Earth: the planet past the END

Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say and they are absolutely correct because that space ship is not making any noise at all. It's only flying past a farming planet at the slowest, joltiest pace possible.

So that is why the INFOIL officer Lelanio continues with his work of guarding the outer ring of Retoil1 with the same amount of gusto as the minute earlier… meaning no gusto at all. Still he leans over his consol, extends a long white appendage shaped like a flatworm, and grabs his plain black communicator. He switches it over, glancing across his viewing screen to where a moon white craft like his is drifting in formation beside him.

“We’ve got a civilian coming from the END direction, continue as usual”, he reports boredly and sets his communicator down. The communicator switches back on before he can recline back in his pilot’s chair.

“What’s the identifying number”? His partner asks.

Officer Lelanio groans, this guy was such a pole. No relaxing, always following protocol, didn’t spare a moment to distract from their constant vigilance. He wishes for his own partner back, but she is with the other newbie. Doesn’t the new guy understand that this is a retirement position at the end of the known universe? You aren’t supposed to be serious. It's supposed to be chill.

“Sir, its protocol, what is the ship's number”.

“Eh, it's just a civilian ship, just letting you know it's there”, Officer Lelanio drawls into the communicator and sips his juice, or rather the juice crawls into his mouth from the cup. It gives him a thrill, which meant he is NOT supposed to be drinking it on the job.

“Sir it is protocol. You need to contact the ship and get its number”.

“Ugh, fine, fine. If it will help you relax in your belt, sheesh”, he grumbles and turns on the other communicator, this one is for any other ship that isn't an INFOIL ship.

“Connecting to civilian craft, connecting to civilian craft. This is INFOIL, please confirm your ship number”, and waits.

“WRRRRRAAAAAAAH. GET IT AWAY. SHOOT IT, SHOOT IT. ITS ACID, DON’T LET ITS ACID GET ON ME. DIE YOU FREAK”! the communicator shrieks.

It doesn't matter what they actually say over the communicator. All they needed to do is speak and the number shows up on Lelanio’s dash. It is in green font. Lelanio turns the communicator off and sits back in his chair.

“Just a civilian ship”, he tells his colleague on the other communicator.

“What was their number”?

“Just a civilian number”, Lelanio answers and takes another swallow of his juice. It clings to his baleen before sliding down his throat.

“WHAT WAS THEIR NUMBER”.

“Eh, it's GH67….”

With a shudder his partner’s engines flare and it tears out of formation. It shoots straight for the other ship.

Meanwhile inside the civillian ship a human foot slams into the captain’s face, knocking the gun pointing at her askew. She grits her teeth and pushes hard on that face. The pilot yells and claws at her leg, his spikes tear at her skin and red blood spills out onto his fat lap and on his nice dashboard. His copilot is against the wall and his slave is attempting to remove the human from him, but somehow failing, despite being nearly twice her size.

“Get it off of me you stupid thing”! Captain Tikke roars. The slave’s sorrowful infinite eyes travel from the human girl to Captain Tikke. There is a decision in them, Captain Tikke hates when his slaves started deciding.

The human pushes hard against the slave’s chest and sends him back before he can settle. She twists and grapples at Captain Tikke’s gun with her free hand. The Captain yells and trys to move his gun out of reach, but her arms are longer than his. She grabs the gun and yanks. His grip is strong.

Then she looks up, her black eyes reflecting a moon pale shape in the endless expanse of space. It is the white head of a skinny ship. And in a breath it hits them dead on.

As your narrator, let me explain.

Let's start here. Yeah I know there is an order of events, but lets...start ......here. Fun facts about Retoil1... eh, really? Out of all the planets, the least interesting one. Fine! Retoil1 is a small farming planet, there is no asteroid belt or moons. The main star is small, barely bigger than its largest planet. The star burns red and is surprisingly cold. Like several solar systems, there is usually one planet that is habitable. When the star its orbiting is red, it will usually one closest to the star. Retoil1 is small and bitten with asteroid craters full of water. The rest is covered in plant life or will be plant life. The greenness is in planned patches that cover the whole surface.

Retoil1 is not a habited planet despite the definite farming marks and planned blue rivers. It is habitable, but bears no creatures, plants or even bacteria of its own. No this planet is habitable, but with no inhabitants born from its soil. It is a farming planet, a planet with good soil and water that could be habitable. The Intergalactic Nexo Federation of Intelligent Life or INFOIL used it for growing food.

At that point in general space time, all of the patches of green, brown, fiery red, and purple were all alien plants that had been neatly planted and cared for by INFOIL-ers. Because the planet is simply a farming planet with a red dwarf star, there is not much security. Which was why a slave ship tore across the solar system.

The planet may have low security, but there is still security. Hence why there was a much faster and much smoother vehicle that chased after the slave ship.

Two things a random pod floating like a stray asteroid outside the solar system might have noticed. One, the slave ship was a piece of junk. Two, the security ship, though smooth and graceful, was jerking into the junk ship as though it was a crazed mother falcon chasing down a poacher with her baby. Three, since the first ship was a slave ship, that might just have been the case.

The geometry teacher’s dream of a ship was a mechanic’s nightmare with its dented hull, atrocious green paint job and currently smoking main engine. The way it tilted and jolted you would think the pilot was drunk. The pilot however was not drunk that day, but he wished he was. At least when he was happy on the fizziness of Calvan3 water he could be unpredictable to the ship behind him. Then he had no idea what to do.

He flicked one of the left pedal back into before position and stamped down on the right pedal. The ship’s course did not change.

“Damn”, he swore as he pummeled the right pedal over and over again as if that would fix all his problems.

Please note that all aliens have different swear words, but the translator measures out what the words mean for you English speakers on a scale from fiddlesticks to the F word. What the pilot was really saying is ‘Damn’. ‘Damn’. ‘DAMN’. Stupid thing! Whatever. He is saying a word that is the equivalent to that.

“Sir, the INFOIL security craft is gaining”, croaked the copilot.

He bustled over the screen pad that assessed the ship and the sensor that viewed the other craft. It seemed glitchy since the other craft was sweeping by the side of the ship in rpms faster than the screen could depict. The copilot’s webbed feet kept getting caught in the wires keeping the pad to the ship and his slimy fingers stuck to the face of the pad.

He dripped with anxious slime. Some of the slime traveled from the copilot’s foot to the right petal and Captain Tikke found that the sticky substance glued the petal in place. Captain Tekke prayed for the right engine not to start up.

“Damage report”, Captain Tikke roared.

“Actually, the ship is in relatively good shape”.

A humungous BOOM rocked the whole ship and Captain Tikke’s head jerked and slammed into his steering wheel.

The steering wheel was not sharp in any way or form, it was actually the only decent thing on the ship. The bulfur leather was extra smooth and gentle on the hands. However the pilot happened to cut his head on it and his forehead sprayed blood like a fountain.

“Um… Scratch that, the main engine is damaged, but everything else is fine”, the copilot remedied.

Another BOOM rocked Captain Tikke in his seat and a steady stream of blood splattered on the copilot. His droopy face didn't change.

“And now the left wing is damaged”, the copilot added in a squeak.

“SHUT UP”, the pilot yelled and slammed the bloody wheel all the way down. He aimed for a patch where there were no stars.

Captain Tikke happened to be a professional slave trader and knew the ins and outs of trading. He knew how to kidnap someone in the most mysterious way possible, how to outrun an INFOIL Security craft with his outdated ship, and he also knew how to make his crew lose their lunches. He also knew that if someone was chasing you, always aim for the least amount of stars. Most likely you will never find a planet and therefore be harder to arrest.

Then again today was a strange day. You didn’t find baby Rolats on farming planets for one thing. The one loaded in the hold would be worth a fat solar system full of carbon planets. Adding to the rarity was the maddest bat out of hell of an INFOIL-er. They always avoided hitting at a slave ship for the safety of the passengers, but this one was letting him have it. With this luck maybe what he was about to do is a bad idea.

“You, fire up the Jumper”, he roared at the incompetent copilot.

“Sir I don’t think that is wise”, the copilot squeaked. He sputtered slime as curtains of it fell over his wide brown lips.

“SHUT UP AND JUST DO IT”.

“Sir if we jump now we will end up in the middle of the end of space”, the copilot shrieked in terror.

He shoved the screen of the pad into Captain Tikke’s floppy face. Captain Tikke would have had a better idea for the situation if he didn’t have this feral nightmare of a ship behind him.

“Do it”, he growled and readied the ship for the jump.

The copilot didn’t argue further, he knew if he didn’t follow up with the preparation, the ship would explode. His froggy hands stuck on the screen and the slime made the surface hard to work with. If only he had been a little less slimy. There was no time for a calming break with fresh Lecton12 glacier ice.

The screen showed him bright green warning signs and cautions about jumping at this point. They were so close to the edge of the universe. They would jump right into the middle of nothing and they couldn’t jump back. The battery was faulty and the disrupted wiring only allowed for one jump.

The copilot gulped as the loud whirring of the Jumper powering up filled the noisy space.

Captain Tikke gripped the wheel and pushed the button in the center.

The stars spun into long comets for a single moment and then it didn’t even look like he was moving at all. His gut twisted in the hyperspeed pressure that leaked through the hull of the old ship. The pilot room only had a little of the pressure, the crew and enslaved would get a crushing pain and be slammed into the back wall. The most he could hope for is that the jump wouldn’t damage the goods too much.

They slowed to a stop and in front of the ship was an empty nebula.

Not a star flickered in the distance, behind them a million microscopic pinpricks poked into a sea of black. The nebula was molted with dark purple. No radio signals reached this point of space and the only things that floated past were chunks of ice, ancient ship parts, and space rocks. There was also no light so it was impossible to see the space chunks or if your hand is in front of your face. The only light for billions of lightyears was the lights in the slave ship and some of the nebula creating friction. The sands shifted and spun in different shades of purple, deadly to cross into.

“You overshot it”, Captain Tikke growled.

He had read an account of this phenomenon because he liked reading about hopeless stories. An ancient ship filled with dead crew members had floated its way back from a part of space full of endless black. They had stopped in front of a dead star nebula and could go no further. They had named this nebula “END” in their journals depicting their last sorrowful moments. Those letters to dead nobodys from more dead nobodys had made Captain Tikke laugh.

Captain Tikke was terrible at math, but he knew. He knew that it took a whole 90% of a hyper solar battery to get to the Nebula END. If the stupid copilot had at least jumped to 40% then they would have enough fuel to get back to a liveable part of space. 10% of the fuel would lead them to a spot of darkness where they would die and float in nothingness until someone found their rotted bones. There was not a single star to recharge with for billions of lightyears.

The copilot didn’t answer his higher up.

The stupid Palvoc, a frog like alien, spewed slime like a waterfall. The pad shook in his hands and displayed an error message for an output malfunction. In minutes later the floor was in a layer of sticky goo and Captain Tikke had to retract his feet onto his chair to avoid it. Meanwhile, the copilot was slowly dying of dehydration.

“Calm down already”, Captain Tikke snarled at the copilot who was frozen with terror.

A second later his eyes glossed over and the waterfall of slime ceased. The body of the copilot was left to stare at the Nebula END forever.

“Ugh, SOMEONE”, Captain Tikke yelled.

A large burly Valan opened the door. By the Valan’s feet the slime slowly drained out of the pilot room. The Valan scooted out of the way. Their four infinite eyes watched sorrowfully as the slime poured out of the door and splattered onto the deck below.

“I will need a new copilot. Find someone on this ship who at least knows something about working the ship and not one of your kind. Also get someone to clean him and this mess up”, Captain Tikke snarled.

The Valan slave bowed his head and walked away. The heavy footsteps of the tall, blue and silver skinned alien added to the noise. Instead of bars and squeals of pain, there was simply the honking of the crew and whimpering of the enslaved. They must have all found out where they were.

Captain Tikke waited a moment until a different slave, a werlock walked in with anti slime. She sprayed and scrubbed the floor, she started with the area under the pilot’s chair. The pilot glared down at her with his piggy eyes and his seven layers of jowls quivered with anger and interest.

The slave felt his eyes on her body and she tried to clean faster. She knew what happened when the pilot was angry and she hoped he was getting too old for it.

When his area was clean he put his feet down on the floor again and felt for the pedals. The right one was unstuck, but the left was still glued to the floor. However the ship did not spin rapidly into the dangerous cloud of dust because the left wing was broken. The pilot could tell from the several blinky green parts on the dash that depicted his ship.

Oh what a situation, nowhere to go and anywhere that he could would kill him and his crew. Yet if they stayed here they would all slowly run out of oxygen and most of the crew would explode. There was several Norgs on board and when they were denied oxygen on their skin they blew their guts everywhere. Captain Tikke was also a norg.

He would miss life, he would miss his wife, his children his… Wait, he had no children. Or a wife. The pilot owned a pet water worm. He missed his water worm and loved it so… wait a second he ate it. That’s right he owned a nice place in the main slave ship… nevermind he hated it there. His neighbors had children who giggled all night and played bouncing ball outside his door.

Captain Tekke realized that he had accomplished nothing in his life and he would miss nothing. He only wanted to live like every other stupid thing in the universe. That was all he wanted to do and ever wanted to do.

He would miss the slave shipping money he earned. And he would miss buying new steering wheels for the ship with that money. That was the best he could think of. Dying shouldn’t have been that unpleasant of an idea.

He stared into the nebula that slowly shifted and scattered. Purple flickered across the dust and grey made a giant wall between him and more nothingness. However he noticed something peculiar.

In the low light of the nebula he noticed a large shiny blob that was just illuminated by the dust. The blob twisted, spun, moved until it became part of the nebula and continued uninterrupted on its path. The dust around the shape became swallowed up and the large thing carved a path through the Nebula END. The thing was a giant puddle of water, those were common in space. Most of the time it would be ice, but the water was so large and so full of toxic substances it did not freeze.

Better than every other option Captain Tikke started up the ship and trundled towards the nebula with only two of the five engines working. The ship moved slowly due to the main engine being down.

He reached the water’s back end just before it receded in the cloud. Inside the glob of water the pilot saw bits of old ships including wings, wiring and uranium that still burned and bubbed in the middle of the water.

The slave rose and tried to drag the dead copilot away, but glanced upon the nebula tunnel they entered. She dropped the copilot unceremoniously on the floor and sat on his chair. She was in too much awe to care about how slimy the chair was and how she would get yelled at later.

The colors of deep purple and grey swirled and passed before her eyes and bits of carbon sparkled when the light of the ship reached them. The nose lamps illuminated the large bubble of water that rippled through the large glob, almost to the other side.

Captain Tikke focused on what he was doing, a big chuck of water could come off and turn to ice in an instant. If that ice hit the ship they would all have problems. He had also never been inside a nebula before, a rare few dare to enter one and usually they would be beaten to shreds and burned. It was peaceful and beautiful. He didn’t even yell at the slave girl next to him even though it would have cheered him up. Belittling other races was his favorite.

As they went deeper into the nebula, light turned the purple dust to pink and gold and the grey parts to white and black. Pieces of crystals, nickel and forming asteroids glistened. Sometimes it got to this point there would be a hot ball of gas or the extremely early stages of a star. Either way it was beautiful and rare.

After four days of following the water glob the pilot and the slave saw more light and more balls that became bigger and bigger as they moved.

They were both tired and exhausted and tired. They were so exhausted they began repeating themselves over how exhausted and tired they were. Sometimes they would talk about the same things over and over and over and over and over again.

“There sir, look”, the slave exclaimed and pointed a long, slim finger to a point past the window.

Captain Tekke woke up with a snort and unstuck his sweaty jowls from the control board that once regulated temperature. The amount of Co2 in the air was tiring him and he was beginning to itch. He imagined it was worse in the holds.

“I don’t see anything”, he growled.

He focused his beady eyes into the nebula. The dust was thinning and he needed the water glob less and less.

“Right there”, the slave exclaimed pointing.

Past a few wisps of dust and a solid boulder was an open space in the nebula. It was dark and black nothingness, but there was the glimmer and flicker of a star, not one, but two. Three, four five, many stars.

“Mhmmhm”, Captain Tikke hummed happily and grabbed his steering wheel from the copilot. He shoved the ship away from the water and towards the empty space. A minute of dodging and clinking of tiny pebbles of sand on his ship, they were free from the nebula.

They ended up right in the middle of a forming galaxy, all of the stars were clustered together too close to each other to develop any solar systems. They were all gigantic and to Captain Tikke’s pleasure, most of them were blue. Those were the hottest of stars.

The battery on the ship climbed when he passed right next to one. Oxygen flowed through the air again from the generators and the two remaining engines picked up speed.

“Brilliant, absolutely brilliant sir. You are a genius”, the slave exclaimed and clapped her big and spindly hands.

Captain Tikke’s saggy jowls wobbled in pride and his back spikes pricked up in a display of his species. This salve was butt kisser, but that might not be a bad thing. The pilot always liked a good compliment, compliments were rare in space. Maybe she could be his new copilot.

To be real, he was a genius. He had ventured past the Nebula END and had officially discovered new stars and blue giants nonetheless. He had made it to where no one had come before. He was greater than any explorer.

“Alright then, now that we are in the clear. Let’s count how many we have enslaved”, he said and let the ship bask under two blue giants so close to each other they could make a unique gravity field.

If someone had just taken off from their planet and went through a heroing experience like this, they would change their lives. Especially so close to death they realize their lives had been completely worthless, they would make a change.

Captain Tikke, however, has gone through experiences like this again and again. It was normal for a slave trader to be put in danger by absolute nothingness. It was his greed that kept him going as a slave shipper. He would give his soul for money and anyone who met the norg would say that he already had.

The copilot did not look taken aback by his comment, she was used to people like this, being a slave all her life.

Her pincers dropped from the smiling position they were once in and he frowned at the pad.

“It looks like we only have the baby Rolat and the young Valan from Retoil1”, she told the pilot.

“WHAT? We caught at least two norgs off that planet”, he spat angrily.

“By the looks of it, one was in an area with low oxygen and exploded and the other one died on impact with the jump”.

“Can’t just deliver nineteen slaves. I need at least one other slave to get my bonus”, He mused to himself and petted his jowels. The slime and blood had gone crusty on his skin.

“Why not, the Rolat is rare enough”, she stuttered, fear flashed in her brows. Another passenger meant another chase.

“No way I’m passing up that bonus. It's good money”, he snorted. The pilot leaned back in his chair and thought hard.

Beyond the cluster of stars there were more stars, billions upon billions of them, just like the stars beyond the nebula. Usually in space, even the vast expanses of it, there was always planets that could produce life. If no one had been in this part of the universe, that meant there were species undiscovered by scientists or slave traders.

“Fire up the navigator”, the pilot commanded with a floppy smirk.

The slave tapped a button on her side of the control board and the ship rocked with the power of the navigation cannon. It was the finest in the business and one of the only new contraptions on the ship. All slaving ships were required to have one and were made by the Big Master. The pilot could not cheap out on it like the rest of the ship.

On the pad was a hundred or so little dots, most in a line. Each are different colors. Green meant planets with danger, white meant cold planets, purple was habitable planets without life, blue meant planets with intelligent life. There is no blue anywhere on the board.

The pilot took the pad and scrolled around, searching for any spot of bright blue. For an entire Jump with a forty percent cell usage there was nothing.

The pilot threw the pad back at the copilot.

“Figures this place wouldn’t have intelligent life. It is so isolated. All intelligent life needs more intelligent life to actually get something done. If there was any intelligent life, I bet they would be dumber than sticks and count as-”

“Sir we have a radio signal”, the copilot exclaimed.

The pilot leaned in towards the tablet with surprise.

There was a signal, it was too complex to be some phenomena of gas and light. There was even sound.

““Hello this is Detroit morning live and we have a special guest star today…””.

The two aliens did not understand that someone was listening to a radio morning show while boredly staring at the ceiling in Nasa. That a transmission monitor scientist did not know he is not the only one listening because slave ships had anti transmission detection. However if that Nasa employee moved their head to the left they would see a little red button turned on signaling that someone has tuned in to Nasa in the morning.

“Do you recognize this language”? Captain Tikke asks.

“No I do not sir, let me check the translators”.

The translators failed. They had never heard this language before and had no way to pick apart the radio show host. With further investigation, however, they are able to view pictures of strange aliens on their blue sky planet. It looked very livable and its inhabitants looked very useful.

They had built great things in those pictures, they looked strong and capable, dumb and happy. Large, but not super large like Valans with two legs and two grabbing limbs. They looked perfect and the pilot could buy two solar systems with that baby Rolat, plus a new creature only he could find.

“I think we have just hit the jackpot”, Captain Tikke stated with a sadistic smile.