Tevun-Krus #55 - May The 4th Be With You: The Space Opera Special

No Moon - A Short Story by @jinnis

No Moon

By jinnis

"That's no moon!" Ben chimed. Smartypants. So much was obvious. Moons don't normally drift alone in space, they tend to stick to planets like biloins—or flies, if you're human—to turd. If they don't, they're not called moons.

But Ben is human, and it's common knowledge they're slow. No wonder with only a single heart to pump blood to this tiny, soft brain of theirs. I'm fond of Ben anyway, and he's a reasonably gifted engineer.

I adjusted the exoscanner to get a better view of the pale sphere in our projected path.

"Listen, squishybrain, instead of dealing out platitudes, what about checking our landing thrusters? I'd hate to live through a reissue of that touch down on Getaway 7."

It's always a sight watching human cheeks blush. Hrrovr's emerald head scales tingled in barely suppressed laughter while a purple-headed Ben disappeared down the hatch to engine. My remark was unfair, of course. The infamous landing I referred to hadn't been his fault alone.

Topsy-turvy, our battered tin can, had been in dire need of an overhaul for a while. Duty as a freighter, messenger, scout, and other things in the sparsely populated outer spiral arm of the galaxy has this effect on ships.

Our mixed bunch of a crew doesn't mind. We all have reasons to keep away from denser populated areas, be they dominated by SU, the Sentient Union, or AIP, the Alliance of Independent Planets. The main political forces dance around each other like binary stars, or sandworms on spice deprivation. This thankfully leaves them too occupied with politics to care for unattached rangers and leaves us free to roam the galaxy's backwaters, happy as comet-gobblers.

That day, we reached Getaway with our long-suffering starboard thruster failing. Had to bring her in manually on the main drive. Ben did quite a good job at the engine while Aalyxh worked her yuuol telepathic marvels to guide us through approach. She's the best helms-woman I've sailed with—unless she's distracted by smells. As every spacer knows, yuuol double noses are a tricky affair: a wrong fragrance and their gifts run awol.

Anyway, right above the Getaway landing pad, when everything looked peachy, Hijac, our resident karjkan, released a flowery fart of relieve. From there, things went down the wormhole. Aalyxh lost concentration, Ben overcompensated, the Topsy skidded sideways towards the city, and—well, suffice to say Hrrovr and I spent a copious amount of time and credits with the relevant authorities.

To convince the Getaway judges our unannounced landing in their treasured mud-wrestling arena was a mere accident proved tricky. They chose to see it as a political statement against local traditions.

At least, Hijac, Aalyxh, and Ben had cleaned the slug-infected mud from the hull when we were released on probation. I've never seen the trio working so harmonic, unified, and mud-drenched. Perhaps we should get arrested more often.

Since this incident, we keep the proverbial twelve parsecs between our ship, Getaway, and its outposts.

But I digress. I wanted to tell you about our encounter with the infamous no-moon. When Ben announced all thrusters clear, Aalyxh took the Topsy in a wide bow around the white sphere. Comm cackled and Ben's melodic voice filled the bridge. I swear, the man could have made a career as an opera tenor on Scala station, but that's another story.

"Thing looks like a giant golfball."

Hrrovr's ventral claws moved over his screen and called up a picture. Squishybrain had a point. The depressions lining the no-moon were distributed in neat, regular rows. Hrrovr hissed his approval with rattling scales.