Spider's Treasure

No one can hear you scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say. We used to practice screaming into the night sky, my brother and I. The only two boys in our family. Darius and I had a contest to see who's voice could echo out into the cosmos longer.

"I bet you echoes don't stop. They probably just get smaller and smaller." He would say to me after shouting middle school profanities out at the nearest constellation. "I bet bugs are just the echoes that fell back down to the ground. That's why they freak you out. It's somebody's secret crawling all on you." He finished, teasing me by miming spiders with his hands.

I got stuck on that idea of spiders piecing together their little webs of secrets. I stared down at a parchment star map stretched over a fine wooden table, attempting to see where the threads of silk connected, hunting for a spider's treasure.

I circled an area known to be thick with spinning black holes that snarled and circled in the dark, eating everything, including each other, in a large radius.

"Shit, I bet I’d hide it there too." I said softly to myself. I shook my head awake and rubbed my eyes, tearing them away from the chart for the first time in what felt like too long, and looking out the large windows of the captain's cabin out into space.

We were in low orbit over an ocean planet as the sun was setting. The cabin was flooded with a strawberry ice cream glow as I looked out at the horizon. I smiled at the view for a second, and then I made a decision.

"Aite. Fuck it." I said out loud. “Hey ship. Call the bridge.”

I waited as the ship did its boops and beeps patching me through to the bridge.

“Hellooo, this is the bridge, we are very very official, and super serious about tyranny, yes?” Replied a familiar voice from the other end. I exhaled a laugh and a sigh, stepped one foot over the body of an unconscious ship's captain, then another foot, and walked closer to the window.

"I found a map to the Orphan Star." I said, getting right to the shit. "It's here, it's old as fuck, it has the seal of all Five Pirate Kings of old, and, and this pervy ass captain let me see it thinking he was gonna fuck me." I said in a tumble.

"So I shot him." I finished with a shrug. "Now I'm the Captain."

"It's so funny that top military guys will use shit like Tinder to get a date. It's like they wanna get robbed." Shelby replied, she sounded buoyant.

"Is he dead?" She asked a little squeamishly.

"Naw." I replied seriously. "I always try not to if I can. I loaded the gun with nightmare rounds."

"Uhhh"

"They knock you out and induce an eight hour real time nightmare." I finished impatiently.

"You pirates and these fancy magic bullets crack me up sometimes." Shelby replied with a laugh. "Acting like all of us are supposed to know about shit like that. Some of us still fight with honor, you dirty slut!" She shouted taunting me.

"Sorry, I forgot I was talking to Samurai Showdown over here." I said carefully stowing the map in a container and striding out of the room.

"I've never even heard of that fucking game and you keep on referencing it like I've heard of it." She said dryly to me, sounding annoyed over the ship's speakers. "I don't even use that thing unless I have to."

"Yeah, yeah, I know. You just look super cool, you're like the sword character in a fighting game." I said sincerely as I strode through the halls shooting unaware soldiers with sleeping rounds. They were human so it was kinda easy to sneak up on them. There were only a few stragglers, most of the crew had been summoned to the bridge for what they thought was some sort of announcement. It was actually a robbery. It was a liberation effort for the people of this planet as well, but it was mostly a robbery.

As I walked I thought about what it would mean to find the Orphan Star. A time ship.