#randyscience

"Hull integrity’s down to 17%, Captain!" spat the heavily-accented voice of Officer Jackson, his voice crackling and distorted over the cockpit’s intercom system. "Another hit like that, and we’ll be dead in the water!"

"Dammit…" Starchild growled, waving his hands over the console. The bright blue display came up beneath his hands after flickering for a few moments, and showed that, as he’d suspected, the enemy ship was still circling around them. They were drifting now — floating through the empty void spinning in a pretty little pirouette. The weapons were dead, the thrusters were dead, life support was barely hanging on… "Well, we can still make this work," Starchild muttered to himself. "We’ll just have to—" But before he could complete that thought, a familiar button on the console started flashing yellow.

"Captain!" Jackson shouted from the engine room. "They’re hailing us!"

Starchild smirked. Perfect. “Acknowledged, Jackson! We’re going to Plan B! Responding now!” Starchild snapped, slamming the button with his fist. After a few moments of static, a holographic projection finally sprung to life in front of him.

Lit only by dull red light, the yellow-furred face of a Sirisian, clad in a stolen Confederacy uniform that had been stretched, readjusted and torn to fit her non-anthropomorphic, canid body. The pirate smirked, her one good eye glaring down her muzzle at Starchild. “This all could have been avoided, you know,” she sneered.

"Go to hell, bitch!" Jackson’s voice crackled over the speakers. "If you think we’re going to be surrendering our cargo to a damn Sirisian, you can—"

"Jackson, that’s enough!" Starchild spat, forcefully slapping the console and cutting Jackson off before he could continue.

The pirate growled softly, baring her glistening white fangs at Starchild. “I’m not going to ask you again, human,” she snarled. “Hand over your cargo, or we’ll take them by force.”

"Wh-Why?!" Starchild whimpered, clutching his head in his hands. "What the fuck do you dogs want with 200,000 donuts?!"

"You really don’t know?" the Sirisian replied, her paw coming to rest on the console and a grin spreading across her face. "Earthly sweetbreads are in very high demand on Gurriptar right now. Is your first time on a freighting voyage, human? That would explain why you don’t have any kind of shielding…"

Starchild groaned, resting his head on the console. He was afraid of that. “I… I’m not going to surrender my cargo to interstellar drug smugglers!” he groaned.

"Well, I’ll give you a choice, then, Captain," the pirate replied simply. "Hand over your cargo, or we’ll destroy your ship. I’ll give you two Earth minutes to decide what to do."

Starchild shuddered, a shiver going down his spine. “But… But, if you destroy the ship, the cargo’s going to be destroyed, too!”

The Siririan laughed. “You really think I’m stupid, don’t you? I HAVE done this before, human. Besides, we’re not going to be aiming our warheads at your cargo hold. We’ll be aiming them at the cockpit. You’d probably die first, of course. But your little friend… Jack-son, you called him? He’d likely asphyxiate first, slowly, as the oxygen slowly drained out of your ship. Of course, that’s assuming that he didn’t get sucked out into the vacuum of space first… freezing, choking, constantly bombarded with cosmic radiation… For all our bombast and pomp, I have to admit, there is no more ruthless killer in all of the universe than outer space herself. At least she has the decency to kill you quickly… assuming the void you’re floating in isn’t saturated with medical nano-machines, of course.”

Starchild’s head snapped up. “You wouldn’t,” he murmured.

The Sirisian’s mouth curled upwards, such that it could, into something approximating a smirk. “Wouldn’t I? …Hm. Well… Are you prepared to take that risk, Captain? Sixty seconds…”

Suddenly, Starchild threw up his hands. “Alright, alright, stop! Stop! For the love of God, we’ll do it!”

The Sirisian let out a short, barking laugh. “Good, good. Now, then—”

"B-But we don’t have any shuttles," Starchild interrupted, lip quivering, "and you destroyed our tractor beam in your initial assault, so you’re going to have to dock with us…"

The Sirisian blinked, cocking her head briefly to one side. “…Very well, human,” she said after a few moments. “Don’t try anything — we are still considerably better-armed than you.”

"Of course not," Starchild said through a sigh of relief. "I am a human, but I’m not that stupid…" With that, he pressed the yellow button on the console, and the hologram shut off. He took a long, deep breath, closed his eyes, and switched on the intercom again. "We’re a go, Jackson. You can come in now."

The door to the cockpit dilated open, and Jackson slunk quickly into the room. “Nice flying back there, human,” he sneered, his pointed ear twitching with anticipation.

Starchild chuckled, reaching under the console. “Shut up, Jackson,” he said simply. “She’s going to be docking with us any minute now. I hope you’re ready.”

He retrieved a standard-issue Confederacy pistol and tossed it quickly to Jackson. Jackson, with all of his typical grace and poise, plucked it out of the air and switched it on. He smoothed the soft white fur on the back of his hand with his tongue, then dragged it quickly across his forehead. “You’re not going to regret this, sir,” he purred, his tail swishing back and forth slowly.