Christmas on the Anvil Read online

  Christmas On The Anvil

  A Science Consortium Story

  Michael Penmore

  Contents

  Christmas On The Anvil

  Afterword

  Also by Michael Penmore

  A MICHAEL PENMORE book.

  First published in Great Britain in 2018 by MICHAEL PENMORE

  Book first published in 2018 by MICHAEL PENMORE

  This book published in 2020 by MICHAEL PENMORE

  Copyright (c) MICHAEL PENMORE 2020

  Cover image by Juan Jose Padron

  The moral right of Michael Penmore to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1998.

  All the characters and events in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual events or persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  This book was written in the UK in British English. For this reason, there’s a lot of unusual words and strange spellings like ‘ise’ and extra ‘u’.

  First Edition

  Christmas On The Anvil

  It’s the night before Christmas, when all through the ship

  Not an engine is stirring, not even a peep;

  The Tiergans hang greenery on bulkheads with zest,

  The Anvil at Christmas must look at its best;

  Look, Sigma’s all snugly in warm comfy bed

  Hopes eggnog will stifle the Voice in her head;

  At cockpit, Zach Gorman is calm as he’s been,

  Who knows what he’s thinking, that outlawed machine;

  Rhys’ dancing and singing would wake up the dead,

  He’s building a big screen for movies ahead.

  But what about Nadie? Please take a soft chair

  And read all about her big Christmas affair!

  Nonsense, gibberish and bah-humbug! Oh no, she was starting to think like Rhys! It was the height of the season of madness again. Every year the same: Christmas with its over the top cheerfulness and generosity of spirit. But not for this XO and navigator. She was business as ever, vigilant and astute. There were many dangers lurking in space, ready to pounce on the unsuspecting crew of the Anvil. They needed a razor-sharp protector to lift them out of trouble, as always.

  Nadie’s beat was interrupted by uneasy sights. She stood in one of the Anvil’s hallways and ‘admired’ what Hetty had done to the bulkheads. They were glowing with cheap yellow and red lights hidden among a ridiculous amount of plastic foliage of a dark green colour.

  The same thing happened the previous year, only at a much smaller level. Apparently, this time the mechanic was on a quest to outdo herself. She had spread the Christmas hysteria all over the ship like a disease. The symptoms were gaudy ornaments and childishly giddy behaviour in everyone except the XO.

  “Like what our mascot’s done to the place?” Rhys joined Nadie with a content smile. He was a sucker for all this cheap stuff.

  “No. It’s draining too much energy.”

  “It’s not. They got self-contained batteries. Two for the price of one!”

  “Whatever. The light is... ineffective. Too dim.”

  “Come on, Nadie, stop judging everything on tactical value, OK? Cheer up! It’s Christmas, you know? It’s the most wonderful time of the year,” he slipped his arm around her waist and with a song on his lips pulled her into a rotating dance. He sang to her about good cheer, with energy but not much skill.

  “Stop!” she pulled away from him, but the corners of her lips were curling up on their own. She stifled the incoming laughter with a snort. Rhys looked so silly when he pursued all those garish traditions. He was the only one able to make her forget herself for a second or two, pretty much.

  “OK. No dancing. How about kissing? I saw a mistletoe somewhere.” He looked up and so did she.

  The siblings, Hetty and Malcolm, had splashed bright garlands and round baubles above the corridors. Nadie wondered where they’d been collecting all this useless trash for a year. The Anvil had to be at least a tonne heavier from carrying it!

  Rhys was smooching the air in front of her face. Nadie put him in his place, “Give it up, lover boy. I’m not in the mood.”

  “All right. No dancing and no kissing. But you will come to the movies.” He had a glimmer in his eyes and his cheeks went rosy. Rhys was both mirthful and deadly serious about his night of Christmas cinematic bonanza. Every year was the same. He gathered everyone in a big room and made them watch moving pictures on a wall screen made of bed sheets.

  “I’ll take a wild stab in the dark and say you’ll make us watch ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ again.”

  “However did you guess? It will be a smash. We’ll drink punch that packs a punch and we’ll exchange presents over the finest piece of American Christmas movie making—”

  “Watching an old overlong 2D vid about a guy who wants to kill himself. That’s supposed to be festive.”

  “Nadie, did you sleep over every time we watched it? How can you still have it all wrong? It’s not about suicide. It’s about the joy of life well-lived and worth living!”

  “My life won’t be worth living if you put me through two hours of that torture again.”

  Rhys smirked like a bad boy. “Two hours fifteen.”

  Nadie shook her head, tired of putting up with his fantasies. “You’re not making it any better, you know? Anyway, I’m going to spend some time in the cockpit. Don’t follow me. I wanna be left alone.”

  “Alone at Christmas? In the cockpit? What for? The ship isn’t going anywhere.”

  “And that’s another thing.”

  It was Rhys’ turn to be dismissive. He gave a big sigh and said, “We’ve been through this. For the twentieth time, Nadie, we are in a safe spot. Nothing’s gonna happen. No one is looking for us. It’s Christmas Eve.”

  “You keep repeating it like Christmas is some magical word that will keep us safe.”

  “Christmas is not just a word, it is magic. It’s the best time ever! Families get together. Children are happy. People forgive each other. Don’t tell me you don’t feel it too because I know deep down in your heart of hearts you have a tiny fire that just needs a little bit of stoking so it can change into a blazing inferno of warm feelings.”

  He said it with a confident smile. She watched him for a moment, amazed at his capacity for cooking up such soppy slop.

  “Yeah,” she said with her hands on her hips. “I can feel something. Exasperation. Disbelief at the waste of time you’re putting us through. If this couple of days is some magic time, like you’re saying, a moment where all is forgotten and no one’s chasing after us, why aren’t we using it to put as much ground between us and New Cairo as we can? This period is a strategic advantage! Think of the opportunities! We can glide past listening posts and patrols without them being the wiser! Who knows, maybe we can even make it as far as Gliese!”

  Rhys clicked his tongue, his eyes got a slight glaze over them and he smiled like an old headmaster preparing to patronise a naive young school girl. “After all this time, you still know nothing about Christmas, do you?”

  “Oh, I know plenty and I can tell you this: what’s the point? A baby was born thousands of years ago and you all go crazy because of it. Babies get born all the time. Big babies. Small babies. Pretty babies. Freaking monster babies as ugly as giant spider
s from Mirkwoods…”

  “You never celebrated it with your family. I get it. You come from Taiwan, a place where it isn’t a thing. You spent ten years in Oz where Christmas falls on the middle of summer, so there’s no snow to play in. And then you moved to live in a mine with dragons burrowing in the sand. Real life dragons! I’d like to go to Formosan just to see one with my own two eyes, but that’s totally off topic now. The thing with you is, your parents screwed up. They never taught you about Santa. They didn’t teach you carols. They didn’t show you how to make a snow angel. You had a difficult childhood and they didn’t make it better by taking away the best and most fun thing a little girl can have.”

  Nadie changed. A woman who was tired and bored with the nonsense around her slipped into the guise of a determined fighter. She grabbed Rhys by both arms, shoved him against an ornamented bulkhead and snarled at him. The words were like simmering flames, ready to burst into a full-fledged forest fire:

  “Don’t speak about my childhood and my parents. You weren’t there. You don’t understand it and you never will. You had a cosy sheltered life as a kid in a rich country with rich parents no worry about what tomorrow brings. You don’t know what you’re talking about. Don’t make me punch the stupid out of you. Because I will, have no doubt. I’ll straighten you if I have to. You have your Christmas, that’s your thing, and I’ll have my solitude, that’s my way. Don’t expect me to come to your stupid movies night. I’m going to lock myself in the cockpit and I won’t be interrupted. Are we clear about that? I won’t be seeing anyone until morning comes.”

  Rhys nodded, lost for words. She let him go and started to walk away fast. The spurned Captain rubbed his ruffled sleeves and called after her, “Zach is in the cockpit.”

  “I can take the robot. He’s quiet and he’s not gone mad like you.”

  “OK! Go!” he shouted because she got quite far away. “You will come back in the evening! You’ll come round and celebrate Christmas with us! I know you will!”

  “Don’t count on it!”

  She turned a corner, relieved to leave him behind, and didn’t stop walking until she reached the titanium door blocking the entrance to the cockpit. Someone glued a wreath of pine branches and cones to the middle of the door. It must have been Hetty. Nadie keyed in her access code and the thing fell down on the floor as the door swished open. She didn’t bother to pick it up.

  Zachary Gorman greeted her by standing up from the Captain’s chair. He remained silent.

  “Sit down, manbot,” she almost ignored him as she lowered herself into the co-pilot’s seat and buried her gaze in the instruments.

  Gorman sat back down in his temporary place and closed his eyes. Nadie didn’t have her preferred option—no company at all—but Zachary was an excellent second best. The android had even stopped breathing air, it seemed. Did he do it to respect her privacy or did he always shut down these blending mechanisms when nobody was watching? Well, she was watching and she didn’t care.

  The Anvil wasn’t on the move so the dashboard wasn’t giving any sounds, annoying or else. The silence was perfect. Too perfect. Nadie lived for action.

  She launched into her habit of triple checking everything: ship’s integrity, position, that the pre-launch sequence was set up in the right order. Rhys’ assurance that no one was looking for them because it was Christmas Eve didn’t convince her; if anyone or anything came after them from the seemingly quiet space, she’d be ready.

  She finished her checks and fell back in the chair, but she still felt like a spring stretched to its limits and ready to jump out of control. For some reason, Zach’s unobtrusive presence spoiled her moment. She gave him a long look before saying:

  “Listening to signals again?”

  “Yes.” He didn’t open his eyes.

  “You’re wasting your time. It’s Christmas. According to our jolly Captain, everyone’s ditched common sense and no work is done. Or do you humanforms buck the trend?”

  “My kind don’t have much reason to celebrate human holidays.”

  Nadie nodded in unison with his words. “On that, we are agreed.”

  Zach said nothing else and she seemed to have her quiet time at last. But she wasn’t in the mood to think. The navigator was... restless. She looked around the dark of space. Nothing changed, nothing twitched in that borderless immensity. Her fingers danced on the keys, switches and knobs and her eyes read the readings from the near ancient Mastrad computer.

  “That’s funny,” she tapped the screen with one close cut fingernail. “Did you move anything in the last minute?”

  Zach Gorman opened one eye but otherwise made no movement at all. “No.”

  “Then why does it say the roof hatch in Cargo Bay B is open? Did you intercept and ignore a sensor warning?”

  Zach opened his other eye and moved his neck until he faced her. “There was no sensor warning.”

  Nadie ordered the hatch to close remotely. It appeared to listen. “Maybe it’s a glitch, maybe something more. I’ll go check it out just in case.” She extricated herself from the chair, grabbed her old Colonial communicator from its place hanging above the dashboard and backtracked to the door. “Call me if anything changes.”

  “Shall I notify the Captain?” the automaton asked.

  “Do what you want. Just don’t send him to Cargo Bay B!”

  Nadie left and jogged through those ridiculous hallways. Every time she thought she was going to get used to it, something outlandish assaulted her eyes. She nearly punched a toy reindeer stuck to a corner wall because it started singing when she ran past it. She also spotted a family of snowmen pretending to be carollers and a miniature Christmas tree which stood abandoned smack in the centre of one of the pathways. She kicked it with venom and smiled when the tree fell on its side with a jingling of bells attached to its plastic branches.

  She wanted no Christmas. She wanted to be left alone. And definitely, she wanted to be spared the company of Rhys Dreyfus for the day. He would spoil the alone time she needed. An intruder, on another hand, would be very much welcome. She’d have someone to discharge her frustrations against.

  The cargo doors parted and she was immediately caught off balance by the most bizarre sight on any starship. The floor directly below the suspect hatch was taken by a gigantic red and gold sleigh packed with the largest red sack Nadie had ever laid her eyes on. To top it off, the vehicle had the most unexpected kind of drive: strapped to the front was a posse of nine braying, hairy and very lively push animals with antlers on their heads.

  Reindeer, she thought at once. But that’s impossible. There’s no reindeer in space. They must be holograms.

  The animals didn’t look artificial at any rate. They whinnied and snorted, clomped their hooves and tried to dig holes in the hard floor. One specimen at the end of the pack raised his leg and began to discharge its dirty business with some very loud groans. The scent of number two was so overpowering, Nadie’s eyes teared up.

  “Reindeer droppings, huh?” She approached slowly in spite of the nasty odour wafting in her nose.

  The reindeer at the front of the pack was obviously the leader. The alpha deer. He stood alone while his compatriots were paired up. The tip of his wide nose had a strange colour: darkly red and slightly luminescent. When she got close, it filled with a bright scarlet glow.

  “What are you supposed to be, big guy? I think I heard about you somewhere before. What was that name? Randolph?”

  The reindeer raised his head high and shook it with a loud cry. Nadie stopped for two seconds but the antlered beast wasn’t preparing an attack. He just observed her. And what would be the harm if he charged? He wasn’t even real. There was no way he could be real.

  “And your buddies? Who are they? Let’s see. You all have funny names, right? Not that I can remember. You won’t mind if I make something up? Sure you won’t. OK, here we go,” she stuck out her fingers and began giving them names one by one, “Chancer. Shmancer. Wheezy. Dizzy
. Busy. Cheesy. Sleazy…”

  She paused there. The animals all became motionless as they looked her over as though she was the one who fell down into the cargo bay from some moon rock or else.

  “You. What do I call you, stinker?” she addressed the one who had just finished his toilet activities. “I know. Jizzy,” she finished with a bang. The reindeer brayed out loud, lowered its head and glowered at her under his heavy eyebrows. “Don’t give me that look, Jizzy. You’re just a holo. I can call you whatever I want.”

  Then she thought about something obvious. If they were holos, how could she smell the poo on the floor? This warranted further investigation, of the animals not the manure, of course.

  Nadie stepped close to the alpha deer and noticed some white powder spread all over its fur, reins and antlers and shining in the light. The deer was standing in it. It was all over his pals and all over the sleigh too. Even the sack appeared to have a film of glazing over it. The substance reminded her of…

  “Snow?” Nadie crouched beside the big animal she named Randolph and touched the soft granules carpeting the deck. They were cold and wet to the touch, and they turned into water on her fingertips. “Holy supernova, it is snow. OK, big guy, I don’t know how you and your pals managed to bring this muck inside, but I’m bringing this overblown charade to end right now.”

  She put her hand through the reindeer’s mane. The creature sniggered like he knew what was going through her head and enjoyed seeing her in discomfort. Nadie’s palm went between the long hair and touched a warm body underneath. It felt hot to the touch as blood cursed inside the hidden veins.

  With mouth wide open, Nadie stepped back and blew several long breaths. Her breathing went to steam in the chilly air. The cargo bay was cold like on a winter’s day on Earth.

  “Can’t be!” She shook her head vehemently. “You can’t be real. It’s just...”