Z-P-N-E-S didn’t land.
After years of Blindy’s abusive “maintenance,” dozens of crashes, and repairs held together by hope and duct tape, it finally fell the fuck apart right inside the hangar.
Hard enough to shake the entire spaceport like a seven-point quake.
Cranes collapsed. Dozens of servitors were torn open from the shock, spilling metallic guts everywhere.
It scared the shit out of half of Helaris—
enough that a good chunk of them collectively decided to resign from existence there
and migrate to another planet.
Let me remind you, dear gremlins, this ship was built for short flights and hauling space junk classified as “extremely toxic bullshit.”
Not for hypers of Class X.
By the laws of physics—and logic, if that even exists—
it should’ve broken down into quarks the moment it launched.
And as our lovely Jackie once explained:
if you keep throwing an L-class bucket into hyperspace long enough,
sooner or later it’s gonna say: Fuck this.
—and die.
And that’s how this apocalyptic duo managed to turn a cosmic-scale problem
into a planetary-scale disaster.
Blindy went on a drinking binge instantly.
Like he’d lost his own mother,
not a rusted-out piece of scrap.
Though, to be fair, when he lost his mother,
he drank for two days…
Now he decided to drink for a month, like a captain without a ship,
washed ashore and stripped of all meaning.
For Blindy, this was karma.
The universe had finally told him:
“You’ve had enough. Here. Take it, for everything you’ve done, you bastard.”
Zeros didn’t give a shit. At all.
This metal psychopath didn’t need a ship to bend the laws of physics,
dive into the universe’s hyperspace asshole,
and crawl out somewhere near the edge of time.
But he wouldn’t risk taking Blindy with him.
If even a ship’s life-support system couldn’t survive another year,
Blindy wouldn’t survive a single jump.
And just like that, Z-P-N-E-S was officially decommissioned.
The ship’s death was recorded on July 3rd, 3479—SST.
Rest in scrap, you old bucket.
Less than a week later,
Zeros ran into Blindy on the way to the bar—the place Blindy defaulted to, like a pigeon to a dumpster.
He didn’t have a home anymore. Blindy now lived in a box where his house used to be, the one that got sucked into the wormhole—literally carried off like toilet paper down a drain.
Didn’t have a ship either.
He walked like he’d been drained dry. Eyes swollen. Swaying like a wet puppy.
Zeros stopped him in the Shit Hall sector
and pointed at the mercenary agency—
“We Fix It Right™.”
“Hey…
I… can’t look at you like this.
Let’s go inside.
Maybe we can find someone to steal a ship from.”
Blindy swayed back… forward… then back again. Didn’t say a word.
Just turned and walked inside. Zeros followed.
Inside, the agency was packed with noise, heat, and sweat—
so thick any normal biological organism would’ve died instantly. But the mercs, mutants, and cyborgs here had long passed the point where smell meant anything.
Voices overlapped like this was some kind of screaming championship.
Zeros immediately started scanning the crowd.
“Hey. You know these assholes.
Who’s got a decent flying bucket?
Point, and I’ll make you captain of a new one.”
Blindy barely kept his eyes open. He smelled like he had personally carried a distillery on his back.
“I… I…”
His gaze drifted—not focusing, just floating—until it caught on something that didn’t belong to the rest of the room.
At first, it looked like a tall figure standing still.
Then it shifted. Not moved—shifted. As if parts of it disagreed on where “still” was supposed to be.
Zeros followed his line of sight. A brief flicker passed through his optics.
“How about that one?” he muttered. “This one’s big. Ship’s gotta be big too.”
Blindy squinted, forcing his eyes to cooperate.
The figure—a Threxial—stood a head taller than most, its silhouette uneven—layered. The outline of a single body broke apart the longer you looked at it: extra shoulders where none should exist, a second torso pressed along the side, something like a half-formed ribcage shifting beneath patches of dark, rust-like skin. Veins pulsed faintly under the surface—out of rhythm, out of agreement.
A harness wrapped around it—metal, tubing, blinking nodes—holding everything together with quiet, artificial authority.
Its mouth opened. Closed. Opened again.
No sound. Then—
A voice. Clean. Perfect.
It came from an embedded interpreter—wired into her collarbone:
“Negotiations are currently open.”
Zeros stepped forward without hesitation, like he was greeting an old friend.
Blindy followed half a step behind, swaying slightly.
“Hey…” Blindy mumbled, dragging the words like they were heavier than they should be.
“Gra’Mullock… how you doin’?”
The main body tilted its head. A fraction too late.
“Functional,” the voice came out low and feminine—hoarse, resonant, as if carried through an empty metal pipe.
A faint ripple passed along her side. Something attached to her spine twitched, then stilled. Zeros gestured loosely.
“We need a ship lifted. Clean job. Fast hands. No questions.
You look like you can handle… volume.”
Something inside her shifted. Not one thing. Many. The mouth opened again. Closed.
Then the interpreter spoke:
“Price—2,000,000Ꞩ.”
Same voice. Hollow. Controlled.
A sharp jerk ran along her ribcage.
The sound snapped—warped—returned in a different tone: male, nasal, slightly muffled:
“No. Too low. Market’s down. Ask for more.”
Another movement—sharper this time, like disagreement turning physical. A new male voice cut in, angrier:
“Triple it. They look desperate.”
A third voice slipped in—male as well, but duller, flatter, almost bored:
“Yeah, yeah—set it to ten. Round figure.
Enough low-tier work. Increase level.”
Zeros blinked. Blindy just stared, trying to figure out which part of her was actually talking. The body went still. Very still.
The mouth opened slowly. The feminine voice returned—low, metallic, composed:
“Ignore them.”
A faint twitch—something forced down beneath the harness.
“They do not understand negotiation protocol.”
The stillness held—tight, controlled.
“Price stands…”
Zeros glanced at Blindy. Blindy glanced at Gra’Mullock. Then at the restless mass shifting along her side. Then back at Zeros. He took a long, slow breath.
“…We ain’t doin’ this, right?”
“Nah…” Zeros whispered, rubbing along his jawline.
“Let’s find someone else.”
Blindy didn’t argue.
As they stepped away, the internal murmurs didn’t fully fade—low vibrations slipping through the interpreter, breaking into fragments, like a glitch it couldn’t quite contain. Behind them, the feminine voice followed, steady, composed:
“Offer remains open.”
The body shifted again—subtle, uneasy, as if settling into something that refused to stay still. The mouth opened. Closed. The same hollow, feminine tone returned:
“Gotta head home soon. Pick up a new husband.”
A sharp twitch rippled across her side. A nasal, masculine voice cut in—strained, alarmed:
“Oh c’mon… not again—”
Another voice overlapped—male as well, flatter, more urgent:
“We just stabilized—don’t—”
A third voice slipped in—low, almost amused:
“Darling… better get rid of the other two.”
The movement tightened—then forced itself still. The feminine voice snapped back—cold, final:
“No one asked you. Freeloaders.”
Blindy glanced back once. Shook his head.
“Damn…” he muttered.
A crooked, tired smile pulled at his face.
“And here I was thinkin’ my family was the weirdest one.”
At that moment, the guild master—
a Froppian named Uls’Than—
stood as if evolution itself had once stumbled…
and decided not to correct the mistake.
Where a normal creature would have had a face,
there bloomed a fleshy crown of thin, twitching tendrils—
alive in their own right, constantly shifting,
reaching into the air, tasting it,
as if vision had never been part of his species’ original design.
He had no eyes. None.
[Dick paused, glanced at Jackie, then shook his head slightly before continuing]“He perceived the world differently—through scent, vibration…
and, as Jackie quietly notes—echolocation.Those slick, nauseating tendrils served as auditory receptors as well,
while the sound itself was produced by subtle vibrations of his entire body.”
[Dick let out a tired sigh]“Yeah… baby… We really could’ve lived without that information.”
[He coughed lightly and pushed on with the story]“Zeros called him an ‘”‘ass-eye.’
Not as an insult—just a functional description. Very Zeros-ish.
Uls’Than himself spoke exclusively through interpreter in bureaucratic-corporate dialect, as if he were running not a cheap mercenary agency, but a trillion-c-bucks intergalactic conglomerate.
He demanded receipts. Issued contracts. Insisted on signatures, confirmations, verifications—and then signatures again. Preferably in triplicate. Because of this, even the simplest job could take days to process. The queue piled up, thickened, stagnated—sometimes not moving for weeks, as if the system itself had decided: speed… was not part of the service.
Zeros looked at the guild master with a growing urge to smack those twitching, star-shaped tendrils—
and the longer he stared at Uls’Than, the closer that urge drifted toward obsession.”