After locking in all the barrels from the Qwortarian warehouse Yem checked the weight, finding the load was just barely under the max weight initially agreed upon, so no fines for the haul.
With everything secured Yem took off the safety gear and sat in the captain's chair, gearing up for takeoff. The Qwortarians knew better than to linger outside near the ship, so the only delay was the sheer number of barrels he had to load.
As his ship left Qwortar's atmosphere he turned on the sub space radio. "Yem to GarZaCorp." He let his spaceship orbit Qwortar while he waited for a response.
"GarZaCorp to Yem. What's your status?" He recognized the perpetually nasally voice of Vun.
"Heading back with a full ship Vun. Only the Qwortar load."
"What other pickups were on your route today?"
"Mym and Prison 224."
"Roger, I'll send someone else for those too. Dock at Bay Eight upon your arrival."
"Roger."
Yem used the orbit and his thrusters to give his ship a nice boost before turning on the warp drive. GarZaCorp HQ was a long space station, the length of several planets and even wider than the average one.
Bay Eight was ready when Yem arrived, a few workers opening the doors and signaling him to dock inside. As Yem slipped the haz mat suit back on, another worker in the full suit joined them on the ship.
“You should have seen the warehouse, there wasn’t even room to walk.” Yem spoke before he slipped his mask on, not even sure if if his coworker could hear him. There was a bob of the hood, so Yem figured either he was heard, or the other worker was just ready to start the process of unloading the barrels.
Carefully setting a barrel under the suction machine Yem nodded to the man atop the machine. With a push of a lever a circle covered the top of the barrel. With a whir and a slurp the contents were pulled out, passing through an analysis block.
“Are you sure those shape shifting blobs got it all off their planet?” The scientist held up the paper detailing the spectrometer measurements. “This stuff is pretty nasty.”
“How am I supposed to know?” Yem waved his arms and turned back to his ship. “That’s above my pay grade.” He shouted over his shoulder. The scientist filed away the analysis for a follow up with Qwortar.
Word count: 407
