Young Writers Society

The green slushy was for Focci, which explained why Ellipse found it so disgusting. The spinach-cranberry taste was supposed to imitate that of a very unhealthy eel-ish thing. As Ellipse pulled herself into the ship, she caught Focci giving her a grossed-out, wide-eyed look, tail curling protectively around his snacks.

“Did you eat any of my stuff?” he asked, tone bordering on shrill.

Ellipse wrinkled her nose. “Yes. Your food sucks.”

“Then maybe do not eat it,” Focci suggested. He curled his tail in further and began a long scoot towards his room, bags of food wrapped up in his spiny tailfin. His gills alternated between flaring and drooping, like he could not decide between acting horrified and throwing a hissy fit.

“Do not worry. I would not touch your food again if you paid me.” She crouched by the floor hatch and stuck her arm down so Wrecktrix could pass up the rest of their haul. But like everything else in the universe, Wrecktrix took option b and threw his snacks through the hatch. Ellipse got a faceful of crinkly bags.

As he clambered up, Ellipse curled up a lip and gave him the stink eye. “That was rude,” she told him.

“I am in a hurry.” Wrecktrix kicked the hatch shut and listened for the air proof seal to hiss into effect. “Shoo. Go find Captain Maj. Tell them we need to leave because his friends are here.”

Some friends, Ellipse thought. She stuck her tongue out at Wrecktrix for making her play messenger and then climbed up the ladder to the second floor. Captain Maj would most likely be in either their cabin or the cockpit, or the cargo bay if something was wrong. According to Focci and Wrecktrix, the captain tried to stay away from the cargo bay outside of loading and unloading. They did not even help with inventory check.

She peeked down the hall, towards the ship’s bow. The cockpit door was wide open, and Ellipse could see Min’s thick, white, serpentine root system piled up like a resting snake. No Captain in there. Huffing, she continued her climb.

On the third floor, she followed the black plastic floor panels towards the ship’s stern and stopped outside a bathroom stall style door stuck between two panels of lime green. Fishing in her pockets for her lightbox, Ellipse tapped at a little button installed near the door’s lock. No knocking; the specifus had probably the worst hearing of any space-faring species in the universe.

She waited a few seconds, tapping her toes against the floor in a rhythm that alternated meters every few beats. Specifus walked so hecking slowly. What was the point of Wrecktrix’s hurrying if nothing ever got done quickly on this ship? Scratching her neck, Ellipse reached out and pressed the captain’s door light again. Then she dropped to the ground and shoved her lightbox under the door.

“Wrecktrix says your friends are here,” she flashed. “What friends? Why does he think this means we have to leave in a hurry?”

A tremor passed through the floor panel, a sign that something was actually moving behind the door. Wondering if the captain had been ignoring her, Ellipse frowned and retracted her hands. She stood, staring at the lightbox and biting her lips. She had not paid attention to the signage for the dock next door and had no clue if Captain Maj’s friends were specifus, or what their occupation might be, or even the name of their ship.

Before she could try to make too many assumptions (the captain’s so-called friends probably were not bounty hunters, if the Conics could still dock at the fold terminals), the door swung open, squeaking like the bathroom stall door it was.

“Get out of the way,” the captain flashed, and then he tumbled out of the door, roots writhing along the ground like giant centipede legs.

Hecking jerk. They did not even try to answer Ellipse’s questions. She watched, nostrils flaring, as the captain scurried to the ladder, and then stomped after them, trying as hard as she could to make the panels shake. Alas, she did not have nearly as much mass as anyone else on the Conics, and therefore not nearly as much transferrable momentum. Angry at her genetics for making her only average-human-sized, she stomped harder.

When she reached the top of the ladder and found the captain still curling and uncurling their roots around the bars, she clucked her tongue and cupped her hands around her mouth. “Focci!” she sang, “Where are you?”

The notes for ‘cargo’ floated up through the floors. Evidently someone was already setting up the hangout.

“I want to ask you some things!”

Ellipse caught the little octave jump that ended all questions and let out a growl, as if that would somehow encourage the captain to climb faster. She could not tell if Focci was asking her to repeat whatever she had just said or asking what she wanted to know.

“I want to ask you some things!” she tried again. Captain Maj looked up at her and covered one of their lights with a vine, the specifus version of a finger over the lips.

Focci sang back something about knowing that already, and Mouthbot asked a question about possible euphemisms associated with ‘things.’ Ellipse ignored it all until the captain finally stepped off the ladder and began crawling towards the cockpit. Then she practically slid down the ladder and scrambled off for the cargo bay hatch, leaving Mouthbot to repeat the euphemisms question over and over again.

Ellipse dropped into the bay not thirty seconds later, landing with a hard thud on one of the metal crates stacked under the hole in the first floor. On the other end, Focci and Wrecktrix were already bustling about, stuffing their snacks into the same empty crate that held their other food and filling up water bottles so they could avoid dealing with loose water during in zero-gravity.

“One of you explain why we are supposedly in a hurry to leave,” she said, once in siren and then in tyran. Focci and Wrecktrix turned to look at her, still shoving things away in preparation for takeoff, but Wrecktrix only shivered and ignored the demand.

Snapping a rubber band around the blue shrimp bag, Focci sucked in a breath and wrinkled his snout. “You really want to know? It is not a nice thing for earthlings to hear.”

“I can handle it,” Ellipse retorted. She slid down to the cargo bay floor and checked to make sure she had not touched a switch for the ship’s electromagnets.

“Okay then, but I warned you.” He gave Wrecktrix a look, as though asking for permission, and when the tyran slumped over in resignation, proceeded to explain the situation. “As an earthling, I assume you know that specifus and earthlings do not always like each other.”

They sort of ripped off each other’s tech, so it was understandable. “Yeah,” Ellipse said.

“Good. Anyway, minor specifus shipping operations are not supposed to deal with earthlings. It is… unpatriotic. But here we are, headed to planet five to deliver food to some of the earthling terraforming workers there. We have been doing this job for months; it is good money.” Focci tossed the shrimp bag at Wrecktrix, who grumbled about having already shut the snack crate.

“I see,” Ellipse said. “So that would make the captain like a progressive or something? Pro-trade, pro-space-drugs, pro-being-nice-to-other-species, whatever.”

Focci turned green, like he might explode into a pile of icky cucumber-colored goop. “Stars,” he tittered. “Tell that to Wrecktrix!”

Ellipse repeated herself in tyran, and got an earful of raucous howling and beak clicking. Her cheeks heated up in embarrassment. “What?” she asked, crossing her arms. “I was only making a guess.”

“I know, I know!” Wrecktrix giggled. “But it was funny! Captain Maj? Progressive?”

“I swear upon the ocean floor,” Focci muttered, one webbed hand over his mouth. “That might be the most hilarious thing I have heard since we were in the Un system.”

Hecking aliens. “Yeah? Well I was not trying to be funny. Tell me what is going on!” Ellipse imagined herself clomping through the bay and tugging Focci’s gills or taping Wrecktrix’s beak shut.

“Okay, okay,” Focci relented, voice still stuck in an airy, upper register. He coughed, and suddenly was very businesslike again. “Captain Maj likes to take earthling money. That is it. It is like that history between the big antlered-animal-head-shaped country and the nation that lost the moon colony near your ringed planet. Just on a very small scale.”

Ellipse squinted. “China and the United States?” she asked.

“Yes, yes. The one-way trade thingy. It is like that. Only the other specifus do not get it, so they are always trying to convince the captain to stop.”

Focci probably did not understand either earthling or specifus history and politics all that well, Ellipse decided. Earth was complicated, just like every other planet out there. “Okay then,” she said, trying to sound unconvinced.

“The last time one of Captain Maj’s friends caught us, we got stuck on the Mao station for hours. It takes so long for them to talk, you know, and they tried so hard to convince the captain to stop his dealings with earthlings.”

“And thus, we have to leave as soon as possible,” Ellipse concluded. Sighing, she rubbed her temples and took a small step backwards. “I am going to go train Mouthbot some more,” she sang, reaching up to find purchase on the crates. “Let me know if you need anything.” As the gravity began to drop, she jumped to the top of the crates and looked back to see Focci and Wrecktrix still giggling at the idea of a pro-trade Captain Maj. Jerks.

At least bounty hunters were not involved.