Space Trash

By Chris Winder

Mistakes were made...

...accidents happened.

Admiral Eeekbo, freed from a long-standing treaty, is looking forward to being the first admiral in hundreds of years to conquer something.

Now that Earth is no longer protected by the treaty of Mic-Nic-Talawic, it's fair game to whoever gets there first.

Who caused the treaty to be broken? Who will save Earth from a hostile invasion force?

Buy this book and find out for yourself.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Chris Winder Books
• Release date: Mar 25, 2019
• ISBN: 9781386668763

Chris Winder

Chris Winder is a Science Fiction author, former United States Marine, husband, and father. His stories include Space Trash, a comic science fiction novel, Breach Team, a space Marine novel (co-written with best-selling author JR Handley), What Really Matters, a story told in the Four Horsemen Universe of Chris Kennedy Publishing, and more. Chris Winder lives in northern Arizona where he enjoys the peace and quiet of rural living along with his wife, youngest child, elderly dog, and two obnoxious but adorable cats.

Book preview

1

Milo Dezelbup pouted . He was a phase-certified quantum-drive engineer, but it wasn’t his job. He crossed his long, skinny arms in front of his narrow body and frowned with his wide mouth, which was the way most things with mouths frowned. Four years of quantum-drive mechanic tech school with nothing to show. Almost all Parlactians were builders. Milo wasn’t building anything, except a very long, very hard to explain gap in his resume.

Milo was tired of working his way to the top as his college guidance counselor had suggested. True, he wasn’t the best quantum-drive engineer, but he hadn’t even had a chance to get some experience by getting his hands on one, outside of the classroom.

As he sat there watching the trash fall, he tried to scratch his skinny nose, which is something he did often when he was thinking. He did it so often, that he had worn the end of his nose down to a nub, which was something that usually only happened to old Parlactians. It would grow back, he knew, but right now he didn’t even care if it made him look old. In fact, he thought looking older might get him a little respect.

His nose, however, was not immediately accessible for his fingers to scratch. His polysteel, transparent-visored helmet blocked access, as did his gloves, body armor, and encapsulated gas and hydration packs he had to wear while performing his job. His j-o-b, as he referred to it, was not something friends ever brought-up in conversation, because doing so would often put him in a very foul mood.

Milo’s j-o-b consisted of watching and pressing buttons. More pressing buttons than watching, but there could be a good deal of watching involved before buttons could be pressed. His job was to watch trash fall from a dozen or so chutes in the ceiling of his workroom and press buttons when it stopped. Simple as that, and utterly boring as that. Had Milo been aware of the existence of the thing called a ‘monkey’, it’s likely he would have said that such a creature could be trained to perform the task. The assumption wouldn’t have been wrong.

Milo’s workroom was exactly ten meters high, precisely cylindrical and slightly narrower than it was tall. The walls, floor, and ceiling were shiny silver metal and were polished to a mirror finish. Beneath the trash chutes were several shiny silver funnels, arranged so that all the trash would fall from one to another into a single disposal pod large enough to fit a hundred Milos in. When the disposal pod was full, it would automatically close.

Then it was Milo’s job to find the next target on the list, enter the coordinates into the control panel’s buttons in front of him, and then press the big red button. Then the pod would drop into the disposal cannon’s barrel. The cannon would aim at the coordinates Milo designated and whoosh, it would be gone.

The trash would be fired at a convenient star, especially if it was in the process of dying into a large red giant anyway. Enough trash could poison a star to death. If no such stars were convenient, and the ship’s captain was afraid he, she or it might get caught, a fee had to be paid to fire the pod at a trash planet. There were many throughout the galaxy, so the prices were low enough to make using the service justifiable.

Milo bemoaned his work. He’d studied for six years in order to achieve his certification as a quantum-drive engineer, a very prestigious position, yet he was working in trash disposal. The thought made him sink lower in his seat. The iris hatches of the trash chutes pinched shut and the top of the egg-shaped pod closed like a flower un-blossoming.

Just like he’d done thousands of times before, Milo read the coordinates from his digital clipboard and punched in the next ones on the list. This time the target was a star. It wasn’t a dying star, but it might be soon, he thought. Sometimes pilots were responsible citizens of the galaxy and sometimes, well, sometimes they poisoned stars.

After the coordinates were entered, he pressed the big, red button and whoosh the trash was gone. A side hatch opened, and another trash pod was rolled into place by a mechanical arm purpose-built for the job. The irises above the pod opened and more trash began to fall.

To his amazement, Milo recognized several items that fell from the disposal chutes this time. The General Engineering and Systems Acquisition Department had obviously received a new order and were throwing out all of their old equipment. To his shock, Milo recognized that some of the equipment was stuff that he had trained on!

A groan, which to the ears of many other species resembled the sound of screeching tires, escaped his throat. Milo leaned heavily into his chair and allowed his large head, which seemed even larger encapsulated by a helmet, flop behind the seat on his long neck. Not only was he not getting any experience doing the job he was trained for, what he spent four years in college learning, but now he was behind the technology. He wasn’t even sure that he would know how to use any of the new equipment. Milo grunted a surly curse word in his language and allowed his digital clipboard to fall from his grasp while his other hand unsuccessfully tried to scratch his nose.

He wondered if he should just throw himself into a trash pod and get himself loaded into the cannon. The polysteel suit should protect him from the trash, which would be dumped upon him from the trash chutes, and the sudden acceleration of being fired out of the massive trash-cannon. Maybe, he thought, he could leave his mark on something, whether it be a passing freighter, a capitol building of some nearby planet or just the crater he would leave on a somewhere else.

Milo leaned forward and failed to place his face in both of his hands, or even one of his hands, much to his dismay, his big, helmeted head would have made a loud thunk on his desk, had there been atmosphere For several minutes he sat there and thought. If he climbed into the next pod, would someone notice that the trash wasn’t being disposed of and fire it, and him, off? He wasn’t sure if it would even work. When he looked up again, he noticed the chute irises were closed.

Now is just as good as any other time, and probably better than later, which would just be a waste of the now, he thought. Maybe he could hop into the next trash pod and finally be rid of the job he despised. No, he said to nobody in particular, you’re just feeling sorry for yourself, now snap out of it!

Milo picked his digital clipboard off the floor with a slightly renewed sense of determination, sat upright, and scooted his chair closer to the control panel. However, when he turned his head to find the next coordinates, he realized that his eyes weren’t working as well as they had before his temper tantrum.

Milo didn’t shake his head to try to clear his vision, because Parlactians wouldn't do such a thing. Their heads were big and their necks were long, so shaking their heads vigorously could pull a hundred muscles, which didn’t feel good at all. Instead, he instinctively stuck out his very long, very flat and very wide tongue and wiped his corneas of whatever debris might be making them show his large brain a distorted image on the digital clipboard. It didn’t