Trena - Ninth planet of the Per-Altian System

Theta Quadrant - Milky Way

Earth Date: October 31, 2050

“Tell me Captain Estrella, is it true what they say about Earth girls?” His glass clanked against mine as his third eye wandered down and away from my eyes.

“What? That Po-Wellian Ale makes us do regrettable things?” I answered as I downed the perfectly smooth frothy drink, chugging my mug back slowly while never losing my smile or eye contact. 

I wasn’t entirely lying. If it weren’t for Po-Wellian Ale, I might be the best fighter pilot in the galaxy, some say. Instead of a spice trader looping from shitty system to shittier system. The part I was lying about was acting as if six mugs could have me making a bad decision like coming up to this creep’s unit above the bar.

“Take off your jacket and get, how do you say…comfortable,” the arms dealer from the planet Trena insisted as his blue skin began to glow, which meant he was getting aroused and I was running out of time. 

I peeled off my leather flight jacket that was emblazoned with my ship’s logo, The Paradox, and flung it across the length of the small unit, landing somewhere over near his bed. I think it was a bed, it hung from the ceiling and turned slowly as the fan blew gently against it. 

I tied my long black hair with a twist-tie and pushed the table separating us to the side as the glass screeched across the metal container surface, pinning his legs to his chair by piling my knees on top of them. His hands ran down the course of my backside, all four of them, as I leaned my face close to his. I reached into my right front pants pocket and retrieved a small black sphere, and wove it into one of the many hands that were slithering against my body.

“What is this?” He asked in a voice that sounded like he had a mouthful of marbles while holding the sphere up to the light between his tentacles. It was dull and smooth, an old Earth toy from my Abuela’s generation that they called a Magic Eight Ball.

“Oh, that?” I answered him, “That is a neutron star whose mass collapsed into the size of an object that fits perfectly in the palm of your hand.” 

The Trenatian arms dealer stopped moving all of his slippery tentacles across my body and focused solely on the item in his third hand, or fourth depending on where you started counting from. I removed a small remote I had found at an antique store, I think it was used to turn on home ceiling fans back in the day, with my other hand and slowly climbed off of him backwards as he remained silently seated, careful not to breathe too loudly.

“I’m sure you know what this is?” I asked as I shook the remote gently toward him, now standing a solid eight feet away from his grasp. “One wrong move and my thumb slides ever so slightly forward on this remote and your body will be pinned under the weight of a star.” 

That sure as hell got his attention.

I began rummaging about the small unit, tossing open every container I came across and kicking open anything that had a lid while whats-his-name sat in frozen terror, stuttering in his native tongue and staring at the object in his palm.

“You’re ro-robbing me?” He asked with a certain innocence at the end of the question mark. I never said he was the brightest guy I’d hooked up with.

“No, I’m not robbing you, that would be immoral,” I answered, appalled at the accusation hurled in my direction. “I’m merely taking something away from you by force that I believe would be better off with me instead.” 

“That is the literal definition of robbing someone,” the apartment’s A.I. assistant spoke over the unit’s intercom.

“Shut up! Nobody asked you.”

I stood in the unit with every container busted open and ripped down to the floor peering over my shoulder to the back wall. I un-holstered my sidearm and aimed it directly at the back wall with my right hand while staring at Mr. Handsy who was still wrestling with his own dilemma. 

His third eye never blinked. I turned my firearm to face the opposite wall, still nothing. I pointed my weapon straight above us to the low ceiling and then I got the reaction I was hoping for.

“Don’t shoot, don’t shoot! You’ll kill us all for god sakes.” He stammered as his third eye twitched. I re-holstered my sidearm and ran my hand along the surface of the ceiling until I came across a small uneven crack. I punched the center of the tile squarely until it popped off and fell to the ground. Reaching inside the opening, I retrieved a black metallic cube about two inches by two inches in diameter that resembled a Rubik’s Cube, another Earth toy. Except that it had no moving or brightly colored squares. 

“You’re lucky I found this. Plan B was to chop off your genitals until you told me where it was.” I was bluffing…I had no idea where his genitals were. “Toodles, Jy-rex” I said, backing away from him and fiddling with the door handle behind my back, keeping my eyes on him.

“It’s Kel-Far.” He interrupted my escape.

“What’s Kel-Far?” I asked as my face said it couldn’t be any less interested.

Sweat continued beading down his forehead making all three of his eyes squint as he answered, “My name is Kel-Far.”

“Yeah, that’s literally what I just said,” my shoulders shrugged at their maximum output.

“Will I ever see you again?” He asked, again with the sublime innocence that was almost adorable, if it weren’t so goddamn lame.

I hurried back to him, and climbed across his lap grabbing his wrist holding the Magic Eight Ball, shaking it vigorously as he shrieked slightly and slammed his eyes shut.

“All signs point to yes!” I answered, reading the floating message inside the Magic Eight Ball and then slid back off of him with a smirk and raced out of the unit and down the stairs, skipping four at a time.

“Get to the ship, get to the ship, get to the ship,” I hummed the words under my breath as I reached the ground floor, losing myself in the crowded streets of the market bazaar.

“Pinche cabron!” I swore aloud in Spanish which meant I was extra pissed at myself after realizing I had left my bomber jacket back at what’s his fuckin’ name’s apartment. I knew if I went back to get it, there was a decent chance he had figured out by now that the orb he was gripping onto was only capable of stubbing a big toe if dropped onto, at best.

I had what I came to this disgusting planet for and could sell it for enough credits to cover the cost to repair my ship’s accelerator, not to mention fuel to get home and at least three more hops to a much better and cleaner system. I had been slumming in this quadrant for the past three months, and nearly forgotten what it was like to interact with beings who didn’t act like unneutered dogs.

“My Abuela gave me that leather jacket,” I gritted the words through my teeth to myself, spinning my body around through the thick crowd of the bustling market-goers. 

Besides, it was the only thing I owned that smelled like Earth.

This time I would play it safe and cause a distraction at the front door while I climbed up the fire escape ladder. I paid a local street kid what I was fairly certain was the equivalent of enough money to afford him some exotic Trenatian chocolate, or it could’ve been enough to purchase a street-glider. These coins were really hard to figure out with all of their presidents looking exactly the same.

I gave the street-boy directions to go and knock on the front door in case my suspicions were correct. I asked a gentleman with a long trunk that he was using to lift boxes that weighed more than me over his head to boost me up the ladder’s first rung. My glasses superimposed every alien being’s type, native language and home planet over their faces, but there was no way I was gonna be able to pronounce this one, so I referred to him as “Trunky” and thanked him kindly halfway up the fire escape. 

From my vantage point I could see halfway into the unit and the front door with the street kid knocking and shouting loudly as I had paid him to do. No such luck at the porch, which likely meant he was still pinned under the Magic Eight Ball he thought was a collapsed star. Or…he saw me double-back and was waiting to ambush me.

The fact that I went back meant I had to believe it was the first option and not the second.

I slid through the air vent that was off the fire escape and into the apartment hallway, just outside his pad. I crept slowly along the corridor as I could hear thumping sounds of alien music pumping out of the unit across the hallway. It was music from a rock band from one of the moons of Kentomar that I saw in concert, while tripping balls on some local tree bark. It was better than any Earth concert I had ever attended…I think?

I knelt at the front door and pulled out my lock pick, gently sliding it into the door lock, before the neighbor’s door swung open and the muffled rock music blared uncontrollably in my face, causing me to drop my lock pick.

“Jesus Christ,” my startled shriek was drowned out by the music as I spun around to see a Kentomarian exit the next door unit and stumble down the hallway rambling about finding fuel for his mind.

I looked for my dropped lock pick, but realized it was the same color as the metal flooring. The moment I lowered my entire head to within an inch of the floor to find it, a blaster shot out a hole the exact same size of my head, where my head coincidently just was. I rolled into the next unit where the music was coming from as the door was left slightly open. The blast came from inside the unit which meant that Kel-Far had figured out the Magic Eight Ball was a dud and was waiting to take my head off.

I guess it was the second option after all.

My blaster was in my firm grip before I knew it, returning fire and obliterating Kel-Far’s metallic door as the stoned-out inhabitants of the unit across the hallway watched me lying on my back firing on repeat.

“Thanks,” I said, snatching an energy blast drink out of the hand of the stoned-out-of-his-gord alien metal rocker, before racing down the apartment’s hallway and chugging the entire can.

I knew this energy drink brand well, used it when trying for a personal best in my workouts and when I had a penalty throw playing Teverian Dak Ball before having to quit from too many concussions. This juice was potent as hell but I only had less than a minute before its effects expired. I only needed it for one blast of excess energy, but I had to make it to the rooftop with Kel-Far hot on my ass.

He stopped blasting up the apartment hallway as I raced up the fire escape, which meant he was coming up the main stairs to meet me on the rooftop. No worries, I had my eye on the rooftop door as I raced at twice my normal speed toward the rooftop’s edge. 

“C’mon, c’mon, c’mon…DO IT!”

My motivational speech to myself worked as I leapt from the eight story building and landed on the building that was about twenty or thirty tan-tans in length (a Teverian fighting staff).

“OOOMPH!”

My breath kicked out of me as I rolled onto the new building and raced up the ramp of my ship that had landed while I was in mid-flight.

“Gunderson! Get us out of here now,” I shouted to my second in command.

“Please specify a destination,” he replied.

“ANYWHERE but here, you fuckin’ worthless robot.”

It’s cool, we’d been together for a really long time and have a working relationship that allowed us to dispense with pleasantries. 

“This ship’s navigation system does not engage without a destination and you have made it crystal clear that I am NOT allowed to manually operate—

“Don’t move,” the deep gravely voice said as it dawned on me that not only had my ship not lifted off, but the ramp was still down. Also, Trenatians were really good jumpers.

“Kel-Far! Is it too late for that kiss?” I asked with my hands raised over my head as his blaster jabbed into my lower back.

I guess the Magic Eight Ball is never wrong.

“The cube…hand it over, now!”

“Ok, ok. Here it is, no worse for wear,” I turned to face him and paused before extending my hand forward so that he could retrieve it. “I have a buyer that will pay triple what you can get for that thing here in this shitty system.”

“This shitty system is my home.”

“And it’s a lovely system,” I answered. “But think about coming with me just a short three puddle hops away from here and you will have more credits than you can imagine. She’s already programmed to take us there, you and I can sit back, drink some Po-Wellian ale and ya know…see what happens,” I said with a sly wink, working every part of my hips, head tilts and lip biting.

Thank God I wasn’t in front of a mirror.

His head tilted as his eyes rolled around in that big head of his, pondering something that took nearly all of his mental acuteness. 

“How about I take the cube,” he snarled with those big dumb eyes as he ripped it out of my grasp. “And then I kill you dead, take your ship to this pre-programmed dealer, then buy myself a better ship and send this one adrift into the nearest asteroid field and retire to a less shitty system?”

It was a cold-hearted move on his part…exactly the same thing I would’ve done in his spot.

He raised his blaster and pointed it at my face as I wondered how fast I could get to mine.

BLAST!

“Jesus Christ!” I shouted as a splattering of blue ooze sprayed my face.

Kel-Far collapsed head first, his crown landing within an inch of my boots and standing behind him with a smoking blaster was Gunderson.

“I thought your programming didn’t allow you to kill a living being?” I asked while kneeling next to Kel-Far’s body and retrieving the cube from his dead grip.

“It does if said living being threatens the existence of the Paradox,” Gunderson answered.

“OH, so you’re ok to kill someone if the ship is in trouble but not if I’m about to have my brains blasted?” I shouted, while rolling Kel-Far over to his back to rifle through his pockets and shoulder-slung carrier bag.

“Um, Captain Estrella?” Gunderson stammered in his nervous manner, which meant something bad was about to happen and he hated to be the one to bear the news.

“What is it?” 

“It’s your breasts, Captain.”

Gunderson was programmed to be asexual by design and although he had an emotion modulator, it mostly surfaced in anxiety and hysteria…certainly never horniness.

“What about them…oh shit,” I interrupted myself as I saw what Gunderson was looking at. 

About a half-dozen quills that were glowing blue, fish-hooked with incredible fine needles protruding out of the top of my leather corset. Kel-Far was Trenetian and under extreme stress their bodies will release poisonous quills. My shades immediately informed me of the antidote to stop the poison from entering my bloodstream. Which was moments away.

“No, I can’t,” I whispered aloud.

“You must, Captain. You’re losing valuable seconds. DO IT!” Gunderson shouted at me, and he never shouted at me. Sure, he yelled and cried a lot, but the fact that he shouted an order at me meant this was serious.

“Fuck me,” I said as I straddled Kel-Far’s corpse and began a lip-lock that would make a street-walker from Antor blush, in the hopes of draining every last drop of saliva from his salty dead mouth.

Eww!

“Keep going! I’m monitoring the poison being released from the quills and the saliva’s counter-effects are working. DON’T STOP!” Gunderson encouraged me on like I was winning a bet at a kissing booth.

“Goddamn you Gunderson, if you save one second of video from the ship’s log of this, so help me God I will disassemble every last piece of you and turn you into an electric scooter,” I threatened, taking a breathing break from the sloppy kiss session as Gunderson shoved my head back onto Kel-Far’s moist, but dead lips.

Double Eww!

“Incoming message!” Gunderson shouted as his attention averted from me and Kel-Far. “I can’t stop it from coming on screen, they’ve smashed through the encryption of the—GREETINGS, your highness!” Gunderson stammered nervously as he failed to block my body from being on the display screen.

“Elisa? What are you doing?” The calm and stately voice boomed over the ship’s comms as I unlocked my lips from Kel-Far’s purple lifeless lips, wiped the drool from my chin while still mounting his squishy body and turned around to face the monitor.

“Prince Pintar…how are you?”

I played it cool.

“Well…I am a bit confused,” the Prince of Ashtar replied. He was dressed in an all white robe with a massive headdress that had a giant red ruby the size of my fist in the middle of it while a few thousand of his closest friends and family members were seated behind him.

“Oh, what about?” I answered, nearly pulling off a look of concern before realizing what he was watching me doing. “OH…this? I can explain. We had a little bit of a problem with one of my passengers and I was giving him mouth-to-mouth, but he’s fine now, see?” I said as I lifted one of Kel-Far’s squiggly tentacles and dropped it to the deck like wet bologna.

“Where are you, Elisa?” Prince Pintar asked through a gritted fake smile, while worried murmurs grew from the bustling crowd seated behind him.

“I’m on Trenitia, where are you? It looks lovely,” I answered, still riding Kel-Far’s dead ass body for reasons unknown.

Prince Pintar put on his bravest face while projecting calmness to his loyal followers before clearing his throat and answering, “I am at the Royal Temple in the heart of the Imperial Ruby City awaiting my bride to walk down the aisle so that we may be happily married as she takes her rightful place at the throne as the Queen of Ashtar…that’s where I am, my love.”

My eyes and nose scrunched tightly as my brows dove downward and the words organically rolled out of my gaping mouth, “Aw shit. Is that today?”