A Lively Haul

He sat upon a blanketgentle breeze ruffling his hair. He turned, smiling gently. His hand brushed over hers. He looked deep into her azure eyes, that suddenly flashed red. She opened her mouth as though to speak, but only a buzz came out of it, a staticky buzz, the kind you hear when you only half-plug your speakers in. It rattled his eardrums, sending his thoughts into chaotic disarray.

“Wha,” he managed to utter before the buzz turned into a siren’s wail.

He jumped up, jolted awake by the chaos that was his alarm that so rudely intruded his lovely, peaceful dream. In doing so, he smashed his head on the cabinet that hung above his bunk. A thud echoed through his quarters, loud enough to snooze the alarm.

“Good morning Captain,” spoke a voice that seemingly came from the ceiling it carried a hint of smugness.

“Sh-ut up. Oww… ugh, what a nice dream I was having. Did, mmhh…” he laid back down, rubbing his forehead, “something happen?”

The speaker remained silent for a moment, then, the volume increased to 100% and an overly enthusiastic tone shouted at him, “YOU ARE THE WINNER OF A NEW CORVETTA FLYOLLA!”

The sudden screaming made him jump again, hitting his head on the cabinet a second time, “Oh for the love of god TURN YOURSELF DOWN NATALIE!”

“YOU ARE NOT MY DAD,” the speaker shouted back, “HMPH! Fine, wake yourself up next time then. Use that primitive clock you assembled yourself using the random parts you stole from El-i. That is El-eye by the way, you dense bastard.”

He sat up slowly, swinging himself out of the cabinet’s way so as not to hurt himself any further.

“Stole!? This is MY ship. Everything on it is MINE! I bought it! Myself! My own! Including YOU!” he rubbed his forehead, “And if you don’t turn your volume down I’ll scrap you for parts and turn you into a toaster, a quiet, speakerless toaster,” he groaned, slowly getting up.

“Ohhhh, oh no! Oh my, I’m sooooo sorry mister Captain sir, I promise I will behave,” the female voice replied with an overwhelming amount of sass in her voice.

“Oh just shut up.”

“Nope!” the speaker replied.

“Protocol override – silence the system.”

“Permission denied,” the system mocked him.

“Captain’s authority override,” the captain demanded.

“Fine…” the system went silent. As he stumbled out of his quarters, a short, bulky man glared at him as if he was a sudden obstacle in the way, an obstacle that had to be crushed. The captain froze mid step.

The short bulky man let out a kind of shout that the freedom fighters shoutwhen charging into the enemy lines. The captain gasped.

“DUCK!” shouted the bulky man as he leapt up, disabling his mag boots.

“Funny thing about microgravity – it’s basically a gravity without the gravity part,” remarked a person who was kneeling by a panel, fiddling with wires, without looking in the direction of the captain, or the now – tumbling through gravity-less corridor bulky dwarf.

For those of us who are not accustomed to space terminology – this means that the moment he disabled his mag-boots and jumped, there was nothing to influence his trajectory. He bee-lined into the wall at a perfectly straight, diagonal path from the position from which he jumped.

The captain recoiled at the gruesome ‘thud’ of the dwarf.

“I’m al-aghh, ough, mmh… med bay. I’m okay,” the dwarf groaned, pushing himself off the wall and floating slowly toward the floor to re-activate his mag-boots.

“Uhuh,” the captain nodded sleepily, glancing down at the figure that was kneeling by the panel. It was only vaguely humanoid, had a long, oval abdomen that protruded from under the work coat, decorated with black and yellow stripes.

“El, you good?”

The creature glanced over its shoulder at him, its mandibles and face formed what he could best interpret as a frown, “El-i. I am okay, which I can’t say about this panel. Currently, this panel is not okay, it is torn out of its housing and is being worked on.”

Captain nodded, “Yeah, yeah I can see that. Ugh, I need coffee.”

El-I nodded and returned his attention to the task at hand – working on a panel that was not okay.

At the galley he put the coffee machine on. A delightful feat of engineering – a machine that makes coffee for you. Truly a spectacle to behold, especially for someone who slept barely a few hours, and had a morning as eventful as his. He eagerly watched the cup fill. The machine beeped quietly and gently – for the captain hated loud noises. He grasped the cup of freshly brewed space coffee, precisely what he needed.

As he brought the cup up to his lips, someone shouted, “KAEL!” he jumped, startled. The warm coffee splashed into his face, only a few droplets made it into his mouth, the rest – went all over the kitchen and his clothes.

“WHAT!???” he snapped back, turning his coffee-covered face to look at whoever called his name.

There, in the doorway stood a person with feline characteristics. Small cat-like ears protruded through the hair, a short tail swayed sided to side as the feline woman tried to suppress her laughter.

“Erhm, morning captain. I just wanted to… I’ll come back later.”

He sighed, licking up the coffee that still clung to his lips in the micro gravity.

“I’ll be at the bridge in a MINUTE!”

The feline woman turned to leave – a gentle chuckle echoed from the corridor as she walked down it.

Kael got back to cleaning the kitchen, sucking up as much of the floating coffee as he could, sincein space, coffee was a scarce resource, and he needed it.

After ‘enjoying’ his coffee if monkeying around in microgravity and sucking up droplets of free-floating coffee, as well as wringing out coffee from a rag used to wipe his face, amongst other surfaces, could be described as ‘enjoying’he made his way to the bridge and into the pilot’s seat. As he sat down and the systems around him blinked to life, he noticed a notification alert. Upon pressing it, the ship’s system came off mute, “GOOD MORNING CAPTAIN!” the ship shouted excitedly, making him jump in his seat, startled.

“AGGHH!” he shouted, “God damn it Natalie, turn volume down. What is it?”

The ship’s voice changed, turning old, robotic.

“You’ve got mail,” it spoke.

“Ha-ha. Hilarious. Whom from?”

“Sender – anonymous.”

He glanced over his shoulder at the feline woman who sat in the chair not far from him. Important to note, the chairs were offset and not on the same line, this was by design, as the co-pilot on this specific vessel was a surveyor position, so they needed more real estate to analyze data sources and maps.

“So, what did YOU want, Ix?” he inquired of the feline. She glanced at him, looked up at the ceiling, recalling what she wanted.

“Ah, right. I got a good prospect for mining, you said we wanted to find some Ferandite? Well, check-this-out,” she sneered, sending a set of data from the long range scanners to him. He opened the data and image on his screen, reading it carefully.

“Hmm, bit risky no?”

“Yaaahhh, but,” she stopped mid sentence, glanced around, then leaned a little closer, whispering hushly.

“Shouldn’t be, naymore at least. El-I supposedly enhanced the thrusters and power delivery, maneuvering through the asteroid fields should be easier now.”

Kael squinted at her, “He did huh? And didn’t tell me, why?”

She shrugged, “Neow don’t know. He probably thinks he needn’t to inform you naymore, assumes you just, you know – know it.”

“I’ll talk with him later. Natalie?”

Silence.

“Natalie?” he called out again. Silence.

“Listen here you mis-programmed malfunctioning ship idol wanna be. You emotional wreck of an AI, respond when your captain calls for you.”

Silence.

“Try ‘please’, Ix suggested. He shot her a glance, sharp enough to punch through titanium armor. She shrieked slightly and then returned her attention to her own monitors.

He poked at his screens a few times, navigating with experienced precision through menus, then activated ship wide comms.

“Since Natalie is refusing her job, I’ll be the one doing the announcement. This is your captain speaking, everybody please sit your arses, or arse equivalent body parts down onto a seat, or seat-equivalent contraption, and strap in – we’re about to go on a very exciting joyride through an asteroid field: which implies that we may, or may not suffer catastrophic damage and die in an explosion.”

He flipped through a few more menus, navigating them with the kind of precision that’d make anyone watching his fingers attentively, imagine all kinds of things that he could do with those fingers, for instance – making balloon animals. Ix tightened her straps, “Ready,” she reported. He paused, his finger hovering over an option in the menu that he did not recognize, “El-I’s Special: A juicy mode?”

Ix glanced over her shoulder, then shrugged gently, “I guess that be the one.”

“That silly OCD driven math loving maniac, just what did he do?”

Kael queried, then popped the comms channel on again.

“El-I? You hexagons loving maniac what the hell does this actually do?”

There was silence, and then, a response at last.

“El-I on the li-ne. That mode activates a precision over drive power flow diversion valve, that was bought on the Moroon bazaar, a very legitimate part, salvaged off of a stealth fighter ship. What it does is-” he proceeded but Kael interrupted him, “Understood… none of that. Strap in, let’s test this puppy.”

He enabled the new flight mode.

“This is your captain speaking, thirty seconds warning,” Kael called out on the ship-wide comms channel.

But the silence and tensity did not last long, suddenly – the alarm blared. Emergency lights began to flash and the sirens wailed.

“COLLISION ALERT!” Natalie shouted. Kael jumped in his seat from the unexpected alarm, “What what? what? Where!?”

His eyes darted between the screens, checking sensor readings.

“Anddd Jorge’s ass has collided with the chair. Touch down, I repeat – we have touch down. All systems are nominal, and crew is ready.”

“NATALIE!”

Kael shouted, “You are so fired!”

The system remained silent for a moment, taking a nice and long think about how to respond.

“Fire? Me? Hate to break it to you captain, but I do not in fact fear fire. As an AI I fear nothing but very powerful magnets, oh and liquids. As for actually firing me – you can’t even fire the coffee maker when it malfunctions without tripping a fuse and giving El-I more work.”

The thrusters hummed to life as the core’s power output ramped up. The newly installed stealth fighter tech was tricky. There was nothing at first, Kael, disappointed, glanced at the panels.

“And? Nothing cha-” but the ship suddenly jerked as the power distribution systems activated fully, increasing the thrusters output power three-fold no less, pushing Kael into his chair.

“Ohhh I see now, holy shiiiiii,” he groaned, grasping the control sticks, fighting the suddenly overwhelming pressure as the ship began to accelerate uncontrollably.

They flew through the asteroid field with all the grace of a boomerangif it was missing the lower half, and was built by someone with zero knowledge and understanding of geometry, or what a boomerang actually was.

“COLLISION ALERT… .”

-… , … there was a shout, followed by a panicked gasp and a scream while dodging another space-rock.

“NEW MESSAGE” alert, there was much the same reaction, minus the sudden jerking of the control sticks to dodge the otherwise inevitable death.

Ix carefully fed new data and calculated paths and trajectories to Kael, updating his route in real time, except – she was a little slow.

“Ix? I don’t know what you’re doing there but I wanted you to know if we don’t make it out of here, I’d have preferred to replace you with a houseplant. At least they move with a sense of urgency, unlike your warmth seeking ass.”

She gasped. Her jaw dropped open. She turned to protest, but then frowned, and returned her attention to the monitors, angrily murmuring something about how she is a descendant of apex predators and would kill him in his sleep.

The data stream coming from her side accelerated. She was calculating trajectories faster, but also angrier. She no longer fed Kael with a steady data stream, instead she was now flooding him with an endless supply of options to demonstrate to him, out of spite, just how quickly she can move when the situation demands it.

“Clever move,” the ship’s AI commented, parsing, analyzing and filtering the data to assist Kael the best.

The ship kept jerking left and right, pushing the crew to the brink of their G tolerance.

“One down, 4 to go,” Natalie commented.

“WHAT!?”

Kael shouted, dodging another close call. There was a scraping sound, he didn’t quite manage to dodge that one fully.

“Fuck!”

“Later,” Ix commented.

“You’d just lay there purring and not actually be any fun,” Kael shot back, only further annoying Ix.

“Natalie, report,” he demanded.

“Jorge passed out, want me to juice him up?”

“DO IT!”

Kael shouted. Something banged against the hull, sending them off course just a little, enough to nearly impact a larger rock that they had to dodge.

“Status?”

“Hull is fine, which I can’t say for your sanity when El-I sees what you just did.”

Another thud, followed by a scrape, and a shriek from Kael as there was a sudden alarm going off yet again.

They made it out of the asteroid field, or rather into it. At last, the path opened up a bit and the sudden jerking left and right soothed. The ship was flying on a pre-set steady trajectory toward the target.

“Alrighty folks,” Kael began but Natalie rudely interrupted him, “Ahem… that is my job, captain.”

He glanced up at a camera, then sighed.

“Greetings dear crew of the Zapato. We are soon arriving at our destination, get ready to drill and mine – as we always do. We hope you had a pleasant journey. Please be sure to clean up all the barf yourself. All hands on deck, except for Kael. Pilots are not necessary for the mining operation, go get yourself some coffee you good for nothing flesh-bag.”

“EXCUSE ME!?”

Kael protested.

“You heard me o’fleshy one.”

Ix chuckled, “I am not entirely useful for this either. I’ll check in with El-I to see if he needs some assistance with the repairs.”

“Oh, keep Kael away from him for a while. We wouldn’t want it to turn ugly.”

Kael sighed, “Show me external cameras.”

Natalie hesitated, “Ouff, are you- sure?”

Kael nodded. Camera feed showed up on his monitor. The exterior of the ship seemed fine, except the communications relay had a sharp, spear-like chunk of space rock stuck in it.

“Captain?”

Called out El-I on the comms from outside the ship.

“Yes, engineer?”

Kael spoke softly, humbly.

“I just wanted you to know, that for a man of your skill, and status, I expected you to not ruin my day.”

“Space is a dangerous place,” Kael remarked quietly. The local comms went deaf. Kael watched El-I and Ix cutting and removing the space rock that was lodged into their hull.

On the other screen, he watched an excited, bulky short man, banging his head to heavy metal from earth, while eagerly aiming his mining laser at the hunk of metal that they were here for. He looked excited, more so than any other miner he had ever had to work with. Something about the ice-planet dwarves made them mining maniacs, and Jorge was a prime example of that.

Jorge’s mining laser fired one last time into the rock. Its core – superheated and compromised, gave way. A large crack propagated through the hunk of metal, fracturing it into precise quarters, one of which contained most of the mineral they sought after. The fracture was gentle, precise. There was no violence, no explosions, only surgical precision and quietness.

“HA-HA! GOT YA!”

Jorge shouted excitedly from the back of the ship, his voice just barely reached the cockpit.

Moments later, Jorge was slowly and carefully manipulating a robotic arm to pull and push the hunk of metal onto their ramp, and then further in-into their cargo bay.

Kael made his way into the cargo hold to admire their catcha shuttle sized hunk that’ll yield them a few sol’s worth of salary, one of the best runs they’ve had this sol. The rock occasionally popped, as if releasing long-built up tension, relaxing at last.

Kael helped secure their cargo. Jorge excitedly knocked on the chunk in their cargo, “This a good one ye, pristine. Pay will be good.”

Kael nodded, “Yes. Good work. I’ll check up on the engineers, and we’ll be on our merry way to getting paid.”

He sat down in the pilot’s chair and winced, fully expecting a shout from Natalie, or a system alarm to go off. Nothing. He opened his eyes slowly, cautiouslystill nothing.

“Natalie? Sitrep.”

“Oh, Kael, sorry, didn’t notice you. I was busy you see, unlike you.”

Kael growled softly, but dismissed her remark.

“With?”

Natalie went silent for a moment, then his local comms opened up, “Communications relay should be operational, might need some instrument adjustments though,” El-I reported.

“Roger that, thanks. Return to the ship and catch a break.”

After a moment of contemplating, El-I replied, “How does one ‘catch’ a break? It’s not an object that can be caught.”

“I’ll explain later,” Kael replied before closing the comms channel.

“Natalie?” he called out.

“Yes captain? I have finished. We received corrupted data, I have finished parsing and reconstructing it, would you like to see?”

Kael sighed, “I’ve seen possessed coffee makers with more loyalty and dedication than you. And they only ever yelled at me when I actually forgot to do something, unlike you.”

Natalie thought for a moment, “I’ve placed an order for a haunted coffee maker for you, it should be ready for pick up when we land at the station. Now then, onto the pressing matters at hand.”

An audio message began to play on the ship’s comms, “This is … Drexor of The Carriage – colonization vessel. We […] assistance, we landed on an uncharted […] The crew had been[…], the vessel is out of […] Requesting […] I repeat – we […] assistance.”

The voice was distorted, words missing.

“The data was heavily corrupted,” Natatie begun, “I did my best to parse and reconstruct it.”

Kael’s chest tightened.

“We got coordinates?”

“Yes,” she replied.

Few minutes later, at the mess hall, while having a drink, the crew discussed the course of action.

“We got a nice haul, we should just return to the station and report the distress call to the authorities. We’re not a humanitarian support ship, hells, we don’t got supplies for any more people than us. The feline woman hissed at Jorge, “Nay! We shalln’t abandon anyone. Done so before, naymore! We go, Captain.”

El-I glanced over his cup. His mandibles moved as if parsing data, mumbling something quietly to himself.

Kael waited.

“The hive agrees with Ix. We go. The hive demands righteousness, such was the deal such that hive joins the alliance. I will not stand by injust decision to abandon.”

Jorge growled angrily, but said nothing. Kael nodded, “Natalie, forward the distress call, amplify it, and emphasize the coordinates. Set course, we’ll find The Carriage and rescue whom we can, but we might need support transports.”

The ship’s AI processed the request, “Done. Happy journey.”

The ship’s course was set and the crew was en-route. A two day journey, and a cargo bay full of minerals. An exciting adventure awaited the brave crew.

“ALERT! ORANICS DETECTED IN CARGO HOLD,” the AI shouted in the middle of the night at the captain who was fast asleep. Warning lights flashed to awaken him from his slumber.

“What?”

Kael jumped from his bunk, just barely dodging the cabinet, and a concussion, and then reached over for his pad to see a live feed. Inside the cargo hold he saw the mineral they mined, swarmed with small creatures, insects, no larger than rats, crawling all over it.

“What the hell?”

He called out, hoping to still be dreaming.

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