Chasing the Cosmic Bandit

The ‘Rusty Bucket,’ as Gleep affectionately (or perhaps not so affectionately) called his spaceship, rattled and groaned like a space-aged badger with a tummy ache. Inside, Princess Astra, or Cadet Astra as she was currently pretending to be, clung to a wobbly console, her knuckles white. Outside, the cosmos was putting on a show that would make any artist weep with joy, or possibly just weep. Swirls of nebulae, like cosmic tie-dye gone wild, painted the inky blackness, and asteroids, chunky as forgotten space potatoes, tumbled past.

“Are you sure this thing is going to hold together, Gleep?” Astra yelled over the cacophony of the ship’s protests. Her voice, usually as clear as a starlight chime, was strained.

Gleep, a creature whose skin resembled a particularly bruised plum and whose eyebrows seemed permanently set in a scowl, grunted from the pilot’s seat. “It’s held together for three hundred cycles. It’ll hold together for this one… probably.” He adjusted a dial that sparked alarmingly. “Besides, it’s not like you have a choice, is it, Cadet Shiny-Pants?”