(Page 1 of 2) The Stony Creek by Dan BiegerSUMMARY: The story my software generated for Tristis Ward for the April flash fiction contest.The Stony Creek hung there in space relatively motionless to the major artifacts in its general vicinity, said artifacts including a binary, a red dwarf, and a soon-to-be-common-old-nova star system. The crew gathered in the galley, the largest open space available, and all twenty-two women had something to say. Everyone saying something all at once produced more noise than the Stony Creek was built to stifle. It took the stentorian tones of the Captain, A. Hoodless, to quell the incipient riot.
"Okay, ladies...women. We're in a mell of a hess and we must take some action. That much we can all agree on."
The XO, E. Murphy, known behind her back as The Judge for her penchant for trenchant criticisms of the daily activities of the crew, offered into the sudden silence: "Occasionally, doing nothing constitutes a course of action but I would conjecture, in this instance, our good Captain has the right of it."
Nods from close by, murmurs from farther off encouraged the Captain to resume her pitch: "We all know that a watched pot never boils so watching the screens for our hoped for rescuers is not a worthwhile activity." She waited for the expected assent to percolate from the crew and it came, grudgingly.
"So, what we need to do is take out minds off the screens. We need a distraction."
"Couldn't we just repair the drives?" an engineering mate asked to a round of fearsome silent rebukes, the merest raising of eyebrows by all in her vicinity sufficient to the task.
"Repairing the drives is not as simple as re-wiring the galley nanowaves; it requires specialized training not available in the crew CV. When we let all the men trot off to war to fight the T'Dor we neglected to ask one with some useful knowledge to stay behind just in case."
"Wasn't our purpose to instruct all women in the basic science of running a household?"
The Captain could not be certain but she strongly suspected that question came from the Political Officer, that skinny little bitch. It would be just like her to stifle all progress by reverting to the rules.
"And your point?" the Captain responded to thin air.
"Well, as far as I can see, running a space ship certainly constitutes a basic science of our life since our life is pretty much what this ship can and cannot do." The voice drew its body from the crowd to take a place beside the Captain. She was one of the Infamous Five, those stalwarts who had goaded women to action after the apparent disappearance of all the able bodied men. And, yes, by the goddess, she was a skinny bitch.
"For home and humanity, you know, and how better to serve humanity than to get this dreadnaught into the fight when we discover where the fight is taking place?"
"And how do you propose we do that?" the Captain asked, her voice as chilly as the space outside the ship.
"Well, some of us had to repair our transport back in the good old days when we stayed at home. There weren't any men around to perform the chore and we had to get to the next meeting, didn't we?"
"A dreadnaught is not a transport," A.
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