Doug Hawley’s short story ‘Space Force vs Space Squids’

Space Force vs. Space Squids

“Mr. President, we have our first action taken by Space Force.”

“Jenkins, I told you to call me ‘Your Excellency, Emperor For Life’.  I knew that the 200 billion dollars start up cost for Space Force was well worth it.  Have Space Force Commander Hanley come in to brief me.”

“Yes sir.”

POTUS pointed at Jenkins, frowned and said “One more thing.  You’re fired” while spraying spittle.

“Thank God, I won’t have to lie about what I do for a living anymore.”

Hanley walked to the front of the gold plated POTUS desk.  “Your Excellency, Emperor For Life, have you read our report of our encounter with aliens?”

“Hanley, you know that I don’t read.  Just tell me what happened.”

“Our ship, Donald 1, was between Neptune and Pluto..”

POTUS interrupts “Of course Pluto isn’t a real planet.  You have to be big like me to be real.  I’m a big strong guy.”

Hanley is used to these interruptions and continues “when we encountered a small spaceship of alien configuration.  We were pleased that they responded to our English message to them in good English.  We didn’t talk long enough to find out how they knew English.”

“Here is the transcript:”

“This is the US Space Force.  Halt where you are.  You are entering US territory.  We are prepared to blast you from the sky if you proceed towards earth.”

“We need to see your leader on important business Space Farce.”

“His Excellency, Emperor For Life, does not meet with aliens and the proper name is Space Force.”

“Whatever, but we have brought gifts from afar on our home planet Xan.”

“I’ve never heard of Xan and I think that you are lying to me.  Do you have a visa?”

“Stupid untranslatable humans.  But what of our gifts of precious metal for your leader and the finest Xanian clothes for his many concubines?”

“Do you have any idea what the tariff is on interstellar good?”

Alien to crew “Well it looks like we came a lot of light years just to get sent away by some untranslatable.  Mark my words, they’ll be sorry.”

“You Excellency, Emperor For Life, at that point they turned around at warp speed.”

POTUS after awaking from a short nap “It sounds like you did the right thing upholding my rigid dislike of aliens, from inside or outside this universe.”

“We learned more.  We were able to get them up on our five hundred million dollar cost plus contract viewing screen which was delivered after only five missed deadlines.  They were purple with six legs, two hands and a head which was encircled by eleven tentacles.  The tentacles waved continuously.  We may be wrong, but they appeared to have two penises if male, and three vaginas if female.  Our crew spent a lot of time while coming back trying to decide how that works.  For some reason, their leader kept swinging an odd stick while we talked.”

At the last sentence, POTUS became instantly alert, spilling his Big Mac and Coke in the process.  “Where did you say they came from?”

“Xan.”

POTUS looked around for the TV cameras and then remembered where he was.  “You idiots.  You should have told me.  I wanted to trade them a POTUS brand golf course for the secret of faster than light travel, and you blew it.  You’re fired.”


Doug is a hobby writer who started in 2014.  He has about a hundred publications in the UK, USA, Canada, Netherlands and India. Website: https://sites.google.com/site/aberrantword

2 thoughts on “Doug Hawley’s short story ‘Space Force vs Space Squids’

  1. Pingback: Partnered Reading, March 29th, at Portland (OR)’s OpenHaus | SYNCHRONIZED CHAOS

  2. This is hilarious. I read it out loud. What a tongue-twister!

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