Abduction

Welcome, young jetsetter!

You are about to embark on the journey of a lifetime. Today marks your acceptance into the Academy of Alien Sciences, Interdimensional Navigation, and Galactic Biology. By the time you finish reading this letter, a vehicle will have arrived at your home, ready to take you to the stars. Though your goodbyes may be quick, don’t forget to make them meaningful, as your travels far and wide will allow you to regale your family with tales of adventure for eons to come. 

As a novice member of the Academy, you will be assigned to a small crew to complete your first round of apprenticeship. Details of this assignment will follow during your delivery to the medical station, where you will receive final clearance to depart. As you learned during your application process, the diversity of experience and hands-on training provided by the Academy is unmatched across the universe, providing you with the essential skills you will need to serve the Coalition throughout your long and illustrious career. With a 100% placement rate at top-tier guilds, the Academy welcomes you to the ranks of legends.

———

Legends. Yeah, right, I say to myself, scraping space barnacles off the side of our hunk-of-crap ship. Okay. I know. Someone really decided to call them space barnacles. But that’s not my problem.

It’s been six months since the Academy blasted their acceptance scroll through my door, scaring the actual shit out of my parents. The blinding chariot arrived almost immediately afterward, nearly flattening our already-flat house, and with a 1-2-3-do-you-agree-to-never-see-your-family-again-and-hold-the-Academy-not-liable-for-any-damages-sustained-during-your-assignment, I was whisked away. I never even expected to get in, but when you live in the Muck, what else do you do? 

So here I am. Breathing disgusting canned air and doing “educational” chores on a rendezvous that will supposedly teach me how to negotiate treaties, collect cloud samples, and whatever else alien researchers do. Maybe the crew will forget I’m out here and try to do a jump while I’m still scrubbing shit off the hull. Wouldn’t that be nice.
But Tarren beeps in my ear and gives me a countdown to get back inside. I flick one last space barnacle into the abyss and head to the pressurization chamber. Once I’m inside the ship and out of my protective gear, I find my seat by the window. I do like to watch the jumps. It’s not a real window - that would be too dangerous - but a circular screen with a live feed to the outside simulates the effect. It’s the only good thing about this old, clanky mess. Whoever built it seemed to care.

The blinking stars begin to scream by in long strands as the leap starts. The only evidence of this inside, though, is a soft pressure holding me against my seat. Just as quickly, it ends, and we’re surrounded by glowing - and stationary - celestial points and marbles again.

I hear Jiji and Sopp whispering in front of me. They’re the youngest official crew members - recent Academy graduates. Sopp turns around and says, “Hey.”

I pull away from the window. “Yes?”

“Captain said you get dibs on the next planetary extraction.”

I double-take. They don’t give those to first-years. “What? I’m not trained for that.”

Jiji chimes in, “Not yet. First time for everything!”
They chuckle to themselves and turn back around. I catch, “...the first time I dropped an extraction,” from one of them. Why are they laughing? This is a highly complicated and dangerous maneuver. I imagine a body suspended in light below our ship, my sweaty hands on the controls. One mistake, and the sleeping subject plummets to the ground. The specimen could die. We could die. My vision gets fuzzy. I can’t hear them anymore. My whole body is turning to jelly. Dammit. Finally, a real assignment, and I think I’m gonna puke.