“I can’t believe how lucky we were to find you out here,” Pei said. “I hope we aren’t inconveniencing you.”
“Stay as long as you need.” Or just stay, period. “I hear our techs have volunteered to help with repairs.”
“We’re all ready to go,” Kizzy said, hands on her toolbelt buckle. “You just point us in the right direction.”
“Oxlen will go with you,” Pei said.
“I’m no tech,” said Oxlen, Pei’s pilot, a tall male with light eyes. “But I can tell you the basics of what’s what.”
The female soldier — Tak, if Ashby remembered correctly — spoke up. “I was hoping that we might have access to your scanners and ansible. I highly doubt we will encounter enemy contacts out here, but given what happened aboard our ship, we can’t be too careful.”
“Sissix can show you to the control room,” Ashby said. “Unless you’d like manual access to our AI core.” Out of the corner of his eye, Ashby could see Jenks stiffen at the suggestion. Relax, Jenks, they’re not going to break her.
“Your control room should be fine,” Tak said. She nodded to Sissix, who lead the way down the hall. Ashby could not have imagined an odder looking pair: the armed Aeluon missing an eye, and the Aandrisk in low-slung pants and a fresh coat of swirls painted on her claws.
“As for the rest of us,” Pei said. “I’m afraid all we can do is wait.”
“Oh, I don’t think that’ll be so bad,” Dr. Chef said. “It’s just about time for me to start preparing breakfast. Though, fair warning, my recipes weren’t exactly made with Aeluons in mind. This might be the worst breakfast you’ve ever had.”
The male soldier laughed. “You’ve never had field rations.”
“You’d be surprised.” Dr. Chef puffed his cheeks. Ashby smiled. Few things made Dr. Chef happier than feeding hungry people. “Come along with me. Let’s have a look through my stasie, see what appeals to you.”
“Please tell me you have real mek on board,” one of Pei’s crew said. He had a gun strapped across his back that would have made Bear and Nib weep with envy. Did they really have to wear weapons here?
“Plenty of mek,” Kizzy said. “Big ol’ boxes of it.”
“Oh, stars, that’s great news. If I have to drink another cup of the pre-packaged stuff, I’m going to be sick.”
“Only one cup each,” Pei said. “I’m not getting back on my ship with a fuzzy-eyed crew.”
“Come on, come on, all of you,” Dr. Chef said, leading the way out of the airlock, walking on two. “I’m not letting you leave hungry.”
The remaining Aeluons followed eagerly. “Leave some for me,” Oxlen called after them as he lead the techs back through the airlock. Kizzy snuck one last glance at Pei, and wiggled her eyebrows at Ashby. He rolled his eyes and shooed her away with his hand. She scampered off, chuckling.
They waited until the hallway was silent. Even then, Ashby wasn’t sure what to say. He wanted to kiss her, hold her, run up to his room and let her tear off his clothes. Somehow, he held it back. “So. This is unexpected.”
She stared at him. Her second eyelids closed slowly. Her cheeks turned a displeased shade of yellow. “There is a scatter burst burn on your hull.”
“You always say the most romantic things.”
“Ashby.” She glared. “You said in your last message that you got boarded and that you lost some supplies. You said nothing about getting fired upon. Was anyone hurt?”
“No.” He paused. “Just me. But I’m fine.”
Her cheeks swam with exasperated colors. “Why didn’t you say anything?”
“Because I didn’t want you to worry.”
She cocked her head. “We seem to have traded places.”
“Hardly. Who’s the one showing up on my doorstep talking about disruptor mines?”
“There was only the one mine, and no one was hurt. It seems someone at the loading bay had an…opinion about the war.”
Ashby shook his head. “The Rosk are attacking border colonies. How — ”
“I know, I know. People are crazy.” She frowned. “And speaking of, the more I hear about this Toremi situation, the less I like it.”
“You didn’t like it from the start.”
“Ashby, listen. I met the captain of a pinhole tug that’s been ferrying diplomats out there. The Toremi, they’re…strange.”
“They’re a different species. We’re all strange to each other. You’re strange to me sometimes.”
“No, I mean dangerous strange. Incomprehensible strange. She said she couldn’t understand how the GC had brokered an alliance with them at all. The diplomats, they kept talking about how hard it was to communicate with them. It wasn’t a matter of language, the Toremi just think differently. They try to all think exactly the same things in exactly the same way, which is insane enough, but everything goes to shit if they can’t find consensus. That captain, she told me that a few standards back, when the GC finally got their foot in the door, a few Toremi tore each other apart — I mean literally, Ashby, during a conference — because they couldn’t agree on whether or not Harmagians were sapient.”
“I’m sure they’ve figured that much out by now.”
“Maybe. All I know is that she heard of several times where a Toremi delegate didn’t voice agreement with its higher-ups during a meeting, and then was never seen again. She hated going out there. She said she got scared every time one of their ships got close. She didn’t trust them. And neither do I.”
“You’ve never met them. Pei, they wouldn’t be sending us all the way to the Core if they didn’t think they could keep us safe. We’ll be fine, don’t worry.”
Her cheeks flashed pale purple with frustration. “I can’t even keep the people on my own ship safe. How am I supposed to not worry about you?”
He looked down the hallway, just to be sure. He took her hand. “Kizzy said you lost someone.”
She shut her eyes. “Saery.”
He squeezed her hand tight, fighting the urge to take her into his arms. “Stars. Pei, I’m so sorry.”
“It was pointless, Ashby, so fucking pointless. He got jumped in an alley while we were on Dresk. They cut out his patch and stole the tech he’d picked up that day. If he hadn’t been alone — ”
“Hey.” He reached up to cup her cheek. The hell with it. “Hey, now. Don’t go there.”
She pressed her cheek into his palm, ever so briefly, then pulled back, her eyes flicking down the hall. “I’ve missed you so much,” she said. “These last tendays…I wanted to write to you, but — ”
"I know,” he said, and smiled. “Come on. I’ll show you my ship, and we can talk. Touring the ship is a respectable sort of activity, right?”
There was a tiny flash of amused green in her cheeks. “Yeah.”
“What did you tell them, anyway? About you and me?”
“That we met on Port Coriol, right after I bought my ship. I met you there during a supply run, and sometimes we meet for a drink when we wind up at the same dock.”
“Huh. The truth.”
“Well, the innocuous part of it, anyway. To be honest, it felt a little strange.” Her cheeks went yellow. “I’ve gotten used to lying about you.”
●
“I feel like I should’ve left my shoes at the door,” Jenks said to Kizzy as they followed Oxlen through the corridors of the Aeluon frigate.
Kizzy nodded. She’d seen Aeluon ships in dock, and Linking pics of what they looked like inside, but being inside one…it was like walking through a piece of art. The grayish walls were pristine, not a bolt or panel to be seen. She couldn’t see any individual light fixtures, just continuous strips of soft light emanating from the curved ceiling. No window frames, no visible air filters. It was a ship as smooth and seamless as stone. And silent, too. Though Aeluons had given themselves the means to process sound and verbal speech, they only needed those abilities to communicate with other species. Within their own ships, they had no use for sound. T
here were no voxes or klaxons or panels that beeped and chirped. Even the sounds of the life support systems and artigrav nets were so low that Kizzy could barely make them out (though she doubted their quietness was engineered on purpose; more likely, they were just extremely well designed). The absence of sound made the ship seem all the more hallowed, like a temple built to honor good tech. Her and Jenks’ big, stompy boots and clanking toolbelts felt intrusive. She was glad that she’d had the time to change into a relatively clean jumpsuit.
“Life support’s in here,” Oxlen said. He placed his palm on the wall, and a portion of it melted open. As Kizzy walked through the opening, she could see the surrounding frame, the predefined edges of the door, solid as the thickest plex.
“What is this stuff?” Kizzy asked, running her palm over the wall. Cold and firm, but she could feel a latent pliability beneath. “Some sort of responsive polymer?”
“Yes. It’s held in place by an electrostatic lattice, which responds to the bioelectrical signals in our skin.”
“Wow.” Kizzy leaned closer to the wall, squinting. “What’s it made of?”
“That’s…beyond my area of expertise. I’m sure you could look it up in the Linkings.” They walked into a room filled with a tangle of tech. Way, way better looking than the stuff Kizzy was used to, but recognizable all the same. Oxlen gestured to a large apparatus, the heavy heart at the center of a network of tubes and pipes. “This is — ”
“Your atmospheric regulator.” Kizzy put her hands on her hips and nodded as she inspected it. “Looks an awful lot like ours.”
“Except a hell of a lot prettier,” Jenks said. “Check out those stabilizers.”
“Wow,” Kizzy said. “Look at the interlocking seals. Awesome. Awesome, awesome, awesome.” She craned her head toward Oxlen. “Where was the mine?”
“Top left corner. Tucked behind the…” Oxlen made a vague gesture. “That lump with the little knob on it.”
Kizzy climbed up the side of the regulator, taking care to rest her weight on the sturdiest pipes. Behind the relay hub — the lump with the little knob on it — was a patch of torn metal, the end result of a fierce energy discharge. She pulled her tech lenses from her belt and slipped them over her head. She peered through the magnification lens as she pried up the metal and looked inside.
“Wow,” she said. “All the nodes around here are fried. The filter relays are ten kinds of fucked up. Your fixbots patched ‘em up okay, but this needs more than — holy shit, look at that. Wow.” She flipped the lens aside, put on her gloves, and reached into the hole.
“What’s up?” Jenks asked.
Kizzy felt around, running her protected fingers over the mangled machinery. “The entire regulator shaft’s stripped. Nasty piece of work.”
“Should I go get some filler sheets?”
“Yeah, and grab your small tools while you’re at it. There’s a whole circuit panel in here that you’ll need to rewire. And snacks, Jenks, we’re gonna need a shitload of snacks for this.” She rubbed her left eye, pushing away the sleepiness. She was starting her day without having gone to bed, but that was hardly anything new. She had a thermos of happy tea clipped to her belt, and a packet of stims in her pocket in case things got really dire. It’d do.
“So, you can fix it?” Oxlen said.
“Oh, yeah,” Kizzy said. She looked Oxlen in the eye and placed her hand over her heart. “Believe me when I say that there’s nothing I’d rather do than fix this thing.”
●
Rosemary sat perched on a stack of empty vegetable crates, snacking on pepper puffs. Sissix was with her, leaning against one of Dr. Chef’s bug breeding tanks. The curtain separating the storage room from the kitchen was pulled back, but not all the way. The stasie hummed. The bugs skittered. It was a good place for gossip.
“They’re so pretty,” Rosemary said, looking out at the Aeluons happily stuffing their faces around the dinner table. “I wish I had scales.”
“You say that,” Sissix said. “Be happy you have skin that doesn’t shed all in one go.”
“Do Aeluons molt?”
“No. The bastards.” She took a few puffs from the bowl sitting in Rosemary’s lap.
“How do you see them? I know attractiveness is relative.”
“True, but Aeluons are the universal exception. They’re stupidly pretty.” Sissix crunched her puffs.
“Harmagians probably disagree.”
“Harmagians don’t get a say in this.”
“Why?”
“Because they have no bones and are covered in goo.”
Rosemary chuckled. “That’s not their fault.”
“It’s still true.” Sissix grinned. “Look at them, though.” She nodded toward the Aeluons. “Look at the way they move. Even little things. Like that one, look at the way she picked up her cup. They don’t move. They dance.” She took another handful of puffs. “They make me feel like…oh, what are those big ugly reptiles you have back on Earth? The extinct ones?”
“Um…” Rosemary racked her brain. “I don’t know. Iguanas?”
“I don’t know what those are. I don’t mean things lost in the Collapse. I mean the old reptiles, the ones millions of years ago.”
“Dinosaurs.”
“Yes!” Sissix hunched over, tucking her arms up and exaggerating the angle of her bent legs. She stomped around the storage room, shifting her weight clumsily.
Rosemary cracked up. “You’re not a dinosaur.”
“You don’t know that. You weren’t there. Maybe some of them built ships and left.”
Rosemary let her eyes trail over Sissix. Polished green scales. Festive quills. Artful swirls painted around her claws. The way her pants hung just so over her strange hips. Even when goofing off amid old crates and edible bugs, she was lovely. “You’re too pretty to be a dinosaur,” she said. She felt her cheeks flush as she said it. She hoped it didn’t show.
“That’s a relief,” Sissix said, straightening up. “They didn’t have the best of luck, if I recall. What was it? Gamma ray burst?”
“Impact event.”
“Too bad. The galaxy could use a few more reptiles.”
“To be fair, though, them dying out made room for us weird furry things.”
Sissix laughed and gave Rosemary’s shoulder a friendly squeeze. “And I am fond of you weird furry things.”
Rosemary smiled, and got to her feet. “You want some fizz?” she said, walking to the cooler.
“Yes, please. These puffs have a kick.” Sissix watched the Aeluons as Rosemary searched for drinks. “I’ve heard it’s very scary to encounter them in combat. No yelling or noise. Just a bunch of silent people coming to kill you.”
“Ugh,” Rosemary said. She handed Sissix a frosty bottle of melon fizz. “That’s creepy.”
“You ever hear of the battle of Tkrit?” Sissix said. She looked at the long-necked bottle in her hand. “I need an Aandrisk-friendly cup.”
“Oh, right, sorry,” Rosemary said. She stepped through the doorway and opened the cupboard outside, in search of something that someone without lips could drink from. Out at the far end of the kitchen, Corbin appeared at the counter. He gave the briefest of glances their way as he poured himself a mug of tea from the communal decanter. Sissix didn’t acknowledge him, but Rosemary could see her feathers fluff ever so slightly. “What’s the battle of Tkrit?”
“Territory skirmish back before the GC, when we were all snatching up habitable planets as fast as we could. One of the few times Aeluons and Aandrisks clashed. Just a squabble, really. We were never formally at war. The story goes that late one night, three groups of Aeluon soldiers snuck into the base on Tkrit. Dead quiet, like I said, and coming in from all sides.”
“What’d the Aandrisks do?” Rosemary said, handing Sissix a cup.
Sissix grinned. “They turned off the lights. Aeluons can’t see in infrared.”
Rosemary imagined being inside a pitch-black building, filled with silent
soldiers being picked off by unseen claws reaching through the darkness. She shivered.
“Speaking of Aeluons,” Sissix said. “I am dying to know where our captain is.” She turned toward the vox. "Hey, Lovey.”
“Nope,” Lovey said.
Sissix and Rosemary exchanged amused looks. “Nope?” Sissix said.
“You heard me. No way.”
“Please? You don’t have to say what they’re doing, just tell me where — ”
“Oh, no! I seem to have a…circuit…problem. I can’t talk to you any more.” The vox switched off.
Rosemary and Sissix started to laugh, but the fun died as Corbin approached the storage room. “Do you know when Kizzy and Jenks are coming back?” He addressed the question directly to Rosemary. “They’ve been gone five hours.”
“Sorry, I don’t know,” Rosemary said.
“Rough estimate?”
“I really have no idea.”
Corbin huffed. “The mixer they replaced last tenday jammed again, and the sensors aren’t responding. I have a drum that’s on the brink of going tacky.”
Rosemary wanted to comment that the Aeluons had a ship that was running out of air, but if Sissix could bite her tongue, so could she. “If I see them before you do, I’ll send them your way.”
“I’d appreciate that.” He gave a curt nod and left.
Rosemary turned to Sissix, who was contemplating something within her cup. “What’s up?”
Sissix inhaled, as if surfacing from a deep thought. “Oh, I was just exploring the idea of telling the Aeluons that Corbin is a Rosk spy.”