Chapter 13… The unlucky chapter! Unlucky mainly because you had to wait for it! But here it is!
Yo, guys, I have a new story up in the "R" rated stories section. Don't know how to get R-rated stories? Well, go to the main page and change the G--- PG13 scroll down bar to "All." Otherwise, if you're just interested in seeing my new story, it'll show up when you click on my pen name and the "stories authored" list comes up.
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Shuddering, I put an arm on Willow's shoulder. She's solid under my touch, her eyes hard and set. "Willow… tell me what happened. Please, tell me what happened."
Willow sighs softly, leaning back. "This isn't going to be easy to say. You see… every year they give the test, there's a surprise section. This year, the surprise test was to climb a two story rope ladder and swing across an open gap."
"Oh Gods! Gregg fell, didn't he! Gregg fell!" I cry, violently weeping into my hands."
"He couldn't have fallen. He didn't even make it more than ten feet up the rope."
I pause, my heart freezing in my chest. Somewhere in the whirl of thoughts rushing through my mind, I'm taken back to that night after the Tallests' ball, ascending the stairs to Willow's nest. I remember Gregg screaming in terror at the heights. I remember how pale he was, how his heart was shuddering, how…
I burst into tears again, pushing my face into Willow's chest. She wraps her long, muscular arms around me, holding me tight as I choke and whimper against her. "Shush, shush," she whispers, patting my antennae.
Suddenly it all comes together, all the pieces fitting to make a horrible puzzle. Gregg knew he failed. How could he not know he'd failed, when he'd been unable to complete an entire section of the test? Feeling the end loom over his head, he'd come to my work to make love to me without admitting that it was the last time he'd be able to hold me. Without telling me that it was the last time I'd be able to hold him.
Tears streamed down my cheeks. "Willow, what is," I choked, "what is going to happen to him?"
"He'll be deported to Food Courtia… or worse, Dirt," Willow shuddered, sticking out her tongue. "Anyone who'd go to planet Dirt willingly would have to be in… NO. NO. I may be crazy, but I'm not that crazy!"
"Please, Willow! I have to see him, even if it's just to say goodbye!" I weep, digging my fingers into the front of her uniform. She pushes me off, backpedaling as fast as possible no her hands and heels.
"WILLOW!" I cry as she sprints to her heels, bursting out the room. Suddenly realizing exactly how alone I am, without even Moby to hold in my arms, I curl up and weep bitterly to myself.
Outside in the hallway, Willow collapses against the barrier preventing the careless from falling down to the floor below. Her head leans back, her antennae sweeping the floor. Her eyes are shut, hot tears oozing out of them.
"So that's it?" Raine asks softly, his eyes distant.
Willow looks accusingly up at him, brushing her hands against her antennae. "What are you talking about?"
"Your friend. She's hurting and in pain, and you ran away."
Willow stands up, joining him to lean on the railing. "Shut up, Raine. You've done more running away from other Irken's pain than I can count, as well as your own pain."
"So have you," Raine snaps. "Damn, I wish I hadn't quit smoking," Raine mutters, wringing his fingers as he stares out over the empty corridor of the Massive.
"But you did."
"Mmm, yes. But that's not the question. The question is, what are you going to do about her? There's a girl in there that's really hurting. She needs you to help her, Willow, so put aside your selfish ambitions of getting in the sack with her and do what's best of her, not for yourself. Even if that means tracking down that male."
Willow glares at him out of one eye. "What makes you think I'd take your advice?"
"Because as much as you hate me, as much as what we once felt for each other is gone… you know I'm right."
A long period of silence passes between the two, heavy and oppressive as the air right before a major storm is unleashed. Finally, Willow slams her fist against the banister and stomps her high-heeled boot hard against the ground. "Damn it. I hate it when you're right."
With that, Willow storms back into the room where I'm sitting, shakily trying to put the bits of a shattered mind back together. "Get dressed," Willow orders.
I look up at her, my eyes as glazed as fresh donuts. "Why?" I ask.
"We're going to get your boyfriend. ACK! No hugging! No hugging! Come on, Orig, you're wrinkling up my uniform!"
Willow assists me in buckling my seatbelt. I've never been in a private ship before, so I'm not quite sure how the darn things work. "I hacked the main computer system frame. I know where to find him."
"What happens… when we find him?" I ask.
"That'll be up to you," Willow says quietly as she adjusts her own belt. "Maybe you can convince him to come back and be a house husband. You do have your Scholarship degree now, and you don't have to pass any test to sit around raising smeets…, which, I'll say, is one of the saddest things I've ever heard in my life. There are some Irkens that just shouldn't have offspring."
I bite my lip. Saying "like you?" would be just too tempting at the moment. "Where'd you get this ship?" I ask.
"This ship? Oh, it's Raine's."
"He said we could use it?"
Willow looks at me like I just said the funniest thing ever. "No. But what's he going to do about it? Chase us without a ship?"
The ship's engines fire lightly, pushing us onto a black metal track. A chain ejects out of the floor, hooking onto the bottom of the small ship and pulling us along the metal floor. We're moving so slowly that walking Irkens could go faster than us, which is frankly fine with me. Going fast is too scary for this little librarian, uh-huh.
"We gonna have FUN!" Moby chirps from the back, where Willow bolted him to the wall to prevent him from flying around and hitting our heads during take off or landing.
"Yes, Moby, we are," I coo brightly. The ship suddenly jerks, the nose lifting off the ground at a forty-five degree angle. The chain pulls us slowly upward, ever climbing.
"Willow, what's going on?" I ask, a bit confused. This is more like riding a roller coaster than watching a ship launch…
"Oh, the Massive has a lot of problems with incoming and outgoing ships crashing into one another. So now, they slingshot the outgoing ships out of the Massive on a pre-approved route. That way incoming ships don't get in the way."
"Oh that's nice," I say, then I pause. "Wait… did you say slingshot?"
All of the sudden the ship jerks vertical. I'm not sure exactly what happened next, but my eyes must have tripled in size as I let out a screech of "IEEEEEEEEEEE!" There's nothing ahead of us but a roller coaster like track of metal and empty black space, punctuated by unflickering stars.
The ship drops sharply into space, rocketing at speeds I've probably traveled at before, but that I haven't been so sharply aware of. The world around us turns to a blur of red and purple metal, occasionally punctuated by the silver of the track. Large, solid, white rings surround us on the track every few dozen feet. Every time we pass through one the ship lurches and the surroundings get a bit blurrier.
Willow's laughing her ass off, her antennae flailing back behind her. I'm screaming and holding onto the seat, mentally shouting "Don't pee on yourself, don't pee on yourself, don't pee on yourself!"
My legs flail wildly as the ship turns upside down, sailing through another white ring. "Wheee!" Willow cries.
"Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!" Moby cries, obviously imitating Willow.
"I wanna get off the riiiiiide!" I shout, my fingers dug into the Oh Shit handle so tightly that Willow will have to pry them off once we get into open space.
"Come on, Orig, live a little! How often do you get to take off from the Massive?"
"One too many times for me to live a safe and happy life already, thank you very much!" I shout back. The nose of the ship lurches violently forward for a moment before correcting itself, turning on its side as we pass through another white metal ring. My legs flail helplessly in the air but I'm hardly aware of the sensation.
"I wanna gooooo hoooooooooooome!"
"What about Gregg?" Willow calls back as the entire ship seems to shudder around us. Moby is clinging to the back of her seat, laughing in a chiming mechanical voice.
"Couldn't we have taken the teleporters?"
Willow pauses. "Guess we could have. But this is much more fun!"
I groan as the ship is launched finally into the blackness of space, the stars around us failing to twinkle as we shoot through the blackness, heading for our destination.
"Seven," Willow counts as she pries my fingers off the Oh Shit handle. "One finger left to go!"
My teeth still chattering, and my skin still abnormally pale, I hardly notice. Moby is sitting on my shuddering lap, appreciating the view from space and humming the theme to "2001: A Space Odyssey." I am going to have to do something about his programming when we get back; I manage to think through the fear-induced haze in my brain.
"Boy, you really did get scared," Willow says as she pries my last finger off the handle and works on shoving my mechanical legs back into my pack. "Mechanical legs don't usually pop out until after you've dookied yourself." She sniffs the air. "I'm glad you didn't; this ship doesn't have a bathroom. Congratulations."
"Thanks. I think," I reply. "Moby, could you hum a bit quieter, please? Master has a headache."
Willow digs through a small cooler strapped to the wall in back, pulling out a red and orange can and tossing it to me. "Here, drink this. It'll steady your nerves."
I push it away. "No thanks. Soda makes me have to pee."
"Can you hold it for about fifty-six minutes? The ship says that'll be how long it'll be until we reach the docking ports of Dirt, and you can go there. Now drink the damn drink, I'm not going to have you fainting on me."
The drink is overly sweet, to the point of being disgusting. It tastes like liquid gummy worm, perhaps combined with a hint of licorice. Yuck, yuck, and yuck are the three words that come to mind to describe it. Willow explains that there's something mixed in to prevent ship sickness, and that's why I have to endure it, but I'm not listening.
I'm thinking of what I'm going to say to Gregg when I see him. His eyes will widen in surprise, and perhaps he'll weep. I'll throw my arms around him, and he'll throw his arms around me. We'll hold one another, and then I'll beg him to come home. I'll tell him it doesn't matter to me if he doesn't have a big, important job. I'll tell him that I don't care if it hurts his pride, but I'll provide for the both of us… somehow. I'll ask him to finally become my legal mate like he promised. I'll ask him to keep his promise, and he will, and everything will be fine again. We'll get by. We'll get by… somehow.
Raine's ship lightly touches down on the surface of Dirt, making as near of perfect landing as possible considering that, like most things on Dirt, the track is made out of mud and dust and parts of downed ships. Dirt, you see, is but one of Irk's many trash-dumping planets.
Over the course of a great many years, the slaves assigned to Dirt from all walks of life will convert all the scrap metal back to useable metal. Everything will be recycled… eventually. Or so the Irken Government says, Willow informs me as we stalk through customs. The problem is, trash comes in much faster than it will ever go out.
Failing tests, writing nasty things about the tallests, forming rebellions, refusal to obey the commands of a military superior… all are grounds for expulsion to Dirt, Food Courtia, or any other one of the filth-filled planets the Irken Empire is in control of.
"In other words," Willow says as we get in an uncomfortably small, whining elevator, "These planets aren't just planets for plastic trash. They're planets for Irkens deemed to be trash."
The elevator shakes each time it passes another floor. "That's terrible."
"That's the Irken Empire."
The elevator door slides open and lets us out on the ground floor of Dirt. There is virtually no customs inspection to get onto Dirt. It's getting out that requires long, often embarrassing inspections. After all, who in their honest right mind would want to get on to Dirt? It's everyone who's already there that wants to get off.
Two hungry-eyed smeets in rags look up at us, holding out little empty tins. Willow hesitates in front of them before continuing on. Once we're out of antennae shot, she whispers back to me "I wanted to give them something. I really did. But then every single poor smeet in the area would be at our feet, begging with their starved eyes."
"Why aren't they in training?"
"Their parents are probably slaves here. The Empire doesn't care what happens to the children of slaves. It doesn't want the children of slaves."
"Oh," I say, my head down.
"Don't drag behind me. There are a lot of desperate Irkens and others here, and you'd look like the weakest member of the herd."
I nod and speed up to walk at her side, suddenly imagining that the piles of scrap metal surrounding us on either side are walls of eyes. The eyes look hungrily down, straight through my clothes and down to the delicious flesh and bones they could crunch.
We pass by a virtual tower of dysfunctional, dead looking robot slave units. It looks like the ending of a cheap horror movie, but with less Irken blood splattered all over the machine units. A few are dangerously leaking oil, threatening a fire if someone carelessly threw a cigarette nearby.
"This entire planet is a fire trap," Willow comments with a shrug as I point it out to her. Her eyes are set and determined, her antennae swinging only slightly as she stomps through the trash, avoiding anything that looks like it might contain something that would stick to her heels.
She's trying to radiate a "leave as alone. We're not an easy target," aura. I think she's doing a great job. The two thick, ugly males blocking the path apparently don't agree with us.
The one-antennaed male grins. "Hey, girlies, what you cuties doing on a planet like this? Give us a kiss, loves,"
Willow holds her antennae high and ignores them. I attempt to do the same, but all the spunk seems to have gone out of my antennae. The other male reaches out and comes within an inch of grabbing my leg when Willow whirls around, striking his hand amazingly hard with one quick flick of a spider leg.
"Ow, babe, what'd you do that for?"
"Stop picking on my girlfriend!" Willow proclaims loudly, putting an arm around me and landing a big kiss on my cheek. The two males look at one another, make a rude hand gesture I've never seen before, and slink off.
"That took care of them…"
"What took care of them?" Willow asks, grinning in mock confusion. "Come on, Gregg's station isn't much further."
Climbing over a pile of rusted crescent-moon shaped ships, Willow peeks her head out. "I see his station. Look out for rust spots, don't tear your gloves."
"That's the fifth time you've warned me!" I cry, meekly following her. Librarians aren't exactly the built for adventure sorts. Standing beside her, I pant for a moment before hope fills my eyes. "There he is! I see him!" I pause. "What have they done to him? He's all scratched up!"
"They call it "hazing," dear. It ain't pretty. Come on, let's get down before someone decides to take pot shots at us with old beer cans." With that, she extends her spider legs and nimbly jumps down the pile in three bounds.
It takes me more like seven jumps, and even then I almost fall flat on my face. Fortunately, Willow catches me. My face falls straight into her chest and there's a few moments of awkward apologizing and insistence that it's okay afterwards, before we press on to confront Gregg.
"Gregg!" I cry when we finally get near enough for him to hear us. My arms reach outward, extending towards him.
He lifts his head and looks up at Willow and I like we were hateful, vile things. "What are you doing here?" he snaps.