Captain Space Pirate, Adrift
Captain Space Pirate is adrift out past Neptune. His holds filled with pilfered energon of the wrong formulation to power the ship. The crew went quiet when the engines went quiet and went quieter still when the lights went dim. This is not a proud day for Captain Space Pirate.
Captain Space Pirate, Leaves
Captain Space Pirate, freshly docked, ordered a round for his crew and for the briefest of moments thought that he registered in the eye of the bartendress a glint of recognition. By the time the steins were filled, their ship was already pulling away from the airlock.
Captain Space Pirate, Moon
Captain Space Pirate, finally in orbit of Venus, learns for the first time that the planet Venus has no moons. Quietly he gives the order to the Weapons Bay to power down the very expensive Moon Blaster 7000. Down the narrow steel hall from the Weapons Bay he hears a disdainful chortle from one of the crew. Probably Sven.
Captain Space Pirate, Traumatized
Captain Space Pirate, never one for routine maintenance, has not been inspecting the seal on the helmet of the suit of his new parrot and so suffered the entirely preventable trauma of watching Archibald expire while reconnoitering the hull of a freighter out past the Galilean moons.
Captain Space Pirate, Eroding
Captain Space Pirate finds solace in a single pink grain of sand he found on the floor of his cell. Licked his finger and pressed it to the grain of sand. Held his fingertip just beyond his nose. Wondered from where in the solar system such a grain would have come. Wondered how it had made it to this cell. On whom? And what their fate might have been. He rolls the grain between his thumb and forefinger, eroding it into just a pink nothing.
Captain Space Pirate, Son
Captain Space Pirate powers down the ship into the shadow on the dark side of the moon, hiding out from the Rangers. He glimpses his reflection in the porthole window as the sun crests below the curve of Kepler Crater and his aged face reminds him in his memory of his father and how once as a boy he told his father that one day he could become a Ranger and how his father had grinned a grin that exposed the glimmer of his big gold tooth as he said, "No my son, you will not."
Captain Space Pirate, Gardener
Captain Space Pirate is alone in his stateroom when from the small safe once intended for the sealed orders for captains of the Fleet, he removes the dog eared paperback he'd taken in the last moments before sealing the airlock on that doomed research station in orbit of Callisto. His bookmark patient. As they watched the burning hull of the station fall toward the orbit of Jupiter, Sven had asked him why, amongst all the expensive research gear they'd not had the time to take, he'd wasted one of his hands grabbing a book, and a book about gardening no less. Captain Space Pirate, whose fingertips - when young - had once known the wet texture of soil, fixed his eyes on the receding research station and pretended not to hear.
