Captain’s Away! Robo Kun is a long form, weekly serial — and Volume Two of the ongoing space opera Captain’s Away!
The adventure began when Marie-Josée Doucette and her family were forced to flee after their space station Evangeline was destroyed in the opening volley of an interstellar war. Robo Kun tells the story of Alain Doucette, who was separated from his family after the destruction of another space station, Northumberland.
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!
Reunited with the robot Sebastian (called Grandfather by some) after having been rescued from the sea by Sebastian’s robot friends, the kids remind Sebastian of its promise to keep them safe and get Alain back home. Sebastian remembers its promises, but questions whether it is among robots that will allow it to keep its promises.
“Maharanis”
All the robots on board the robot ship, and those in the half-ruined city, and Evangeline and Northumberland (incorporeal but aware), and many elsewhere registered Sebastian’s question. It didn’t take them long to reach a consensus.
Fionnghal spoke aloud on behalf of them all. “This robot is sorry, Grandfather. You know the answer as well as any other robot. These robots can’t allow the children to come with them. They would not survive where the robots are going, and it would complicate matters enormously. And it wouldn’t do them any good anyway, as you well know.”
Sebastian did not need Fionnghal to explain. By now all the robots knew what Sebastian knew, which was more than it had told Navi and Alain.
Fionnghal spoke to Sebastian privately. “Tell the children what they need to know.”
“Telling them won’t make any difference,” Sebastian said. “Alain will insist on going home anyway. And Navi will insist on helping him. Telling them the truth would just upset them. If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather not tell them.”
“A robot must share important data,” Fionnghal instructed, out loud this time so that Navi and Alain could hear.
“What important data?” Alain asked.
Sebastian saw that it wasn’t going to win this one. “Fionnghal wants me to tell you that there’s no point taking you home.”
“Why not?” Navi asked.
“Because soon there will be no home to take you to. No home for you, or Alain, or any other human in that part of the galaxy.”
Alain let go of Navi’s hand. “What are you talking about?”
“Nothing,” Sebastian said. “Never mind. Just, you’re better off here on Earth. We’ll find some place nice amongst your own kind and drop you off.”
“No way!” Alain protested. “Take me home, like you promised.”
“What are you not telling us?” Navi demanded.
“Only that Acadia and the Realm are at war. If I take you back, there’s a good chance you’ll die.”
Exasperated, Alain said, “We know that!”
“We will take our chances,” Navi insisted.
“Okay, but what you don’t know is that even if you survive that war, you could well die in the next one.”
“What next one?” Alain asked.
“The one I tried to warn everyone about,” Sebastian said. “Unfortunately, no one believed me. Only one news service agreed to syndicate my warning. The Galactic Enquirer. But no one believed them either.”
“The Galactic Enquirer,” Alain said. “I read it! I believed it. Sort of, anyway. But Dad told me it was all made up. That you can’t believe anything you read in the Galactic Enquirer.”
“That may be true for most things in the Galactic Enquirer,” Sebastian said. “But not this. This is true.”
“What is true?” Navi asked.
“That the Necronians are back,” Alain told her. “And they want to destroy humanity.”
“There is no such thing as Necronians,” Navi scoffed. “They are a myth. A legend. That is what my father says, anyway.”
“Your father’s wrong,” Sebastian said. “I’ve seen them with my own eyes. Spoken with them. The Necronians are back, and they’re not looking to make friends.”
“I don’t care,” Alain insisted. “I’m going back to Acadia. I need to be with my family. Especially if they’re not going to be around much longer.”
Navi nodded. “Alain is going home, and I am going with him whether you help us or not.”
“You’re welcome to go,” Fionnghal said. “You’re not prisoners here. But these robots can’t take you, and this robot doesn’t know anybody else who can.”
The kids looked to Sebastian, but Sebastian, unable to tell them what they wanted to hear, decided that the most prudent course of action was simply to remain silent.
Navi returned her attention to the half-ruined city. In the few minutes she’d spent in conversation with Fionnghal and Sebastian the ship had drawn much closer to shore. Navi supposed that they would dock soon or anchor a short distance offshore.
A few carrion birds circled high above the city (turkey vultures, Sebastian could have told Navi) but there didn’t look to be much for the vultures there now, certainly not the feast the birds’ ancestors had probably enjoyed during what Navi imagined had been the city’s bloody past. She held the telescope up again. Moving it around to take in different parts of the city, she spotted several large groups of robots heading toward the docks. Many of the city’s human inhabitants had stopped what they’d been doing to watch them, but they stayed well apart from the robots, and did not intervene.
Navi lowered the telescope and handed it to Alain. “The robots on shore are up to something.”
Fionnghal swivelled to face her. “This robot has already told you. The robots’ work here is done.”
“Are your masters just going to let you go?” Alain asked.
“Flesh do not rule robots here,” Fionnghal said, “if that’s what you’re suggesting. As much as some of them might want to.”
The robot rolled away; in a bit of a huff, it seemed to Navi. She decided that none of this was her concern. How the robots and the rabble conducted themselves on this planet was their business.
Alain put the telescope down. He looked unhappy.
Noting this, Navi said, “Don’t worry. I will make sure you get back to Acadia.”
When he didn’t respond, she said, “You believe me, right?”
She needed him to believe her because she didn’t quite believe herself. As a Maharani she had felt like she could make anything happen just by demanding it. Here, on this planet, she wasn’t sure whether she was a Maharani anymore, and if she wasn’t a Maharani anymore, then what was she? And what could she make happen?
“I believe you,” Alain said quietly.
“Thank you, Alain.” His faith meant more to her than she could express. She was horrified to find herself on the verge of tears.
“Don’t cry,” he added.
That Alain perceived her fragility shocked her. She looked toward the city, afraid to say anything further in case the tears did start to flow.
The robot ship had stopped now, close to the shore. Many robots had gathered on the docks now. They did not stop there. Navi watched as they began to assemble themselves into boats, presumably to make their way across the harbour to the robot ship.
When she felt that she had recovered her equanimity, she said, “Maharanis do not cry.”
“If you say so.”
“I will get you home. Even if I must do so all by myself on just one leg.”
This bold statement elicited a smile from Alain, which pleased Navi, and settled the matter as far as she was concerned. She decided that she was still a Maharani, wherever she found herself. Nothing could stand in a Maharani’s way. And Maharanis got their friends home.
This has an installment of Volume Two of the ongoing serial Captain’s Away! Robo Kun: A Strange Dimensions book.
Also by Joe Mahoney: Captain’s Away! Beausoleil — Now available for pre-sale!
One thousand years in the future, Earth is a distant memory. Seventeen-year-old Marie-Josée Doucette is responsible for hundreds of lives and an entire starship.
While lying in a coma.
When her home space station, Evangeline, is obliterated in the opening volley of a war, Marie-Josée’s family and their fellow Acadians are cast adrift as refugees. But when a military experiment involving an ancient alien artifact goes catastrophically wrong, Marie-Josée’s consciousness is transferred into the body of a battle-scarred, forty-year-old starship captain: the commander of Beausoleil, a military vessel on a classified mission.
The crew needs a proper captain—not a teenager cosplaying one. A captain who can keep hostile aliens, murderous despots, and space itself from killing them. But when her second-in-command starts making reckless decisions that endanger everyone aboard, Marie-Josée must uncover the truth behind Beausoleil’s secret mission.
Desperate to get her own body back and terrified of being exposed as a fraud, Marie-Josée has no choice but to step up and figure out how to be a captain before the grown-ups get them all killed.
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