: Prompting Needed_

Good Tragg

From Daily Quordle 343 (1/2/23): SURLY, TOUCH, WREAK, SORRY

Tragg shook the notepad at its captain, and she did everything she could to ignore it She was being what humans called surly. It knew that this night was supposed to be the one time she had this year to be left alone. But somethings were 'just to important to let rot,' its brood mother had always said, and it took that to its hearts. It shook the pad again, making the papers rustle just on the edge of its captain's pink, fleshy ear flap.

Ear lobe?

Ear... wing? Whichever. Tragg shook the pad once more, its chitinous plating clacking together with the effort. It held onto the doorframe with its other three arms and leaned as far into the cabin as it could. The captain sat at her desk facing the large thick pane of glass that separated them from the deep cavern of the quarry beyond. It was well into the night, and nothing could be seen past the glass save for the illusory reflections of Tragg and the captain. "Captain, please," it chittered. The pale green light on the captain's collar blinked in tandem with the small earring she had riveted into her upper cartilage. She turned her head a fraction. "These readings. They are important." She raised her shoulders in what looked like a sigh, but it couldn't be certain. The mannerisms of humans in various modes of distress seemed to be as diverse as they were exaggerated.

"Everything you bring me is labeled important," she said. The captain's mouth sounds were exceptionally sticky. Tragg spied a bottle of alcohol on the desk in front of her. The brown glass flickered in the oil lamps' lights and its contents steamed the window's glass. The odor that emanated from the container was no doubt strong to those with liquid-filled olfactory senses. Tragg could barely notice the density of the steam on its many sub-antennae.

"That is why I exist in this facility," it reminded her captain.

Captain Mar Ger-ett turned in her chair and the wooded joints of the seat squeaked. The sound was reminiscent of a hatchling's squeal and Tragg reflexively tensed up. It was suddenly flooded with visions of its nest at home. Its previous generation would care for the eggs well enough, it supposed. But this was the first time Tragg was far from its nest longer than a few Earth days. It ruffled its plates and shook the notepad again, this time flipping the edges of the paper to touch against the captain's wet mouth.

"You work here," she said, putting an odd emphasis on the word 'work', "because the Gethchian Syndicate needed proper representation in this mining facility because someone-" There was that odd inflection again. Tragg didn't know why the captain chose to drink that warmed alcohol, but in the morning, before they departed to their individual nests, it would have to ask that she not drink that while in the office. "-chose to build a goddamned nest six miles into a future quarry. So now here we are."

Tragg stood against the frame of the door. It held the notepad resolutely. Somewhere behind it, towards the mess hall, a loud cry of humans celebrating something drifted down the hall. "Captain, please."

"Fuck, fine, give it." She snatched the pad from Tragg's pincers and scanned the pages with the watery, glassy eyes of a human who wasn't paying attention. "First we sit through that damned strike up in Ohio and now I've got you lot to deal with." She slapped the pad down on her knee and glared up at Tragg. It could tell she was having a hard time focusing because her gaze shifted from each of its three eyes in a random pattern. "I'm damned glad to be the first female foreman here, Tragg. Shit, did you know they pay me half what the damned miners were getting up there? HALF. And now I've gotta babysit bugs." She picked up the pad again and scanned it once more. "What the hell is this?"

"It is the wage request of the new workers, Captain."

"I'm not your captain."

"You will note that the amount of coal purged from this land has risen, as well as the installed infrastructure-"

"The what?"

"Infrastructure, Captain." Captain Mar Ger-ett stared up into Tragg's face with eyes that were rapidly beginning to lose their traction. "The homes humans have offered to protect the uncovered nests."

The captain nodded. "Oh, right. Right, we've done good by you lot," she said. For some reason, she lifted one of her arms and waved an extended phalange at it. Cheers rose behind them again and this time the wordless cries were mingled with a few shouts of 'Happy New Year!'

The captain tilted her head at the neck – a most unsettling pose – and tried to see past Tragg's body. "That's right boys," she shouted. "The hell with eighteen seventy-three! Nowhere to go but up!" The responding calls to her denouncement seemed to be directed towards her, but not as an answer. The crew, too, seemed to be indulging in alcohol as well and thus were wreaking havoc in the way drunk humans did.

"The workers are demanding more, too, Captain. I brought this to you because I fear their greediness will deny you a fair wage yourself."

The captain peered at the pad. "Tragg."

"Yes, Captain?"

"How in the bluest blazing fresh fucks am I supposed to read this?" She held up the pad to wave it in front of one of its eyes and tapped the page with her other arm's phalanges. "It's written in bug. Uh, whatchacallit... Gethchian." She thrust the pad back into its still outstretched pincer and spun abruptly to grab her drink. She then continued to stare out her darkened window. Her posture slumped as if some support structure within her had broken.

It paused for a long moment, letting the jubilation of the crew down the hall fill the space between them. "Sorry, Captain. These numbers. They are acceptable?"

"Please," the captain said around the lip of her bottle. "Just get the hell out. Tell the boys I wish them a Happy New Year's." Tragg took a few clicking steps back and turned to leave back the way it had come. Behind it, the sound of the door to the captain's cabin shutting slapped against the small corridor. It looked down to its math with a possible sense of satisfaction.

"Happy New Year," it chittered to the 'boys' in the galley as it slid past the open door. "And... the hell? To eighteen seventy-three?"

The 'boys' cheered and raised steaming cups of alcohol towards it in response. Yes, Tragg was filled with satisfaction.

Good Tragg.