The Alienbutt Saga, Book 1. War of the Coffee Bean. Part 2.

CHAPTER 1

INTERSTELLAR NEWS CHANNEL 9 NEWS FLASH
The price of coffee beans rocketed to a new high today as news of a bad crop in the Rata System came to light. Rata is the sixth largest producer of coffee in the galaxy, and the news triggered large scale rioting in several systems that depend on Rata coffee for their supply. The Coffee Houses based on Earth have moved to quell fears of rationing in a statement made to the Federation Senate.

The Taxi years.

Alienbutt had grown up on Sloppystool dreaming of following in his father's footsteps and being a taxi driver. It was a family tradition going back seven generations. Also for someone with no formal education it was a fast way to earn the money needed to enter the Federation Academy to become a starship commander. Piestoff Alienbutt had big plans, which true to form hadn’t worked.
Because of several centuries spent in suspended animation he was now too old to enrol in the academy by about six hundred years, but he did end up getting his taxi. The Interstellar mk5 taxi cab had originally been designed as a military drop ship. It could hold up to ten persons and had the ability to be launched from large deep space troop ships safe at the edge of a system. From there it could fly to its target planet and then was able to navigate in the planet’s atmosphere. Five million had been built by the Chrom military for a war against the Ji Hunters, a race of intergalactic reprobates renowned for causing trouble and stealing anything that caught their eye. As the Chrom massed to attack, the sneaky Ji Hunters nerve gassed the entire fleet ending the war before a Chrom managed to shoot a gun in anger.
The captured fleet was then sold off by the Ji and an enterprising fellow bought some of the drop ships and put taxi meters in them. They quickly became the cab of choice for the short distance cabbie with over twelve hundred thousand now flying around “For Hire.”

So Piestoff had achieved half of his childhood ambition but quickly he had set himself a new goal as the reality of his life set in. This time he set himself a real grown up goal and not some boyhood fantasy. The first part of his plan was to be anything else apart from a taxi driver. How he hated his bloody taxi, always in the repair bay having worn out parts replaced in a never ending cycle of expenses. When the stupid thing did work he would spend his days and nights picking up customers who were not interesting and full of the joys of space, but more often unhappy and dull, all eager for their next fix of coffee.
He had expected to be trawling the galaxy going from one system to the next, dodging space pirates and asteroid storms. Instead he got shoppers heading for the off planet retail parks and hyper markets with the odd job to the hyper jump station, where you could be on the other side of the galaxy in a matter of minutes for the equivalent of five years of Alienbutt's annual income. The invention of the hyper jump had overnight destroyed the interstellar business class taxi trade.
Now it was all local work, you never left the system. Sloopystool had changed so much from his childhood days. It was now the largest producer of coffee in the universe and social housing was a distant memory.

Five hundred years before, humans had entered space and brought coffee with them. To almost all other species coffee was highly addictive, even the smell of it could get some species hooked. The coffee revolution had quickly made humanity the major player in the universe and within fifty years Earth companies had taken over almost everything worth buying.
Sloppystool’s climate was so similar to Earth’s that now ninety percent of the planet’s landmass was turned over to coffee production. The population of the planet now lived in giant floating cities situated on the planet’s oceans and most worked on the coffee farms or associated companies. With the off planet shopping centres, Sloppystool had become a major trading centre where people could make a fortune, if they didn’t become addicted to coffee, which was now used not just for drinking but in foods, chewing gum and even perfume. Almost the whole universe was a captive to the coffee companies’ marketing departments. Only humans, the aloof Ick Empire and a certain alien race with four arseholes were immune to the little brown bean.

Piestoff threw himself into taxi driving, working long hours to earn the money to buy passage to anywhere and buy a home when he got there. He had his plan and was desperate to make it happen. But while Alienbutts couldn’t become addicted to things, they could grow to like things with a passion that could become obsessive. Piestoff really obsessively liked spicy kebabs and whiskey, and would often fly over to the next planet Hardstool to buy whiskey to last him a month, then drink it all over the weekend while eating kebab after kebab. Because of this his savings never really grew. After a weekend blowout he would start again, working longer hours until he could bear it no longer and he would have another weekend blowout.
Piestoff would spend most of his time at work sat in his Interstellar mk5 taxi waiting. Being a taxi driver you learnt how to wait like an expert. Waiting over an hour between jobs was normal and Control, who gave out the jobs would give him crap; often it wasn’t even going off planet.
But on this particular day the job had a pet. He hated animals and they hated him. Control knew this and still the slimeball gave him jobs with pets. The only way to get good jobs from Control was to be his friend, to go out drinking with him, buying his drinks.
This job though, would have a massive impact on Piestoff's future.
He looked at the job again.
2436 Shorepond street, Sector 4, Newport City. Lady and a Mutthound puppy. Going to sector 32, Shazzer town.

Growing up on Sloppystool in the pre-coffee days Piestoff’s only experience of animals apart from Mr. Fluffy was the now extinct two foot red beetles that made up the main diet of the planet’s populace. Even heavily spiced they tasted horrid, and more people died from food poisoning than from any other cause. This had left his experience with animals limited to one evil cat and food that often killed you. The pick-up point was a good thirty minutes away in an area he wouldn’t usually go into after dark unless he had a full squad of riot marines with him. Taking off from his parking spot he pulled into the traffic, causing two other ships to swerve to avoid colliding with him. There followed the usual hand signals and cursing, but what did they expect? He drove a taxi after all and the usual rules of driving didn't apply to taxi drivers.
Driving in-orbit on Sloppystool was one of the most dangerous jobs you could do, as traffic came from any direction and you had to keep your reflexes sharp or your second to last journey ever would be much shorter than you planned, and once you had been scraped up you would start your final journey.
Before long, Piestoff was landing outside the run-down building. He got out of his seat and pressed the button to open the rear doors. His fare was a young Belguin female. She looked very similar to the humans but the Belguins had purple skin and seven fingers. She stood waiting at the back of the taxi with four large bags.
"Hi love could you just store these while I get Poodle?, They did say I had a puppy, didn’t they?" She smiled then quickly turned and went around the back of the house. Piestoff grabbed the first two bags and put them into the storage locker then went back for the other two. As he walked back up the ramp into his taxi he heard a low growl. Looking around he saw nothing so walked to the locker and put the bags in. As he closed the lid he felt something breathing on the back of his neck. He looked down to see two large clawed paws next to his own feet. Very slowly he turned around to look into two large orange eyes and a large mouth full of lots of large sharp teeth. A long tongue lolled out of the side of the mouth, dripping drool. The rest of the body was covered in long black fur, and there was a lot of body there.
From the doorway he heard the ladies voice. “Poodles put down the nice taxi man.”
The beast sniffed him, which would normally cause anything to at least run off whimpering, as Piestoff was nervous and two of his arseholes were really testing the charcoal butt plugs he wore at work. Instead it licked his face and went to lay down behind the driver’s seat.
“Oh that’s lovely, he likes you, Mr. Taxi man.” The girl smiled as she walked past to sit in the passenger seat. Piestoff stood transfixed for a moment longer, then wiping the drool off his face, edged himself into the driver’s seat.
“They said you had a puppy.” Piestoff cast a quick look at the six foot monster. “A mutthound?”
“He is, he’s only six month old, they grow to be at least twelve foot, could you stop off at the pet world on Pond Alley? I need to get him a snack to stop him getting hungry, did you know....” Piestoff switched off and headed for the pet world, the girl had a voice that grated and the word hungry made him nervous. She droned on as he flew while Poodles moved its head to rest next to Piestoff’s foot. Two minutes later Piestoff landed his taxi outside the pet shop. The girl jumped up and headed for the rear door. “Poodles, stay! I’ll only be a minute love, if he gets playful just smack him on the nose.” With that she disappeared down the ramp.

Ok so that's it for today, thanks for reading.
All artwork is my own.