Home Alone 1 (Patreon)

@Leinglo wanted to see a Home Alone sort of scenario in deep space. I deviated a bit from the original request since I didn't want to pigeon-hole the ringel as pirates, but otherwise this should be what you were looking for.

I won't deny that I had waaaaaay too much fun describing Captain Arge's ship.

———

Arge looked up from his captain’s chair at the sheet of clear plastic that had been stretched overhead. Engineering had erected some scaffolding on either side of him and used bungee cords to hold the awning in place. Once every few seconds, there was loud plop directly overhead before a drip of clear fluid streaked its way slowly down to the deck.

With a finger, he stabbed a grimy button that had been built into the chair’s armrest. It lit for a moment before the white light flickered and died. He stabbed angrily at it three more times until the button finally stayed lit.

“It’s still dripping,” he announced.

A pause before a voice like a banshee’s wail replied. Most wouldn’t be able to make out the engineering chief’s words through so much static and distortion, but after using the intercom system for nearly a lifetime, Arge was accustomed to it. “It’s not dripping on you, is it?”

The captain stared up at the plastic. The sheet was acting as an amplifier and the drops sounded like a drumbeat, echoing around the empty bridge. Each time one plopped, Arge winced. Plop. Plop. Plop. “I think whatever-it-is is eating through the plastic,” he sighed.

“Well, then you definitely don’t want it dripping on you.”

He closed his eyes and slowly counted to ten, but before he reached five, he snapped, “No, I don’t want it dripping on me. That’s why I told you to fix it!”

Another pause. Chief Kestos said, “Okay, so let me get this straight—you want me to stop refitting the reactor, you want the ship to keep drifting here helpless in deep space while I try to fix a dripping pipe.”

Arge growled. She was going to drive him to drink. He should never have taken her as his mate. He should never have had three cubs with her. And seven grandcubs. And two great-grandcubs. He stared up at the drip some more. Plop. Plop. Plop. “I would appreciate it if fixing this leak was at the top of your task list the moment that the reactor refit is done.”

“No promises, hon,” she said through the whistling static. “Life support is on the fritz again. If you enjoy breathing oxygen, you’ll understand why I’ve got other things to do.”

Without replying, Arge stabbed a finger into the intercom button. It stayed lit. He punched it five more times until his knuckles began to ache, but the plastic button had wedged itself sideways, jamming against the bezel. “Oh, for the ancestor’s sake!”

“Anything else?” asked his mate. “Or can I get back to work?”

“No, that’s it. Get back—” The intercom light winked out, cutting him off mid-sentence.

“Oh, damn this worthless bucket of bolts!” he grumbled as he went back to staring at the drips.

In front of him and slightly to the left, a red light started flashing. The glare bathed the dimly lit bridge and made the old geroo’s heart beat faster. “What now?”

Getting up from his seat, he lifted the plastic sheeting that had been draped over the navigator’s console for the last couple weeks and peeked at the display screen.

His jaw dropped open. A proximity alert!

Rushing to the open hatch that led from the bridge, he slammed his fist against the big red button mounted beside it.

Nothing happened. No klaxon blared. He hit it two more times before the button snapped free and rolled across the deck into a dark corner. Giving up, he grabbed a wrench off the deck, and with mighty swings, he beat the thing against a steel wire conduit that ran the length of the ship. Clang! Clang! Clang! Then he bellowed out the hatch and into the corridor beyond. “Red alert! Red alert! All hands on deck! All hands on deck!”

# # #

Ten minutes later, the plastic sheeting had been peeled from the navigator’s station, wadded up in a heap, and shoved in the corner where Arge had last seen the red alert button. Four grim faces watched the main display as a blinking red light continued to close on them.

“Can you hail them?” the captain asked.

Gise, the navigator, stared at her screen and shook her mane of oily black fur. She was a sturdy-looking gal in her forties with hips that barely managed to fit in any chair with armrests. She loved flirting with the captain—which would have been great, except that she only ever did it when his mate was in the room.

“The transmitter is down,” said Gise.

“Oh yeah,” grumbled Captain Arge. Engineering Chief Kestos had mentioned that it was broken weeks ago, but he was sure that fixing it was near the bottom of her kilometer-long list. Radio communication was seldom needed in deep space since there was no one to communicate with, and it would still be another eight months before they arrived at their destination and needed to coordinate docking plans.

“I’m modulating the ranging laser and bouncing it off their hull,” Gise explained, “if they ever notice, they should be able to decode the bitstream.”

“I’m receiving a transmission!” shouted Stitti. At twenty-five, Lieutenant Stitti was the youngest officer aboard the Greasy Smear—technically, the freighter was named JL-4917, but no one ever called it that.

“I thought the radio was broken?” grumbled the captain.

“Just the transmitter, sir,” said Stitti. “I’m receiving them just fine, but they can only hear us over the modulated laser. Putting it on-screen now.”

The four geroo stared at the image wide-eyed. The bridge they saw was clearly that of a working ship, not some playboy’s mega-yacht or cruise liner, but yet, the room behind the alien captain was the cleanest the geroo had ever seen. Even their boss, a krakun made wholly of piss and vinegar, and named Euritima—his nickname you can probably guess—video-linked them for updates from an office that was dusty and cluttered. In fact, the only truly clean surface that Arge could ever recall seeing were the pipe ends that Kestos polished clean right before she sweated them together. The Greasy Smear never even received new replacement parts—when it received replacement parts at all—they were always salvaged from some other ship.

The alien captain was a feline fellow, sitting ramrod straight and with carefully groomed fur. With eyes fixed on the screen in front of him, he spoke out of the side of his muzzle at one of the other officers.

“They’re geordian,” said Stitti.

Arge let his lips curl back in a sneer. There had always been bad blood between the geroo and geordian, and the captain doubted this encounter was likely to improve their relations. “Can you translate?”

“Yes, sir,” said the lieutenant, “I’ll try.”

“Can you pinpoint their location?” the captain asked.

“No, sir,” replied an officer to the captain’s left. “The transmission is via laser beam instead of radio wave. Our triangulation calculators were only designed to work on traditional communications.”

“Modulating a laser?” asked the captain, lifting an eyebrow. “Who does that?”

“I don’t know, sir,” replied the second officer. “But they should be able to hear you now, if you’d like to address them.”

“Very well,” said the captain, taking a moment to smooth down the fur on his chest. He cleared his throat. “Cloaked or hidden ship: I am Captain Neotny of the Golden Claws XII. As the first visible ship to arrive at the derelict freighter, I am claiming the legal right to salvage. You can just—”

“Cloaked ship?” grunted Captain Arge. “What in blazes are you yammering on about? We’re directly in front of you, you blind gits!”

The captain on the video link frowned. Without moving his eyes, he spoke out the side of his mouth once more. “In front of us? Could they be directly behind the derelict? Or docked to her hull, perhaps? Scan them again.”

Arge shook a meaty fist at the screen. “Are you calling my ship a derelict?” he shouted. “The Greasy Smear may not be the prettiest freighter in krakun space, but she’s my ship and you’ll be eating your insults as seasoning on all your teeth as I knock them down your throat! We are only stopped for a refit and will be on our way in less than twenty-four hours.”

“Thirty-six,” said the chief engineer under her breath.

“In under thirty-six hours!” Arge corrected himself.

“Maybe a little more.”

“Ish!” he shouted.

“Captain,” said the geordian officer on his captain’s right, “the geroo is lying. We have an unobstructed view of the derelict’s port nacelle and easily a third or more of it is missing. That ship is not operational.”

That comment brought Kestos to her paws with both fists raised. “The port nacelle may be a junker, but the starboard nacelle is … functional! You just have to steer a little to the right … to get where you’re headed.”

“Don’t let that geordian scumbag get you riled, hon,” said the captain as he put a paw on his mate’s shoulder. “Remember your blood pressure.”

The captain moved his face slightly closer to the screen, squinting. “Is that really a view from inside the derelict?” he asked. “You best wear your spacesuits. I wouldn’t trust her to hold an atmosphere.”

“Oh, now that tears it,” grumbled Captain Arge. “If any of your crew so much as sets a paw on the Greasy Smear, I’ll be tossing you out of an airlock, and you’ll be walking home!”

“And you, geroo,” sneered the geordian captain, “best get back aboard your ship before we dock. If I catch you trying to salvage any of my derelict, you’ll wish I had merely tossed you out an airlock.”

———

Reviewer's link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1KVh2qRyI7hMpqjB8dA7xeCYsy69VxP9l610VOzKVSic/edit?usp=sharing

Thoughts?