Chapter 228: Buying Trouble: The Incredible Humans!

Chapter 228: Buying Trouble: The Incredible Humans!

Captain Vexp was on the bridge reviewing the status panels with concern. Every trip, there was more and more amber and purple where white should be.

Redundancy was lost on several vital systems. They were literally one broken component away from being dead in space... or worse.

He pulled up their finances, and his concern deepened. Getting the ship to even the barest minimum of "safe" would burn through all of the meager headway they had managed to achieve and more.

They only had one ship. If it was lost...

He clenched his circular mouth to a pinhole and barely managed to avoid letting out a distressed whistle. Fortunately, few people on the ship or in their little colony knew how bad things actually were. Between keeping their one ship barely running, the pitiful profit margins they could manage, and the 'gifts' they had to give 'their friends'...

And then Beep decided to buy two new slaves...

He made a conscious effort to relax his expression and at least appear calm.

It wasn't Beep's fault. Vexp and Belq, Beep's mother and "captain" of the planetside colony, had made the decision to maintain the illusion that things were going much more smoothly than they actually were. Why deny the rest of them the sleep that they were robbed?

He closed his eyes and uttered a silent prayer to The Great Heap, begging for something, anything to help them.

His prayers were interrupted by the last person he wanted to hear from at that particular moment.

"Captain Vexp!" Beep exclaimed, "Captain Vexp!!!"

The captain excreted and swallowed a calming mouthful of saliva before he turned around.

"Yes, Beep?" he asked.

"Captain!!!" Beep said, bobbing up and down so excitedly he was actually bouncing, his tail plume fluttering like a child's. "The humans have completed their proficiency testing!!!"

At least he looks happy, the captain thought. Hopefully, they weren't a complete waste of money... and food... and oxygen... and water...

"Were they everything you hoped they would be?" The captain asked.

"No!!!" Beep said, fluting hysterically, "They're more!"

His tentacles trembling, he offered the captain a cracked data pad.

"This..." the captain said after a few moments, "This can't be correct."

"I double-checked!!!" Beep flute-giggled. "They 'broke' the test... in all areas... Engineering... Math... Science... Medicine... Piloting... Navigation... Electronics... Troubleshooting... They... They... Oh, my Heap!... They can do anything!"

"They are both ship pilots and navigators?" The captain said in disbelief. "They are both engineers?"

"And and and and..." Beep squeak-flute-giggled, "Look at the completion time!"

"Oh... Heap..." the Captain muttered, completely shocked.

"They both said that they completed 'part one' and were ready for the 'next module'!"

"Beep?"

"Yes, Captain?"

"Could you please bring both of them to the bridge, please?"

***

Upon their arrival, the captain congratulated the pair on their excellent performance and cleared the bridge.

He then pulled up the ship's status on the main screen.

"Oh, you have to be kidding me!" Alan exclaimed when he took a look at the ship's status indicators.

"Um... Yeah..." Grace said a few seconds later. "If you want to just sell us at your next stop, that will be great..."

"As you can see, we are in a bit of a predicament," The captain said calmly.

"You think?!?" Alan exclaimed. "Why the fuck did you let it get this bad?"

"We have no ship's engineer, and nobody on the crew is capable of performing anything but the most basic of repairs. I can do a little bit more, but not much. As such, we have to pay outsiders for each repair, and our finances are, to be honest, not good."

"They will be a lot worse when you lose your fucking ship, pal," Grace replied as she tapped at a series of icons on a control panel, causing an entirely new menu to appear, one that the captain didn't even know existed.

She looked back at him.

"Lucky for you, this ship is Federation technology... more likely a clone or salvage because this interface wasn't locked out. You really need to password protect this, by the way. You do NOT want this easily accessible."

The ship's screens were suddenly filled with data.

As the captain watched in awe, Alan and Grace paced back and forth, pulling up screen after screen and jabbering to each other in high-technobabble.

She smiled a soulless smile.

"What I do care about is the pathetic [email protected]'an and all of the other lesser races like you looking at a human and doing anything other than getting the fuck out of their way. It seems that a message must be sent, an example be made. You have exactly thirty seconds to beg my forgiveness and do exactly what I politely requested before your whole fucking species becomes one of those examples."

The xeno screamed in rage.

"We shall bathe the stars in the blood of your kind!" he shouted.

"Twenty seconds," Jessica smiled.

"I shall have all of your kind delivered to me, and I shall personally defile them!... I will..."

Jessica didn't reply as the xeno ranted and raved. She just looked at her mechanical wristwatch...

A few seconds later, she smiled.

"My ambassadors are already in position," she smiled. "They are quite the troupe... Enjoy the show."

The line went dead.

"[email protected]!" he screamed.

The richly engraved door to his office swung open as another of his kind, in beautifully decorated armor, entered and snapped to attention.

"Find where these pathetic humans hide and send our fleet! Teach them to fear the [email protected]'an... and this 'Jessica Morgan'... Capture her and deliver her to me... alive!" he screeched.

"Yes, Premier!" [email protected] shouted and turned to leave, colliding with another armored xeno who frantically sprinted into the room, causing a loud crash.

"Premier!" the new arrival shouted, his eyes wild with terror. "Over a hundred ships just entered the system! They... they said that someone called Kessicka Murrgoan told you that they were coming."

***

As the sun fell upon their world, the Premier's war room, previously filled with increasingly frantic and then hysterical activity, fell silent.

It was over...

It was all over...

Their fleet was either destroyed, seized by the enemy, or soon would be. Every station was overrun and in the hands of the humans...

Vomit now pooled upon the formerly pristine and polished tiles of the room because of what they had seen take place... what was still taking place...

...what was being transmitted across the entire system...

They didn't even have time to murder the captive humans. They were all on the trade stations. They fell too quickly.

Their ships couldn't stop them. Their troops couldn't stop them...

Nothing could stop them...

Nothing...

"P...premier..." his young nephew and a colonel in his army stammered, all color gone from his face, "We have just intercepted a transmission... They say that..."

He looked at the Premier with terrified eyes.

"They say that 'their hearts sing at the taste of our flesh'... Oh, Gods... They... They've just requested refrigerated transports..."

***

At roughly the same time, Captain Vexp sat in his quarters, sipping a celebratory cup of full strength pepper tea, and watched yet another ship system go back online.

Those humans...

They were unbelievable...

Nothing could stop them... Nothing... They laughed at problems that even supposed skilled professionals said were impossible, "fixed" components that everyone else said had to be replaced...

...and what they were doing with that "useless" robo-fac... Heap itself!

He smiled and prayed a prayer of sincere thanks to The Great Heap for their arrival...

Finally... finally things might just be turning around for them...

He felt... hope.

***

Author's note: Y'know... I'm starting to suspect that Alan and Grace aren't your average young Porkies...