Hard Luck Hermit

“Cool. Can someone get this collar off me?”

“Yeah, we got you,” Kamak said. “Farsus, you’re up.”

The red-skinned alien took off his sizable belt of weapons and picked up some tools from a nearby workbench. He beckoned Corey to sit down and then stood behind him on the couch, poking at the collar with his various implements.

“Please remain still, Corvash, and I shall unmake this mark of slavery,” Farsus said.

“Can you leave the translator intact? I think it’s the only reason I can understand you guys.”

“It can be done,” Farsus said. “In that event, I shall leave the device intact, while removing the restrictive metal plating.”

“And the bomb.”

“And the bomb,” Farsus agreed. Corey put his hands in his lap and remained perfectly still while the surprisingly delicate hands of Farsus went to work. For being as bulky and as hairy as he was, Farsus had very nimble fingers.

“So. Maybe you picked up our names in all the shouting and gunfire, but just in case: I’m Kamak D-V-Y-B, the owner of this ship, captain of the crew, and all that.”

Kamak was by far the most human looking person in the room, though other than his complete hairlessness, he also had some other major differences. His skin had thin ridges across the top of his bare head and all down his spine, and his skin had a slight grayish tint. The captain stripped off the armor he wore in the field and tossed it aside, exposing the simple white shirt he wore underneath, now visibly stained by sweat. Corey recoiled from the acidic scent of his alien perspiration and tried not to let his disgust show on his face.

“I am Farsus, engineer of the Kintava clan, scholar of chaos theory,” he said. He unlatched one of the mechanisms of the collar and pried a small explosive loose from the interior. “There. Your head is now at a significantly lower risk of exploding. It is my honor to meet you, Corvash. May our companionship bring us closer to comprehension of the certain uncertainty.”

Farsus took the last few bits of metal plating off the slave collar and took the scrap to his workbench. Corey nodded politely and then used his new freedom of movement to lean slightly closer to Kamak.

“What’s he talking about?”

“Don’t ask, his explanation won’t make any sense either,” Kamak said. “Doprel, you done yet?”

The hulking creature returned from the weapons bay of the ship, looking as sad as is inhuman anatomy allowed. Corey didn’t know whether to call his hardened skin scales or a carapace, but Doprel definitely had mandibles on his face, and finned ridges on his back and upper limbs, making Corey very confused as to whether he was piscine or insectoid in nature.

“HobridHee’s been prepared,” Doprel sighed. “It’ll be a short time before the launch, if you want to say your goodbyes, Corey Vash.”

“No, that’s- it’s fine. Like I said, I barely knew the guy.”

“His role in your life has ended,” Farsus said solemnly. “May the scattered atoms of his body spiral outwards, and cause shockwaves throughout the galaxy.”

Everyone in the room ignored that statement and moved on with introductions.

“The big guy is Doprel,” Kamak explained. “He’s here to be large, and also keep me from becoming too much of a bastard.”

“If that’s his job, he needs to get paid less.”

The muffled mockery from the cockpit caused Farsus to burst into a near-deafening bout of laughter. Doprel’s mandibles wiggled mirthfully as he suppressed his own delight at the joke. Kamak didn’t even try to hide his annoyance.

“If you got time to mouth off, Tooley, you got time to introduce yourself,” Kamak called. “Quit being a bitch and get out here.”

“I’m still doing faster-than-light stabilization, bastard, it takes time,” Tooley called back. “If you think you can run this thing without me, fire me and get in here yourself.”

“Don’t tempt me,” Kamak shouted back. In spite of his threats, he didn’t go anywhere.

“You can’t fly your own ship?”

“It’s a highly complicated piece of machinery, and I have other responsibilities keeping me from devoting the time and energy necessary to understand it.”

“Though this sounds like a blatant deflection, it is true,” Farsus added. “Our ship is unnecessarily complex, and Kamak’s poor time-management skills preclude his learning process.”

“You people are despicable,” Kamak mumbled.

While he stewed in his anger, the fourth crew member made herself known. She looked even more human than Kamak, albeit human with body paint and dyed hair. She had powder blue hair, so thick and tightly braided they looked like tendrils on her head, and sapphire blue skin that almost looked iridescent in the ship’s lighting. Corey made no assumptions about her general anatomy relative to a human, however. He was even assuming they were female, now that he thought of it. Those bulges on their chest could be poison sacks for all Corey knew.

“Hi there, I’m Tooley Keeber Obertas, your pilot on this expedition,” they said. “Have I introduced myself in a satisfactory manner? Can I go back to piloting the ship we’re all on now?”

“Oh, sit down, you little whiner, you and I both know we’re basically on autopilot until we drop out of FTL anyway.”

“Okay, can I circle back to that real quick?” Corey asked. “Are we actually traveling faster than light speed right now?”

“Yeah, you-”

A moment of realization struck, and all eyes in the room fell on Corey.

“Holy shit,” Tooley said. “Are you an Uncontacted?”

“I’ve been told, yes, but nobody ever explained what it meant,” Corey said. Most thing he’d been told so far had yet to be explained.

“Uncontacted refers to any sapient species which has not been brought up to the Galactic Council’s baseline technological standards,” Farsus explained. “A minimum level of scientific knowledge, shared among all council races. It is surprising to me that your planet escaped their notice. Their committed effort to uplift all sapient species in a grand ‘Galactic Uplifting’ was recently declared a success.”

“Maybe they didn’t miss it,” Kamak said. “They made an exception for that one planet, what was it called, Katoomas? They were too violent, said they would’ve been unsuitable members of the galactic community. What about you, Corey, you from a planet of barbarians?”

“Well, I don’t know, Earth’s not great, but I’ve only been up here a few hours and I’ve already seen a five-way shootout between gang lords, slavers, and bounty hunters, so I can’t say we’re much worse off.”

“Fair play,” Kamak said.

“Did you say Earth?”

Tooley stepped forward, as if in a trance, and reached out to Corey. Her hands gingerly grabbed at his face and wide eyes full of awe stared deep into his soul.

“My people’s shaman’s have always told stories about a warrior from a shrouded world called Earth,” Tooley said, her voice nearly breathless with wonder. “One who had the strength to change the galaxy forever. To challenge the Maw that threatens to consume us all.”

Corey stared back at Tooley. Her cold fingertips were trembling on his face, her eyes were full of wonder, and her lips quivered slightly as she stared at him in silence. Corey’s eyes narrowed.

“You’re fucking with me, aren’t you?”

Tooley pulled her hands back and pumped a fist in frustration as the rest of the room burst into laughter. She then turned around and made some mocking laughter sounds at Kamak before slamming down into the sofa with a huff.

“Stick to piloting, sweetheart,” Kamak taunted. “You’re not any good at it, but at least it’s better than your acting skills.”

“Yeah yeah, laugh it up,” Tooley said. She slammed her foot down on the table in front of her and the surface opened up, lifting a bottle of opaque blue liquid through a small hole. Tooley grabbed it and removed the cap as she turned to Corey. “Sorry, mate. Not trying to make fun of you, just wanted to give that routine a try. Not every day you meet an Uncontacted, right?”

“Yeah, I get it, see a chance and take it, respect,” Corey said. “Just want to be clear though, there isn’t a Maw threatening to consume everything? Right?”

“There is such a Maw: an imperceptibly massive black hole at the edge of the observable universe that slowly consumes all of existence,” Farsus said. “But the consumption occurs at such a slow rate that all of our stars will have long since faded into cosmic dust by the time it consumes our galaxies. Unless your species is functionally immortal and capable of surviving the endless abyss of entropic space, you have no reason to be concerned.”

“Not a problem,” Corey said. “Humanity will be lucky to make it through this millennium, much less the heat death of the universe.”

“On the topic of your species, though,” Doprel said. “If they’re Uncontacted, it’s going to make it hard for you to find your way back home.”

“Yeah, good luck with that,” Kamak said, his tone making it very clear he did not consider the journey back to Earth his problem. Corey shook his head.

“I’m not worried,” Corey said. “I don’t really have anything to go back to.”

Tooley very deliberately put her bottle in her mouth, just to have an excuse to not say anything for the next few seconds. While she evaded the subject, Kamak and Doprel stared each other down over it.

“Don’t you look at me with those big old eyes,” Kamak said. Doprel had six eyes, which made his puppy dog eye routine that much stronger.

“I’m not,” Doprel said. “I’m just thinking. To myself. About things.”

“Well keep those thoughts in that big ugly head of yours.”

“You did say we could take on new jobs with a bigger crew.”

“He’s not qualified.”

Corey nearly spoke up, but Tooley very firmly placed a hand on his chest to hold him back.

“Don’t say anything,” she whispered. “You’ll only make it worse.”

“You said he could shoot,” Doprel said, carrying on the debate heedless to their aside.

“That doesn’t make him qualified to be an intergalactic mercenary,” Kamak protested. “Especially not as a damned Uncontacted.”

“And you said you wanted to shift down to easier jobs during shipping season,” Doprel said. “That makes it a perfect time to onboard a beginner.”

“It ain’t happening.”

“Kamak.”

“What?”

“He’s got nowhere else to go, and doesn’t know anyone else.”

“And I’m supposed to care?”

“No. But it means he probably won’t quit after one job.”

Kamak turned on his heel and put a foot up on the table, flashing a winning and entirely insincere smile towards Corey.

“Hey kid,” he said. “You want to be a bounty hunter?”