Ash cycled through the direct messages on his tablet as the video call to his daughter continued to attempt a connection. There was nothing wrong with the call itself, she just refused to answer any of his calls.

“Come on Laura, this is important.” He muttered and lifted his coffee pot to start pouring his last cup of the night.

The stream came out much faster than anticipated as his attention was divided and not sufficient for either task. The hot liquid splashed back over the rim of the mug and onto the screen of his tablet. Ash swore and frantically wiped the screen with his white t-shirt and noticed the screen displaying the “Call Ended” message.

“SHIT!” Ash swore again and tapped the call button but another call was coming in and he inadvertently answered that one.

“Hello? Ash Miller?” a female voice asked through the speaker.

“Shit, uh yeah, this is Ash. Who is this?” he said, noticing the coffee stain that seemed to have a life of its own and was spreading across his shirt.

“This is Katherine Young, your copilot for the Solent. You can call me Kate of course, um, if you want.” The girl said. The last part coming out awkwardly.

“Uh, okay.”

“I was just calling to confirm that the ship is ready. I can’t get any real answers from VFC. I was hoping you would know more?”

“No, they haven’t called. I was wondering that myself. I guess we’ll just have to turn the key and see what happens.” Ash replied, double checking that the call was audio only before scratching his balls and walking away momentarily to get a towel.

“The key sir?” Kate asked, unsure if it was an attempt at humor or an indication that her new pilot was shockingly uneducated.

“Yeah, I have it here somewhere.” Ash said, rattling the forks and spoons in his dish strainer. “Relax kid, I’m sure they would have called us if something was wrong. I’ll meet you on the pad at 0430 and you can kick the tires as many times as you want.”

Kate laughed nervously and wished him a good evening. She sounded young but Ash knew that the minimum age to even touch a starship’s controls was twenty five so she wasn’t too young for a good natured jab or two. He selected his daughter’s name in the contacts and tried to call her again but came up empty handed, so he wrote her a message.

Laura, honey, did you answer last time I called? I spilled my coffee and might have hung up on you. I just wanted to talk before we head out tomorrow. It’s a big day for my company. It’s the first time we’ve shipped something off world. We’ll be gone for four months but I can still send you messages like this. I hope school is going okay and that boy is treating you well. He seems nice. I love you dear. -Dad.

Ash walked into his bedroom to start packing but realized that he forgot the “creamer” for his coffee and went to the cabinet above the sink. The shot of bourbon raised the level of the coffee in the mug but he had accounted for that and not poured too much. Ash scratched his balls again, wondering if something was wrong with them, and then began throwing unfolded laundry into a duffel bag.

If a zipper could scream, his zipper would have been howling as he forced the bag to close around the pile of clothing, toiletries, devices, and the bottle of rum that they were working to conceal. He reached into his underwear drawer and found the small fixed blade knife and sheath that his grandfather had passed down to him and looked at it for a moment.

It was a work of art. The handle was black with a snarling wolf at the bottom and foliage snaking up to the blade. His grandfather had loved wolves and Ash shared his appreciation for the animal though he had only ever seen one in a zoo. He slipped the blade into a side pocket of his duffel bag and muttered “For the aliens” with a chuckle. He often talked to himself, a side effect of being a forty five year old man who lived alone in a three bedroom home.

Ash grabbed a cold beer from the refrigerator and flopped into the loving embrace of his recliner which was molded to his exact fit. A hockey playoff game was already in progress which he decided was perfectly acceptable.

Ash didn’t follow many sports but he loved hockey. It was fast paced, hard hitting, and anything could happen if there was still time left on the clock. A double header was on the schedule for the evening, first an east coast matchup and later a west coast game running until at least 11:00pm and possibly later if there was overtime. Lucky for Ash Miller, strategist, he had already set his alarm because he never even saw the end of the first game.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

“Ah god, shit, shut up please.” He cursed, knocking the tablet from the arm of his chair and causing the alarm to continue blaring from the floor. “Please stop.” He muttered, finally reaching it and canceling the sound by swiping his finger across the screen. He rose on unsteady feet and quickly got to the bathroom to start his morning rituals but a quick glance at the wall clock informed him that the alarm that had woke him wasn’t the first attempt and he only had 15 minutes left. He only had time to brush his teeth and put on some deodorant before running out the door with duffel bag in hand.

Seventy five miles per hour seemed reasonable after his tires finally left the dirt roads near his house and proceeded onto the highway. A weather report interrupted the tired old commercials on the radio and announced a clear morning, followed by scattered showers later in the day and a stray thunderstorm was possible.

Ash thought about that and realized that he would have left the planet by the time the rain started and that was hard to wrap his head around. The weather report didn’t apply to him. He was ripped from these thoughts when the alarm on his tablet, apparently ending a snooze cycle, started screeching in vain from inside his bag. He hated that sound. He wanted to kill it. Just pull over and smash the thing on the side of the highway and be done with it.

The floodlights in the parking lot of the Vista Freight Company, or VFC came into sight and ash marveled at the sprawling new building that was bustling with activity. The large lot of the trucking department seemed to only be at half capacity, probably just the night shift workers for another hour or so. Tractor trailers maneuvered into position as forklifts zipped around, beeping their horns as they passed blind corners. Most of the office windows were dark but were illuminated by the new warehouse across from it where several landing pads, all empty except for one, were flooded with light.

“There she is, the Solent.” Ash said to himself as he parked next to the only other vehicle at the back of the lot. A young girl got out of the back passenger side and waited, nearly at attention, for him to secure his pickup truck.

“Sir, Katherine Young, it’s a pleasure to-“ She stopped with a puzzled look on her face. “Aren’t you going to take your keys and lock it?”

Ash grabbed the shoulder strap of his bag as it dug into his shoulder and turned to look at the old, square bodied pickup. “That old thing? He motioned to it with his free hand and smiled. The paint was flaking from the hood and the headlight was cracked but not broken. “I hope someone does steal it, maybe they’ll treat it better than I do.” He reached out to shake her hand.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you.” Kate said, smiling.

“Don’t jump the gun miss, you don’t know that.”

Kate smiled and went to the driver’s side of the car to say her goodbyes. It was a brand new luxury sedan with nifty blue interior lighting. Ash walked closer to admire the reflection of the landing pad lights in the paint but stopped short.

“Mr Young?” He said, startled at seeing the owner of his company, a man whom he had only met once before, but immediately put the pieces together. “Is Kate your daughter?”

“Mr. Miller, the million mile man.” Young replied with a genuine smile, referencing the award given to any driver who reaches one million safe miles of trucking for the VFC. “Kate is my daughter. I trust you’ll take good care of her and show her how to be the best trucker in the company?” He said as he handed Ash a large envelope with all of the paperwork that he would need.

“That’s space trucker now, sir.”

“Space trucker, yes.” He chuckled

Ash smiled and started to reply something along the lines of “Driving that hard had cost me my wife and my relationship with Laura” But he was interrupted by another car whipping into a parking spot and encroaching into the next. All heads turned as a young man with a backwards ball cap stepped out and tossed a cigarette to the side. He grabbed his luggage from the trunk and waved to Ash as he walked toward him.

“Jayden Cross, your engineer.” Mr. Young said “He’s brilliant with tech. You have a solid crew but I expect you’ll have to learn some things on the fly, no pun intended. I trust you Ash, make us proud and take our little company to the stars.”

“I’ve met Jayden before, when he was a diesel mechanic. Wow, he works on space ships now? I’ll do my best sir.” Ash replied, looking at the imposing form of the Solent on it’s landing pad.

"Space ships, computers, semi trucks, I can fix anything with enough time and an owners manual." Jayden said as he reached them.

“You should start by changing your clothes. You smell like a trash can.” Mr Young said and climbed back into his car, shaking his head. "Good luck Jayden, and take care of my ship."

The Solent was an older ship when judged by the standards of space vessels which were advancing by leaps and bounds, but it’s physical age was fairly new, unlike his truck. Every year seemed to bring newer and better components that cut down on travel time, made the crew safer, more comfortable, and some with better weapons for the United Dottir Militia or UDM for short.

The VFC had staked it's entire future on being an immediate competitor in the space cargo industry. They offered a lower than average rate for the Solent's first run. The payout would cover all costs and provide a small profit, but the objective was to enter the arena and win the bid to pick up a load of raw iron from Ingrid, moon of the planet Aegir which was an ancient Earth word for ocean. The planet itself was habitable but had very little land mass. The moon however was rich in resources and had constant shipping and receiving traffic to it's spaceport.

Ash thought about ancient Earth as he looked at the shipping manifest. Very little was known about it beyond the fact that it was destroyed by a large scale nuclear conflict and that Dottir was merely a colony world when the aid from Earth ceased. He was taught in school that the early people of Dottir were strong and persevered through the loss of the home world to make a new life here. Now, over three hundred years later, humanity was once again reaching into the stars