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:
Previously in Captain’s Away!
The Beausoleil is disabled and ripe for the picking, but instead of destroying it, the Padishah, on board the Realm battleship the Atul, has offered to help. Marie-Josée and Saito suspect this is because Corpsman Javad has used the Field to take over the Padishah’s body.
“Conversational Gauntlet”
The Field had been too powerful for a human body, a human mind, to wield. Javad had believed for some time that it would be the end of him. At the same time, after he’d survived the destruction of the Northumberland, he’d begun to suspect that it could be his salvation. He couldn’t have said how, exactly, but he’d been alert to the possibilities, and then one had been handed to him in the form of the Padishah.
Fortunately, he spoke Hindi fluently. And he’d taken the time to learn as much about the Padishah as possible. He even knew someone on board the Atul, a maintenance technologist named Keshini Ghai. They’d known one another as teenagers when his parents had been stationed on Pandura. He wouldn’t reveal to Keshini who he really was, but it didn’t matter. The important thing was that he could trust her if it came to it.
“I’m sorry, Your excellency. I’m sure I didn’t hear you correctly.”
The officer sounded nervous. The Padishah’s presence in the Command Centre probably made him nervous. Everything Javad had read about Samudragupta made the Padishah sound unstable, especially since the death of his wife, the Padishah-Consort Alexeievna. Probably this guy was afraid that getting his instructions wrong could result in his death, or worse.
“I said that we will no longer be attacking Miscouche.”
“We are delaying the attack? Based on new information, no doubt?”
“New information, yes. But no, we’re not delaying the attack.”
The guy was visibly sweating now. “We are proceeding with the attack?”
“No.”
The officer tugged at the collar of his uniform.
Javad sighed. “Listen to me carefully. I can write it down for you if you like. We are not attacking Miscouche anymore. Not now, not ever. I need you to communicate this to the fleet.”
“There will be questions.”
“I will deal with the questions.”
“Are we – are we returning to Pandura?”
“No. There is a new threat. We have to deal with that. We will be working alongside the Akkadians to do so.”
Judging from the murmur that arose, the entire Command Centre crew was flabbergasted. It helped that the Padishah had a reputation for being mercurial, unpredictable. Javad tried to read the crew’s expressions, but couldn’t quite discern whether they were relieved, upset, or just plain baffled.
“May I ask, Your Excellency. What is the new threat?”
Javad had lied to Marie-Josée when he’d said that the Realm had also detected the Necronians. They had not. But they would soon.
“They’re called Necronians.” The man Javad was talking to was a ranking officer, though exactly what rank Javad couldn’t tell; he’d have to work that out later. “Anyway, they’re out there, not far away, and I expect we’ll be hearing from them shortly.”
Everyone knew about Necronians, the aliens that had almost wiped out the T’Klee civilization centuries earlier. Most believed that they had been wiped out themselves, or at the very least were no longer anywhere near this part of the galaxy.
“Necronians?”
“Necronians.”
Now the Command Centre crew definitely thought he’d lost his mind.
“You believe the Akkadian’s story about these aliens,” the man said flatly.
“I do. Don’t you?”
The man was silent, conflicting emotions at play on his face. Javad realized that he had no idea how to respond in a way that he felt wouldn’t result in his summary execution.
“It doesn’t matter. Just do what I instructed.”
“Understood, Your Excellency,” the officer said.
Javad relaxed and sat back in his chair. “Where’s my daughter?” he mused aloud. “Has anyone seen her around? I’d like to see her.”
The silence that greeted this question seemed unusually silent, even for this crowd. Nobody answered. He’d obviously said something stupid. “What?”
The officer he’d been speaking to looked uncomfortable again.
“Just tell me.”
“Your daughter’s no longer on board the Atul.”
“Oh? Is she visiting one of the other ships in the fleet?” Probably this was something he would have known. He was stepping in it now. How much could he chalk up to the Padishah’s eccentricities? There was a limit.
“Your Excellency…”
He could practically read the man’s mind. He was thinking this was a test of some sort.
“Your daughter was kidnapped by a robot. The one they call Grandfather. The robot took her along with the Akkadian infidel boy.”
The officer said it all breathlessly, as though getting it out quickly might spare him whatever fate no doubt awaited him by relating this unfortunate information.
Javad was genuinely surprised. So, the Padishah had lost his wife and then his daughter. No wonder he’d gone crazy. “Where is she now? Yes, yes, I know I should probably know all this, probably did, but I don’t now because… because of the medication I’m on. Just tell me please.”
The officer told him a wild story, even showed him holovid material surrounding the incident. Javad was stunned to recognize the Akkadian boy, Marie-Josée’s brother Alain, whom he’d seen on board the Northumberland. Marie-Josée would be so happy to learn that her brother was alive! If, in fact, he was still alive. Now he was gone with some crazy robot, which Javad also dimly remembered from the Northumberland. According to the officer, the robot had, incredibly, taken both the Padishah’s daughter and Marie-Josée’s brother to Earth, of all places.
“Let me know when the fleet has been informed of its new orders,” he instructed the officer. “And convene a meeting of all the captains so I can explain.”
“Yes, Your Excellency,” the officer said, obviously relieved to have somehow survived this strange conversational gauntlet with the madman known as the Padishah, and to have done so physically intact.
“And get me my daughter and the Akkadian back,” Javad said.
He’d always wanted kids.
Help me make this chapter better! What do you think? Let me know in the comments!
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