Chronicles of the Flying Dolphin

Kristal had found out from the Dolphins of Homeworld that Fractal had not found the ship, as he thought. He had made it with his mind. And although he though he had repaired it with the installation of servos and drivers, the truth was that the Dolphins of Home had merely had him install those things to give him more confidence in the craft. It was well known among the Dolphin tribes that other than trained Goddesses, the few Humans who shared their talent for telekinesis often lacked the confidence to make thought drive a reality.

The entire crew worked up aggressive appetites by surfing and snorkeling all day. The flounders and lobsters on the fire were the rewards of the latter. Fractal emerged from the dense interior of the island with an aloe leaf two thirds of a meter long, with which to soothe Kristal's sunburn and Xero' scorched knuckles - he had singed the hair off of them while baking plantains over the fire.

"O'Kee Dokie, Me got Ju-Ju, B'wanna!" he made light of his mentor's wound - not to mention the apothecaries knowledge and reverence of herbal medicines. Xero had no riposte. The Privateer split the succulent into two flat, wide sticky pieces, tossed one to Xero and began applying the other lovingly to the Goddess' pink shoulders.

"Ooooooo! Is cold too!"

"No, my Goddess, you're too hot. And you're not used to this world's sun, so stay here in the shade, O.K?"

He felt guilty about having told her of this planet's tropical delights at such great length during their voyage only to have her confined from the fun and sun behind the dunes. She didn't seem to mind, though. Unable to get the hang of surfing, she had proven an excellent diver, and had filled a sack with starfish, shells and other goodies from as deep as twelve meters.

"...Look one this at!" she was amazed herself as she showed her booty off to the Privateer. Each new shape fascinated her.

"Its called a Lightning Whelk, Goddess," he offered, turning it in his hand gently before her. She was almost hypnotized when one of the Lils - who could tell which? - broke the spell by stabbing her short surfboard's tail into the sand and noisily demanding,

"Gimme s'm food!" Drawing her dagger and plucking a tail from the fire in one motion before adding an obligitory, "Please!"

Kristal rolled to her side and tossed the twin a banana leaf to serve as a plate/glove against the hot shell just as Xero proclaimed that the plantains were done to perfection.

"The plantains are done to perfection." he said matter-of-factly, and began to offload generous servings of them onto broad leaves from the same tree the fruit themselves had been purloined from. The other Lil came bouncing naked up the beach and collapsed in the sand laughing - her milk white hair plastered to her face.

"You'll never guess what I found," she gasped between convulsions of hysteria, and knowing that it was true that they never would, she didn't give them time to try,

"...cases and cases of old Soviet rocket fuses! Cold war era! All packed up nice an' neat and rusted fucking solid!"

"That's impossible!" Fractal spat a wad of partially masticated lobster tail into the fire.

"Is not yet to be rockets - or also soviets, is no?" Kristal agreed. She had understood the warp to have been to ancient Terra. Long before the birth of the great theocracies the space pirettes would have to battle soon. The albino's announcement had to have been in error, or else Xero had misjudged in his timephase estimate. Either way, it was a first.

The Flying Dolphin bobbed at anchor in the lagoon; it's builder/owner/captain had come to trust his life to the ships instruments - and the lives of his friends as well. He was now off at a run toward the lagoon to check the accuracy of those instruments. Not bothering with either of the launches, he dove into the waves and began to swim as though a Sea Serpent from Home was after him.

He hoped he could find the fuck up. He hoped his old mentor had bee mistaken in his reading - as unlikely as that was. He hoped that they were in some more recent version of Terra than they had thought themselves to be. He hoped all these things and more; because if this was indeed pre greco-roman earth, then the brother and sisterhood of the forbidden sector were not the first or only time travellers to visit. Even worse, whoever else had been here had been radically wreckless with nuclear arms, and not very good ones at that.