Ensign James (Jim) W. Harriman crouched next to his fallen comrade, checking her vital signs,
while at the same time scanning around. The attack was sudden and the team probably would have
all been killed if Jim hadn't assigned two specialists as sentries, based on a feeling that something
was amiss.
Two of the attackers were lying on the ground and a third in a twisted position over a small
boulder. None of them were moving. The two lying down looked like werewolves with mottled
hair, the third like a hairy lump.
He hefted his colleague over his back and staggered toward the waiting shuttle. Shots were fired
from the shuttle at an area behind him and he heard screeches, then just as he handed his colleague
over to the shuttle occupants, he felt a thump on his back that burned as he was propelled into the
shuttle entrance and grabbed and pulled in before he blacked out.
He woke up, groggy, to find himself lying in a bed in the medical bay of the ECV-197 Orville. He
lay there, still half asleep, and turned his head slightly to see the security chief in what looked like
a serious conversation with the chief medical officer. Claire turned her head to face him and
Lieutenant Kitten(?), no that's not right, but close, followed suit. His last sight before passing out
again was those two looking at him.
He had transferred to the Orville from another assignment at an off world base that was attacked by
the Krill and damaged extensively when the very same Orville appeared and chased them off. He
was an average officer, who graduated from the academy with average grades, and was looking
forward to what many would have termed a mediocre career. He was well regarded and liked by
the other officers and civilians on the base, but mostly kept to himself when off duty, as he was the
only single person there, everyone else either married or in a relationship. He was assigned a clerk
job, but would help out the engineering staff when they needed it, as he had shown an aptitude for
technology and original thinking.
After the base was decimated, he was assigned to the engineering crew aboard the Orville, a post
he found interesting enough to go out of his way to solve problems as well as take on the grunt
work. He was solitary by nature, so the grunt work to maintain the engine room components
occupied his time, and the unique problems they encountered helped improve his skills, and he had
impressed the other engineers every so often.
Still, he knew he was never going to shine and stand out, but neither did he feel like a hindrance
and even felt there was a modicum of respect for him.
When he was assigned to lead a team that would shuttle down to the planet and help get a
generator fixed that ran a deep space communication relay on a planet that was near Krill territory,
he was nervous as hell. Attempts to repair it in the past had been hampered by attacks from hostile
nomads that would land on the planet and hunt. He was assured there were none detected in the
vicinity before he and his crew were sent down to get the generator running.
He assigned two of the crew to be sentries, ignoring their grumbling, and he and Ensign Carla
Brinkerhoff repaired the generator within twenty minutes. Her eyes sparkled with admiration when
she praised his skill, and he was almost embarrassed. Then they heard the warning that hostiles
were approaching. He sent her back to the shuttle and finalized the generator settings before
starting it up again. When he turned to go he saw the shot that cut her down. He whipped out his
own weapon and shot back, hitting the hostile. After lobbing shots back and forth he carried Carla
back to the ship and got her in before he was knocked out by the shot to his back.
When he woke up again, he was fully awake. He was in a recovery room bed. It was in a room off
to the side of the Orville Medical Bay. Looking around he saw that he was alone. He moved his
arms and legs to test if he had the strength to get up and walk out of there. He managed to prop
himself up to sit on the bed, using arms to support his torso, feeling sweaty and out of breath by the
exertion. It was then when some people walked in.
"What do you think you're doing, Ensign?" the CMO, Dr. Finn, scolded him. She went to the
control panel by the bed.
"I'm trying to see if I have the strength…," he replied as the back support on the bed raised up to
meet his back. It was a struggle to speak. When he felt the bed against his back, he let his arms fall,
then brought them forward and rested his forearms on the armrests.
With the doctor was the ship's captain, Ed Mercer, the first officer, Kelly something, and the
security officer, Allie Kitten (?), a name he knows can't be right. Were they here the whole time?
"How's… Carla?" he asked, exhausted.
"She's dead, I'm afraid," answered Dr. Finn. "The wounds were too severe."
"Oh," he replied. He's actually quite saddened by the news but doesn't have the energy to say
anything more. An alarm goes off as his back feels like it's being twisted by red hot pliers, and he
groans. Dr. Finn pressed a spray injector against his bicep and the pain faded. He started feeling
loopy now and as he drifted off to sleep he saw the security officer, looking at him with a
concerned expression on her face. 'She looks like… a kitten,' he thought. Why did he think that?
He said to her, "Here… kitty… kitty…," and then fell asleep.
Alara looked at the group with her mouth opened, a stunned expression on her face. "Wha…," she
said, then shook her head.
Ed and Kelly looked at her, stone faced, expressionless, not daring to say or do anything.
"Why did he say that?" she asked, a look of consternation on her face.
No reply. Nope, not going to say anything. Both her commanding officers look paralyzed as they
stare at her. Dr. Finn looked away, shaking, and breathing in and out, deep breaths.
"I don't understand," Alara said to them, wondering why they weren't saying anything.
"What is a kitty?"
Dr. Finn let out the loudest laugh Alara had ever heard, followed by the Captain and Commander
howling with laughter. Ed, with tears in his eyes, said, "Oh, My, God!" He followed that with more
laughter.
Kelly was bracing herself against a medical cart as she practically shrieked, she was laughing so
hard.
Alara was completely puzzled.
Kelly finally stopped long enough to say, "Oh, Alara, I'm (chuckle, chuckle) so (chuckle) sorry!"
Then another string of laughs followed.
Ed calmed down enough to say "Lieutenant Kit..." then can't help it. He laughed some more and
tried again. "Kit…"
"Kitten!" Ed said, then "KitAN!" he finally calmed down. "Lieutenant Kitan… Alara… it's been a
long day. Forgive us."
She saw the connection and understood. "I understand, Captain."
"I hope you do understand. I have no excuse. It is not our intention to demean you in any way,
please understand that, at least. The only explanation I can give you is…"
"Captain, it's okay! I'm not going to be offended by an understandable mistake in pronunciation
after a long day." Alara said, smiling.
"Thank you, Lieutenant," Ed replied gratefully, looking relieved.
Alara looked at Dr. Finn and asked, "Is he going to be okay?"
"Maybe. Those pirates or whatever they were used a particularly nasty bit of ordnance. It burned a
hole in his back, tore up muscle, pulverized bone. It's a miracle he survived. But he's stable if he
doesn't try to exert himself like he just did earlier. We'll probably have to transfer him to a
specialized medical station unless a miracle happens."
"Bridge to Captain Mercer," Bortus's voice said.
"Mercer, here."
"You wanted us to inform you," Bortus said. "The communication relay is operating at 100%
effectiveness."
"Thank you, Commander."
"Bortus out!"
Ed stared at a distant spot and said, "All it cost us was a woman's life and a severely wounded
man!"
Alara woke up the next morning and as she was getting ready it hit her.
"I must have been really tired last night," she told Kelly Grayson, with whom she was having
breakfast.
"Why? I mean you probably were, but why do you say so?" Kelly asked. She had already
apologized to Alara for last night, who accepted it gracefully, sincerely thanking the commander.
"Because I forgot! I had heard that kitty remark before. Someone said that to me, a boy, a human
boy," she said.
"When?"
"When I was, uh, maybe seventeen Earth years old. It was on an off planet trip. My dad took me
and my mom with him to go to some symposium on Omicron III," Alara explained.
"That's a beautiful planet, but it doesn't sound like an exciting trip," the first officer remarked.
"I know we almost died on that trip," Alara told her.
"What!?"
"Who would have thought going to another world would be so dull?" Alara thought to herself.
Ildris and Drenala Kitan were watching the stars go by in the chartered cruiser they took to go to
Omicron III. Alara, their daughter, was bored. She envied her sister, who was away at college,
instead of being stuck on this dreadfully dull trip with her parents. The only other kids on the ship
were a Xelayan boy and an Earth girl who spent all their time together, presumably discussing
literature. Alara scof ed to herself, 'yeah, right.'
Oh, and an Earth boy, younger than she was by a year or two, but still cute, who was busy looking
at his tablet the whole time. She noticed he would sneak peeks at her but didn't approach her.
'Probably because I'm stronger,' she thought. She envied the Xelayan boys who can get any girl
they want. Being stronger is an asset for a male, but a detriment for a female, Alara knew. Her
father wasn't very sympathetic. He thought she should just go with Xelayan boys, and definitely not
a human.
She was busy wallowing in self-pity when she felt a lurch, then heard this horrible scraping noise.
The ship shuddered, the power went out, with the exception of emergency lighting casting a red
hue over everything. Anyone not strapped in, including Alara, started floating. She looked around
and saw the boy staring at her, then looking above her while grabbing a thick removable cushion
from the chair. Then she heard a noise.
"Holy crap," Kelly exclaimed, wide-eyed.
"Yeah," Alara agreed. "So anyway, Xelayans have to learn how to walk on low gravity worlds so
they don't fly to the ceiling with every step. It takes some practice to regulate yourself, until it
becomes automatic. As a girl, I knew how, we'd occasionally have simulated trips to other planets,
just to experience what it would be like, but I always had to consciously control it. No sudden
moves. Every so often, someone would bounce into a wall or ceiling, padded of course. It's
happened to me once or twice. Now I had to do it for real, without padding."
"Sounds like a drag!" Kelly sympathized.
"It's definitely a challenge," Alara agreed. "So now imagine it became not just low gravity, but no
gravity. Then imagine being startled by a loud noise and you're already starting to get up."
"Oh, no!"
"Yep!"
The noise startled her and she reacted. She suddenly flew toward the ceiling unable to slow herself
down. She closed her eyes in anticipation of an extremely traumatic if not fatal impact only to feel
a cushion which she bounced of of. She opened her eyes to see the boy heading toward her and
grabbing her with his right arm, using a thick cord he had grabbed with his left hand tied to a
chair leg to control their velocity. They landed, not particularly gracefully but safely. He handed
her a pair of magnetic boots and put his feet in another pair.
"That boy threw the cushion so I'd bounce off of it!"
"Wow, quick thinking by that kid," Kelly exclaimed. "Figuring out you might fly into a bulkhead
and where to cushion it for you, then getting you down to safety? That's major smarts."
"I'm Jimmy, what's your name?" the boy asked.
"I'm Alara Kitan," Alara told him at the same time a loud message came over the ship's speakers.
"Attention, Attention, the air circulation system has been compromised. You are to use the
portable oxygen tanks!"
"Allie Kitten?" the boy asked.
"I repeated my name, but that warning message kept drowning me out, so all he ever heard was
Allie Kitten," Alara said, smirking.
"That's funny!"
"The tanks had these seals you were supposed to twist off so you could attach the masks," Alara
explained.
They saw that almost everyone was having trouble with the seals, so Jimmy inspected one and
tried to move it to take it of .
"He understood the mechanism, but he couldn't push it down to release it. So he showed me what
to do and I opened the seals," Alara explained. "It was a terrible design!"
The boy said "thanks, Kitty," then grinned at Alara when all the tanks were distributed. She smiled
back, somewhat shyly. Then the lights came on and so did the air system.
"I don't remember what happened to the ship, why it malfunctioned, but we were transferred to
different ships. I didn't see him after that. I actually have not thought about that time for a while, if
you can believe it. I guess life on this ship makes that experience pale in comparison."
Kelly nodded. "That's a wild story, alright," she said. "You think he's the same guy? His name is
Jim, you know."
"I mean it's possible. The age fits. I guess when he's more lucid I'll ask him if he was on that
ship."
"Hi Mom."
"Hi, Alara, how are you doing?"
"I'm doing well, how are you and Dad?"
"Your dad's at a symposium in the city, he'll be sorry he missed you! We're doing very well! Any
chance you could come and visit!"
"Well, right now I'm busy, but I'll let you know when things ease up."
Drenala said, "that'll be wonderful!"
"Anyway, Mom, you remember when we were going to Omicron III and that ship malfunctioned?"
"I don't think I'll ever forget it!"
"There was a boy from Earth…"
"Jimmy! Jimmy, uh, Martinson? I know he was Doug Martinson's nephew. Doug and your dad
had some kind of rivalry then. Yes, yes. Jimmy rescued you, and then you two helped with the
oxygen tanks. I think he liked you. I remember your father grumbling about him until I reminded
him that boy probably saved your life, and others, too."
"I wouldn't know, Mom. I never saw him again."
"It's a fickle age. Besides, we didn't leave Xelayah after that for a while... Oh, wait!"
"What, Mom?"
"The boy's name! It wasn't Martinson, it was, uh... Oh, oh yes, it was Harriman, Jimmy Harriman!
I wonder what he's up to now..."
Alara walked into sickbay and saw Claire standing near a medical device, entering commands.
"Hi, Alara," Claire greeted.
"Hi Claire, what happened with the ensign that was here last night? He get transferred already?"
"He died," Claire said softly. "Soon after everybody left. He never woke up."
Alara felt cold inside. "Oh."
"I'm sorry, Alara, the wounds were just too severe," Claire said when she saw Alara's response.
"Thank you, doctor, I'm sure you did all you could," Alara said as she left.
She gets a call from security, steels herself, and then gets on with her job and her life…