I plonk myself down on the Captain’s chair. A vast blackness fills the window before me, dotted with tiny sparkling blobs. All those stars, all those civilizations, and not a lick of work for us. I’m not sure how much longer I can put up with these cheap tins of spam, even if my one robot arm has a can-opener setting.

“Ey Gringo! We’re sailing by that Bordoon planet soon. You gonna shoot them a flier?”

Turning away from idling at the co-pilot’s console, Gringo spins in his chair and shoots me a disgruntled look, his lizard-face twisted up in a scowl, “An’ risk ‘aving ta ship those weird frogs around again? Ain’t happenin’, Cap’n. I still get nightmares with me legs coated in tha lumpy little bastards.”

I arch a sceptical eyebrow, “maybe if you showered more they wouldn’t think you were a mobile swamp.”

He waves a disinterested, dismissive claw at me, “Aaaaaa lay off it. I’ll send tha’ frog-munching numpties our flier.” Defeated, he slumps over as he pokes a few buttons and a schunk echoes from below.

“’Atta boy!” With a loud squeak, I lean back in my chair and return to staring at the big nothingness ahead. A fist-sized capsule catapults past the window and towards a passing planet. “Did you remember to give it the extra coating? So it doesn’t, you know, burn up in Bordoon’s atmosphere?”

The surly lizard-man freezes, “extra coat o’ paint, yeah?”

My facepalm echoes through the cabin, and only silence follows. Could be time for a recruitment drive, or retiring to the nearest exotic planet that isn’t inhabited by useless reptiles or-

“Gooooood morning folks!” Dressed in the gaudiest pyjamas I’ve seen since that species who developed a colour wheel before the actual wheel, Valsyth explodes into the room with too much noise, cheer, and glitter. Where did he find that glitter?

Valsyth slips past me and into the navigator’s seat, “We got any fanmail, Jorry?”

He floats in my peripheral vision – even while blurred I can see that big dumb grin, “Don’t call me that. And no.”

With a flourish he spins on his chair to inspect his screens – just watching him makes me dizzy, “Well, what’s this then?” Gringo and I perk up, “Yeah, new message waiting right here!”

I hop off my chair and peer over Valsyth’s shoulder. He taps the message icon and a small dialog box opens;

“Yo, can someone deliver me one of them tasty frog leg sandwiches? I got a serious case of the munchies!”

Sender; a moon near Bordoon.

I meander back to my chair and slump into it. Valsyth grows restless from the silence, “Chin up, fellas! Work’s work, right?” The silence returns for a moment, “Right?” His earlier cheeriness is shaky.

The lanky git is right. With a heavy sigh I flick the thruster controls and spin our spaceship around, “C’mon lads, let’s get to it.” I glance down at the half-eaten tin of spam – your days are numbered!