History of the Galaxy II

[Jmenschenfresser]

Chapter 1--Part 3:
2400.2

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MERRILL & TYR
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Merrill, from tribe Vellon, slapped his daughter, Tyr, across the mouth, at which she fell to the floor. His daughter was every bit the bastard he was, in both senses of the word. Her mother had been locked up right after Tyr's birth. Crazy ***** began laughing one evening. The contractions started not long afterward. She kept laughing through the entire birth. Merrill still heard that laugh late at night standing under the shower. The pellets of water hitting the metallic floor turned to laughter. The call of the ubiquitous northern crow turned to laughter. Laughter everywhere. Every year, the list got longer. Every year, the world around him was that much more edgier. The doctors assured him that insanity wasn't contagious. He still washed his hands when he went to visit his wife. The disease was extremely rare among Heruvians. Only the Boohr suffered from it really, to which most contributed their incessant thinking and praying. Merrill tried to track down his wife's history to see if she were Boohr, but the weeks of libraries and shuttle trips turned up nothing.

He remembered all this standing on the first space ship to leave the homeworld while watching his sobbing daughter crawl toward her room. God, how he was ashamed of his wife at the birth of his daughter.

"You will not curse me to my face, Tyr. What's his name?"
She muttered something.
"What!"
"Garrak," she said knowing another misunderstanding might result in a kick in the ribs.
"Only 34 million of the 500+million Vellon can fit on this first ship. I refuse the situation, daughter. To worry about the fate of this ship and my daughter's purity. No. The boy is not coming on this ship. I've kicked his whole family off, so there's no reason for him to be here. And I might add, if you work behind my back and I find that lout on this ship, I'll put you both out the air lock."
Tyr slithered to the door and stood up, her back against its closed face. The cold metal gave her strenght. She wiped her mouth on the sleeve of her robe and stared at her father devoid of fear.
"Look at me. I have nothing. I have you, but I might as well say, I own the whirlpools of Yuile. Your fear is to blame."
"For what, girl."
"For anything I might do." She smashed her elbow into the door panel and the door open. Sparks fell from the panel and its cover dropped to the floor. Once inside her room, she jabbed the other panel smashing it as well and bringing the door down."

Captain Merrill strode onto the bridge for only the second time. The entire bridge staff stood at attention. This annoyed him almost as much as his daughter's disobedience.

"Return to your duties, crew! You plan on saluting every time I join you way up here above the rabble? No. Listen. You want to show me respect soldiers? Show me respect by never taking your eyes off your station while at them. Science Officer!"
"Yessir!"
"Put the star Primidara on screen and highlight."

The view screen shuffled through several takes before becoming static. A green triangle highlighted a white twinkling point of light.

"Probes, scientists, universal mathematics and ten years tell us that the spacial lock we, the Vellon have chosen as our destined path, leads to this star. We do not know if we are correct or if any type of planet circles this star. One day soon we'll have this same talk, but then we'll be looking back at Spica, the faint blue star under which we've all grown up and grown old. (now jovial) Who knows! Maybe we won't be able to see it at all."

With that Merrill strode off to his bridge-side office. He immediately brought up the ship scematics.

"Display the quaters of Captain Merrill. Display living entities."

He quickly picked out his daughter's room. A single red dot squished itself into the far corner of the room.

Launch time. The announcement queue went off. Merrill left the room, unable to decide if the queue also contained a hint of laughter.