Hard Luck Hermit

The ocean of the world below rolled by in the cockpit window as Kamak sat alone. Somewhere on that planet, a child was mourning his father. Kamak didn’t care.

“Apall. Your pirate’s dead,” he said. He switched his personal tablet out of communication mode briefly, to send the proof to Apall. “Transferring confirmation details now.”

“Wonderful,” Apall chimed, far too quickly for him to have actually checked the files. “Efficient as always. Your payment is on the way. And I have a bonus, as well.”

“Take it from your tone you don’t mean a little extra spending money,” Kamak said.

“Not this time,” Apall said. “We monitored that little stalker of yours as he was leaving the station. He sent a message saying he’d failed the job. Transmission was supposed to be encrypted, but we traced it to Karzahd Station, far side of the galaxy our processing center is in.”

“Hmm. Thanks for the tip,” Kamak said. His first stop would’ve been the nearest station to the Timeka processing center, lightyears away. Having a slightly more recent lead would be a big help.

“Happy to help. Hope this situation of yours gets resolved soon. Timeka has a lot of work to be done we could use your kind of help with.”

“I’ll let you know as soon as we’re done,” Kamak said. “Thanks again for the tip. Keep your head on, pal.”

“Same to you,” Apall said. “In a more literal sense.”

There were a dozen different complications that could delay a manhunt, but by far the most infuriating was traffic.

“They got to set a limit on how many people can go through these fucking things,” Tooley complained. They were one of dozens of ships waiting to go through a Bang Gate, lining up to take their turn to hurtle through time and space.

“Even if they did so, we would likely be on the wrong side of the limit,” Farsus said. “We are currently number eighty-hundred and thirty-seven in the queue.”

“Don’t fucking tell me,” Tooley said. She’d stopped keeping track a few swaps ago, in hopes it would make the time go by faster. It wasn’t working.

“They really need to build more of these things,” Corey said.

“It’s a hole in time and space, Corvash,” Kamak said. “It takes like eighty solars to build. By the time they finish one that can fit another ten thousand ships a swap, thirty thousand new ships are trying to fly through it.”

“What really needs to happen is people got to stop having kids,” Tooley said. “More people means more traffic. Farsus, what’d be the best way to sterilize a lot of people?”

“Chemical agent dispersed in the Hokkton Comet Cluster,” Farsus said. “The ice harvested there is spread among multiple systems as drinking water, and-”

“Farsus, stop telling Toobertas how to commit bioterrorism,” Kamak snapped.

“What? She has no means to carry out such an act,” Farsus said. “The Cluster has extensive security systems.”

“Still. We try to keep the ship terrorism free. Pick something else to talk about,” Kamak said. He wanted to kill time as much as the rest of them, but there were certain outlawed topics on his ship. “Corvash, ask us a dumb question.”

“Uh, okay.”

Corey had several dumb questions filed away, to be parceled out over time. Right now he was most curious about what was going on with Doprel’s species, the Doccan, but Doprel had been in a bad mood lately and Corey didn’t want to bring up anything unpleasant. He opted for a more innocuous question instead.

“What’s with some of the nicknames people get around here? Corvash, Toobertas, what’s with that.”

“Oh, it’s just a diminutive sort of thing. You mash some people’s names together,” Kamak said. “At least among cultures that actually have last names. So Corey Vash becomes Corvash, Tooley Keeber Obeltas becomes Toobertas, that kind of thing.”

“Alright, I get it, so you’d be what, Kam-Y-B?”

“Ugh. No,” Kamak said. “Our designations don’t really work well.”

With long life spans and relatively high breeding rates, Gentanians could not rely on family lineages for identification purposes so easily. An average Gentanian could have up to thirty-seven children during their lifetime, most of whom would then breed with other Gentanians and produce thirty-seven more offspring, so on and so forth until every family tree was more of a family spider-web. Gentanian children were assigned unique alpha-numeric identifiers rather than family names, to make them easier to track.

“The trend is also inapplicable to me and Doprel,” Farsus added. “As neither of our cultures make use of last names.”

“I’m not even sure Doccan’s use names at all,” Kamak said.

“Does Doprel not talk about it?”

“We don’t converse much about his emotionless murder-cousins, no.”

Though he saw an opportunity to ask about the Doccan, Corey chose not to seize it. Both out of respect for Doprel, and because asking too many questions too quickly made him feel stupid.

He had another question in mind that he was also sure would make him look stupid, but the benefits outweighed the risks.

“So, uh, on a completely different note,” Corey said. “Do you guys have, you know, laser swords up here?”

“Laser swords?”

“Yeah. Like an energy beam thingy,” Corey said. He mimed the action of stabbing someone. Kamak, Tooley, and Farsus all stared at him with equal levels of confusion and disdain.

“Why the fuck would we have those?”

“For stabbing and cutting shit?”

“We already have something for that, it’s called a regular fucking knife,” Tooley said.

“How the hell would you make a laser blast into a sword shape anyway?” Kamak snorted.

“Does the human race understand some physical laws we do not?” Farsus asked. “Using all known materials, such a blade would be impossible to create. On top of being wildly impractical.”

“If you want something lasered, you just shoot it,” Kamak said.

“Forget I said anything,” Corey said. “Fucking useless space tech.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, is us bridging the gap between galaxies with space time anomalies not impressive enough for you, Mr. Science?” Tooley snarked, as she gestured to the massive Bang Gate in front of them.

“Don’t have laser swords, don’t have automatic doors-”

“We have automatic doors, idiot, we just don’t have them on this ship,” Kamak said. “On a space ship, you need to be efficient with your space. A sliding door means you have to give it room to slide into. When the door’s on a regular hinge, it goes where empty space already is.”

“Fine, yeah, I get it.”

“If this is the kind of shit you humans are focused on, no wonder you haven’t figured out space travel yet.”

“I said I get it,” Corey snapped. They made fun of him for ten more minutes anyway.