An American Dream, Part II: An American Spacedream

Purple rage?

Something tickled the back of Sam's brain. Purple rage. Purple rage. Purple range. Out of range. Out of range. Out of range.

"Out of range. Out of range." The mechanized voice of his starfreighter's onboard CPU awoke Sam with a start -- and thank God. Had he dreamt about his idea for a campy 20th-century novel for a second longer, he would have plunged straight into the Kal'Tuk Orphan Refinery -- a revered institution that gave orphans a comfortable home for three years and a chance at adoption, after which it processed them for the raw materials so desperately needed in this forgotten corner of the galaxy.

Sam deftly avoided the orphan refinery and set the ship down with a thud in the middle of the landing pad, which sat on the fringes of Kal'Tuk's gigantic spaceport in the eastern slums of Ralta, the planet's smoggy capital. While most of the spaceport was under the strict jurisdiction of the Imperial Space Commerce, Agriculture, Satellite TV, and Trucking Guild (the powerful, secretive, and terrifying ISCASTVTG), widespread bureaucratic disorganization and corruption meant that the eastern landing pads were for all intents and purposes controlled by an ever-battling smattering of warlords, criminal ringleaders, and minor guilds. It was an anarchic center of black market commerce in which there were only two rules:

1) There are no rules.

2) No smoking.

But this was the sort of chaos in which Sam could most easily find a buyer for the spoils of his most recent adventure: A Quasar-Class starfreighter that came complete with a neural-net onboard CPU, an androgynous, vaguely sexually threatening cyborg named Syd, and a 12-disc CD changer (and cupholders – cupholders everywhere). It was worth at least half a million Sky Credits, which could be redeemed for a variety of goods and services at most spaceports, orbiting maintenance platforms, and Wal-Marts. Given the mobster off of whose underling Sam had taken Ferñandez (Sam thought it was a horrible name for a vehicle capable of going two thousand times the speed of light, but the Space Code precluded him from renaming it before it had been in his possession for at least six cosmomonths.), it was in his best interest to get rid of the thing and get off of Kal’Tuk as soon as possible. But who would be bold enough, or dumb enough, to buy a huge, conspicuous, unregistered starfreighter?

“Why hello, Sssssssssssam.” A sticky webbed hand placed itself on Sam’s right shoulder, and he immediately regretted, as always, the Earth government’s 2239 decision to cross-breed iguanas and humans. “It’sssssssss me, Ssssssss’ssssss-ssssss.”

“Oh really?” said Sam, turning around smartly. “I assumed it was one of the other wannabe lizardman gangsters I know on Kal’Tuk.”

Ssssssss’ssssss-ssssss looked confused for a second, then said, “Nope, it’sssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss me.” The peculiar build of Ssssssss’ssssss-ssssss’ hybrid brain made him incapable of understanding sarcasm. “That’sssssssssssss a nicccccccccccccccccccce ship you have there, Ssssssssam.”

“Yes – do you want it?” Sam had learned early in his spacefaring days that it was always best to cut straight to the chase. Ssssssss’ssssss-ssssss, following a recent surgery to repair what had been a devastating lisp, certainly didn’t have the Sky Credits for such a purchase; Sam was asking on behalf of Ssssssss’ssssss-ssssss’ boss, Agfrytsgferrg, an alien gangster from the sun-parched wetlands of Venus 8, a blistering desert planet on the icy fringes of the system. Agfrytsgferrg had a brutal reputation, but he also had enough Sky Credits to buy an Efruvian Raptor egg, and was always in need of cargo vessels.