"Cheese Runners, Chapters 1 & 2" by Chris A Jackson

Cheese Runners

By

Chris A. Jackson

Chapter One

Busted

Music blared through the tiny, cluttered bridge of the Limburger.  Old music.  Roiling guitar riffs that would have curled Mozart’s curly hair, climbing and falling to the lyrics: “And the rain exploded with a mighty crash, as they fell into the sun...”

Not my favorite, especially when I’m being shot at.

“Man, I hate it when she plays that stuff!”

I hated to agree with Turk on any subject involving taste, be it concerning food, drink, music, literature (like he read), government, the opposite sex or any combination thereof, but here and now, I had to give his assessment the nod.  I wasn’t going to admit it, of course; I wasn’t one to start narfing on Kik’s choice of music at a time like this.  After all, she was trying to keep us alive at the moment.

A huge ball of white blossomed ahead of us and slightly to starboard (I often wonder about those ancient sailing terms that we still use in space vessels), and the shockwave expanded toward us.  Forty megatons or so, just a love tap, a wakeup call from our pursuers, something to let us know it could have been 400 if they wanted it so, and right on our nose instead of a hundred klicks out.  Well, at least that meant the wanted us alive; some consolation...

“Hope you’ve got your SPF one thousand on!  That shockwave’s gonna pack some rads!”  That was Turk’s idea of humor, about as good as it ever got.

“The shielding should suck up most of it.”  Probably not, but what’s a little DNA damage between rival species.  Oh, yeah, I forgot.  We weren’t rivals of the Farfnian’s; we were only peons, pests, flies in their ointment.  I watched the fly-swatter approach in a hyper-accelerated wave of radioactive dust.  I thumbed the ship-wide intercom and said, “All hands, brace yourselves!”

Several ancient music disks, two coffee cups and a foot massager fell to the deck from the pilot’s console as the Limburger yawed with the shockwave.  Turk let out a stream of profanity, but Kik sat oblivious to the clatter.  Of course, she couldn’t have moved if she wanted to.  It never ceases to amaze me how oblivious a pilot is with the sensor net on, but I guess that’s why I’m captain and not pilot.  The thought of that neuro-conducting membrane pressing against my flesh (all of my flesh, as in every square nanometer) gave me the creepy crawlies.  Kik didn’t seem to mind it, though, and often commented that an exhilarating flight was “better than sex”.  I’ll have to take her word on that, too, since her idea of carnal relations is different than mine.  Kik’s a Xenophile (poorly repressed shudder) and never misses an opportunity to, uh, go where no man (or woman) has gone before, shall we say?

“I don’t mind the music,” I lied, cringing as another, more violent shockwave sent new paraphernalia clattering to the deck, “when we’re not being shot at.”  That one had been behind and to port.  They had us perfectly bracketed and could kill us at any time. 

“Jeez, you gotta be kiddin’ me, Harry!?”  Turk’s voice was beginning to get on my nerves more than the ancient music.  I thought about offering to let him pilot the Limburger the next time we got caught by a Farfnian patrol cruiser, but then thought better of it.  He might take me up on the offer, and that would undoubtedly leave us cavorting around space in a ship so dented and dinged that no self-respecting planet would even let us into a parking orbit.  Or worse yet, he might take it personally, and break my arm for me... again.

“TARGET CLOSING.  DISTANCE ONE THOUSAND KILOMETERS.”  Okay, I hate computer voices.  They bring back really bad memories for me that I don’t care to relate at this particular time.

“Yea, right!  Like they’re the freakin’ target!”

“Cycle it Turk!”  Well, I guess the prospect of a broken arm was suddenly less daunting than listening to his complaints.

I really don’t know why I put myself through this.  I mean, it wasn’t like we had a Popsicle’s chance in a supernova of outrunning the cruiser.  The Farfnian ship was bigger, faster, better armed (we weren’t armed at all!  Well, not precisely armed, anyway), and more technologically advanced than our little courier-class freighter.  That’s the trouble with the Farfnians, they’re always bigger, better, faster and smarter than us, (us meaning the whole human race, not just myself and present company.  Well, maybe especially myself and present company.)

Seventy-five years ago they had conquered earth’s combined military might in a matter of two hours (who knew they could just turn off every electrical thing on the planet?).  Then they had the gall to insist that we stop killing one another, and form single planetary government.  I mean really!  We told them that we were quite capable of handling our own disputes, thankyouverymuch!

The asteroid they dropped between the West Bank and Jerusalem was about twenty miles in diameter.  The Dead Sea is now Mediterranean beachfront property.

Point taken.

The Unified Earth Government was then informed that all of our problems were hereby solved: no hunger, no pollution, no war, no crime, no addiction, no unemployment, no disease, no old age, and no money.  How dare they!  They pumped so much foreign aid into bringing our sniveling backwater planet up to technological speed with the rest of the galaxy, that every human on the planet was left with their mouths hanging open for the next ten years.  They have no idea how many humans they pissed off.

The rich were mad because their money was worth less than wallpaper, the poor were mad because they couldn’t blame the rich for being poor, the workers were mad because they were out of work, the unemployed were mad because their benefits were cancelled, the disabled were mad because their disabilities were no longer disabling (modern prosthetics are wonderful... I’ve got one myself), and the government was mad because it no longer wielded any real power to make everyone miserable.  The entire world economy was worth about as much as a fifty-year-old Volkswagen beetle with no hubcaps, simply because nothing that the Earth could produce was worth anything on the Galactic Market.  Nobody was hungry, but nobody was fat either (obesity was cured), and absolutely nobody wielded any power.  The situation was totally untenable!

Another near miss, this one at half the distance of the previous one, showed us that the gravity inducers hadn’t failed (yet) by sending several more personal effects clattering to the deck.  I’d had just about enough abuse for one morning, so I flipped open the protective cover on my armrest that hid several switches and thumbed one.  An explosion rocked the ship, and stars skewed across the viewer as the force of it sent us spinning.  Kik tried to correct and get us back on course, but I thumbed another switch and the starboard main drive cut out.

We could go nowhere now but in circles.  Starships aren’t like atmospheric craft; if half your thrust is cut, you can’t compensate with the controls.  You just spin like one of those whirly firecrackers they light off on the fifth of May, or whenever your local revolutionaries overthrew your local dictatorial government.  Yea right....  Well, anyway, the jist of it was that all we had for locomotion now was maneuvering thrusters, atmospheric jets (useless in space) and a can of Jiffy-Whip™ that I was saving for emergencies.  We were dead in space (well, not literally, but we couldn’t move), and the Farfnian cruiser was closing in fast.

The pilot’s control couch opened with a sound like parting Velcro, and Kik shouted, “Damn drive’s out!” before stepping out and reaching for her jumper.  I fumbled the access hatch to my secret switches closed before she could see them, and managed not to stare at her.  Well, okay, so she’s a xenophile, but she’s also got an awesome and quite female figure, so it’s hard not to gape a little when she’s getting out of the couch (did I mention that pilots can’t wear clothes with the sensor net on?  No?  Well, you get the picture).  Kik is very striking, despite the fact that she hasn’t a hair from her scalp to her toes, (one of the fringe benefits of being a pilot) and the lack of eyebrows and even eyelashes makes her face look a little flat.  Well, okay, so I stared a little.

“Overheat on the starboard side,” I explained, as if I hadn’t caused the whole thing.  At times like this I find it easier not to tell the whole truth to my crew.  They just wouldn’t understand.  “I don’t think anything’s blown permanently, but it’ll take Zook a while to fix it.”  I knew better, but as I said, too much information can confuse things sometimes.

“That’s assuming they don’t just impound the ship and throw us all in the bio-cycler!” Kik said, sealing the last seam of her jumper and freeing up my eyes for other tasks.  Well, okay, so I stared a lot.

“Well, they’re not gettin’ me without a fight!”  Turk lurched from his seat (an impressive sight since he masses at least twice what I do) and leapt to the weapons locker.  I said the ship wasn’t armed, not us.

“Let’s just see how belligerent they want to be before we lock and load, huh, Turk?”  I was trying for my best diplomatic tone, but probably came off as sarcastic, if the muzzle of the small ion cannon pointed at my nose was any indication.  I grinned my best “please return to your seat, place your seat backs and tray tables in the full and upright position and don’t vaporize your captain” grin and opened the communications link that had been blinking for my attention since before the attack.

As the faces materialized on the viewer (six very ugly, at least to me, and irate Farfnian faces), I dialed my best “angry lawyer” face and let them have both barrels.

“You have damaged this ship and endangered the lives of all those aboard, I’ll have you know!  I’ve got full recordings of your unprovoked attack, and I can beam them to the authorities if you don’t cease hostilities.”

“We are the authorities, as you well know, Captain Harold Eugene Fische.”

Boy, he was really torqued!  You can always tell when a Farfnian’s mad - his mandibles clack together when he speaks, and he uses the longest version of your name he can manage.

“You are suspected of transporting contraband of an illegal and narcotic nature through Farfnian Space.”  The whole damned Spiral Arm is Farfnian Space, so that was no surprise.  “You will allow our boarding party to search your ship without resistance, or we will blast you to dust!”

“Harold?” Kik said with a raised (oops, no eyebrows), whatever.

“Eugene?” Turk quipped in with his usual huge, idiot grin, verifying that today could very easily get worse.

“Narcotics?  That’s ridiculous!”  I was still trying for angry lawyer, but was probably only achieving miffed accountant.  “Search all you want, but you’re not going to find anything!”  I flipped off the viewer and pushed myself up out of the crash couch (another term I’m not overly fond of).

“Whaddya think you’re doing, Harry?” Turk bellowed, glaring at me and waving his weapon around as if it couldn’t blow a hole in the hull.  “If they board us, they’ll find the stash for sure!”

“And if they don’t board us, they’ll blow us to slag.”  I shrugged, looked up at him and said, “I’ll let you decide whether you’d rather explain the loss of a shipment, or try breathing vacuum for a few minutes, but personally I’d rather be alive and poor, than dead and rich.”  I stopped on my way to the airlock and looked back at Turk.  “So put that thing away and paint on a smile.”

He didn’t shoot me, so I guess he took the hint.

Chapter Two

Boarded

The airlock cycled with a sound like an elephant on a strict diet of refried beans.  Well, okay, so it just went “Hissssss”, but I was in a pissy mood, and I was attaching unattractive metaphors to everything I could.  It’s my only release sometimes.

Anyway, the door opened, and Turk, Kik and I were staring at five very heavily-armed and armored Farfnian marines, and one boarding officer.  I’d made Turk put away his ion cannon, thank the nondenominational deity of your choice, and told my crew to look as non-threatening as possible.  For me, that’s easy, I was so scared that my breakfast was trying to come back for an encore appearance.  Turk, unfortunately, would look threatening if you stripped him naked, hog tied him and painted him pink.  That was a problem.  Kik, on the other hand, never looks threatening; I don’t know how she manages it, but she achieves the rank of “hottie” in the company of any species we encounter.  Maybe it’s her perfume... Uh huh....  And instead of being further annoyed by my security officer’s belligerent glare, their collective attention was instantaneously captured by my pilot’s intragalactic hottiness.  (Damn, I’m glad I took her on as Pilot!)

“Welcome aboard the Limburger, good Farfnians.  I’m Captain Fische.  This is Commander Turk, my Security Officer, and Lieutenant Kikira, my pilot.”

“We will search this ship, Captain Fische!” the boarding officer snapped (literally... remember the mandibles?), taking a step forward.  His five-squad of storm troopers flanked him precisely, two on each side and one directly behind, each leveling a weapon (I had no idea what they were; it looked like a handful of linguini with a muzzle of ziti to me) at me and Turk.  Kik was evidently immune to their aggression.  I guess hottiness has its advantages.

“Of course, Sir.  Where would you like to start?”  I waved my hand in a vague directional indication.  “The bridge is this way, and my quarters are this way, and engineering is this way.”  They all glared at me.  “I suppose you want to see the main hold.”

“Do you take us for fools, Captain Fische?”

“Of course not!” I protested, thinking, You damned well better be, or my butt is going to be sitting in a cold concrete cell for the rest of my life!  The Farfnians didn’t fool around with punishment.  If the crime was violent, death was the sentence; if it wasn’t violent, life in prison would make sure you never did it again.  And the Farfnian prison planets are legendary for their unpleasantness.

“Then take us to the galley, and be quick about it!”

“The galley?”  I tried on my best ‘puzzled menial’ face.  “Why would you --”

“The GALLEY!” it roared, turning an interesting shade of mauve.  “AT ONCE!”

“Right this way,” I said, waving a hand toward Mishi’s Domain...

“I must explain about my cook, before we get there, good Farfnians,” I said, my voice edging toward warning.  “He is not a very... uh... friendly person.”  They didn’t comment, or even look at me for that matter, but I felt like I should at least warn them.  “In fact, he’s down right surly at times.”  Still no response.  “And with all the sharp implements in the galley, he can get a little dangerous.”

“Your cook will cooperate with us, or he will be arrested.”  The boarding officer turned his chitinous visage toward me and clacked.  “If he becomes violent, he will be vaporized.”

“Oh, I understand.  I understand.”  I wasn’t about to try to buck this crab.  He was holding all the cards, and he knew it.  But I could try to protect my ship, couldn’t I?  “But if you have to vaporize him, could you tell your troops to use the lowest setting the could on their weapons?  For your own safety as well as ours?”

There had been instances of ship’s reactor cores being breeched by Farfnian small-arms fire, through more than a dozen decks and a multi-terawatt containment field.  Some captains had been known to mount Farfnian small arms on their hulls for ship-to-ship combat.  I just didn’t want to die because my cook is a hot-tempered little twit.  In response to this, the boarding officer clacked something to his subordinates, and they fiddled with their linguini.  I hope they tweaked the right noodles.  We continued on to the galley.

They pushed through the hatch like they owned the place, which, I’m sure they would very shortly if they found what they were looking for, and waved their weapons at the array of pots and pans and utensils strewn about the floor from the shockwaves of their earlier barrage.  Mishi was nowhere in sight, a fact for which I was duly grateful, but something was cooking.  There was a fifty-quart pot on the stove, steam wafting from under the loosely fitting lid.

Officer Crab clacked something to his mates and they fanned out, pointing their weapons at this and that, making sure the place was safe, no doubt, as officers of the law are wont to do in situations like this.  Why, a marauding toaster could have leapt out of one of the cabinets and toasted one of them to death!  Finally convinced that there were no ambushers in the utensil drawers, they focused their attention at the one appliance that they had come to search.

“Not the refrigerator!” Turk squeaked in a whisper next to my ear.  “They’re gonna find it!”

“Stash it!” I hissed back, keeping my grin in place.  I repitched my voice to be heard by the goon squad.  “If you tell me what you’re looking for...”

“Looking for!” a high-pitched voice screamed from the general direction of the stove.

The pot on the stove rattled until its lid fell off, and five fusion-powered linguini blasters were instantly trained on it.

“Oh crap...”  Sometimes I’m so eloquent that I astound myself.

“Who the Hell is searching MY galley?!!”

And with that screeching query a two-foot tall, bright-red-skinned little hodgepodge of patched-together oompa-loompa parts lunged up out of the boiling water and landed on the sizzling grill top.  Water hissed beneath his four little feet, which were immune to the scalding temperature.  Mishi is a Turpenoid, and any temperature below that of boiling water is positively frigid to his caustic little metabolism.  He usually sleeps in the oven, but now and then he enjoys a soothing bath.  But he’s a pretty good cook, anyway.  Unfortunately, his temper matches his body temperature.

“Now Mishi, these nice Farfnians are just looking for something.  They’re not going to disturb your galley.”

“Stuff a rat in that hole, Fische!”  Mishi bounded off the stovetop and landed at the feet of the boarding officer, glaring up at the chitinous cretin with death in his beady little multi-facetted eyes, all four fists on his lumpy little hips.  “Get these crabs out of my galley before I boil ‘em up for dinner!”

“Silence, Turpenoid, or I will exile you to an ice planet!”

Mishi shut up, which amazed me no end.  I’d never thought to threaten the little imp with cold!  Maybe I’m not so smart after all.  Well, I was about to find out.

“Open that refrigerator!” the boarding officer clattered, drool escaping its mandibles.

“Why, of course!”  I smiled benignly, stepping forward, over my cook (nearly scalding some very tender parts of my anatomy, mind you), and opened the reefer.

“Ah Hah!”

“Ah hah?” I asked, looking in at the week old potato salad, slimy lunchmeat, half a rotten cantaloupe, and a piece of romaine lettuce that could probably score higher on a calculus exam than anyone in the room.

“What is that?”

“What?”

“That!”  The boarding officer pointed toward a row of paper thin, neatly stacked yellow squares, each wrapped in its own little cellophane blanket.

“Oh, that.  That’s for omelets.”

“That’s contraband!”

“No, it’s Crap Shingles®.”  I shrugged.

“It is narcotic contraband.  Individually wrapped wafers of earth-bovine species lactational secretions, treated with highly toxic earth-species bacterial colonies!  Highly narcotic, addictive, and against the law to possess, sell or use within Farfnian space!”  It reached one four-fingered lobster hand into the reefer and plucked out a packet.  “This is CHEESE!!”

“This is NOT cheese, good Farfnian!” I assured the officer.  “This is simulated cheese, for the consumption of the crew as food.”  I took a packet out of the reefer and peeled its skin back.  “This is just a bunch of chemicals plopped together to taste like cheese, I assure you.  Look.”  I flapped the little treasure under its eyestalks until they were weaving back and forth in time to the beat, then I popped it into my mouth, chewed and swallowed with distaste.  “It’s fake cheese.”

A stream of spittle dripped from the corner of the boarding officer’s mouth, pooling on the floor in a nasty little green puddle.  I had him.

“We will confiscate this contraband for laboratory analysis!” it snapped wetly, spraying spittle in a two hundred-seventy degree arc.

“Well, if you’re going to take that, you’d better take this, too.”  I reached into a cupboard and pulled out several yellow cardboard bricks about a foot long and three inches square.  “We were saving this for chile-con-queso, but I don’t want to get into any more trouble.”

“MORE CONTRABAND!!”  The boarding officer gabbled, falling over himself to snatch the brick of Velveeta® from my hand.

“No.  That’s not cheese either, see.”  I pointed to the plain lettering on the package.  “Processed cheese food,” I read.  “Not real cheese.  But if you want to take it, we can eat our chips plain.”

“Yes!  This, too, we must confiscate!”  The boarding officer waved his troops forward, and each shoveled the packets and bricks of synthetic cheese into their satchels, dumping a plethora of military gear to make room for the booty.  “We will... test this contraband for cheese content.  If the results come back negative, you will be free to go.  Come on!”

The boarding party left the galley at a run, dropping more gear in their wake.  Turk picked up one of the linguini blasters and eyed it professionally.

“Careful with that, Turk,” I said, making for the corridor.  “Let’s get back to the bridge.”

“Hey, Fische!”  Mishi snapped, throwing a spoon at me (It could have been a knife.  Maybe my luck was changing).  “Who’s gonna clean up this mess?”

“You are, Mishi, or I’ll lock you in the reefer!”  He shut right up... Life is good.

We arrived on the bridge in time to hear the comm system bleep for our attention.  I fell into my chair (yeah, chair... I told you I didn’t like that other name for it) and keyed the screen on.

“This is Captain Fische.”  I looked up into the decidedly bleary eyes (all six of them) of the captain of the Farfnian cruiser.

“Weeee hahfhh teessstted the congr... contrev...”  He shook his head, and bits of green and yellow spittle splattered the video pickup.  He’d obviously been testing the contraband personally.   His eyes focused for a moment.  “We found no cheese in the cheese my boarding officer found on your ship, Captain Fische.  Please refrain from transporting cheese-like products.  You may avoid trouble that way in the future.”  He waved his mandibles in a Farfnian dismissal.  “You are free to go.”  As the signal faded, I saw a little yellow square being lifted to that crabby face with a wavering lobster hand.

“Well, I guess that could have gone worse,” Turk snapped, dropping into his own chair and eying his new gun.  “We got some new toys, anyway.”

“Personally, I don’t think it could have gone much better!”  I stretched back in my seat, put my feet up and sighed.

“What?”  Kik glared at me, but, like I said, she couldn’t look very scary.  “We lost the stash, and this trip’s going to cost us thousands!  We won’t be able to afford fuel for the next run!”

“Just get us out of here, Kik, while I scan us for bugs.”  I flipped a few switches that turned on the ships internal scanners.  If the Farfnians had been cognizant enough to leave a tracking or listening device, it would register out here.

“You mean back to Earth?” she asked, moving to the pilot’s couch and unzipping her jumper.

“Uh...”  I pried my eyeballs away and checked my scanner...  Negative.  Perfect.  “No, Kik.  Take us to the Carpoolian system.  We’ve got a deal to make.”

“With what?” Turk growled, pointing his linguini at me.  “The stash is gone!”

“You think we were selling that crap?”   I snorted a little laugh of superior intellect... Oh yeah, life is real good.  “That was for sandwiches and omelets, or at least if we didn’t get boarded.”  They stared at me in shock, so I thought I’d better explain.

“There are four tons of high-quality Wisconsin Cheddar wrapped in static repulsive monolayer sheeting, buried in an ammonia bath, which is sealed in high density polycarbonate vacuum crates in the secret hold, behind 500 cases of rotting sardines.  Disgusting, I know, but it throws off the sniffers.  It’s worth ten thousand times what those four cases of “Crap Shingles®” were worth on the Cheese Market.  You still wanna go home?”

“Nope.”  Kik grinned, dropped her clothes and hopped into the pilot’s couch.  “Oh, but what about the drive?  Can Zook --”

“That Zook’s amazing!” I said, thumbing the switch that would make the fake malfunction go away.  “He’s already fixed it!”

Kik just grinned and closed the hatch.  The drive slammed on, pushing us all back in our seats.

“Won’t that cruiser get suspicious, Harry?”  Turk thumbed a few of his own switches, checking for pursuit.

“Oh, they’re all pretty wasted by now, Turk, and I wouldn’t worry about them for a week or so.”  I kicked back, picked out some good music and started it spinning.  “There are so many weird chemicals in that stuff that those Farfnians are going to have headaches for a month!”