Andromeda Mayday Read online

  “You can’t call them that!”

  “Why not? We’re Humans, they’re aliens.”

  “Shhh! It’s xenophobic!”

  “That’s crazy. I’m no xenophobe.”

  After first contact, the polite term was guests. As they integrated into the Human sectors and more and more were born there, it didn’t make sense to call them guests, so we called them aliens. Kids started using alien as an insult, and soon it became a full-fledged epithet. With time, sapients came about as the proper way to address them, usually shortened to saps.

  Sap is a catch-all word for sapient galactic and intergalactic species, from humanoid to gaseous. It’s hard or impossible for most of them to live alongside Humans for purely logistical reasons. Very few breathe oxygen and most need to carry around tanks of methane or argon or whatever, so the vast majority of them ignore us. Many of our greatest technological breakthroughs were thanks to sap scientists though, including the PGD and the cloaking system, so they were very revered in the Qbik. To a certain extent, we owed our very existence to them.

  We sat in silence for a minute as I rolled a joint and lit it. “Have you ever fucked an alien?”

  She looked at me with a mixture of disgust and intrigue. “No . . . you have?”

  “I have a friend from K-407. Join us sometime, if you want. It’s amazing. You should know that’s normal here. You’re going to have to get rid of your old-galaxy prejudices if you want to fit in.” I handed her the J. “How are you holding up?”

  “I’m great. It’s weird, but I’ve never felt this good. Why do people keep asking me that?”

  “We have two hundred million people stuck in a box floating in space. After keeping the GUAP out, our most important task is to ensure the mental health of our citizens. Left to its own devices, human nature is chaos and anger.” I took the joint back after she hit it. “What’s the deal with Wolfram?”

  “Tombstone? It’s . . . complicated. He’s like a brother to me. Well, he’s more like a sexy stepcousin. Somebody you’ve definitely thought about screwing but know it’d cause a lot of drama.”

  “So you guys never . . .?” I used the intergalactic gesture for getting it on.

  “Are you kidding? He has a chick on every planet in the Union. He wouldn’t have any time for me even if I wanted to.” She hit me with a smile that was both dopey and sexy, nudging me with her elbow. “You like him? I can hook you up if you want. He’d eat you alive. He loves redheads.”

  Sometimes you start a conversation and it goes places you never intended it to.

  “I have to get up early tomorrow.” I handed her the rest of my weed. “Roll yourself another. That should help you get to sleep.”

  Vint’s Story

  Vint Carabine was a very handsome spy. He fancied himself a pirate because his main job was smuggling drugs and weapons into the GUAP and people out of it. His booty was a fat paycheck from the Department of Intelligence and Espionage, which also gave him Ms. Magnificent, a large cargo ship full of uppers, downers, guns, ammo, subversive literature, and whatever else the Qbik wanted to use to destabilize the Galactic Union. He was expected to bring it back with politicians, scientists, and military secrets. Kidnapping, assassinations, and drug running: he had a good life, until he fell in love.

  It took three months to get to the nearest inhabitable planet in the GUAP, and he made the trip alone. On the ground he had set up a network of friendlies—paid saboteurs, revolutionary idealists, blackmailed officials, and common criminals—to take care of documentation and unload his cargo. A lot of the problems in the Union had to do with mismanagement and corruption, which the Qbik tried to exploit as much as possible.

  Despite its name, the Galactic Union of Autonomous Planets didn’t control the whole galaxy. There were holdouts from the old Dynasty, as well as purged former revolutionaries, exiled to the farthest edges of the spirals. Emboldened by the recent annexation of the Eagle Nebula, the Union was embarking on a bold new multifront action to reconquer them.

  After any revolution, the power vacuum left by the old guard must be filled. Factions that had been comrades in arms during the war now look at each other with suspicion. Did they fight as bravely as they claim? How many of them are spies, alien agents, or sympathetic to the previous regime, a fifth column lying in wait to strike out against the fragile new order? A process of natural selection begins in this bubbling petri dish of paranoia; a new monster evolves as the more scrupulous are killed off or exiled, leaving behind the purest form of cynical, unrepentant politician. Only the most skilled at marketing fear to a public beaten down by years of war will take the reins of the new empire, even if they’re too savvy to give it such an ugly name.

  In the postrevolutionary Milky Way, that monster was Osco Silvos.

  Like any good spy, Vint was only truly allegiant to the art of espionage itself. He liked the Qbik and was glad he was born there rather than in some dreary Union starstation or mutant slum, but he had no illusions about the moral clarity of his missions or the true goals of the Department. They paid him to do fucked-up shit, and he was happy to do it.

  Looking down at Port City from above, you had to admire the tenacity of the GUAP that it could govern the galactic capital at all. The skyscrapers almost reached the upper atmosphere and had to be mass-produced in orbit. Real estate on a planet with a breathable atmosphere and balmy –25oC summers was pretty valuable, so a place like Port City might have a population of several hundred million people. This made it impossible for even the most oppressive government to enforce the arbitrary laws its Galactic Assembly passed. He flew over the endless ghettos until he passed an unassuming abandoned warehouse, at which point he turned his communicator to an unused channel. Static burst from his speakers. He sent three quick empty signals, waited five seconds, and sent four long ones. The roof to the warehouse opened and he made a wide U-turn above it, slowly coming in for a landing.

  * * *

  “My people are very grateful to you.” Krae’s voice was deep and authoritative. He reclined in his seat and took a long drag from the hookah on the table between them. “Soon the Union will fall and you will go down in our history as a hero.”

  “Your struggle is our struggle, my friend.” Vint, the only Human allowed into the headquarters of the Lathe Underground, kept silent about the fact that Krae’s people had zero chance of toppling the Galactic Union.

  “Lathes and Humans will finally live in peace.” Krae left unsaid that, after the GUAP was defeated, all Humans would pay for their centuries of exploitation.

  His species grows incandescent with age, and Krae’s skin, once a sprightly, swirling violet, was now a silvery glowing mauve. He used his tail to refill his cup. In the hangar, soldiers were unloading enormous crates marked DANGER! and TOXIC MATERIALS! from Ms. Magnificent.

  Vint was having tea with the most wanted sap in the GUAP in the lair of the galaxy’s most extreme terrorist organization.

  Once colonized and enslaved by the Dynasty, Lathes got the shitty end of the stick after the revolution. You couldn’t blame Krae for being mad. He had fought fiercely for freedom, only to be stabbed in the back by Silvos, and now most of his brethren toiled in asteroid mines, extracting minerals and precious metals in slavelike conditions. The rest joined him or followed other terrorist leaders, making periodic attacks on Union financial and military targets.

  “Now, as per our agreement.” Krae opened a holoprojector, aiming it at the table. A Human male having sex with a Lathe female appeared. Krae zoomed in on the man’s face and Vint recognized him immediately. It was the GUAP minister of agriculture.

  “Beautiful.” The Galactic Union’s bigotry against xenosexuals made high-ranking officials vulnerable to blackmail, and Krae had a whole army of honey-trap Lathes to seduce them.

  “Now check this out.” Krae, giddy, zoomed down to the man’s ass. Vint could see the female’s tail moving from underneath her toward his anus, glistening with pre-ejaculate lubricant, before it
penetrated him. He let out a moan as he came, relaxing on top of her. The entire room broke out in laughter. “There’s more where that came from.” He tossed an infochip to Vint.

  Andromeda’s Story

  The truth is, most inhabitable planets are frozen wastelands, but D-22-7 is one of the better ones. At least you can go outside, which was where Andromeda stood, smoking a cigarette and waiting for the boys to buy vodka. It was a rare moment alone on tour, and she relished it, shifting her feet in the snow to make a satisfying crunching sound. She would’ve enjoyed it more without the gargantuan portrait of Osco Silvos over the storefront, so she tried to focus on the galactic spirals visible in the icy midday sky.

  The drinking was getting out of hand. The empty hours between soundcheck and the beginning of the concert, followed by two or three opening acts, had to be spent doing something, and in this galaxy there weren’t many options. After the concert, liquor and various powders, pills, and tabs would keep your performance high going until you crashed sometime midmorning. If there was no show the next day, you might keep going into the evening. If there was a show the next day, you still might keep going, but you would play like shit and pass out right after it was over. It was bleak, but the nihilism and hopelessness of life on planets destroyed by thousands of years of Human civilization and a galaxy-wide civil war was invigorating.

  * * *

  There are two kinds of people in the Milky Way: main characters and bit players. The main characters can tell right away who’s worth talking to and who they needn’t waste their time on, and they sniff each other out like dogs.

  The door opened and Andy turned to see a figure in the hall taking his coat off. Their eyes met and she felt an immediate connection with him. She was in the kitchen of a flat somewhere on the thousandth floor of a prefab apartment building after the concert, passing around a two-liter bottle of honey beer with various hangers-on and scenesters. The food was cheap and simple, but welcome, if only for the fact that the smell covered up the body- and foot odors.

  “Hell-o. I’m Vint.”

  “Andy.” She held her right hand out to shake his, but he took the beer from her left hand and swigged it instead. Ballsy.

  “So you’re the rock star?” Dexterous as a magician, he pulled out a baggy full of baby-blue pills. “I got something for you.” He had an aura of adventure and carried himself like someone who knew exactly what he was doing. Add to that a folksy charm, dark eyes, and a youthfully rugged face and anybody who saw them together could predict how this was going to end: they spent the rest of the night rolling, drinking, and talking until everyone else in the flat was asleep or comatose. Then they stumbled into the bathroom and fucked until the sink broke and Andy fell onto the ceramic shards, bleeding onto the tiles.

  “Don’t stop . . .” she cried out, but Vint hadn’t even considered stopping.

  * * *

  “Cunt, cunt, cunt. . . .” She was on her stomach on the kitchen table, naked from the waist down, when Tombstone entered. Vint had washed the cuts on her ass with vodka and was stitching a large gash down her left cheek. Tombstone maneuvered around them to get to the fridge and open a beer.

  “Where’s your next show?” Vint asked.

  “KR-46-3.”

  “When does the shuttle leave?”

  “In four hours.”

  “I’m heading in that direction. Why don’t you guys refund your tickets, keep your money, and come with me?”

  * * *

  A cyclops mother sipping a beer pushed her bundled-up baby on a swing set and eyed the musicians suspiciously. It was the outskirts of Port City, megameters of abandoned factories, long-empty mines, mutant housing projects, and perpetual smog: a graveyard for hope. They stood in a rusty playground outside a warehouse in the courtyard of a burnt-out prerevolutionary building—one of the many structures that looked as though it must have been abandoned centuries ago yet bewilderingly remained inhabited.

  “Your boyfriend knows how to travel in style,” Tombstone said to Andy.

  She wanted to flip him off but remembered there was a kid watching them, so she took another swig of the vodka they were drinking to stay warm. “Blow me. You want to take the shuttle, go ahead.”

  “Too late for that . . . and now that you’re boning Dr. Feelgood, we’ve hit the jackpot.”

  The door to the warehouse swung open with a long creak.

  “Come on in, guys. Sorry about the wait. They don’t really like unexpected guests here.” Vint took them down a long cast-iron staircase lit by bare bulbs to the main hangar. “There she is, Ms. Magnificent.” “She” was a six-hundred-square-meter box. Vint opened the door: “Welcome aboard.” Andy avoided the five pairs of eyes looking at her in a mixture of amazement and dismay and boarded the ship.

  Once they had cleared the atmosphere, Vint set the cruise control and left the cockpit. “Hey guys, ready to party?” He sat down on the couch and carved up a fat line on the table. “When’s the show on KR-46-3?”

  “In eight days.”

  “Great. Perfect, we’ll get there just in time. I have to make a quick delivery, but it’s on the way.” He pulled Andy onto his lap and rolled up a 1000 GUAP Credit bill, and she went to town on the coke. When she was done, he threw the rest of the white brick on the table. “You guys make yourself at home. Coffee, tea, the fridge is over there.” Taking Andy by the hand, he led her into the cockpit.

  * * *

  It was a small protoplanetary nebula. She had never seen its like, a rainbow of intricate waves of colors. In front of it was a very sleek space mansion. Suddenly, “Li’l Ol’ Me” started playing out of nowhere. “Where is that coming from?” Andy asked, surprised.

  “I’m getting a call.” He flipped a switch and a hologram of a large jolly man in a fur coat appeared.

  “Vint!”

  “Taram, happy birthday!”

  “Thanks. I’m glad you could make it.”

  “There’s no place I’d rather be.”

  “And who is your friend?” He peered closer at them.

  “Only the best singer in the Union, Andromeda Mayday.”

  “Wonderful! Andromeda, I do hope you’ll grace us with a concert. . . .”

  Andy looked at Vint, who nodded encouragingly. “Uh, sure, I’ll talk to the guys.”

  “Great, we’ll be seeing you all soon.”

  Vint turned off the communicator. “Trust me. It’ll be worth your while. I’ll make sure you get way more than whatever they promised you on KR-46-3.”

  Onboard, the mansion was no less impressive. The top floor was open to space, an invisible force field holding in the atmosphere and allowing one to stand directly in front of the nebula. The landscape was stone pathways, bubbling brooks, and hot tubs. Sexy biodroids carried platters of the most expensive lab-grown seafood and meats, champagne and wine. Winged lions, unicorns, and other genetically modified creatures mingled with the partygoers. At the very end, just on the edge of the nebula, was a stage.

  “I don’t know about this, Vint. It’s not really our scene,” Andy said, overwhelmed.

  Taram approached the group, embracing Vint and kissing Andy’s hand. “I’m so honored you’ll be playing my party. We can’t wait to hear you.”

  “Thanks, and happy birthday.”

  When they were alone again, Vint threw his arm around her waist. “Trust me, babe, they’ll love you.”

  * * *

  Her nervousness made her reserved and even more mysterious, enhancing her elegance. A lesser personality would have been dwarfed standing on a stage in front of a nebula, but it complemented her energy, almost feeding off of her. The crowd grew quiet as they noticed, and Taram stumbled onto the stage.

  “Ladiesth and gentleben, ’tis my honor to present the most best band in the Milky Way . . . Adnrom . . . Adrom . . . Ad . . . May . . . day and the Uncatchables!”

  The first chord of their first song was slow and drawn out. Starting softly, the clarinet, fiddle, and Tombstone’s kn
opfakkordeon riffed in the Fraygish mode in the key of Q major for several bars, accented by cymbals and backed by a gentle, melodic upright bass. As it crescendoed, building toward the inevitable peak, Andy, tremolo picking her three-stringed domra, closed her eyes and took a deep breath, filling her stomach with air, and . . . the electricity went out.

  When she opened her eyes, in the light of the nebula she could make out a dark column of movement on both sides of the dance floor. She quickly realized it was troops from the GUAP Ministry of Benevolence marching toward Vint.

  “Vint!” she cried out, but it was too late. They grabbed his shoulders, trying to pull him down to the floor.

  “Andy!” For a moment he managed to pull away, flinging something to her as everyone looked on in amazement. She reached out and caught it, then opened her hands to find the keys to Ms. Magnificent.

  She looked back at Vint. As the cops were dragging him off, he mouthed to her, “Bye-bye, baby doll,” before half of the dance floor exploded. The force of the hot wind slammed her back into the drum set and knocked her out momentarily.

  “Andy!” This time it was Tombstone shouting her name. He pulled her up.

  “Wait.” She had dropped the keys. For what seemed like minutes, she rummaged under the drums until she found them. In the chaos, the band made their way to Vint’s ship, boarded it, and took off.

  * * *

  When Vint pressed the self-destruct button implanted in his hand, he set off a series of automated events, starting with a distress signal being sent to the Qbik and Ms. Magnificent cloaking herself and shifting into dark speed.

  “Where the fuck are we going?”

  “I don’t know. It’s on autopilot, I can’t take control.”

  After a week flying through an unfamiliar, uninhabited region of the galaxy toward deep space, the group had given up hope of ever being found. They spent most of their time on the leftover acid, ecstasy, and weed, hoping they’d reach their destination before they ran out of those and had to start doing heroin. The ship seemed to be taking them somewhere and was running smoothly until the water-processing system stopped working. There was enough food and powdered hydrants, and of course beer, but showering was out and they had to shit and piss into bottles and shoot them out into space. Tombstone became despondent and spent most of his time alone with his accordion, and Andromeda, bored to death, put herself into suspended animation and figured they’d wake her up whenever they got to where they were going.