Starfarers!

Chapter 1: Greasy Berlalarians - pt 1

Parked at a rather crooked angle, basking in the hot sun at the base of a windswept rocky outcropping, was a ship. It was not just any ship, because "ship" is quite a vague term that can be applied to too many things all at once. This ship was a spaceship, and as far as spaceships go, it was a bit ugly. Many have accurately described it as a rusty-brown fist, of the human variety, wearing a tiny monocle. If it didn't have the few odd asymmetric angles that it had, and if it were smoothed out and given a prettier coat of paint, it would be more like a raindrop. But instead it was a fist. A hard, brutal, two-storied, utilitarian fist. And one that looked like it had punched through quite a few walls, to boot.

It had a few off-white stripes here and there to accentuate certain angles and subtle curves, but they were mostly faded and burnt due to the kind of chaotic lifestyle that a spaceship typically has, what with needing to constantly endure various pressures, temperatures, and speeds in and out of atmospheres and dimensions that other non-space-related ships can only dream of. Along the side of this ship were the printed English words, in dirty-white, "Stranger Danger," even though the ship was typically just referred to as the Stranger by its bare-bones crew. Right beneath those words, in an equally-dirtied orange, was the exact same phrase translated and printed in High Tertuxtian, which was a much more popular language to understand than the common human language above it, even if High Tertuxtian did just look like a decorative honeycomb to the untrained eye.

Looking out from the little monocle-esque window in the face of the fist-shaped spaceship was a cat. Much like the ship, saying that a "cat" was looking out from the window was much too vague. So, to clarify, this cat belonged to the house-cat subcategory, the very same which has, in the past, been aggressively compared to twenty-first century domesticated canines. And the very same variety that is both small enough to hold but sometimes just too large if said cat were to suddenly invite himself up onto your lap without the lap owner's consent. More specifically, he was slate-colored, longhaired, green-eyed, round in face and body to the point of achieving near-perfect pear-shaped status, and he usually wore the expression of a typical house cat that could nearly grumble monotonously all on its own to anyone looking, "Feed me and get the hell out."

Of course, all of these features were typical, because this was indeed a typical-born house cat, so it only makes sense to then expect such features. What was atypical about this cat, however, was that this house cat was genetically modified after its typical birth, making him much harder to underestimate than he cares to be estimated. But he tends to hide his genetic modifications well enough to prevent any things of that sort to begin with in the first place. Also, he was very noticeably without a grounded house, which technically made him not a house cat but a "ship cat," if you will.

"Aw, damn," cracked the intercom on the ship's dash. It was a man's voice, and he didn't sound pleased. "No, no, no, no. Dammit! You got to be kidding me."

"You forgot them, didn't you?" asked a woman. She didn't sound pleased either. "You fucking forgot them. I knew this was going too well. There just always has to be some kind of fuck up, huh? Always some sorta'—oh, shit. Jim!"

The intercom squealed, popping at a high frequency it could hardly handle. A drawn-out, angered shriek of some beast then weighed in. Several blasts cut through the sound, pinging and whistling to a place unseen, turning anger to pain if not the other way around. More beasts made their call, more blasts pinged and whistled, answering nearly each one in a frenzy of auditory bile.

"Just fuckin' grab it and go!" shouted the man. "There's too many!"

The cat, using the intercom on the dash as his personal vibrating seat cushion, swiveled an ear back in slight annoyance at the loud sounds, but he only continued to stare out the window. From down a wide path littered with jagged black rocks, wind-thrown pieces of unidentifiable trash, and things that could have been relatable to shy scorpions with octopus limbs, two red humans came into view—one male, one female, both at their own peaks of physical perfection. These red humans, despite their obvious robust statures, were hunched and struggling to hurriedly drag between them a fairly small stone slab, no more than four feet long. They were red because of their matching red uniforms, and they matched because they were professionals, or at least they were advertised as such. As to why their uniforms were red in the first place, it was simply because "red" was the agreed-upon best color of all the colors they liked. In addition to agreeing upon that color, they also agreed upon the best possible accentuation, which was gold. But they only sported gold modestly, mostly being around their calves where their thick-soled boots ended, around their forearms where their knuckle-plated gloves stopped, around their waists where their pocketed belts sat, and around their most-preferred thigh where a handy holster hung comfortably.