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The Grumpy Captain
Sunlight flashed across the nose of the Forty-Five Dancing Girls as she wrestled with the spatial currents, trying to keep her keel even in a nor’norwesterly course going negative on her z-axis.
Unable to combat the strength of that current, her captain gave a gusty snort of exasperation before releasing the ship's wheel, allowing the spokes to spin to starboard. There were shouts as his crew ran about, hauling in this line and letting loose that one until the ship ran before the solar wind, her sunsails puffing wide like golden wings above her three masts.
“Look lively there!”
The Captain was a squat brutish creature. His angry shout sent the desperate thugs of his crew scrambling to catch the line that had slipped its clamp and was now flapping madly about.
Denser than the core of a white dwarf! The captain thought in disgust. When would these layabouts start to act like a proper crew?
Captain Arol Nask was of that most disreputable alien race, the Jerz. Born on Mars to a slave mother, he had managed to sink even lower than his birth by taking up slavery as his own profession.
Now, his thoughts were grim as he watched the end of the rope whip about. Last trip to this corner of the galaxy, we barely came off with a profit! He scowled at the remembrance of his negotiations with the planet leaders, Those uppity little barbarians have no idea the cost of shipping raw slaves all the way across the galaxy.
The crooked purpose of Captain Nask’s ship was somewhat at odds with her beautiful design. She was modeled after an old ocean liner—complete with a real oak hull, a genuine ship’s keel salvaged from some ocean vessel, and varnished in space sealant for airtight integrity. Nask took it all in with a glance that soothed his angry nerves just a trifle.
Topside her deck was all smooth wood planking and she sported a twelve-spoked pilot wheel—fully digitalized of course, but nevertheless lending credence to the look of a real planet-bound vessel. Her navigational computer for interstellar travel was fully voice-activated to eliminate the need for buttons that would have marred the façade, and a viewport stretching from stem to stern made her space-worthy and formed the nose of the ship, allowing an optimum view of the star systems that lined their current course.
As Nask once again gripped the helm a white puff of steam released from the double steam engines. The soot-bots scurried about, stoking the boilers below as he prepared to come about for a second run at the planet that was his target. The bow of the Forty-Five dipped slightly, giving him a brief but alluring view of his sought-after destination. The blue-green planet lay spread out below him with hints of wispy clouds skirting across the atmosphere like fleecy sheep.
He hauled back on the wheel, ignoring the luffing sails, until he heard the ship’s bell chime. That was the signal that they had reached optimum orbit over this planet known locally as Earth. Their orbit steady now over the landmass below, he disengaged the manual drive and told the computer to anchor them steady in orbit. Excess steam from her engines puffed into a small cloud that disguised them from below as the crew raced about, scaling the ratlines to stow her sails.
He gave a hurumph that shook his massive girth, watching his crew from the poop deck, his arms akimbo.
Well, I’m not playing their game—not this time. Oh, he would meet his usual dealer, and pick up several of these Earthlings that made such choice slaves on the Asterope market. Paying for them, however, was no longer on the agenda.
Pirate Ship
Lissa Phelps awoke with the sun coming in through a crack between her curtains. It splayed across her white sheets in a glow of warmth and welcoming, but she wrinkled her nose and tried to sink back into blank oblivion. Just as the present deleted from her mind and she felt a dream touching the corners of her consciousness, Stephanie’s alarm went off.
With a wailing complaint at this injustice, Lissa sat up in bed and looked imploringly at her dorm mate’s unmoving figure across the room.
“Steph, shut it off,” she begged, rubbing sleep from her eyes while she suppressed an agonized yawn.
Stephanie Wu, her Taiwanese dorm mate and best friend (damn her) silenced the alarm with a flailing gesture at the large black snooze button, rolled over and fell back to sleep.
“Typical,” Lissa muttered. She extracted herself with difficulty from her twisted sheets and started her morning routine.
Lissa, Stephanie, and two hundred forty-six other adolescents comprised the student body of St. Lucia’s Academy for Preparatory Students—a posh, two-story boarding school tucked into the Swiss Alps, “…where no boyfriends can find us.” At least, that was Stephanie’s immovable estimation. After six weeks of attendance and her own assessment of the resident male population, Lissa could only agree.
She watched now as Stephanie hauled herself from bed and pulled a t-shirt over her small curves. As her eyes were still mostly closed she stumbled over a pair of sneakers in the middle of the floor. Lissa watched her hunt through the mess of clothing and shoes scattered everywhere. She winced as Stephanie tossed a discarded pair of shorts from the day before onto a pile of fresh but unfolded laundry in the corner.
“Your jeans are on the chair by the desk,” Lissa pointed out helpfully, “and your left sandal is on the window ledge.” Stephanie already held the right one in her hand. She grunted ungraciously and found the sandal, tossed both onto her unmade bed and slipped into her jeans.
Stephanie was quite Lissa’s physical opposite—curvy where she was slim, and tended to leave articles of clothing and makeup scattered everywhere. It was Stephanie, with her sleek jet black hair and almond eyes, who was popular with the boys. Lissa was a slender girl, the taller of the two, with inquisitive green eyes and a soft face that smiled easily. Despite their differences, the two girls were inseparable.
Nearly an hour later, Lissa and Stephanie sat beside each other at matching ugly gray school desks, both with their attention split between trying to catch some sense of Mr. Zuch’s class on economical methodologies, and dreaming about what they would do when the bell released them.
Lissa’s mind was bent in all directions by the sort of distraction only a school set in the Swiss Alps can afford. She loved to hike and was a born rock climber, and sitting in first period listening to Mr. Zuch go on about economics was not at all how she would want to spend an autumn afternoon. Her mind drifted as she stared at the scene overlooking the mountains outside a nearby window.
“A service is a commodity as it results in an increase of useable goods,” Mr. Zuch declaimed, “Who can give me an example of that?”
It was a day Mr. Zuch always referred to in later years as the moment he taught Lissa the definitions with which she effected economic change across the galaxy. But in actual fact, Lissa was far too distracted to note his speech about the economic strangulation of Eastern and African culture by Western banking before the advent of the international merger into World Government.
In fact, she was so intent on memorizing the line the mountains made across the sky that the bell rang without her noticing. Stephanie had to tug on her shoulder to get her moving toward the door. Hurriedly, Lissa gathered up her notes and exited after her friend into the hallway and out to the terrace.
“For the love of shoes, what was he going on about?” Stephanie groaned, stretching her neck as she dug in her purse. At last she pulled a round token from within and tapped it against the soda machine. The price flashed.
“Yeah, yeah—I accept!”
The machine gave her a cheerful acknowledgement and a can dropped into her waiting hand.
“That machine is so slow,” She muttered, mainly for her own benefit as Lissa was certainly not listening. The other girl stared out across the terrace at the mountain panorama.
It was a bright autumn day and the sky was a blue bowl across which a few fluffy clouds scurried. As she munched on a bag of chips and a grilled cheese sandwich,