Déjà Vu Dinner
The Adventures of Seeker and the Serpents, Chapter One
This is the first chapter of my serial sci-fi adventure story, The Adventures of Seeker and the Serpents. It picks up where my novella SEEKER leaves off. It should read well as a stand-alone story, but you can get a free copy of SEEKER by subscribing to my mailing list! (You’ll get a link in the welcome mail.)
This space to be updated each week with a table of contents.
The generic corporate music, which had been playing for the last hour, stopped abruptly.
Opie paused with one paw in the air. He knew what this meant, and he wasn’t looking forward to it tonight.
It was obvious that Fable Freight had provided their emcee with equipment at a similar level of quality to the soundtrack they had chosen. “Ladies and gentlemen, creatures of all shapes and sizes, I am honored to welcome you to the Fable Freight Employee of the Year Honorary Dinner!” she crackled.
The crowd applauded, and Opie flattened his ears and tucked his tail. He had no interest in going up on stage—not now, not ever.
“Gods help us, corporate emcees all sound the same.” This from Hlana, the tallest and bulkiest of the monkey-like Shihari, who wore a smart-looking tuxedo. She hooked an opposable thumb over her shoulder to where the emcee was standing on stage. “You’re gonna look great next to her, Ope. Ope? Seeker! Here!”
At the sound of his code name, Opie snapped out of his trance and gazed out over the sea of tables. They were filled with overpaid people who had put their money into Fable Freight and who now expected to be entertained by someone who delivered packages at minimum wage under horrific conditions.
Well, used to deliver. Opie didn’t work for Fable Freight anymore. He was with the Serpents now, the Shihari warriors who acted as militia on their home planet Shihar, keeping their people and territories safe from all threats both domestic and foreign.
Which included Opie’s other former boss, Section Chief Ferra Cain, who had betrayed the Human Authority Tactical Intelligence brass and—well, Opie wasn’t sure what had happened to her after he’d left her a very special message in front of her tent.
He’d then sent a much more civil notice to Fable Freight, letting them know he would no longer be in their employ. But though the read-receipt showed that someone at Fable had viewed the message, they had still sent him a letter last month to the effect of:
Here is a voucher for up to six (6) tickets for you and your loved ones. We expect to see you at our Employee of the Year Honorary Dinner in four weeks. Congratulations on this prestigious honor.
Opie had dropped the letter in the fire, but Harja had rescued it, read it aloud, then run around the fire screaming, “Free dinner! Free dinner!” Even stoic Dax had been keen on the idea of showing up somewhere Opie hated, primarily to cause some kind of mischief.
Opie couldn’t say no to all four Serpents, and Meras had provided the final excuse: “It’s a way to close the book on Fable Freight.” And so, Opie had cashed in the voucher and they’d all boarded a rickety ship from Shihar’s tiny port to wend their way to Kiru IV.
But now that they were there, Opie didn’t want to follow through. His head ached from the long hours in hyperspace. All he wanted was to eat a giant steak and go to sleep. Which, to be fair, was what he normally wanted to do.
Hlana elbowed Opie gently in the shoulder. “Hey buddy. Stop stalling. You should totally do this. You deserve it so much more than any other asshole Fable Freight employee! And really? I think you go stick it to them up there. You don’t even work for them anymore! Why are you worried?”
Opie blinked out of his stupor and pushed his nose against her shoulder to show he wasn’t upset. “Hlana, I really appreciate you. And I appreciate how much you appreciate me. But, you know…”
“Can’t find the words?” Hlana bopped Opie on the nose with a finger. “Doing just fine on the words right now, bucko. Are you gonna go up there or not… coward?”
Opie looked away. “No, I’m not. Let’s find our seats.”
He stuck to the outskirts of the auditorium as he led the Serpents to their table, where Opie’s name and a gaudy plaque distinguishing him as Employee of the Year sprouted from the center.
Meras hopped up on one of the seats, but he was comically below the height of the table, so he stood up in the chair instead and leaned forward to look at the centerpiece. “Did they leave us any party favors?”
Opie leaned forward, too, intrigued by Meras’s interest. But before he could examine the centerpiece, the spotlight blinded him.
Opie froze. He knew how he looked: a white German Shepherd with no outward signs of being a human-dog hybrid, a daugment. The ultimate imposter.
“Now, now, don’t you dare be modest, Mr. Opie,” the emcee squawked. “We want you up here! We want to hear what you have to say about working for Fable Freight this year.” It was obvious in her voice that the emcee was pointing at Opie.
Every person in the room turned audibly around to see who was so reluctant to accept their award. Opie’s cybernetic enhancements—the ones that let him speak any language he’d ever loaded into the chip slot in his tongue—allowed him to understand every murmur of surprise and gossip that rippled through the room of multicultural, multi-planetary guests. Some of them expressed their disappointment that they’d come all this way and paid so much per plate not to hear from any of the people of Fable Freight. Others snickered at his appearance or his companions.
Opie’s heart sank. He didn’t want to disappoint anyone. He simply wouldn’t have come if he’d known he’d have to look into their eyes and see them hate him.
So, instead of hopping up into one of the chairs, Opie slunk towards the stage until he was at the edge of the staircase up to the platform. The spotlight followed him. He turned his head to look out towards a crowd he couldn’t see and wagged his tail—his best sign of appreciation.
Apparently, it was insufficient engagement for the emcee. “No, no, no! That is not going to be enough. I want you up here to accept your reward. You deserve it! Come on up here, Opie!” The woman gestured wildly at Opie, putting her hands on her hips and making a great show of playing to the crowd for their cooperation and gesturing to the daugment as if he were an ordinary dog. “Let’s give him a warm round of applause to encourage him to join me here on stage, folks!”
Embarrassment coursed through Opie… but he was committed. He took the steps one at a time, his horror growing as he mounted the steps and went to stand beside the emcee.
She immediately turned away from him to gesture magnanimously to a man in an ill-fitting suit. “And now, here’s the president of Fable Freight, Chipton Hardinand!”
The audience applauded tepidly as a man who was caught embezzling from Fable Freight three years ago strutted across the stage—just because his nephew owned a controlling share in the company, just because the board didn’t dare vote him out of the presidency.
Opie narrowed his eyes at Hardinand, remembering their first encounter. Towards the end of a shift, Opie had come back to Fable Freight headquarters to get his last load for the day and found Hardinand was visiting the site. Opie had intended to approach the president to say something memorable and professional… only to watch the man open the cash register and pocket several hundred dollars. As Hardinand had closed the drawer and turned away, he and Opie locked eyes.
Just as they locked eyes now.
Hardinand fidgeted with his collar, but his chest stayed puffed up as he swaggered across the stage. He swept the emcee aside with a motion of his hand; she ducked out of reach and then out of sight.
Hardinand leaned forward on the podium, staring at Opie. He put his hand over the mic and leaned down. “Well, if it isn’t our resident traitor, who still somehow got enough votes to be Employee of the Year. I hope you understand exactly how much I’m doing for you right now.”
Opie tilted his head and blinked at Hardinand. His innocence wasn’t feigned; he’d put in his notice. A retort leaped to his tongue before he could stop it. “I suppose it would be fair, then, to mention the lack of board votes that you got to be president of this company?” A thought occurred to Opie, and he smiled slyly. “Do you fetch when your nephew tosses a ball?”
Hardinand’s face paled. “I could ruin you, dog.”
An empty threat in retort. Opie knew then that hardly anyone dared insult Hardinand most of the time.
Opie looked heavenward as if for help. As he did so, his eyes landed on a cheap half-metal trophy sitting on the corner of the podium, the current year written in marker on the base. It was the same trophy Hardinand had awarded Opie the year before and confiscated a day later, insisting he needed to reuse it the next year.
So, this would be an identical grand moment as last year. President Hardinand would make a great show of kneeling down to present Opie with the trophy, showing his willingness to be on eye level with his employees. A grand gesture on his part, surely.
This year, Opie wanted Hardinand to kneel as if he was begging.
Something in him snapped.
“I’m a daugment,” he woofed softly, “and you already took this exact same trophy away from me. Do you really think it’ll ruin my life if you don’t hand it to me? I don’t even have hands.”
The crowd seemed to catch Opie’s last statement, because a titter rippled through the audience.
Hardinand glared, then uncovered the mic and cleared his throat loudly. “Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you… Opie, who delivered packages for approximately four and a half months last year, and who’s been strangely missing from the universe for the last seventeen weeks.”
The crowd booed in response, and Hardinand nodded grandly, as if he was the ringmaster of this group of people staunchly agreeing with him. “Yes!” he boomed. “I also feel that giving out this award would be strange and inappropriate.”
“We love you, Opie!” someone called. Opie’s ears pricked up.
Hardinand tried again, putting an edge into his voice. “But perhaps we would all be better off if Opie were off the stage.”
The crowd started the boos again, this time for Hardinand.
“Opie, speech!” someone called.
“Speech, speech, speech!” the crowd picked up.
Cold fear washed through Opie. It wasn’t stage fright. It was a dire sense that the precious life he had cultivated with the Serpents on Shihar, as harsh as that planet could be, was coming to an end.
He didn’t want it to end. He felt like he’d just found it. It had been four hard months of living off the land, protecting the Shihari from the monsters on and off the planet—but there was nothing Opie had preferred doing in his whole life.
With the Serpents, he felt like he was with family. On Shihar, he felt like he was home. Opie wouldn’t trade it for anything, and he was terrified to lose it.
Returning to the real world was the scariest prospect of all.
The crowd continued to chant Opie’s name, and he blinked back to the present. Hardinand still stared him down.
Opie let his jaw slacken and his tongue loll, and he let the leash on his petty side slip a little. If it would piss off the president… he could work with this moment.
“Thank you so much, Mr. President,” Opie said. “I accept this award directly from you. It’s a great honor to be celebrated by you like this.”
It had the intended effect: Hardinand’s face turned red, and he could barely breathe enough to get out his next words. “Thank you for your service.”
Opie gently nudged Hardinand aside and stood up on his hind legs, putting his paws on the podium. “I don’t have much to say to you all tonight, but I do want to say that nothing I do would be possible without help from my friends, the Serpents of Shihar.” Opie grinned in their general direction, though the spotlight was too bright for him to see them.
The crowd broke into thunderous applause, and Opie took this as his cue to drop off the podium.
Without kneeling or bowing or groveling at all, Hardinand thrust the trophy towards Opie. Opie gently took the trophy in his jaws, wagged his tail at Hardinand, and trotted offstage with his head high to continued applause. He tuned out whatever Hardinand had decided to say in favor and loped back towards his table.
But as he approached, he could see that the Serpents looked grim and concerned. And there was Harja, who’d disappeared before they’d even gotten to the venue. She was the smallest of the Serpents, a deceptively delicate creature of death—but right now she looked very nervous standing beside a beautiful bird-like creature about a half-meter taller than she was—an imphus.
The plumage on the imphus’s head was red and gold, and he had wings and hands on the same limbs. He was dressed in a clean, well-cut tunic; classiness notwithstanding, clothes on a bird looked strange to Opie’s eye.
But what was stranger still was that the imphus stood with his hands on Harja’s shoulders in a protective way, as if he had known her for a long time.
Opie set the trophy down. “Harja, where were you?”
“Opie,” Harja said, “this is Riddle—my betrothed.”