L Squad Profile: Hitch
Hitch
Before Hitch was the impulsive, impetuous, quixotic, captain of the L Squad, he was Crisphitchenstaub Aurthorius Krakenswav III. He was the first Zechistenian with that name. His mother thought it would make him look prestigious to add ‘the third’ to his name. It would seem it only made him three times as wild and crazy and hairy. That last one’s not true. All Zechistenians are hairy.
Hitch is about four-feet tall, weighing in at about 95 pounds. He’s covered in brown hair, over which he wears a faux pleather jacket. Not real pleather, that’s cruel. He has pointy triangular ears that sit on the top of his head. He has a little knobby tail that sits on the top of his butt. Humans might say he looks like a cross between an Ewok, a Mogwai, and a koala, but more athletic. He can run, jump, and roll. He doesn’t waddle. Of course, you’d want him as a pet but he wouldn’t go for that.
On his home planet of Zechisten, Hitch was always getting into trouble with his impulsive ways. He’s smart and always had the potential to do great things, if he put his mind to it. Unfortunately, his mind was always secondary to his impulse. It was that impulse that tore him away from everything he knew and loved.
One day, some of Hitch’s friends were going up to the orbit of Zechisten to race their pods. Hitch heard about the race and assumed control of the rules. He stretched the limits of the race to well beyond Plactiousun, the fourth-most distant moon from the planet. All the other racers gave up and returned home before they made it to the finish line. Their pods weren’t made for actual space flight. They could make it up to one of the inner moons and back, but that was their limit. Some of the distant moons were beyond reach.
Hitch was so set on his objective that he was oblivious to the other racers falling out. He reached the finish line and zoomed right past it. Zoom, zoom, Hitch. He had pushed his pod well beyond its limits and it was stuck at full speed. He was headed straight for an asteroid belt, but fortunately, or not depending on one’s point of view, he plunged into a wormhole.
There was a series of wormholes, constructed by the Yamfennians, that every species capable of interstellar travel used to traverse the universe. This was not one of those wormholes. The wormhole Hitch found was naturally occurring.
He was spat out somewhere in the Iisneent Solar System. Hitch tried to gain control of his pod and turn around back to the wormhole, but pods weren’t made for that kind of travel at that kind of speed. He zoomed on for awhile. Then, his engines gave out completely. He was fortunate that life-support subsisted or he would have died within a few hours. The pod was solar-powered, which kept everything functioning indefinitely even after the engine burned-out.
He floated aimlessly for days. For someone as restless and impulsive as Hitch, being locked in the tight confines of the dysfunctional pod was torture. He tried to keep himself busy playing games comparable to Earth’s Solitaire. He played Froiinkle, Splonx, and Prubbbl. He even tried counting the stars. None of that helped. As anyone who’s ever played Earth’s Solitaire knows, it is no cure for boredom. In fact, it can be a major cause of boredom.
The food producer kept him supplied with food and beverages. He couldn’t have elaborate meals. The food producer needed raw materials like grains, water, and so on. As I’ve stated, the pods were not made for long-distance travel. For that reason, the pods weren’t loaded with many raw materials to make food. The majority of their usage is for snacks for pods trips. As impulsive and impetuous as he is, Hitch knew he had to use his food supply sparingly. Even rationing, his food ran out on the fourth day. For the first time, Hitch started genuinely worrying that he might not survive this ordeal.
You know fudge dang well he survives. The opening line of this bio states that he’s the captain of the L Squad. That couldn’t have happened if he died before the L Squad was even formed.
Hitch was found (Surprise!) and saved by a cruise ship from Nasga. He had gone a few days without food and was barely alive. The pilot of the ship spotted the lifeless pod floating aimlessly. It piqued his interest and he deviated from his course to investigate the mystery. The pilot, we’ll call him George, because that was his name, had Hitch brought aboard. He didn’t even have to buy a ticket for the cruise. The ship’s doctor, we’ll call him the ship’s doctor, because I don’t know his name, took care of him until their cruise was over and they could take him back to the vacation/refugee world of Nasga.
By the time Hitch was nursed back to health, his pod had floated away and the wormhole was nowhere to be found. It was assumed to have closed. George flew Hitch around where he found him. They found no trace of the pod or the wormhole. They did find one of the doodie packs Hitch ejected from the pod, but that was no help. Over time, Hitch resigned himself to the fact that he would never see his home again. He reluctantly accepted that Nasga was his new home. He started to make friends.
His first friend was assigned to him. She was a misanthropic Yamfennian scientist named Abby. She was actually assigned to him more for her benefit than his. Like all people who are assigned to be friends, it worked out perfectly. Abby's job was to help Hitch adapt to his new planet and get over the loss of his home world. She had some experience with this and was having her own problems adapting. It worked like an immigrant, which made sense since they were both immigrants. Abby was reluctant at first but acquiesced. Hitch was outgoing and charismatic. He eventually won her over and they both had someone to talk to who understood their situation.
Hitch and George would become friends as well. George did save Hitch’s life. They also shared an affinity for pod racing. The renown George acquired for saving Hitch even led to a career as a professional FastPod racer. Their relationship didn’t develop as quickly, though. George's job as a cruise ship pilot meant he spent way too much time off world to make friends on Nasga.
Life was good on Nasga. Hitch was away from his home, his friends, and his family, but he was adapting. He was making new friends. Nasga was a beautiful planet. If he had to be stranded somewhere, Nasga wasn’t a bad choice to have forced on him. Still, Hitch longed for action and adventure. Of course, when action came, he longed for the quiet serenity it destroyed.
When The Tyrannical Tyrannosaurus Gregory LambaDambaBottom arrived, Hitch wanted to charge in and fight off the fiend. He was on a picnic with Abby and some other friends who weren’t assigned to him. His friends restrained him, which probably saved his life. He never forgave them for it as he thought he could have single-handedly fought him off despite the fact that The Tyrannical Tyrannosaurus Gregory LambaDambaBottom was much larger, stronger, and better equipped for a battle.
The Tyrannical Tyrannosaurus Gregory LambaDambaBottom easily conquered the planet. At first, everyone was assigned to work digging mines. The Tyrannical Tyrannosaurus Gregory LambaDambaBottom was searching for uranium to power a new fleet he planned to have built. 3T.G.L.D.B. studied his new slaves and started picking out the scientifically minded and engineers to start on his new fleet and make new weapons. Abby was among the first to be pulled from the mines. It was good for her but bad for Hitch. When Abby, and her calming influence, was taken out of the mines, Hitch started to rebel. He was confined to working in isolation, so he couldn’t be a disruptive influence on the others. Hitch quickly grew lonely in isolation, with no one to talk to except the guards who whipped him for talking. The lone bright spot was he didn’t have to smell the Splorg farts.
By the time Nasga was due to be abandoned, Hitch was marked for death personally by The Tyrannical Tyrannosaurus Gregory LambaDambaBottom for his rebellious ways. Hitch was to be among those left on the dying planet. 3T.G.L.D.B. had polluted Nasga, which was renamed LambaBad, to the point that it was quickly becoming uninhabitable. Shortly before the evacuation was to begin, Hitch’s friend, Abby, arraigned to have him sneaked aboard a ship she and others had commandeered to escape. Hitch put in another request for them to free his friend George. Abby was very important to the escape plan and was granted any reasonable request by Grek, the leader of the rebellion. Not only did they free George, he got to be the pilot.
Hitch hated fleeing the world that had become his home, but he also had strong hopes that a venture back into space would somehow find him back home on Zechisten. Grek, who was elected captain of the ship, had no real destination in mind. It was imperative that they got away the from The Tyrannical Tyrannosaurus Gregory LambaDambaBottom and the slavery and destruction that he brought with him. Grek was happy to help Hitch look for the wormhole through which he ventured. They needed to find any planet that could support life and Zechisten would do. Those plans were dashed when they realized they were being pursued. They couldn’t intentionally lead the Lambads, formerly Nasgans who became minions of The Tyrannical, to an inhabited planet.
The refugees had an advantage over their pursuers. Many of the beings on board were actually the ones who made the ships. They knew all the strengths and weaknesses of the ships and that knowledge would help them stay ahead of the Lambads. George was a former cruise ship pilot and cargo ship pilot, so he was familiar with the Iisneent System and the Yamfennian universal superhighway of manufactured wormholes.
Hitch did all he could to not go out of his mind. He couldn’t believe they were running instead of fighting. Captain Grek learned of this and summoned Hitch to his side. Captain Grek explained to Hitch that the number one rule of being a leader was to know when to stand-up and fight and when to regroup and fight another day. The people on the ship, and the ship itself, were far too valuable to risk a fight now. Any delay they made would give The Tyrannical Tyrannosaurus Gregory LambaDambaBottom a chance to reorganize and send more ships out after them. They had this chance to escape and they needed to seize it and squeeze the juice out of it. Having no choice but to acquiesce, he did so and Captain Grek took him under his wing, even though Wemeselsimians don’t have wings. Maybe he took him under his tail. Oh… Yeah, gross. Anyway, he promised to teach him everything he could.
They flew along at max speeds and traversed many wormholes. They were never so happy about the series of wormholes laid out by the Yamfennians. The Lambads stayed right with them the whole way. As they vigorously attempted to out-fly their pursuers, scanners picked up a Class M planet, a planet capable of sustaining carbon-based life such as those on the ship. It was near the center of a solar system tucked inside an enormous asteroid belt. They came to find out later that it was the planet Earth in the Milky Way galaxy. Surprise! You didn’t see that one coming a parsec away. Oh, you did? Dang it!
The refugees emerged from a wormhole just outside of the asteroid belt, called the Kuiper Belt, that bordered the solar system. Captain Grek and George tried to hide the ship among the asteroids, dwarf planets, and bodies of ice or K.B.O.s (Kuiper Belt Objects) in the Kuiper Belt. Since they were being pursued, they entered at too high of a speed and collided with a few such bodies. They were slowed to the point that the Lambads caught up with them. George was able to continue evading them until they encountered another asteroid belt. The Lambads took out the refugee ship’s booster engines with a well-placed blast and grabbed onto them with their tractor beam.
They were close to the Class M planet. Captain Grek knew there was life on the planet, they picked up transmissions emanating from Earth, and he didn’t want the Lambads to be able to enslave another planet. Captain Grek came up with a plan. He decided to fire the ship’s lasers and a torpedo directly into the tractor beam. The subsequent explosion separated the ships. George couldn’t regain control in time to avoid plummeting into Earth’s atmosphere. The Lambads’ ship was crippled by the explosion and sent tumbling into the planet below. Both ships crash-landed into unpopulated sections of Earth.
The refugees, who landed in the Canadian wilderness, were surrounded by the American military and the Canadian Mounties, eh. The Lambads crash-landed into the base of Sara Sara, an active volcano in Peru
The refugees formed the Refugee Alien Defenders with the sole purpose of defending Earth from the Lambads. There were those on Earth who believed that the Lambads either didn’t exist or didn’t pose any real threat and decried the tax dollars that went to the organization. There were also those who thought the refugees, themselves, were the real threat and should be locked up.
During the training and aptitude testing of the refugees, Hitch’s leadership abilities scored off the charts. Unfortunately, his recklessness was also off the charts. He lost at least most of his team in every simulated mission. When his adrenaline (or the Zechistenian equivalent) kicked in, Hitch always, without fail, forgot all his training and went on impulse power (that’s a bad pun). Given his potential, Captain Grek still gave him his own squad. It was the squad composed of the lowest scoring members, but it was his. There were some perks. His friend, Abby's misanthropic tendencies landed her on the squad. George's penchant for crashing landed him on the squad. With the weakest squad comes the most mundane missions. They were assigned a lot of community service. Until dot dot dot. What? Oh … Like that? All right. Until…
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