Space Trucking

I am wrestling with what to post here. I have lots of stuff but, to be fair, it is older stuff and not quite as polished as I’d like to believe I’ve become. So I could just post it anyway, warts and all, and let you examine it and take it apart and see all the flaws.

Or I could, in time honored tradition, gnaw at the story bones and attempt remediation.

Maybe I’ll just mix things up.

The Haul

Captain Anataxx watched the main viewscreen at the front of the bridge. The bumper on the transmission was a pirate flag. Skull and crossed bones, the whole bit.

"Sir, they've matched our course. It's a Terran ship," said the first mate from his console in front of the captain's chair with a quavering voice. The first mate had turned mauve.

Of course. Had to be humans. What else can go wrong? thought Captain Anataxx, rubbing his small tentacle over his eye as he sat in the command chair.

"Steady as she goes, Mister Strcken. Open a line to them."

"Aye aye, sir."

How to explain this? The captain clacked his beak. He remained a calm yellow-green.

A visage of a scarred human appeared on the viewscreen in the front. Anataxx was fairly certain it was a male. The owner of the face had a prosthetic eye, a cheap one that didn't match the other one. It was gun metal gray with a red LED in it. The alignment seemed pointed slightly off camera. Not that the other eye was much better. It was brown with lots of little red lines in the white part. A scruffy beard, black and shiny, festooned his weak chin. It looked like he had dipped it in the mucus pools back home. A tricorner hat was stuck to the top of an unruly mop of oily curls.

Anataxx had seen humans before. He didn't recall them having that sheen on those parts. Must be some sort of beauty aid. Humans liked to play dress up. A mechanical something perched on the human's shoulder, the green faded and showing metal in patches. It had a beak similar to his on a small round head. The main body was dented here and there. There were wings on it? Anataxx wasn't too clear on that.

The captain waved a large tentacle in greeting at the man.

"Avast, we'll be boarding yer vessel and relieving ye of yer valuables. And don't be trying t'lie. Polly here can tell, even with your kind, ya sorry excuse fer a squid," said the man with an exaggerated accent.

Anataxx tried to stifle a guffaw and momentarily turned green. You didn't need a fancy device on your shoulder to recognize a reaction like that. Guffaws were pretty universally recognized across species. He wasn't successful. The ostensible pirate noticed.

"What be ya laughing at?"

"Sir, you picked the wrong ship. We're a bulk freighter. We got inserted into this orbit and nothing but arresting coils are going to stop us."

"We knows ya got valuable cargo."

The captain couldn't hold it back. He let out a loud laugh. It sounded like hiccups. "Valuable? Only to the people we're taking it to. They live on a cold planet."

"Eh?"

"Carbon. We're hauling half a million tons of carbon to them."

"Carbon?"

"I forget what you call it. It's the stuff you dig up out of the ground. Huge seams of it."

"What be you doing that fer?"

"To burn and release greenhouse gases. To warm the planet up."

"That'll take years!" The pirate accent was gone.

Nodding, the captain said, "Yup." He held a shiny, dark eight-sided lump almost the size of the pirate's shoulder companion in a tentacle for the viewer to pickup. "You're welcome to all the pieces you want. I don't think they would notice your tiny ship's hold missing from the mass. Though you never know."

The pirate captain looked off screen. Another voice was shouting at him. "We scanned them. It's just a bunch of rocks. Looks like mostly carbon."

"Telling the truth, telling the truth, awk," the ersatz parrot squawked.

A mad expression transformed the face on the viewscreen. "I ought to hijack your dumb freighter."

The captain smirked and shook his whole body, the motion carrying through his tentacles. "You don't have enough delta vee to alter our vector. Besides, hijacking rocks would be like hatching a fernock egg instead of your own. 'You would never live it down', I think is the phrase?"

Snarling, the pirate dropped the connection. The pirate flag reappeared for a moment before dissolving into digital snow.

"Sir, they fired up their main engine and are moving off."

"See, First Mate Strcken, another problem solved without too much hassle. Humans can be a reasonable lot."

He put the rough diamond down on the console next to him.