Scene One
“Dieux de l’espace me sauver!”
Jacques wrestles with the power coupling cable from the new blasters. Nothing is working right: no bolts or even bolt holes appear to be had on the new hardware: instead he’s been looping bits of cable and a few spare belts around various parts in order to affix them to the fuselage. His zero-G suit’s faceplate is beginning to fog at the top. He is already in pirate space.
“GAAAADAAARGH!”
The hydrospanner slips his grasp, tumbling away into the void. He dives for it, touches it with is fingers, and now it spins away all the faster, and he is loose from the ship. He grabs his tether and start hauling himself back in as quickly as possible. Now a quarter of faceplate is fogged, and the bottom is flecked with spittle. Before he gets back to the hull a flashing light appears on the side of his HUD. If only he’d read the manual! It was red, though, and there was some sound as well. Could it be an interception warning? He pulled faster, grabbing the power coupling again. Maybe he had only moments to attach them! In desperation he shoves the terminal end into the fuselage socket without watching where his grip is. A loud humming sound pervades and then overwhelms his consciousness.
Initially bemused by the spectacle of a man trying to do some sort of mid-flight repair, however ineptly, the flash of light, the dangling spacewalker being pulled about, and the ship lurching into some kind of wooden juke and dive manoevers sends the watching pirate crew into such paroxysms of laughter that the ship is well away by the time somebody asks whether they should have tried to board it.
“Hell no,” says the captain. “Don’t want no part of that mess!”
More laughter.
Scene Two
“Excuse me, sir? Excuse me?”
Someone is tapping his foot. Jacques twitches away. And looks around. No-one. The side of the ship. He looks down. Standing on the space port floor below him a docker is tugging on his boot. “Sir? Can we speak to the captain of this vessel?” Jacques dangles helplessly at the end of his tether. As he slowly rotates he takes in the port id. He has arrived.
“I can introduce you to the captain. But first may I have a stepladder?”
The militiamen, somewhat distasteful sorts, judging by their furtiveness, offload the munitions crates by hand, babbling “Blasters & Ammopacks” jargon to each other. Jacques is too busy reading through the Slap-On™ Toolless™ Unicorp™ Junior Blaster Set instructions and mentally kicking himself to notice when they are finished. He tosses the instructions back in the box, and then kicks the box to the corner of the cargo bay in disgust.
This reveals a second, identical box that, in his haste, he had not noticed before. A sinking feeling strikes him. The panic, the Unicorp™ Echo, the voice recognition system…
“Non, non, NON!”
Scene Three
“Wee, wee, WEE.” The space lobster at accounts payable is not only unsympathetic, he somehow makes every mocking line he speaks in Human sound scatalogical.
“You most certainly ordered two. Here is the VoiceReceipt™.”
“Confirm” says a frail, tinny voice, paired with a flashing hologram of an order number and SKU. The lobster stops the recording deftly, “And now the other.”
“Confirm dammit! Mer-”, the lobster cuts the second recording off. A second order number floats in the air.
“But I did not pay…” “We have accepted your first installment!”
Jacques sinks deeper into his seat despondent. He flips open his Unicorp™ Claymore™ SpacePhone and stares at the Unicorp™ PartnerProgramApp. Maybe he can work this with a change of plans. The money is sunk…he’ll have to pay it eventually. He’s out credit whatever he does: if he pays it off he’ll be out for mission overhead, and the interest on that is steep. He thumbs through the parts menu. This is worth thinking through carefully, Jacques thinks, even if only to waste more of the clerk’s time.
“Hmmm”, he says, relishing the sound of mandible-clicking on the other side of the desk.
Jacques has 28.5 StarBits.
Jacques has on credit from the Unizone Parts for Partners Program
b20 on Unizone Blaster
Jacques will spend:
b10 on To the Front
b10 on weekly epic-mega-deal Communications Enhancement Software Kit
b5 payment against his Unizone debt
b0.5 on drinks at Duck’s for everyone to celebrate his lucky escape.
Scene Four
As it turns out, Jacques uneventful return voyage had been courtesy of his fellow light freighter pilots barging into pirate space blasters blazing and basically driving the remaining pirates into hiding for weeks after. Definitely worth filling a few rows of shot glasses! His head hurts, but at least his bowels are in order. And that second blaster set “Slapped-On™” like a charm. He was capable of learning!
General good feelings, rare and always retrospectively premature, flitted through his head as he gently slid the razor back and forth under the cheap paper. It was a smooth, certain motion, learned long ago from his mother. Slowly but surely the hull door yielded the odd poster intact. Deftly Jacques arranges it on the stiff card next to him, then a pre-cut mat over the top, and a panel of Plasti-glass™, a few swipes of the FrameGun™ (dial set to “Ornate”), and done. Jacques contemplates it at arms length for a moment, than marches it into the lavatory attached to the captain’s quarters. He turns a couple of times, assessing impact, and then his original edition of the Frontier Times takes its position of honor directly opposite the combo commode/bidet.
"Captain" Jacques Malchance The Entropy
