by Eric Vall
My heart clenched in emotion at her sincerity, and I caressed her tail around my wrist in gratitude.
The mechanic’s mother didn’t say anything else to us. She seemed to have gotten what she came for. Instead, she turned to her daughter and drew her a few feet away, back down the loading bay a meter or so. The two women spoke quietly for a moment and then embraced.
“Ya le file ho ru teho leya,” I heard the older woman say to her daughter in a language I didn’t understand. She kissed the mechanic on the forehead, gave her a stiff nod, and then turned her back on the three of us. She walked straight back down the loading ramp and off our ship. She didn’t look back once, and in a moment, she was gone.
Akela stared after her mother, an unreadable expression on her face. Once the woman was out of sight, she turned back to Neka and me, that familiar look of resolve in her eyes and the line of her jaw.
“She insisted on seeing me off,” was all the mechanic said by way of explanation. I nodded in understanding but didn’t comment.
The three of us lapsed into silence again. For a moment, I considered asking if the mechanic was okay, but I dismissed that thought just as quickly. It seemed the silver-haired woman didn’t want to talk about what had just transpired. I struggled to find something to say, but thankfully Akela beat me to it.
“So,” she started as she brought her violet eyes to mine. We locked gazes for only a moment before she was glancing around the cargo hold with a scrutinizing eye. “This is the ship I’m supposed to be taking care of?”
I shook off the relative weirdness of what happened and did my best to give the mechanic my most charming smile.
“Yup! This is the Lacuna Noctis,” I said with grand mock ceremony as I gestured around the not so elaborate cargo hold. “Our home.” I was more than a little proud of our modest ship, and I think it showed in my voice.
Akela hummed and tried to look disinterested, but I could see the gleam in her eye. It was the same gleam I had when I was eighteen and first walked aboard a Terra-Nebula ship.
“Would you like a tour?” Neka suddenly piped up from my side. “CT gives the best tours!” I turned to my assistant to see her bouncing on the balls of her feet as her tail lashed back and forth.
Akela blinked at the cat-girl, probably perplexed by her seemingly boundless fount of energy. “Um, sure I guess.”
I reached out and scratched behind Neka’s ear. “Pardon my assistant’s enthusiasm,” I said with a laugh. “We don’t often have guests. We can do a full tour once you’ve gotten settled, we’ll have a whole week to get to Proxima V after all, but we can show you to your quarters, if you’d like.”
Akela pursed her lips but gave a small nod. Neka purred in delight and threaded her arm through mine. I grinned at the cat-girl and then offered the mechanic my other arm, but the silver-haired woman stared at me blankly until I dropped it.
“Alright,” I chuckled awkwardly. “Let’s get this show on the road then! Right this way, madam.”
I turned and led us out of the cargo hold and into the belly of the Lacuna Noctis. For the first few moments, the three of us walked in relative silence. There wasn’t much in this section except empty hallways and some storage, nothing of interest to point out. I kept glancing back at the mechanic to try to gauge what she was thinking or feeling, but her face was a closed book if I ever saw one.
Neka kept looking over her shoulder at Akela, too, her face openly curious. Finally, as we came out into the main hallway of the ship, she apparently couldn’t take the suspense anymore.
“What did your mother say to you? Back on the loading ramp?” my assistant asked abruptly. Tact usually wasn’t her strongest suit.
The mechanic started and blinked at the cat-girl. When she had finally processed the question, she pursed her lips and glanced off to the side. “Nothing really,” she muttered. “Just mom stuff, ya know.”
Neka frowned. “No, I don’t know. What does that mean?”
Akela looked back at her incredulously and then at me for an explanation. I shrugged.
“Don’t look at me,” I said honestly. “I don’t know what that means either. Neither of us had a mother.”
“Everyone has a mother,” Akela scoffed and hiked her bag higher on her shoulder. She clipped the wall of the hallway slightly and had tottered off balance for a moment.
“Not me,” Neka chirped, her voice incongruously upbeat for the conversation. “I was made in a test-tube, and both of my Makers were male.”
Confused, Akela turned to me again, but I didn’t want to talk about the past, Neka’s or mine.
“She’s a gen-mod. The scientists in the lab weren’t exactly nurturing,” I explained as I reached up to scratch behind one of my assistant’s ears. She purred in response.
“And you?” Akela asked as she scrutinized me, probably looking for my own tail or ears.
I shot her a crooked grin. “Nope. I’m 100% a human orphan. Nothing special about me.”
Akela didn’t respond, and I thought we had dropped the conversation when the mechanic suddenly but quietly said, “May the stars guide you home again.”
I blinked and slowed my pace, but Akela wouldn’t meet my gaze again.
“What my mom said,” she continued. She lifted her amethyst eyes to the ceiling, her profile unreadable. “It’s how we say goodbye.”
“That’s very pretty,” Neka said from my opposite side. Akela brought her eyes down, and my assistant gave her a shy smile. The mechanic’s mouth twitched upward in response.
“Thanks,” the silver-haired woman replied. “Neka, right?”
The cat-girl’s eyes went bright with happiness at the fact that someone had remembered her name. “Yeah!” she mewled and gave a happy little wiggle.
“And… the other one?” Akela questioned. She looked around the hallway, and it took me a moment to realize she was referring to our resident AI.
“Omni,” I reminded her as we kept walking. We were near the sleeping quarters now. “Our ship’s AI. He’s currently running system checks and making sure we’re ready for takeoff.”
“He can do that all on his own?” she asked and there was genuine intrigue in her face.
Neka answered before I got the chance to. “Yup!” the cat-girl crowed proudly. “CT programmed him to do all sorts of stuff! Tell her, CT!” She pulled excitedly on my arm, and I felt myself flush slightly under the weight of Akela’s violet gaze.
“My assistant here gives me a little too much credit,” I said abashedly and rubbed at the back of my neck. “I deleted almost all of his programming dampeners, and he kind of got away from me. I honestly can’t tell you how he got to be what he is. I’ve tried to figure out what I did, but Omni doesn’t like me picking around in his brain very much, so he’s rewritten some of his security protocol to lock me out.”
Akela hummed in thought and rubbed at her nose. I found myself surprised when she drew her hand away and there wasn’t a smudge of grease on her pale skin. “Would you mind if I take a look?” she asked.
“That’s something you’ll have to take up with him,” I chuckled. “But first, here we are! This is you.”
We had arrived at the nearest empty bedroom. There were a handful on the ship, not including Neka’s and mine, but over the years I had kind of taken to throwing random miscellaneous items in them. Most of them were improvised storage rooms now, except for this one.
I reached out and touched the keypad, and the door slid open with a hiss of hydraulics. I turned to the mechanic, expecting some kind of response, but the silver-haired woman didn’t say anything at first. Her eyes were wide as she took in the room, and her mouth was slightly agape.
“This… is all mine?” she asked incredulously.
I furrowed my brow and glanced back in the room. It wasn’t much, maybe ten by fifteen meters, small compared to my captain’s quarters. But then I remembered what Proto had been like. There isn’t a lot of room on space tin cans. This probably felt like a lav
ish suite to the mechanic.
Suddenly, Neka let go of my arm and came around to stand in front of the other woman. Akela blinked at her, still at a loss for words as she continued to stare at her own room, and my assistant gave Akela another one of her shy smiles.
“I know it seems like a lot right now. I remember being so scared when CT first took me aboard, but this is the best ship in all the galaxies,” Neka said, and her tone said she really, truly believed that. “If you help us take care of her, she’ll take care of you, too.”
The mechanic slowly shook her head like she was trying to clear it of cobwebs. “I…” She cleared her throat and tried again. “I’ll take good care of her,” she said solemnly, the promise in her words clear.
“That’s what I like to hear.” I smiled at my now two crew members. “Now, why don’t you set your stuff down and get settled in while Neka and I finish putting away the supplies? Takeoff is in less than an hour.”
Akela finally tore her eyes away from her room and nodded at me. “Alright,” she said, and then she tossed her duffle bag through the open doorway. It landed on the floor in the center of the room with a resounding thud.
I looked at the mechanic in confusion, but the silver-haired woman simply shrugged.
“Like you said, we’ll have a week in transit,” she said. “Plenty enough time for tours and settling in.” Then she craned her neck from side to side, interlaced her fingers, and extended them away from her. Nearly every joint in her body gave a loud crack.
“Now,” she continued as she lifted her chin and looked me in the eye, “just tell me what I can do to help so we can get off this heaping pile of space trash already.”
I couldn’t help but laugh. “Seems like we share the same sentiments regarding our home stations.”
And, for the first time, the mechanic cracked a true smile. I felt something in my chest preen at the sight. It wanted to make her smile again and again and again.
Beside me, Neka gave a trill of happiness and bounced closer to the mechanic’s side. “Yay!” the cat-girl mewled. “This way I can show you some things I bought at the market this morning. Come on!”
My assistant held out her hand to the mechanic and bounced on her toes. Akela stared at Neka’s offered hand for a moment before she slowly reached out and took it. Neka purred, and her tail danced back and forth.
“Let’s go!” she mrowled and then began to skip back down the hallway we just came from. She tugged the poor, unsuspecting silver-haired woman in her wake.
“You’re in good hands,” I called out to the mechanic with a laugh as Neka turned to round the first corner down the hall. Akela still looked a little in shock so I gave her my best reassuring smile before she disappeared.
I chuckled to myself as I followed the two women, albeit at a more moderate pace.
Things were looking up. We had our mechanic. We had our supplies. Now, Omni needed to finish the pre-flight checks, and we were on our way.
I couldn’t keep the smile off my face as I wound through the hallways of the ship. I turned the last corner to see I had more or less caught up to Neka and Akela. They were about thirty meters ahead of me, just about to turn into the last short hallway that dead-ended into the cargo hold. Although I couldn’t hear her clearly from this distance, I could see Neka was chattering a mile a minute to the mechanic she held captive. Akela was doing her best to keep up, but I could tell her head was set on an automatic nod. Neka could a little carried away sometimes.
I was just about to call out to my assistant to tone it down a little when the two disappeared around the corner… and then immediately reappeared. For a moment, I thought Akela was waiting for me to catch up with them and save her, but then I noticed the mechanic’s body language and every muscle in my body immediately tensed.
Akela had shoved Neka behind her and up against the wall. She pressed a finger to her lips firmly to signal the cat-girl to be quiet and then leaned forward to peek around the corner. She quickly snapped up straight and ducked behind the wall beside my assistant.
Before I knew it, I was running down the hall, and as I drew closer, I could finally see Akela’s expression clearly. It was the picture of distress. Akela glanced up when she saw me and urgently motioned for me to hurry up but also stay quiet.
“What? What is it?” I hissed as I slid to a stop beside them. My heart pounded in my ears, a pulsing war drum.
“There are men in the cargo hold,” the mechanic whispered back. There was definitely alarm in her amethyst eyes, but the stronger emotion seemed to be anger. “I heard them as we came around the corner. It looks like they’re trying to steal our supplies, maybe even the ship.”
“Pirates?” I groaned. “Seriously?”
Akela nodded stiffly and then peeked down the hall again. “I think there are only three or four. I think we could probably get the drop on them. Do we have any weapons?”
I raised my eyebrows in surprise at the mechanic, but she only scowled at me. “What? I know how to fight,” she snapped. “Anyway, we probably won’t even need to. If they’re natives of Theron, they can’t afford any weapons. One look at a plasma pistol, and they’ll probably turn tail and run.”
I hummed in mock contemplation and rubbed at my chin. “That sounds like a good plan,” I started. “Oooooor we could just sit back here and wait.”
Akela frowned. “Wait? Wait for what?”
Instead of responding to her, I grinned and whispered into the empty hallway. “Omni? You there, buddy? It seems like we have some unwanted guests in the cargo hold.”
I made a mental note to ask Akela if she couldn’t reintegrate our old flight suit communication tech into our new clothes so I didn’t have to look crazy talking to empty air. There was a moment’s delay, a burst of static, and then the AI spoke softly through the ship’s speakers. “Already on it. Give me approximately… two minutes.”
“Affirmative,” I said and set a timer on my watch. Then, only because I couldn’t help myself, I cracked a fake yawn.
Akela looked at me like I was losing my mind. “What the hell are you--”
Before she could even finish her sentence, the screaming started.
The mechanic whipped around and tried to look down the hallway, but I caught her elbow and held up one finger.
“Just a moment,” I mouthed. The silver-haired woman gaped at me as we stood there and listened to the unholy shouts and screams that echoed down the hall. Beside me, Neka giggled, and Akela looked like she was reconsidering our contract.
Five seconds before my timer went off, static crackled above us from the speaker’s once more. “All taken care of, Colby. And I do believe I beat my estimated time.”
“That you did, bud,” I said as I let go of Akela’s elbow. “Great job. We’ll be there in just a second.”
I gestured for the mechanic to proceed down the hall, but the silver-haired woman was still staring at me in shock and confusion. Neka giggled again, reached out for Akela’s hand, and then proceeded to once again skip toward the cargo hold. Akela tried to dig her heels in but was pulled along all the same.
The moment we entered the cargo hold, someone was quite unceremoniously tossed at our feet.
The man lay prone on the floor of the hanger bay and blinked up at us groggily. His clothes seemed to be torn and there was a rapidly swelling lump taking form on his forehead.
“Guhhhh,” he groaned, and I noticed he was also missing a tooth, blood smeared across his lips.
The three of us stared at him in silence. Then, Akela took a step forward and said, “Isaias?”
Before the man could respond, there was a commotion further into the room. I looked up to see three more figures, all in various states of duress, writhing and moaning on the floor. They were hogtied with some kind of wire and were rolling around on the ground like worms.
Suddenly, off to the side there was a whirl of machinery, the clatter of tread on metal, and as I looked up, I began to laugh.
It seemed Omni could use the drones for more than merely manual labor. He could also, apparently, turn them into an extension of our ship’s defense system.
The drones didn’t have faces, or really a head for that matter, but I still got the distinct impression of smug satisfaction as one of them brushed its mechanical hands together like they were getting rid of dirt. It was a decidedly human gesture.
“Apparently, these men followed you from the market earlier this morning when they saw how many supplies you had purchased,” the AI responded from the speaker of the drone, his voice small and tinny. “They waited until it seemed you were finished stocking it and then attempted to commandeer the supplies.”
I looked down at the men at our again. Their clothes were torn, they were bleeding from multiple injuries, and it looked like the wire they were bound with was rapidly cutting off circulation to their hands.
“Well, they obviously weren’t anticipating you,” I said with a chuckle.
One of the men moaned in pain. Apparently, he didn’t think that was very funny.
I turned to Akela to apologize for the scare and assure her everything was now okay, but the look on her face drew me up short. Her eyes glittered, and a smile split her face from ear to ear. If she had been beautiful with a scowl, she was absolutely stunning when she smiled.
She stepped right over the still whimpering men on the ground and walked straight up to one of the drones. It was a little comical, seeing as the drone only came up to her waist, but I held my laughter in.
“I’m Akela,” the mechanic introduced herself as she stuck out her hand. “It is very nice to meet you, Omni. Isaias has been begging for an ass-kicking for years.”
The faceless drone reached one of its mechanical arms out and shook Akela’s hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you too, Akela.”
While he still held the mechanic’s hand, the AI tilted the drone to look past her. “I like her,” he said, and, this time, I couldn’t hold my laughter in.
I was cut off, however, when the man Akela had called Isaias stumbled back to his feet. He swayed drunkenly for a moment and pressed the back of his hand first to his bleeding mouth and then to the lump on his head. His hand came away stained crimson, and he spat a wad of bloody saliva onto the floor.
