Page 1 of There’s an Alien Down My Chimney

Chapter 1

Ru’ol

Ignoring the empty navigator’s seat on my left, I clutched my hands tightly around the yoke of the Scintilla. I pushed away the voice in my head that insisted that this was wrong, that I was sitting in his seat. I shoved those thoughts aside, I didn’t need them, and I couldn’t use them when I was flying through a cluttered field of debris.

My scanners were lighting up with something intense, a power signature of something I hadn’t run across before. I was pretty sure I’d just hit jackpot as I steered in a zigzag pattern around broken pieces of ships, clusters of metal with jagged edges, and sometimes scuttled ships still in one piece. Piloting a small salvage ship into the scrap field near Strewn was no easy task, especially without a proper navigator to plot a course. Most salvage ships were sans nav so I wasn’t an exception, this job attracted loners of all kinds.

I couldn’t wait to figure out what I’d picked up on. I’d crossed this section of the massive scrap yard not too long ago and my scanners hadn’t seen it then. It was new, or it was something that had recently turned on, possibly because of the massive solar flares that had run rampant across this system yesterday.

My tail lashed angrily against the back of my seat just remembering being stuck on crowded, noisy, and often smelly Strewn. The shipyard master ran the place with a tight hand, it was after all the most profitable shipyard in the Zeta Quadrant. Ships coming out of this yard sold to each side of a war, each military force in the system. They said they were neutral, but slaves or gladiator fights were not tolerated aboard the station. That meant that entertainment had to come from other things, like gambling.

With how crowded the station had been yesterday, fights had broken out left and right. I still had a bruise just below my left horn from a flying appendage, though all I’d done was try to back away. My fighting days were done, I’d left the Kertinillian Army for a reason the moment my draft had been completed.

Whatever those solar flares had done, least of all wrecking havoc on the moods of people hiding inside the station, I was happy with this result. I considered the small bruise worth it if this power signature turned out not to be a fluke. Something generating this much heat was bound to be worth a fortune. Nowadays I lived for the thrill of such finds, my buyer was going to be so happy with an item like this.

I cleared the nose of the Scintilla around a broken rear half of a Long Hauler, the squat rear gaping open to the cold vacuum of space. There! I saw something small spinning slowly just ahead, blue glowing from the ends of the thick cylinder. That had to be it and I was carefully approaching, not wanting to steer in too close in case the thing blew up.

My scanners beeped in warning and I lowered my eyes for just a second to see what was going on. “Ah, fuck,” I said, reading the signature of a ship approaching. I knew that ship, and I knew who was in it. There was only one kind of outcome if we were both after the same thing in this field, a fight.

Flicking my eyes back to the strange cylinder floating in space, I was surprised to see that it seemed much closer than before. The signature of the Raptor streaked across my sensors, the pilot of the pretentiously named ship, flying recklessly through the debris. I could either bail and give up on this precious piece of salvage, or I could take a more risky approach to haul this item in.

The Scintilla didn’t have any weapons to speak of, just the kind of defense systems and lasers to help me out in the scrap field. The Raptor’s owner was a big bully, he thrived on scaring other salvage workers away from their finds. If it was something big and they did haul it in, he wasn’t above some good old intimidation in the flesh either. He hadn’t tried with me yet, and I was almost disappointed about it.

A little rivalry was normal among the salvagers, encouraged even, but no hard feelings once at the bar. That’s not how this worked, but Yatzel was a piece of work. I was just thinking that when my com pinged with an incoming signal. Oh, so he wanted to threaten me to back off, did he?” I laughed out loud as I slammed the answer button while engaging my magnetic hooks.

“What do you want Yatzel?” I said with a smirk, “Do you need directions back to Strewn? Are you lost or something?” I added, just to rile the bastard up. I could see him on my viewscreens now. The Raptor was a red-streaked salvage ship outfitted with drills and hooks like the Scintilla on the front, a bristling array of guns mounted on the top of the ship. If he’d asked me, I would have suggested he mounted some of that stuff on the sides, this just looked ridiculous. I couldn’t imagine the Strewn mechanics were happy with those modifications. Might be, he’d gone somewhere cheaper to get them done. That was actually more like, Yatzel was a cheapskate, and not well liked around these parts.

“Back off Ru’ol, this is my find,” Yatzel demanded in a rough growl. I imagined he spoke with spittle flying in every direction, his crooked teeth leaning out from behind his partially missing upper lip. Good thing I had the very best translator tech installed in my noggin, or I might not even be able to understand him. Huh, maybe that would have been better.

“Don’t think so buddy,” I quipped back, “I got here first so you’ll just have to skedaddle.” I waved my hands at the com screen as if he could see me, though I hadn’t engaged the camera for this call. My ship shuddered when the magnetic hooks clunked as they hit their target. Yes, as always, my aim was impeccable.

My tailed curled over my shoulder, flicking switches in preparation for a rapid departure. The hooks were gently reeling the strange object in, and soon Yatzel would realize that I’d already gotten hold of it. I was pretty sure he’d step up his tactics when he noticed. He was a fucking bully, and never outgrew that schoolyard phase. I didn’t know many bullies who did to be fair. Must be a complete inability for self-reflection.

Thinking back on the bullies that had regularly beat me up when I’d first started attending school back on Ker, I pulled back my lips for a snarl Yatzel couldn’t see. I hated bullies. Sure did show them when I grew two heads taller over the summer, didn’t make a nice soft target anymore. I never would again, so I always hit first.

“Yeah, well I claimed it first, so doesn’t matter. Leave, or I’ll make you leave,” Yatzel delivered, as promised. It even sounded like he’d smacked a fist into his palm. My sensors blared with an alarm, no, he’d probably slammed his meaty hand on the arm weapons button. “Stop that right now or I’ll blow out your engines. You’ll be for the scrap heap yourself then. That what you want, you stupid disfigured Kertinal?”

“Oh, sure, I love it out here,” I said. My mind was not so much on what Yatzel was blathering about, as it was on urging my magnetic hooks to pull in the object as fast as I dared. With those weapons aimed, I really needed to get a move on.

Engaging the rails attached to the belly of the Scintilla, I reeled the mag hooks to the back of my ship. Spinning her nose around as I did so, facing the Raptor head-on. I didn’t have any weaponry that could penetrate the ship’s excellent shielding, but I didn’t need to.

“I love it out here,” Yatzel said in a girly voice, a bad attempt at mocking me I’d guess. Perfect timing. With a flick of a switch, a small explosive charge launched itself, exploding just off the Raptor’s bow. Yatzel cackled with laughter, “That it? You missed you idiot!”

“Did I?” I said, just as the broken rear portion of the Long Hauler broke into two big pieces, then fragmented even more. The debris was sent spinning against the front of the Raptor, pinging off his shields and hampering his view.

I didn’t stick around to listen to his swearing, the object was three-quarters of the way in, and it had to be enough. Pressing on the yoke, I rapidly darted the Scintilla away from the Raptor and its predicament. Swerving around some more broken pieces of a ship, and then ducking the nose of the Scintilla beneath an intact Cruiser.

On the viewscreen displaying feeds from the rear of the ship, I could see the object being towed along on the mag hooks. I really hoped those were going to hold, I didn’t dare pull it in more, it would slam into the hull, a sure way to destroy the thing, and my ship.

The Raptor had already recovered, I could say what I wanted about Yatzel’s lack of character, he was a damn good pilot. For a moment, I thought he’d actually shot at me when a blue light started filling up the viewscreen. Then it flashed across all my sensors and alarms started blaring immediately. The Scintilla was tossed about like a tiny raft in rough water, I had no control any longer, and no sensors or sight to even see where I was going.

I thought I was going to die, crashing into a broken ship at crazy speeds, blown to bits by one of Yatzel’s oversized guns. I swear the guy had to be compensating. I should have claimed that piece of land on one of the many Kertinal worlds, homesteading in peace would have been much smarter than this. At least I’d see Ar’tax on the other side…

The blue light disappeared as quickly as it had appeared, receding from the front of my ship until I was gazing at a blue and green planet that was rapidly approaching. The planet grew bigger in just the second it took for me to look at my sensors and check their readings. “Error, unfamiliar location,” announced the nav console. I doubted that, but I didn’t have time to look at it now.

“Danger, approaching reentry at dangerous speeds,” the ship announced. Ya think? That planet was now filling up my entire viewscreen, my sensors were reading dangerous heat streaking around the nose of the Scintilla as we started burning up in this planet’s atmosphere.

The strange object was still dangling from the mag hooks, but it was no longer glowing blue from either end. “You did this to us, you stupid thing,” I said as I rapidly worked to stabilize our descent. I couldn’t avoid a landing, but I’d like to try not to die in the process. Thinking I was about to die once was one time too many for the day, I didn’t need to add another to the tally.