When I finished playing the last of us and watching The 100 (we don't talk about S7 in this house) I couldn't stand not having more content. The worldbuilding! The characters! The unflinching violence and grey moral compasses! I needed more!

So, to keep others from the dry pits of content like me, I give you Earth Sucks.

His mission is vengeance, but his enemy and the people he considered tools teach him there's more to life than surviving.

-bisexual, grumpy anti-hero -sunshine love interests -morally grey choices -aliens who grew up on "If humans were the scary ones" ideals, like the 2012 Tumblr threads -enemies to allies to friends to... -gritty worldbuilding -touch her/him and die -fleshed out cultures

As J'orb was walking through the halls of the ship, she heard an excited exclamation from the nearby lab.

"Hahaha! I did it, I got it all done!"

As she ran into the lab to see what happened to make one of her human crewmates so excited, she saw Adam standing in front of a row of freshly cleaned test equipment.

"Hey Adam, what's up? I heard you yelling from down the hall."

"Sorry about that. I finally, FINALLY was able to get all my lab equipment cleaned and organized before I left for the day, rather than letting future Adam do it. Man, I love my meds sometimes. They make my life SO much easier"

".... Weren't you the one who reconfigured the engine last week to run on 15 percent less fuel by using waste products so we create less space debris and save money???"

"Yeah, but that interesting and easy. This, this is hard stuff. Look, it is clean and properly put away!"

".... Ok, Adam, I have so many questions. First, why are you so excited about this? Second, what does medication have to do with this? And third, aren't you supposed to do this everyday? Why is it a big deal?"

"I have so many answers for you, J'orb. Firstly, I know you just came onto the ship at our last pickup, so you might not have heard yet, but I have ADHD. It is a imbalance in certain brain chemicals that makes small, boring tasks impossible to do because my brain constantly needs external stimulation to produce the chemicals it is missing. This means my own brain fights the everyday things it needs to do because they are not stimulating enough. So I take meds that act like those chemicals to allow me to do those boring tasks."

"Ah, so you must have been on this medication your entire life then? Why does this still make you excited?"

"Oh no, I only started the meds a few years ago. Most people seemed to think I was "too smart" to have ADHD, and thus I have lived with it my entire life. So yeah, being able to do these small things is a new experience for me."

"............... How can anyone think it is normal to feel that way and not notice?!"

"They just assumed I was lazy and didn't want to do it because they can, so why can't I?"

"That is probably the most stupid thing I have ever heard."

Ikaroa turned out to be an immense, burly man with darkly tanned skin and a mass of wildly curly black hair that hung down past his shoulders in a cloud. Deep tattoos crawled over his chest, visible under his open shirt.

When he smiled, Maggie caught sight of his teeth, which came to sharp, many-rowed points.

Skinshifter, most likely, and Zaaba said ‘Longfin’ which didn’t mean much to Maggie, but suggested some branch of the aquatic Others. She would have to sent a letter to Luka, asking about them, once she got out of this particular situation.

Assuming, of course, she didn’t have to call down the might of the Imperial fleet to get out of this situation, which would no be ideal. She liked the Blackbird, and she didn’t want to have to leave it.

Water ran through in a deep channel to one side of the room, but the air smelled reasonably clean. Probably because of the water. The man behind her made sure she was steady, the floor was slick, and let go of her hand, but he didn’t step away. Maggie suspected that he was the only person the kidnappers had who could go up against an electromancer, and he was their insurance against her abilities.

Which… well, that meant some interesting things about how much planning went into their little operation here. Zaaba hadn’t mentioned having problems with any other captain beyond the usual ones that everyone had a problem with, but this seemed like a longstanding grudge.

“Ikaroa, you bottom-feeding crack-toothed slimeskin,” Zaaba said when she clapped eyes on the big captain. “What the hell are you doing grabbing one of my crew? We have our problems, but you touch one of mine again, I’ll peel you, coat you in salt, and stake you in the sun.”

“Zaaba, always a pleasure,” Ikaroa said, his deep voice bright and cheerful as he gave Zaaba a very toothy grin. “Had to make sure you wouldn’t make a scene in public.”

“I’mma ‘bout to make a scene right here. What do you want?”

“Are they going to fight or flirt?” Maggie muttered to her captor, who was rolling his eyes so hard she could tell he was doing it without even looking at him. He had the knife to her throat again, but it rested against her collar, more a gesture than a statement of intent. “Any way I can talk you into helping me lock them in a room to figure themselves out?”

“Nothing doing, love,” he whispered back, apparently stifling snickers at her irreverent comment. “She’d eat him whole if he wasn’t poison. Can’t let it happen.”

“I couldn’t convince you?”

“You probably could,” he said with a low chuckle in her ear. “But I think Dad would kill me if I asked you out while he’s trying to threaten your captain.”

“Given the knife to my throat, I wouldn’t say yes If you asked me out. Also, Ikaroa is your father?”

“Can’t blame you for that, and, yes he is. Watch out. They’re looking at us.”

Maggie met Zaaba’s annoyed gaze and gave her an artful, guileless smile that made her captain glare harder before turning back to her apparent-rival. Maggie gave them another minute to get back into their argument, which seemed to involve a lot of insults regarding people who had scales and people who didn’t, before huffing an annoyed sigh.

“So,” she said when she was confident that neither captain was paying attention to them. “What’s all this about? Oh, and what’s your name? I’m getting tired of thinking of you as ‘the man’.”

“Marcus. You?”

“Maggie.”

“Hey, M solidarity. Anyway, your captain underbid a job in my captain’s territory. Apparently it was a whole drama,” Marcus explained. He was quiet for a minute, and then the knife went away. Maggie hid a smile. He seemed nice, but it would be easier to get herself and Zaaba out of this without having to worry about a knife to the throat. “He wants reparation money for the business he lost.”

“He knows the Blackbird doesn’t actually have that kind of money, right? Most of what we make goes into the ship, and Zaaba will die before she lets him take that from her.”

“Math isn’t his best subject. I tried to talk him around,” Marcus sighed, apparently the only reasonable person in the room besides Maggie herself. “How’d a core girl end up on a smuggling ship?”

Maggie might have replied, she had half a dozen lies about her history ready to go, but Zaaba caught her eye and glanced at the door. Apparently it was time to go.

“You’ll have to see if our paths cross again, for your answer,” Maggie told Marcus, and flickered magic over her bracelet. A holding spell, the finest money could buy, and cast by one of the better Imperial sorcerers, billowed through the room and caught the whole crew neatly. Zaaba, who had clearly been expecting something, but probably not that, stared at her. “Captain, it seems it’s time to go. Shall we?”

“We’ll be talking about your bag of tricks when we get back to the ship,” Zaaba said, apparently nonplussed by Maggie’s undisclosed ready-to-fire spells. The were all one-off spells, but Luka would send her more in her next care package, and she had a stash of them in her room on the ship. “How long do we have?”

“Probably long enough to get out of here,” Maggie said, and led the way back up the slippery, winding stairs. “It’s got a ten minute lead, which should get us out of this hole and back to the market. If they start something there, the Delve Peacekeepers will be on them.”

“Ten minutes,” Zaaba said to herself and nodded resolutely as they took the stairs as fast as they dared, holding tight to the rail as they went, boots sliding in the slime. “Right. Well, I’ve been meaning to teach you when it’s better fight and when it’s better to run. Lesson the first. There’s no honor in getting shot, so run the hell away.”

+++

HGE - Blackbird:

Crown Princess Lucia Therese Magdalene has taken to the sky like her brother, Luka, before her. With her name and her crown set aside, Maggie Gol will take the Human Galactic Empire by storm.

Hot Pepper Blackbird

Fixing What’s Broke

Smuggler’s Den

Penny Zap (Subscriber Only!)

Down the Delve (Subscriber Only!)

+++

More Stories!

Captain Zēz-ħar knew that employing a multi-species crew for this mission would be difficult. After all, even species from the same solar system didn’t always have mutually intelligible languages. That was why she had invested in the best universal-translators money could buy.

Before giving them to the crew she fastened a translator over her tympanum and took a walk around the ship to test it out. It was then that she heard two human crew members having the most confusing conversation she had ever heard.

“Wait, so what’s ’mouse’ in Korean?”

“Mouse.”

“Mouse?”

“No, it’s more like: Mouse.”

“Mouse.”

“Yeah.”

Captain Zēz-ħar turned on her heel and looked back to her office, retrices flicking with annoyance.