Fur Feathers Scales and Stars - 2.1

2 - Margo 

   Chip was not looking good, Margo reflected. He couldn’t be expected to, under the circumstances. It wasn’t fair, the way issues just kept springing up around him, one after another, after another, after another. If it wasn’t the temperature, it was an uncooperative arachnid. Of course, that very arachnid had then gone on to solve the temperature issue, sacrificing his life, leaving Chip the captain of a very mutinous Bug Division. It was as if the entire galaxy was teaming up to ruin his life. Chip, bless him, was still hurting from the loss of Ochon, an officer he hadn’t valued the loyalty of until it was too late. Not to mention his sister was reportedly travelling with the maniac who had caused it all, a maniac who had vanished off all radars … although perhaps that was actually a blessing.

Now, a green and blue planet several hundred light years away had weighed in to add even more mayhem.

“How long have you had this, Chip?” said Margo. She was standing on a platform that hovered in the air beside his bunk, on the edge of which he’d flung the printout of an email. The humans loved writing emails to the Jungle Corps Space Team. Writing - to animals - in space. It didn’t get better than that, according to the manager of the zoo in which Treego Dart had resided for the early part of his life. Treego had read that particular line out to them all with his tongue lolling out his mouth and his shoulders shaking with giggles.

This email, as painstakingly politely written as the rest of them, informed Captain Chip Puccoon, of the JCST Canopy, that he had been awarded the Dickens’ Medal for his gallant resistance of the Buzzer’s temptations. This was a high honour, of course, but that probably didn’t mean Chip wanted this saga brought back to the crew’s attention any more than it had to be.

“Couple of days.” He shrugged. “I’m supposed to have organised a ceremony for my e-presentation by tomorrow.”

“What will they do when you don’t show up?” said Margo. She set the letter aside and sank down onto her haunches.

“They’re thousands of light years away, Margo,” he said, “What are they going to do?”

“Honestly …” A smile tugged at Margo’s mouth. “Probably just leave you alone. They have their own problems … lots of them.”

Chip shuddered then nodded.

“Just leave it, Chip,” Margo said. She raised herself back to her feet and yawned. “I promise, this will blow over.”

She turned and pressed a button at the back of the platform to engage the electromagnetic thrusters. With a quick smile at Chip over her shoulder, though she wasn’t sure he even registered it, she tapped the down arrow and drifted back down to the spacecraft’s floor. She would check on him later, but for now she had patients to see.

There was a snake, Officer Visely, whose insides were so precisely calibrated within his long spindly frame that even the slightest turbulence threw him into turmoil. In all the Lezeki business, he’d been one of the worst hit, after Officer Glace, and even now he was only just recovering.

It was about five minutes later when she reached the storage container where she'd left his medicine. She flicked a switch near the bottom of the door that clicked the it open but as she lifted a paw to step through, her ears perked up and she felt the buzz of an alert ripple up her spine and around her shoulders. There was a buzz in the room too, a different sort of buzz - audible, not sensory.

She peeked around the corner of the door, with her head low to the ground in the hope that she might not be noticed immediately.

"Whipple!" screeched a sharp, rough voice.

As Margo searched for the voice's owner, she chuckled. Keeping low to the ground was the worst thing she could have done. The voice's owner was Kernik, Ochon's brother. He and literally hundreds of other bugs and insects were crammed into the office, all of them on the floor, inches away from Margo's snout.

"Kernik," said Margo. She didn't enter the room, mostly because she would squash huge sections of its population with every step. Instead she kept her head curled around the door, rising a few feet so she wouldn't be dangling her fangs over the bugs. She understood how intimidating a wolf staring down at you could be so she kept her eyes on the room's two computers. They were on opposite sides of the room, though the room was so small users could pass notes from one to the other without leaving their screens. A small room for small life forms. Margo often thought she might understand how an ant felt when she looked out the helm viewscreen at the deep space flying past. What the heck did an ant feel when they did the same?

"What's going on in here, Kernik?" she asked, still not looking at them.

"Don't tell her, Ken!" an especially high-pitched voice cried. "She might not have arms but she's basically one of them!"

"Pedu!" Kernik hissed.

Hiss! Of course! She could think about what all this was about later. Right now she needed some medicine for a very sick snake.

"Look, I'll be out of your hair in a moment," Margo muttered, "I just need that vial on the east-facing desk."

Within moments a chain of ants had conveyed it to her. It was at least thirty times their weight, Margo knew. It was incredible what these creatures could do. Just a shame they weren't any bigger.

"Thnk ye," she said as she stooped down and closed her teeth around the vial, hoping the vial itself would be big enough to shield them from the gleam of her teeth. She bowed out of the room as quickly as she could and hurried down to sickbay.