Christopher James

Here’s the third chapter, where the whole adventure kind of kicks off. I hope you enjoy it!

STARSHIP FABLE – CHAPTER THREE

The night before we left was almost entirely uneventful. Marie, myself, and the kids spent the evening going back and forth from the apartment to the dry-dock, loading up all of the stray supplies and goods that we were taking on our trip. Marie ate her nightly cucumber, she always had one before bed. Whole, not peeled, like it was a treat. We had to be done by midnight, station time, as they would be moving Fable from the dry-dock to a docking collar;  she would be ready and waiting at the dock at around 4 in the morning. Which, of course, meant that I was going to be ready hit the road, so to speak, at that exact time. There would be stray items and clothing we would gather that night and bring with us in the morning, but for the most part everything was on board and ready to go.

My inner child has never subsided, when it comes to anticipation. I find it hard to focus on anything when something exciting is on the horizon. It is ever-present and uncontrollable, and I cannot think of anything else. The eve of an adventure like this – or anything I might be looking forward to – is almost always a sleepless night. I lie on my side, on my back, staring at the ceiling or wall, waiting for tomorrow. Waiting for the time when my excitement finally comes to fruition. This night was no different. I lay in bed, in our three bedroom apartment in the hab ring on Voss Station, imagining the feeling I would have in the cockpit. Pulling away from Voss Station and beginning our journey. The feeling of spooling the FTL drive the first time and plotting course for a distant star. Hopping from star to star as we got deeper into the journey…

BANG! BANG!

Someone was at my door. What?

BANG BANG BANG!

Someone was aggressively pounding on my door at 3am. Was I dreaming?

I grabbed my pants from the bedside floor and quickly put them on and hurried to the door of the bedroom. Marie opened her eyes and mumbled some vague concern, I told her not to worry and go back to sleep. It was almost time to go. Who the hell was at the door?

BANG BANG BANG!

Security? They were knocking like security. Fuck. Was this about the drugs? FUCK. Our apartment wasn’t very large, not much larger than Fable truth be told. We had three bedrooms, a bathroom that were accessible down the only hallway, which attached to central living space, where the sole entrance to the apartment was. The central living space was adjacent to the kitchen – it was all kind of one big open layout .It didn’t take me long to get to the viewscreen on the door. 

Aaron. What the fuck? Aaron? I opened the door.

“Hey man, it’s kind of late what’s going…” I started to say.

In a flash, Aaron pulled a laser pistol from behind his back, and two men equaling his size revealed themselves from either side of the door, both with laser pistols of their own – drawn. One of them had long hair held in a ponytail, the other was bald and heavily tattooed. They both wore sunglasses. Fuck. Why didn’t I grab that old gun from the bedside table drawer?

“So, about your little trip…” Aaron said slyly,  “I’ve got some concerns about your absence and I’m here to alleviate them for myself. Mind if I come in?”  He asked, but it wasn’t a question. 

He pushed me out of the way, entering my apartment. He tucked his pistol back into his pants as he made his way towards my couch, dropping his entire weight onto it and making himself comfortable. His goons kept their pistols trained on me as Ponytail nodded at me to follow Aaron.

“Have a seat, let’s chat.” Aaron said, calmly.

“Okay.” I said, trying to come across as calm as Aaron appeared, despite being thoroughly spooked. Maybe an understatement – my heart was nearly exploding out of my chest. I was sweating, shaking. I walked towards him as he leaned forward, putting his elbows on his knees and steepling his hands under his chin.

“So. You’re leaving… and you’re taking my supply with you?” He asked, calmly.

His question caught me off guard. Taking the drugs with me? I responded, bewildered:

“What? No, of course not. What is this Aaron?”

He rubbed the palm of his left hand gently across his cheek, chuckling performatively to himself, saying; “No? Where is it then? Where’s the stash?” 

Is he here to rob me? Is that what this is? He doesn’t know I keep the supply here in the apartment. Fuck, this isn’t good. Just give him the shit, Jack. I tried to reason with him:

“Aaron, come on man..” he quickly cut me off:

“Jack, I’m not here to play fucking games with you. Where is the stash?” His facial expression was hardening, and he was playing like he was losing patience – though I knew Aaron well enough to know he’d been on edge since he walked through my door. At least, I thought I knew him. He chuckled abruptly:

“Wait. Is it here? Do you keep the supply here in your apartment, Jacky boy?” He laughed, genuinely. “ Of course you do, you dumb fuck. What do ya think Frank? Is he hiding it in the kitchen?”

Ponytail’s name appeared to be Frank – he responded with a slow, aloof shrug and made his way to the kitchen. He opened the first cabinet he came to and began, loudly, emptying it out on the floor. Knocking everything out of it and onto the ground.

“Aaron…” I was going to try to tell him something, anything, that he wanted to hear, but he interrupted me.

“Shut the fuck up Jack! I asked you a simple question, and look at you. You’re nothing, Jack. We’re doing this my way now.”

Baldie smirked and shuffled to join Ponytail in my kitchen. The two made their way through every cabinet and drawer, the fridge, the oven; knocking any loose object they came into contact with onto the floor. 

“Not in the kitchen, boss.” Ponytail mumbled.

“Aaron, what the fuck man? My kids are sleeping, my..” I tried again, allowing my confusion and fear to work their way into my words. I didn’t know what to say, I didn’t know what to do. My mind felt like it was melting, my heart was about to give out. He cut me off again: 

“Not for long, friend. Go get their asses up, boys. Consider this a family meeting, Jacky. Get the wife too. The lovely Marie I’ve heard so much about. I want to see her up close.” Aaron shouted, at his goons, making kissy lips after the last of his last orders. Ponytail and Baldie made their way down the hallway to the bedrooms.

“Aaron, look, I don’t know what this is but, whatever it is you’re after, it’s yours. Leave my family out of this, it doesn’t have to go like this. We’re leaving tomorrow. Please.” I said, almost in tears. I wanted to be angry, I wanted to be mad. I wanted to stand up for myself, for my family. I couldn’t do anything but cower. 

“That’s what I want to hear Jack. I want your stock. All of it. I want it now, and I want you to pay me for it.” Aaron said, laughing in my face. I was nothing to him, a minor obstacle. Had he planned for this all along?

Just then I heard Trixie sobbing as Ponytail pulled her out into the living space. James sulked behind her, wiping the sleep from her eyes. They were both confused, fear streaked across their faces. The other goon, Baldie, followed with Joe in tow, who looked like he was still asleep and completely unaware of what was going on, holding his pillow. 

“It’s okay guys. It’s okay. These are dad’s friends from work…”  I said to my children, in my least convincing tone. I was quivering. The children stood, helpless and terrifed next to Ponytail, across the room from me. Ponytail had his monstrously large right hand around Trixie’s left bicep, it looked like he was holding a pencil. James’ eyes were darting left to right, she was in complete panic. Joe was sobbing now. I was terrified to see where this was going and I felt completely helpless amidst these three giants. I just had to get him the supply and he would leave. 

“Pay you for it?” My words betrayed me. Let go of the money Jack, just give him whatever he wants.

Our adventure was over before it even started. Without money, we wouldn’t get very far. Aaron, certainly, wasn’t just looking for a bit of restitution. He was going to take me for all I was worth. My supplies, my cash, all of it. I would be cleaned out. The first payment on Fable wasn’t due for a year – we had the sense to put down a reasonable down payment as well as paying the first year of financing – but fuel? Supplies? We were fucked.

“Yeah, I want my fucking money back, Jack. All of it. Where’s the wife Bruce? The wife! Get the fucking wife!” Aaron barked

Baldie turned to walk down the hallway. There was dead silence and then, in a single breath – a gunshot. Loud. A ballistic shot. THUD. 

Aaron startled, stood and turned, wide-eyed, as Ponytail aimed his weapon at the hallway entrance. The kids all started crying. Chaos. I dove for the children from my position, who had been huddled into a mass next to Ponytail. I screamed at them all to get down, trying to tackle them as I fell to the floor. Aaron pulled out his gun, training it on the hallway entrance and motioned to Ponytail, who clumsily rushed down the hall  to check on Baldie. 

Another gunshot. THUD. Marie. Holy shit, Marie!

“How many more?” Marie shouted from the bedroom. Aaron looked back at me, panic in his eyes, unsure of what to do.

“Just one” I shouted back, as I looked into Aaron’s eyes. Fury flushed over his face and he leveled the barrel of the gun at me.

“Don’t say another fucking word…” He said, as he moved the barrel away from me. He was pointing it at Trixie, and continued; “… or I shoot her.”

Aaron looked at me with rage filled eyes, wide and expanding to the point of bursting. I could almost see the vein on his head pumping blood into them, as he quickly pivoted to train the gun on the hallway entrance once again and shouted:

“Throw the gun down the hallway and nobody gets hurt. I’m going to count to five, if there’s no gun on the ground when I get to five, your little girl gets two in the chest.” Aaron demanded, his whole head was red now, he was vibrating.

“One… Two… Three… Four…”

CLANK

Aaron sharply turned his attention to the floor to look at the gun Marie tossed, and in a fraction of an instant, Marie contorted her upper body around the frame of the hallway entrance and fired a single shot through his forehead. His body fell limp to the floor. THUD.

“We have five minutes. Get everything you think you need, we are going.” Marie said, calmly.

I stood there, stunned, as the kids all ran to their mother screaming and crying for their mama. I looked at the floor. It was a spare, loaded magazine that she threw, not the gun. I couldn’t believe it, how she acted so fast. How did she even know the situation was so dire? How could she have acted so violently, so quickly? I knew then, as I know now, that there were things about my wife that she never told me. Things from her past that she kept secret, deep inside her, dark things she was trying to escape from. Things she was trying to protect us from?

Whatever plans we had for this trip, they had just taken a significant turn – an understatement to be sure. Fable was going to be ready to leave in an hour, and there were three bodies in our apartment. If we left without going to security, they would assume the worst and it wouldn’t be long before we were flagged for both murder and evasion in the Liberty Republic systems. That’s not to mention the massive amount of illegal, performance enhancing drugs I was keeping in the apartment. I wouldn’t be able to get those onto Fable – what the hell was I going to do with them?

“Babe, we need to talk..” I said to Marie, cautiously. “We can’t just leave the apartment like this. Aaron… and my supplies…”

“We don’t have a much of a choice.” She said, firmly. “We get to the ship and we get the hell out of here. What’s done is done.”

There are moments like this in every life. Hectic, frantic moments where so many different gears are turning it’s hard to know what’s even happening. This moment, unlike the many leading up to it, felt huge. It felt cumbersome. It felt impossible. We needed to slow down and think. We needed to evaluate our options and decide, analyzing and debating outcomes, what the best course of action was. But these moments don’t allow for that kind of navigation. You don’t have time to sit around a discuss which choice is best. You have a family, who moments before, was threatened at gunpoint. You have a wife who is responsible for three deaths, however justified they might be. You have an apartment filled with drugs, illegal drugs, recreational or not.

And you have a starship. A ticket to freedom. Cold freedom. It wasn’t really even a choice. We couldn’t stay, knowing what that meant. We couldn’t leave either, really – it was crazy to go on the run with three children. But we had to. This wasn’t how I ever dreamt of starting my interstellar adventure, but imagination cannot account for this kind of unforgiving reality.

We didn’t touch or move the bodies. I took a little extra time to haul the drugs to the nearest disposal unit, not that it would make much of a difference. Crowds had started to gather outside, concerned faces lining the hab ring corridors. They had heard the shots, of course. This whole apartment block would be cordoned for investigation very shortly.

Most of our closet neighbors knew we were leaving for an extended amount of time today, which helped excuse our hurried exit. Marie did a lot of mothering on our way down to the docks. She did her best to explain, in hushed tones, what just happened – why it happened, what it meant. They understood, I think, the best they could. They were about to grow up a whole lot faster than either of us ever anticipated, and this was a loud first step.

We stopped at a 24-hour bank kiosk on the way to the docks and transferred the money from our accounts into the accounts of the corporation I had formed. Law enforcement intervention, whenever the bodies were found and the investigation was started, would result in the freezing of our personal accounts and the inability for us to access our funds in them. The corporation would be protected from this, as it was protected under the law as a separate entity from myself. Any transactions we performed could potentially be flagged and traced, though the funds themselves would not be frozen. We would have to be careful, but we wouldn’t be completely locked out.

We got to the docking collar around a quarter to four and to our surprise, Fable was ready and waiting for us – which was nice because I was in a state of complete panic. This was a small, karmic kindness in a sea of confusion. Did we do something terrible? Did we make the right choice? We could never take it back, and we would live with the repercussions forever. Marie was holding it together very well. I got the sense she had been in this kind of situation before. It didn’t take us long to get the last of our things on board and que for departure. I wondered how long it would be before we were formally issued a demand to return to the station for a pending investigation. A day? Two? An hour? What the fuck were we going to do…

“We need to leave Liberty space.” Marie said, coldly, as we settled the kids into their bunks, waiting for departure clearance. They were all on the verge of sleep, their night’s rest cut horrifically short.

“I know. For how long?” I asked

“I don’t know. Longer than two months.” She said with certainty.

“I’m not going to have a job to come back to.” I said, softly. I would have no job to come back to once the bodies were found in our apartment, anyway.

Marie turned to me, and walked gently over to me from across the cargo hold, brushing her warm body against my side and putting her hand on my head. She looked me deep in the eyes and said, sweetly:

“Babe, we’re not coming back. We can’t ever come back.” 

And I knew. I knew the truth of why she left Jericho – and why she could never go back. This wasn’t her first rodeo.