The first thing I knew the second I woke up... was how silent it was. It didn't matter where you were, there was always something making noise in the background; a fan, a passing car cursing at the driver in front of them. Here? There was none of that.

I pried open my eyes, before squinting as something big, green and brown shined straight into them. I rolled myself around effortlessly, staring into the vast blackness above me, dotted with at least a hundred tiny lights, and one big one staring straight down at me. It was at that point I figured out where I was. My eyes darted up, down, left right. I was in space. I was in fucking space.

Of course, I took the most appropriate response there - screaming. And then vomiting. My whole helmet had been covered in my half-digested lunch, it certainly did not help that some of it was still floating around. The stench was revolting, enough to let out my stomach this time.

I managed to realise, in the areas that I were still able to see through my visor, that I was tethered somewhere by my waist, a spaceship, half-functioning, was present a couple dozen metres from where I was. With nowhere else to go, and myself beginning to calm down, I began pulling the tether, and slowly began floating towards the ship.

From underneath, I entered, passing through an electromagnetic field and into the good old world of gravity and oxygen. I ripped my helmet off, and began wiping away the vomit all over my face. The lights inside were dim, and the place was generally a mess, with tools and things all over the floor. A holographic screen was present, flashing red with the word WARNING staring straight down at you. I waved through it, discovering it wasn't interactive. Nothing specified what was wrong.

I called out, 'Hello? Anyone in here?' Silence.

After finding something to wash my face, I searched around for some InstaSober, with a hangover like this no living person could recover for weeks. No luck. I headed up to what I believed was the cockpit. I sat down, and began to scour over the controls, nothing had exploded yet and I wasn't suffocating, so I guessed I was all right for now. I pressed a few things on one of the screens, strangely getting a familiar feeling the more I explored, finding that a couple systems on the outside were quite damaged, and that the shields were barely functioning for some reason. Maybe I was out there for repairs and something threw me off.

I didn't bother at that point with all the technicalities. My main concern was what and how did I get here? The last thing I was able to recall was a party, all the way down in London. It was me, and a couple friends I had been in contact with since Sixth Form. There was a lot of alcohol there. And our group weren't exactly the weirdest there. There was this one man, a football hooligan, who thought it was a great idea to storm Parliament on his own. I don't remember much of what happened to him. After all that, everything is very fuzzy. The most coherent memory was on a starship, not the one I was on, this was different, larger. A fight took place on there, I think one of my friends were present. Other than that, there was nothing else I could piece together.

It was likely I had written logs. Everyone who lived on a starship kept logs, it was basically an unspoken rule. I browsed one of the screens, I guess I kept some sort of log? Pressing on it, there were multiple entries, completely disorganised, and written like a drunk nursery child. Practically nothing was intelligible. Either that or I had somehow picked up the Welsh language.

Suddenly, there came skittering from the bottom deck. Afterwards came some bubbling, then tinkering. The skittering started again, and began making its way up to the cockpit. I sat there, paralysed, thinking that if the movies had taught me anything, it was that I was utterly fucked. Nothing nearby could be used as a weapon, except perhaps the bottles all over the floor. Hopefully, they were built from glass.

I grabbed one off the floor, before hesitating. What was I even doing? I questioned myself. Not everything had to have been a threat. Maybe whomever was down there was a crew member, or somebody I let squat on the ship? The state of this place would certainly explain the latter.

The skittering soon came up the ladder, I turned, finding seven, eight long, hairy legs emerge from the hatch, with the rest of their large body pulling itself up. I found myself staring into eight, blood-red eyes, with sharpened fangs happily on standby. I had a spider on the ship. I had a giant bloody spider, right on my ship, and it was holding a mug of coffee.

"Good morning," it said, slurping the coffee.

"SWEET MOTHER OF HELL!" Immediately, as I was clearly panicking, I smashed the emptied bottle (well, more dented it), putting on a wobbly defensive stance, ready to bash this giant arachnid should the need had come.

The spider took a few steps back, and spoke again through something under its fangs. "Good gracious! Has something gotten into you?"

"S-spider!" I stuttered. "There's— you're a giant fucking spider!"

"That is... how you say, quite racist, yes?"

"You can talk. You're fucking talking!"

At this point, he made the rational choice saying, "I will come back later."

The spider began making its way back down, before I calmed down and said, "No, wait, stop. Look, can you just... explain what's going on to me please?"

"Explain? Are you not 'throwing a fit' again?"

"I... look, I will be perfectly honest here, I cannot remember a single thing. This feels like one fucked up fever dream."

"You do not remember anything?"

"I have literally just said that."

"What is the last thing you do remember?"

"A party, I got drunk," I simply stated.

"That would explain why they call you 'unorthodox'," he told himself. "When was this?"

"I don't know, what year is it?"

"Which calendar?"

"The normal one."

"There is not a 'normal one'."

"Fine, the Earth one. Whatever Humans use."

"I believe it is twenty-three... something."

I paused for a few seconds, doing multiple disjointed calculations in my head. "Never mind that. Okay, new question, who am I and what am I doing here?"

"Do you not know your name?" The spider asked.

"No, no, I do. Just tell me."

"Your are Commander Abdi. You are the owner of this... mess of a vessel, the McSpaceyFace, and you are currently transporting me to Juno IV."

For some reason, I decided not to question the name, instead asking, "And you are?"

"Crown Prince J'kkreh of the H'rahsid Kingdom."

"Harassment?"

"Huh-rah-sid."

I kept muttering the pronunciation to myself, "Okay, you're a H'rahsid."

"My species are called Ehnid, but yes."

"Right, right. And why am I... transporting you?"

"Would this be better spoken over refreshments? You do not look the best."

I nodded, and we both made our way downstairs.

----------------------------------------

"She was a good crew member," Fakushi says, staring at Eyha's picture on the wall. "It is truly a tragedy what happened, but I must say, I kind of saw this coming."

I sip my drink. "In what way?"

This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

"She was quite... disconnected from her situations. Eyha knew how dire everything is out here, but she never actually carried a weapon."

"Seriously?"

"It's ridiculous, isn't it? I understand her role was largely doing errands, but look around you, woman. This isn't Hacksaw Ridge, you have a child with you!"

"Maybe she was a pacifist?" I suggest, chewing on some jarrem nuts. "Piyeri Arvans are meant to be peaceful, right?"

"No. You're probably thinking of Bayeri. The Piyeri, funnily enough, are more warlike, at least that's how the stereotype goes." He drinks his bourbon. "Besides, Eyha grew up more Canadian than Piyeri." Fakushi looks up at me. "Your friend was in her car, wasn't he?"

"Yeah. He should be here in a bit." I suddenly eye Nolan at the bar's entrance, with a nervous look on his face. "Over here!" I call.

Nolan sat down. "All right?"

"We're just talking about Eyha," Fakushi tells him.

"They not doing a funeral or anything?"

"Too many die on the job for them. Sometimes, if we can, we send their bodies off into space or back to their families, allow them to sort everything. But for us, we just put up those." He gestures his head to the couple dozen framed pictures on the wall.

Nolan stares at them, clearly haunted. "How long... how long did you know her?"

"She worked on the Centaurus for... wow, five, six years? Longer than most of the people here."

"Not many here, though." He glares around the bar, barely ten or so here other than us. And I doubt half of them are even here for the Arvan. "Ryan's not here is he?"

"Likely getting some alone time. I don't blame him."

"Mhm, right."

I lean in to him. "Are you sure you want to be here?"

"It's fine, Mills."

Koha comes over, holding some baskets of Maledro Chips, heretically covered in curry sauce. "Nice to see you join us," he says to Nolan, sitting down beside him. "Enjoying your time on the ship?"

"It's been all right, I guess."

"What did the captain want you for yesterday, if you don't mind me asking?"

"Oh, j— just saying hi."

Koha's bullshit sensors seem to have activated, but he brushes it off. "Welcome, anyway. Fries?"

Nolan happily accepts, and begins to devour a portion of the basket, either out of starvation or perhaps he may have started binge eating. Or both.

"What's going to happen to AT-6?" I ask. "It was literally just Eyha and Ryan, wasn't it?"

"They'll do some reshuffling with the other away teams," Koha says. "Or maybe get someone to replace Eyha's position. Someone needs to babysit that child."

"Maybe the Doctor?" Fakushi suggests, leaning on his arm.

"We don't need another drug addict on board," I tell them.

Suddenly, the ground below begins to shake, the tables rattle, and some of the pictures go crooked. The Centaurus has taken off.

The rattling ends after a short while. Out the window, it's clear we have left Sa'Ikarna's atmosphere. The deserts below fade, and the stars come to sight.

"So," Fakushi turns to me and Nolan, "What exactly are you two?"

"Are you dating?" Koha asks, somehow smirking with his beak.

Almost immediately both of us cry:

"No!"

"Me and her, really?"

"Oh God, no! Never!"

"I drink for a reason."

"All right!" Fakushi shouts. "Calm down. You're friends then?"

"Yeah," Nolan says, quieting down. "Known each other since school."

For the rest of the meal, we just continue chatting, forgetting entirely about the reason we came to the bar in the first place. Nolan gets on quite well with the two, and somehow descends the conversation into something about fast food restaurants.

Eventually, DAVE pops in from above. "All right, gents? And lady, of course."

"Yeah, fine, we're doing good," Nolan says.

"Here for Eyha, are we? Yeah, good member of the crew."

"Is everything okay, DAVE?" Koha asks. Usually, the AI doesn't appear unless there is something urgent going on.

"I've come for Mila, actually. It's about your ship."

My smile drops, this doesn't sound good. "What is it?"

"Right, one of the jeeps crashed into it during takeoff."

----------------------------------------

I hovered there, staring at each screw, each wire, every bit of the mechanism inside the panel, one complication of many across the hull. The adverts often glamourise what it's like to work in space, with adventures and discovery and whatever cliché they can pull out from over three hundred years ago. What they don't mention is the maintenance side of it. I don't mean 'I'm giving her all she's got, Captain', I mean having to sort out every bit and bob on your ship, over half of which are so complicated that they have apparently been sourced from the ninth dimension.

After settling down and talking with Prince J'Kkreh earlier on, we just spoke. Apparently, he hired me to transport him to this outpost where some gang or something was after him, I did not question who or why, I couldn't care less for politics. The spider did give me a hangover drink from some random spices lurking in my cupboard, though, and he even agreed to help me out on the ship's problems. Apparently he was in the army. Unfortunately, I didn't seem to have a space suit that could fit a giant spider, so he was now standing in the comfort of my cockpit.

That sounds wrong.

It took me an hour or two to sort out all the repairs. For an engineer, this would have been an average Tuesday, but for someone who worked in tech support, I felt like a complete moron. Why did my ship even require manual labour? Aren't drones a thing? Or maybe drunk me did not bother with that, she clearly did not take good care of the ship, so it would make sense.

I never got used to floating around in that time, I still haven't now. The whole way, I tried my best not to look straight down. No, I was not going to burn up in that planet's atmosphere any time soon, but staring below would have let out the rest of my half-digested lunch again. Speaking of which, was it a good idea to go back flying into space if you still had a hangover? The drink J'Kkreh somehow made for me didn't quell the worst of it, and unless I found some InstaSober, this was going to last me for weeks. I was surprised I got this far out here. But, I had a contract to act out apparently, and if I kept putting these repairs off because of a headache or diarrhoea, I was going to end up with something much much worse.

Another half hour went by, I decided to call it a day, and floated back inside. The shields were back online, and most of the unintelligible technical stuff was mostly fixed, at least held together with duct tape. J'Kkreh suddenly decided, however, to activate the ship's subspace drive. The hatch closed automatically, I threw my helmet to the side, and made my way back into the cockpit.

"What the hell are you doing?" I questioned.

"Continuing the journey," J'kkreh said.

"I'm pretty sure I should be the one doing that."

"Do you know how to?"

"I... look, this is my property... I think. It doesn't matter whether my memory is gone or not, you don't go into a taxi and suddenly kick the driver out."

"What is a taxi?"

"Doesn't matter. Where are we going again?"

"Vernadsky, a Human settlement on Juno IV."

That would have been good for me, I thought. Perhaps they had a phone I could use there, call Mama or Baba, maybe sell whatever I'm on and just book a flight back to Birmingham. If I was going to sell this thing, I might as well have cleaned everything up, someone could injure themselves with the amount of bottles on the floor. Whyever a Prince would bother taking a ride with this flying recycling bin was beyond me.

J'Kkreh stayed in the cockpit, staring at the majesty of the starline. It is quite a beautiful thing, a million colours flashing by at a million miles an hour, but I've already seen it a hundred times going on holiday. And I cannot really care anymore.

Cleaning up along the way, I made my way into what I figured out to be my quarters. The ship was and still isn't large, so it was a bit cramped inside. I placed the plastic bag of bottles to the side and sat down on the bed. A phone was present on the chest of drawers beside me. It was not a standard mobile holo, picking it out, it was apparently one of those cheap flip-phones.

I opened it up. The date was the third of September, twenty-three-oh-two. A whole new century. Underneath the date and strangely formatted time were two missed calls from around a month ago. It was just a number, no name seemed to be saved, prompting me to have a looksee in the contacts. Just one. A 'Chrisseeee', last called a couple weeks ago. There was no signal, unfortunately, probably the subspace blocking it. But there were saved pictures, though. Not many, but it might have been useful.

- Drunk selfies: 2

- Poor pictures of buildings: 7

- Dead bodies: 13

- Accidental mug shots: 9

- Armpit hair: 37

I sat corrected, concluding that I was only going to make do with this 'Chrisseeee' fella. Suddenly, there came a halt. Something had hit the ship.

----------------------------------------

There is a massive dent in the side of my ship. I say dent, when really about a third of the hull has been absolutely caved in.

Bao, one of the engineers, comes over to me. "Subspace drive is fully intact, much of the cargo has been damaged, your water system has drained all over... you are looking at about seventeen grand worth of damages."

I continue staring with disbelief. "How the fuck did this happen?"

"Someone's parking brake wasn't on. It happens."

"What kind of idiot forgets to turn off their car?!"

"It was your's apparently," DAVE said over Bao's comms, "The keys were still in the ignition."

I begin stuttering, before regaining my flow of thought. "How long will this take to fix?"

"At least three, four weeks, to patch up the hull at least. This isn't just some damage from a turret or torpedo here."

"What the shit?!" Bryce exclaims from down the bay, making his way over. I hear DAVE brief him over his comms. "How did this happen?!" I overhear DAVE brief him on the situation, thankfully leaving out the fact I had left the keys in the car. Bryce then turns to Bao, "Li Jun, how long will this take?"

"Current resources, six weeks."

"That thing is tiny!"

"It is also an old model, with what spare parts we have, this will require a major revamp."

The Australian facepalms. "Well, Abdi, I guess your contract has been extended."

Nolan stands near me, and whispers, "What the fuck am I going to do for six weeks?"

----------------------------------------

I stepped outside, feeling the ship completely slow down. One of the warning screens came back on. "Everything all right?" I shouted up the ladder.

"One of the engines has malfunctioned," J'Kkreh said.

I climbed up. "What do you mean malfunctioned?"

"It is broken."

"Yeah, I know what malfunction means, I mean is it on fire or what?"

"Such fire cannot survive the cold confines of space."

"You know what I mean though, smartarse."

"It has sustained moderate damage, it appears you lacked the skills for proper repairs."

"Was that an insult?" I asked, giving him the look of a person planning to shove his eight-eyed face right underneath a hydraulic press.

"You did what you could," he corrected.

"That's better. So, what are we going to do?"

J'Kkreh then brought up a screen on the window, showing the system our starline was soon to pass through, Karaos. Less than two more light-years, we would have arrived at Juno. "We will be able to make it. A couple hours, I believe this ship will hold."

"Do you not want to do any repairs?"

"Commander Abdi, repairs are better left once we have arrived, especially with your condition. It is a mere few hours before our arrival."

"This is going to bite us in the back later, won't it?"