CRACKED: An Anthology of Eggsellent Chicken Stories by J. Posthumus (read after txt) 📕

that clucked, crowed, and squawked as they collided and produced an equal and opposite reaction. Chickens without gravity will fill the container they are provided.

Bas turned and looked in the other direction. “Gert, how many chickens…?”

“Four hundred and forty-six chickens,” Bas told his boss. “Give or take a few. Ms. Saar seemed to think some have met, ah, unfortunate ends.”

Sam grunted and leaned forward, putting his elbows on the desk between them. “Not unlikely. Some find the plague of chickens the worst part of this malfunction. How many in the core? Not all of them?”

Bas shook his head. “It was impossible to get a firm count. They kept moving. But at a rough guess, fifty or sixty.”

Sam spread his fingers out flat on the desktop and glanced down at his hands. “Filthy animals. A chicken, son, is a basketball-sized bundle of hate, greed, and shit.” He looked back up at Bas, his gray eyes calm. “What’s the plan?”

Bas gaped at him for a second.

Sam chuckled. “I know you have a plan or you wouldn’t have come to me yet. And that girl of yours loves those birds, so it’s a plan that doesn’t involve dead birds. Which,” he leaned forward again, intense eyes drilling into Bas’s, “is a good plan. Chicken dirt in all the air filters is bad enough. Shutting down the whole system to asphyxiate them? Too much trouble and social unrest.”

Bas choked. “You saw the chickens in costumes too, sir?”

Sam blinked but remained stone-faced. “Humans will make a pet out of anything.”

Bas nodded, thoughtful. “Nets, sir. We thought…”

“We?” Sam broke in.

“Gertrude Saar and I. She was in the core with me earlier. After we found the door open and evidence of the chickens.”

Sam was very good at reading between the lines. “That’s going to be a nasty clean-up job. I’m assigning it to a certain tech who signed off on work he didn’t actually do.”

Bas shook his head, but opted not to comment on the shortcomings of his team member. “We think the birds were trying to roost. Gert says chickens have a pecking order.”

Sam smiled. “Where the term comes from, yes.”

“So they kept going up the ladder to compete and they couldn’t get out of the core once they got into it.”

“Giant chicken trap, really.” Sam turned and leaned back in his chair, stretching his legs out. “Nets would work. Big ones, and propulsion packs. But!” He sat up with a thump from the chair back. “No one wears a pack without training.” He poked a finger at Bas’s chest. “You hear me?

“Yessir. Safety first, sir.” Bas nodded emphatically. “Can we have the husbandry techs in magnetic boots?”

“Ayuh. You’ll need their hands, too. This won’t be a walk in the park.”

Bas remembered that prediction a few hours later, as they all assembled at the access leg. Gert had adamantly refused to wait until morning.

“We don’t know how long they have been without food and water!” She threw up her hands. “Besides, didn’t your boss say they are gunking up the air system?”

There had already been complaints of the smell. Bas didn’t want to think about what would be said if the air circ started to reek of death.

Nets, it turned out, were not in demand on a space station. It had taken some creative scrounging and then bargaining to get the two they had. On the upside, the cargo nets stretched nearly from one side of the core to the other. Which was moot, Bas had thought at first, given they only had three propulsion packs. A brisk brainstorming session had hashed out a plan that seemed plausible. Three engineering techs would don the packs. They would herd the chickens into the nets, which would be held by the husbandry techs, stationed as anchors with their magnetized boots firmly on the shell of the core.

This time, Bas sent Gertrude and the other husbandry techs up first. They were using the access leg in the service area, where to the best of his knowledge, no chickens had the temerity to intrude. The ladder was clean. Bas and another of his team, Helen Knapke, rigged the nets into neat bundles and ascended with the apparatus to pull it up after them on a pulley system, along with the propulsion packs.

Bas was still on the ladder, moving slowly enough to not catch up with Helen, who was directly above him, when he heard Gert’s voice.

“Bas! Bas, hurry!”

He looked up. She was framed in the opening. Helen clambered up and out of the access, moving carefully. They all had magnetic boots on, now. “The chickens dying?” Bas asked with a bit of exasperation.

“No, worse than that!”

Bas hauled himself up over the edge, moving with exaggerated care to keep himself grounded. His head swam, then settled. He was fortunate not to suffer from the gravity sickness some felt in zero gee. Gert pointed, and he stared.

It was quite a spectacle to behold. Gaven Chamberlain, parks manager, was adrift in the core. He was roughly at the midpoint, which meant he had climbed the befouled access ladder. He had either come unprepared for the lack of gravity, or had been overeager… he flailed in midair, his face a truly alarming shade of purple.

“Get. Me. Down!” he roared at them. The impact was lost by the distance.

Bas looked at Gert. She seemed to be suppressing an attack of the giggles. “What… What is he holding?”

She bit her lip, and then managed to speak, her voice unsteady. “I think… I think it’s a butterfly net.”

“What are you waiting for!” bellowed the floating man.

“Helen.” Bas turned to her. She was bright pink with her own effort to keep the laughter inside. “Would you do the honor?” he asked.

She knelt and popped the pulley onto the edge of the shell where it met the core. Bas pulled off the knapsack he’d carried equipment in and grounded it with a strong magnet. Working efficiently, and ignoring the incoherent gusts of rage erupting