[SpectralJulianIsNotDead]

I'm better at verse than at just plain 'ol writing. But I've been thinging of making sci-fi short stories for awhile.

The systems of Alpha Centauri were conquered. All of the fear the people of earth felt that they would be attacked by beings far superior to them was unwarranted. They made it into space and found that the races of Alpha Centauri were much less advanced than the combined nations of Earth, and the two habitable planets had a bounty of resources. Earth found allies in a group of aliens known as Wanderers, a race that fled their planet due to imminent destruction. They were too few in number to conquer the planets of Gagarin and Armstrong, which revolved around Alpha Centauri A and B, so their fleet set up stations on the lifeless planets of Alpha Centauri A and B, as well as the dead system of Proxima Centauri. They had scouted out earth in the 20th century, but found that they had lost too many scouts to continue funding their projects, but they apparently felt no hard feelings in their alliance made with the NoE. The wanderers provided the NoE with several services in exchange for the exclusive rights to the Gagarin and Armstrong slave trade. With the support of the numbers of the NoE, they proved to be brutal warriors and helped speed the war along with minimal casualties for the people of earth, according to the news networks.
That the war had ended fifteen years before didn't matter to Orion Smittan, he had to live it every night over and over again, fighting the jungle-things of Gagarin. The weapons that he had were meant for fighting humans, not those vile creatures. Tonight he was screaming in his cot. Adelaide Mu couldn't take it anymore. She got on the intercom. “Rise and shine passengers, the Hydra will be arriving at the Barnard's Star in several hours and docking at the UAE's wondrous base city of Independence!”
“Fuck you,” Orion said groggily as we woke up, still sweating from his nightmare.
“There will be plenty of hookers in Independence, Orion, I'm sure you can wait a few hours for that release. Now, get showered, you smell like a Uranian. People might forget you were born and raised on Titan.”
“Yeah, whatever.”
Orion walked into the showering room and slammed the door so that it made a cold metallic clank.
Adelaide looked to her jacket's right arm. She undid a velcro flap to reveal her personal computer.
“Tolek Minicomp model C765 At Your Service, Adelaide”
“Could you pull up the current mission briefing file and patch it to the ships hologram projector?”
“Yes, Ma'am.”


Adelaide turned her attention to the holo-projector to see the image of her boss, Eli Randolf- Chief of the Interstellar Police. The Interstellar Police are an organization responsible for police matters that involve multiple star systems.


“Captain Mu, Sergeant Smittan, here is your next mission. We are loading a detained psychotic Gagarin Centaur responsible for the deaths of three wanderers and two humans into the Hydra right now. You are to take him to Independence City for his trial, it is farther than Earth, but we want this to be low profile, and then you will have to transport him to a prison colony. There will be a welcoming party on landing platform 23 for you one week from now, so you'll have to leave at 1500 hours to be on time. You'll have a few days in Independence City, don't get into trouble. Chief Randolf out.”

“I kill them, I kill them,” the Centaur screamed in his native tongue. He pounded on the door with his enormous reptilian hands, but nobody seemed to hear. He stood on his hind legs and thrusted his front legs into it. Still, nothing happened. “They not do this to I! I Hlopek!”

Hlopek struggled some more, but it was no use, he was not going to free himself.

“I feel like I've known you forever!”

“Oh, there is a lot you don't know about me, I only just met you and got you drunk,” Ryp said as he gently moved the mess of blonde and blue-black hair out of the pathway between their lips. He pulled back. “Wait, this is wrong. I don't really know you.”

The drunk blue-black haired woman pulled him close “My name is Gean, I work for Smithfield Arms company. Now kiss me!”

Ryp obliged her. “I used to work at Smithfield Arms company! What do you do there?”

“I work on their transport ships. The pay is great, and I only need to be there the day that they take off,” She kissed him again, “I don't have to work until next Monday, gotta get up early though, because the ship will take off at noon

She was lucky. He wasn't a ripper. He wasn't going to have sex with her than kill her. He didn't have any alien STDs—which can be quite nasty. He was just a man who found liquor and sex an effective way to loosen lips. He wasn't even very amorous, but he considered himself in debt to her for the valuable information she just gave him.

“The Hydra will be coming out of superlightspeed shortly. All crew and passengers secure themselves,” the ship's computer announced.

Orion took the co-pilot seat. “God, I hate Independence city.”

“But it is on a cold dumpy little moon revolving around a gas giant, it should remind you of home!”

“I hate home, I'm waiting for the day I can afford a nice place on good old fucking Earth.”

“At the rate you break protocol I don't think your going to make chief anytime soon,” Adelaide reminded him. “Time to start the landing procedure.”

“Aye-aye cap!” Orion said with an irritated look on his face. He tuned his radio to the controller frequency, “this is Interstellar Police ship Hydra, requesting permission to land on Dock 23, over.”

“Negative Hydra, Dock 23's hydraulic system just went out. Proceed to Dock 17, over,” the controller replied

“Roger that, over.”

“Transmitting now, over.”

“Received, we will land shortly, over.”

“Alright then, Officer Nilko will meet you shortly for customs, over and out.”

Adelaide brought the ship over the landing pad and let it down gently. With a lurch, the hydraulics lowered the whole pad into the pressurization room. A hallway extended to the ships starboard door. Orion got up, picked up his bag, and immediately opened the door

“Greetings, I'm Officer Nilko.”

“Smittan.”

“Right, we'll scan your bag and. . .hello Captain, Captain Mu, correct?”

“Yep,” Adelaide nodded.”

“Right. We'll scan both your bags and confirm your ID, then you can be on your way.”

The officer's aid picked up their bags and used an Y-ray wand to detect the contents.

“OK, Orion Smittan, blue eyes, black hair, pale complexion, that all checks out. I got to do an eye scan and get your fingerprints.” He pulled out a small pen like device and a pressure pad, synced them to his wrist computer, and finished the ID check on Orion. “And Adelaide Mu, brown hair, medium complexion, green eyes, I got to scan you too,” Nilko said and then identified her too. “Well, you check out. You can be on your way. We'll unload your cargo after the ship's exterior is brought to this pressure level. Enjoy your stay in Independence City!”

Adelaide and Orion grabbed their bags and entered the elevator. The door closed.

“Welcome to Independence my ass. Let's go get some fucking beers so we can forget we are here.”

“Sounds like a plan Orion,” Adelaide said as they got off the elevator and left the building.

Under a sign saying, “Independence City, Now 5 Degrees Warmer!” (they raised the city temperature to -5C just that year) were some protesters. “Abolish alien slavery!” they shouted and harassed wanderers that came past.

“Orion, don't let anyone know we brought a centaur here. That would start a shit storm. Even the abolitionists are afraid of Centaurs. Sure they love the other Gagarin races, but centaurs can rot in hell as far as they are concerned.”

“Hell is too good for most of them.”

Adelaide looked to a bar on her left. “They've got a fine selection of imports here and the bartender can make a great Black and Red, he's been here forever, I think he got his license the day the city opened 20 years ago.”

“Sounds great.”

[SpectralJulianIsNotDead]

* * *

“You no cage Hlopek! Humans will pay!”

“Shut him up, will you?” Judge Grew asked the bailiff. The bailiff hit the centaur with a shock stick that temporarily disabled his speech. “We have clearly enough physical evidence that has been provided with him to sentence him to a prison sentence on the colony of Ross 154. The officers that brought him will transport him there on Monday and a cell will be ready for him the following Sunday. Court Adjourned.”

* * *

“I feel like shit,” Orion said as he woke up.

“How do you think I feel? You were having nightmares again. I really wish I got a separate room. All these pioneers heading to Cygni 2 had to just take up most of the space. Last time it was the asteroid collector's convention. Why is it always when we're sent to these dumpy places?” Adelaide looked at her computer.

“I need some water.”

Adelaide picked up a bottle, “Catch. You should have drank last night, when you were drinking, that way, you wouldn't have a hangover. Don't they teach you that on Titan?”

“Yes they teach you that on Titan.” Orion scratched his head. “When we leaving?”

“Tomorrow.”

“What was I doing last night?”

“Well, you were showing girls scars from the Centaur that you have nightmares about.”

“Did I break down?”

“Not until after we got back.”

“Good, good. Did I get any numbers?”

“You might have, girls hear seem pretty stupid and easy. Check your pockets.”

“Ha! Two! You get any guys last night Adelaide?”

“No, I was too busy dragging your drunk ass back then consoling you about the damn Centaur and telling you ours isn't going to break out or anything. What exactly happened on Gagarin 15 years ago?”

“I went through the hell that no 18 year old ever should. Maybe I'll tell you the whole story sometime. I don't really feel like it now.”

“OK, Orion, I'm gonna head down to the bar and get something to eat. I'll see you later, OK?”

“Ma'am yes ma'am!” Orion said and gave her a salute then flicked her off. “That's for saying I smelled like a Uranian.” He leaned back and smiled.

Adelaide laughed and left the room.

* * *

“What I would give for some good earth food,” Adelaide sighed to herself as she ate a dish that came probably came from an Armstrongian Howler-beast's armpit.

A man with blonde hair sat down across from her. “Here have an orange,” he said, smiled, and handed her an orange.

“Thanks!” She ripped open the orange and bit into it. “What's your name?”

“Ryp. Yours?”

“Adelaide,” she said with her mouthful of orange, and spit out a seed.

“That is a beautiful name. Very old sounding.”

“I should have known this orange had strings attached. I leave tomorrow Ryp, and I'm an honest girl.” She smiled and spit another seed out.

“You got me completely wrong! I could just tell you aren't from around here, probably feel uncomfortable, and hate that cheap shit they sell here.”

“So, what do you do that lets you give away oranges in a place like this?”

“I'm a trader.”

“And what do you trade?”

“Goods.” Ryp cracked a smile. “What do you do?”

“Right now, transporting.”

“What may I ask?”

“Goods.” Adelaide smiled.

Ryp's minicomp started beeping. “I must go, it was a pleasure to meet you miss Adelaide, maybe we will meet again.” He kissed her hand then he was gone.

Adelaide finished her orange and looked up to see an angry little man staring right at her. “Where did he go?” the man asked.

“Where did who go? You gotta be more specific.”

“The man you were just talking to.”

“I don't know him. He was just flirting with me.”

“We'll see about that, come with me.” The little man carefully pressed a concealed blaster to her back. “Take my arm dear!” He nudged her in the back with his blaster.

She took his arm and they left into the back alley. “Where are you taking me?” Adelaide cried silently.

“Nowhere” Orion shot the little man in the back. “I don't know what kind of trouble you got yourself into, earthling, but lets lay real low for the rest of our time here, alright? I contacted one of the girls from last night, her name is Gean. I'm sure she wouldn't mind if you came with.”

“Good idea, let's go.”

* * *

It was quite an uneventful morning for Gean getting the large ship ready for take-off. She replaced some parts on the ship, filled in some small holes from debris, and then she checked all the fuel and supply levels.

“Smithfield 1 is clear for takeoff,” she announced over the radio. And with that, everyone cleared out of the airlock, the hatch opened and the platform ascended. Then the ship lifted up off the platform and blasted out of the moon's thin atmosphere.

[SpectralJulianIsNotDead]

* * *

“Orion, set coordinates for another hellhole, Ross 154. I'll make the preparations for superlightspeed.”

“Ross 154, fu----n.”

“Wait, there are some unidentified ships coming in the radar. OH SHIT, it is a Tau Ceti attack.”
Tau Ceti are a race of aliens that populated the star system of Tau Ceti. They are technologically inferior to the NoE, but they were able to learn a lot of the art of spacecraft building from both NoE Free Knowledge Society television broadcasts, as well as from several failed scouting missions to the area. Still, compared to the NoE, many relegate them to barbarians. Especially after war tore their world apart, and their greatest architectural achievements were lost. The NoE decided it would be less risky to take Alpha Centauri first, and in turn the Ceti Tau's learned what would happen to them. Many of them surrendered on Ceti Tau 2, but majority of them fled the system and found several inhabitable planets that were in more remote less desirable star systems, so they could wage guerrilla warfare against the NoE. None of them have entered into slavery as they are very intelligent and look much like humans, with only a few differences- such as their purple skin. They claim that they are equal to humans, being in the same image as the God of earthling religions. As a side note, the discovery of extraterrestial life, especially that of the Ceti Tau's, has reignited religion to where atheism is fairly uncommon, but many scientists maintain that their similarity is pure coincidence.

“They are probably after that Smithfield Freighter. I wonder how they knew about it.”

“Beats me, lets not stay long enough to find out, the defense force will handle it.”

“What about Gean? She said something about Smithfield. She was very cordial to us. What if she's on board?”

“Orion, you save me yesterday, now you are going to get me killed. Get in the turret.” Adelaide turned the ship around and went straight for the first wave of four Tau Ceti fighters. They were going straight for the freighter as Orion predicted. “We can't let them get close enough to fire virus missiles, it will shut down the freighter's computer systems.”

As the vessels came in range, Orion aimed his sights at the lead fighter and fired. A brilliant fire erupted from the cockpit and the ship careened out of the fight. Orion moved to the next one, and got a direct hit and moved his fire right onto the third. As the third exploded, the fourth shot a virus missile right before the Independence defense force got in range to shoot down the fourth ship.

The freighter was hit, and larger raiding ships were inbound to dock with it, and they had escorts. The defense force moved in to intercept.

What they were not ready for were the Tau Ceti ships coming out of superlightspeed behind them. The fighters quickly moved in on the defense forces and annihilated them.

“We're fucked,” Orion proclaimed. Then he was knocked out of his seat.

“Navigation system disabled,” the computer announced.

“Not fucked, boarded.”

* * *

But they were not immediately boarded. First they were towed to the Tau Ceti rendezvous point where they must have planned the ambush. Right outside of the system. It was a good spot.

Two Moons came led his Tau Ceti force onto the ship.

“Where is the shipment?” he asked Adelaide and Orion, helpless to defend themselves.

“We aren't carrying any shipments, Adelaide replied.

“Sir, we found a big crate, can we open it?”

“Yes.” He turned to Adelaide, “No shipments! We will. . .”

A roar erupted from the other end of the ship. Orion started to shake. Two Moons and the rest of his men went over to see what was wrong.

“Hlopek kill, Hlopek kill!”

The centaur flung two, Ceti Tau warriors against the wall with such force that their bones shattered instantly. He charged another than gave a front leg kick and sent him on top of Adelaide. The Ceti Tau's fired their guns, but their bullets did no harm. Pretty soon it came to the point of Two Moons being the only one left. He took out a long electrical spear and declared, “I will die fighting a great beast!”

“Hey you big ugly bastard, over here!” Orion shouted.

It turned to him and said in English, “You! I killing you for 15 years, die!”

Orion's heart sank. He was ready to die and join his comrades that Hlopek killed.

“Catch you fucking Titan, fucking kill him!” Adelaide yelled and slid him a Smithfield Mark 3 rifle.

A large burst of energy came from the rifle and turned the Centaur's chest into green goo that splattered all over Orion. One second later, the legs and hind of the Centaur knocked Orion over.

Adelaide went pushed the unconscious Ceti Tau off of herself and went to aid Orion. “Looks like your nightmares will be over.”

“Never have two humans treated me so honorably,” Two Moons said. “You could have let me die.” We will allow you to leave.”

* * *

“Message from Chief Randolf received” Adelaide's minicomp announced.

“Play.”

“Captain Mu, officer Smittan is wanted for murder of an Internal Security Agency, the man who attempted to question you on Sunday. He is also wanted for treason against the NoE in conspiracy and Ceti Tau sympathizing. Bring him back to Barnard's star immediately.”

“Well, Orion, it looks like we aren't cops anymore.” Adelaide said and laughed.

“Good, I didn't like that job anyways,” Orion smiled.

[SpectralJulianIsNotDead]

Crap, it screwed up my formatting. BTW, I haven't grammar checked it too heavily yet, so don't get all up on me. I'm tired, this is the first draft.

The basic idea is that a lot of samurai themes got turned into western themes. I'm taking the western themes and turning them into sci-fi themes. An imminent civil war over slavery, guerilla warfare with an apache-like nation, religious pioneers, etc.

[krastian]

Interesting. Writing short stories based on sci-fi/fantasy is kind of difficult because there is usually so much going on in terms of bizzare concepts in the world that you have created, characters, and plot. It can be hard to inform the reader in such a short time. My fiction professors in college would never let people write sci-fi in hopes of trying not to confuse the other readers in the class that wouldn't know what the hell was going on when they had to critique their work.

[youthoftomorrow]

i'm presently writing a story about the violent and death-filled history of the employee lounge of the theme park that i work in.

[Bertrand]

It takes courage to offer anonymous readers-who-can-fling-back-deceptive-comments your work, SpectralJulianIsNotDead.
I didn't find the description of the Tau Ceti race that necessary (or it could have been a note not to affect the rhythm in the passage) but that's just my problem & it ain't what struck me the most.
I found the first passage with Ryp to be really well written, making this character from that moment on someone I'd pay attention to.
Slave trading's a good topic too.

[SpectralJulianIsNotDead]

Thanks for the comments! Yeah, I agree with the Tau Ceti thing a little, but I wanted to give their history somehow, and that seemed to be the most appropriate place. Maybe I'll add a passage with Ryp making a deal with the Tau Ceti and explain it there, or a passage where Two Moons is preparing the fleet.

I'm going to write more stories that follow up on this, but they won't neccesarily follow a straight narrative, in other words Adelaide, Ryp, Two Moons, and Orion will be recurring characters in my stories, but not every story will be about them.

I sort of like the short story format because I can have a mini-plot but sew in much bigger stuff happening around everyone. That is what I really like about westerns, there are small personal level stories going on in the midst of much bigger things. You can end up using those bigger things as Deus Ex Machina to resolve certain passages. Such as in the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly where Tuco is about to kill Blondie and a cannonball hits the hotel room.


Krastian, I see what your fiction teachers meant. I wrote all of this story last night, and I spent half the time trying to decide how I should use all the planets in this little map of the 47.2 lightyear radius http://www.solstation.com/47ly-ns.htm

The hardest thing is that you have to make up a history and really stick to it. I'm going to actually have to make a timeline before I write the next story just to get things straight in my head. I also have to check some of this story for continuancy. I think ultimately readers are becoming more attuned to science fiction than they used to, that is why shows like Battlestar Galactica and Cowboy Bebop are possible. I also think readers are at the point where they don't need to know everything, as long as they have some understanding of the events at hand.

[krastian]

That's a good idea. Any kind of "prewriting" really does help.