Temples to Alien Gods - Episode I

The Union of the Human Colonies prides itself on the finest starships in the known universe. Everything from warships to private yachts are constructed in the shipyards of Polaris, with metal mined from worlds all across the Union.

But what they never show you in the promotional videos for the Polaris shipyards is that those ships have to be maintained. Cleaning and maintenance are as important as they were when human vehicles were stuck on the ground. If anything, the importance has only grown. A plumbing failure can be so much more catastrophic in the regions of deep space.

In times such as these men the Union relied on men like Obadiah Crumb, a custodian on board the Union Starcruiser Napoleon. A man who probably had more job security as a custodian than he ever had in the Union’s Armed Forces, especially with the Maintenance Guild keeping the minimum wage for its members as high as it did.

The Union couldn’t afford another Maintenance Guild strike, the last one had been…cataclysmic.

“…and there he was! Stuck! It took an entire crew to unlock the droid’s legs and set him free!”

Obadiah and the other two members of work crew G couldn’t keep straight faces. Obadiah had to steady himself on the wall of a nearby stall; he was laughing so hard. Martha removed her gloves to wipe her eyes and Bill was chuckling at his own anecdote. Only Obadiah’s cat Spike, an animal who would be would white if he or Obadiah kept up with his grooming, watched the three humans with no hint of mirth on his face.

Obadiah pulled himself together.

“Why?” he managed to ask as he wrung out his mop “Why? I wouldn’t put a finger in those cheap robots, much less my…”

He laughed again, unable to finish the thought.

Martha sprayed another restroom mirror and wiped it down.

“I don’t understand how we can figure out how to cross space and still be so…stupid!” she exclaimed. “You think the Ekta or any of the other races have problems like this?”

“If they do,” said Obadiah, “they keep it to themselves.”

His left leg, the cybernetic one, seized up suddenly and he banged it on the bathroom wall to unfreeze it.

“Leg acting up again?” Martha asked.

Obadiah nodded and knocked it a few more times against the wall “Standard-issue Union-insured crap. It worked fine until the warranty expired. Just fine!”

Martha shook her head “I had an uncle who lost an arm in the Pirate Wars. They replaced it but once the warranty expired” -she snapped her fingers- “dead, no more feeling than a noodle.”

Obadiah flexed his leg a few times.

“There,” he said. “It never used to give me this much trouble, got another five years of service out on this thing. Then I landed funny in a drop ship attack and that was the end. Replacements are expensive.”

“Drop attack?” Bill asked “If that thing conked out on you in the middle of a drop attack, then how the hell did you not die?”

“I dug a ditch where I lay, covered myself in branches and shot any of the enemy who came too close.”

Martha clapped and Obadiah gave a little bow. Bill came out of the stall he was in. “Say, did any of you hear about what happened yesterday?”

Martha scoffed. “You need to be more specific than that.”

“On board the Abraham,” said Bill as he entered the next stall. “It’s all over the private messaging streams.”

It was Obadiah’s turn to scoff “I don’t follow gossip.”

“Mrow.” Spike said from the bathroom sink.

“Well, not religiously anyway.” Obadiah amended.

Bill chuckled. “Their captain had a little…mishap.”

Martha clicked her fingers. “Wait! I heard about this! Was this the guy who spilt chili sauce all over himself?”

“Close,” said Bill. “His wife poured it all over him in his sleep.”

“Oh dear God, why?” Obadiah was both amused and horrified.

William shrugged. “Had a bottle of the stuff, found him sleeping naked.”

“Was she trying to kill him?” asked Martha

“I don’t know” said William. “All I know is that he came streaking into the common dining area at 1 in the am, screaming and pouring milk on himself.”

It took a while for the custodial team to regain their composure, still chuckling as they finished the restroom and lined up to empty and refill their mop buckets at the custodial closet across the hall.

“You know,” Obadiah began “That milk story reminds of the time my brother-in-law-”

“Hey,” said Martha. “Do you guys see that ship?”

The two men looked where she was pointing. A fairly large craft was moving through space toward them.

Obadiah squinted. “Looks like a freighter. An older model, but still one of ours.”

“What were you saying about your brother-in-law?” Bill asked

Obadiah cracked as a smile as he remembered, ultimately however the story of his brother-in-law would have to wait.

The older freight pulled up alongside the Napoleon and remained there for a moment. The crew only had minute to wonder at this odd behavior before the ship opened fire on them.

Obadiah, William, Martha, Spike, and the other passengers and crew were thrown about violently as the ceiling and floor switched places and confusion settled over the craft. More disrupter fire followed and several parts of the ship were completely blasted away.

“Attention, everyone!” the ship’s intercom buzzed. “This is your captain speaking! Do not panic! I repeat! Do not…”

Static overwhelmed the intercom as another voice cut over.

“…is it on?...on?...There.”

Drenched in mop water, Obadiah and his fellow custodians sat up, listening to the new voice.

“This is Captain Kenshin Kinrowan of the Quetzalcoatl,” said the new voice. “Prepare to be boarded!”

Words like ‘panic’ and ‘pandemonium’ barely describe the utter chaos onboard the Napoleon as the ship’s limited security force rushed to respond to the pirate threat while the passengers raced to their quarters and the crew fought to get out of the way. The onboard alarms screaming at everybody. By the time Obadiah made it back to his quarters, the pirates had made it on board, pillaging and plundering.

Obadiah dug through his things, which all lay in a heap on the ceiling.

“Where is it?” he demanded of Spike, as if the cat was somehow responsible for this situation. Spike, for his part, paced the doorway, keeping a lookout for pirates.

Finally Obadiah found his insurance for these situations: an 1892 Winchester rifle. Bullet weapons were much less commonplace than any of the numerous disrupter models but they were so much cheaper. Throwing some clothes and other supplies in a bag, Obadiah ran into the hallway and found the nearest ‘you are here’ map.

“Spike!” he said, pointing. “The escape pods! Come on!”

The two were halfway there when an explosion shook the entire vessel. Spike and Obadiah were thrown forward but saved from a nasty collision with one of the walls by the immediate failure of gravity.

“Dammit!” Obadiah cried as he bobbed in the air. “Spike? Spike!”

The cat was not pleased by this new state of affairs and only allowed Obadiah to grab him under his arm under the most severe of protests. The custodian swam through the air, rifle slung over his back, cat under the other arm, and backpack barely holding on.

“Ow! Spike!”

Spike had fallen back on his favorite stress coping mechanism-biting things.

“We’re almost there!” Obadiah yelled over the alarm. “Just a little further…”

Obadiah hurried around the corner, Spike trotting along behind him, to the corridor with the escape pods. People were already fighting to get inside the egg-shaped vessels. Few seemed optimistic that the ship’s security would withstand the pirate attack.

Fighting his way through the crowd, Obadiah climbed into the tiny hatch of a pod and gave it a quick once-over. Once he established it was working, he whistled and Spike joined him. Obadiah slammed the big red ‘EJECT’ button and they were away.

“Yes!” Obadiah cried. “We did it, Spike! We did it!”

The cat wasn’t listening. He had swum toward the escape pod’s only window and peered out into space, seemingly concerned. Obadiah’s merriment died a sudden death as he joined Spike at the window.

Viewed from space, the fight between the Quetzalcoatl and the Napoleon seemed decidedly one sided: the Quetzalcoatl circled the Napoleon as the passenger ship drifted on its back like a dead whale. Pirates flew back and forth between the two vessels, armed with a vicious multitude of weapons as they scoured anything of value they could find on board.

Obadiah had forgotten that escape pods, being small ships with very little engine power of their own, were victims to the strongest force of gravity nearby.

Which, in this case, happened to be the Quetzalcoatl.

“Maybe they don’t want us,” Obadiah whispered to Spike.

Spike narrowed his eyes skeptically.

“We don’t have anything of value,” insisted Obadiah. “Maybe they’ll let us go.”

As he said this, an escape pod drifted past the Quetzalcoatl, but the bigger ship fired a disrupter bolt and disintegrated the vessel. Spike turned to Obadiah, his eyes uncharacteristically wide.

“Don’t worry!” said Obadiah. “I’ll think of something!”

Spike blinked and looked away, less than impressed. Obadiah bit his lip.

“There are some controls for the rockets,” he said, looking around the walls of the pod. “Not enough to get us clear of that ship, but maybe enough to control where we land on it.”

“Meow?”

Obadiah pointed. “That bay there is where the pirates are loading the stuff from the Napoleon. Maybe they’ll have a better ship there, something we could escape on.”

If Obadiah was looking for approval in Spike’s face he wasn’t going to find it. The cat look as if he had certainly heard better plans in his time.

“Fine, then,” said Obadiah as he set the pod to a steady cruise and gently steered it towards the bay door. “You stay here, and I’ll escape.”

Spike pawed at the window.

“Damn, you got a point,” said Obadiah. He frantically scanned the inside of the pod until he found the environmental controls.

An idea occurred to him.

As Obadiah predicted the pod drifted through space and toward the bay door. It drew closer and a cable shot out from the pirate vessel and towed the pod in. Upon re-entering an environment with stable gravity, the pod dropped to the bay floor with a bump. Pirates gathered around the tiny ship.

A tall shirtless human pirate with metal arms knocked on the wall of the pod. “Anybody there?”

No reply.

Another pirate prodded the pod with his disruptor rifle. It rocked gently but otherwise didn’t move.

“Is there anyone in it?”

“Let’s cut it open and see!”

Another pirate climbed on top of the pod and looked in the window, or at least tried. “It’s all fogged up. The environmental controls are shot. No one could survive in here.”

“We don’t have time for this!” the first pirate shouted “Push it in the cargo hold!”

The pirates did as they were told and hurried off for better booty. After a moment, the pod hissed and the door opened. Spike sprinted for more temperate conditions as Obadiah pulled himself out.

“We s-s-s-survived, d-d-d-d-didn’t we?” he called out his cat, shivering.

Spike found a heating pipe in the wall and simply didn’t have time for Obadiah’s human bullshit.

The cargo hold was truly massive. This ship had once been used to haul raw asteroids and ore for refining. The pirates did their very best to use the massive space; they hadn’t been to a store world in a while and so the spoils of their last five or six raids lay unsorted.

Obadiah whistled.

“Look at all this stuff.” He walked to a nearby pile of containers that simply had ‘PT’ stamped on them. “You want to retire Spike?”

“Meowr!” Spike had found the wardrobe of a Union admiral lying in a heap and had curled up in it, purring. Obadiah limped over to the pile, his leg acting up again.

“Nice,” he said, picking up a fur lined leather bomber jacket. “About a year’s worth of pay right here.”

“Meow?” Spike looked up at Obadiah as the human pulled the jacket on.

“They won’t notice it.”

They were down there for hours, looking for a ship but also looking for something small that they could slip unseen into a pocket.

Obadiah started jingling after a while.

“Meowr!” Spike called from atop a small spacecraft. Obadiah limped over as fast as he could, clearing other stuff away to get a look at the ship.

“Myydian,” he observed “Pleasure ship. Probably belonged to a high ranking drone.”

If Spike could clap sarcastically he would have. Obadiah heaved himself onto the roof, to look for the entry hatch, Myydians always climb in the top of their ships.

“Got it!” he cried. “Now, where’s that latch…Spike? What are you-aaaaaaaah!”

Obadiah had found the latch on the ship and, forgetting that Myydian ships open inwards not out, fell and landed hard on the floor of the craft.

Spike looked down. Obadiah pulled himself up and groaned. Since the human had established that it was safe, Spike leapt down after him.

“So good of you to join me,” Obadiah muttered, contemplating the issue of a bipedal mammal piloting a ship designed for a giant six limbed insect.

“All right,” he said “Fuel levels seem pretty good. Give me a few hours to warm the engines and maybe we can-”

“Hey!”

“Dammit.”

Pirates approached the craft, weapons drawn.

Obadiah climbed under the cockpit, drawing a little switchblade from his pocket. “If you can drive it, it can be hotwired.” he mumbled.

“Hey! You in there!”

Obadiah pried a chunk of paneling off the underside of the control board and gazed at the tangled mess of strangely colored wires.

“You in there! Answer me!”

“Meowr?” Spike looked through the window with no small amount of concern.

“It’s fine,” said Obadiah. “They’re bluffing! This is a valuable ship!”

Bang! A bullet ricocheted off the hull.

“Blast!” Obadiah cried.

“So you ARE in there!” one of the pirates called back.

Obadiah found the wires he was looking for and set to work on them. “Yes?”

“Who are you? What are you doing in there?”

“I’m…uh…” Obadiah tried to hotwire the spaceship and think of a good alibi at the same time but, multi-tasking had never a strength of his.

“I’m…the plumber.”

Spike lay down and put his head under his paws.

“We don’t have a plumber on board! Maintenance Guild rates are too expensive!”

Obadiah stripped two wires and tied their innards together, flinching from the sparks that shot out.

“You’re from the other ship, aren’t you?” the other pirate asked.

Obadiah grinned. “You got me! I’m part of an advanced strike team of Union commandos! This entire raid was a ploy to infiltrate a Pirate Guild vessel!”

“Meowr?”

Obadiah listened. The pirates outside were murmuring too quietly for him to hear them clearly.

“Why do think it was so easy to take the ship?” he continued “Do you think Union security personal are that incompetent?”

There was a moment of silence. Obadiah lay on his back, hoping they’d bought it.

They bought it too well.

“Mickey to bridge, Mickey to bridge! Intruder alert! All hands to battle stations! Union commando trapped in a ship in the cargo hold! Send more guns!”

“ShitshitshitshitshitSHIT!” Obadiah he fussed with more wires. Spike pawed the walls of the spaceship.

With a shower of sparks, the ship hummed to life, control panels glowing with energy.

“Yes!” Obadiah leapt to his feet. “Yes!”

Looking around wildly he struggled to remember anything he could about Myyrdian spaceship controls. He slammed a button at random and the ship barreled towards the wall of the cargo bay.

“No! Damn it!” Obadiah looked around for a steering wheel but couldn’t see one. He grabbed a lever toward the middle of the controls and, with a sharp pull, sent the ship careening to the left. In order to compensate for his lack of four extra arms Obadiah darted back and forth playing a life or death game of ‘bop-it’ with the random controls: pushing, flicking, pulling, twisting, and spinning everything he deemed helpful. The ship hurtled around the cargo bay like a mad animal, knocking piles of pirate’s booty in all directions.

“Where are the damn disrupters?” Obadiah flicked another switch and the craft somersaulted into the cargo hold walls. Obadiah held on for dear life but Spike was thrown about the ship, hissing with a vengeance.

Obadiah grabbed a smaller lever and pushed it hard. A bright green disrupter bolt shot out the front of the ship, blasting a hole in the side of the cargo hold. The pleasure ship and the pirate treasure were sucked out into space.

“We’re clear! Spike, we’re clear!”

A volley of disrupter fire blasted the back of the ship. Obadiah fell over.

“Meowr.”

“All right! All right!” Obadiah tried to pull himself upright but his leg had locked again. Cursing, he banged it on the floor as the ship rocked from more disrupter fire. Obadiah pulled himself up on his stiff limb and looked at two gauges, one of them showed nearly full, the other showed about a quarter full.

“Spike, the good news is that we have enough fuel to get us to a system with a warpgate,” said Obadiah. “The bad news? This ship desperately needs more coolant. Hopefully it won’t burn out when we jump.”

Obadiah punched in the coordinates and rested his hand on the accelerator.

“Spike, hold on!” he called to his cat.

Spike dug his claws into a vinyl couch as Obadiah punched the warp drive and the ship accelerated to light speed, leaving the pirates far behind in nanoseconds.

Obadiah collapsed on the floor, laughing with an odd giddy energy. Spike released his claws from the vinyl seat and came over, cautiously.

“See?” Obadiah said, scratching Spike behind the ears. “I told you.”

The ship came out of lightspeed rather abruptly. Obadiah banged his head on the control panel.

“What the-?” he pulled himself upright and checked the gauges again. One was still full, the other was empty. Obadiah rested his head in his hands.

“Well, we have a lot more coolant than I thought,” he said

Spike bit Obadiah’s hand but made no other comment.