Mettle Fish [Astro's Adventures, Ep. 2]
An Astro Adventure
Captain Astro was sent on his first solo mission on the Arrow as a mere test animal for Earth’s first interstellar flight. Mark, his trainer, had told him it would be a long but simple mission. An encounter with a strange plasma storm changed him, evolved him, and now he commands and pilots the ship, along with his new friends, searching for the way back to Mark and home.
Astro glared at the asteroids that filled the main window of the bridge. He tapped his forepaws on the arm of the captain’s chair. His claws made a sharp sound with each tap. The sound annoyed him and he fed the annoyance to his frustration. He had still not managed to reengage the ship’s autopilot. The flying was on him, and sometimes Sakesh, though she seemed less interested in doing it most days. He was more than happy to leave the cooking to her and the flying to him, as nothing he had cooked so far had been worth eating. She, at least, had experience from her hunting parties.
“Going around the asteroids will just take too long.” He would have to fly through the asteroid field, and he hoped he’d gotten good enough.
“Can you fly through those? They appear to be moving around, and some are very large.”
“We’ll just go slowly. It’ll still be faster than trying to find our way around them all.”
“What are the fast little rocks in between?”
Astro maneuvered the ship closer. Between the asteroids, flashes of reflective specks zipped around, in and out of the rocks. Sometimes singly, sometimes in groups. Astro leaned forward as he noticed one chasing another.
“They look like-“
“Fish!” shouted Sakesh.
“But they are in space. There is no air, or even water, out there.”
Yet Astro could not deny the similarity. They did indeed appear to be fish swimming in space. As they got closer, they could see that even their shapes were reminiscent of fish, long and lean or wide and stout, with big round eyes. Some had tapered fins on either side, others a strong tail fin. Their scales glistened in reflected light of silver and copper hues.
“They look metal,” commented Sakesh. “My people craft metal fish for status. Show wealth and power. They craft little ones on uniforms; show rank and nobility.”
Astro looked over at Sakesh. She still wore her hunting uniform, finding it more comfortable than the Earth uniforms on the ship. Astro’s tail agreed with her. He was currently wearing pants and a leather jacket made for him on her world with an Arrow branded tee shirt he’d gotten from the supplies on the ship.
“I don’t see any fish on your uniform. Where are they?”
Sakesh’s ears tilted back, nearly flattening on her furry head. “I have no rank, no status. I am last born of my litter, and smallest as a second scratch to my name. My family is noble, but I am destined to be nothing more than what I can make for myself. So I hunt. I am good at it. But it make joining your journey easier choice.”
Astro considered her flattened ears which had now relaxed, and the metal fish flitting to and fro across the main window. “Let’s get you some, then.”
Sakesh looked at him. “Get me what?”
“Metal fish.” Astro gestured out the window.
“Astro, you say no air or water out there. We have no fishing poles or spears. How do you think we catch fish?”
“With our paws.” He shrugged. “We have suits for out there, to walk in space. We can just suit up, go out, and get some fish. To show how noble you are. It’ll be fun.”
Sakesh stared at him without moving. He was never sure how to read that look. Sometimes it seemed like admiration. Sometimes disappointment.
“You catch fish with paws?”
“Never. How hard can it be?” He powered down the engines and headed for the suit storage near the air lock. Sakesh followed.
Once suited up, their tails stuffed down one leg, they stepped into the air lock. Beside the door were four safety lines with big hooks for their suits. He clipped a hook and line to each of them.
“This is the safety line to keep us tied to the ship,” he told her over the suit radios. “Do not take this off.”
“Understand,” replied Sakesh.
Astro knew from experience that the lights around the door would indicate when it was safe to go out. He pressed the air cycle control, and the lights around the exit door went blue. The overhead lights dimmed. Once the ship took the air out of the room, the lights turned white and the door slowly slid open. Outside was a vast darkness pierced with a million little stars. The airlock door was not facing the asteroid belt, but it was obvious as soon as they exited.
The giant wall of floating rocks of every size and rough shape stood before the front of the Arrow. The little metal fish swam around between them.
“We use the jets in the suit to go where we want.” He jetted gently forward to demonstrate. He went further than he’d expected, but he didn’t share that over the radio. It got the point across. Sakesh nodded and jetted forward herself. They made their way toward the nearest asteroid, which had schools of copper and silver fish flitting all around it.
Astro chose one silver fish about half the length of his arm that appeared to be nibbling on a shiny section of the asteroid itself. He jetted forward with his arms out, directly toward the fish. It was almost within his grasp when it flipped around and swam away right out from under him. He flailed his arms, but could not change course as fast as the fish had. He reached for the reverse jets too late, and crashed into the asteroid with a yelp of surprise. A glance at the suit display in his face shield confirmed that he’d taken no damage, but a feline giggle echoed across his radio.
Up close, the asteroid was a mix of rock and metal. Holes and tunnels covered the misshapen chunk of asteroid reef. Astro took hold of the edge of a tunnel and used the asteroid as a stable base to turn.
Sakesh had abandoned the idea of using the jets to chase the fish, and instead was crawling across a large asteroid nearby, stalking a large bronze fish with long trailing fins like copper ribbons. The ribbonfin glided from one shiny spot to another, moving away from Sakesh with no obvious concern. She crept closer over the pitted surface. Her lithe body, even in the space suit, flowed around and over bumps and ridges. She was half a length from her target when she bunched her hind legs under her and leaped forward, arms outstretched. The safety line jerked taught a foot into her jump, stopping her progress, making her thump into the asteroid with no sign of her usual grace. The ribbonfin swam away, stirring up little bits of metallic asteroid dust to float up from the surface. Astro did not recognize the words that came across his radio, but he knew the tone.
She reached down and grabbed the safety hook, pulling it out of the suit latch.
“Sakesh, what are you doing? Don’t take off the line.”
“I can not hunt on leash,” she hissed into the radio and cast the safety line back toward the ship. Astro hesitated, uncertain whether to leap for her safety line and fetch it back to her, or to go for Sakesh herself and count on his own line to bring them both back to the ship. His hesitation lasted only a moment and he launched himself across the gap between the asteroids toward her.
Sakesh pulled her feet under her and leaped. She soared away from the asteroid, but not toward Astro. She twisted around mid-flight and kicked off against an asteroid floating by that was as big as she. The asteroid shifted its direction, and Sakesh went rocketing back toward the original asteroid. Her paws closed around the ribbonfin, and she tucked around it, rolling across the surface with the fish clutched against her chest. She held it with one arm and reached out with the other to grasp a pawhold on one of the holes. Angling back toward Astro, who was now floating midway between the two larger asteroids, she launched herself again. He clutched her to him as soon as she was in range, and both of them, all three of them, counting the fish, floated gently back toward the ship. Astro triggered the safety line retraction, and they were hauled back toward the airlock together.
“I got fish.” Her voice came across through the radio, but the smile through her helmet was louder.
Astro shook his head, grinning as well, and turned his attention back toward the ship. Little fish were swimming around the outside of the ship, as well. They needn’t have had to go all the way to the asteroids after all; the fish would have come to them. As they got closer, he noticed that nearly all the little fish around the ship were face down toward the metal hull. He focused on the closest of them, a round fish with a dark silver body and gold rings around the middle. What was it doing to the front of the ship? It broke away and swam off as the safety line pulled them near, and Astro barked in his helmet, hurting his own ears, as he saw that the little fish had left behind a little hole.
“They’re eating the ship!” The realization hit him. “They eat metal.”
“That is not good. I hunt them.”
“There are too many. By the time you stalk each one, they’ll have done too much damage.”
“I will use bow. Move ship away from rocks.”
Astro nodded. They had a plan. The airlock cycled them through an eternity, but when the doors opened, he ran for the bridge, and she ran for her bow, still carrying the ribbonfin. He leaped over the back of the captain’s chair and initiated the engines. It only took a few minutes to back the ship off the asteroids enough to keep the fish from swimming the distance. He kept watch through the main window to make sure. Other screens turned to view the airlock and the sides of the ship. Sakesh was already cycling back through the airlock, holding her bow.
Astro suddenly worried. Would the bow work with no air for the arrows to fly through? Would the arrows hurt the metal fish? Or had they already done too much damage to the ship? He brought up the systems checks and looked for signs of problems: loss of air, or damaged electrical components.
On the exterior screen, Sakesh clipped in her safety line and stepped out onto the hull of the ship. She took aim, and let fly an arrow. It shot true, faster than a blink, punctured a fish, and sailed on into space. No sooner was it gone than a second arrow flew down the side of the ship, taking out another fish. Sakesh hunted up and down the outside of the ship, taking deadly aim on every fish she found.
Astro, relieved that the bow was doing the job, and finding no severe damage, finally relaxed enough to remove his helmet. As he did, something tickled against his neck. He pawed at it, and knocked a tiny metal fish to the carpeted floor. It wriggled there, but did not seem to be able to fly the way it did around the asteroids. After a few moments, it lay still, and he picked up the tiny gold fish.
“All done. No more.” Sakesh entered the bridge, back in her usual uniform.
Astro brought his right paw up and held out the little gold fish. “Sakesh, for exceptional service to the Arrow, I present you this symbol and the rank of First Officer.” He smiled. “Now you can show off your riches and nobility.”
Sakesh took the little fish and gave Astro that inscrutable look again. “Yes, I have much wealth.”
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