Captain Dashiell Drake: Loser

Dash scrubbed furiously, but the dark, stubborn stains refused to budge from the airlock floor. This is what happened when you had an Octopus for a first mate.

From the other end of the airlock corridor came the gentle hum of antigrav motors and the subtle squeaks of tentacles on tile. Dash glared up at Squix, who was walking through the airlock corridor on two of his arms, pushing a hovering pallet of crates in front of him while pulling another two pallets behind. He was nearly finished loading their cargo onto the lift, and he marked the new additions down on his handset with two of his three free arms.

“I can’t believe you.”

Squix turned to face the captain, waving his eighth arm like a white flag.

“I said I was sorry!” Squix meant it, too, his mottled red skin flashing yellow with embarrassment as his exosuit’s vocoder translated his speech. “Listen, you know we’ve needed to repair this airlock for ages. If the pressure fluctuates, even just a little—”

“I know, yes, I know,” said Dash, trying and failing to mask the edge in his voice. He let out a hard breath and stopped scrubbing for a second.

“Look, I know you didn’t mean to ink up the airlock,” he said, calmer this time. “It’s just that the cadets arrive in an hour, and I’d rather they don’t think the Gremlin is a dump.”

There was a brief pause.

“But,” Squix said, “it is a dump.”

Dash started scrubbing again. “Well, sure, but I’d still prefer they not figure that out until after we start our trip.”

“Or at least until after their credits transfer into our account,” added Squix.

“Right,” Dash said, spraying more cleaner on the floor. “Or that. Remember Jonah?”

Squix thought.

“Nope.”

Dash put down the spray bottle and looked up at his first mate.

“He got a rash from the sheets in his bunk just after he boarded two weeks ago,” he said.

“Oh yeah, the itchy kid!” said Squix. “He was disgusting.”

“He was,” said Dash. “Called his parents to pick him up before we could even leave port. They threatened to leave us bad reviews and call the other parents at Jonah’s school to stay away from our cadet program—unless we gave them a full refund. And that’s why you’re the one loading up the Gremlin’s cargo instead of him.”

“Oh yeah,” said Squix. His head made a squeaking sound as he rubbed it with a spare tentacle. “I was wondering about that.”

Dash shook his head and sighed. “Let’s just not give anyone a reason to call home until after we’re a few star systems away, okay?”

Dash picked up his rag and folded it in half, hoping to use the clean bit of cloth to loosen up some of the ink. Even as the rag got darker, the stain still seemed like it might be a permanent fixture. The airlock corridor wasn’t particularly long—only a few meters—since it extended from the starboard side of the ship whenever it docked with a station or another vessel. And that was the problem. Without much floorspace, and the ink being situated right in the middle of the corridor, it was unavoidable. The moment anyone boarded the ship, it’d be the first thing they saw.

“How many more crates are there?” Dash said as he punished the floor.

Squix looked down at his handset and scrolled through the display. “Only a few more pallets. Should be all loaded up in twenty minutes.”

Dash tossed the rag down, his shoulders slumped. He sighed heavily. The kind of sigh that said, “you win this round, stain.”

“This is hopeless,” he said, rising to his feet with a grunt. “Let’s just get the boxes stowed so this place isn’t a complete disaster. I still have—”

Dash paused mid-complaint. He sniffed the air.

“What’s that smell?”

Squix flashed green, his free tentacle coiling up. “I don’t know.” Then, defensively, “You know I’ve always wanted a nose.”

Dash sniffed again. “God dammit.”

He took off down the corridor. Squix yelled after him, “So, I’ll just finish up here, then?”

He knew it wasn’t the trash compactor in the cargo bay—he’d emptied it when he first landed, like he always did. The captain sprinted toward the galley at the center of the Gremlin’s top deck. Usually if there was an unidentifiable stench, that was the place to check first.

He slapped the door control and ran to the sink…finding nothing. He and Squix had done the dishes the night before and made sure to eat breakfast on Arcadia Station so as not to make a mess. Dash peered into the disposal hatch and took a whiff, but didn’t notice the smell getting stronger in any particular place in the galley. But the stink—a stomach-churning blend of rotten flowers, fermented synthetic cheese, and superglue—was getting stronger overall by the moment.

This was bad. That smell could only mean one thing. And he knew it was only going to get worse if he didn’t find the source…fast.

Dash clambered onto the food prep counter and tore the air vent off the wall. Pulling his utility flashlight from his pocket, the captain looked inside as he was hit with a wave of stink. Gagging, he didn’t see what he was looking for. Dash slammed the vent cover back into place, high powered magnets keeping it on the wall. He bolted back into the corridor and pulled his jacket lapel over his nose and mouth as the smell matured into adulthood. He breathed through his mouth, but somehow he could still taste it.

He checked each room surrounding the galley, going counterclockwise, looking for the stink beast. First his room, which was strewn with dirty clothes and candy wrappers. Then Squix’s room, the bulk of which was taken up by an aquarium in the wall and a rack for his exosuit, the mechanism that kept him hydrated and supported his limbs out of the water. Then the empty crew bunks and passenger quarters. Even the six-seat escape pod on the port side of the ship, though he couldn’t even guess how something could’ve gotten into there.

Nothing. The rooms, the vents, the escape pod, even the cockpit at the front of the ship—they were all clean.

Dash ran into the medical bay. Its usual antiseptic scent was now overpowered by the bastard smell. Bill, the medical robot attached to the wall, started chattering at him the moment the door opened.

“Captain, I feel the need to inform you that the oxygen aboard the ship seems to contain alarmingly high levels of—”

“I know!” Dash yelled, cutting him off. The screen that displayed Bill’s digital face buzzed with a brief burst of static.

“Well, I hope you find it soon,” Doctor Bill said, crossing his surgical probes in irritation. “This is the second time in as many months!”

Dash opened a storage unit and grabbed an emergency oxygen mask and a biomedical waste bag. He climbed onto an exam table as he fitted the mask over his face and looked into the vent.

Nothing.

“Come on!” Dash slammed the vent back onto the wall.

The handset on his hip chirped as he ran back into the corridor. He tapped it and spoke, shouting as he was losing his breath with each step.

“What now?”

“So,” said Squix, relatively oblivious to Dash’s struggles. “I finished loading the crates onto the lift and sent everything down to the cargo bay.”

“Great job, Squix, really awesome,” said the captain, squeezing every ounce of sarcasm festering in his body into his words. As usual, Squix didn’t pick up on it.

“Thank you!” he said.

“Was there anything else?” said Dash as he checked the vent in the weapons control room. The consoles hummed and blinked with muted lights, the controls blanketed with a layer of dust. “I’m kind of in the middle of something.”

“Yes, two things,” said the Octopus over the commlink. “First, the cadets are set to board in about ten minutes.”

“Ugh.” Dash opened the door to the engine room. The chamber that housed the Gremlin’s reactor core spanned both decks, and was by far the largest room on the ship. That meant there were a lot of air vents to check.

“Second, I think I got a solution for the ink in the airlock! I think that—”

“Sounds good, thank you, I gotta go.” Dash tapped his handset to turn off Squix’s voice and pulled off another vent cover, peering inside. He didn’t think the creature could have really made it this far through the ship without having been detected earlier. But then, the Gremlin was getting old, and it was getting harder to keep track of its growing list of hiding spots for vermin.

Finally, after checking six vents and starting to climb down the ladder to the bottom of the engineering chamber, he found it: a whole stinking nest of crungers.

Dash nearly threw up in his oxygen mask. Holding back his breakfast, he examined his find. The small green creatures were stabbing their spiny beaks into a hunk of brown and yellow meat. They flapped their featherless wings as they ate, feasting on the desiccated and rotting remains of their mother, which had given birth to its brood and died for their nourishment.

She must have been living in the ship’s vents for weeks—and probably came aboard and mated with the other one that Dash found in the crew quarters’ vents back on Antares Beta. The heat of the engine room provided the perfect incubator for her eggs.

In some ways, the crunger momma’s self-sacrifice was a beautiful expression of motherhood, an example of how love can take many forms throughout the galaxy. From Humans to Octopuses, from Aphids to crungers, creatures from star systems near and far lived, fought, and died for the betterment of their species and societies. The crunger turning herself into breakfast proved that even from death could come life.

To Dash, however, it just smelled like his ship had athlete’s foot.

Dash swallowed down another wave of nausea and tucked the vent cover under his left arm, which was holding onto the ladder. With his right, he slowly reached for his laser pistol. He made sure not to make any sudden moves, or else the dozen or so baby crungers would bolt throughout the ventilation system. The new cadets would be aboard any minute, and the last thing he needed was to cut the trip short on account of the inescapable stink.

He leveled the pistol at the nest and fired a wide beam, frying all the crungers in a righteous fury of pest control. Dash wrapped his legs around the rungs of the ladder—he was still suspended between the room’s two decks—and unfurled the biomedical waste bag he’d taken from the medbay. He leaned over and carefully swept the remains of the crunger family into the bag with his arm, then climbed the rest of the way down. After cinching the bag, he opened the hatch to the reactor core and tossed the whole thing inside.

Dash walked to the engineering console and tapped in a few commands. Once he heard the telltale sound of air being pushed through the ship’s ventilation system, he took off his oxygen mask. He still caught the tail end of crunger stench, just before his nostrils were flooded with the overwhelming scent of lemon. He breathed deep, the astringent smell burning his lungs.

After changing his clothes (but keeping his jacket on, despite the fresh crunger stains on the sleeve), Dash walked back into the airlock corridor, where Squix was waiting for him.

“We really need to upgrade the internal sensors,” said the captain, tapping some notes into his handset. “The Fleet’s flagship would’ve been able to find those crungers the instant they stowed away.”

Dash looked away from his handset and up at Squix. The first mate’s tentacles were slowly curling and uncurling with satisfaction, his skin mottling a muted and satisfied blue. Then Dash looked over at the ink stain on the floor, but it wasn’t there. Instead, there was a towel, held in place with gray duct tape over each corner. The word “Welcome!” was scrawled in big black letters, the result of an Octopus wielding a magic marker.

Dash slumped against the wall, defeated. “Perfect.”

“I know,” said Squix. “Isn’t it great?