My first post to this forum, please be gentle (but honest) in your feed back (:

*The damn dog just wouldn't shut up. It, and others like it, had recently been drafted into the space service as they had proved almost pre-cognizant in alerting crews to internal danger before anything was noted as amiss on the control panel.

This time though, we couldn't tell what the heck was going on with him. We had checked the ship from bow to stern with nothing found out of place. There wasn't a particle of dust mis-placed. The internal weight was as it should be, even the atmosphere of the ship was at correct proportions. We had a crew go outside to check the external hull, thinking perhaps the dog had somehow 'detected' something out there. That's when the mystery thickened. Soon after the crew circled around to the below decks area, we lost contact with them. A sensor sweep said that they just weren't there. Not even a scrap of their environmental suits.

Fearing the worst, I had shields raised and the ship put on red alert. It might have been too late for the maintenance crew, but it wasn't too late for everyone else, the captain hoped, but at least the dog had shut up.

Two weeks later the dog started up again, but this time the captain engaged the shields immediately and put the ship on red alert. "Captain, incoming message from an unknown source, trying to trace back and get a position," announced the tactical officer. "Good," was all the captain could say. He was scared out of his mind. He had no skills on first contact missions. He was on a transport ship and besides the shields had nothing with he could defend himself with. No weapons, not even defensive weaponry. If the unknown was to get too itchy, most likely they'd be all dead before they knew what hit them.

"Sir, they are aliens, translating language now," chimed the communications officer. "Language translated, do you want me to put it up on the main view screen," it asked. "Yes, place it on the main view screen," the captain responded. "Attention unknown ship, this is the starship TSA OSS Card, you are in human space, please lower your shields and state your purpose," Captain Samson Lewis ordered.

Indicating to mute the transmission, the captain looked around at its bridge crew, then directly at its communications officer. "Can we broadcast in their language?" it asked. The communications officer nodded. "Then make it so."

"Attention crew of the O.S.S Card, this is the Talaxian space freighter Vengence," the captain paused and looked toward tacital and indicated to the tactical officer to lower shields, "we do not wish any trouble. We are simply on a trade mission to one of our colony worlds and this just happened to be the fastest way to it," it forgot to mention that the last time anyone from Talaxia had been to Alpha Centauri, humans had just learned how to use weapons.

"Would you like an escort?" Captain Lewis offered, careful to avoid gender specific pronouns. In his many years in the service, he had encountered and heard of many races which were gender neutral and they all considered it an insult to be labeled a gender. "All we need are the co-ordinates to your destination and we can assist you on your mission," he smiled, if nothing else, he'd be instantly famous for encountering the first new race since the TSA had explored the galactic north of the Milky Way almost 20 standard years ago.

The captain of the Vengence thought about that for a moment, "We agree to your offer, but we must warn you that we have recently lost two crew members to an unknown force while they were inspecting the outer hull," the Captain figured since they were courteously escorting them through human space, that they should also be aware of any danger. After all, the captain hadn't slept through all of its diplomacy course.

10 standard days later, both ships were nearly completely devoid of life. The only life-form that existed on either was a single, lone dog. One that just wouldn't shut up.*

I wrote this as part of an assignment from a friend (I belong to a writing community over on LJ), where we had to take a starter sentence and write a short story that began with the sentence. In this case the sentence was The damn dog just wouldn't shut up.

I hope everyone enjoys!

BTW, this happens in the same universe as my first (unpublished) sci-fi novel (which I've been re-writing for several years).