The Inner Ring (gxg)

Chapter 20

Among the three of them, Brody, Anton, and Lena brought back over 200 of the weapons from the storage room they had found, sinking Vanessa's spirits. While that trio unloaded their weapons and stored them in one of the cargo pods, Vanessa, Pepper, and Miles unloaded their assorted items from the bunk room for everyone to examine before packing them away.

"We'll have to see if we can find an alien Rosetta stone so we can decipher some of this writing," Brody murmured as he examined the fibrous sheets. "It could help us later, as we saw some writing that looked to be on signs near hatches too."

"Yes, that is something to be on the lookout for!" agreed Anton jovially. His mood was jubilant after the first day of exploration in the ship gave him what he would consider a rousing success. "I must say, it is a relief to be able to bring back all of this. I was worried that we might find nothing in the ship. The weapons alone could fund another trip!"

"That isn't a relief," countered Lena. "I'll tell you relief. I was seventeen, a senior in high school and I was late, if you know what I mean. So, I take a pregnancy test, and it comes back positive, I was freaking out, I couldn't handle having a kid that young! I head to the OB/GYN to get a blood test, and there are two other girls there with me in the waiting room."

"Friends of yours?" Brody interrupted.

"Shut up, no. Anyway, one of the girls was a redhead, and she was all excited. She claimed she was having a girl for sure because she was on top when they conceived. The other girl was a little less excited, evidently her boyfriend was on top, so she was convinced that she was going to have a boy and she doesn't like boys. Well, unless they're fucking her of course."

"Of course!" snickered Vanessa.

"Well, at that point I put my thinking cap on," Lena smirked, pointing to her blonde hair. "And I felt such a relief, because I knew that if I was pregnant, I was having puppies!"

"Oh my god!" Pepper chortled, holding on to a handle while she shoved Lena's shoulder and causing the blonde to roll into Miles.

"You can't have puppies!" Brody complained.

Lena looked at him, shocked. "Don't worry Brody, it is a delayed action joke. You'll get it later. Us blondes are allowed to make fun of themselves."

"Well, I don't care. But these clothes are going to be perfect for puppies," Brody commented, holding up one of the aliens' children's outfits. "People would pay a mint to outfit their dogs in these little alien outfits!" he added with a chuckle.

His comment was met with silence.

"This is where you tell us you're kidding, right?" Vanessa was disgusted with what he'd said, as were the rest of them. Anton just looked down with a frown.

"Oh, come on, we don't have to turn them all over. I bet there are a ton of outfits in there that we could sell." He continued.

"So, is this mission now all about making money? Should we just accept that now, or are we interested in more than that?" Vanessa snarled, looking between Brody and her father.

"Of course, it isn't about money!" Her father replied sternly. "But we do have to recoup the investment made for this journey."

"Then can we at least stop glorifying the profits? We found a lot of items today that could help unlock an entire alien culture and help us identify where they're from and how to go meet them. I would think that is at least as exciting as how much we can make on guns and selling puppy suits."

"That is a lot of money!"

"Brody, shut up," Pepper said. "You're acting like we just went shopping at the mall instead of exploring the inside of a fucking alien space craft. We didn't bring all this back to act like kids."