A derelict spaceship was slowly drifting in space, even more derelict than the Tast-E-Chill… totally shot to shit and rusted out really bad. It was illuminated as a small shuttle craft approached it.

  "So what are Space-maritime laws regarding this kinda thing?" asked Lawg, chewing on a candy bar as Duffy slowly backed the shuttle towards the junk-ship.

  "Neutral zone, any vessel adrift belongs to the crew unless the crew is all deceased, in which the ship becomes the property of anyone who claims it, registers the serial numbers and legally calls dibs." she said checking the sensors and the rear-view mirror as the back-up beeper beeped quietly into space.

  "The hell is a dib anyway?" he asked.

  "Dib registration office, on the home world of the Dib species. It's the place where claims are settled outside court. If the ship sent a distress beacon and can be confirmed, then we can't claim it, but if the ship has made no distress call and has no survivors, we can call dibs and let them know we claim the vessel as our own." she explained.

  "I call dibs on any weapons." he hollered.

  "It doesn’t work like that, you can’t just yell out something and claim it as yours like some college frat douchebag, you have to legally fill out dibs paperwork. Why does nobody understand that? Plus, since the shuttle is technically mine and that's what is doing the salvaging operation…it’s sort of already mine…and I already called dibs before you woke up."

  "When?" he asked.

  "I sent a signal to them as soon as we left the ship."

  "Whatever." he pouted.

  "Alright…gonna feel a little bump so hang on." she said nudging the joystick and rapidly pressing the A for action. "Docking port contact in 3, 2, 1…nope." she said.

  "Nope? What nope? What does nope even mean?"

  "We are not docked." she informed.

  "I felt the shutter." he noted.

  "You felt the docking port bump, but it's not sealed." she said punching keys and bringing up a camera view of the rear port. "See that big-ass open triangle that you could stuff your head into? That is what we call, NOT sealed…by like a really big margin." she said bluntly.

  "Well that's stupid, why doesn’t it fit?"

  "Not all docking ports fit all docking ports?" she said irritated.

  "I thought docking ports were universal?" he scoffed.

  "Yea by most known species, how the hell would a craft made by an unknown race possibly fit the universal gaskets?" she asked.

  "I dunno, it usually works on TV. No matter what ship you find, the same docking thingy always seals perfectly to anything that looks like an airlock. Nobody ever fails to make a connection, I think you dicked it up somehow." Lawg scolded

  "Damnit Lawg, why is this so complicated, let me show you something." she said grabbing the screen and turning it to him.

  "That is a literal square peg and round hole situation, there is no way that two completely different shapes are going to seal at all, not even close, especially not air-tight." she argued.

  "What if you just kinda ram into it a little, just a few times to see if it goes?" he asked. She squinted, getting fairly impatient.

  "I suddenly understand why you're single, and also why there are numerous, evenly spaced little slots poked in the drywall near the TV corner of the den." she sighed.

  "I ran out of outlets, I thought it was worth trying. Is there any way to make the seal work?" he asked.

  "Explains your love-life too. It's gonna take a little while." she said opening the glovebox and getting tape and 2-part car-body filler.

  Lawg stood with his arms crossed, critical of the work he was looking at.

  "Looks terrible…you are cleaning this off when we get back to the ship, right?" he asked as he stared at the plate-sized wad of tape and patch-filler.

  "Just locate the alien ship's parking break so we can haul this thing to the dib-office." she sighed, hitting him in the chest with her flashlight, handing it to him intentionally hard.

  "Fine." he said dragging his feet in moody protest.

  "Pretty sure all ports fit all ports." he muttered under his breath.

  The SS Tast-E-Chill drifted with its cargo in tow, towards a very impressive space station, floating very closely to the pink and orange cloud layers of a gas giant.

  "Wow…a city in the clouds. That is really pretty." Lawg said with a romantic tone. Marley plopped down in the passenger seat.

  "Super Impractical too." He spoiled.

  "How so?" Lawg asked.

  "Sure it's visually interesting and semi-original so they get style points, but a floating city is a nightmare. One power failure and you just drop a million people into a gas giant. All dead, no hope, no landing systems."

  "I'm sure it has backup systems." he shrugged.

  "Probably…but think of the power it takes to keep that thing floating. They don’t just have big tanks of anti-gravity keeping it up. That’s a ton of resources and energy for mag-levitators and thrusters running 24/7 that can't shut down or fail or they all die. All that just for a nifty view. Rich people are dumb." he yawned.

  "I agree, but think of the atmosphere." he said losing himself in the colors.

  "It's all toxic gases, bro. Acid and chemicals that would melt you before you suffocated."

  "No I mean like the mood atmosphere. The vibe must be amazing. Infinite sunset and luxury pools with transparent fancy bottoms and rich women with transparent bikini bottoms on their rich, fancy bottoms. It must be one romantic love-party 24/7."

  "Yea, too bad we can't dock without docking codes. These uppity floating cities have super strict policies about poor bastards like us." Marley shrugged, scratching crud from his oversized ears.

  "We have class!" He objected, scratching his ass with a classy subtlety as he pretended to move some levers for some reason.

  "It's not a matter of class, and no, we don’t, we're basically dirty space hobos living in our van. It's about codes, not opinions." Marley informed.

  "But we have to dock...my father is on that floating posh-bucket."

  "Are you sure you read that thing right? This is a pretty fancy place, and holograms don’t have equal rights in this quadrant. It's pretty unlikely that a hologram would live here…or that a hologram could be someone's biological father but we already had that dumb conversation and you believe you won, despite making no sense."

  "Damn right I won. I read the paper twice before we got here. It says 23345 West Jupiter street, Atmosphere of Megas Prime. Only floating city they have here. He is a Hybrid Hologram Program, and a fairly successful doctor.

  "I thought Megas Prime sucked?" Marley asked as Duffy approached to see the city. She readied her plan-tablet for the mission.

  "No, your thinking of Alpha Primus." she corrected.

  "Right, Alpha Primus Sucks, I think that's their planet's official slogan, they chant it at every festival like they are proud of it. So, how can we dock, if we have no docking codes?" Marley asked.

  "Well." she pondered. "We could pretend to be a trash hauler and when the bottom opens to dump a load, we can fly a shuttle into the doors. From there we can just blend-in and find Lawg's impossible daddy."

  "How do we disguise as a trash-hauler?" Lawg asked.

  "Pretty sure if we just park there that it will be assumed, given what we have going on here. We're even hauling a salvaged ship behind us. Trust me…we look like trash already." she assured them.

  "Yea, I buy that." Marley nodded. "But we won't blend in very well in an ethnically un-diverse humanoid colony. I'm a bunny and you're…Duffy. Too bad Uka is gone again and the Robot is still damaged and flamboyant. This back and forth is confusing to everyone." He said dramatically looking directly at the robot.

  "What about me?" asked Lawg.

  "Well, your species is close enough to whitebread -human, but the moment you speak they're gonna know you are actually white-trash." Duffy reminded.

  "I am a slightly-Asian Chaffee, Half Hologram-Chaffee and 100 percent awesome. That's 200 percent, if that doesn’t qualify then what does?" he protested.

  "Yea, statements like that is what I am talking about. Maybe not announcing you are a quasi bi-racial humanoid species that runs on booze and hookers while we're on the rich-people planet would be nice." suggested Duffy.

  "Good point." he admitted. "So we will sneak in at 03:00 hours."

  "Why 03:00?" asked Duffy

  "The night shift…less people around." he smirked.

  "This is space…its always night." Duffy sighed.

  "Yea, but who the hell is up at 3 AM?" he shrugged.

  "That's 3 am our time, it means nothing to them. They may not even have 24-hour days. This is space, artificial lighting and whatever schedule you want is whatever shift." she reminded.

  "Exactly…and what schedule I want is night shift, because less people are out at night. I understand that there is no literal day and night in space."

  "Do you? Do you really grasp that, Lawg?" asked Duffy with skepticism.

  "Whatever time-zone they are on, we do the math and then whatever 3AM is for them, we ride." he said striking a pose.

  "No, you do not in fact grasp this. There is no late shift in space, there could be A and B, or 1 and 2 and 3, or Delta and Gamma. It's space. Time is made-up and they would likely have people out at all times. There is no 3AM, or graveyard shift on a damn space-station." Duffy protested. He clicked the radio on and after a few seconds of alien music the announcer began talking.

  "Gooood morning Megas Prime. It's another sunsetty day in the Federal Union Empire, and I'm your ultra Caucasian weatherman Bert Thorp. It's 8:42 PM and WKTFM will be switching to slow-jams in an hour, so you can rock your night away in style." he hollered as smooth alien Jazz played.

  "Feel kinda dumb now don’t you Duff?" Lawg grinned. She looked more alarmed than ashamed, like proven wrong was secondary to a bad epiphany she just had.

  "I was not aware that Megas Prime was a Federal planet." she sighed angrily.

  "Yea the Federal Planets do weird stuff, everything is all military and proper and they still use the time from like 500 years ago when they had boats. It's hilariously obsolete." Marley said, kicking back.

  "No wonder it's so uptight. Military controlled and upper-class income. I wonder if you get to pick what color of stick you have to keep in your ass all the time or if it comes in standard Federal Grey." she sighed.

  "Okay, so new plan. I blend in and you guys stay on the ship." Lawg suggested as the others nodded.

  "He's gonna get us killed somehow." Marley said shaking his head.

  As the Tast-E-Chill hovered up into the garbage bubble on the bottom of the station, an ominous blue glow surrounded it. The com system automatically turned on and a rather proper grey-haired alien woman in uniform presented a very plastic smile.

  "Captain…Bob…Limpett of the SS-Trash hauler reporting for duty." Lawg blurted with a look of panic.

  "We're not scheduled for dumping until 11:00." she smiled.

  "Sometimes you gotta take a dump unexpectedly and it’s good to have us on stand-by. We're just a bit early, so can we chill here until then?" he asked.

  "Certainly, feel free to wait until the bubble bay until then, and security will scan you for clearance." she said.

  "Oh, yea about that…" he paused. "Can I use your restroom first and then come back, ours is broken and I've been holding it for hours." he bluffed.

  "I'm sorry. Nobody is allowed on the settlement without scanning procedures and clearance. They will be here at the scheduled time of 11:00 and you can use the restrooms before you leave. Until then you must remain in the bubble bay." she said.

  "That’s over two hours, I really gotta go. Things could get serious in here. What if I need a dump before you guys take one on us?"

  "I'm sorry, that isn't my problem." she smiled smugly.

  "Look, I get it. It's not your space-station and you're just following the rules and whatnot but think of the human-compassion for your fellow man, we got no bathroom and its 2 days to the repair station, I've been holding it all day."

  "What's human compassion?" she asked.

  "Oh right…not human, damnit. Megas Primian compassion. If I shit my pants, they won't let me on the station to sign for the trash and then you got a ship sitting in your bubble bay and the paperwork would take hours. Don’t you wanna go home to your family on time, or do you wanna deny another living being a bathroom and stay overtime filling out papers all night over some dumb rule…I'll even buy something." he offered. She rolled her eyes.

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  "This isn't a gas station, it’s a space station."

  "200 credits." he offered.

  "I can let you use the one here in the office." she nodded. The screen went black.

  "Oh great…so you can get 50 feet inside and call your dad from the shitter?" Duffy said.

  "I have a Plan. I distract her while you guys head to the control bay. I sneak out of the bathroom through the window and leave this behind." he said hitting the button on a small battery powered fart-sound machine. "I swipe the clearance codes from another ship and send them to you, then go find my father. You guys just walk back out with the codes like you were already cleared." he smiled.

  "That’s…actually not a terrible plan." Duffy said with a surprised look. "I'm amazed you thought of it."

  "I saw it in an old movie called "Home Alone 12, alone in space Las Vegas."

  "Aaaaaaaand we're back to stupidity." Marley sighed.

  Lawg quietly fell from the bathroom window, landing on his feet and faded from frantic stumbling flail, to casual walk. He seemed to blend in reasonably well as he strutted into the public streets, getting a few looks of smugness from his peasant attire but generating no calls to emergency services.

  Duffy and Marley cartoonishly tiptoed through the ship repair-bay for the trash haulers, looking for one with no guards and an open door.

  "I wouldn’t have thought they would guard the trash so heavily. We'll never get docking codes and papers." he whispered.

  "Well we can't just crash the system and deactivate the shield grid." Duffy sighed.

  "Why not?" he asked.

  "Well, it would be incredibly bad on the grid and cost millions to fix, plus it's probably heavier guarded than the trash." She noted.

  "But theoretically, if we just crashed the grid, we could escape?" he asked.

  "And then we would be wanted for millions in property damage and shot on sight if we ever returned to a Federal Empire station or planet." she warned.

  "So?" he asked. "Screw them."

  "You think Lawg will be thrilled that he found his father and we screwed up a simple snatch and grab job that put his name and face on an arrest warrant in the very station where his father lives?" she asked.

  "Oh right, and he’ll write us out of the will…and the robot would get the ship when he dies. Valid point. We could just wait till he screws something up himself and then by crashing the system we would be cleaning the mess, not creating it." he justified.

  "Not bad. He is bound to get himself in deep shit in the next hour, and in the chaos we can snag the codes and be out of here." she smiled, giving him a fist bump.

  Captain Lawg nervously reached the top floor of the apartment complex, peering out over the glorious lights and sounds of the cheaper side of town from the slightly wobbly fire-escape-ish platform. He checked his papers and knocked on the door. The door opened a moment later with a grumble and an irritated sigh.

  "What?" said the voice.

  "I am here to see Doctor Benny Lawgins." said Captain Lawg.

  "That's me. You better get inside, it’s almost night and this part of town is a real danger zone." replied a gruff, balding man with a thin ring of frizzy grey fuzz in a rather monk-esque pattern. His 5:00 shadow suggested he was not in the most presentable condition.

  "I've come a long way to meet you, is it possible shake your hand?"

  "Despite my instincts to shut the door I guess I can give you that much…why do I feel like I am about to have a really bad day?" Benny asked.

  "Can holograms shake hands?" Lawg asked.

  "Oh, I see." she smiled smugly. "You must be familiar with my Generation 1 Holograms. Clearly they are so seamlessly flawless at mimicking human personality that you have mistaken me for one of them. I assure you, I am the real Benny Lawgins…in the flesh." he nodded, beaming with pride.

  "Aren't you at least half hologram yourself?" asked the Captain, clueless. Benny faded to a look of utter confusion.

  "No…what does that even mean, half-hologram?" he scoffed.

  "But it says right here on this DNA result page: Benny D. Lawgins, hybrid Hologram Program/ Chafee." he pointed out.

  "I guess this is going to take a minute, step inside…you are familiar with typos, are you not?" he asked.

  "I read it dozens of times; I don’t think I read it wrong."

  "I'll take that as a no. A typo is an error in a typed word, often resulting in confusing or comical miscommunication. Even if you read it correctly 50 times, sometimes errors get printed out from the source. I'm not a Hybrid Hologram Program, I'm a Hybrid Hologram Programmer. I design Hybrid Holograms for a living. The slash is to separate occupation from species. I am 100 percent human and a damn good Holographic Programmer." he explained.

  "Wait, so that means I'm not part hologram? I'm 100 percent Chaffee!?" Lawg Beamed.

  "What? Obviously not, you're half human, or about 45 percent human. There is no such thing as part hologram, that’s just dumb. How would a hologram reproduce, they're just refracted light? Even a hybrid model with a physical skeleton and built-in emitter, technically could have sex, but with no DNA or biological components, just never mind, holograms can't reproduce with organic life. And why would that affect you and your…" he said examining the paper. "son-of-a-spacebitch." she sighed.

  "I'm your son." Lawg said, grinning like a child at Christmas.

  "Yea, I just got that…hence the exclaim of anxiety. Marla Smith, no wonder you ended up so dense. I knew dating a space-pirate was a bad idea, but you don’t see many Chafee so I figured, what could it hurt?" he sighed, looking up at Captain Lawg scratching awkwardly at his ass. "And now it hurts me greatly." he added. Lawg jumped as another Benny came around the corner, younger and still bald.

  "Is that my brother?" he gasped.

  "No, it’s a hologram…we just went through this. The holograms look like me and they don’t age." he said looking frustrated. "My god you are stupid."

  "Why would you make them look like you?" Lawg asked.

  "Because I wanted some kind of legacy I could be proud of. It’s the closest to a son I ever had. Plus they look like me so they are sexy as hell and awesome" he said awkwardly.

  "I get it now…you weren't aware that I was even born…that’s why you were never there. You felt something but you didn’t know where to look and I grew up with my grandfather, who was crazy, and probably didn’t even know who my real father was." Lawg said feeling a bit of comfort as he wiped his brow.

  "Wrong again, dip-shit. After a knocked up your mother and vowed to never go out again, I had you med-scanned hoping you were actually someone else's kid. Luck of the Chafee failed me twice that year, first the condom, then the paternity test came up positive and with it showed you have a predicted IQ between 60 and 70…obviously from your mother's side. Needless to say I have a reputation as a brilliant scientist and successfully covered the fact that I am an eighth Chaffee myself for almost 35 years, so having a dumb-ass half/chaf son put a dampener on that situation. So, I left you with your mother and resumed my career." he said, pausing as Lawg waited for an ending.

  "That's it? I was too dumb so you threw me away?" Lawg asked.

  "I didn’t throw you away, I did what was best for both of us. My career would be over, we would go broke, a Chafee child raised in public schools by a single father? I may be brilliant and talented, but I'm not a miracle worker, and I'm not exactly loving. I have had 2 house plants run away. I'm eccentric and crude, grouchy and antisocial, you think I would have done better than a loving mother with a starship and a universe of possibilities?" he asked.

  "Mom left me with my crazy Grandpa and went to space-Vegas…never came back. Grew up on a freighter never knowing my parents." he said dryly.

  "Bummer, guess you did kinda get the old boot-to-the-ass, didn’t you?" Benny pondered. "At least you had a job and got to travel, see the universe." he pointed out.

  "Same 11 month cargo run back and forth for 15 years. Only Docked to re-supply. Just empty space and a crazy old man who the crew felt sorry for enough to keep him onboard, even though he was clearly unfit to captain a ship. Weren't even any women on the ship except Bertha and that is a stretch of the gender lines." he said coldly.

  "So life didn’t even use a clean boot, hu? That sucks kid. So what do you want from me? Money?" he asked.

  "Sure, I could use…I mean no. NO! I wanted the truth, I maybe even hoped to find a father who was glad to find out I existed and want some kind of relationship."

  "What are you, 12? Life is full of disappointments, isn't it? So you aren't here to claim any child-support money or weasel your way into some inheritance plot…Was there anything else I missed?" he asked.

  "Nope." he said coldly, turning and shuffling away. Benny looked almost sorry for a moment, feeling for the first time like he owed him something more then just a Lawg monologue.

  "Wait…hold up Kid." he hollered. Captain Lawg turned around and shuffled back to see what the old bugger had to say.

  "Can I tell you a secret? Can you promise not to tell anyone about this?" he asked.

  "Sure, dad."

  "Don’t call me dad. So, here is the thing… My real name is Jimmy Jackson." he said looking ashamed.

  "I thought your name was Benny." he said looking confused.

  "Shut up dumb-ass and try to listen, you might learn something. I'll keep this stupid-simple. You seem simply stupid. Your Father was a Captain of a Space-cruiser. He died in a combat mission while your mom was pregnant. He had a pretty solid reputation and I was broke and high for a week so I stole his identity. Your real father was a war hero and a great man and I stole his name long enough to start a business and feed my own family. I had 6 kids and a wife to feed and Badass Benny was a good friend of mine, I knew he would have given me anything I needed if I asked when he was alive, so I borrowed his name after he died." he said pausing. "Your Father is dead, but he died protecting his people and he would be proud that you became a Captain as well. I'm just an old Mutt with a lot of regret. My family left me, and now I sit in my apartment and write programs all day to stave off depression." he finished.

  "Wow…so my father may have really wanted me after all. I knew I was from a Lawg line of Greatness." he said smiling.

  "Take this." he said handing him something from his desk drawer. "It was your father's watch. It meant the world to him and it belongs to his son now. I never deserved it, always kept it in case your mother ever returned. Now if you excuse me, I have programming to do, so get the hell out of my doorway before someone gets the wrong idea." he said as Lawg strutted away proudly. Benny shut the door and sat down, checking computer files.

  "Gullible idiot." Benny scoffed as the hologram of Benny brought him a virtual sandwich. His hologram looked concerned.

  "Why did you lie to him?" it asked.

  "He had a shit life, the truth is no better. I got no room in my life for a son, let alone a brainless son. He was better off without me then, and he is better off without me still. Now he will live his life far away from me, believing his father was a hero and we'll both be happier men." Benny said firing up his laptop.

  "Where did the watch come from?" asked the hologram.

  "Found it on the sidewalk last week, looked expensive. I was gonna pawn it but it didn’t work and it would cost me more to fix than it's worth."

  "You are a deceitful old man." the hologram said bluntly.

  "Thank you, now go get my damn slippers and a fresh cup of coffee.

  Laser blasts flew overhead as Duffy and Marley ran from the guards.

  Marley came to a frantic stop as they reached the nearest door opening, where the room became a hollow vertical shaft like an inside-out skyscraper. A consistent wind whistled below as he peeked out over the edge of the border path. A very spindly metal tube reached to the center where a platform was sitting, wobbling ever-so-slightly in the distance. The shaft-room descended downward into a fading blackness as the tiny lights of the numerous floors turned into vague perspective lines that converged into infinity.

  "What the hell is this shit?" Marley asked.

  "Some kind of exhaust system maybe." Duffy said.

  "Why? Why would there be an exhaust system anywhere near the foot paths of residential people? This is just a 40 fadjillian foot high drop to nothing. Why would this exist?" he asked.

  "Are you afraid of heights?" she asked. He turned slowly.

  "No, I am afraid of stupididy that can kill me. This is the perfect example of lethal stupidity. I thought it was the location of the grid power supply, but now I see it is a badly designed bridge to nowhere." he corrected.

  "Just go." Duffy growled.

  "No, this is just unsafely bad architecture. Sure, it looks cool and interesting but it has no purpose, this is a really significant sized empty space in a space-station that allows people to fall for what seems like forever…where does it go? What is the reason they needed an infinity tube of death? Why is it not enclosed to prevent people from falling off?" he complained

  "It has rails." she noted.

  "RAILS? OH DANDY…IT HAS RAILS! Well how fortunate that the Fadjillian mile high drop into infinite void comes with a flimsy aluminum pipe on either side, with a polished finish for a perfect grip in case you slipped on the smooth metal floor panels and needed to grab for your life. This should be completely enclosed in something, I don’t even see the point of putting a panel anywhere near the hollow tube of infinite vertigo, let alone on a heavy platform, precociously extended to the exact center of the death-tube via a single wobbly extension. And lucky us, It’s accessible only from an 80 meter long, slightly round walking path with 2 flimsy frigging rails attached every 9 feet. I could stuff a cow through this gap, who designed this shit?" Marley ranted.

  "Calm down little buddy." she encouraged, firing back as guards closed in.

  "No, I will not calm down. This is stupid. Why does every space-station and creepy base have to have a giant cylindrical chamber that drops off to blackness and death, and if this is somehow necessary, why must it be so open and badly marked? I'm 4 foot tall, there are children on this station, I am the height of the flimsy rails that would probably break if ever actually used. It's not even welded good…look at this shit." he pointed out as lasers flew over his head.

  "You're examining welds while we are being shot at!?" Duffy asked, firing wildly.

  "This is a spot-weld, its not a structural weld, it just holds the thing in place so someone can weld it properly. They didn’t even finish welding it! How can I feel safe walking on a pipe that was made by someone who decided the rails didn’t need to be welded out?"

  "That’s nice, but we are being shot at by security, so normally I would agree with you, but if we don’t shut down the shielding we can't be teleported out and they will murder us with death and lasers." she reminded.

  "How much ammo is left in that thing?" he asked.

  "It's a laser, I can't check the magazine. It runs out when the battery does. It has 1 out of 5 blinky bars left and I have no idea how full it was when I picked it up off the guy I knocked out. "Do you know how many shots 1 blinky bar represents?"

  "Damnit. They have the technology to build a city that floats but they can't put a counter on a gun or a freaking weld on a rail? What kind of shitty space-station is this?"

  "Federal Owned Property, what do you expect? They paint everything white and use good lighting to distract from cheap corner-cutting and mistakes. Nobody thinks about it if it looks cool. Those wall covers are probably made of recycled trash bags and under those nice, matte grey panels…probably a rat-nest of zippy ties and taped wires, missing bolts and budget sensors."

  "Oh great, now I really wanna go out on the flimsy pipe into the void…thank you for giving me the optimistic confidence I needed to feel safe." he barked.

  "Stop wasting time, we have been talking for like 8 minutes and pretty soon the guards will figure out they can approach us while we are monologing. Just go out there before I shoot you in the fury ass and tell Lawg it was the Feds…mkay?" she said with a sarcastic smirk.

  "You suck." he squinted as he tried not to look down. The laser fire continued as he nervously centered himself down the walkway, barely touching the rails on either side of his head as he stared at his footing and focused on his breathing.

  Lawg noticed the alarms going off and used the distraction to dart past the desk receptionist blocking his way to the ship. He grabbed a com and dialed out.

  "Hey guys, I assume these alarms are your doing, did you get the codes?" he asked.

  "NO! WE DO NOT HAVE CODES!" hollered Marley.

  "Geese, calm down. No rush." he scoffed.

  "I am not calming down, Lawg. I am stuck on a wobbly platform with lasers flying everywhere, flimsily held above an infinite drop to space-hell by a SINGLE STRAND OF VERMICELLI!!!" Marley hollered.

  ""I'll teleport you out." he replied.

  "NO. Do not teleport us yet." replied Duffy. "I need to finish disabling the shields or we will be teleporting into a locked hangar bay with no way out."

  "Teleport me and then let Duffy finish." Marley insisted.

  "No, don’t teleport him. The teleport coils need like 10 minutes between teleports and I don’t wanna get stuck here. Give me another 45 seconds." she barked, shooting the panel off and rummaging through wires.

  "We'll be dead in 45 seconds; they're almost across the vermicelli bridge." Marley reminded.

  "Oh, screw it." she said turning a dial on the gun and jamming it in the panel.

  "Teleport us now." she said

  "Coils need to warm up first." Lawg said watching the lights slowly dim.

  "Shit!" Duffy barked, yanking the gun back out. "I already set it to explode." she added, looking around and flinging it towards the guards. The explosion rattled the platform and the handrails fell off.

  "See? Shitty handrails." Marley barked. The platform began to sag and creak as the flimsy bridge crumpled and bent. They de-materialized as the platform dropped suddenly with a snap, crashing and exploding for literally no reason.

  "Grid's down, activating the emergency boosters." Lawg said, punching it and ramming the doors open as the ship zipped into the blackness of space. Marley and Duffy staggered out of the Teleporter.

  "Oh hey, you guys made it. Good stuff." he yawned, sipping from his umbrella-drink. Duffy stormed off to go take a nap as Marley staggered to the cockpit.

  "Are they following us?" he asked.

  "Nope, I knocked out the locator dish on the way out. Happy accident, really. Luck of the Chafee. One hundred percent Chafee." he smiled.

  "That’s conveniently conclusive to wrap up the day. Find your dad?" he asked, shakily lighting up a joint from the glove-box.

  "No, but I found answers and that is the next best thing. He was a hero and a great Captain, and at least I know that now. Plus I got his old pocket watch." he smiled.

  "Very interesting, I'm gonna go take a shower and cry a lil." Marley said staggering off.

  "Not a bad day." Lawg said putting on his unnecessary sunglasses and putting his feet up. "Not a bad day at all." he added.