Short Stories from the Star Kingdom Read online

  Short Stories from the Star Kingdom

  Lindsay Buroker

  Copyright © 2019-2020 by Lindsay Buroker

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Contents

  Foreword

  Robots and Roommates

  Robots and Roommates

  Cultured and Clawed

  Cultured and Clawed

  The Main Event

  The Main Event

  Foreword

  Welcome, good reader! These stories offer some background into the main characters in my Star Kingdom series.

  “Robots and Roommates” takes places several years before Book 1 and shows how Casmir and Kim first met and became roommates.

  “Cultured and Clawed” takes places about six months before the first book and shows how Bonita and Qin first met and became crewmates.

  “The Main Event” is a bit of an epilogue adventure and takes place after the last book and thus contains spoilers for the entire series. I’m not even going to tell you who is in it! I suggest waiting to read this story until after you’ve completed Book 8, Layers of Force.

  Robots and Roommates

  Robots and Roommates

  Casmir Dabrowski grabbed his gaming books, his holographic dice roller, and his bag of real dice. They weren’t necessary, but he liked the way they clinked and clattered across a table.

  He stepped out the front door into the misty evening air and paused. A stranger in a hoodie was standing on the walkway in front his cottage and gazing thoughtfully up at the large zindi tree in the yard. It was the only native species on a street lined with oaks, the acorns brought long ago from Earth on the colony ships, but there were other zindi trees in the city. Its presence shouldn’t startle anyone. And, since his home was at the end of a cul-de-sac, strangers rarely wandered this way. Though he did recall a time when the dendrology club on campus had come to visit the tree.

  “Hello.” Casmir waved his free hand. “Are you lost?”

  The stranger started, then turned to face him. It was a woman in her early twenties, a student, he assumed, with black hair worn back in a ponytail and a gym bag slung over her shoulder. A pair of wooden swords were attached to the bag.

  “No,” she said, little inflection in her voice and less expression on her face.

  She looked at the address numbers glowing beside his door—his last roommate, who’d been studying marine biology, had painted them with a bioluminescent algae that glowed in the dark. She looked at him, and then back to the address.

  Casmir thought she would explain what had brought her this way. Her gaze drifted back to the tree.

  “I’m Casmir,” he offered. “Casmir Dabrowski.”

  “Yes. I am Kim Sato.”

  “Oh! You’re here about the roommate opening. Uhm, I thought we agreed on 8 a.m. tomorrow, not 8 p.m. tonight.”

  “We did. I came to scrutinize the dwelling and the neighborhood to see if they would be acceptable.”

  He wondered if trees were a priority for her. The zindi seemed to be of more interest than the house. Maybe she was in the dendrology club.

  “I did not anticipate encountering you while I did so,” Kim said.

  “Do you want me to go back inside?” Casmir smiled and pointed his thumb toward the door, not sure what to make of her.

  “That is unnecessary. But I have already researched you. You are a graduate student and have completed degrees in mechanical engineering and robotics. Your GPA in these subjects is excellent. You’ve been less attentive with your electives and general requirements.”

  “This is true.” Casmir decided not to be fazed by a prospective roommate researching him. Naturally, she would want to make sure he wasn’t a pervert or a weirdo. Though he wasn’t sure how his grades would tell her that. “You should also know that I usually get takeout instead of cooking, we would have to share the bathroom since there’s only one, and I have a few hobbies that occasionally spill out of my room and into the rest of the house.” He thought those things would be more important for a potential roommate to know up front. “How much of a stickler for cleanliness are you? I have a cleaning robot, but I borrowed a few parts from it for another project.”

  That had been two years earlier. Should he confess to that? Jay hadn’t cared, but if his mother was anything to go by, girls were more concerned about cleanliness.

  “I prefer a hygienic and uncluttered home.” Kim pressed her lips together. In disapproval? “Since it has come up before, I should also inform you that I insist on a platonic relationship. Under no circumstances will there be sexual intercourse, foreplay, cuddling, or physical contact of any kind.”

  “Yeah, Jay and I had the same rule. No problem.” Casmir gave her an affable grin, wondering if she ever cracked a smile.

  Maybe she would have liked a serious answer instead of a joke, for she sternly said, “I study kendo and grappling and can ensure my preferences are observed.”

  “Grappling? Wouldn’t there have to be physical contact for that?”

  Her eyes narrowed.

  “Sorry.” Casmir lifted his hands. “I’m told I have an impertinent sense of humor. It sometimes gets me in trouble.”

  “Perhaps you should sign up for a self-improvement class and seek to remedy that character flaw.”

  He started to smile but realized it wasn’t a joke. Not unless she had a better deadpan delivery than any of the androids he’d worked with.

  “I’ve already fulfilled all of my electives, but I’ll keep your suggestion in mind. Can I show you around the house?” Casmir wondered if he could live with someone without a sense of humor.

  Maybe it didn’t matter. Between his studies and his work in the robotics lab, he was rarely home. And he’d looked her up when she first suggested the meeting, and he knew she was a bacteriologist engaged in postgraduate work on campus as well as research for a private lab, so she wouldn’t likely be around much either.

  Kim glanced dubiously at the house and then at his books. “You appear to have been on your way out. I can return in the morning.”

  “Just to my gaming group.” Casmir jangled the dice bag. “Nobody’s ever on time.”

  She hesitated.

  He wondered if she was thinking of rejecting him as a roommate before even seeing the place, and he regretted making jokes about physical contact. Maybe she’d had a bad experience with a guy before.

  “Or you can go in and look around yourself if you want.” He groped for a way to appear unthreatening, though she was as tall as he was and had those wooden swords—and apparently a bunch of martial arts training—so she could probably beat him up without putting her bag down. “I can wait here. Or leave. You could just shut the door when you’re done looking around.”

  “I don’t think—”

  The hum of an air bike sounded as someone turned down the street. Kim broke off and looked toward the noise.

  Casmir waved, recognizing one of his neighbors and her boyfriend. Usually, they headed straight into their cottage two houses away, but the bike swung toward his house, hovering a few inches over the sidewalk.

  “Hi, Casmir.” Mindy Baum flicked a few fingers at him. Her boyfriend sat behind her, arms around her waist. “Kim Sato? I thought that was you.” She glanced at the bag with the wooden swords. “What are you doing here? I thought you’d be busy in the lab all weekend, trying to come up with a meager copy of the solution I found to the problem we were assigned.”
/>   Kim lifted her chin. “I do not need the entire weekend to come up with a superior solution.”

  “I bet you don’t have anything yet. You’re too stuck on bacteria. They can’t do everything. They’re not nearly as versatile as fungi.”

  “That is an unsubstantiated statement.”

  “Oh, it’s substantiated every time I get a better score on a project than you do.” Mindy grinned. “You better stop lurking in the dark like a stalker and go work on yours. How embarrassing would it be if you couldn’t get something to work?” Mindy wheeled the air bike around and pointed it to her house. “Bye, Casmir. How come you’re not wearing your cute little hat tonight?”

  “Er, my kippah? Because I’m on my way to slay imaginary dragons, not pray at the synagogue.” He almost explained that his family wasn’t Orthodox but realized she was teasing him and wouldn’t care.

  “Dragons. Very brave of you to keep the neighborhood safe from them!”

  Her boyfriend, whom Casmir had never heard string together more than three words at a time, snorted as they sped to their cottage.

  Casmir eyed Kim warily, wondering if Mindy’s presence in the neighborhood would be another strike against his acceptability as a roommate. He supposed he would have to keep looking. There would be plenty of students in need of housing at the start of the new semester; he just would have preferred someone else who was older and serious about his or her studies. He didn’t need anyone who threw parties, not when he had so many breakable projects and parts around the house. Not to mention his prized early-centuries comics in dust jackets.

  Kim, he felt quite certain, would never disturb his comics.

  “You know her, huh?” Casmir asked.

  Kim was scowling in the direction Mindy had gone, even though they had parked the bike and disappeared inside.

  “We’ve had classes together and share the same faculty advisor for our postgraduate work. I entered the university at sixteen, which is considered exceptional, but she entered at fifteen, as she often reminds me. She has already had four papers published in Odin’s Modern Journal of Bacteriology and Mycology.” Her lips squished together. “I’ve had two.”

  “Ah, so she’s your archnemesis.”

  “My what?”

  “Your archnemesis. Your most prominent enemy who does her best to thwart you at every turn.”

  “I don’t have enemies.” Kim pulled her bag off her shoulder, rummaged inside, and withdrew a small flashlight. She pointed it at the corrugated bark of the zindi tree, at a bunch of small holes bored into the trunk about fifteen feet up. “I have talented colleagues who inspire me to work harder to achieve what they’re achieving.”

  “Are you saying you wouldn’t have been tickled if she’d fallen off her air bike?”

  “Certainly not.” Kim put the flashlight away.

  She looked toward the front door of the house and then up the street, as if she couldn’t decide whether to stay or go. Casmir doubted this was going to work out—it sounded like she was younger than he was, but he was positive she was too mature to appreciate his whimsy—but he extended a hand toward the door in offering. It would be impolite to shoo her away.

  She glanced toward the tree again and bit her lip.

  “It’s included,” Casmir offered.

  “What?”

  “The tree. I mean, this is a rental property, so I don’t own it, but I’m fairly certain the tree is on this side of the property line and comes with the cottage.” Casmir tilted his head. “What about it is drawing your attention?”

  “You wouldn’t be interested.”

  He raised his eyebrows, doubting that was true, but if she didn’t want to talk… He merely kept his hand out in invitation.

  He was almost surprised when Kim walked up to the front door instead of leaving. Casmir had locked it, but he used his embedded chip to send the code to open it for her, and it swung inward.

  She had reached the stoop and leaned over the threshold to look toward the living room. She didn’t step foot inside.

  “You say there’s a cleaning robot?” she asked.

  “Yes, under those jackets over there.”

  She gave him an indecipherable look over her shoulder. No, that wasn’t quite accurate. It was a flat and expressionless look, but he didn’t have much trouble deciphering it.

  “I can get the parts to fix it,” he said. “I was planning to tidy up before you came by in the morning.” At least, he would have scrubbed the fizzop stains off the coffee table. Not that they were that noticeable with his tools scattered over the surface. And spilling onto the floor. Which was stacked high with journals and schematics.

  He rubbed his head. Maybe he had better stay home tonight and clean the house. Jay had been just as lost in his projects and inner world as Casmir, and hadn’t been one to worry about tidiness, but if Casmir wanted to attract a new roommate—a quality roommate—he ought to make the cottage look as appealing as possible.

  Kim backed away from the open door like someone backing away from the scene of a particularly gory accident.

  “I’ll tidy it up,” Casmir said. “Really. And get the robot working.”

  “It’s not acceptable.” Kim turned toward the street, passing quickly by him, though she did pause and look back long enough to bow slightly. “Thank you for allowing me to look.”

  “No problem.”

  Casmir looked wistfully at his dice and gaming books. He didn’t have any other potential roommates coming by the next day. He didn’t really need to clean this very night…

  But, as his mother would say, it was time for him to be a responsible grown-up. He would graduate soon, and eventually he would be a professor with students of his own. And he would get to be in charge of his own lab! But he had to be a mature adult to achieve those goals. And mature adults could see the table portion of their coffee tables.

  * * *

  • • • • •

  * * *

  What do you mean you’re not coming? a text message floated down Casmir’s contact interface as he scrubbed the coffee table. Unfortunately, the cleaning robot needed parts, so he had to do the scrubbing by hand.

  I have to clean, he replied. So I can get a new roommate and continue to afford to stay in my house.

  Just get a roommate that likes to clean. Problem solved.

  Casmir tried to imagine the rigid Kim Sato volunteering to clean the house for him and almost laughed. Those people are hard to find. Even my mother has given up on straightening up when she comes to visit. She just purses her lips and looks around in disapproval.

  Yeah, but she brings you food. I love your mother.

  I’ll let her know. Casmir eyed a random pile of soil on the floor, pulled out the dustpan being used to keep a wobbly table from wobbling, and used his hand to sweep the dirt into it. But my father may be jealous if you show up at their apartment spouting professions of adoration for her.

  It’s true that I am virile and manly and a threat to many women’s marriages.

  Yes, when you zip around on your bicycle collecting butterfly specimens for your studies, you’re just like a knight galloping into battles.

  Knights don’t ride anything that gallops anymore. If their air cruisers do that, they need to get a tune-up.

  It’s a pity we live in such bland times. Casmir took the dustpan to the door to dump the soil outside but paused when he glanced through the window.

  Not only was Kim Sato still in front of his house, but she was climbing the zindi tree. Agilely. Casmir gaped as she skimmed up to the holes she’d been investigating earlier.

  “This woman may be odder than I am,” Casmir muttered, then grinned. “I have to convince her to be my roommate.”

  As Kim paused fifteen feet off the ground, her legs propped between two branches, a campus security drone whirred up the street. It zipped up to her eye level and hovered two feet from her shoulder.

  Casmir opened the door, curious if it was simply recording her or if sh
e would receive a warning.

  “Climb down from the tree,” a flat computerized voice said. “Activities which could harm a heritage zindi tree are prohibited on campus.”

  Kim looked from the drone to the bark in front of her. Had she wanted a sample? Why from that particular spot?

  “I need a core sample for a research study I’m engaged in,” she said.

  “You are ordered by this robotic representative of campus security to descend from the tree. Failure to comply will result in fines and disciplinary actions. You are being recorded.”

  “Very well.” Kim slid down from the tree.

  She had to walk several steps away before the drone whizzed off, satisfied its orders would be complied with.

  “I don’t think they’re overly protective of the oaks,” Casmir offered, stepping out on the stoop.

  Kim leveled an irritated look over her shoulder at him. He didn’t know if it was because the drone had interrupted her or because of his comment.

  “What are you after up there?” He pointed. “Maybe I can help.”

  She straightened her sweatshirt. “You wouldn’t be interested.”

  “Are you sure? I’m interested in a lot of things. Not just comic books and robots. I have drones of my own that could probably get your sample without campus security noticing.”

  “You keep drones in your house?”

  “If you looked up my academic records, you can’t find that surprising. I have all manner of robots in the house. Some of them even work.”

  “But not the cleaning robot.”

  “Not at the moment. But I raced my drones last summer at the UAV competitions. I’m sure they’re in decent shape.”

  Kim looked at the spot on the tree, then back to him. Casmir debated whether to feel rejected at how unappealing his offer appeared to be to her.