The Best Laid Plans of Vegetation and Cybernetic Beings

Part 2

Author's Note: Just an FYI. I shamelessly break the fourth wall. It's part of the style I'm going for, but like the Grandpa in The Princess Bride, I'm explaining now so you don't worry. 😊 

The lazivator doors opened to the bridge, but Jeb paused a minute before entering to admire the view and give the reader a chance to visualize the setting. Like most iGotThis class vessels, the bridge was a small compact bubble with a 360-degree view of the space through which it traveled. Of course, the view was digitally generated; the bridge itself nestled securely in the center of the saucer section under multiple deck plates and shields. Most species thought the design overkill...until they met the kind of crew that generally gravitated to HuFleet.

Let's meet a few of them now.

To the right, in a horseshoe-shaped console that manned sensors, communications, and ship systems and could be tied to engineering and command functions by flipping the switches installed under the main console, Ensign Ellie Doall stood, fingers flying over the touchpad screens. Was she recalibrating the sensors? Scanning for potential threats? Tallying the latest ship's pool? Jeb never quite knew, though he guessed – and accurately – that she was doing more than one of those. Regardless, if he needed anything, he could count on her to already be on it by the time he asked.

On his left, in a similarly shaped console, Minion First Class Gel O'Tin stabbed one of his tendrils at the security board at a significantly slower pace than Doall. Probably following the progress of their new guests, or trying to, if the greyish blue of his gelatinous endoplasm was any indication. O'Tin didn't have a lot of experience with bridge duty yet. Not to mention the fact that the human interfaces baffled him easily. There were times when his technical incompetence exasperated Jeb, but there was no disputing the Globbal's talents in a fight. O'Tin absorbed punishment...then he absorbed his foes.

Almost dead across from Jeb, the helmsman, Tonio Francisco Cruz, lounged at his console, feet up on the edge while he told a story to First Officer Commander Phineas Smythe, who sat in one of two revolving chairs in the center of the room. Judging from how his hands were moving, Cruz was either relaying an atmospheric dogfight from his Union Air Force days or a fight he'd had with his grandmother. In the recessed alcove to his right, three extra crewman half-listened while they played cards.

"Then she hit me – Bada-bam! Glancing shot to my port thrusters. I had to make an emergency landing in Dona Tortella's tomato fields. I stunk of marinara all summer. I'm a-telling you. You don't snitch my nona's tortellini or her hovercrafts!"

"Your grandmother was quite a woman," Commander Smythe remarked dryly. "I wonder. If we invited her aboard, could she break you of the habit of putting your feet on the nav console?"

"Sorry, sir," he said. "Orbit's just so boring. Put her in the right spot and stick her on autopilot. Doall could handle it from her console."

"I have," Doall answered. "Captain on the bridge, by the way – or at least in the lazivator."

Cruz's feet came down with a thump and Smythe spun the command chair to face the back. "Sir! Are our guests aboard safely?"

Captain Tiberius strode in, but paused just past the double-horseshoes of Security and Ops. "Well, Dolfrick would insist they died in route, of course, but they seem fine now. I left them in Loreli's capable hands. Are LaFuentes and Deary waiting for us in the briefing room?"

Smythe nodded. "There has been giggling, sir. I fear the worst."

"Well, we'd better get in there before they devise some creative new way to blow up this ship."

"Or someone else's."

Jeb shrugged. "Don't care so much about someone else's, as long as it's the right someone else. Cruz, why don't you come join us if you're so bored?"