The Abandoned

She sat in the comfortable chair facing the sole desk in the room. Placed on a raised platform, a strange woman was standing behind the desk trying to compose her thoughts. Janet Pinkerton looked at the two women beside her. Her two follow survivors, Lisa Williams and Rose Catterly, both had an impression of restlessness on their face and it’s no wonder. 

Since the time they woke, it has been one strange thing after another.

Protocol seems to have been abandoned on this planet. First, the people here did not speak English or any other known language the three of them knows off. Then there was the strange attire the people were wearing. Janet Pinkerton's gaze drifted down to the attire of the woman standing in front of them, trying to think of which planet had a fashion like that. The woman was wearing a pink jacket that covered her arms and a pair of black pants which flare out baggily at the legs.  Nothing unusual there but she was also wearing head was a colourful scarf that covered her head and her lower face were hidden by a veil. Hung on her belt was a straw conical hat that had seen some use before.

Pinkerton drew a blank.

“H…Hello”

Silence reigned in the room as the 3 women were momentarily surprised by the greeting. It was the first time since they had awoken that someone had spoken in a language they understood. All 3 of them started asking questions together and it was too much for the strange woman. She put up both hands and the questions stopped.

The woman looked to be smiling behind the veil. She put down her hands, looked at the 3 women and began again. “You may call this one Kettle. Do you understand me?”

Kettle? What kind of stupid name is that? But that was a question for another time. Janet Pinkerton stood up. “My name is Captain Janet Pinkerton, commanding officer of the science vassal Pagoda. Beside me are Lisa Williams and Dr. Rose Catterly. I demand to know what planet we are on and why no one from the UPF has come to see us yet!”

Kettle’s eyes looked at her curiously, as if trying to process some information. “You are…you are from space? UPF stands for United Planets Federation?”

The surprise was evident from Kettle’s voice and not for the first time since she woke from the escape pod, Pinkerton had a bad feeling about all this. “Yes, of course! Now where the hell are we?”

“By the council…it’s true!” Kettle's whisper could clearly be heard in the emptiness of the room.

“Miss…Kettle,” Williams asked softly. “What planet are we on?”

“This is the planet Eridani.”

Williams, Catterly and Pinkerton looked at each other. All 3 had the same look on their face. “We never heard of a planet Eridani.” Pinkerton said. “Which system are we in? What is the operating function of this planet?”

Again Kettle put up her hand. This time more firmly. “Please… captain,” Kettle bit the word as if it was an insult, “we have questions of our own. May we know what happened to you?”

Of course there would be questions and Pinkerton had been ready for a debriefing the moment she woke up. Only no one from the UPF had came to interview her. She decided to treat this as the debriefing.

“The Pagoda was on a mission to map the material contents of a comet travelling through the Tarus system. We managed to get into the tail end of the comet without problem but on our approach to the comet, our ship suffered a serious malfunction of some sort. We had to abandon our approach but traveling out of the tail of a comet carries its own risk and the Pagoda suffered complete system failure.” Pinkerton took a breath and swallowed the bile in her throat. As the captain, the failure strung her. “We…I had to abandoned ship. Now which system are we in?”

“We do not know.” Seeing the looks on the 3 spacefarers, Kettle explained further. “We do not remember. All we know is that this planet was once called 82 Eridani. Over time, the 82 was taken away and now we just call our planet Eridani.”

“Lost!” Pinkerton and Williams both looked at Catterly the moment the words came out of her mouth. Catterly’s mouth was open in disbelief but she continued. “They are lost. We crashed on a planet filled with lost colonists.”

Pinkerton looked back at Kettle and for the first time truly saw her. It was so obvious she couldn’t believe she didn’t put two and two together. Kettle’s dress was a dead giveaway. There was no way a modern woman in this time would wear something as strange as that. Her thinking however was broken when she noticed that Kettle was shaking her head.

“No, not lost,” Kettle said. “We were not lost. We were abandoned!”