A merchant ship’s crew makes a timely delivery for a client in the post-Final War Magical Realm. Originally written for an NYC Midnight contest.
I was in the galley of my vessel, the Abuela, an abandoned shrimper that had done most of her service in the Gulf of Mexico before the Final War. She’d been re-outfitted for land use in the Magical Realm, the MR. It had been a simple transformation, consisting solely of the addition of a fermitic tetrablazer and a coating of calcentrozone. The tetrablazer was a bit of overkill for this old ship, but it got us from here to there quickly, and that’s important in the MR, especially when your work involves deadlines.
And this time we were on a firm one.
I’d just sat down to dinner, when the ship’s autonav chose to triple our speed. The jolt as the overdrive engaged sent my dinner plate with its bone-in ribeye, roasted potatoes, and sauteed green beans sliding toward the floor. Only my well-honed reflexes managed to prevent a culinary disaster. I snatched the plate in mid-air, interrupting its fall, and replaced it on the table.
“By the gads, Caruso, why can’t that thing give us a little warning?” said Eldragon, a Wizard of the 3rd Order and my long-time first mate, as he stooped to pick up his plate. “At least the steak was saved,” he said, staring at his ribeye’s former accompaniments strewn across the floor.
El casually tugged his left earlobe, instantly recreating the potatoes and beans on his plate, while simultaneously moving the ones that were currently decorating the floor to the nutrecycler. He glanced over at me, probably wondering whether I’d say anything about his breech of The Uniform Code of Magical Protocol, specifically Article 127.1(b), which prohibits the use of Magic for “correcting problems caused by the physical universe that could have been otherwise prevented.”
I’m a stickler for rules, but I held my tongue.
We’d taken the mission to North Moon for one purpose: cash flow. We had none, and this contract provided plenty. We’d have done it for half the price, but through sheer, dumb luck the client, Lacie, had mistaken my quotation as the cost for each of us, rather than the package deal I’d intended. I did nothing to dissuade his misconception, and was silently joyful that my poker face had carried me through that negotiation.
My gut told me, though, that before this mission was over we’d earn every newfarthing of our accidentally inflated fee.
#
Fishing trips had long been our steady source of income, and we’d known all the best spots in the MR, but the last of those spots had finally gone dry, so we had to resort to taking whatever contracts we could get. When Lacie called with a package-delivery job, I snapped at the offer despite his reputation as, shall we say, a rapscallion. It may be a new world order here in the post-Final War Magical Realm, but cash is still king. Anyway, a trip to North Moon would almost be a vacation, and even a W3 like El can easily provide the magic needed to fuel the Abuela, so accepting the mission was a no-brainer.
I disengaged the autonav as we entered the Bassport area that leads out of South River, and took the controls. Autonavigation is great for well-cleared routes, but frequent rock slides in and around Bassport can make the terrain tricky, so it’s best to have an experienced, human hand at the helm, and I didn’t want anything sidetracking our mission.
“Mission.” El often mocked me for calling our jobs “missions.” All I can say is you can take the boy out of the army, but…. You know the rest. I picked up a lot of good habits in the military, many of which I still retain, and I approach each job with a sense of duty that makes it a mission. So sue me. Hey, if Lacie wants this thing delivered to North Moon precisely at 14 bells on the 8th of Octavia, then it shall be done. Especially with the kind of cash he’s throwing around.
#
We’ve arrived at the address Lacie had provided us, three minutes ahead of time, and something looks off, feels wrong. I can’t quite put my finger on it. Maybe it’s the stillness. This is a big house, a villa, yet it seems devoid of any kind of activity, almost as if there is some kind of cloaking spell protecting it.
Just as the nuclear clock indicates 14, I see out of the corner of my eye through the starboard porthole a man walking quickly – no, running – toward the Abuela. I turn for a better look, my right hand instinctively moving toward my ectoblaster.
It’s Lacie, and he’s coming in hot! He’s waving his arms and shouting. I can’t make out what he’s saying, but I get the picture.
“Open the personnel hatch! Now!” I shout. El does so by touching his right cheek, and Lacie doesn’t even need to break stride. He dives through the hatch.
“Close it back, El!”
Our cloak is on, so I am not at all concerned by the 12-foot fire-breathing tricorn hydrasaurus that’s chasing Lacie. And, anyway, I’m too busy getting us the hell out of there to care.
#
Safely distanced from the impressive monster, I settle the Abuela into her routine and shift to autonav. Only then do I realize that we did not make the delivery. But surely Lacie will understand! We were saving his hide!
Lacie looks a bit frazzled as he enters the bridge from below.
“The package?” he asks. He sees it on the floor by my feet. “The package….”
“Now, look here, Lacie, we were saving your tail, so we lit outta there before we had a chance to–”
Lacie grabs the package and opens it in one motion. It’s a very expensive bottle of scotch, Glenlivet 50-year-old single malt, to be precise.
“Thanks for being on time,” he says. “Join me for a drink?”
THE END