Episode II: The Starchasers and the Junksea

Inscribed on the hull were the words “SALVAGE” and “DUFC”.

The Starchasers are a down-on-their luck, rag tag group of alien misfits just trying to make it in this crazy galaxy they call home. Led by Captain Goose, they’re sassy, they’re scrappy, and they’re broke.

The full version of Starchasers and the Junksea is available on Patreon

In the empty bridge of the starship Bronco, the ship’s computer had been operating in low-power mode for three standard days now, sipping at power while it cycled idly. It had only one task each iteration, sending out a pulse of beats across the local spectrum of sub- and super-luminal bands in a cry of distress. The rest of each loop was given over to awaiting a response that would never come. And so the Bronco’s computer, like its crew, had chosen to fill its time with games, attempting to devise an algorithm that could calculate complex pathway polynomials in the time between distress pulses. It was getting quite good at it.

Far away, near the rear of the old cargo ship, past clanging raised floors and exposed steel bulkheads, the crew gathered in the galley had no inkling of the computer’s activities. Indeed, their attention was on far more pressing matters, matters like galactic conquest. Scanning the situation on the board in front of him, careful not to tip the cards in his hand, Captain Goose did not like his odds of victory. He was down to a single world, a single ship, and maybe two good cards left to play. It was frustratingly like his real life.

Looking over the mess of a table at the focused faces of his crew, whether human, bovine Lioshi, felid Meseag, or mantis-like Suadorn, Goose couldn’t help but think he’d won anyway. The first hours after their crash landing on Tasiliset VIIe had been getting tense between the stressed and panicked crew before he’d dug the old board game out from one of the Bronco’s storage lockers and ordered everyone to play with him. Aside from breaks for sleep, the crew had spent the past forty hours thwarting history and carving up the map of Constellara for themselves.

So it was quite the surprise when the ship lurched, shunting all of them aftward.

…

The full version of Starchasers and the Junksea is available on Patreon