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

started to peck at the wall with furious industry. When the dust settled, the chicken backed up, and sat, watching them all expectantly.

“Captain!” LeRoy called, and pointed to wall, where etched clearly were the words: NO LAY I.

“No lay I?” Ellie interrupted. “Maybe the letters were clear, but the words sure weren’t. What does that mean? ‘I won’t let them lay eggs’ or ‘I don’t lay eggs’?”

“The captain had a staff meeting to discuss it,” LeRoy answered. “Commander Kun’pau was in Sickbay because the mind meld did something screwy to his language center. He squawked for the next week. Anyway, after some deliberation and after examining the rocks, they realized the rocks were the eggs of this creature. Probably it was some kind of caretaker for its species, and the colonists were putting the babies in danger by picking them up and using them for home décor.”

“Never understood knick-knacks, myself,” Jeb said. “And the message?”

“Captain Choquette suggested it was a plea for them to move the chicken farm, which had apparently encroached on its nesting grounds. He said that it trying to communicate that much of a message in Union Standard was evidence enough to consider it a sapient, protected species. The colonists tossed the eggs into the forest about where they’d found them, and they moved back to an older settlement. I heard our galley chef complain that the eggs wouldn’t taste as good, but small price to pay.”

Misha laughed in amazement. “That’s incredible! What a first away mission.”

“That’s not how it ends,” Ellie said decisively.

“What do you mean?” Misha asked.

With thought processes worthy of a Logic, she laid out her reasoning. “First, this does not explain the beetles carrying the eggs around. Second, if Kun’pau had joined minds with another sapient creature, why was he squawking for a week after he got back to the ship? The universal translator should have figured out the language in a day or two at most. Finally, you still haven’t told us how you got those.”

She pointed to the necklace of chicken neckbones.

Now, LeRoy expressed his awe. “I don’t know how you do it, L.T., but you’re right. That was not the end of our adventure. It turned out the captain had misinterpreted a lot. The beastly fowl we’d encountered was indeed the last of its generation, but it wasn’t just some desperate mother hen trying to protect her species. Every chick hatched with one thing in mind — kill the closest thing next to it.”

“Murderous mothercluckers,” Enigo said, quoting the Chief of Security’s log from that mission.

LeRoy nodded. “That’s where the beetles came in. Apparently, they have some kind of instinct to carry the eggs away, so that they’re separated from each other. The colonists disrupted that, not only by gathering the eggs but by bringing in a predator that fed on the beetles.”

“The chickens! They disrupted the ecosystem.” Misha covered her mouth to hold back an exclamation that might or might not have rhymed with cluck but was not something she wanted to say in front of her captain.

“It was worse than that, ma’am. The beetles kept doing their job, which meant they carried the eggs to the next colony, too. When those mothercluckers hatched, they attacked their mother, each other, and the colonists.

“When Commander Kun’pau was finally able to talk, he went straight to the captain and told him the danger the colony was in. By the time we got back there at maximum warp, however, half the colony was dead or injured, and we had to go in with bladed weapons until we could modify the phasers. We never did figure out how they resisted our initial fire, but fortunately, once we reversed the polarity, we roasted them good. I lost two toes, chunks of my thighs and half my elbow before the battle was done. And we did have to use the ship’s phasers at one point. But I ain’t ever had better chicken before or since.”

“They weren’t sapient?” Misha asked. “But what about ‘No Lay I?’”

LeRoy shrugged, so Ellie, who had had a brief and ultimately unsatisfactory romantic relationship with a Logic science officer, answered. “It was a language shadow, most likely. Commander Kun’pau was probably trying to explain the situation and thinking about writing his mission report, and the creature picked up some stray words.”

LeRoy nodded. “That makes sense. I never got told. Still, I learned some valuable lessons that mission. Never assume a creature has noble intentions.”

He pocketed his chain and picked up his cooling fish, “And some species are just meant to be eaten.”

The End

About the Author

Karina Fabian is a spec fic writer and a long-time Star Trek fan. She started writing the serial adventures of the HMB Impulsive during a difficult time in her life as a way to relieve stress. Three years later, Space Traipse: Hold My Beer continues with a weekly blog and a series of story collections. She also writes other science fiction, fantasy, and horror stories, plus creates fill-in journals. Learn more at https://fabianspace.com.

It Clucked

Amber Draeger

It Clucked Amber Draeger

Disclaimer: Any and all references made herein are definitely intentional and may be considered satire.

Western Texas Agri-Science Research Outpost

March 1st

It colored the night sky a neon pink as it plummeted through the folds of our atmosphere. I watched through the cracked lens of my son’s left-behind KidderScope, turning the broken plastic zoom knob to its full 1.5x magnification.

High up in our atmosphere, orange flames, skirted by ribbons of blue, shot around the circumference of the object. My breath caught in my throat. The sight was beautiful, and the object was… slowing.

I, sitting in my shredded vinyl folding chair in the back of the Silverado, jostled with the truck as two-hundred-and-fifty pounds of bearded cowboy slid from the cab behind me.

“Holy moly, boss,” Merryl’s voice boomed in the nighttime silence, his exasperation punctuated with the too-hard slam of the truck door. He leaned against the