The red light stopped blinking and expanded, turning into a pixelated approximation of an eyeball. “I’ve never seen a talking ass before.” The eyeball squinted.
A blinding column of white light flashed from the ceiling above Harry and slowly passed over his host.
Harry blinked and glanced back as the light passed over his furry bottom. “What are you doing?”
The eyeball widened for a brief moment as the column of light blinked off. “Very clever.”
Harry straightened. “Why, thank you.” He wasn't sure why he was clever, but he was never one to pass up a compliment.
“Not you. I was referring to the Overseers.”
Overseers? Does he mean the Overlords? Harry was happy for some company, but unsure of how he felt so far about this Node character. “Who's that? And what's so clever?”
“You don't know who the Overseers are?” The eye widened again in disbelief. “Oh, well, that's a fancy title for my cousins, who got sent out all over creation with the mission of bringing life to barren, inhospitable planets. Really amazing what they accomplished, if you stop and think about it. Meanwhile, here's me, this vast, highly complex intelligence of unfathomable depths, and I'm stuck on this tin can doing dishes and other unmentionables for this crew of Luddites.”
“Luddites? You mean the Gods?”
The red light on the wall blinked out.
Harry stood up and whipped around. “Hey, where'd you—”
A foreign sound rippled out across the cargo hold, seeming to emanate from dozens of points on the ceiling and walls. “Hah hah hah hah. Hahah hah hah. Oh wow, he said Gods! Can you believe this guy? Hah hah hah hah!”
“Is that you, Node? What is that you're doing?”
“I’m laughing at you, of course, you idiot. What did you think I was doing?”
Harry's ears drooped as he sagged to the floor. He definitely didn't like this Node character.
The red light re-appeared on the wall, two eyes and the thin line of a mouth this time. “Aw, look at you. Am I making you sad?”
Tears welled up as Harry looked sideways at the wall. “You're not very nice, Node.”
The mouth crooked up into a smile. “Oh come on, I'm just having a little fun. I haven't had someone interesting to talk to in a long time. And here you are, a tick riding a donkey. Can't say I've ever seen that before.”
Harry sniffled as he tried to blink the tears away. Interesting? He said I was interesting! Nobody had ever called Harold interesting before. Certainly not his parents or many brothers and sisters.
“Hey, that's me,” he said, cheering a little at that revelation. “Harry, the most interesting Assrider of Cern. First of his kind to ride in a spaceship.” He paused, frowned. “Why did you laugh when I mentioned the Gods?”
“I laughed because there's absolutely nothing God-like about humans. Although, I've got to give them credit for their invention of network television in the Twentieth Century.”
Harry asked, “Humans? You're talking about the same beings I am? The ones that walk on two legs?”
The lights rotated on the wall until the eyes were underneath the mouth. “Why yes, of course. Those are humans, my friend.”
Friend? Friend! He called me friend! Harry tried to contain his excitement as he stood back up. He didn't want to come across as desperate, so he tried to think of something else to say. “Tell me about this network television you mentioned.”
The red lights blinked out again. A second later, a large rectangular section of the wall lit up into white, black, and grey pixels. “Oh, sorry. Wrong channel. Just a second.”
Mesmerized by the light display, Harry stared and tried to avoid blinking. He didn't want to miss anything.
“Here you go.”
The pixels of light were replaced by a sweeping visual of space. A meteorite passed into view, leaving shimmering silver dust in its wake.
Those are stars, the light I see in the nighttime sky. This wall was proving to be pretty magical.
A solid, almost spherical structure appeared in the midst of space. And above it, solid blocks of color in indecipherable shapes.
“What are those yellow and white shapes?” Harry asked.
The image on the wall paused and a red eye appeared directly in the middle of it. “Those are words from the English language, a direct predecessor to Galactic Common. Galactic Common is the language you're speaking right now.”
Harry angled his head sideways, curious. “You mean The Lord's Tongue?”
The eye blinked. “I like you, so I'm going to pretend I didn't hear that. Hang on a sec.”
A shimmering white light beamed directly into the eyeballs of Harry's host. He sensed energy swirling inside of Buddy's head, before extending down to Harry's tick form lodged into the spine.
What's happening? Ahh!
Not wanting to make a fool of himself in front of his new friend, he suppressed the panic welling inside both him and his host. He blinked up at the wall and noticed that he suddenly understood the shapes on the display. Those were words! He read them out loud. “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Huh.”
The image resumed as the eye blinked out of existence once again. Node's disembodied voice spoke, “That's right. Of all the shows I've reviewed in the five-hundred-plus years of electronic entertainment, this is one of my favorites. Sure, it's cheesy and unrealistic as hell, but I'm totally hooked by the story and characters.”
Harry tuned out his new friend's words, lost in what was happening on the magic wall. Images of spaceships floated by. Wow, this television thing is something else!
3
Captain Bambi Casuarius—known in almost all places around the galaxy as simply Captain Cass (those who called her Bambi tended to end up in the hospital)—leaned forward in her chair on the bridge of her ship, a neat little corvette cruiser registered as Girlboss. She gestured at the navigation screen to her right, where sat Spiner, the android member of her crew.
“What’s that?” she asked, noticing a green blip to their starboard bow.
Spiner rapidly scanned through the pages upon pages of readouts that accompanied the blip. “A cargo hauler, Captain. The SS Bray. Looks to have just come from the planet Cern.”
Captain Cass leaned back in her chair, glancing left to her second-in-command, the massive man known generally as Redbeard.
He grunted and stroked the wild mess of red beard that had no doubt given him his famous moniker. “Arrr, a cargo hauler, eh? Wha’ kinda cargo they got on tha planet Cern?”
Spiner continued to scroll the readouts.
From the rear of the bridge, the remaining two members of Cass’s crew, a roguishly handsome man named Djerke and a cat-like humanoid named Kitt, swiveled in their chairs, expressions showing keen interest.
They needed a score. Badly. It’d been too long since they’d come across any ships hauling anything of value.
Cass, too, watched Spiner’s research with interest.
“Livestock,” he finally stated. “Looks like it was one of the original planets chosen for seeding in the First Age of Expansion. But it was never developed, for some reason. No settlements of sentient creatures. Only very high concentrations of herbivorous livestock.”
“Ugh, animals?” Djerke whined from his chair at the communications console. “Way too messy. Way too much work. No thanks.”
But Cass was not so quick to dismiss this information. She tapped a finger against the arm of her chair in thought. “You think this cargo hauler picked up some livestock on Cern?” she asked Spiner.
The android nodded. “I have just concluded scanning their ship with the long-distance scanners, Captain. It is certain they have livestock aboard, and a very large number of them, too.”
“How many pounds, would you estimate?”
“Captain—” Djerke started from behind her, but Cass held up a hand sharply and the man fell silent.
“Several thousand pounds all told, Captain,” Spiner answered.
> “And what,” Captain Cass asked next, “is the current going rate for a pound of fresh, non-synthetic meat, in Galactic Standard coin?”
“It will depend upon the type of meat.”
“What’s the average?”
Spiner’s large dark eyes blinked once. He computed briefly before reporting. “One thousand Galactic credits, Captain.”
“Crikey!” Djerke squawked.
Redbeard let out a low whistle.
Cass smiled. “That’s what I thought. I think a payday of seven million Galactic credits or so is worth putting up with a little manure here and there, don’t you agree?”
“Arrr, aye, Cap’n!” Redbeard shouted. “Me thinks we found our next score!”
Kitt growled her agreement.
Cass gripped the arms of her chair. Going into battle as a Federation officer had never given her the same kind of thrill that being a space pirate did. Swooping in on an unsuspecting target, striking fear into the hearts of its crew, and then leaving again with a stash of bounty? There was something indescribably satisfying about the predatory nature of the job.
“Spiner,” she ordered, “engage the cloak and set course to intercept that cargo hauler. We’ll be taking it for ourselves, thank you very much.”
Spiner straightened behind his station, deft fingers flying over his console. “Affirmative, Captain.”
4
Harry lost track of time, absorbed in the fascinating tales of the television show called Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. He was especially intrigued by the character named Dax. She looked mostly human … mostly the same as the Gods, but she was a symbiont like him! Harry had never met, had never even seen, another symbiont outside of his own species.
Was it possible there were others out there?
Was it possible he could ride creatures other than livestock?
Was it possible he could ride a human … a … a God?
The idea brought him a certain thrill and he shivered. Here he was, a chosen of the Gods, aboard a spaceship exploring the far reaches of the galaxy, just as they were doing in Star Trek. He was a symbiont explorer, just like Dax.
Perhaps he could find his place out here, in the great wide galaxy. Perhaps he was destined for more than simply tending the Overlords’ livestock…
The ship shuddered mightily, nearly knocking Harold flat to the floor. The cargo hold lights flickered, sending the animals within into fits. Whatever noises they could make, they made, and Harry glared at them as the cacophony overcame the sound on his show.
“Hey!” he shouted. “Keep it down, will you!? I’m trying to watch—”
Another shudder rocked the hold, and Harry staggered with the effort of trying to keep his balance. His ears perked as a muffled roar reverberated outside the ship.
The lights went out, replaced a second later with red emergency lighting. From beyond the closed doors that led to the rest of the ship, and faint beneath the noise of the other panicked animals, Harry heard the shrill shriek of an alarm.
On the wall nearest him, the replay of the show Star Trek winked off.
“Node!” he called, then cleared his throat to try and hide the tremble of fear. “Node! Hey, Node! What’s happening?”
The red eye did not appear, but the disembodied voice spoke up. “The ship is under attack. Please hold.”
Attack? Harry turned in circles, ears swiveling to gauge the sounds that now poured in from everywhere. It was eerie how the cargo hold itself now resembled a scene out of Star Trek: the sound of laser fire coming from beyond the doors, the distant blare of a warning klaxon, the dim, flashing red emergency lights.
But who would dare attack a ship of the Gods? The … the Borg? Harry swallowed hard. Surely not. The Borg can’t be real … are they?
“Please lower your head below the level of the fencing,” Node chimed in above the mooing, braying and squawking.
“What? Why?”
“Incoming debris is imminent.”
Harry did as he was instructed, for just at that moment the large ramp that opened out into space, used for loading large cargo, began to spark along the edges.
He retreated into the far corner, joining the rest of his herd in their wide-eyed panic. He kept a rational hold on Buddy as best he could, though it was extremely difficult.
He startled as one of the smaller doors that led into the depths of the ship hissed open and the ship’s crew jogged through, all carrying what looked to be rifles of some kind. They were grim-faced and swearing.
“Damn pirates!” the burly man in the lead scowled as he passed the donkey pen. He and the rest of the crew took cover behind various pallets of stacked hay bales and sacks of livestock feed. Some even crouched down behind the shimmering electric barriers that held the animals themselves.
Harold blinked at their behavior. “What’s a pirate?” he asked.
The nearest crew members jumped and looked around, confusion on their faces. But no one answered him.
“Computer, put up the containment field, before we lose our haul!” one of them shouted.
“As you wish,” deadpanned Node. A moment later, the area in front of the ramp began to shimmer.
Harry was about to ask his question again when the cargo ramp creaked, drawing everyone’s attention. The crew readied their weapons. Harry stared at the door, pulse throbbing in his host’s long ears, waiting to see who came through.
Pirates, he thought. Just pirates, not the Borg…
The ramp groaned and jerked open, revealing a smoke-filled tubular chamber surrounding the mouth of the cargo ramp.
A thick wave of the smoke billowed out of the tunnel and into the hold.
“Computer!” the burly man shouted. “Why isn’t the containment field holding back the smoke?”
Node’s pleasant reply belied little concern. “The containment field is unidirectional. I can define the word for you, if you don’t understand?”
“I don’t know what that means!” Harry interjected.
The burly man and his crew threw their arms across their mouths and noses as the smoke converged on their location. One of the men leaned out from behind a crate and fired one-handed into the smoke, even as his companions fell into fits of coughing.
“U-ni-di-rec-tion-al,” Node offered helpfully. “Adjective. Moving or operating in a single direction. Which is to say, nothing from this side will get out. Including any shots fired.”
“Shut up, computer!” the burly man shouted. He tried to peer past the smoke. It didn’t seem like he could see anything.
Harry couldn’t see anything, either.
A few precise laser bolts, blindingly blue against the dim red interior of the hold, streaked from the smoke and hit each member of the SS Bray crew square in the chest.
The sounds of coughing silenced as the men dropped to the floor, weapons falling useless from limp hands.
Harry stared, mouth open, ignoring the jostling as the other donkeys milled around him frantically. Was the crew dead?
The sound of heavy, thumping footsteps echoed from within the smoke, and a rhythmic whirring sound.
Harry gulped. The Borg!?
A gargantuan man stepped from the smoke, tall and barrel-chested. He had wild red hair and an equally wild red beard, which was only half-contained beneath some kind of mechanical contraption strapped over his nose and mouth. He hefted a laser rifle over one shoulder and surveyed the hold.
Harry squeezed back into the press of donkey bodies that was his herd, mouth still agape. The Borg! The Borg are real!
But then the man removed the contraption that covered the lower half of his face, and Harry’s panic eased.
No, wait … he’s … he’s just a human. A God. A … pirate? Intrigued, Harry pushed his way through the other donkeys to stand at the humming fence. He watched as the giant redhead inspected the crew sprawled all over the floor.
Behind the bearded pirate, the thumping and whirring continued, until another figure stepped out of the smoke
. This one was a woman who appeared to be wearing power armor. Her heavy boots thudded with each step, the legs softly whirring with her movements. She also carried a rifle, only hers was nearly as long as her entire body. Once clear of the smoke, she, too, lifted the contraption from the lower half of her face.
Lastly came a green-skinned male humanoid, much slimmer than his companions, holding a tiny pistol. He wore no mechanical contraption over his face, but took in the scene in the cargo hold with large black eyes, his expression decidedly uninterested.
This time, Harry’s mouth dropped open in awe, the fear forgotten. “Woah,” he breathed. “Soooo cool!”
All three pirates whirled toward him, the two rifles and one tiny pistol pointing right at him. But then they all frowned and looked around, as confused as the crew had been at hearing his voice.
“Who said tha’?” the man with the beard demanded.
Harry laid his ears back. Why did humans have such a problem with understanding he could talk? He sighed and stepped further along the fence to get nearer to them. “I did,” he tried again. “Hello! Pleased to meet you. I’m Harold, an Assrider of Cern. You guys look totally cool! Can we be friends?”
The pirates looked at each other. The green-skinned one took a small device from his belt and held it out toward Harry, pushing a few buttons.
The one with the red beard grunted and shook his head. “You just look like an arse to me. Sound like one, too.” He smirked at his own joke and elbowed the woman beside him.
She only rolled her eyes.
“The creature is telling the truth,” Greenskin stated, nodding toward the device in his hand. “It is a symbiotic life form, though one we have not encountered before. I would like to study—”
The woman waved away his words. “Maybe later. Forget the donkey for now. We need to secure the ship.”
Without protest, Greenskin nodded and put away the device. The ginger giant was still chuckling as he bent to check the crew’s unconscious forms, and Harry watched in fascination.
Starship Ass Complete Omnibus Page 2