“Look what I found.”
Barker turned one of his eyestalks away from the screen to look at Seersi. She held out a glass container. In the bottom of it, scuttling frantically on many legs, was an animal with a hard carapace and flat little face staring back.
“Where did you find that?” He asked her.
“In the cargo hold,” Seersi’s fur stood on end in excitement. “It snuck on when we were planet-side.”
“Are you going to throw it into the incinerator?” Barker asked, turning his eye away from her and back onto the screen of his computer.
“Not yet,”
He turned to her fully. “What do you mean, ‘not yet?’”
Her eyestalks waved excitedly. “I’m going to show it to the humans first.”
“Why?”
“Because,” her voice dropped to a whisper, “they’re afraid of bugs.”
“That can’t be true,” Barker looked again at the animal in the jar. “Don’t they eat meat?”
“Yes, but only with bones on the inside. Maria told me.”
“I’ve definitely seen them eat invertebrates,” Barker insisted, but even as he said it, he remembered how uncertain the humans had been about eating the meal beforehand. And how little they had eaten of it.
Seersi deflated a little. “Whatever. I’m still going to show it to them, and if they’re scared of it, you owe me a favor.”
Barker considered. Bets were one of Seersi’s favorite games, and she always made you keep them if she won. “Fine,” he said, “let’s go show them.”
Seersi bounced down the corridor ahead of him towards the human sleeping quarters. Barker followed her with trepidation. He didn’t like the human sleeping quarters: their beds were too narrow and the way they were stacked on each other made him claustrophobic.
They could hear all three three humans in the bunks as they approached. They were talking amongst themselves in their own native languages. They had five in total, and Barker was certain they would be drowning in humans the next time they hired crew.
“Perfect,” Seersi said. She crouched down in the hallway just outside the door and pried at the lid of the jar with her claws.
“What are you doing?” Barker asked.
“Be quiet,” She whispered. The pid of the jar came off with a pop, and Seersi eased the door open a few inches. She shook the animal out inside of the bunk room.
“Seersi!” Barker gasped, “you can’t do that! It’s illegal!”
“It’s okay. We’ll just catch it again.” Seersi bounced to her feet and eagerly pressed her ear to the door. She was so excited her fur was waving on its own. “I just want to see how they react,” She said.
Barker hesitated, but he was so curious. He just had to know. He pressed his ear to the door beside Seersi’s and listened.
The humans were talking softly behind the door. They sounded relaxed, or as relaxed as they ever got. He and Seersi waited, listening, for one minute then two. Barker wondered what exactly Seersi thought was going to happen.
Then one of the humans said, “What is that?” In galactic common.
There was a beat of silence, and then one of the humans screamed, high and sharp. Barker cringed away from the door at the sound.
“Get it away from me!” Maria shrieked.
Another human was swearing violently in their own language. There was also someone running around frantically.
Barker heard a bunk bed groan as a human climbed into it.
“I got it!” Jules shouted, and there was a loud thud. Then he was shrieking too, and there were several more loud bangs.
The door to the bunks blew open and Maria ran out of it. She was shaking and crying, tears, but the second she was out of the room she turned and looked back inside.
Jules was standing in the middle of the room, panting, a work boot in each hand, both of them splattered with gore.
Chuy stuck his head over the edge of the bunk. “Did you get it?”
“Yeah,” Jules crouched down and poked at what remained of the bug with the toe of one boot.
“What is that?” Chuy asked.
“I don’t know,” Jules said.
Maria looked at Barker and Seersi, then at the glass jar still in Seersi’s hands. “What are you doing out here?” She asked, narrowing her eyes at them both.
Seersi’s fur suddenly slicked down flat against her skin, making her appear thin and nonthreatening.
Barker, on the other hand, was fluffed up with amusement. Oh, how the tables turned when the jokester had to face the consequences of their joke. “Seersi wanted to show you a bug she caught,” He said.
“She did?” Maria turned her gaze towards Seersi, “Well, where’s the bug?”
“I- it- it escaped!” Seersi’s eyestalks shrank all the way down into her head like she was trying to hide underwater.
“Did it just… escape into our bunk room?” Maria asked.
Jules looked up from poking the corpse on the floor with a finger. Slowly, a terrifying, toothy grin spread across his face. He laughed, “Seersi,” he said, “did you prank us?”
Seersi latched onto this lifeline. “Yes,” she said, “I was.”
Now Maria was grinning, but her smile looked meaner, more angry. “So you want to play pranks?”
“Um….” Seersi trailed off.
“Guys,” Chuy said from the bunk bed, “maybe we should let it go. It was just a bug.”
“Oh no,” Maria said, grinning, “I love prank wars. You want to play, Seersi, you better bring your best game!”
And that was all she needed to say, because Seersi was always interested in games, no matter what kind they were. “I will!” She said enthusiastically.
After Maria had walked away, shoulders still stiff with fear and determination, Seersi turned to Barker and said, “what’s a prank? Is that a human word?”
Barker waved a hand at her in confusion and privately thanked the stars that he hadn’t been caught in the crossfire this time.
The next morning, Seersi opened the door to the kitchen to start cooking breakfast for the crew, and a bucket of water fell on her head.
Her waterproof fur meant that most of it slid right off her, but the bucket bounced off her head and landed in the puddle. Maria was in the kitchen with Jules, laughing hysterically.
“You should have seen the look on your face!” Maria gasped. “That was so worth it.”
Seersi stared at them, shocked dumb. After their laughter had died down, she whispered, “What are you trying to do to me?” in a scared little voice.
Maria’s smile slid off her face. She looked at Seersi very seriously. “I’m trying to prank you, Seersi. This is what you signed up for.”
Seersi’s fur fluffed up and she shook herself hard, throwing water all over the countertops and the humans, who shrieked in protest but laughed a moment later. “You’re on!” She cried, “I’ll win this war! You’ll see!”
It took two days, but the next time Seersi made breakfast, and the humans went to add salt to their food, the whole top of the salt dispenser fell off and absolutely covered Jule’s food. He glared at Seersi over the long table while her fur fluffed out in glee.
“Did you like that one?” She whispered to Barker, “I read about it in a human book.”
He did like it. It was funny to watch Jules wince and stick out his tongue while he ate. But Jules hadn’t been the one to challenge Seersi to the prank war. “Did you mean to get Jules with it?” He asked.
“No,” Seersi admitted, “so I’ll have to try again and get Maria this time.”
“You don’t think it’s better to quit now?” Barker suggested.
Seersi, being Seersi, didn’t see it that day.
Later that afternoon, Maria opened her locker in the maintenance room only to find it had been completely filled with fire-resistant foam.
“Seersi!” She yelled at the top of her lungs.
“Yes, Maria?” Seersi put both her eyestalks around the corner, and Maria threw a glob of foam at her.
“You asshole!” She yelled, but she was laughing when she said it.
Seersi retracted her watering eyes and skittered down the hall out of the line of fire.
The Captain summoned her to the bridge of the ship not long after. She was from a swampy region on her planet, much like Seersi and Barker, except instead of waterproof fur and extendable eyes, her species had evolved long, whiplike bodies that swayed like water weeds in a faint current. Also unlike Seersi, she couldn’t walk upright on two legs for any amount of time. Instead, her species had five limbs and a large, paddle-like tail.
The humans called her salamander behind her back, which was a type of animal on the human homeworld. Seersi thought she looked more like a Swifsh than anything else, but they were apparently very similar.
“Seersi,” the Captain said, swaying back and forth hypnotically, “I heard you filled Maria’s locker with fire foam.”
“I did,” Seersi said proudly.
“That is unacceptable,” The Captain said, and Seersi shrank under her harsh gaze. “You can’t waste ship supplies on silly games with the humans.”
Seersi just nodded, and she didn’t tell the Captain that the fire foam had been past its expiration date, because she wouldn’t care. “Yes, Captain,” she said instead.
“And this ‘war’ you and the humans have going on stops now,” the Captain continued.
Seersi hesitated, “Not yet.”
The Captain’s head whipped around to face her, “Excuse me?” She hissed sharply.
“Please,” Seersi added hesitantly. “I want to get one more hit in.”
“And why is that?”
Seersi raised her eyes to look at the Captain. “Because my whole bunk is covered in tin foil, and I can’t let her have the last laugh.”
The Captain just gawked at her, but she didn’t tell her no.
So Seersi set about crafting the most devious prank she could think of. A prank, she had learned by watching, was a sort of joke. A mean one intended to cause inconvenience and discomfort. And while Maria hadn’t done anything to actually hurt her yet, Seersi had heard her discussing itch powder, so all bets were off.
She checked her bed carefully that night, on the chance that Maria had actually gone through with the itch powder, but nothing was out of the ordinary. She climbed into her nest and curled up, still puzzling about what to do.
The problem was that humans were hard to scare. Maria, Jules, and Chuy were a team, always together, and always watching each other’s backs. Maria alone might have been easy to prank, but together it was much more difficult. And she couldn’t separate Maria from the other two.
And then it came to her: she couldn’t separate them, and she couldn’t get close enough to Maria to do something just to her. So she was going to have to get all three of them.
Seersi crept out of bed and down to the cargo hold of the ship, where she could find scrap metal.
She took the tin foil she had peeled off her bed yesterday and a plate of repair metal and then, after a moment of consideration, a tube of extra-strong adhesive. She tiptoed back to the human bunks and stopped outside the door.
It was going to be a challenge, but she thought she could get it done before any of the humans woke up.
Maria heard something during the night: a scraping noise like someone moving metal over metal. It wasn’t an unusual sound on a spacecraft, so she rolled over and went back to sleep.
In the morning, she woke and got out of bed still half-asleep. The door swished open at her touch like it always did, and she walked out, rubbing her eyes. And hit a solid metal wall.
Maria stumbled back, gasping, grabbing at her banged elbow. She stared at the sheet metal covering their door, and especially at the cockeyed smiley face drawn in the middle of it at eye level.
“Seersi!” She yelled.
Jules and Chuy jumped in their bunks and looked around. Then they saw Maria at the door, or what used to be the door. Jules just shook his head, but Chuy started laughing.
It took them two hours to get out of the bunks with help from people on the outside. The adhesive Seersi had used to secure the sheet metal was serious about its job, and they had to use a lot of solvents to get it to release its hold.
By the time they’d done it, the humans were hungry, grumpy, and ready to murder Seersi,
Seersi had helped them get out, but laughed the whole time.
“Seersi! I swear to God—” Maria started the second the metal wall came down, but she bit her tongue as she saw the Captain appear around the corner.
The Captain didn’t even say anything. She just glared at the humans, Seersi, and the accompanying rescue squad with clear disapproval. They all looked back at her: she was the one who decided whether they all kept their jobs, after all. But she continued on her way with only a parting, “and that’s enough of that.”
Maria held out a hand to Seersi. “Truce?” She asked.
Seersi shook her hand. “Truce.”
Maria leaned in closer and whispered in her ear, “We should team up and prank the captain. She’d never know what hit her!”
Seersi’s fur fluffed out excitement all over again.
