Do you like space adventure? Do you like alien creatures? Do you like jokes?
Well, you have come to the right place!
The 'Oh No!' Anthology is a collection of short stories written by great authors of this orange world based on the same theme. In th...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Interstellar travel isn't all it's cracked up to be. Granted, the company prepares you for the lack of showers, tasteless protein mush, and the long restless nights learning to sleep to the hum of the engine. What they don't prepare you for is the loneliness; the life of the rigger, hauling a junk bucket to every corner of nowhere. Least rigger sounds fancier than 'space garbageman'. I mean, I can't complain, without Galactic Ordinance 556, I wouldn't have a job, and times are rough.
With all the recent expansion and conflict, well, someone had to cleanup all that debris. Wouldn't do to have the blown up ships of a piddling territorial scuffle get pulled into the gravitational field of some unsuspecting colony. I'm saving lives!
Besides, life on the Müllarbeiter isn't so bad. Three square meals and an actual bed to sleep in is nothing to sneeze at. I just wish I had someone other than PEX311 to speak to. It's hard to connect with a droid that has all the personality of a tin can.
"What the hell is this?"
"I am sorry Hague, I do not compute the question."
"Call it a rhetorical question while i puzzle out the situation Pex."
"I am sorry Hague, I do not compute the question."
"Oh, go repair something." It's not fair to pick on the robot I know, but seven months in space with nothing but the rust bucket for company makes me miss living in the barracks something fierce, despite the constant back stabbing and smell of boiled cabbage. Pex puttered off to repair the constant wear and tear the Müllarbeiter incurs during junk runs, leaving me to ponder the clump of debris pulled in with our latest haul.
The clump was fuzzy.
The scanner beeped feebly, the cracked screen crackling as it fed me the readout. Well it wasn't plant matter or fungi. No registered toxins or bacteria. No lifesigns. A generally benign readout, though the scanner had no definitive answers either.
"Right." I tossed the useless hunk of tech aside and gingerly grabbed hold of the metal. "Let's crack her open, shall we?" Lesson #1: Space junk is full of surprises. It's a mantra they beat into us during training. That's why we scan everything before we poke at it. And I fulfilled that criterion. Maybe I should have worn gloves or something.
The 'fur' felt cold, not surprisingly since this pile of debris looked like it had been floating through space for some time. Possibly years. It's hard to tell with these garbage clusters. Without ships like the Müllarbeiter out here, scooping up the mess, it would just sit there until some poor bastard collided with it and it mucked up their hull. Told you, saving lives!
I paused as the fur shifted under my hand. No, no way. Just junk shifting around as I broke the lump apart. I pulled harder, straining as the lump started to come apart, revealing fibrous strands of some material that held the lump together.
"What the--"
The brilliant halogen lights of the hall filtered through the web of strands, illuminating a dense white mass inside. The mass was looking back at me. It blinked three sets of mismatched eyes.
