Pew! Pew! - The Quest for More Pew!

by M. D. Cooper

  He said nothing. She slipped the slimy shell around her body, where it fit oddly and out of place. If it wasn’t for her stilettos, she’d be the wrong height entirely: and the crown was the only thing keeping the eye holes at eye level.

  Oddly… perfect.

  “So we’re pulling a Star Wars?” she asked.

  “A what?”

  “You know, Star Wars: A New Hope? When they dress up as stormtroopers to…” she saw Yorick’s lost expression, and her heart fell. “Never mind. We’ll have to watch it sometime. Is Netflix still around?”

  “That really weird cult, over on Tabbard?”

  “Ah. No. Never mind then.”

  She kicked the door open and strode out into the hallway, grabbing Yorick by the scruff of his collar and dragging him out behind her. Only, of course, she didn’t have complete control of the shell, so Yorick had to play along quite a bit. Good sport.

  “Aha!” she cried, making her voice deep, “look who I caught trying to steal our weapons!”

  The five Tagriffians in the hallway didn’t seem all that convinced.

  “Yo dude, what happened to your face?” asked one.

  “Oh, this pesky human put up quite the fight, let me tell you,” she continued, making her way past them with Yorick still in her fake grasp. The hoard followed, close at her shiny black heels. “I didn’t think I would get him. I’ll take him back to the cell now.”

  “The cell block is the other way.”

  “What do you expect? This frozzler kicked me in the motherfrozzing face!”

  “I have information!” Yorick blurted out. “About this planet’s high command! And how to win the escape games!”

  “Oh you do, do you?” said Katra, “then I am taking you to the bridge! Grr! Yes, I am!”

  “What the froz are you doing, Stan?” said one of the Tagriffians.

  “Frozzing Stan,” said the other, “always doing shmuz like this. Come on, man, you were daft before you got kicked in the face. Hell, this might have made you smarter!”

  Katra spun on her nine-inch heels and blasted the rude Tagriffian right through the chest. Ka-pow! The asshole burst like an ant under a magnifying glass, with a rewarding squee!

  “Anyone else?” she asked.

  She didn’t wait for an answer. Or, rather, Marcus didn’t wait for an answer. In an instant, she was bounding out of her shell and right at the next bugger in line, screaming a war cry as she landed on its shoulders. She ripped at its mandibles and pulled the head clear off.

  The Tagriffian corpse toppled over, and she fell along with it, smashing her knees against the hard metal floor. She cried out in pain, trying to wrench her legs free, but one of the other aliens was already on her. Before it could pull its trigger, Yorick pulled his, and another massive Tagriffian corpse fell on top of Katra.

  She scrambled to crawl out from beneath them, freeing one leg and then the other, only for the body on top of her to press down harder. She forced herself to roll, freeing herself for enough time to grab the butt of a gun and slam it into the legs of the last standing Tagriffian.

  Yorick took that window of opportunity to blast its head clear off.

  Katra pushed herself out from the corpse, ignoring the black tar covering her body, and most of the corridor around them. She picked up the helmet shell from the ground, placing it back on her head, feeling the circle of the crown touch her scalp once more.

  “We good?” she asked.

  “Yeah, we’re good,” Yorick replied.

  The bridge was how they left it: full of cockroaches, gloomy and dank. Katra and Yorick threw the doors open as they fired on the entire congregation.

  “TAKE THAT, YOU MOTHERFROZING BUGGERS!” she shouted, as she sent a stream of fiery death into the mosh pit of Tagriffian high command.

  “What she said!” Yorick echoed, right before his plasma ran out. “Shmuz!”

  “Here!” Katra grabbed one of the gigantic guns from the ground and tossed him the butt end. “Triggers!”

  Propped on the hard exoshell of the Tagriffian she had gutted and was now wearing as an impromptu stormtooper’s uniform, her hands were protected from the harsh, burning heat of the plasma gun as it fired into the crowd. Yorick yelled in furious excitement as she pulled both triggers at once, launching a stream of ionized particles into the bridge.

  “Heyaaaaa motherbuggers!” He laughed maniacally.

  “You’re the one who sounds a whole lot like Jesi,” she said, when everything was dead, except for the odd twitching mandible or leg here or there.

  “I suppose you have a plan?”

  “Yup,” she said, marching towards the control panel. “Get me on the coms. Visual or whatever. Send me to every ship in this fleet.”

  “Gotcha.”

  She adjusted the bulky shell around her body, took a deep sigh, and stood tall. Her body quivered underneath the heavy carcass, and her ankles smarted in those heels, but she dug deep for that pageant queen determination and stood strong.

  “This is a private message,” she said. “I’m talking to you, yes, you! Everyone on this ship has been destroyed! There is a spy in our midst, and they’re right off your starboard bow. Kill them now! Destroy their ship before they can get away!”

  Yorick cut the connection, the screen returning back to a window, a perfect Earth day flowing in on beams of sunlight. Katra blinked as she took off the shell, extracted her crown, and placed it back on her head.

  “Do you think it worked?” she said, brushing the tarry hair out of her face. “It wasn’t a very complex plan.”

  “They’re not exactly complex beings. And it’s definitely working!” Yorick pointed out the window as balls of yellow fire appeared in the sky. “I take it Tagriffians aren’t exactly known for their intelligence.”

  “If at all.”

  “Katra, you just saved the universe from these bumbling idiots,” he said, proudly, putting an arm gently around her waist. She could barely feel through the shell, which she still wore, but the thought of his hand wanting to be there was enough to send shivers through her spine.

  “Shmuz,” he said, pulling his hand back, making Katra flinch.

  “What?”

  “We’re next!” he threw himself at the console, throwing switches and wires in all directions. “We’re going to get blown out of the sky!”

  “FROZ!” Katra pulled off the shell, tossing it towards the bodies that were piled in the bridge. “What do we do?”

  “We’ve only got one hope,” the former pirate captain turned, his eyes finding hers and holding them for dear life. “We’ve been targeted. This ship is going down. We have to jump!”

  “We’ll die!”

  “On our own terms!” he stammered, grabbing Katra’s plasma gun and shooting straight at the window. “Come on. If we’re lucky, a dinosaur will save us.”

  “Yorick, I…”

  “It’s alright. We saved the world, didn’t we?” He gave her a sweet smile. And then, just then, he took her head in his hands, pulling her soft lips against his and kissed her with all the fire he could muster.

  And she kissed him back, thirteen thousand years worth of un-kissed lips doing all the talking.

  So when he jumped out the window, she barely even noticed. Well, at first.

  Then, she was screaming.

  “Yorick, you prick!” she snapped, trying to swipe at him, but he was already falling a good three meters away, completely out of reach, and getting further away by the second.

  The air took the words right out of her mouth, anyways. Her long silky hair, now coated thick with Tagriffian blood, swung and snapped at her face like a million little bees. The ground rushed up to her, so fast she thought there was no way it was that close already. She spun around to look back at the ship she had just left, only now it was a big orange speck in between some clouds.

  Which suddenly became a very white ceiling.

  “Glad to have you back,” said Jesi, her lopsided child’s teeth gli
stening in the bright white room. “I take it everything went okay?”

  “Jesi!” Katra’s feet were on solid ground, her hair limp once again by her side. She rushed at the non-child and wrapped her in a hug. “You’re alive?”

  “What is this?” the girl struggled to push her away.

  “A hug?”

  “Screw that. Let go of me before I put you right back where I found you.”

  Katra rushed back, throwing her hands in the air. Better safe than sorry. She noticed Yorick getting back his space legs beside her, wiping some of the more visible grime from his arms.

  “I thought you were dead,” Katra continued. “I saw you blow up!”

  “Oh, that was all a very clever plan I set up with Owaitt,” she said, leading the two of them back through the ship towards the bridge. “We hid the ship in the airport. What you were seeing, and what the Tagriffian were shooting at, was a hologram.”

  “But a shot like that should have killed you,” said Yorick, trotting to keep up with her, “Even if it did just hit the earth. And I doubt you had time to shield yourself. Where did you…”

  “Owaitt’s fetish function,” she said happily.

  “His what?” The former captain and the current one turned back to look at Katra, who was lagging with confusion.

  “Some people are into large men,” tiny little Jesi said with a shrug. “Owaitt has the capacity to inflate, to accommodate.”

  “But to act as an airbag…”

  “Some people like really large men,” she said. “Don’t judge, Katra. Your generation was so prude.”

  They walked into the bridge, where a battle was fully under way. Podulk piloted as Owaitt manned the turret, taking to it like a fish to water. Take the compassion away from a robot, and watch him thrive.

  “Your turn to take it in the ass!” the droid screamed, destroying yet another Tagriffian ship.

  “Well, that’s that,” said Jesi. “Congratulations. You have just destroyed the entire Tagriffian fleet. We saved the planet and found the royal gems. How do you feel?”

  “Like I need a drink,” said Katra.

  “I second that,” Yorick added.

  “And me,” Jesi exclaimed. “How much do you think this body can handle? Not enough, I take it.”

  Podulk turned the ship around, letting it orbit the Earth in silence, watching the planet rotate below. The Tagriffian ships were gone, decimated by each other, or picked clean by a vengeful sexbot with his tongue on a leash. Their captain let out a massive sigh.

  “Well, that’s that, then,” she said. “I guess we’re all free to do what we want, now.”

  “Go our separate ways,” agreed Yorick.

  “I’m not sure I want to,” said Katra.

  All eyes turned to her, and she smiled. “You’re the only people I know. I thought you were dead, and losing you was worse than losing my planet. I think it means I kinda… want to stay.”

  “Well, I have no better place to go,” said Yorick, wrapping an arm around Katra’s waist. And this time, no windows to jump out of, no shell between them, no holes into lost airports to fall though. He was here, and he was holding her.

  Her heart leapt in her chest.

  “If you still need a first mate, Jesipax, I’m all in.”

  “Well good,” she said, placing her arms on her hips. “What’s the good in being the captain of a stolen ship if there’s no one who wants to be my crew? Podulk?”

  “I am a good pilot,” said Podulk, his voice the closest to being smug that Katra had yet to hear.

  “Owaitt?”

  “Captain Jesi, I am to remind you never to buy a service droid.”

  “Well, I guess that settles it,” said the tiny captain. “That makes us a crew. I’ll raise a glass to the five of us, as soon as I can find some half decent booze.”

  “Perfect,” said Yorick, before swinging Katra around for a real, full bodied kiss.

  She melted into him, glad to finally be free to kiss him back. She was a new woman now: a queen out of time, without a planet, a pirate on a stolen ship. And with a new beau to enjoy.

  Get our lips off him!

  An internal force ripped her away from Yorick’s embrace, tearing her out of his arms and halfway across the room. It was as if her arms were no longer hers, her body taken over by…

  Marcus?

  “What the hell is going on?” Her mouth formed the words, but they were not hers. Her voice was low and grave all of a sudden, and her hands flew up to her lips before the other soul inside her pulled them back down.

  “Where am I?” She looked down at her hands, and the voice inside her head let out a yelp of shock.

  “Sorry,” she managed to say, while Marcus returned inwards to have a little tantrum. “I think we’re actually a crew of six. Team, meet Marcus: my dislocated fiancé.”

  There was silence in the bridge as they stared at Katra, who struggled to calm Marcus down while he took wild control of one limb or another.

  It was only Owaitt who said anything at all.

  “Well, the more the merrier, as I always say.”

  And the crew left the orbit of the planet formerly known as Earth, ready for new adventures far away from that disturbing place.

  THE END

  — — —

  Want to read more by S.E. Anderson?

  Starstruck

  She could barely look after herself. Now, she’s looking after the entire planet.

  After an incident with a hot-air balloon causes college-dropout Sally Webber to lose her job, she sets off to find direction in her life. Crashing into a teleporting alien, however, is not on her to-do list.

  Now she’s on the run from TV-drama-loving aliens, and things are just getting started. Zander won’t stop reeling her into life-or-death situations to save her planet, as he waits for his laser-wielding sister to search the universe for him. Though Sally isn’t quite sure if he wants to save Earth from annihilation, or just quell his curiosity of all things human.

  On top of this, she’s got to find lost alien emissaries, as well as a job, and stop the planet from getting incinerated in the process. But with Zander as her roommate, what could possibly go wrong?

  Now available from Bolide Publishing Limited

  Alienation releasing October 24th!

  Reach for the Stars:

  Free five chapter sample: www.instafreebie.com/free/M1Vdc

  Available in Ebook, Paperback and Hardcover: http://bit.ly/KSTAR

  About the Author

  S.E. Anderson can’t ever tell you where she’s from. Not because she doesn’t want to, but because it inevitably leads to a confusing conversation where she goes over where she was born (England) where she grew up (France) and where her family is from (USA) and it tends to make things very complicated.

  She’s lived pretty much her entire life in the South of France, except for a brief stint where she moved to Washington DC, or the eighty years she spent as a queen of Narnia before coming back home five minutes after she had left. Currently, she goes to university in Marseille, where she’s studying Physics and aiming for a career in Astrophysics.

  When she’s not writing, or trying to science, she’s either reading, designing, crafting, or attempting to speak with various woodland creatures in an attempt to get them to do household chores for her. She could also be gaming, or pretending she’s not watching anything on Netflix.

  Connect with S.E. Anderson:

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  For the Love of Llama

  by TM Toombs

  Mia’s mission: blackmail her captain, steal and deliver contraband to save her best friend’s life—and avoid the brig.

  Commander Mia Cochran, after a disgraceful episode she’d rather not discuss, has been relegated to maneuvering a garbage scow under the thumb of an ob
noxiously lewd and drunken Captain.

  After four long months on a filthy ship processing hazardous mining waste in a backwater planet located in the ass-crack of the solar system, she gets a ransom demand to save Tefeau, the closest thing she has to family. The ransom? Deliver 100 tonne of Phinkies, a psychoactive contraband to her captors within four solar days.

  Mia must now blackmail the captain, commandeer the ship and its crew, locate and steal the goods and deliver it. Then exchange it for the only being in the known universe who has deceived her more times that she wants to admit. Is Tefeau worth throwing away Mia’s chances to ever redeem herself in the Colonial Navy?

  In a race against time, she must avoid confrontation with heavily armed, patrolling Colonial Navy ships. If she fails, she’ll find herself thrown in the brig, fulfilling her family’s legacy and following in her father’s footsteps.

  Chapter One: Mia Loveyou Longtime

  Lieutenant Commander (LTC) Mia Cochran paced back and forth across the bridge of the Colonial Navy Garbage Scow HMS Falderal. She stopped long enough to glare at the twenty-four foot-wide by eleven-foot tall main view screen that filled the wall in front of the command module. Narrowing her eyes, she watched as the hazy purple and white planet slowly rotated on the screen in front of her.

  “He always gets to go on the surface missions,” she grumbled, clenching her hands into fists at her side and began her pacing again.

  Mia’s cheeks grew warm as she remembered the disgraceful episode that cost her the command of her transport frigate and a reduction in rank. But the worst part of her punishment was being reassigned to a garbage scow. A friggin’ garbage scow! She began to fume again. She was bred to be a ship’s captain, not a lowly minion on a filthy ship processing hazardous mining waste in a backwater planet located in the ass-crack of the solar system. She’d been assured that she’d be able to join on the away teams when they had to go planet-side. But after four long months, she had yet to step foot off of this damnable ship. She was beginning to feel hemmed in and suffocated.