The Domici War

[1434.259.1200] Ifningholm Downport

I used to be scared, but not no more. Now I was "wet my coveralls and swear to the Creator to be good for the rest of my hopefully not short life" terrified.

The day had started like every one of the last fifty-seven; grumpy old Chief Ivarsson told me to clean the engineering section of BMM-100644. I was tall enough to reach most places, and skinny enough to climb into tight spots. Cleaning like that got black grease and worse dirt into my hair, and the black and blond stripes looked funny even to me. When I first signed on six months ago, it had taken me two weeks to totally purge and scrub the bilge troughs. Like most of the hundred-year-old ship, they hadn't been cleaned in a while. Chief Ivarsson hadn't been much for cleaning, unless someone else was doing it. Same with the rest of the crew. Captain Varin herself wasn't much for anything besides Captain Varin's purse.

But cleaning the ship gave me a lot of information that most folks never knew. One time I helped clean the inside of the ventral fuel tank, some gunk had gotten stuck in the fuel scoop and blocked up the purifier. They all knowed I did a good job cleaning, but I guess they didn't expect me to crawl through the rest of the fuel tank to see if anything else needed a good scrub. I would have never known about the smugglers' holds down there, you know. They had been careful not to mention it to me before, as I was new to the ship, but you could put a good bit of stuff in the compartments I saw. I wondered if there was the same in the dorsal fuel tank? It'd make sense, there was a maintenance tunnel above the cargo hold. It went all the way from the bridge back to engineering. There was an upper and lower tube too, one to the dorsal and ventral turrets that didn't really work. I had cleaned those too, and the entire tunnel passage to them.

Everyone called me Jimmie, 'cept Chief Ivarsson when he wanted to cuss me. Then he said "Lauwers." No one called me James, they all assumed I came from some back-world with no tech and not a lot of marriage prospects. At nearly eighteen, with a full year and half of being employed as an "Apprentice: Ships Engines," I could clean the engineering section, interpret the dials, and work the control indicators I cleaned off. I even understood how to tune the Brote-2315s that powered BMM-100644 across space, 'cause I got to watch some videos on it. Course Chief never let me touch anything important. Folks failed to ask where I was from, and that was okay; they would have been surprised.

When my last ship had financially gone bust and was sold, I was broke and on Birach. Birach wasn't a bad place to land; not too crowded, lots of ships going in and out, and real sky. When I wasn't cleaning Engineering or loading cargo, I sometimes got to walk through the park next to the industrial section of the star port. It was nice, with real dirt and real grass that got mowed every week. There were statues of famous people around the mulch path through the park, and lots of flowers. Birach had been attacked by a huge pirate fleet a few years ago, and this one lady attacked a huge battleship to rescue her dad. There was a statue of her there, and she was a Marine in armor. Across the path from her was a guy in normal spacer gear. I had heard the stories about him; he was sweet on the Marine girl. He was Captain of a mid-sized merchant ship, and he charged the entire enemy fleet to rescue her. Which was funny, 'cause she was trying to rescue her dad. The dad's statue was further along on the path, and older. He had caused a war on Birach before I was born, and tossed out the old government. Folks seemed happy with what he did, since his statue always had a bunch of flowers laid in front of it.

Birach was a funny place. There was these cities like Ifningholm; several thousand people spread out over a few dozen kilometers. The tallest buildings were only twenty or thirty stories high; they was just tiny. On Atreo, my home planet, that much ground space would have buildings two or three hundred stories high, and several million people trying to live and work in them. The entire planet back home was either city or ocean. Folks like me lived in deep underground complexes, we had artificial light that looked like the sun, and artificial grass that looked real, even up close. I had a hard time imagining any place having so many living trees that they could grind them up for a nice soft path. Back home, on the video set, it was packed dust and chunks of dirt, 'cept when they needed mud. Missy would love this place, and I really wanted to rescue her so I could walk along the path with her.

Rescues take money, and I needed to get Ma and Pa out too. But I had no money. BMM-100644 was the only ship that would take me on, what with no credentials or engineer's license. She wasn't a bad ship; a very old merchant in a small hull. A decade or so ago, her working engines had been yanked and replaced with the Brote set; matching power and maneuver. No jump drive at all, which meant we had a lot of extra room back in engineering. I had a hammock and a spacer's bag where the jump drives used to be, just like all the other engineers 'cept for Chief Ivarsson. BMM-100644 hauled supplies and the occasional government official out to the belt, up to the high port, or sometimes out to the shipyards deeper in the system. She was officially a Birach Merchant Marine vessel, but I called her as "Miss Sally". She wasn't a bad ship. I wasn't too sure about the crew and I had yet to get my full pay; the Captain herself said the government subsidy checks were late.

Now I wasn't sure I was going to get paid at all. Of course, I wasn't sure I'd be alive long enough to spend any of it, anyway. I had run into the empty cargo hold when they called me. There had been some screams and thumping as I climbed down from cleaning the power plant shielding meters, and then I had to struggle into my coveralls and put my boots back on. It was wash day, and I had cleaned both set of my coveralls and all my boxers and socks in the work sink. That industrial cleaner was meant for hard to scrub engineering parts, but it did a nice job on greasy coveralls too. I hopped as I pulled my boots on, ran out the hatch, and skidded to a stop just behind Chief Ivarsson right as someone hit him over the head with his shotgun. The shotgun made a cracking sound as it hit his skill, and he hit the deck right fast.

That's when I saw her. The woman looked at me, as if waiting for me to attack. I wasn't the "hit a girl" sort usually and surely wasn't about to hit a woman holding half of Chief's pump shotgun. Antonio, the second pilot, crawled away from the woman. He was moving slow and his left foot was turned funny. Chief was out cold, having someone take your shotgun and break it over your head can do that to a fellow. Jackie, the other "Apprentice: Ships Engines," leaned his hundred-fifty-kilo self against the bulkhead and tried to hold his jaw in place. He slowly slid down to the deck, and started crying.

"Well?" the woman said. "Should I ditch the gun so you think it's fair?"

The woman's hair was sort of blond, more a dusty dirt color, but in a Raider haircut. Tanned skin and frightening blue eyes. Not as tall as me, but a lot meatier. She wore a standard Birach Merchant Marine gray utility uniform with a Sublieutenant's pip on her collar. And she was still holding most of Chief's shotgun.

My heart raced. They had yelled at me to get to the port loading ramp and to be ready for a tussle. They had not really explained the plan to lose the tussle this badly and this quickly. I really weren't much for a tussle anyway. "N-n-no. Ma'am," I said as I took a big step back. "No Ma'am."

The woman watched me as she racked the action until no more shells came out. "Well, if you're not going to hit me, then maybe you could answer the Captain's question?" She nodded down the loading ramp.

I was sure my heart was about to attack. "Uh...uh...uh..." Was all I could say. The woman stepped back and I took three very careful steps around her, until I got to the edge of the loading ramp. We only had one ramp that worked, the starboard ramp gears had been rusted solid and the ramp was spot welded shut. A man in Birach Merchant Marine utilities stood on the cracked pavement at the bottom. He was bigger than me, sideways, and my height. Full Lieutenant's pips on his collar, comp pad in his hand, and a couple crates next to him. He had wavy black hair that drew my attention. I'm not sure why I noticed that, but it seemed to be a popular style on Birach.

"Uh...you...you had a question?" Belatedly, I came to attention. "Sir."

The man smiled at me. As much as the woman terrified me, the man's eyes said I was safe. Was important. I straightened a little more.

"Permission to come aboard?" the man said. "Spacer Apprentice Lauwers, right?"

I nodded and the man walked up the ramp. He was big, but he moved like it was all muscle. In a few steps, he was between me and the woman. Our cargo bay was good-sized, but it was just the three of us standing, the three on the deck, and some junk in two old crates that Chief Ivarsson never wanted to get rid of. "Yes. Sir. Spacer Apprentice Lauwers, I mean. And welcome aboard. Sir. Captain?"

"Thank you, Spacer." The Captain smiled. "The Admiralty found enough irregularities in Captain Varin's accounting to warrant an investigation, and detention, until things were resolved. Unfortunately, the fleet needs an emergency shipment of medicine taken to one of the asteroid mines. They asked us to help crew 100644."

The man looked at the guys laid out on the deck. It struck me as funny that he didn't seem at all surprised about what the woman had done. Or that she could even do it. "Looks like the crew will be short. Is anyone else aboard?"

"Miss Lexis, she's the pilot. She don't go off ship much, " I said, and shifted left so the man was fully between me and the woman. "She's good people. Sir."

The man turned to the woman. "Shore Patrol is on their way, hopefully with corpsmen. Clean off the deck and load our gear as fast as you can. I'll be on the bridge."

"Sir!" The woman stood at attention. She smiled at the Captain, and then winked at him as he walked by.

"Uh..." I said as I looked at her. I wasn't sure the woman wasn't going to have Shore Patrol bring four stretchers. "Uh..."

She tossed the shotgun at me. "Stash that, it might make the Shore Patrol itchy. You can fix it later. If there's a medkit around here, bring it. I'll get these louts off the ship. You get those crates on and secure them forward, clear?"

"Clear!" There was a medkit in Engineering, which meant for a few moments I would have a quad-strength bulkhead between me and the woman. I ran.

“Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed.” -- G.K. Chesterton

"Be a kid when it's time to be a kid. Be a world changer when the world needs changing." -- Josephine "Jo" Franco

"She struggled to understand love, to accept it. She struggled, as we all do, to find her place. To find her heart." -- Matreetha of the Dragon Clan, NavakSen, "Grandmother"

The Domici War novels are easy reading level science-fiction Coming of Age stories with a Christian Warrior ethos.

The characters struggle with their imperfections and the challenges of an unknowable future.