“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.”
Rosemary snorted. “I’m sure they treat their prisoners well.”
“Well, that’s the thing. I doubt a civilian ship like that has facilities for transporting captured spies.” She sipped her drink. “I bet they’d make good use of the airlock, though.”
The wrench fell from Kizzy’s hand and clattered down behind the regulator. “Oops.” She climbed down the pipes, making her way to the space between the machinery and the wall.
“You want me to get it?” Jenks asked.
“Nah, there’s plenty of space.” Kizzy jumped down to the floor and began hunting for the errant tool. After a few steps forward, she paused. Something wasn’t right. She turned around and looked at the wall. There was a hatchway there, but it wasn’t properly melting into the surrounding wall. The seam around it flickered, as if someone was activating and deactivating the door faster than it could respond.
“Hey, Oxlen,” Kizzy called.
“Yes?”
“Is there a service panel back here?”
“I think so, why?”
“Looks like it’s malfunctioning.” Kizzy thought about the way the walls worked. “Could something be interfering with the structural lattice? A wonky circuit or something? Anything generating a signal?”
“I suppose. I don’t really know. Do you think the mine damaged the door?”
Kizzy looked back up at the regulator. The relay hub was a long way up. She shook her head. “I doubt it. Nothing else this far down was damaged.” Kizzy pressed her hand against the panel. She could feel the polymer beneath her fingers liquefy—though that wasn’t quite the right word, because the wall didn’t feel wet. Just… fluid. Kizzy gave a little laugh. “Cool.” The panel melted aside. The frame twitched and wiggled, but it held in place. She stuck her head into the wall and switched on the two little globulbs attached to her lenses.
The wall held power conduits, fuel tubes, waste lines—all the things you’d expect to see within a ship’s wall. She stepped inside. There was a narrow service pathway there, big enough for a lone tech. The pathway led upward, disappearing into the darker regions of the ship’s innards. She gazed around, looking for a sparking circuit or a leaking tube.
A small flash of yellow light caught her eye. Just a little ways above her head, easily within arm’s reach, a strange object clung to a bundle of fuel tubes. Flat, black, round. Like a metallic jellyfish, tendrils wrapped tight. It was obviously of different make than the surrounding tech, but Kizzy couldn’t quite place it. There was another flash. Then a pause. Then a flash again.
“What the hell—” she muttered. She reached toward it. But before her fingers made contact, she froze. Another flash appeared in the corner of her eye. She craned her head up to follow the pathway. There was another one of the objects, positioned a few paces away from her. Then another. And another.
She turned off her globulbs. Stretched out in a steady line, disappearing into the dark, a row of tiny yellow lights blinked in rhythm.
With a rising horror, she realized what they were.