Page 33 of Naughty List Delivery
The human part of my brain wants to scream at the systematic cruelty of it all.
“Magnificent, isn’t it?” Vex’s voice flows like acid through honey as he gestures to his collection of destroyed holidays, his translucent skin rippling with phosphorescent satisfaction. “Three months of careful selection. Each family represents a different failure of your precious OOPS system.”
He moves between the energy barriers with predatory grace, and I see the calculated malice in how he’s arranged his victims. Section A holds elderly beings, some clearly past their species’prime reproductive years, who cling to each other with the desperate tenderness of people who know their time together is measured in heartbeats. A pair of ancient Lividians, their yellow markings so dim with age and stress they’re barely visible, lean against each other with the careful fragility of crystalline structures under pressure. Their formal traveling robes—carefully chosen for reunion ceremonies that will never happen—now hang loose on frames that have been shrinking with inadequate nutrition.
Beside them, an elderly human couple holds hands with the desperate grip of people who’ve been married longer than most species live. The woman’s gray hair, once carefully styled for Christmas photos, now hangs in limp strands around a face carved by three days of terror. The man’s Christmas sweater—one of those aggressively cheerful ones with dancing reindeer—is stained with tears and the protein paste someone gave them yesterday.
Section B breaks my heart in ways I wasn’t prepared for. Young families, children ranging from toddlers to teenagers, pressed against parents who can’t explain why the “Christmas vacation” became a prison. A Lividian mother holds twin younglings, their distinctive markings flickering with distress as they keep asking when they’ll see their sire’s crystalline workshop on the asteroid station. An Andraxian father, his normally lustrous fur now matted with stress, carries a sleeping daughter whose Christmas garment—delicate fabric in their traditional blue-silver—is stained with tears and the nutrition supplement someone gave her.
But it’s the human family that destroys me completely. A mother clutches two children, maybe six and eight years old, who’ve stopped asking when they’re going home and started asking if Santa knows where they are. The little girl’s Christmas dress—red velvet with white trim, the kind that costs a month’swages on a mining platform—is wrinkled beyond repair. The boy wears a tiny suit that was probably his first “grown-up” outfit, chosen for meeting grandparents he’s never seen.
Section C cuts deepest of all: young adults who’d scraped together every credit they had for surprise Christmas visits. A young Andraxian female clutches a small ceremonial box that probably contains bonding crystals meant for a mating proposal that was supposed to happen yesterday. Two college-age Lividians lean against each other, their matching academic robes from some distant colony’s university now serving as makeshift blankets, their skin markings pulsing in synchronized patterns of shared fear.
Ober’s heat radiates against my back as he positions himself to shield me from the guards’ direct line of sight, his alien warmth cutting through the processed chill of the ship’s atmosphere. His tail flicks once—a sharp movement that speaks to barely controlled rage—then deliberately wraps around my ankle with the kind of comfort that says you’re not alone in this. The touch grounds me, reminds me that whatever happens next, we face it together.
“You sick bastard,” I breathe, watching the human little girl in Section B—maybe six years old—tug on her mother’s sleeve and ask in a whisper that carries across the silent bay: “Mama, why won’t the space pirates let us go see Grandma and Grandpa for Christmas? Did we do something bad?”
The mother’s answer is lost in quiet sobs, but I see her shake her head, see her pull her daughter closer while trying to maintain the fiction that adults have answers, that grown-ups can fix anything if they just try hard enough.
“I’m educational,” Vex corrects, his voice carrying the kind of satisfaction that makes my claws itch to extend—except I don’t have claws, just human fingernails and a rage that could power a small star. “Each section represents a different demographicyour Christmas deliveries serve. The elderly who trust you with final chances to see loved ones before time runs out. The families who believe holiday magic can bridge impossible distances. The young adults who think love conquers everything, including logistics and interstellar economics.”
His phosphorescent circulatory system pulses beneath translucent skin like a constellation of cruelty, each pulse synchronized with words designed to twist the knife deeper.
“All of them learning what my brother learned three years ago—that hope is just delayed disappointment, and Christmas is when the universe reminds you that some distances can’t be bridged, some separations can’t be healed, and some people you love are gone forever no matter how much you’re willing to pay to see them again.”
A holographic display materializes in the center of the bay, rising from hidden projectors with the smooth precision of expensive technology. The images that flicker to life make my stomach clench: shipping records, financial statements, travel documentation, intercepted communications. The systematic scope of his operation unfolds like a tactical briefing from hell, each data point representing a life destroyed, a dream shattered, a Christmas turned into a nightmare.
“Forty-seven families across seventeen worlds,” Vex continues, his elegant fingers dancing over the controls with the same fluid grace he uses for everything, making even mass psychological torture look like art. “Each one carefully selected for maximum emotional impact and strategic value.”
The display shifts, showing individual family profiles that make my heart shatter with each revelation.
“The Zyl’thara bonded triad from Andrax Colony—first generation to leave their homeworld, worked the deep mines for five years to afford transport to see the clutch-siblings they left behind. The younglings they’ve never met who’ve been waitingfor kin-scent recognition ceremonies that bind families across the void.”
A trio of young Andraxians in Section A—their fur marked with the distinctive patterns that identify family groups, now dulled with stress and separation anxiety that their species feels as physical pain.
“The Keth’var bonded pair from Lividia Prime—mated for forty-seven cycles, who mortgaged their crystalline grove to afford transport to witness their offspring’s first spawning season. The grandcubs they’ll never scent-mark if their lesson about trusting reformed criminals concludes... poorly.”
The elderly Lividians I noticed earlier, their markings so dim with distress that they’re barely maintaining the biological functions necessary for survival. Their species bonds through biochemical markers—separation can literally kill them.
“And of course, the Torres family from Meridian Station—Maria worked three jobs for two years to save enough credits to surprise her parents with their grandchildren’s first Christmas visit. Little Elena and Miguel who were going to meet Abuela and Abuelo for the first time, ask for their blessing, show them the drawings they made.”
The human family in Section B, and suddenly their terror carries extra weight. They’re not just scared—they’re completely isolated among alien species they might not even be able to communicate with properly. The mother’s eyes hold the particular desperation of someone trying to comfort children in a situation that has no comfort to offer.
The display continues cycling through profiles, each one a masterclass in emotional manipulation. Families reuniting after years apart. Parents meeting offspring for the first time. Younglings surprising deployed parents with Christmas visits. Love stories interrupted, relationships severed, futuresdestroyed—all in service of one man’s lesson about the price of moral choice.
“You’ve been monitoring private communications,” Ober growls behind me, his voice dropping to those dangerous harmonics that make the guards shift nervously. I feel his claws extend involuntarily, probably imagining what he’d like to do to someone who violates the most intimate communications between people who love each other. “For months.”
“I’ve been documenting the consequences of moral choice,” Vex replies smoothly, his black eyes reflecting the holographic displays like oil catching fire. “Every family here trusted OOPS because they believed in second chances, in a reformed criminal who claimed to care about Christmas miracles. They invested their savings, their hopes, their carefully planned futures in the fantasy that people like you could actually change.”
He gestures to the families with theatrical precision, a conductor orchestrating a symphony of suffering.
“They’re about to learn what happens when idealism meets reality. When conscience collides with consequence. When people try to be better than what the universe permits them to be.”
The human little girl starts crying harder, the sound echoing off the bay’s metal walls like a physical assault on everyone present. In Section A, one of the elderly Lividians begins the low harmonic keen that their species uses for mourning, a sound that makes the Andraxian cubs whimper in sympathetic distress. In Section C, the young female clutching bonding crystals stares at her ceremonial box and whispers something in her native tongue about how fate always punishes those who reach too far.
“Forty-seven chances to choose differently,” I say, my voice steadier than I feel despite the way my hands are shaking with rage. “And you chose to destroy all of them.”
“I chose to demonstrate truth,” Vex corrects, but there’s something in his voice now—a hesitation that wasn’t there before. His phosphorescent patterns flicker irregularly, like a display with power fluctuations. “That conscience is a luxury the universe doesn’t permit. That good intentions create more suffering than honest selfishness.”
