She looked at Laurian, looked right at him so he couldn’t look away. ‘Do you want to get out of here?’
He looked back at her, searching her face. He took a deep breath. ‘Yes,’ he said.
She felt something stir in her, something sure and final, the same something that had made her step out of the hole in the wall, that had made her decide she would never, ever leave her bones in the scrapyard. She nodded at Laurian, grabbed his hand tight, and headed down to the commons.
Scales and claws and tentacles surrounded her, all headed to places she could barely imagine. Without much thought at all, she climbed up on a bench, pulling Laurian with her. ‘Good afternoon,’ she called out in Klip. A few heads turned. ‘We are looking for passage off this station. If there’s anyone here could use a skilled tech, I’ll be happy to work in exchange for a trip to seriously anywhere.’
There were a few laughs, a lot of eyes averted. She imagined herself as they must have seen her. Some scrawny bald sickly thing and her silent, hairy friend. Yeah, she wouldn’t come up and talk to them either.
Something approached through the crowd – a Harmagian, heading for them on her (her, right?) wheeled cart. Jane quickly studied the tentacled body coming toward them. Yes, yes, it was a her. Thank you, Owl.
‘How skilled of a tech?’ the Harmagian said, her eyestalks stretching forward.
‘I’ve done nothing else my whole life,’ Jane said. ‘I can fix anything.’
The Harmagian rolled her front dactyli, pierced all over with shimmering jewellery. ‘And you?’ the Harmagian said, speaking to Laurian.
Laurian visibly swallowed. Jane stepped in. ‘He doesn’t know Klip, and he has trouble speaking,’ she said, ‘but he’s smart and hard-working, and can do whatever you need him to.’
‘But what does he do?’ the Harmagian said.
Jane looked at Laurian. ‘He draws,’ she said. ‘He helps. He’s my friend, and he has to come with me.’
Laurian didn’t understand the bulk of it, but he caught friend. He smiled at her. She couldn’t help but smile, too.
The Harmagian laughed. ‘Well, I have no need for someone who draws. And I don’t need a tech, either.’
Jane’s stomach sank. ‘But—’
The Harmagian fanned out her dactyli. Jane didn’t know what the gesture meant, but it shut her up all the same. ‘What I do have,’ the Harmagian said, ‘is a cargo hold full of sintalin. You know what that is? It’s a top-shelf spirit, and they don’t make it in Central space. I’ve got barrels and barrels of it, and every one of them needs to be turned over three times a day, so that the sediment doesn’t harden. I know my crew isn’t looking forward to that task, and neither am I.’ She looked Jane up and down. ‘It’s a lot of heavy lifting. You’d need to be strong to do it.’
‘I can do it,’ Jane said, tugging down her sleeves as nonchalantly as she could. ‘I can absolutely do it.’
‘I don’t have any spare sleeping quarters, and none meant for Humans, anyway,’ she said. ‘You’d have to sleep on the floor in one of the storage compartments.’
‘That’s fine.’
‘I’m headed to Port Coriol. That’s eleven tendays from here.’
Jane relayed that to Laurian. He nodded. ‘That’s also fine,’ she said.
The Harmagian’s eyestalks shifted back and forth. ‘My ship’s the Yo’ton. Docking bay three. We leave at sixteen-half. I won’t wait around.’ She paused. ‘You both look a bit tweaked. Are you modders?’
Jane looked at Laurian, then shook her head. The Harmagian didn’t understand the gesture. ‘No,’ Jane said. ‘At least, I don’t think so.’
‘Mmm,’ the Harmagian said. ‘I think I’ll drop you at the caves anyway.’
SIDRA
How did Blue stay so patient? Sidra had wondered this often. Perhaps it was something in his genes, something his makers had written into his organic code. (Was it less admirable, then, if it was something inbuilt, rather than cultivated by conscious thought and effort? Sidra hoped not.) Whatever the reason, she liked that quality in him. Pepper had been in an excitable mood ever since they’d left Coriol. She ate at odd hours, she slept little, she took apart and reassembled things that didn’t need it. In Pepper’s company, Blue had been his usual self – calm, collected, happy to help. Away from her, though, Sidra had seen the worry in his eyes, the distracted way he stared out the viewscreens. But he never let that bleed into his interactions with his partner, who clearly benefited from the company of someone who wasn’t taking everything apart. Patience. It was a laudable trait, and Sidra had been doing her best to emulate it over the nine days they’d been in transit. Her code was built for patience, too, but their situation was one that bred restlessness. Her situation especially.
She hung out with him and Pepper both as they sat in the cockpit – her chewing on her thumbnail, him sketching on his scrib.
‘Do you hear that?’ Pepper asked.
Blue paused. ‘No.’
Pepper sat forward, listening. She shook her head. ‘I could’ve swore I – there. That little rattle. Hear it?’
Blue strained. ‘No.’ Sidra didn’t hear it, either.
Pepper got to her feet. ‘I’m going to go check the fuel pumps.’
Blue nodded noncommittally. By Sidra’s count, Pepper had checked the fuel pumps four times already. ‘Want any help?’ Blue asked.
‘Nah, keep drawing,’ she said. ‘That’s a much better thing to do.’ She exited the cockpit; Sidra followed.
They didn’t speak, which had been the case since they’d left dock. This wasn’t the plan as Pepper had wanted it, and Sidra understood that, even though the silence was getting unbearable. She counted days, again. A little under two tendays left to Kaathet. Not a long trip, all things considered. They were lucky the shuttle had been found in a museum branch, rather than the main museum on Reskit. Sidra doubted any of this would have fallen into place had it required a standard-long trip.
Tak had come along, and Sidra didn’t know how she’d ever thank her for it. On top of everything else, her poor friend had been spacesick for the better part of the trip. She was in her bunk now, trying her best to sleep through it. Sidra hadn’t spoken to her, either. She knew Tak still wasn’t thrilled about any of this. Sidra was glad, though, for her help. Her coming along was the answer Sidra had been hoping for, the answer to the question Tak hadn’t let her finish at the kitchen table.
Pepper made her way below. She muttered to herself as she went, counting something on her fingertips, speaking too low for Sidra to hear. Sidra wanted to tell her that the fuel pumps were fine, that everything was fine. But that only would’ve made Pepper angry, she knew. Besides, Pepper needed to be doing something. Sidra understood that all too well.
The engine compartment was cramped, but Pepper didn’t seem to mind, and Sidra certainly didn’t. She followed in Pepper’s path, double-checking everything Pepper did, just to be sure. Fuel pumps. Life support. Artigrav. Everything’s fine, Pepper, she thought. But she didn’t interfere.
An anxious spike popped up in Sidra’s pathways as Pepper made her way to the small room she had no previous use for – the AI core. Sidra had helped her check through its hardware before they left, in anticipation of an extra passenger on the way back. No decision had been reached as to where Owl would go after they got home (the unspoken caveat being: if Owl was still there at all). Pepper and Blue had thrown out ideas, but nothing had stuck. A second body kit? Too risky for everyone involved. Pepper and Blue buying a ship big enough for permanent residence? Possibly, but neither of them really wanted to live in orbit. Sidra’s idea about an AI framework for their house? No, Owl had been alone enough, and besides, Pepper had said, it wasn’t fair to Sidra (who had appreciated hearing that). The shuttle core would have to do in the short term, at least until they got back. The trip was plenty long enough for more ideas to appear.
Sidra watched Pepper nervously as she poked around the core. Pepper didn’t appear to be d
oing anything in particular, but her being in there was concern enough. Sidra had made an alteration to the core before they’d left – nothing major, nothing irreversible, nothing dangerous, but nothing she’d consulted Pepper about, either. There wasn’t much in the core room that would point to it, but with Pepper’s eye for such things . . .
Sidra’s pathways settled as Pepper headed for the door, still muttering to herself. There had been nothing to worry about. They’d go back up to the cockpit, and be cosy with Blue, and—
Pepper turned around, a slight frown creasing her face.
Shit.
Pepper’s eyes followed a single cable patched into the framework on the wall. She approached it, leaning in toward the jack. Sidra could see her studying the hand-hacked circuits and junctions surrounding it, arranged in a configuration the manufacturer had not intended.
‘The hell is this?’ Pepper mumbled. She followed the cable along the bottom of the wall, where it had been carefully tucked out of sight. Not carefully enough, it seemed.
Sidra scrambled for the right way to handle this. Maybe Pepper would drop it. Maybe something would happen upstairs, and she’d leave before it became a problem. Maybe—
Pepper came to the storage panel the cable led into. Before Sidra could find the right thing to say, the panel was opened. Pepper yelled at the top of her lungs, jumping back. ‘Oh, fuck, holy fuck—’ She knelt down in a panic. ‘Sidra? Fuck—’
Sidra couldn’t see from Pepper’s angle, but she knew what Pepper had found: a doubled-over body, limp and lifeless, the errant cable plugged into the base of its skull. Resigned, Sidra turned on the nearest vox. ‘Pepper, I’m fine.’ She zoomed in on Pepper’s face with the corner camera. ‘I’m fine. I’m not in there.’
JANE, AGE 19
There was an AI aboard the Yo’ton. His name was Pahkerr, and nobody paid him much attention, even though he did lots of things for them. Nobody ever said ‘please’ or ‘thank you’ to him, even. They just made demands. ‘Pahkerr, open the hatch.’ ‘Pahkerr, run a system diagnostic.’ That kind of thing. Jane didn’t know what bothered her more: the way the crew talked to Pahkerr, or the fact that Pahkerr himself seemed fine with it. She’d tried talking to him during her first night there, while she and Laurian had arranged stacks of blankets on the floor of their storage compartment. She’d tried asking him how he was doing, what he was up to, if he was having a good day. He didn’t seem to know how to answer, and he wasn’t interested in having a conversation. Maybe there wasn’t any curiosity in his code. Maybe nobody’d ever asked him those kinds of things before.
Jane could hear Pahkerr’s cameras following her as she walked down the broad metal corridor. They were different from Owl’s cameras. Less noisy, less clunky. She missed the clunky ones. She missed Owl, furiously, achingly. And weird as it was, she missed the shuttle. Aboard the Yo’ton, everything was clean and warm, and all the tech worked right. There wasn’t any danger, not that she could see. But she missed the shuttle, all the same. She missed knowing where everything was, knowing how her blanket would smell, missed playing sims and fixing stuff. She’d worked so long to get out of there, and now . . . now, she almost wanted to go back.
Lights in the ceiling switched on as she made her way to the kitchen. The Yo’ton was huge, and she longed to know how everything worked. But the lead tech didn’t like her. Thekreh was a mean-faced Aandrisk with a real thick accent, and Jane didn’t know if she’d asked her too many questions or what, but Thekreh had flat-out told her that she was distracting her from her work, and that she needed to go bathe. That last bit had stung. Jane was the cleanest she’d been since the factory – cleaner, even. She didn’t think she smelled bad, but she’d felt awkward in her own body since then, and had been scrubbing herself so hard her skin hurt. None of the other species there took showers, so she and Laurian had to clean themselves in one of the utility sinks down in the engine room, standing on cold metal and drenching each other with a lukewarm hose. It made her feel like a dead dog.
The lights in the kitchen were already on. Jane wasn’t the only one there. One of the tables was occupied by the algaeist, a big Laru man with the hilarious name of Oouoh. Not that she’d told him his name was hilarious. She’d already managed to make one person not like her in the tenday she’d been there. She wasn’t stupid.
Oouoh was kicking back with his furry feet up on another chair, eating some kind of crunchy fruit as he stuffed a pipe with redreed. Jane liked the look of his species. He was shaggy red from head to toe, and had a long crazy neck that could make his snouted face curve back over his shoulder. He was as tall as Laurian when walking on four legs; when he walked on two, he nearly bumped the ceiling.
Oouoh’s black eyes dilated as Jane walked into the room. ‘Hey, little Human,’ he said. ‘Whatcha looking for?’
‘I’m thirsty,’ Jane said. She paused. ‘And I couldn’t sleep.’
Oouoh’s neck bobbed in a slow, repeated S-shape. ‘Me too. Me too.’ He lifted up the pipe toward her. ‘Want to join me?’
Jane blinked. ‘I . . . I don’t know.’ She put her hands in her pockets because she didn’t know what else to do with them. ‘I don’t know how.’
Oouoh made a funny face she couldn’t figure out. ‘Well, I’ll show you. Come on.’ He waved one of his wide paw-like hands toward his table. Jane pulled up a chair. Stars, but he was big. If he hadn’t been saying nice stuff, she would’ve been real scared of him. She was a little bit anyway.
Oouoh picked up a sparker from the table, and handed both it and the pipe to her. ‘Okay, so, put the little end in your mouth. There ya go. Now close your lips around it. Now, you’re going to spark the stuff in the bowl, and at the same time, you’re going to suck in hard.’
Jane did as told. A hot mouthful of smoke came rushing between her lips, and she tasted it – ash and dirt, hot and sweet.
Oouoh saw her pause. ‘You gotta breathe it in. Way down into your lungs, then out your nose like a chimney.’
Jane did as told, and . . . and she doubled over, coughing and gasping. Her lungs hadn’t liked that experience much.
Oouoh made a huffing rumble down deep in his chest. Was he laughing at her? ‘First time’s always hard. Try again. You’ll get the hang of it.’
Jane wasn’t sure she wanted to try again. Her throat was scratchy now, and she felt kind of stupid, but she didn’t want to give up in front of Oouoh. She repeated the same steps as before: spark, suck, breathe. Her lungs protested, but she willed them open, just a little. She coughed again, but less this time, and some of the smoke came out her nose instead of her lips. She felt something else, too. A little quieter. A little clearer.
‘There ya go,’ Oouoh said, sounding pleased. He took the pipe and sparker back. ‘Look at you, you look like a kohumie.’
Jane coughed the last of the smoke out of her lungs. ‘What’s a kohumie?’
‘A volcano monster. From holiday stories, y’know? Little round furless spirits that appear when rocks near lava flows start to melt.’
That sounded like a cool thing to look like. ‘I’m not round, though,’ Jane said.
Oouoh took a long drag from his pipe. He didn’t cough at all. ‘No, no, you definitely are not.’ He thought for a moment, puffing. ‘Why don’t you eat the same stuff as the rest of us? Your friend eats the same stuff as the rest of us. Cook’s always giving you – what? Porridge? Soft vegetables?’
Jane scratched behind her ear. ‘I was real sick before I came aboard. I’m not supposed to eat anything complicated for a while.’ Both’pol, the ship’s doctor, apparently agreed with everybody back on the Lookout Station about that. Dammit.
‘Sick how?’ Oouoh asked.
‘Lots of ways,’ Jane said. ‘But mostly because I didn’t eat enough, I guess.’
‘Why didn’t you eat enough?’
‘Because there wasn’t any food.’
‘Ah,’ Oouoh said. He exhaled a long stream of smoke. ‘That’s shitty.’
Jane gave a short laugh. ‘You could say that.’
‘You’re a fringer, yeah?’ He made a circling gesture with one of his fingers. ‘From outside the GC?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Spacer?’
‘No, I lived on a planet.’
‘And on that whole planet, there was nowhere to get food?’
‘There was. Just . . .’ How was she supposed to explain? How could she ever explain this to anyone? ‘Just not for me.’
Oouoh waited for her to add more, but Jane said nothing else. The Laru bobbed his head. ‘Sounds bad.’
‘Yeah,’ Jane said.
‘So, wait, wait.’ Oouoh leaned forward on the table, his face stretching out into the middle of it. ‘You got sick because you didn’t have any food, so . . . they’re not letting you eat food.’
Jane laughed again. ‘Yeah, basically.’
‘Did your friend have food?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Why didn’t he share it with you?’
‘We weren’t . . . I haven’t known him long. He wasn’t where I was.’
‘Huh. I thought – ah, never mind.’
‘What?’
Oouoh shifted his jaw. ‘Are you two coupling or what?’
Jane nearly choked on her own breath. ‘Are – wh – no. No, no, we’re – uh—’ Did he really think that? Did everyone think that? Jane had no idea how to feel about that if they did.
The Laru made the same rumbly sound as before. ‘No worries, just getting the story straight. I haven’t met many of your kind, so I don’t really know how to read you. You two just seem . . . protective. Of each other.’
‘Like how?’
‘You’re always talking for him. And yeah, I get he can’t do that great on his own, but you figure him out pretty quick. You help him get there. And doesn’t matter if he can speak Klip or not, he’s clear as air when he’s pissed at someone on your behalf. He’s been glaring knives at Thekreh for the past two days.’