“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. There 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?”