A self-challenge wherein I take a prompt found on the internet, and write whatever I am inspired to write. Expect to see a wide variety of genres - the only rules I've given myself is that what I write must be fictional, and it must, must, must be...
Anderson smiled, and spread her toes into the warm sand, and stared up into the sky, an endless blue. It was just the way Anderson imagined the sky would look on Earth. Anderson had never been to Earth, of course. Nobody had been to Earth in a century; not since the Temorian War had knocked the planet out of its orbit, sending it out beyond Jupiter. The result had been the destruction of the planet's natural satellite and earthquakes that tore apart half the landmasses. With the loss of their only planetary base in the system, the humans had lost the war. Last anyone had heard, the Temorians were still blockading the entire quadrant – there was no intention of letting the humans access the treasures that their ancestors had left behind.
"Shore Leave," Anderson breathed, luxuriating in the very concept. Saburra Alpha might not be the most popular planet on the tourist circuit – too far from the galactic core - but it got Anderson away from the Volucer. Anderson liked her job, and she liked the ship – but after seven solid months of space travel, she was sick of it. Sick of the smells of sweat and oil, the cramped quarters, the processed food. As far as Anderson was concerned, right now her cabin on the Volucer was purgatory, and Saburra Alpha was heaven.
A familiar, long-armed, hairy figure hove into Anderson's field of view, and she frowned. It wasn't that Anderson was surprised to see Jiggs; the chimpanzee-like ModApe was pilot-communicator of the Volucer, and he was on leave, too. It was Jiggs' outfit that Anderson was surprised to see. The pilot-communicator wasn't wearing his casual personal wear, or any of the three different colours of planet uniform available. Instead, Jiggs was dressed in the angry orange of a light spacesuit, the sort the crew usually wore when travelling to and from the Volucer on dropships. His data transducer was connected no just to his translation box but to the port on the suit that linked him into Volucer's comm net.
"Jiggs," Anderson asked, sitting up. The purple ocean heaved in the distance, but her attention was only on the pilot. "Aren't you supposed to be on leave for another two weeks?"
Jiggs frowned, lips pursed expressively. A long, spidery finger depressed a button on the box that hung around his neck, and the ape's answer emerged in the form of a stilted, electronic voice.
"No longer. We have new orders."
"We?" Anderson asked. She could not keep the disappointment out of her voice.
"I just received the communication. Volucer," Jigg's speaker crackled and hissed with his reply, "has a new mission. We are all ordered back to the ship. Perhaps you would tell Himself? There's something under cypher for him."
'Himself' meant the Volucer's Captain, Telor Corpan. Corpan liked to remind his command crew that on the tinpot planet he'd grown up on, out in the Terada Sector, he was Subarchon Telor Corpan, cousin to the ruling Planarch. Corpan was probably not actually an idiot – he had survived a palace coup as a teenager – but he definitely acted like one. Anderson, who had a degree in Symbology - old starmap codes, in fact - found dealing with Corpan painfully frustrating.
"Why should I do it?" Anderson complained.
"You're the highest ranking officer on leave, aside from him" replied the emotionless, electronic voice.
Anderson sighed, forcing herself onto her feet. "Fine, but you owe me."
Jiggs shrugged, flapping his wide, round ears. He did not bother to engage his translation mechanism.
"Don't give me that look!" Anderson complained – but she went to find her commanding officer.
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