Blast Off! Short Spurts of Sci-Fi

Dirty Water in Space

A collection of microfiction for @BeyondSol Word of the week where stories are one comment (2000 characters) long:

17 April 2020: Word of the week: Mission

I simultaneously pressed my left thruster forward and the right back to bring myself to a stop outside the window of the NASTY WATER.

"What kind of name is that for a ship?" I said & heard the answering snicker of Pol through the headset.

He was hovering three clicks away in our TriStar. It may have been the fastest ship on the market, but it was still detectable by radar, & Nasty Water had an excellent radar system.

"Ow!" I said as a small asteroid - the only reason I was able to get this close - collided with me.

I lunged forward to grab onto the window seam before I could get blown off course - & blow the whole MISSION! We'd been tailing these sky pirates for weeks, waiting for the opportunity to get close enough to plant the tracking device.

Before another asteroid could hit me, I hit the button to extend the prong with the paper-thin device. I lined it up with the window seam's bolt & hit the button to activate it's magnet. My mind imagined the small click it made as it stuck in place, but I didn't imagine the swelling of my heart in satisfaction.

I laid a hand on the hull, about to push off, when I glanced in through the window. "Black Holes take me!" I swore.

"What?" Pol asked, his voice tense & alert. I reached up & activated my helmet camera. "I'm sending images through now. That cargo they picked up in Mycentia... they aren't smuggling crates of bino-combusters. The intel was muddled. They're smuggling dinosters."

My heart sank to see the small, grey creatures lying listlessly in open crates across the dim room. They were docile, easy prey. Trading them had been banned centuries earlier when they'd almost been hunted to extinction. Their planet had been cordoned off & protected heavily by the Coucil of Galaxies while the dinosters slowly repopulated.

Pol sighed heavily. "This means the corruption has extended into The Galactic Guard. Get out of there, Nye."

I pushed off, ducking an asteroid. "Things just got a whole lot more complicated."

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25 April 2020: Word of the Week: Sector

@BeyondSol Static crackled over the comms. "Cap, that meteor took out our antennae. I can rig something up, but I can't guarantee it'll have the same range."

Captain Marks leaned on the porthole, alternating keeping an eye on the mechanic Halder and gazing out at the twinkling stars that never got old, not even after 5 decades in deep space. As far as she knew, they were the only ship in this SECTOR, so there wasn't a chance to ask anyone for spare parts. She pressed the button to reply. "It would be good to have something in place before we make the hyper-jump back. Even short range to broadcast our identity. We don't want them thinking we're a hijacked ship."

Halder groaned & turned to the porthole. The Captain could see her shaking her head in disbelief inside the helmet. "What's with those military nutjobs, anyway? It seems a bit extreme to seal all the holds with MaxiSeal & blast off the door. Turns the ship into garbage."

But Halder was young. Hadn't seen the enemy sneaking in on hijacked ships and pouring from the holds to decimate entire stations or colonies. Captain Marks had been just a little girl at the time. She'd learned to shoot before she'd learned to read.