Across the Starways: A Space Odyssey: Adventures of Lady Scarra

By Margaret Alice Hamby

Our fearsome adventure loving heroine sets out to find home and solve a mystery illness in the process of finding and reconnecting with her family. Then events take a turn and she winds up in space on another adventure and you get to come with for all that happens.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Archway Publishing
• Release date: Jun 18, 2025
• ISBN: 9781665778213

Margaret Alice Hamby

The author is a college educated writer who loves animals and words. Follow her into a magical world of space adventure and tortured love. She has written poetry books in her spare time.

Book preview

1

THE BEGINNING

L ady Scarra paused as she saw her life and all its many possible iterations flash before her eyes. Her resolution hardened. She would make her way home finally, finishing her massive space odyssey after these many long years.

She always had an ear out for the latest gossip from all levels, the highest to the lowest order. Now, she had heard through the drift, that a Nagainchi was in town. A very rare spotting for locals. They were not part of the Alliance, and locals were not quite sure where they came from.

In a previous revelation, a meditation that reached back past her stolen memories, Lady Scarra realized that her birth name had been Flyla Reigna. She was a member of a species called the Lilliam. She was a long way from home, light years in fact. She had been wandering around lost for decades. Always looking for her original home since her adoptive mother’s death. Always on the move, never staying in any one place for too long.

Now the stars aligned. She could see a way home, a light at the end of her very dark tunnel. She waited until the battleship docked and then she waited some more. Her timing had to be perfect. Wait until everyone else was off the ship and all the guards were on stand down for two days of leave. Then she could make her break. It seemed like asking a small child to wait a small eternity. She pulsed with anticipation. In the dark of the night, she parted company with the battleship and this time would be for good, maybe.

She made her way with her bag to the seedy underbelly of the capital city. It was in with this dangerous crowd of rejects, derelicts, and defectives that she found her mark. A Grey alien with an ugly look on his gawky face. She hated the sight of him as it brought back too many bad memories. She drew a heavy breath of courage and went forward into the fray, guarded against pickpockets, pokes, thieves, and cut-throats she made her way to the table with this unlucky fellow. He soon found a weapon at his back.

Come with me if you want to live. She said pretty positive that she would have to kill him to prove she was serious to his shipmates.

He stood, put his hands up, and started walking. He was expecting someone to start a fight and that to save him. He forgot his blaster in his other pocket today and was already half-drunk.

They carried on outside and she said, Where is your ship?

He laughed, You are too late, I just lost it in a bad bet.

Flyla was not amused. Which Ship?! She repeated in agitation.

He stumbled to and fro for half an hour boiling her blood over and over again, but she kept her patience and nerves. Then he fell on top of the hood of a craft, somewhat dented and in need of some gentle love and tender care to love it back to life. He started laughing.

Here it is. I don’t know why. What you think you gonna do? Steal it? You can’t fly it. He fell down laughing.

Thank you. She said and shot him once eliminating him. Just watch me try.

It was a circular craft with a bio-lock. So, she took his corpse and unlocked the ship. Then left him behind and hitched a ride to the other side of the star ocean. It required a telepath to drive. She was happy to oblige. Set destination and push button. Then the big reveal. Familiar stars greeted her eyes.

She was floating above her home world. Lilly. There was a star base, or space station floating above the planet along with three moons. She gingerly approached the star base. The problem was that she could not find any place to land the ship. She began to hear people over the radio in the craft. Except that she could not understand what they were saying. The conversations she could understand were directed at the dead man. Murder made her sad, but it was a cruel world.

She decided that she had no choice but to go planet-side. She had no idea how much fuel this craft had left powering it. She went down to the planet’s surface and found the first metropolitan area covered in people and landed on a street, stopping traffic for terrestrial vehicles. She waited in the ship until a crowd began to gather. Then she saw people in uniforms approaching. She got out of the small craft with her travel bag and approached them back. She dropped her bag and started putting her hands up when she was met with the muzzles of weapons.

It occurred to her what she looked like, with her black coat covering most of her face. So, she dropped her bag and slowly unhooked her coat. Revealing long blonde hair and big blue eyes, she pointed to her hand with the other hand and said Flyla Reigna she just kept repeating her name and motioning to her hand. A volunteer emerged from the uniforms and approached her. He pulled out a device and motioned to her to give him her hand. She took off her long black gloves off both arms. This revealed a crystal in the middle of her left hand. There were gasps in the crowd. The man scanned her right hand first and found no chip, so he scanned her left hand and the scanner said that there was a chip there. It was just having problems reading it. In Lillia Land all Lillia were microchipped with ID chips in their hand as children. He shouted something back to his group. She did not understand a word of it. He looked at her and the pollen in the air had her nose running down her face. He kept repeating the word Hospital. And she just nodded and followed him with her stuff.

He led her to a vehicle, and she got in after him. She had no idea what she was doing so she just did what he did. Playing mimic had served her well for most of her life. What she could remember of her childhood that is. It was a short car ride to the hospital in the busy downtown area with tall buildings all around. He tried again to scan her hand over and over. Then one time there was a loud *Beep* and he snatched her hand and wouldn’t let go of it. He put a handcuff on her wrist and on his wrist, so they were attached quasi permanently. This was fine with Lady Scarra or Flyla Reigna. She spent the entire time fixated on the device scanner and the man and missed the ride through the just outside the window. She sighed and felt slightly at ease, maybe she could stop and take a breath finally. There was still so much work to be done but for now at least maybe she ought to just take stock and a few deep breaths she thought to herself as the vehicle rolled to a halt. The man in the uniform escorted her out and into the building he called a hospital. If she could have read the language, she would have been able to read the signs as they went to the sixth floor. The psych ward.

They needed to pass by three security guards just to enter the floor. She did not know why the floor was so secure, but it put her at ease. Maybe they would take her seriously here. She had gotten sick as a child on Alora, which is where her adopted mother also fell ill and died. Flyla was already ill with another childhood disease at the time, got even more sick and her body basically shut down and restarted itself. She was not a computer with programming, but it was the easiest way she could think to explain what transpired in her body. The space plague was dreaded by all life forms in all corners of the known universe except it would seem for here, her home sweet home. The walking death or the zombie disease had brought low entire civilizations. Yet, here, it was just a fantasy. For now. Perhaps, at the Hospital the people would take her seriously when she tried to warn them about it and prevent danger by giving them the antidote. She did not know everything about the disease, but she kept running into it and went from fear and survival to studying it.

It was a blood-borne disease. She couldn’t be sure but from the inside out it seemed to behave like a parasite. She wished these people would speak the same language as she did. That was the first barrier to overcome. Language. She couldn’t help them if she couldn’t understand them.

Then she had so many ideas for inventions and technologies. She needed to be in touch with her sister, Aurora to develop those. Hurry up and wait. That was how she felt about that.

This hospital building was white and sterile. Considering that Flyla had no immune system, she liked the good vibes she was getting here. She had no idea it was the Psych ward. She was escorted to a room with a bed and a wall of windows and an attached bathroom. There she was given a set of hospital garb to wear and a small toiletries caddy with some towels. She set her travel bag down and the security guard knelt and started sorting through it for contraband. He found only clothes, underpinnings and socks, and some squares of fabric covered in snot that she had used as tissues.

The staff wanted Flyla to change her clothes and she wanted to use the bathroom. How to communicate this? She started crossing her legs and dancing around back and forth. The nurses asked her, Bathroom?

She wasn’t sure what the right answer was, but she nodded hopefully. They handed her a urine cup and showed her to the bathroom. There, after what felt like five minutes of gesturing, Flyla arrived at the conclusion that she was supposed to pee in the cup. The nurse did not close the door and leave the bathroom. They waited in there to keep an eye on her in case she needed help with anything and for security reasons. Flyla did not mind, privacy was a luxury you had to steal in her experience. The cup was messy, so she tried to clean it up, but the nurse took it from her regardless. Then she tried to wash her hands and found that there was no soap, something else she was all too familiar with running into, so she went to get some from her bag. The nurse handed her some from the toiletries caddy. She washed her hands and then returned to the bedroom portion of the room. There the security guard was going through her coat and baffled by what they had discovered. No, no, no, Flyla objected in every language she knew, which was about 20 at last count. The security guard understood only the first three no’s. She took the coat and made sure that all the objects were securely in their pockets. In her coat of many pockets, everything had its place proper. She did not mean to argue with the nice people but the coat contained several dangerous weapons that she did not want them to hurt themselves on or to accidentally hurt others with by mistake.

He looked at her and cautiously set the coat down. In a language Flyla still did not understand, he said, Why don’t we save this portion for later.

She let out a deeply held breath and sighed but then tensed up again when she realized that they wanted to draw bloodwork. She began objecting. She tried motioning to the nurses to put on gloves, and they did, but they were short gloves. Then she tried to get them to put on masks. When one nurse, a black lady with long orange braids, realized what Flyla wanted she grabbed the second shorter nurse with short brown hair, and they left the room for a few minutes. Flyla did not do anything, she just stood there waiting for their eventual return. They did return, covered from head to toe in protective gear. This put Flyla at great ease. They could read this ease on her face. She sat down on the bed and extended her arms to them. The nurses took extra care in preparing the needles and vials, then when they stuck her, they jumped back in alarm. Her naturally blue/purple blood was a bright orange color. She looked at the alarm on their faces and tried to tell them, Yes, and it glows in the dark too.

They did not understand what she said, they would soon enough discover it’s bioluminescence.

She looked at them and tried to warn them, Please, be careful. It’s contagious.

They seemed puzzled. They understood the word please but nothing else. She sighed.

They took a few vials of blood and left. She lay on the bed resting then it occurred to her that she had a slight headache. So, she got out of bed and went over to her coat and grabbed two things, a wire device that locked into her left hand and worked in tandem with the crystal and the wrapping on her brain to restore or regenerate her brain every night as she slept, and a long thin metal bottle that she liked to always keep full of water. She let people think that it was alcohol she was drinking. It was her little secret.

She was sad and dismayed to find that the bottle was empty. She looked at the security guard and tried to ask for a drink of something. He sat there confused in the chair just staring at her with a glazed-over look on his face. Then when she opened the container and turned it upside down and started shaking it, he realized that it was empty, and she wanted more. He stood and took the container from her hands, firmly. He walked to the nurse’s station in the middle of the hallway and then gave the container to the nurses who filled it with ice water. He came back and handed it to Flyla who was very grateful and thanked him in several languages. He did not understand so she just hugged him.

NO. The man said in a clear, firm tone. So Flyla let go and stepped back giving him personal space. She smiled at him and drank her water. Then she remembered her headache. She walked over to the bed and lay down on it, setting the water on the night table beside the bed. She had auditory and visual hallucinations as per surviving the Walking Death four times, so she did think that she heard somebody say something but wasn’t sure. Then the man repeated his question, What are you doing?

She did not understand what he was asking, but Flyla tried to answer him and explain to the man about the device in her hand. She motioned to it and then showed the man how it locked into her hand and motioned to her skull, both where she had sustained the head injury and where she had the chains on the top of her head close to her skull. The man did not understand her but came over and began to inspect the device in her hand, her left hand, the crystal in the middle of the hand, and then she guided his hand to her head. He thought she had an itchy scalp or lice. Then it happened, his nail felt the tiny, thin, gold chain. He began searching the top of her head for the chain until he understood that it was in a crosshatch pattern.

About this time, one of the nurses came back into the room, this time bringing upper management in tow. The man with them introduced himself to Flyla, but she just shook her head, Sorry, I don’t comprehend.

The man said a lot of things to Flyla. He was talking about her blood and some abnormalities that they had found. He was trying to reassure her not to be scared but that for safety reasons she would not be allowed out of this room for the foreseeable future. (They had caught on to the fact that she had no immune system.)

Flyla wanted to try to help them out with the antidote, but she needed to learn the language first. She wasn’t sure if the entire hospital was put on lockdown or just her floor, but sanitation was no joke for sure. The security guard told the man about the chain on her head and the device and the crystal in her hand and her motioning that it all somehow went together.

More testing. They got Flyla to change into the garb that they had provided to her. She insisted on carrying around a lanyard with about eight different manner of communication devices, or communicators, or coms. They were all dead with radio silence on this side of the universe. The only intelligent lifeforms in this solar system were the Lillia and the nearest neighbors, the Greys, from whom she had borrowed a ship home.

They fussed over how to get a proper brain scan and a proper hand scan. They wanted a full body scan too. They checked her heart and lungs, eyes and ears. They tested her reflexes. They tested everything. It was nearly breakfast time the next morning when they had finished. Flyla had taken her over the knee boots off and taken off the socks she was wearing and put on the socks that they provided which were small with grippy things on the bottom. She liked walking around in just socks.

There was a board in her room and when she got to it after all the testing, the nurse there was writing on the board with a marker. Flyla asked if she could borrow the marker. The woman did not see the harm. Flyla drew a pill with a plus in the middle of it. Then she started pointing at it and saying every word for cure she could think of at the moment. The woman said, Oh, I know, this is like Charades, isn’t it?

Charades? Flyla hesitated to mimic the woman.

Then the woman started to try to guess the picture that Flyla had drawn. Flyla had gotten distracted and almost missed the woman say the word, Antidote. Now, she wasn’t sure why except reflexes and instinct, but she nodded and cried, YES!

I don’t have any antidote. Said the nurse, shaking her head.

ME. Flyla threw her hands up and smiled at the nurse then pointed to herself, Antidote.

The poor nurse did not understand. They parted ways exasperated by the conversation.

She sat on the bed and sighed, then as she was about lie down once more a nurse came back in, Sorry, Miss, but we cannot leave the jewelry. We need to take it and put in this container and that will be labeled and put into a vault for safe keeping.

Flyla shook her head, I don’t understand.

After some charades they came to an understanding, and Flyla did not want to comply with the request. Some jewelry she couldn’t remove. How was she supposed to communicate this to them?

Just then another nurse ducked their head into the room. We need you, quickly.

The nurse left and soon after Flyla heard loud banging and screaming coming from down the hall. A lot of banging. It was unnerving. Another patient had started banging their head against the walls and trying to climb the wall and punch their way through one of the walls. Flyla was half glad she was unable to leave her room. She heard screaming and wailing for the next thirty minutes. She lay in bed with her device attached to her hand and rested as best as she could.

Resting was interrupted again. This time the nurse came bearing gifts. Food. Flyla was ravenous and thirst worn. She devoured the scrambled eggs and bacon with a side of fresh fruit and orange juice. She did not know the name of the orange drink, but it was sweet and fruity, she loved it.

The nurse never came back for the jewelry. Flyla kept expecting her to though.

Seconds passed into minutes. Flyla was bored. Then one of the nurses brought in some paper and colored pencils. You can color and do some puzzles to pass the time, deary. She said with a smile.

Minutes became hours until meal change brought a needed change of activity. She was at a loss, what else was there to do but work out and meditate, thank goodness for those activities. As the days dragged on for the next two weeks. She made little progress with the language, despite her best efforts, she had only picked up a few words here and there and some odd phrases. Not what she needed to know though. The food was good though, better than she’d had in a long time. As far as she was concerned, she was on vacation right now. The blisters covering her feet had had time to heal. There was always that sunny ray of sunshine to chew on.

Then one day, the nurse came in and said, You have a visitor.

Flyla wished that she knew what that meant. She was led out to one of the main rooms where she could potentially interact with other patients. There at a table, sitting in a chair was her father. She screamed when she saw him, never mind that she was now a grown woman in her thirties. The last time that she had seen him she had been ten years old. She cried and hugged him tightly.

Not so fast, came a voice over the line. It was her little sister Aurora on a video call. She continued, Sure you may look the part and even be about the right age but that doesn’t mean you are not an imposter.

She got so excited that she got ahead of herself and started trying to tell her sister about all the inventions that she wanted to make with Aurora.

Calm down, Calm down. Said the nurse as she was getting too loud and carried away with herself.

Flyla sat down quietly and just smiled at her father. I have missed you, daddy.

They tried to talk back and forth for a good forty minutes of frustration. Flyla was determined not to give up on the conversation. Her sister and father had been subjected to years of wondering what had happened to her in addition they offered reward money to anyone who found her and that led to everything from charred remains being discovered at a crash site to an endless parade of Flyla wannabe actresses and their pimps. Apparently, her mother’s heart was too broken to hold out hope that this strangest of cases was possibly the real daughter they so longed to have back again.

Flyla, her father, and sister parted, not having accomplished much. He smiled at her and handed her a bright pink children’s tablet preloaded with games for learning. The nurses tried to take it from her saying, She can’t have technology devices on this floor, sir.

Bite me. And then Flyla growled at the nurse.

I’ll just take it from you while you are sleeping then, she said with a smile knowing full well Flyla did not understand.

2

TURNING POINT

S he had a com that might still work because it worked off telepathic energy. It occurred to Flyla that they might still hear messages even with all this distance between them. But should she dare to try it? She decided to meditate on the problem.

In her meditation, Flyla saw her adopted sister, Delia, who was Crown Prince Kovos’ First Enforcer on the flagship science vessel on which he played captain. She watched and listened to many possible outcomes of initiating contact. Delia had dark eyes and black hair and wore two bandanas one on her head and one on her face to cover a scar/open wound that had been inflicted by the Banshee for the sin of dreaming, something not common to her species. Only the poor seemed to experience dreams in her species, and she was from the poorest slum. Her father was a well-respected military man who moved to the slums to make a difference and started policing the ward. He was ultimately murdered for his efforts but not before making a few hostages feel a little safer sleeping at night and a few bandits and gang leaders shiver with fear for the first time in their short lives. He ran a grocery store with Delia and her mother until it was blown up. The Banshee did not understand dreaming and mistook Delia for having feelings for Kovos and decided to test her in a dream like state. She failed the test. The Banshee swiped her face and left an open wound on the side of her mouth. She had to hide it because if she was discovered, she would be known as an untouchable and confined to the slums and poverty for the rest of her life. She had to compensate by sneaking around to eat and by eating only protein shakes through a straw. The only person that knew about her condition was Flyla and the Banshee that struck her.

Flyla was still on the fence, so she meditated about a meeting with her father and sister and a little boy named JuJu, her meditations had informed her this little boy was her nephew, and a brief contact with her brother-in-law. It was very helpful. JuJu in his wisdom told her to hurry up and wait. Give it time. Her solutions will come with time.

Then she awoke and felt at peace and restored. Giving something time was a hard ask but she would do her best. She buried her face in the new device she had been given. She was determined to learn the language. The nurse did not confiscate the device. In fact, she charged it for Flyla at the nurse’s station over the next couple of weeks. Meanwhile Flyla sat in her room learning as much as she could. In one of her meditations, it came almost as a warning that she might be one of the most intelligent minds of her species, she had a hunch that her little sister was close on her heels.

She still did not remember growing up with two brothers and two sisters, but the meditations had revealed them to her, she trusted in her meditations. She had no idea that currently the family had drifted apart owing in no small part to the rifts created by her kidnapping fiasco and the fallout afterwards. She only saw the small, tight-knit family unit that possibility said could be.

The next few days were ones of enormous growth. The auditory hallucinations were daunting, but she had not quite figured out how to say she had them. Then after a week and a half there was a meeting with a shrink doctor and in it Flyla pointed to her ears and said, Voices. And pointed to her eyes and said, Monsters.

One of the two doctors in the room asked her, Do you hear voices? Do you hear them now? Do you see monsters all the time, do you see them now?

She nodded. She was not currently seeing any monsters but did not know how to communicate their occurrence yet. The voices had gotten bad. The furniture was talking.

They, the two doctors, exchanged glances and then notes. Then they made adjustments to her medications.

She was being given medications for bone density and vitamin D and several immune boosters. Now she was also receiving anti-psychotics.

They did agree that her speaking a validly recognized language was big progress in the right direction towards going home.

She started having dreams about seeing her favorite captain and first officer from a battleship somewhere over the stars. They were taking her by the hand and trying to lead her somewhere. Each time she would get only part way and turn around claiming that she had forgotten something. Then she saw a dream where they led her into a room and sat down with her on the floor. She also had a pretty colorful dream about some bounty hunters who tried to lead her down the same hallway, inviting her to a birthday party for someone special. Then she thought she woke up and they were in her room, a man with brown hair and a living tree and a female of a sketchy nature and they tried to parallel universe pull her into somewhere else. She resisted their efforts. Then she woke up for real. The nurses came in to check on her and tucked her in again. Then she fell asleep and saw the first officer she had a crush on again. She told him about the bounty hunters, and he said that he would take care of them. All she had to do was follow him and trust him for a little while. She smiled warmly. He was usually so grumpy. A regular grumplestiltskin who swallowed a grandaddy snapping turtle and had selective constipation, so he refused to shit it out. A very grumpy man indeed. She smiled because he was being so charming and warm towards her, so she knew it was all just a dream…but no wait, just as she realized it