I have come shuffling in ten minutes late, but I will say that I had this post written up before midnight on Friday, so it counts as a Friday Fiction more than the last post I made. If I’m honest I wish I had more time to polish just about everything about this post. I’ll likely replace the image on the post because I didn’t like the lighting for the art piece when I took the photo, but I was out of time if I wanted to get the post up.
The story this month is “Calling Out to the Great Unknown”, which I’ve given a basic grammar and readability edit. I like the story as it is but I’ve skipped the usual two week rest and re-read I usually give my short stories. I hope you all like reading this short story as much as I liked writing it!
Calling Out to the Great Unknown
Stel stayed quiet as the other soldiers in the research station got up and stretched, finally off duty. She kept her head down, recording the seismic readings the drill drone sent up every 35 tecks while the others all complained about the boring work and long hours. Most of them hated being stuck on an out-of-the-way research station on the edge of the known empire. Considered the posting more punishment than duty.
Finally, the last of them trailed out, leaving Stel alone in the room. She was the only one on duty with the overnight shift. Again.
Perfect.
Once certain that the other soldiers were well and truly gone, Stel pulled out a small sound pod and placed one of the wireless earphones into her ear. It took a little fiddling to get the correct wave frequency, then with a little bit of static a voice slowly came into hearing.
“Hey out there! It’s Shooting the Breeze with Bree! It’s me again, and it’s grab-bag Gravsday! Today we’re talking about…” the voice trailed off and there was the sound of rustling, like papers being shuffled over the static. Silence, then “Favorite pre-past tales! Wow, this takes me back. I read a bunch rising up, so I’m only going to talk about two or three stories today. Otherwise I would probably keep you here for hours!”
Stel settled back in her chair, content to wait the next 33 tecks until the drone sent up another reading simply listening. She’d stumbled onto the broadcasts from “Bree” back in the junior training academy while trying to fix a broken receiver on a survival training mission. Bree had been her only company for two weeks as she shivered through rain and mud back to the base camp, a friendly voice that made her feel less on her own as she stayed up keeping watch. She’d kept listening afterwards, in stolen moments after hours and on stakeouts, using the old patched-up sound pod she’d found on a patrol and smuggled with her wherever she was deployed. The research station was actually a blessing to her. On the overnight shift she could sit and listen for hours with no interruptions and no risk of being shot at.
“I’ve got some of the books with me on my shelf here, so I can reference them as I go. Actually, you know what? I’m going to read them in air, in case some of you haven’t heard them before, then talk about them. Let’s start with “the Brambly Brush-flower” as it’s the one I read the most rising up.
“Long, long ago, before the great Bristle wall rose over the valley and the Wilder king led the river walkers to the sea, in a small hoary valley lived a little brush flower…”
–
Bel sighed as he closed the door to his father’s room, glad the older man was finally resting. He’d known that taking over the farm when his parents had to retire would be a big task. He’d been preparing for it as they got older, trying to get ready for the inevitable when they would no longer be able to manage the hard work. He’d even been able to take over the general farm tasks pretty seamlessly when they fell sick, hiring a few extra hands to make up for being two workers short.
He stopped in the living room of the farmhouse, observing the mess all over the kitchen table.
Unfortunately, while he had gotten the rest of the farm work outside the house sorted, the general tasks inside the house were another story. Somehow he was able to cook over a campfire, but cooking inside with the stove was another thing entirely. With a sigh he gathered up all the dirty dishes and brought them over to the sink, taking a brief check in the sun room to make sure his mother was still resting and not trying to clean anything.
Reassured she was dozing under a quilt in her favorite chair, Bel turned back to the kitchen and started on the task of cleaning all the dishes and hiding any sign of the mess he had made in his attempt to make an okay breakfast. It was early autumn now and he needed to learn everything he could while he still had time before the winter storms swept through and trapped them housebound for days on end. Speaking of learning.
He turned to the audio receiver his mother used while in the kitchen, carefully noting the frequency she had set it to so he could return it to the right spot. Once certain he knew what frequency to return the audio dial to, he switched it to a frequency he had learned by heart and turned the volume to low.
“Hey there, it’s Shooting the Breeze with Bree! Today is time for a ‘try with me’, and we’re going to try pickling! I tried some really good homemade pickles two growstands ago at an upside market and I decided to try my hand at it.”
Bel pulled out a pad and stylus, making careful notes. As much as he loved his mother, she guarded the kitchen like a Grankle guarding its nest and was reluctant to share anything with him. He’s not sure why, he thought she would be happy to share what she knows with him. But other than asking him to help with things she isn’t physically able to do, she spends more time shooing him out of “her area” and into the yard. He hadn’t minded as a boy, happy to get out of even more chores since he was usually only allowed into the kitchen for things like peeling vegetables or scrubbing dishes, but he can recognize now that he was short-sighted. If they want to eat anything other than boiled potatoes and over-boiled bransprouts over the winter then he needs to learn how to make something else.
“I’m doing a cold pickling process, and they should be ready in 3 to 5 henks. They keep for a long time too, so long as you keep them in cold storage!”
He paused, considering his notes. Sometimes Bree would throw out terms like “henks” in her broadcasts, and usually he could guess from context what she meant. He hopes henks are close to hours, but if not then he would need to do some taste testing as he goes along.
“In order to pickle you need only a few important ingredients. The most important are these four. One! An edible fermented acid, I’m using Fermented flim wine. Two! Nice, fresh veggies! I’ve got some fresh Sillia squash I just picked from my garden today. Three! We’ve got nice, fresh water that I’ve recently strained myself. Having good clean water is super important when it comes to pickling. And finally, four! Good quality seasoning. I’m using salt, Dlei seeds, dried fricka flakes and just a pinch of dried shulga nectar, just to add a pinch of sweetness.”
Bel paused the broadcast as he continued making notes, paying less attention to what ingredients were being listed and more to how they were described. He had figured that Bree was from a different farm colony a while back, as he couldn’t identify any of the produce she listed. Maybe one who had water issues? This wasn’t the first time she had mentioned straining water. Once he had everything listed down he pressed play again, leaning in to listen to the broadcast with a smile.
“Now, let’s get pickling!”
–
The station creaked and groaned as Marde picked her way through the delapidated hallway, careful of every missing floor panel and gutted wall. She stopped at the door to the small room she had been using, one of the few still fully intact, and waited until the station finished adjusting to the night cycle. Once the groaning finally stopped, Marde keyed in her passcode and entered the small room and let the door slide shut behind her. Inside she could almost pretend that everything was fine, the little room set up like her apartment planet side.
With a sigh she dropped the flash-packed meals she had scavenged out of the remains of the kitchen and eased her helmet off so she could start removing her suit. The station was still technically secure in its orbit and had yet to depressurize. However, with how badly it had been ripped up in a sudden meteor shower, it was better to be safe than sorry. Rescue was still a good two weeks out after all.
The risks of being part of the Wild Space Exploration Core. At least this solo mission had been nearly finished, the gas planet below was a rich source of Delphium gas but not necessarily useful for colonization. Even if she hadn’t been able to get her distress beacon active a team would have been coming to get her and pick up the small observation station, to take her to her next mission.
And she wasn’t completely alone up here, after all.
Once out of the suit Marde flopped down on the small cot against the wall, choosing to forgo late meal. There were only so many meals she had been able to scavenge and she wasn’t really feeling hungry right now. Turning on her side she fiddled with the comset in the wall until she got the audio on and tuned it to the right frequency. Finally she got the right frequency queued up and pressed start.
“Hey out there, it’s Shooting the Breeze with Bree! It’s me again.”
Marde settled down on her side, pulling her blankets up over her shoulder and turning her back to the room. The voice coming through the comset sounded more subdued than normal.
“You know, sometimes I wonder what the point of all of this is. I mean, I’ve been doing this broadcast for… two years now? Wow! I’m gonna have to do something for our two-year anniversary! But I mean, getting back to the topic.”
Marde smiled. She wasn’t particularly old at only 33 full cycles, but Bree had always sounded more youthful than her, even back when she had first stumbled onto the broadcasts. Maybe it was the way Bree spoke about whatever she was thinking of, or maybe it was because she always sounded so happy.
“I’ve been doing this for two years, and I don’t know if more than five people have listened to any of these episodes. Kind of makes me wonder what the point of it all is, you know? Am I just chattering out into empty space?”
She understood that feeling, there were times when she was out doing observations on the fringe of known space that left her feeling like the only person left in the whole universe, a single life drifting alone in the orbit of one strange world or another she would never set foot on.
Marde curled up tighter, closing her eyes as the automatic lights flicked off and the room went dark, listening.
“But I started this thing cause I felt a calling to it. I know that someone, somewhere out there is listening. So this goes out to you out there, whoever you are. This podcast’s for you.”
