Hello! If you are unaware, I am releasing a new edition of my book 'Get a Job, Todd,' free here on my blog every week. This here is parts two and three of the first chapter of the book. So, if you have not read the two posts that encompassed the Prologue and the prior post that opened chapter one, please do so, or else you may be very well confused. This website is confusing and like many things could likely be fixed in my favor if the time was spent, but to be honest I'd rather just post the story and let the strange nature of it's posting be part of the charm.
A whine and squeal erupted with the opening of the airlock doors. Steel boots clanged steadily up a ladder, dropping dust back onto the surface of the planet, now dark without the blue light.
Dim shadows cast from a hulking metal transport ship obscured the sparse sunlight which traveled a whole fifty-three minutes to grace the rock with a small bit of heat. That sun sat sleepily on the horizon now, and soon this side of the planet would undergo its nightly freeze without its distant warmth. Fangs of frost already began to grow from the shadowed ground.
Rays of the distant, red sunlight made a final dance on the black visor of the visitor before he heaved himself into his vessel, a large black pod perched upon one shoulder.
The ship rang like a bell when Todd's cryogenics pod was dropped onto the metal surface of the airlock chamber, which was soon accompanied by the familiar clang of the outer airlock door shutting. Recompression began.
Another whine briefly sounded as the ship’s airlocks smoothly activated, quickly filling the room with breathable air. Barometric pressure increased to the same atmospheric pressure as the rest of the ship, and the seal on the spaceman’s helmet broke automatically.
Gloved hands lifted to remove the fishbowl helmet with swift precision. Underneath the black-visored, pressure-adjusting, life-saving helmet crouched something gnarled and old. It was a pale raisin of a face, grisled and disfigured with features strewn about as if he had woken up one morning and forgotten where they were supposed to go.
A nose sat smashed a few inches north of where it should be, resembling that of a sad old pig. His eyes, now fixed on the door to the cargo hold, were of two different colors. The left, which bulged out of his skull and was plagued with cascading red spiderweb veins, was a bright blue. The right, a pathetic shadow of its partner, sunk deep into his skull and dropped down his face like a runny egg. It was green, but its white was so yellowed by time the cornea hardly held together at all, making the whole thing look rotten.
Dry, cracked lips, so pale only their lack of moisture indicated them from the rest of the face, curled back to reveal a pair of teeth, both small and sharp, barely hanging onto black gums. He grunted as Todd’s pod was secured back on his broad shoulder.
Pale red skin stretched itself thin to cover the whole facial monstrosity, contouring each and every groove and valley, each marked with more varied and multicolored splots than one could count. The rest of his body looked similarly disfigured underneath his dirty gray spacewalking suit.
The beast smashed a panel with a large, still space-gloved finger, and the airlock door leading to the pod bay opened with a similar whine as its outdoor sibling. Familiar stale air filled the lumbering man’s gnarled nose as he found an open spot in the crowded room.
Large metal gray boxes congested the wide open space, making the room much more cramped than its wide walls suggested. The spaceman smiled wide, cracked lips etching their way further up his cheeks, creating dry ripples in pink flesh.
Finding a place for his prize among a pile of medium sized power cells they had salvaged from a wreck on Daleon 15-C, the helmetless spacesuit wearing scavenger turned to ascend a long set of metal stairs. His boots began to clang before he stopped briefly to turn his head back and look once more at the black pod.
Mission Complete.
***
“Markus!? You didn’t take the damn suit off before coming up here?” The screecher was dwarfed by the lumbering beast who had just walked inside. “Who knows what kinds of pathogens exist on that planet! One more organism in our delicately balanced internal ecosystem and it may just all fall apart!” His small round face began to grow red now, just as it always would, “Markus, this ship is like a clock, one little grain of sand and-”
“Yeah yeah yeah,” a deep booming lazily responded deep from within the large thing called Markus, “one little grain of sand and the whole thing goes… boom.”
His large hands imitated the same explosion motion that his companion made to accompany this particular speech.
“Relax Tristen,” Markus continued without letting the frail little man respond, “That planet was as dead as a doornail, nothing living there. No way, no how.”
“That doesn’t matter!” Tristen’s voice reached a fever pitch, “You can’t just come in here without taking the suit off! It's about the-”
“It’s about the principle… I know,” Markus rolled his eyes, which did not roll at the same time. “Look, just call everyone up here. I found a container down there.”
“Container?!” his train whistle voice shrieked with an accompanying bird-like voice crack. Tristen whipped around with a huff, responding, “Well you already know my vote,” before taking a seat on a green sofa, sighing once more to show how upset he really was. He decided then and there that he was done making eye contact with Markus for the rest of the night. Just as he usually would.
With a slight shake of his head and a scratch of his smashed pig-nose, Markus turned back to the door.
“I’m going back downstairs to put the suit away. Call everyone up here while I’m gone.” This wasn’t a request.
The smaller man, huddled on the couch in a ball, stuck his tongue out in silent protest while his huge shipmate walked out of the meeting room. He heard the boots find the metal stairs and clang the whole way down.
With a groan, Tristen twisted his body backwards and pressed a small red button on the wall behind him. It clicked with familiar satisfaction. The rest of the crew would be on their way now.
The circular yellow room had only two doors. One, which led to the central hallway, connected all the other other rooms in the ship to the steep stairs which Markus was currently descending. The other door, a quarter turn clockwise from the first, led directly to the small room they called the Kitchen. Two large green couches filled the room which could sit a total of six, three bodies on each. This would have been enough for the crew if each member had been an economic size, but that was not the case. For the two giants on the crew, two oversized brown chairs had been placed between the couches.
Long strands of red hair passed through the doorway. A tall nose hooked downward and was flanked on either side by dark, deeply set green eyes on an oval face. “What’s the meaning of this?” the large woman ordered.
Tristen sighed, “Can we please not get into a fight every time anyone calls a meeting other than you?”
She huffed as she walked up to the small man on the couch. In an instant, his jet black hair was curled in the long fingers of her right hand. He let out the yelp of a kicked puppy as she snapped her arm upward, lifting his entire body by his hair until his eyes met hers. With his feet hanging a foot off the couch, Tristen cooled to stare familiar daggers at his crewmate.
Tears then welled in the deep green eyes of the large woman as her mouth struggled with various syllables, never landing on one word. Her face flushed, and Tristen watched her chest heave with increasing intensity.
He knew this behavior, she was trying to think of a comeback, something witty to say in order to punctuate her display of unnecessary strength. Just as always, however, the only words that found Tristen’s ears were a jagged, “Well… b-b-but I… w-would’a, i-if I had called one then…”
Fighting back a smile, he prepared to spit the well constructed dagger that danced around on his own tongue. Before he could, she threw him back down on the green sofa with a huff.
He shook his head and rubbed his scalp as she turned to take a seat on the couch opposite him. Tristen smirked to himself as he watched her curl up as far away from him as possible.
“Jeez Evangeline…” he lightly goaded, “you’re never gonna learn to take a joke, are ya?”
She delivered a venomous gaze with a snap that almost stopped his heart. “Don’t,” she sharply warned. “Just… don’t.”
In came the silence that always filled the room after such altercations, Tristen always found it so comforting in its familiarity. His mouth cycled between a self satisfied smile and a sour grimace filled with pitiful rage, back and forth for minutes.
He was so tired of her little trick. Just because she could pick him up by the hair, doesn’t mean that she has to pick him up by the hair every time she's mad. Going back and forth for a while - as he usually would - and eventually finding the same reasons to hold back any further retort as the times before, Tristen resorted to his tried and true silence.
Other thoughts began to occupy his hurried mind. He hoped he could convince the crew to stop at Torthal 9 soon. The Subsonic Alternators were nearing the verge of destabilization outside of a properly atomized magnetic field, and dehydrogenated Subsonic Alternators were about as useful as hyper-subjectivised Auto-Magnetic Nullanthropic Discriminators. What a waste.
He chuckled.
By the Creator, would it take a hassle to get there. Tristen snarled as he thought about traveling through the HyperSpace Lane, but any other route to the Torthal System would take far too long. As long as he could just close his eyes through the whole thing and trust that Markus strapped down the cargo well enough, all would be alright.
Yes, just breathe and trust the crew. They never let him down before, they sure wouldn't start now. Not even Markus, despite what happened to the rest… He wouldn't do that to the crew.
Lost in thought and having completely forgotten about his interaction with Evangeline, Tristen hardly noticed a small round figure bumbling into the room and nervously taking a seat next to the large redheaded woman. Her shadow alone swallowed him, but she made no indication that she noticed his presence.
Small circular glasses precariously perched on the round man’s pimple of a nose jostled as he turned his body to the right.
“Do you know what this meeting is about Tristen?” A calculated mouse-like voice asked.
“Markus found a container,” he responded through gritted teeth.
“Oh…” The small man’s pinhole eyes found the ground, “Do we still have to have meetings about those?”
“Did I hear someone say container?” A scratchy voice drifted in from the hallway. “Eddard, I swear to the Creator, if you’re wondering why we’re taking votes on whether or not we open random containers we find on dead planets, I’m gonna ask Evangeline to pick you up by the hair like she does to Tristen.”
The small black haired woman to which the kurt voice belonged was covered in thick grease, using its thick scent to amplify her own air of confidence. She scanned the room, head whipping to meet each crew member’s gaze. Huge Evangeline and tiny Eddard smiled at her, the gaunt face of Tristen did not.
She looked away with a chuckle and took a seat in one of the two large brown chairs. It nearly ate her.
Just as she completed her predictable routine of twisting and curling her body to find her perfect body-shaped indent in the brown fabric, yet another crew member found their way into the yellow room. Tristen smiled, finally someone with some sense.
Huge shoulders held aloft a square head decorated with cropped blonde hair and adorned with a flawless facade. The square jaw was only upstaged in its beauty by the oceans of blue that radiated from his eyes. Not a blemish disfigured his skin, and the patterns of facial hair were equal parts effortlessly natural, and carefully curated. Nobody on the crew had seen any Hollywood movie, but if they had, they would be unimpressed by the beauty of the male stars in comparison to their crewmate Taz.
Tristen wished that Markus could have stayed looking like this instead of getting all grisled - they would have been nearly identical if it were the case. Taz was so much more preferable to look at. So clean.
“When will you stop sitting in my spot?” a beautiful golden waterfall of a voice poured from the angelic man.
“Fuck off,” came a muffled voice from the tiny black haired woman who was currently being digested by the leftmost brown chair. “I’ll sit in my spot when Tristen showers.”
“Really? What did I ever do to you, Illana?” Tristen snapped on instinct.
“You smell,” the mechanic spit back, some of it landing on the leg of the blonde man as he crossed the room and sat beside Tristen, raising him up five inches in the process.
“That doesn't even make sense,” he couldn't help but to add. “You’re the one who stinks like engine grease all the time! I do not smell. That literally doesn’t even make sense!” The greasy woman did not satisfy him with a response.
Here it came again, that same comfortable silence. Some eye contact was made, smiles exchanged, but no words left the lips of the crew.
Tristen watched the floor and listened to the dull hum of the ship's engine, closing his eyes after a moment. It was a comforting noise, low and warm. In the silence of their waiting, he felt that engine’s ‘mmuummumm’ rumble through the metal hull and reverberate into every body in kind.
This was home. This is where he was meant to be. And this crew was family, no matter how much they infuriated him.
Eventually, the dull boots of Markus returned, this time heavier and slower. They all listened as the metal stairs clanged one by one, steady and measured before the large shape of their brother filled the doorway. He was carrying something huge, black, and cylindrical over his right shoulder, and placed it down in the center of the room.
“Well, well, well, Markus…” Taz said playfully as the disfigured giant sauntered across the room to take a seat on the remaining large brown chair, “What have you got here?”
“The only damn thing on this planet that might be worth something’,” Markus shrugged, his deep voice almost lost in the hum of the ship’s engine.
“Worth something?” A scoff came from Tristen. “You fuckin idiot, this is clearly a life pod of some sort. I told you that blue light looked like an ancient human distress signal...”
Markus’s scarred face twisted further, first staring at the floor with a furrowed brow, then relaxing. He took a breath as if to speak, but stopped.
A chill ran down Tristen’s back. He hadn’t been like this in a while.
“You’re such an idiot, Markus,” Tristen continued with his nasal tirade, ignoring the twisting feeling in his gut - it was better to be pushed down just in case it was nothing, “Of course you forgot. You’re the one who wanted to investigate this dumb signal in the first place, now you forget! You really are a copper-brained idiot, you know that?”
“Woah Tristen, lay off him,” Taz lazily snapped. “Markus has been around longer than any of us, cut him some slack alright? Besides, maybe whatever’s left in this pod will end up being useful.” He shot a conciliatory look at Markus and nodded.
In response, the grizzled man stared blankly ahead. Avoiding all eye contact, very unlike him.
“I dunno Taz… I mean what if this thing’s been keeping something… alive in there…” Eddard’s voice shakily cascaded through the room and landed with a thud on the ground. A brief silence followed.
“See,” Tristen’s grading timbre refrained to break the cold silence, “My vote is the same. No. Throw it out the airlock when we take off.”
Whatever this thing was, is much better left tossed to the backwater of a dead planet - especially if Markus is being this quiet about it.
“Woah woah, let's think about this some more,” Evangeline spoke up. “Say it is keeping something alive,” she challenged Tristen, making brief eye contact before breaking to look at her feet, “w-would that really be all that bad? I m-mean, it could be fun to have something new around here for a change. Besides, it'll just be a l-little w-while…”
“I agree,” Taz boomed. “Plus, whatever it is, I’m sure we could sell it to The Independence, or The Liberty, or another Cruiser for a penny if it gets annoying.”
“Will you listen to yourselves?” Tristen stood suddenly, his face turned a beet red as his eyebrows furrowed in confusion. Had Taz lost his mind? “We don’t even know what it is! We don't know what it eats! We don't know what language it speaks!”
His eyes searched the room for anyone on his side, “We don’t know if it's human, we don’t know if it's an android, or another implanted remnant from some colony! We have a very delicate ecosystem here!”
Finally, his voice reached a fever pitch, of all the times he had given this speech, it was now or never “We are the crew of the Unity, Last of the Space Pirates! Right? We have to stick together on this, it's now or never! What we have cannot and I mean CANNOT be threatened like this! Come on, people see some reason here!”
Tristen’s voice faded into the sound of the engine. Its ambient song danced through the empty air. Eyebrows were raised.
Finally, the small grease covered Illana could take it no longer, and let her tongue fly. “Wow Tristen,” she goaded, sarcasm dripping from her teeth, “You really know how to make a room feel at ease.”
“Well I’m just trying to stay within safety protocols, what are you doing?” Heat covered Tristen’s face, the retort had flown out of his mouth before he could think of anything else. Trying to get the rest of the crew to care about safety protocols was a waste of time, no matter how hard he tried. He knew it already. They couldn’t help it.
Predictably, the small mechanic parried with astounding speed, “Well I’m just trying to get us all fucking PAID!” Her mocking impression of him was spot on, “What flew up your ass today?”
With his maddening neurosis sufficiently subjugated, Illana whipped her head around to the disfigured giant sitting on the brown chair beside her, “Aren’t you gonna call a vote already? I think we all know where we fall, don't we?”
She turned her head and threw up her hands, eyes meeting each of her crewmates in turn. Heads nodded all around the room.
Markus took a low, deep and measured breath in, then out, stretching and straightening his back in the process.
“Alright,” his deep voice boomed, “All in favor of opening the pod?”
Four hands, including the grisled paws of the vote facilitator, shot up into the air. Markus spoke the names of the voters aloud, “Okay, so me, Illana, Evangeline, and Taz are for opening the pod.”
The four mentioned nodded their approval, “and Tristen and Eddard against.” More nods.
“Four in favor and two against. It’s decided.”
With a squeal of discontent, Tristen twisted his body on the green couch, tucking his legs somewhere beneath his writhing form. The crew rolled their eyes, Illana plugging her ears to protect her from the grading whistle coming from his chest.
Much like a petulant child, the adult body of Tristen began to squirm in frustration, kicking his legs out and tucking them back underneath himself in quick succession. These were practiced movements despite their cacophonous appearance, repeated and performed so many times before. His own strange dance that the entire crew had memorized.
Around halfway through, it crossed his mind, as it always does, that these displays of desperation do absolutely nothing to change the results of the roll call votes - but it must be tried anyway. It was the only thing he knew how to do in a situation like this.
Tiny Eddard shook violently as Markus raised his large form off of the brown chair and lumbered to the middle of the room where he had dropped the pod. All eyes were glued on to the black cylinder as their ugly giant slowly kneeled in front of it with a low grunt.
Tristen and Eddard slowed their shaking enough to glance up at Markus.
Carefully, he began scouring each side for any sort of lever, button, or lip he could use to pry the thing open, giving a kurt sigh and a shrug. As much as it pained him, he had to make sure nobody suspected anything. Much too early for that.
Before long, Markus’s hands joined his eye’s topographical search. He began slowly with a facade of stupidity. Each hand made their own journey around the lip where the smooth black glass met the metal floor. Being extra careful to not reach the center quite yet, he danced his meaty digits up the sides. They slowed the longer they searched, coming to a puttering stop.
Suddenly, as if electrified, Markus shot up from his hunched position, looming over the bullet-pod like a mantis. Alert and poised. With a slap, his large mitt made contact with the center of the pod.
Steam filled the room.
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