JOYRIDE

Chapter 1

Chaz followed the robotic assistant down the hallway. It spouted nonsense like “Welcome to the L&S family,” “Make sure to read the onboarding brochure,” and “Thank you for helping us move the needle.” Whatever that meant. Chaz was more focused on the rust and corrosion that was built up on the robot, and on the fact that it moved by rail rather than walking on two legs, hovering, or driving on treads like he had been used to. It looked like a relic of the ancient past.

Amidst the barrage of corporate pleasantries, the machine informed him that he had been assigned to ship 14001 and that his captain was somebody called Hobs. Chaz’s mind raced with possibilities as he imagined his would-be captain. Perhaps he was a seasoned admiral from the navy who had decided to take a step back and teach the young bucks a few tricks. Maybe instead he was a young and prodigious fleet commander who made time in his busy schedule to school fresh recruits. This would make sense given that Chaz was exceptionally intelligent. He should only expect the Federation to have chosen such a captain for him to accelerate his learning. He imagined a tall figure, with broad shoulders. Clad in the pristine Federation grey. Someone with a full head of finely groomed dark hair and an even fuller and more commanding beard.

They had reached a heavy airlock door, no different from the dozens that they had already passed. The robot turned around and, with an outstretched arm, motioned towards the entrance.

“Please enter your ship now.” It commanded.

An awkward silence followed as the door began to unstick and part. Chaz stepped in, full of confidence, and adjusted his eyes to the dark ship interior. The door shut behind him, much quicker than it had opened.

“Hello!” Chaz beamed. No response.

“Captain Hobs?” He repeated several times as he explored the ship. Each time more reluctantly.

The ship was far more beat than any vessel he could remember flying in before. Everything from the wall paneling to the bed frames seemed to be in a state of disrepair. It looked like a communal space that had been inhabited and abused by a gang of ungrateful inerts. A strange damp smell was permeating throughout.

Chaz took just two steps in the main chamber of the ship, the crew quarter, before spotting his captain.

The man, Hobs, lay passed out in the lavatory. Tucked away in the corner of the room. He was certainly old and experienced looking, but that was about as much as he had in common with Chaz’s fantasies. He wore a patchwork of many layers of indistinct fabrics; all tucked under a torn-up trench coat. Scraggly grey hair covered his entire face, and he was bent over in such a way atop the toilet that his neck was turned upwards and his head was resting on the wall. Chaz saw blisters, boils, acne, and other miscellaneous lumps all over his captain’s neck. What’s more, the man was incredibly jaundiced.

Chaz gave him a firm shake by the shoulders, and then another, and another, until finally the man awoke. He grumbled, pushed his hair out of his eyes and looked at Chaz.

“Let an… Old man… Sleep son… Tired…” he sputtered like a dying engine, and just like that immediately fell asleep again, banging his head off the wall as he did so. The stench that came off his breath as he spoke reminded Chaz of the smell of disinfectant, mixed with something putrid like rotting fruit.

The youngster reconciled that his captain must be one of those depressed and romantic drunks who had seen incredible atrocities and fought in countless wars to the point he was desensitized and numb, but nevertheless someone to be respected. He obeyed the captain’s wish and made himself familiar with the ship instead. In the crew quarters which he was presently standing in there were two bunk beds, a door leading to a small armory and a closet. There was the narrow corridor which he had entered through, and on the opposite side of the crew quarter was the bridge, or rather the cockpit. It was very cramped and there lay several empty bottles across the dashboard. There was also a hatch inside the armory, which led to the lower deck, but there seemed to only be one intricate piece of machinery here, which Chaz thought it was better not to touch. All-in-all the ship was no bigger than a single bedroom apartment on Earth IX.

Chaz heard the airlock door creak open and rushed to greet his new teammate. This man looked a lot more responsible than the captain. He was tall and wore a suit with a collar that flopped down almost to his shoulders. He looked a bit rough with his stubble and tired eyes, but at least his skin didn’t look like it was being melted off by nitric acid. Most impressively, he was carrying a bulky briefcase.

“Hello sir,” Chaz said to the man, who was hardly his senior by a few years. Living off world does tend to age one faster, “My name is Chaz.”

The man ignored Chaz and turned to face the decaying rail-bot. He had cautiously slipped only one foot into the ship, so the door hadn’t closed yet.

“Are you serious?” he questioned with a raised brow, “I was assured this was a respectable operation and you are putting me in a rust bucket with this inert.”

“Please enter the ship now.” The robot replied with uncaring glee.

The man glanced at the robot, then at Chaz. The look on his face was one of deep regret. Like someone who just realized that their entire existence was a string of unfortunate events. The suited stranger experienced something of a spiritual awakening. Surely to end up here was no coincidence. This must have been predetermined by a higher power. He could not believe that his own decisions led him to this. Seeing his visceral reaction made Chaz’s stomach sink. It was at this point that Chaz questioned whether he was in the Navy.

The man drew in a deep breath and stepped fully inside the ship. The door slammed behind him, twice as fast as it had closed behind Chaz.

“Nick,” he introduced himself with a pause, giving Chaz the benefit of the doubt “My name is Nick.”

“Nice to meet you, Nick. Tell me. Are we in the navy?” Chaz retorted. Had anyone else said it this would have been a hilarious joke, but somehow Nick knew he was serious. He turned around again and started banging on the hefty metal door.

“LET ME OUT, LET ME OUT!” he cried and begged to no avail.

This was not the Navy.

“Calm down Nick. I won’t hurt you.” Chaz tiptoed over to the wailing man to reassure him.

“Don’t touch me,” Nick yelled, “where is the captain?” he demanded, breathlessly.

“He’s taking a nap right now, are you sure we should wake him?” Chaz asked, concerned.

Nick dismissed him with the wave of a hand and a foul expression. Chaz, clever as always, interpreted this gesture as a yes and led Nick to the lavatory, where he saw the same scene that took Chaz by surprise moments earlier. Nick slammed the lavatory door shut. He had seen men like Hobs before. Panhandling at spaceports or sitting obnoxiously on public benches creating an eyesore.

“You can’t be fucking serious,” Nick muttered to himself as he covered his face with his hands. They dragged down slowly and pulled at his skin, almost causing his eyes to pop out, “We are getting liquidated. We are sooo getting fucking liquidated.” He gasped through his hands, before turning to Chaz.

“Who are you? Seriously. They put me on a ship with two absolute wasters. How could anyone work in these conditions?” Delirium was quickly beginning to creep in for Nick. He walked circles around the room shouting at the walls.

“Does nobody at this company carry out risk assessments? Is there no screening process? You are probably the first priority 5 human being to live. I’ve seen this before in the mega courts. It’s called 'Gross Negligence of Personnel Selection.’ You must terminate this sub-normal immediately. And the captain. Terminate them and dissolve my contract right now.” He begged to some invisible authority, but his pleading was answered with silence.

Chaz blinked, his vibrant blue hair catching the flickering, low wattage light of the hallway. He watched Nick’s frantic pacing with the same detached curiosity that he would use to study a particularly colorful species of space moth he saw in the closet earlier. He did not quite understand what a ‘Priority 5 human’ was, but it sounded like a high score, so he decided to take it as a compliment.

‘Liquidated?’ The word was stuck in his mind. He had a sense of what it meant but he wasn’t sure he understood correctly, “We can’t be liquidated, Nick, I don’t think we’d fit through the pipes. Too many bones”

He stepped closer to Nick, completely unfazed by the man’s escalating hysteria. To Chaz, Nick’s ‘corpo-panic’ was just another fascinating off world custom, like the rail mounted robot or Hobs’ choice of a toilet as a bedroom.

“You speak really fast,” Chaz remarked with a genuine smile, “Is that a skill they taught you in the mega courts?”

This snapped Nick right out of his daze. He could not even be angry because the words he was hearing were so ridiculous. This man, Chaz, it was as though he was born yesterday. No, it was as though he was born 10 minutes ago.

“Don’t worry about the selection process,” Chaz continued, “I am highly intelligent. The brochure said that I have high growth potential but I’m already pretty tall.” He looked Nick up and down “I’d like to be as tall as you are though.”

Before Nick could accost him with another stream of chastising remarks, Chaz's eyes darted toward the cockpit.

"I wonder if those empty bottles on the dashboard are part of the navigation system. Like a liquid compass? We should go ask Hobs. He seemed very knowledgeable about fluids. Actually, he had a few of those bottles with him. Maybe he was refilling them and grew tired from the labor. We ought to help him." Chaz continued.

Nick’s face twisted in such a manner that it looked like he was ready to strangle Chaz, but just before he could contemplate the consequences of this action the door creaked open again.

Chaz walked down the narrow hallway while Nick was standing stupefied in disbelief inside the cockpit. Part of him wanted to see if the person who came in was normal, but a bigger part of him was scared that whoever came in was even more demented than Chaz and Hobs. He was utterly frozen.

This time, a young woman had entered, bringing their total count to four- which Chaz assumed was the standard size for an elite strike force. She looked Chaz up and down, from his neon blue hair to his hot pink mesh shirt down to his baby blue cargo pants and boots.

"What the literal, iridescent fuck are you supposed to be?” She asked rhetorically, “Did a neon city sex shop dumpster spit you out or is this shitshow of a company actually scout recruiting from the local sanctuary for discordant minds?"

“I’m Chaz. I’m moving the needle,” Chaz replied with a glowing smile and an extended hand, “Are you the fourth inert?”

“Don’t you ever call me a fucking inert again or I will kill you, you half-witted piece of clone vat run off” She barked back.

Nick heard the shouting. A kindred spirit. Someone who understood the perils of his situation. He stepped into the corridor with anticipation to see who it was. She wore black. Black everything: combat boots, jeans, fishnets. Only her hair was a different color, it was a toxic green. Piercings came out of every which fold and hole in her face, and her clothes were ripped to shreds but in a more deliberate manner than Hobs’.

“Nick.” He said, already unsure if he even wanted to introduce himself to the woman, who looked just about as sane as Chaz.

She echoed back his name with an annoyed tone, scrunching her somewhat inbred face in the process. “Are you moving the needle too, Nick?”

He was desperate to separate himself from Chaz and tried to think of a witty way to convey that this situation was not to his liking either but before he could even utter a single word Chaz cut in.

“Nick is here from the mega courts. He thinks we are going to get liquidated, but I told him that’s not possible because we have too many bones.”

“So you’re a litigation chasing, Federation knob polisher?” She asked Nick but cut him off before he could respond and say that he was not in fact from the mega courts, “I could not give a single orbiting fuck who you are or what you do. I’m here to get enough money to leave this system. Now where is the captain? Don’t tell me it’s one of you.”

“Over here, Lizzie!” Chaz exclaimed as he waved his hand to show her the way to the lavatory.

“I didn’t tell you my name.” She hissed and grabbed him by the back of his collar.

“You’re right. It’s stitched into the side of your handbag,” Chaz pointed at the hand-pasted ransom note style lettering on her bag “Can you let go of me now?”

“Creep…” She muttered, before letting go of his flimsy shirt and following him to the toilet.

Evidently, the captain must have repositioned himself in such a way that he was leaning against the door instead of the wall, as he fell out the moment she swung the door open. His head hit the ground and his legs flung in the air, trousers around his ankles. Empty bottles rolled out and a mountain of them, which was previously being concealed by his body, came loose, shattering glass all over the floor.

For a moment everyone was speechless as his misshapen, discolored body was on full display. Lizzie broke the silence with a string of profanities so creative it made Nick’s corporate ears burn. She didn't hesitate, she pulled back a heavy, steel toed boot and delivered a sharp, echoing kick directly into Hobs’ ribs.

"Get up, you jaundiced sack of bio waste!" she shrieked. Hobs let out a sound like a dying rat. A wheezing, wet rattle. His livers seemed to shift in unison under his skin as he scrambled to pull his trousers up with trembling red and purple fingers. The scene was punctuated by the crunching of broken glass. He looked at Lizzie with one bloodshot eye, seemingly unfazed by the assault.

“Ribs… Cracked… Nano…” There was a little cough between each word, and before he could finish what he was saying he hacked up a nasty piece of phlegm on his own shirt.

Hobs gave up on that train of thought. He looked around and noted that all crew members were now present. Nick was leaning in the doorway nervously tapping his foot and Chaz was standing over him with great concern.

“Thanks… For...” Hobs tried to speak before spiraling into a gasping fit and subsequently soothing himself with a sticky inhaler he pulled out from one of his many grimy pockets.

“Holy shit! Talk faster!” Lizzie screamed at the disgruntled mess of a captain.

“The… Wakeup… Call… Bitch…” Hobs finished.

Lizzie’s eyes and nostrils flared. The metal on her face clanged from the motion of her shifting skin. She assumed the form of a jaguar about to jump on its prey and rip its throat out, and with her sharp nails this was a definite possibility. At the sight of this aggression Chaz instinctively rushed to grab her and restrain her by both arms, while Nick watched hoping she would tear both their throats out so his contract would be voided.

Lizzie whined and hurled profanities at everyone in the room, but especially at Chaz who was holding her back.

“Let me go you stunted blue cunt!” she screamed trying to elbow Chaz and break free.

“How am I stunted? You’re the smallest one here.” Chaz pointed out the obvious.

“You’re stunted mentally, dumb fuck!” Lizzie barked at him.

“No, I’m not. I have high growth potential,” Chaz explained as he struggled to contain her, “and I have been assured I’m an intellectual marvel.”

“By who? Your fucking caretaker?” she asked sarcastically.

“Yes.” Chaz replied plainly.

Lizzie, who had been stomping around maliciously trying to stand on Chaz’s feet, had finally found her mark, and the flinching caused by her heavy boot heel bearing down his toes was enough for her to shake free.

Hobs had finally come to a standing stance and apologized profusely, raising his hands in front of his face both to seek forgiveness and to protect himself. Lizzie reeled back a fist, but the sight of the pathetic cowering captain evoked a deep sense of pity in the young punk. Her demeanor eased up a little, but she was still ranting.

“You are a bunch of miscreants! You are the scum of the universe!” She exclaimed, darting her eyes around at the trio of Chaz, Nick and Hobs.

“You are...! You are…” She cast her eyes to the ceiling, seeing her distorted reflection in the buffed metal. She wanted to berate them but couldn’t because she knew what they all secretly knew and understood. That they were all the scum of the universe.

This shared knowledge was implicit amongst them, and it calmed the moment somewhat. Even Chaz could comprehend that there was something undesirable about their current situation, though what exactly that was he couldn’t understand. He looked again at the brochure he stashed in his pocket.

Liabilities and Solutions, the company which Chaz mistook for the federal navy, took odd jobs from all reaches of the galaxy, and then selected from a pool of registered individuals to fulfil the contracts. They didn’t seem to provide much in the way of stable pay or holiday leave, but the leaflet did boast the following benefits: A refurbished spaceship, weaponry, communications devices and of course, an L&S badge.

Hobs leaned against the cold metal of the lavatory doorframe, his trench coat hanging off his bloated frame.

"L… And… S..." Hobs wheezed, his eyes glazed with a chemical sheen "Welcome… To the… Family…"

The atmosphere on the ship shifted, from one of intense confrontation to one of quiet desperation. Chaz had more questions than the others had patience or answers, Hobs wished they’d stop looking at him like he was supposed to be their captain or something, Lizzie was angry at herself and even angrier at her hopeless crewmates, and Nick was wondering if he should turn himself in for a crime he hadn’t committed to be extradited from this place.

Then, an alarm rang out from the cockpit.