Before Dad

No Space for Family [Chapter 23]

After using the office’s communications equipment, we managed to get into contact with Dad and the ship. It was a while later, but the Ora eventually came to settle down on one of the landing pads there within the confines of the colony. The hatch at the back of the cargo bay opened up to let us back in.

Terren met us first in the hallway. “What a ride.”

I noticed that our once mangled hatch had been replaced with the one from the bad guys’ ship. “It looks like junk,” I said.

Terren poked at my shoulder in a teasing way. “Better than nothing. We had barely gotten it attached and bolted down before you contacted us. I heard it rattle the whole way over. Was worried that it would pop right off if we hit the wind just the right way. Definitely not space-worthy.”

Mom shrugged. “Good work, my strong boy. And at least now you have a proper flat place to work on the ship.”

“Amelia,” Grandma interjected, “What can they do for us here on this planet? Will you let me contact my lawyer now and tell him that I’m not dead?”

“The lawyer, really, mom? Tell me, have you been paying him?”

“Most of the time.”

“Then he should mostly be fine with waiting around to hear back from you. As for everything else, we should discuss it with Jeff.”

“I’m up front,” Dad called back in response to hearing his name. “You must have got in with the Overseer pretty quickly.”

“That’s the good news. Sakura is still the overseer,” Mom said as we met up with Dad in the cockpit. He was powering down the engines and shutting down the other energy-hungry systems. “You remember her, right?”

“How couldn’t I?” Dad said with a slight groan.

I couldn’t help but notice that both my mom and my dad seemed to feel way different about that woman. I didn’t want to mention it though.

“So the bad news…” Mom continued, settling into Terren’s usual seat there at the rear of the cockpit. “They’re dealing with their own thing here, a slight epidemic. So both their medical teams and cryo pods are all spoken for. I also think… Dr. Pois’ little stunt to get into contact with us over the beacon cut them off from regular communications here for a bit…”

“I was right,” I exclaimed, stomping my foot.

“Indeed you were,” Mom sighed. “But we don’t need to let them know that. At the very least, I’ve let them know to expect the doctor. Apparently whoever’s… hunting us down warned the colony not to let anyone land here without going through them first.”

Grandma sighed. “So we’re on the lam, that quack doctor’s on the lam, we can’t get any help here, and my lawyer probably thinks I’m dead and gone.”

Dad hung his head low. “Aida, the lawyer is the least of our worries. At least we have some support here. In the meantime, we need to get the hatch fixed up and space worthy, and wait for Dr. Pois to arrive.”

Mom stood and stretched her arms up in the air. “I can’t argue with that. Tomorrow morning I’m going to go back to Sakura and see if I can’t negotiate something with her… see if we can’t free up some resources for the both of us.”

Dad let out a sole huff and stood like he was going to follow her. “Is that really necessary? To go and interrupt her when she’s so busy?”

Mom stopped in the door and turned back to face my dad. “Not interrupting. Helping. You know, all that consulting and logistics experience I’ve built up over the years? Plus there’s no dedicated AI here. Maybe we can put you to work too, Mom, see if you can’t… heuristic matrix out an attack plan for solving this pandemic of theirs.”

“You know more than I do, hon.” Grandma

“Heuristic matrix isn’t a verb, either,” Dad complained.

I felt like I was in my own binary star system right there between my mom and my dad, ready to be burnt up in their coronas, or get ripped apart by their opposing gravitational pulls. I didn’t even know who was right at that moment.

Mom sighed and shook her head. “Well, I’m tired and sweaty. I’m going to wash off this makeup and make some food for me and Sola. You better let me know if you want some too before I start synthesizing.”

“I’m an adult, I can handle getting food on my own,” said Dad, sulking down in his chair.

---

After eating, I pretended I was going back to my room, but I instead snuck back to the cargo bay. The rear door had been closed since Terren and my Dad stopped working for the day. I closed the interior gently so nobody would hear.

“Grandma?” I asked lowly.

“What seems to be the matter, dear?”

“Mom and Dad were kind of… fighting, weren’t they? I’ve never seen them talk to each other like that.”

“Ah…” Grandma trailed off. “Before, back in the cockpit. You might call it fighting. But I’m sure you can feel it too, this stressful situation. If I had a body right now, I would be exhausted right about now. Worrying about this whole lawyer situation. And the whole bad people trying to get us situation too, of course. Stress makes people do things and say things they don’t mean.”

I nodded in understanding. “There have been some fun parts of this trip, but… I wouldn’t be sad if it were over.”

“Business as normal,” suggested Grandma. “This Sakura Ishii lady definitely isn’t helping the situation.”

“Huh? She is helping us, though.”

Grandma half laughed and half sighed. “If only you knew, child.”

I stopped pacing and leaned in toward the AI core. “What? Tell me! Maybe I can help Mom and Dad out.”

“You’re… 20 years too late for that, girl.”

“What happened 20 years ago? That’s how long they’ve been married, right?”

“Not quite. But your mom loved someone before Jefferson came along.”

“Huh? Who? No…”

“Sakura Ishii.”

I imagined the lady I had seen earlier that day. She was nice. She was probably about the same age as my mom, too. And then Mom talked a lot about her and how great she was.

“How do you know that?” I asked.

“Let’s see… it’s funny how easily I can access my memories here. Yes, it was while your mom was working in this system for the first time. I remember it because I had waited so long to hear back from her, but they hadn’t installed a communications repeater or whatever. Then they did, and she finally gave me a call to tell me that the void of space hadn’t swallowed her up. That was great. But then she didn’t want to talk to me about herself. She wanted to talk about her job and how everything was being settled. But also about some girl named Sakura who she loved working with and talking to. She said she wanted to live permanently here on this settlement to be with her.”

“No way,” I said, shaking my head. “But that didn’t end up happening though.”

“Well, I’m getting to that,” said Grandma impatiently. “Now you might think that I would have put my foot down right there, said no.”

I hadn’t thought that right then, but it made sense. I decided not to say anything though.

“And I might have been against it,” Grandma continued. “I mean, your mom is my only child. And I couldn’t have gone on without having any grandchildren. But you know, right after that call I did some research. It turns out the technology is around now to get two ladies to… donate their DNA and have a kid just like the old fashioned way. I won’t go into the details of all that but… well, I guess you might have learned about the birds and the bees already.”

“Grandma, I don’t even know what that means!” I huffed, hiding behind one of the storage arrays. “Those are two different species! What do they have to do with kids?”

“Well, actually I would have been a little upset if this Sakura girl was some other species. I don’t know if I could have handled my grandchildren being little mixed abominations. But I looked up the name and it seems that Sakura is of Earthly origin.”

“What about Dad though?” I asked, pacing in between the arrays. “When did he come into the picture? Why did Mom decide she wanted to marry him and not Sakura?”

“Ehh, your dad…” Grandma groaned. “I don’t know what happened there, apart from him being someone who worked here too. And I was certainly surprised to find out that your brother was conceived out of wedlock. Ahh, and if you’re wondering, that means—“

“Grandma, please,” I begged, shaking my head. “Do you think Mom and Dad are going to be okay?”

“Sure.”

I sighed.

“As long as this Sakura lady doesn’t try to get in the way. I mean, if she’s an Overseer, watching over everything here on this planet, she must be pretty capable and powerful. And while your dad’s great, he’s just been dragging us all over the place without being able to produce any results for me or anyone else. Sakura sounds like she may be able to help. And that might end up reigniting the spark, if you know what I mean. Then again, what do I know? But you needn’t worry, Sola. Whatever comes about, both of your parents and me will still love you.”

I felt my heart tighten. “Thank you, Grandma. Goodnight.”

“Goodnight, dear.”

I snuck out of the cargo hold door, making sure nobody would see me leaving. I peeked in the door of the bedroom where I saw Terren listening to music on his bed and staring up at the ceiling. I tiptoed out next to the common room. The table had been cleared of any signs of our meal, and nobody was in there. Mom must have been up in the loft. Finally, I made one last stop at the edge of the cockpit door. Dad was lounged back in the pilot seat even though no systems or readouts were active. I wanted to say something, but I couldn’t think of anything.