“Luc, I would love you no matter how crooked your nose was,” the one man assured him in a deeply accented voice.
“We weren’t supposed to open the box, Jon Paul,” Luc replied. “The man said that we were only to pick up a box in space, do not open it, and he would buy this piece of shit from us when we delivered it still sealed to him! How are we going to open a restaurant now?”
“You will just have to win one in a poker game for us,” Jon Paul responded lightly.
“Bonjour messieurs,” Star called down in a soft, hesitant voice. “Mon nom est Star Strauss. Avec qui dois-je le plaisir de parler?” She asked in French.
Both men looked up startled. The man she had hit in the throat stood up and bowed his head in greeting. “Bonjour Madame. I am Jon Paul and this is my partner, Luc. We are your humble servants from the most romantic city on a planet called Earth.”
“Paris?” Star giggled with a raised eyebrow.
“Aucun,” Jon Paul answered with a wicked smile. “Montreal, Canada.”
“So how did to French Canadians end up owning a piece of shit freighter in the middle of a distant star system?” Star asked switching to English as she sat down cross-legged near the opening.
“It is a long, but magnificent story of true love, pirates, and a wonderful game of chance,” Jon Paul said with a mischievous grin. “Would you like to hear our amazing story of adventure?”
“Yes,” Star giggled. “I think I would.”
Luc slowly stood up and gave Star a pained smile. “And you will share your story of how you ended up in Snow White’s magical box, as well, oui? The stories would go much better with a bottle of wine,” he added in a slightly hopeful voice. “As well as help with the pain to both my nose and my pride that such a tiny, beautiful fairy could take down two such big, but lovable Frenchmen.”
Star laughed out loud. “I’ll let you out but be warned, if you try to hurt me my boyfriend is going to be very, very upset with you,” she teased as she stood up. “By the way, did you really name your service bot Numbnuts?” She whispered.
Luc’s face twisted again as Jon Paul burst into laughter. “That my lovely fairy, is yet another story.”
*.*.*
By the time the Blue Star arrived, Star had fallen in love with the two adorable Frenchmen who had emigrated from Paris to Montreal to start their own restaurant. The men told her how they had been returning from a farm that was renowned for its cheeses when the SUV they were driving got a flat tire. The two had been arguing so much about the proper way to change a tire they didn’t notice the strange lights in the sky until it was too late. They woke on a strange spaceship. The group of pirates who planned to sell them decided to keep the men after Jon Paul and Luc convinced the captain to let them cook for the crew. They had spent the next ten years cooking and fighting alongside the mismatched group of misfits that made up the pirate crew. Two years ago, the captain decided she wanted to retire. The ship was sold and Jon Paul and Luc found themselves on a distant Spaceport with a few credits and the little knowledge they had learned during their years aboard the pirate ship. Luc was a master at poker and he introduced the game at the bar on the Spaceport. It became a huge success and the bar owner let the two men stay on for about six months with the promise of a place to stay and all the liquor they wanted in exchange for holding poker games. One night, a horrid man came in. Fascinated with the game, he played and played until all he had left to chance was the Dread, the short haul freighter that was two trips shy of the scrape pile. Luc won the freighter in the card game. The next morning, he and Jon Paul woke up with a massive hangover in the middle of space in what they called a ‘piece of shit’. The name stuck. The only thing they were truly grateful for was it came with IQ and Numbnuts, neither the original name of the service bots. Since neither Luc or Jon Paul knew the first thing about piloting a spaceship they relied on the service bots to pilot it. Both service bots received some slight reprogramming over the last two years which is why they acted the way they did. Jon Paul and Luc’s new names had come about the evening they first woke up. They had traded insults with each other for having found themselves in yet another strange mess. The service bots had picked it up and it stuck since neither man could figure out how to un-program the names from the bots' memory.
“We have guests, Dumbass. They have boarded without permission,” IQ said over the communication’s console attached to the wall. “Should I tell them to blow off or are they expected.”