Page 10 of Time Traveling Space Bastards

I hadn’t meant to ruin her food. As the prince, I grew up with chefs who cooked me whatever I wanted. When my parents kicked my brother and I out of the palace to compete for the throne, Torrek took me in and informed me he was my bodyguard, not my butler. His younger sister was also living with him and she was probably scarier than he was, but she tried to teach me to cook a little.

I was usually fine if I had a recipe and instructions. Which I did on the box. She had ingredients that matched the names on the box. I should have trusted Torrek’s nose when he said there was something more with the milk than just it being brown. You could buy milk from different kinds of animals back home, but we didn’t put whatever chocolate was in it.

Torrek grilled her meat, but I figured if she was going to show us food from her planet, we could let her try some of ours. Enix had the best information because he could access all the data. If we could eat her food, she could eat ours. If something was toxic on our planet, it was universally toxic to everything, so I didn’t think we needed to worry about poisoning her.

“Want to see Big Daddy?” I asked.

I hadn’t touched the bottle she’d been drinking from, but drunk was universal in every galaxy. So was the look she was giving Torrek.

“Hell, yes. Oh, you mean your spaceship.”

So, I guess those parts of the holy texts were true. Torrek would feed her and tuck her into bed, but he wouldn’t touch her like that when she was drunk. It was time for a little tour.

I blew literally most of the money I was given for the contest for the throne on this. My brother would say I was copying him, but I wasn’t. I was trying to stop him. I knew he was trying to find the Devouring Mother to prevent her texts from ever ending up on our planet. We’d get to all of that when she was sober.

But first, I wanted to show off my toy.

The holy text mentioned several things on this planet, so I had my time machine modeled after one so that it would blend in. I knew enough to know people would react badly. It was a feat of engineering. I had most of it parked outside her house and the rest of it cloaked in the time stream where it wasn’t taking up any space.

She walked around it.

“What is all of this painted on it?”

“Logos for Torrek’s favorite bands. He’s very into the local music scene on our planet.”

“Ooh, me, too,” she giggled, stroking his arm. “But I picked Bumfuck, Alaska to get away from everyone I knew and I have to drive three hours if I want to see anyone good.”

I guess this planet was just like ours. Women loved Torrek. I stuck the key into the sliding panel that looked like a wall. I opened it and gave her a slight bow.

“After you.”

She stepped inside and screamed. Was that a good scream? Usually when women screamed around me, they were mad at me, but couldn’t hit me because I was royalty.

“Coolest shit ever!”

Yeah, I guess she was impressed with my toys. We stepped in behind her and I locked the door. I didn’t need any other humans sneaking inside. Before I could even try to offer her a tour, there was a thump. Someone was in here. It couldn’t be another human because the keyhole was hard to find, and I locked the door.

Torrek went into kill mode and pounced. That’s what he was here for. He eventually came back out with a hissing and spitting Saki woman scruffed by the neck.

“Omi?”

What was Torrek’s little sister doing here? She was an adult and just a few years younger than Baxter, but Omi was in the last year of residency learning to be a surgeon. It was a complicated job that not everyone was capable of doing. Competition to get into the program was fierce. I didn’t know why she threw all that away to stowaway on my time machine.

“She used her medical knowledge to mix herbs so she could hide her scent from me. Mom is going to murder me and then she’s going to murder you,” Torrek said.

Torrek and Omi were scary, but not as frightening as their mom. Their dad had died right after Omi was born and she never remarried. She raised them on her own and she was a fierce woman.

Torrek was a trained fighter and Omi was a doctor, but Omi could handle her own in a fight. She slammed the heel of her foot down and then elbowed him in the gut. Torrek just grunted and let her go.

“I’m not finishing school while the three of you go to another galaxy and meet the Devouring Mother. It’s shitty you even tried to do that.”

“Hi, I’m the Devouring Mother. I’m barely handling my shit and, apparently, I get murdered in two days. Want to get drunk and eat some forbidden donuts?”

I hadn’t even realized Baxter could understand all of that. Omi had always been way too smart for her own good. Enix hadn’t upgraded her chip to speak the language of this planet, but she was intelligent enough to hack into my fucking time machine and get it to upgrade it for her.

I was mad, but I was also impressed.

Omi just grinned.

“I don’t know what donuts are, but I like drunk.”

“No,” Torrek said. “You’re a mean drunk.”

“So am I,” Baxter said. “And as much as I like, and want to explore the alien sausage party, I never got to have many female friends because they either thought I was crazy or I couldn’t be honest. It’s not like you can take her home. If you get hurt, you’re going to need her. If I take you to a human doctor, you’re going to end up in a lab being experimented on and I don’t think it's like the movies with shady veterinarians.”

“She’s right,” Enix said. “I can access the data on how any medical care works, but I don’t actually have the programming to pull it off. Omi is in the real-life training part of her residency. She could probably spin this to count when we get home. How many doctors on our planet have observed other galaxies and humans?”

“Stop making her feel better about what she did.”

“I’m not programmed to make her feel better. I’m not programmed to make you feel better, either. I spoke in facts and logic,” Enix said.

And he was right, but Torrek was hyper-protective of his younger sister.

“You can’t change it any more than you can change my past,” Baxter said. “She’s here and you’ll probably need her. Why don’t you give me the tour and then we can eat. I’ve had a lot of Everclear and if I don’t eat, I’m either going to hit someone or fuck them. It’s just science.”

I smiled to myself. Baxter Holmes wasn’t anything like I was expecting, but I liked her.