“I am Bob Wilson, the infamous monkey you are looking for. As for the rest of my ships, they’re parked on the planet until I can think of someone willing to buy pitiful junk like that. The crews are doing something useful for once in their lives, shoveling outhouses.”
“Why I never!”
“You should try it sometime. It’s great for calming you down. You look a bit tense. Manual labor is good for working out stress. Maybe we should put you to shoveling, also.”
“You buffoon! I’ll have your head for my wall!”
I turned and said, “Sally, scramble please. Stunners only, for the moment.” A few seconds later, the mouthy Squirrel wilted. Sally said, “Boarding teams away, Boss. Those ships will be ours shortly.”
I asked, “Sensors, how do they look for self-destruct devices?”
“Clean, Boss.”
“Sally, do we have a protocol for large numbers of prisoners?”
“Yes, Boss. Shall I start it now?”
“If you would, please.” We waited, as the boarding teams did their work. I asked, “Topper, get me Dingus on the comm, please.”
“What do you need, Bob?”
“A dumpster for all these Squirrels? What I need right now is to know if this is the last bunch coming in for a while.”
“Who should I ask about that?”
“You can look it up on the ship’s log, I was talking to a mouthy little fella a few minutes ago, who certainly seemed to think he was in charge.”
“How do you want it handled?”
“Go in hard, and if that doesn’t get his attention, feel free to let out whatever frustration you may have stored up.”
“Why am I interviewing him, since you are already acquainted?”
“It’s simple, really. He’s a little shitstain that isn’t worth my time.”
“You want me to use those exact words, don’t you?”
“No biggie. If you have something you prefer, go right ahead, as long as he gets the message.”
“I like yours, I just wanted to be sure. You changed gears in a hurry, Bob.”
“Now I know what I’m trying to do. I thought I was supposed to be nice. I can see why the Commonwealth didn’t get anywhere with these folks, if they took the same course I did.”
Dingus asked, “You mean you’ve been trying to do what the course said to do?”
“I thought it was the best option. I don’t know anything about being a diplomat.”
“Apparently, neither did they. I thought you were a little off, that explains it.”
“I guess I should have talked to you about it before now. I just thought I was doing what I should be, and I couldn’t figure out why I couldn’t get it to work.”
“Those Commonwealth courses aren’t magic, Bob. You need to use a little common sense along with them.”
“Ask your Granddaughter. She’ll tell you, I ain’t got no sense.”
“I doubt that. Just remember, if what the course told you isn’t working, try something else.”
“Thanks for helping me get squared away, Dingus. Don’t know what I would do without you folks to keep me on the straight and narrow.”
“You’d get there. We just don’t have time for you to figure it out for yourself, right now. I better go see if you made an impression on this hardhead, or if we need to dump him in his own puddle to get his attention.”
“Talk to you later.”
Topper cut the connection, and said, “Morning Flower for you, Boss.”
“Put her through.”
“Bawb! You are taking all our fun!”
“Sorry. We were here, I thought we might as well take care of them for you.”
“I am joking, Bawb. There were five ships. That would have been hard for us to handle. You did good. Ruth is fast.”
“She sure is.”
“Do you think you will be able to get these people to quit coming here?”
“I’m trying to figure that out. I hope so. If they’re going to come in bunches, like they just did, we’ll need to stay and help you protect the system.”
“If you need someplace to put them, there are a couple of villages that still need someone to shovel for them.”
“Thanks for the offer. I may have to do that. Did you need anything else?”
“No, Bawb. Just checking in. Talk to you later.”
“Bye.”
Topper cut the connection. Ruth asked, “Would you like me to take us back to our previous location, Boss?”
“Yes, please.” She started the process by giving a five-minute warning. Topper said, “Boss, I found something, I don’t know how useful it will be, but I thought you might find a use for it.”
“Lay it on me.”
“I’ve been studying Squirrel communication, and I’ve found that one of their strongest cusswords is ‘Son-of-a-monkey’. I didn’t know if you could find a use for that or not.”
“I’m sure that will come in handy. Thanks, Topper.”
“No problem, Boss.”
Sensors said, “Boss, I’ve got something I don’t quite understand.”
“Feed the coordinates to Ruth, and we’ll go have a look. Bring us out nice and quiet, Topper.”
They both answered, “Yes, Boss.” Ruth announced the maneuver, and then jumped. I heard Sensors call out that they were using a drive killer on us, before I passed out. I woke up in one of the extra chairs on the bridge, hearing Sally run the assault on the hidden ship. I tried to say, “Report.”, but it came out more like ‘rewurt’. Sally said, “Glad you’re back, Boss. They hit us with a stunner. I returned the favor, and sent Pete and Abe over to say hello. Hope you don’t mind that I took over the assault, but you were out, and somebody needed to be in command.”
I was a little more with it by then. I said, “You did well. They jumped in a sixth ship in hopes
