Crap Shoot

by Richard Johnson

  ***

  Now in orbit, crowded onto the flight deck which was mainly filled with gear, though the walls and ceiling were now transparent and showed a breathtaking view of the Earth from a thousand miles up, Yuri and Kay were talking. “This is the Myship, technically owned by Arlin and carrying Draconan Registry. I’m sorry about the name but he doesn’t have a lot of imagination,” Yuri smiled at the older woman whose eyebrows raised at the name of the ship. “Arlin is a Weir, born on the Frontier of Drakonis and abducted by Demons when he was 15 and kept a slave for some ten years. He got returned to his home just before the Shitai invaded and had to be evacuated until they sterilized his home-planet. So he just built a junk-yard spaceship and left. Went Adventuring and somehow got this ship but don’t ask if he bought or stole it, he won’t answer.”

  Kay continued, “Later, he came to Earth and found us. We were both human than, like you. I’m from Waco Texas, DAR, DOT, DOC…. That means I am a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution, the Daughters of Texas and the Daughters of the Confederacy. I’m descended from Richard Henry Lee of the Continental Congress and Robert E. Lee of the War Between the States.”

  “Kay, they don’t care about your family history, get on with it.”

  Shooting her companion a dirty look she continued, “Yuri and I were classmates at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, Arizona when we were kidnapped by a gang who took us into the forest for… well, what they planned wasn’t pleasant. Then before they could do more than rip our clothes, this alien walks into the group and saves us.”

  “He killed them all within seconds,” Kay jumped in. “We were terrified but he then looked at us, stripped the bodies and offered us a job aboard his starship. It seems that there is a Race of intelligent six-legged Dinosaurs out there that like to abduct people. Oh, it’s not the anal probe thing you hear about, more like they need people to repair their starships and prefer humans as technical-slaves and soldiers. So they occasionally abduct a bunch of people, change them into looking a lot like us, teach them to repair their ships, keep them for a few years of slavery then later, they dump them someplace.”

  “Then one day, one of their former tech-slaves got it into his head to leave Earth and move out into some planet a dozen thousand light years away. He brought some friends and then hired the Demons to help him form a nation. The Demons changed everyone there so they’d have Weir grandchildren and then pretty much ignored Earth in favor of Drakonis for their Tech-slaves. Arlin was one of them.”

  Kay continued, “Apparently, none of the Weir mind being abducted and enslaved. Kinda makes me wonder about that. But the Demons made the Weir race to be stronger and better and smarter than humans and that caused a big problem. Weir need sex or they die. It’s a mistake the Demons made that they never were able to fix. So Arlin needed women to screw regularly to stay alive or he’d die. And he offered us a job. We crew his ship, sleep with him and in return, we get to see the galaxy!”

  Yuri smiled, “We took the offer and he flew us back to campus where we packed and never looked back.”

  “It’s been a good five years with no regrets. But we…”

  Yuri stared, “We didn’t tell Arlin that we were gay and preferred each other. I figure he noticed but didn’t care as all Weir as I understand are bi. But Kay and I are lovers and eventually, I just got tired of watching the woman I love screw some guy. Don’t get me wrong, I like Arlin, we really do, but…”

  “So one day when we were in the vicinity of Earth, we asked to visit family and when we landed, we got him drunk, fed him a sleeping pill or ten and tossed him out the airlock and stole his ship.” Kay confessed.

  “Now we need him back but if we show up, he’ll probably kill us for what we did so we figured that if we give him a fantasy, a sexual fantasy, you guys will relax him and calm him down enough for us to explain and ask for forgiveness and start over.”

  The older woman asked, “You left out how you look this way and what happens if we refuse. By the way, my name is Gabriella Cardenas.”

  Y: “It was an accident. You cannot have a steel hull or it magnetizes and attracts meteors and without iron, magnetic boots don’t stick to the hull. So these,” she raised her tail and pointed to her ape-like feet, “were designed to allow the Weir to work in space.” Yuri sighed, “We got zapped by some radiation-weapon while running from some crooks we robbed and were dying so Arlin fixed us and gave us a transfusion of his blood. A lot of blood. Ordinarily it would have just helped keep us alive until the regenerative tanks healed us but between the damage and Arlin being celibate too long which dumped all these hormones into his blood, the transfusion changed us.”

  “It really isn’t bad,” Kay added. “There are lots of advantages like we are stronger, faster and smarter than before and once you get used to seeing and hearing things you never knew existed, the tail is a lot of fun. Though it took forever to remember to move it when I sat down and don’t ask how many times I dunked into the toilet and ….”

  Y: “I suppose we could change back if we wanted. Or maybe we threw Arlin off before we realized what had happened and don’t know how to change back. We came out of the tank human but our insides were already changing and made us real bitchy. Like mega-PMS! That’s why we tossed him overboard, we just got pissed off being a sex-toy and overreacted. I’m sure you understand.”

  Gabriela laughed, “I spent five years in jail for smashing my husband with a flat-iron. I was PMS-ing and he just slapped my ass and called me ‘fat-hips’ one time too many at the wrong time and I let him have it. Ok, we find this Arlin, screw the shit out of him until he can’t lift a finger or weapon, then you explain yourselves and take off for a life of interstellar crime. Sounds like fun. Where is he?”

  “We don’t know.” They confessed. “We dropped him outside of Flagstaff and felt that if we made a big enough fuss by flying all over the place, he’d find a way to contact us! Here is the problem, this ship has about 3250 square feet of living space plus the airlock and flight-deck. That is about the size of a couple small three-bedroom houses on top of each other. And a lot of that space is storage for food and water.”

  “And, the Galaxy isn’t like Star Trek where every week you find another Earth-like planet. Most are so totally alien you’d die in an instant. If you visit a Class-M planet, it was probably terra-formed by the Demons for future colonization and later someone moved in.”

  Kay added, laughing, “And they’ll be upset when the Demons reclaim their planet and tell the people to get off in 24 hours or else. But until then, we travel and visit and do things only a Trekkie dreams of.”

  “And you’re criminals?” one of the other women asked. “I mean I thought you were joking. I don’t think I can do that. I was raised to be honest.”

  “No problem, where do you want us to drop you off?” Kay asked.

  “On the ground?” she asked, radiating fear.

  Yuri laughed at that, “Key, she thinks we’re going to toss her out the airlock. Look, honey, forget everything you’ve heard about space. It isn’t true. It’s different. Totally different. But Arlin says that anyone can learn to fly a starship. The hard part is finding people who can get along together in cramped quarters for months at a time without killing each other. So you find people who are easy-going and get along and teach them how to fly.”

  “Assuming you don’t PMS again and kill each other,” one of the schoolgirls offered. “Oh, my name is Sarah Curtis.” She was the plain one, the one the guys would ask out when everyone else rejected them.

  Kay smiled, “Since our Change, we haven’t had a period or PMS. Arlin says that no Weir woman has those. Although I do admit that we regrow our hymen if we avoid intercourse for a month. Arlin was born circumcised. So, since we have to live together, that means we need to like each other and trust each other. Killing or robbing any of the Crew breaks that trust so we have to deal fair with each other. You tell me where you want to go and w
e’ll land the ship and you can walk away.”

  In the end, they cloaked the ship and landed invisible at the Grand Canyon not too far from where they were picked up. Kay called after them as they walked to the street, “Do NOT tell anyone where you were or the FBI will take you in for questioning and forget to let you go. Lie and tell them that you were in the back of the crowd and we must have taken someone that just looks like you.” Then the ship lifted again some women lighter for the ones who had chosen to stay were: Gabriela who had nothing to loose, Sarah who wanted adventure, and Barbara Arndt and Amber Driscoll who basically were curious.

  “Now, Kay, we need food and supplies again. That means money. What do we do? Rob a bank or Fort Knox or what?”

  Gabriela suggested. “With all that technology here, you can break the bank at Vegas. Give us communicators that cannot be detected, scan the casinos and tell us which slot machine will pay off big. A couple million dollar jackpots should buy anything we need even after they take the taxes out.”

  “Taxes?” Kay asked, “Why pay taxes. What are they going to do, extradite us from a thousand light years away?”

  “They take the taxes out before they pay you your winnings. You don’t have a choice unless you want to rob the casino.”

  “It IS a thought… but we first need to find Arlin and second make money. Kay, let’s get that probe ready to dump.”

  As they worked, they explained, “Weir bodies see and hear in expanded ranges. We can see in Ultra-violet and Infra-red. So this probe is invisible except in UV. We’ll let it hover over the Rim of the Canyon were we were and when Arlin sees the news-cast, he’ll go there, get the message that we are in Vegas and either call us from the probe or come to Vegas. Your job is to hang around the Canyon until he shows, then seduce him. Be the best you can be and more. Exhaust him. Then we’ll take over. Sarah and Amber, that’s your job. Barbara and Gabriela, you win the money and Barbara, take some of it to Sarah and Amber to pay the bills. I don’t know how long they will be waiting so we’ll need a cabin, isolated but close to the Rim and large enough for us all. Maybe a couple cabins. Then we wait.”

  The plan worked well for awhile. Amber used her credit card and rented a bank of cabins near the Rim, a job that was made easy once Gabriela told them how the billing worked and they found the proper computers to hack. From then on they all had unlimited credit. Then as at least one remained near the rim wearing special sunglasses that were programmed to identify any alien in disguise, the rest went to Las Vegas where Gabriela and Barbara would walk into a casino, play a few slots until Kay had scanned and reprogrammed the big-winner slot and the two won, collected their winnings in a check which they deposited into their bank accounts and proceeded to buy everything that they would need on a long trip. Life was good for about a week.

  Then, things went wrong.

  First word got out and the Casinos banned Barbara and Gabriela. When they replaced them with Amber, Sarah being underage, she won a couple pots then was banned herself. “At least we have some money,” Yuri commented.

  “Some! They shut us down and we can’t even get the taxes we paid back!” Barbara wasn’t taking it well.

  “Barbara,” Kay spoke softly, “We won over twenty-five million dollars. Can you even spend that much? Even if you leave us now, your share will set you for life. Let it go and focus on the supplies we will need. Food mostly. Clothing to an extent and books and movies.”

  “Books and movies?” Amber asked. “Why?”

  “You’ve never tried to watch some foreign Art film in Hindustani without subtitles. Trying to watch the radio transmissions from other planets is like that, only worse. Since we spend a lot of time flying though space with nothing to do, you fuck, eat, or read and watch Earth TV and reception fades away long before you reach Jupiter. So let’s fill the library so we’ll have something to do.”

  Then they visited the Malls and bought books and DVDs and even video-games then had Yuri and Kay make adaptors to allow the players to drain power from the ship. For the most part, Yuri and Kay suffered the most. They couldn’t do anything public and had to hide in the cabins until dark. Even then they couldn’t go near people. So they were moody, “We come all the way home and instead of being stuck in the ship, we are stuck in this cabin,” until Sarah came in wearing a Star Trek Fleet uniform, “Get dressed! We’re going out!”

  “Where? And what are you doing in that?”

  “Like it? I got it on e-bay. It’s not the one Nichelle Nichols wore but it was featured on the show. There is a SF-Con in LA and WE are going! With all the news, you just tell people you are wearing costumes and have fun.”

  “Surrounded by geeks!” Yuri commented, “I went to one of those in Flagstaff. Talk about losers.”

  Sarah laughed, “Then stay here in the cabin all day like you’ve been doing. They may be geeks but it’s a chance to get out.”

  Yuri and Kay looked at each other then called, “Wait up!”