequently shouted the word "intercourse" at her, and she was living so far from the pitiful night-life of Montressor that she had to rely on a giant slug to take her everywhere. For the first time in a long time, Amelia thought she might cry.
"Come on now," the doctor said eventually in that annoying, calming tone. "Let's go home."
Vaguely, Amelia wondered where that was for her.