This is the first installment of my forthcoming novella Operation: Jabberwock. It’s Alice in Wonderland in space, yo. If you miss any chapters, just click the Operation: Jabberwock tag at the bottom to get them all.
Twas Brillig when Alice set her ship down on the remote planet. She wasted no time unbuckling from the sticky acceleration webbing and prepping for battle. She wanted this final test over and done with.
“Please do be careful,” said Dodgson.
Alice turned her head toward the tiny ship’s avatar, which presented itself as a man with long, curly dark hair garbed in Victorian finery. He was modeled after an old Earth mathematician. “I’m always careful,” she said, placing her thumb on the rear wall of the ship. It blipped open to reveal her weapons cache. “Now, what to bring?”
Alice tapped her lips with her index finger as she glanced over the selection. Her vorpal sword was a no-brainer, and she grabbed it and slapped it onto the magnetic clasps on her back. The problem was, she didn’t know what she’d need, and she couldn’t carry it all. The vorpal sword was a must. It had gotten her out of too many scrapes that she almost considered it her good luck charm. She grabbed it from its magnetic fasteners and clamped it onto her backplate. “Now,” she murmured to herself. “What to do about firepower?”
She turned to the ship’s avatar. “Should I go for maximum penetration or ammo capacity? Long range precision or close-up death?”
“You’ll never see it far away, and your sniper rating isn’t very good.”
Alice scowled. “Everyone’s a critic. All right. I choose close-up death.” She selected a plasma bolter and slapped it on her hip, along with three extra magazines. Her hand wavered over the adjacent weapon, a lethal, snub-nosed fair known colloquially as a Ganymede stinger. She took this one as well and slapped it against her left hip. “A girl can’t be too careful.”
Alice turned and hesitated before grabbing one final weapon off the rack, her trusty MP9 pulse rifle. She slung it over her shoulder and thumbed the priming stud. The plastic death machine hummed and grew warm in her hands.
“How do I look?” She turned slowly in a circle for the avatar’s benefit, a huge grin on her face.
“How do you look?” said the artificial intelligence. “Why should that matter?”
“Oh, you’re no fun.” Alice took an elastic band and bunched her long blond hair into a ponytail. “Now I’m ready.”
She went to the ship’s starboard side, passing right through the avatar of the ship’s consciousness, and palmed a button. The wall melted open and extruded a crude ramp. “Wish me luck.”
“Luck has nothing to do with it.”
“Don’t wait up.”
The ship absorbed its landing ramp as soon as Alice alighted onto the alien soil. The moon she had landed on was called Crispin’s Menagerie, a verdant world with thick, bluish green vegetation. Spindly treeforms leaned over her, covered in feathery leaf analogues. It was beautiful and quiet. The last place you’d expect to find a monster. But it was a monster that had been sent to find.
Alice didn’t know why her final test had to be the Jabberwock. At Wonderland, all the girls were taught how to kill, but kill people. To her mind, it wasn’t an appropriate final test, a test that some of her classmates wouldn’t survive.
