the Alienbutt Saga

The Alienbutt Saga chapter 1

Chapter 1.

The taxi years.

INTERSTELLA NEWS CHANNEL 9. NEWS FLASH.

The price of coffee beans rocketed to a new high today as news of a bad crop in the Rata system came to light. Rata is the sixth largest producer of coffee in the galaxy and the news triggered large scale rioting in several systems that depend on Rata coffee for their supply. The Coffee Houses based on Earth have moved to quell fears of rationing in a statement made to the Federation Senate.

Alienbutt had grown up on Sloppystool dreaming of following in his fathers footsteps and being a taxi driver, it was a family tradition going back seven generations. Also for someone with no formal education it was a fast way to earn the money needed to enter the Federation Academy to become a starship commander. Piestoff Alienbutt had big plans which true to form hadn't worked. Because of several centuries spent in suspended animation he was now too old to enroll in the academy by about six hundred years, but he did get his taxi. The interstella mk5 taxi cab had originally been designed as a military drop ship. It could hold up to ten persons and had the ability to be launched from large deep space troop ships safe at the edge of a system and then fly to its target planet and was able to fly in the planets atmosphere. Over a million had been built by the Chrom military for a war against the Ji Hunters, a race of barbaric intergalactic hunters renowned for causing trouble . As the Chrom massed to attack, the sneaky Ji Hunters nerve gassed the entire fleet ending the war before a Chrom managed to shoot a gun in anger. The captured fleet was then sold off by the Ji and an enterprising fellow bought some of the drop ships and put taxi meters in, they quickly became the cab of choice for the short distance cabbies with over twelve hundred thousand now flying around "for hire."

So Piestoff had achieved half of his childhood ambition but quickly he had set himself a new goal as the reality of his life set in. This time he set himself a real grown up goal and not some boyhood fantasy and the first part of his plan was to be anything else apart from a taxi driver. How he hated his bloody taxi, always in the repair bay having worn out parts replaced in a never ending cycle of expenses. When the stupid thing did work he would spend his days and nights picking up customers who were not interesting and full of the joys of space but more often unhappy and dull, all eager for their next fix of coffee.

He had expected to be trawling the galaxy going from one system to the next, dodging space pirates and asteroid storms. Instead he got shoppers heading for the off planet retail parks and hyper markets with the odd job to the hyper jump station, where you could be on the other side of the galaxy in a matter of minutes for about five years Alienbutts annual income. The invention of the hyper jump had overnight destroyed the interstellar business class taxi business. Now it was all local work, you never left the system.

Sloopystool had changed so much from his childhood days. It was now the largest producer of coffee in the universe and social housing was a distant memory. Five hundred years before, humans had entered space and brought coffee with them. To almost all other species coffee was highly addictive, even the smell of it could get some species hooked. The coffee revolution had quickly made humanity the major player in the universe within fifty years, with earth companies taking over almost everything worth buying.

Sloppystool's climate was so similar to earths that now 95% of the planets landmass was turned over to coffee production. The population of the planet now lived in giant floating cities situated on the planets oceans and most worked on the coffee farms or associated companies. With the off planet shopping centres Sloppystool had become a major trading centre where people could make a fortune if they didn't become addicted to coffee which was now used not just for drinking but in foods, chewing gum and even perfume. Almost the whole universe was a captive to the coffee companies marketing departments. Only humans, the aloof Ick empire and a certain alien race with 4 arseholes were immune to the little brown bean.