by S E Zbasnik
So this was life on the outside. He gazed at the "vanity" mirror, clouded and warped from the fumes of sterilization sprays. Only the blues of his uniform were visible through the grunge. Space travel was supposed to be excitement and mystery; traveling to uncharted worlds, discovering the soup you stood upon could talk, falling madly in love with a princess with vibrant skin pigment, and catching a foreign disease that caused you to devolve into a hairy amoeba. Seven months out of the commune and all he saw was the inside of the toilets, the windowless claustrophobic deck of the bus, Samudra's open office inside a storage bin, and here. This ship would have been declared obsolete and a health hazard over a decade ago. It was a miracle the thing could run in its time much less now.
The paper thin mattress shook below him as the ship probably inched another step closer to its death. Or maybe that was Segundo's stomach. Were they supposed to feed stowaways or let them starve to death locked inside an economy cabin on an ancient star-sight cruise ship? The old Segundo -- the one that dutifully shaved his head each rise of the week, that placed his faith in whichever vague god he was supposed to, the one that wasn't chosen to succeed -- would have patiently waited it out and probably starved to death before anyone on the ship came to check on him.
But he learned a few things in the sparse months he'd been set loose on the universe. It was an orc eat orc world; or galaxy, universe, something like that. Screwing up what passed for courage for a third grade technician, Segundo rose off his bed -- which snapped with a dangerous bolt behind him -- and tested the door to his room. He anticipated a lock needing to be smashed open, perhaps that djinn standing guard, but it wooshed open without trouble as if recently oiled. Poking his cropped head out the door, he checked both ways expecting guards rushing to pound his peg back into place.
Only a rickety but empty hall answered back, the few lights that did work flickering above his head. Stretches of inky emptiness filled both sides of the corridor. Stepping out of his momentary quarters, Segundo retraced his steps back to the galley. The pilot had been blathering about the last time his boss discovered a stowaway onboard. There was something about dragging him out of the shuttle bay and lightly breaking atmo. It was so outlandish even the sheltered technician suspected it to be a fabrication, but he couldn't take his chances.
The plastic shoes he still owed coin for trampled over the few metal grates until they found fading carpet when Segundo turned a corner; he must be getting nearer the commons area. A few more of the lights reflected the filthy walls, and a half faded sign called this the "arlor Roo." Must be foreign.
"What are you doing here?" the voice stopped him in his creeping tracks, "You're not supposed to be here, you know."
It was the brash voice of that elf. The loud one that burst onto the bridge while the pilot flipped through his music collection, cursed out the dwarf, and stomped away. She turned Segundo's spine to jelly with only a narrowing of her eyes.
Despite himself, Segundo inched into the new room and peered around the corner. Judging by the single track machine and handful of free weights, it must be the onboard gym. The elf stood next to a panel, her arm halfway inside, while the other batted at a walking light fixture. Its scrap metal arms, little wider than a thumb, repeatedly bumped into the increasingly angry engineer.
"WEST!" she shouted, causing Segundo to jump. "Get this damn thing out of here."
Without waiting for the computer to respond, she picked up a spanner in her leather apron. Ferra swung at the steel grey walking mass of lamp parts, putting a dent into the structure and knocking one of the arms free. It clattered to the floor while the robot stared forlornly at its loss.
"You will be fixing that, you know," the computer's voice piped through the panel she was arm deep in.
The engineer pushed up some of her errant ice blonde hair slipping free from a back knot. Digging in, Ferra yanked on something inside her panel, her elbow whipping out. Like a fasting holiday, rows of lighting burst into operation, scaring away the crypt gloom over the corridors. The elf smiled smugly and began to replace the panel.
"No, I won't," she said to the computer, who seemed to be mulling over its options.
After knocking the panel back on, she collected her tools into a box and turned to find Segundo watching her. The technician faltered at her piercing stare, but she only rubbed the back of her hand across her forehead and picked up her box. "Are you lost or something?"
He sat through the lesson on elves everyone in technician training did that amounted to "just never ever run into an elf, ever." His station rarely if ever saw the fair-folk, being more of the human and preferring-to-sell-to-human variety. The training session had been very exact; only use the minimal amount of words necessary to convey your deepest needs. The elves looked down upon waste be it in energy, space, or words.
Pointing to his mouth, Segundo shouted, "Food!"
Ferra stepped back at his outburst and eyed the human over, "You want it or you're storing some in your cheeks?"
The technician blinked slowly, afraid this was another test. "Hungry?" he tried.
"Uh-huh, the kitchen's right through here," she gestured with her stabby tool out the door. "Most everyone's gathered for dinner, supper, whatever."
Segundo bowed deeply -- always overplay your actions around the elves, they do not understand subtlety -- and motioned for Ferra to go first. Her eyes bounced to the doorway and back to the human half bent over to stare at his shoes, eyeing up her chances before sighing. "All right." Crossing in front of the bent human, she walked towards the galley where the din of her husband easily overtook the bangs of pans sloshing into the sink.
As the technician fell behind her, she called over her shoulder, "Are all technicians this way or did you lick an engine on accident?"
Segundo tried to parse through the cryptic question, an obvious test, but his brain stopped short as the over abundant and eager voice of Orn carried across the still clanging galley. He'd propped his boots on a catty corner chair, having cranked his ornate dwarf seat as high as it could go. The captain was seated across from him, a plate of varying earthy colors before her. She looked a lot less dead than the last time he saw her.
"I shit you not," Orn said, waving his arms about for emphasis, "we'd been staring at each other for an hour, hour and a half. Just as I was about to crack, that dulcen let out the wettest belch I'd ever heard. I thought I'd be picking pits of sunshine out of my hair for a week." His side of the table was empty aside from a few discarded candy wrappers. He only came to the galley for the readily available audience.
Variel smiled into her food, nodding to the story as if some kernel of truth rested inside, but Ferra butted in, "Don't believe a fool word this lump of flesh says. The only elf he sees is me, and he'll be lucky to have that chance again."
The pilot shifted over to his blushing bride, throwing his arms open as if she wounded him, "My love, apple of my adam..." The elf eye roll is a sight to beheld given how large their orbs grow to. Ferra honed it into an art.
"I'd believe it," Variel butted in, stabbing her fork into something crunchy and bringing it to her mouth, "I once attended a dulcen state dinner, or high fancy blah blah blah with gold lettering. Five hours with eleven courses, not a word, not one bleedin' word escaped a single lip. I'd have feared I went deaf if it weren't for the clattering of spoons. Elves sure love their soups."
A stirring spoon banged against the pot at that comment as Brena tried to as un-elvenly as possible finish her dinner soup. She'd probably cough or something to remind the rest of the crew of a fellow dulcen's existence, but that was the height of uncouth. Instead, she quietly pulled the ladle out of the cutlery cup causing a screwdriver stowaway to flop to the counter. Brena picked it up cautiously, getting a shrug from the engineer. Without asking, she put it back with the other spatulas and cooking paraphernalia.
"Just 'cause you met one set of ears doesn't mean you know them all," Ferra said, surprisingly diplomatic for her, before adding,
"Rock licker."
Orn placed his gloved hand to his scarlet vest and mocked a myocardial infraction, "My love, she does wound me so."
"Don't tempt me," Ferra muttered, folding her arms and shaking the heavy tool box.
"I've never met a light elf before," the stalemate broke by the overeager technician who wanted the awkwardness of a couple's fight to go away lest someone get in an airlock kind of mood. And then he turned to Ferra -- who squished up her face as if she smelled something rotten -- and stuck his foot right into an ancient trap. "I had no idea dulcens would service as engineers on human ships."
The elf reacted as if he reached out to shake her hand with a rattlesnake, brandishing her spanner at him incase he was about to attack, "What did you call me?!"
Fully forgetting her manners, Brena chuckled a most unbecoming snort from the stove as the engineer all but shot djinn steam out of her nose. The technician cowered before the five foot nothing of the elf's fury. Segundo fumbled for words, "But, your skin and your hair. I thought light elves looked..."
Ferra grabbed his uniform, popping off a few of the mostly decorative buttons. "I ain't no la-de-dah high elf, and you'd do well to remember that unless you want to become good friends with your intestines," she hissed into his face. Waving her spanner towards his head once, she released him. Grabbing a handful of nuts off the table, she loudly tramped out the door to one of her hidey holes in the guts of the ship muttering about things that drained the blood from Segundo's face.
He trembled, slowly dropping to his knees at the fury of an elf's reputation scorned. Variel shook her head, "What do they teach kids these days?"
It was Brena that interceded, happy to correct the miscommunication as if she were on the clock, "High or light elves do not reference our coloring: skin, hair, or otherwise. It is to represent our familial lines. One that is a light elf exists high within the branches of life, while the dark, or Tennens, reside amongst the roots. Structurally, we are more similar than distinct."
"And space save you if you ever mix them up," Orn said, speaking from a lifetime of experience.
"Yes," Brena whispered into her cup of soup, "some of us take it more to heart than others." She swept past the slowly rising Segundo back to her quarters.
Variel crunched down some more on her dinner, trying to get back the blood Monde was still scrubbing off the felt, while Orn watched their high elf go from the side of his eye. "Don't care what she says, them dulcens still give me the willies."
"I'd rather not hear about the state of your willy," Variel quipped.
"Come on," Orn slipped his boots off the chair and inched closer as if in conspiratorial mode, "You can't tell me there ain't nothing a bit off about those two? Always scurrying about together, never saying more than a few words a day, taking meals in the middle of the night to avoid everyone else."
"They eat the same time we do. You're the one who scrounges for something besides processed sugar at 4 in the morning," Variel tried to wave the dwarf off his wild theories. They all heard enough over the years about Monde, and Gene, and even a few about his wife being a secret double agent for the Elven Intelligence Force. Only the elves would create a bureau named EIF; sounds like something a person says when getting smacked in the gut.
"Still...I hear they were forced off of Cangen for being, you know, a little too close, if'n ya catch my meaning," the dwarf's eyebrows bounced up and down. Variel leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms. If he'd been closer, Orn would have started nudging her in the ribs screaming "Get it?"
"And I assume you heard this from your own two lips," she said, her voice rising to compensate for the dwarf's whisper. Gossiping about your crew was a good way to ensure a mutiny or by instituting every Tuesday as steamed cabbage night.
"It all makes sense," he said, sitting back in his chair. "Why else would a bard and a registered assassin sign up on this flying rock?"
Variel pushed her chair back and grabbed her plate. Rising stiffly and walking towards the sink, she dropped her mess in and said to Orn, "You better never let your wife hear you say that."
"Psh, she says it all the time, typically when she's half inside the rock."
"But it's different when it's her rock. And forget the dulcens, they'll be gone before too long. The bard keeps saying as such." She scraped her excess rinds into a bag and whacked on the sanitizer. A heavy whir overtook the conversation as focused light blasted away at the filth coated plates.
"To elves, 'too long' could be five of our lifetimes," Orn muttered. The twins made his life even more of a living hell than usual. His wife turned into a feral cat around them, especially the female one. She seemed to hit every ancestral hate button by merely breathing. The fact Brena talked like she fell out of an En Faire and dressed to the nines to take a shit only made it worse.
Still mulling over his bit of homemade gossip, Orn turned to his new victim, "Seggie, come and have a seat." He patted the chair his boot previously occupied and Segundo slipped down, "What can we do for you? Fluff your foam indent? Change the tinfoil blanket? Replace all your little soaps with roaches?"
"I," the technician wadded up his hands, somehow knotting his fingers, and said, "I was hoping for some food."
"Well you, Sir, are in luck. The captain here happens to be a world class chef. Mind you, that world evolved without tastebuds."
"Shut it, dwarf," Variel muttered, but dug into the other pot still warming on the tiny stove and plopped a serving onto a plate. It saved on her having to store it later. She limped a bit, but otherwise shook off most of the damage from the firefight. A few more pieces of shrapnel under the skin weren't gonna make a big difference in the long run.
"Here," she said, sliding the plate before the technician. Mostly brown lumps with a few white lumps to spice it up gurgled below him.
As he explored the pile with the metal spork, a curious crunch answered back. "Can I ask what it is?"
"You can, doesn't mean I'll answer," Variel said straight laced, but relented at the kicked puppy eyes, "I believe tonight we dine on grasshopper."
"Good," Orn said, "those bastards were keeping me up."
"G..grasshoppers?" Segundo's utensil wavered above the mass. His mind whipped back to thousands of tiny legs twitching in harmony around the tall grass blades of the commune. Of course, there the 'hoppers were about five inches long and occasionally breathed fire, but they still made lovely songs in summer.
"Yeah, grasshoppers. The ants aren't ready yet, probably another week." At his wan face she asked confused, "What's your problem?"
"I've...why do you eat bugs?"
Variel folded her hands up as she stumbled back into her chair, a small groove already molding to her form, "Let me guess, you're from the Ring."
"The ring?" Segundo had no idea what jewelry had to do with not consuming insects.
"Well, whatever high falutin' fancy breeches planet you hail from, out here in space we eat bugs. They're an easily farmed and quickly harvested source of protein."
"You mean there are bugs on this ship?" A squeal probably would have slipped from the technician if he weren't under the scrutiny of a woman who just jumped over an explosion and survived.
Variel responded like he questioned the existence of gravity, "Yeah, millions of them. But they're all safely locked in their enclosures." Then she turned on the smirking dwarf, "Right Orn?"
"Yeah, right."
"We won't have any repeats of 'the accident,' now will we?"
"No, no," he looked away from her, trying to hide a grin at the memory of a thousand ants crawling across her arm sending her into a near panic, "of course not." He'd kill to have video footage of the great Cap screeching as she tried to jump out of her own skin. That would have set him up for life.
"So eat your bugs," Variel said encouragingly, "Or, if you'd prefer something green, we have an overabundance of kale."
"I'll stick with the grasshoppers, thanks," Segundo said, digging his spork in deep and shivering at
the crunch. As he brought the protein to his lips he tried to not think about a bug splattered across a windshield or smashed beneath a shoe. Closing his eyes and chewing slowly, a meaty and soft texture garbled his tongue. The mass almost reminded him of the crispy meat pies the commune had every fifth day, fried onions mixed into the gravy. Come to think of it, exactly like it.
With the bug crisis over, Orn began to probe the newbie as he always did when a fresh pair of legs joined the table. "So, Segundo. I gotta ask, what's with the name? Half the time my little brain bug turns it into Second."
Some of the slop vanished into his lips as he swallowed, but most dribbled off the chin as he quickly answered, "Segundo is a registered name with the list of untranslated proper nouns."
Orn glanced up at the captain. She shrugged her shoulders. She didn't much care what the kid called himself as long as he was off the ship in a week. "Thanks for the software update. So, why are you called Second?"
"Fifth Second," Variel butted in, despite herself. The doc pottered about the name as he injected the burning stuff into her veins. She played the same mental game to keep the pain at bay while the morphine wore off. What sort of society goes with a numbering system for their people? She'd never heard of any of the various Crests going that route. Well, maybe the Narwhals, but they were always a bit special.
"Yeah, Fifth Second. Sounds like a cyborg baker," Orn added.
Segundo swallowed his grasshopper pie slowly and bounced the end of his spork on the table. It wasn't anything to be ashamed of, they stressed that repeatedly while throwing all their washouts out the door. "I was raised by the Society of Prophet Placement," he said as if confessing to enjoying the burn of sandpaper across his bottom.
