Captain’s Away! is a long form, weekly serial. New chapters come out every week (more or less). Comments and suggestions welcome as we go along.
You can find the master index of all the chapters by clicking the orange Captain’s Away! Index button below:
Chapter One
“Sympathetic Vibrations”
Lights flickered. Silence descended. Funny how sometimes you only noticed sounds after they were gone. It took Marie-Josée Doucette a second to figure out what was missing—the ventilation had shut off. She suppressed a wave of irritation. It was probably just another maintenance window, or a minor glitch that would soon be sorted out. A few seconds later the space station’s alarms began whooping. At this rate she would never get her painting done. On the plus side, maybe she wouldn’t have to go to church.
“Hey Vange, is this a drill?” she asked the station’s interface.
A life-size hologram of a young Akkadian woman in her early twenties appeared in the air before her. Its lips moved but no sound accompanied the image. Marie-Josée was surprised. In all her seventeen years the station’s avatar had never malfunctioned that she could recall.
“This is so annoying!” she announced.
Marie-Josée’s mother Yolande was preparing tea in the kitchenette nearby. “Relax dear. It’s just another drill.”
Someone hammered on the door of their living quarters. Marie-Josée threw down her brush, swept across the room and whipped open the door. It was Reverend Therese Arsenault, the bright orange band of an emergency warden wound tightly about her right arm.
“Time to go.” Reverend Arsenault’s silver tresses, expertly braided, reached the small of her back. “You know the drill.”
Marie-Josée rolled her eyes. “It’s the sixth drill this month, Reverend. I’m not going anywhere.”
Reverend Arsenault lingered.
“It’s just a drill,” Marie-Josée insisted.
“Maybe. Maybe not.”
“Not more important than my painting.”
“Just be ready to go if anything changes. Okay?”
“Okay.”
The reverend’s pale blue eyes held Marie-Josée’s briefly, then she strode briskly down the passageway, which, Marie-Josée could not help but note, was unusually populated for that time of day. Marie-Josée slammed the door shut. The resulting clang reverberated through their living quarters. Inside, her mother Yolande stepped onto a chair and disabled the alarm with a screwdriver. Child’s play for one of Evangeline Station’s top technologists. Soon only a distant whooping echoed outside the door. Yolande stepped off the chair and returned to her tea.
Marie-Josée’s father Bertrand stepped out of the master bedroom towelling his thinning hair dry. “What’s going on?”
“Another stupid drill,” Marie-Josée said.
“You sure it’s a drill?” Bertrand asked.
“Yes!” Marie-Josée and Yolande replied in unison.
“Okay.” Bertrand threw the towel back in the bedroom and trotted into the kitchenette where he began poking various buttons on the coffee machine until it began to produce something moderately drinkable.
Marie-Josée retrieved her brush and studied her painting. The clouds weren’t quite right. She couldn’t figure out what was wrong. She had only ever seen clouds from above, and even that had been on a planet completely different from the one she was trying to portray. It didn’t matter—her guess was as good as anyone’s. She dipped her brush into a puddle of turquoise and started in on a cluster of cirrus nimbus.
“You should be getting ready for service,” Bertrand told her.
“What’s the rush?” Marie-Josée asked. “Reverend Arsenault can’t start during the drill. If she’s even having a service anymore. She busy bugging everybody right now.”
“Why don’t you run out and see?” Yolande suggested. “Maybe the vicar will say mass.”
“Mom!”
“It’s not like it’s on the other side of the station,” Yolande pointed out.
Marie-Josée sighed. It wasn’t worth arguing. Her mother was right—the chapel was just down the passageway.
Outside their living quarters more people milled about than usual during such a drill. This was curious—there had been so many drills lately that most people had begun to ignore them. Marie-Josée spotted Reverend Therese Arsenault walking by. “Hello Sister. Is the service still on?”
“Not under the circumstances, no,” Reverend Arsenault said.
Marie-Josée glanced at all the people flowing by. “What circumstances exactly?”
“I was just wondering that myself. It’s not clear.”
A maintenance robot strode past, its solenoids whirring. A humanoid type, rare after the last robot rebellion. Its body was scuffed and dented, and it had mismatched eyes, one brown and one blue. Marie-Josée had only just started seeing it around the Evangeline. Probably it had been transferred from one of the thirty-seven other Akkadian space stations.
“Do you know what’s going on?” Marie-Josée asked.
“No,” it said, not slowing down. “Other than the rumour.”
“What rumour?”
“That we’re venting oxygen into space.”
Marie-Josée glanced at Reverend Arsenault, then back at the robot. “That sounds serious.”
“Not for me,” the machine called back. “I don’t require oxygen.”
One of the Doucette’s neighbours rushed by, Doris Jardin, a woman with a permanently harried air about her. “What are you doing just standing there? Haven’t you heard? We’re under attack!”
Marie-Josée frowned. That couldn’t be right—Akkadia had been poised to sign an historic peace accord with the Realm. Another rumour, she decided.
An annoying boy with whom Marie-Josée was somewhat acquainted strolled up. “We’re all going to die,” he informed Marie-Josée. “Especially you.”
Marie-Josée returned to her family’s apartment. “Apparently we’re all going to die.”
“That’s nice.” Bertrand didn’t even glance up from the electronic newspaper he was addicted to, L’Akkadie Nouvelle, for which he also happened to work.
“Dad, Akkadia’s still in talks with the Realm, right?” As a journalist, Bertrand Doucette could always be counted upon to know the latest news.
“Yes sireee.”
“And we’re still about to sign a trade agreement with the Realm, right?”
“According to L’Akkadie Nouvelle,” Bertrand said. “And we’re usually on top of that sort of thing.”
“Has there been anything about Realm ships in this part of space?”
“Not a single word. And if anybody would know about that, it would be L’Akkadie Nouvelle.”
“So, this has to be a drill, right?”
“Has to be.” Bertrand resumed reading.
Yolande Doucette stood before her daughter’s painting, arms on hips, forehead creased. “The contrast doesn’t look quite right to me. Between the sky and the ocean.”
“How would you know?” Marie-Josée asked. “It’s not like you’ve ever been to Earth.”
No one had. Not for centuries now. Marie-Josée wondered what Earth really had looked like before war and mismanagement had rendered it uninhabitable. Probably nothing like her imagination. It was the latest fad on board the Evangeline: trying to come up with the most accurate representation of their lost homeland via various arts and crafts.
A slight tremor passed through their living quarters, threatening to spill some of Bertrand’s coffee and Yolande’s tea. Marie-Josée did her best to ignore it, the implications of such a phenomenon too troubling to consider.
“What was that?” Yolande asked.
“It was just a vibration, dear,” Bertrand said. “You get the odd vibration from time to time.”
Yolande frowned.
“What do you think of my polar dog?” Marie-Josée asked her. “Do I have the blue right? They must have been such handsome creatures.”
“I’m pretty sure the station isn’t supposed to vibrate like that,” Yolande said.
“Nonsense,” Bertrand said. “Stations vibrate all the time. The trick is to avoid sympathetic vibrations. One good sympathetic vibration and then you’re in trouble.”
The tremor resumed, followed by another, and then another, increasing in intensity.
Bertrand leapt to his feet. “Everybody out! Out! Out! Out!”
Help me make this chapter better! What do you think? Let me know in the comments! Don’t be shy. :-)
This has been an installment of the ongoing serial Captain’s Away! A Strange Dimensions book.
Also by Joe Mahoney: A Time and a Place
An unlikely hero travels to other worlds and times to save a boy who does not want to be saved in this unique and imaginative adventure, by turns comic and tragic.
Follow Joe Mahoney and Donovan Street Press Inc. on: Goodreads, Bluesky, Threads, Mastadon, Facebook, and Instagram
What a great start. The 'Boiling Frog' tension is effective, and Marie-Josée’s obsession with painting a planet she’s never seen is a beautiful touch. If you want advice: the station being hacked could be expressed in creepier ways, by having the AI "malfunction", subtle to start with but becoming more threatening. But that's just an idea.