Author: Jeff Kennedy

The first few days on a new starship are the worst. The gravity’s turned up a skosh higher than you’re used to. The hot, caffeinated, morning beverage (it’s never coffee) is mauve and smells like wet dog. The bathroom facilities don’t quite fit your particular species and the sonic shower controls are so complicated that you end up dirtier than when you started. After a few tours, you get used to making adjustments.

This rotation was no different. After his second dinner on-board, George asked about the evening meal’s main dish: an “interesting” stew filled with root vegetables and bits of oddly textured meat. There was a brief pause before the Bolons stood in unison and started a series of deep sobbing toasts to “the noble sacrifice of Brother Bob”. Thus began a round of official union-sanctioned mourning that left the ship at a standstill for three days.

This did not endear George to First Officer Boardman, the no-nonsense, zero-tolerance, pain-in-the-ass shift commander. George had never met Boardman face to face (not particularly unusual on a ship this size), but Boardman nevertheless made it very clear that he was not happy with George’s performance. Every morning, he filled George’s in-box with blistering emails and his task pad with mindless insulting jobs. Why did George need to count the blue shipping containers in storage bay three times last Tuesday? How many times do you need to mop down a holodeck before you finally ban certain parties from engaging in certain activities?

George decided it would be best if he just kept quiet and diligently worked the duty list each day, so he smiled and did just that, finishing tasks in record time, collecting missives of praise and support from the officers around him, but the nasty emails and crap job assignments kept coming. It felt odd to have an invisible nemesis.

Thursday morning, George stepped out of the shower, dropped his towel into the bin, and read his assignments from a task pad propped up on the bathroom vanity. Along with the usual mundane maintenance tasks (replace fuse in deck 5 medical scanner, validate deck 12 storage manifest, reboot deck 10 meal printer) was an oddity.

“Feed the cat. Deck 17. Cabin 23.”

George sighed and started the long trek down to deck 17.

When George arrived, he found the cabin door locked so he had to use his security key to get in. A gray tabby cat snoozed on the bunk.

“Rough life,” George muttered under his breath.

He rummaged through the junk on the desk, found a tin of cat food, and emptied it into a cheap metal bowl. The cat yawned, stretched, and rolled over. Mildly annoyed, George dropped the bowl to the floor with a loud clang.

The startled cat jumped to its feet and spoke in a commanding vibrato.

“What the hell are you doing in here!?”

The cat stood up on its back legs and smashed a button on the cabin control panel with a front paw.

“Security! This is the captain. There’s an intruder in my cabin. Send a team immediately.”

There was a brief kerfuffle in the hallway before two armed officers shoved the door open and burst into the captain’s cabin. The first officer in, leveled a charge pistol at George’s chest.

It was going to be a long trip. George could see a lot of litter box duty in his future.