by Eric Vall
“Fish?” a voice behind us chirped excitedly.
Akela and I turned as one to see Neka standing in the doorway. The cat-girl’s eyes were wide with excitement, her pupils dilated to the size of dinner plates. She licked her lips, and behind her, her tail flicked back and forth in eagerness.
“Fish-people,” I corrected my assistant with a laugh. “And no, you can’t eat them.”
“Mrowl,” Neka pouted, and her ears drooped.
“The planet is over ninety percent water, though,” Akela supplied, to which Neka hissed in response, her ears flat against her head. The mechanic started at the cat-girl’s reaction and looked to me for help.
“What Akela meant was that with so much water, there’s bound to be an abundance of sea life and, in turn, sea foooood,” I cajoled my assistant in a sing-song tone.
Neka perked up at that but still wasn’t one hundred percent convinced. “As long as I don’t have to catch the fish,” she mumbled petulantly.
I chuckled and beckoned her to come closer. The cat-girl skipped across the room and right to where my hand was waiting to rub behind her ear.
“I promise you don’t have to catch the fish,” I said as I listened to her purr. Neka was content to sit there and let me scratch her for a moment, but then her eyes popped open and she gave a start.
“Oh yeah!” she exclaimed and bounced up and down on the balls of her feet. “Omni sent me to tell you we’ll be dropping out of hyperspace in about half an hour.”
I blinked in shock. “Already?” How had the week flown by so fast?
Neka bobbed her head. “Yup! He said you two need to get changed,” she trilled and gave a little spin. I realized she was in the jumpsuit and coat she had purchased on Theron. I looked down at my ratty t-shirt and jeans and then over at Akela’s equally casual and worn outfit.
“I guess we don’t paint the most professional picture just yet,” I told the mechanic with a teasing grin.
The silver-haired woman looked uncomfortable for a moment as she rubbed the back of her neck. “I, uh… most of my stuff ends up grease stained or torn, so I don’t have… much else in terms of outfits. Especially nothing as nice as that,” she said sheepishly as she motioned to Neka’s ensemble.
I frowned. Shit. I hadn’t even thought of the mechanic when we had purchased the supplies. Again, I had only been thinking of Neka and me. I needed to work on recalibrating and remembering I had a three-person crew now.
Before I could respond and apologize for my lack of foresight, Neka giggled beside us. I turned to the cat-girl and found her wiggling with barely repressed excitement, and her tail lashed back and forth like a whip.
I narrowed my eyes at my assistant. “Neka,” I questioned and put my hands on my hips. “Is there something you want to share with the group?”
The cat-girl shook her head back and forth quickly and brought her hands up to cover her mouth. “Nope! Nothing at all, CT. I just… need to show Akela something real quick!”
Faster than either of us could track, my assistant grabbed a hold of Akela’s wrist and began to tow her out of the room. The mechanic looked back at me with wide, pleading eyes, but I could only give her a jaunty little wave before Neka had her out the door and down the hallway.
“Meet us on the bridge when you’re dressed!” my assistant hollered back to me, her voice echoing down the hall. “And wear the uniform!”
The cat-girl had taken to calling our Theron purchased clothes our new ‘uniform.’ It was pretty cute.
I shook my head at Neka’s antics, but went to do as she said all the same.
When I had everything in place twenty minutes later, I gave myself one last glance over in the mirror on the back of my door. I didn’t look half bad.
The jumpsuit and overcoat still fit like a dream, the fabric tight but not restrictive, airy but insulated. It accentuated the lean muscle I had built up in my arms and legs over the years. Most brokers tended to be soft men, paper pushers in nice suits. I tended to like to get my hands dirty, actually walk and work the planets I brokered. The personal gym onboard the Lacuna Noctis didn’t hurt either.
The black and gray color scheme of my outfit was also definitely an improvement over the gaudy red and blue I had worn for almost a decade. It made my green and blue heterochromatic eyes stand out more, which other people tended to like to comment on. I looked at my face in the mirror and turned it from side to side. My hair was a little longer than it used to be and, without a backup plan, I just styled it as I used to: slicked back on the sides with it coiffed on top. I shaved so my face was clean and smooth. I smiled at myself and my reflection grinned back.
“Guess it’s show time again, Colby,” I said to the mirror. “Time to show everyone why you are the best broker the galaxies have to offer.”
I took a deep breath, winked at myself, and headed toward the bridge.
When the bridge doors slid open, I realized my two female crew members had already beat me there. As I stepped through the doorway, Neka spun toward me and jumped in front of the mechanic with her arms outstretched, and that was a little comical given how the silver-haired woman was at least half a head taller than the cat-girl.
“Close your eyes, CT!” my assistant commanded sternly. Her face was very serious and determined.
I raised my eyebrows at her, but after five years I had learned it was best not to argue with the petite girl. I closed my eyes.
“Should I be counting down to something?” I asked with a smile.
“Nope! Just walk forward a little bit… just like that… okay, stop!”
I came to a standstill what felt like a few meters behind the captain’s chair.
“Okay! Are you ready?” my assistant asked me. I could hear the grin on her face.
“Neka,” I heard Akela say in exasperation. “This really isn’t necessary. I think…”
“Shhhh! Just stand there. It’ll be fun, I promise!”
The mechanic mumbled something under her breath that I couldn’t hear, but she apparently complied.
“Okay, Neka,” I said to my assistant. “What’s the big surprise? Can I open my eyes now?”
There was silence for a moment, and the sound of shifting clothing. Then…
“Okay!” Neka exclaimed. “Open them!”
I blinked open my eyes and worked to refocus them. My assistant and mechanic were standing a few meters away. Neka stood off to the side, her arms outstretched to gesture to Akela.
“Ta-da!” the cat-girl crowed, and I followed the line of her arms to the silver-haired woman that stood uncomfortably at her side… … and promptly felt my heart stop.
Akela now wore the same outfit as my assistant. The same form-fitted gray jumpsuit, though on the mechanic the color looked more silver as if to match her hair, and the same black coat edged in yellow. Akela was more willowy than my assistant, with her longer limbs and toned muscle honed from years of manual labor. Although I berated myself for looking, I also noted her chest was also slightly less… ample than Neka’s. The mechanic was still drop dead gorgeous, but obviously wasn’t used to such tight and expensive clothing because she shifted from foot to foot, her arms crossed in front of her chest, and her fingers picked at the fabric that clung to her arms.
“Well?” Neka asked me, her eyes alight with mirth. “What do you think? I think it looks good on her but she keeps arguing.” The cat-girl pouted at the mechanic who, despite the blush that stained her cheeks, rolled her eyes.
I realized my mouth was gaping open. I quickly shut it and tried to swallow past the dryness in my throat. It was a little hard, given the two beautiful women in front of me.
“It, uh it looks great,” I stuttered. “On both… on both of you! When did you, um, buy the, uh, the extra set?” I directed at Neka.
My assistant rolled her eyes at me, an unusual expression for her. “Well, it couldn’t be a crew uniform if the whole crew didn’t have one, CT. Duh.”
“I gave Neka the measurements after we met Akel
a in her shop,” Omni intoned from above us. He seemed rather proud to have been part of this little crusade.
“I feel like I should be offended by that, O,” the mechanic muttered. The effect was ruined, however, by the color still high in her cheeks.
“Why would you be offended?” the AI asked. “In terms of symmetry, aesthetics, and overall health, your body is--”
“Hhookay!” I cut Omni off as I felt my own cheeks start to heat. “Um… shouldn’t we be dropping out of hyperspace right about now?” I tried not to make it seem like I was begging.
Akela shot me a grateful glance just as Omni responded, “As always, an impeccable sense of timing, Colby. We will be exiting hyperspace in T-minus one minute. The three of you might want to buckle into your seats.”
“Got it,” I replied as I crossed the last few meters to the pilot’s chair. Neka had already bounded over to her own chair, slightly behind and to the right of mine. Akela looked a little unsure as she stood in the middle of the bridge. I gave her a reassuring smile and tried to ignore how my heart still thumped in my chest at the sight of her in the jumpsuit.
“That one’s yours,” I told her as I motioned to the chair on my left. “No one’s ever used it, so you might have to make some adjustments to the station, but it’s yours for as long as you’re aboard the Lacuna.”
The mechanic nodded and made her way over to the chair I had indicated. I turned back to my own, so I wasn’t overtly watching how her hips carried her across the floor and how the long tails of her coat accentuated them very nicely.
Focus, CT. Now is not the time. I could contemplate the emotions roiling in my gut over my assistant and mechanic after I had brokered this deal.
Once the three of us were buckled in, I tapped at my display to bring up the file on Proxima V on the main viewport. Just as the file opened, Omni announced, “Exiting hyperspace in three… two… one.”
As he reached the end of his countdown, the ship lurched beneath us, dropped out of hyperspace, and into the Icarius System. The ship continued to shake, however, and I felt uneasy.
“Hey, O?” I questioned. “Is this turbulence okay?”
“Affirmative,” the AI replied. “You’re feeling the gravitational pull from the various wormholes in the system. You can see the cluster of them just past the planet.”
Sure enough, just past the small blue orb of Proxima V that we were drawing near, were a semi-circle of bright… disks, for lack of a better word. Or bowls, rather, as the centers of each wormhole looked indented as it funneled inward and cut through space-time.
I glanced back at my crew and found both women staring with their mouths agape. I turned back to the viewport and toggled a few commands, but I didn’t have to do much. Omni had already calculated our descent, and he was much better at adjusting for things like gravitational pulls.
“We will reach the planet in a little under fifteen minutes,” the AI informed us.
Suddenly, a beeping noise sounded through the bridge. I glanced down at my display to see someone was hailing us… and the call sign looked rather familiar.
“Son of a bitch,” I exclaimed. “Looks like Arden Warrick is the T-N rep that’s been stationed in orbit.”
Neka let out a hiss of displeasure, and Omni let down a mechanical hand to placate her by scratching behind her ears. The cat-girl wasn’t a fan of the bastard either, given the last time we were in his presence, he tried to ask how much I’d charge him to borrow Neka for the night. I might have ended up punching him in the jaw.
“Who’s that?” Akela asked, and if it wasn’t for the G-forces as we drew closer and closer to the planet, I would have turned to see her expression.
“An asshole,” I said at the exact same time Neka replied, “Not a good man,” and Omni supplied, “He is Colby’s rival.”
I scoffed at the AI’s response. “He wishes he were my rival. I still have nearly double the number of deals brokered that he does.”
The beeping continued as Warrick kept trying to hail us.
“Are you going to answer that?” my mechanic asked.
I reached out and pressed a button to silence the call. “Nope. Don’t have anything to say to that prick, and he has no authority to stop us from landing on an unbrokered planet. So, everyone, wave bye-bye to Warrick,” I sing-songed as we drew up to the Terra-Nebula broker’s ship, the Mercenary Star.
It was a little bigger than the Lacuna Noctis but didn’t have half the class or personality.
As we rocketed past his ship, I raised my middle finger at it, even though I knew he couldn’t see me. It still felt satisfying. Just past his ship, I also noticed another one hovering in orbit, this one in the orange and yellow colors of the Nova-Sol Corporation. Seems like we had our competition cut out for us.
Proxima V now loomed in our viewport, and it blocked out everything else. The blue of the ocean was a lot deeper and richer than images and holograms had depicted. It leaned more toward navy than cerulean like the oceans of Earth. It also made the single, connected continent look much smaller in comparison. Granted, the landmass did take up half of the side of the planet facing us, but in contrast with the vast oceans, it looked more like a slightly overgrown island.
“Where are we landing, O?” I asked as my eyes swept across the continent. The southern half was bleached-yellow desert, and the northernmost reaches, that I knew to be towering mountain ranges, were cloaked in clouds.
“There is a bay that cuts into the continent on the northwest side,” the AI dictated. “After a cursory scan of the island, I have determined that the largest concentration of people reside along the bay coast, the number growing as the bay reaches farther inland. We’ll be landing on the southern tip of the bay.”
A moment later, he added, “Brace yourselves. We are now entering the upper atmosphere.”
The ship lurched again, but it was much smoother than when we dropped out of hyperspace. In fact, this close to the planet, we couldn’t even feel the wormholes anymore, the huge rock we were about to land on acting as an organic shield.
Once we had entered the atmosphere, the rest of the ride down was rather uneventful. Just as Omni had described, we glided toward the continent and then angled toward the bay in the northwest. The landmass had seemed so small when we were in orbit, but up close it looked like it took up the whole horizon.
“How are we going to talk to the natives?” Akela suddenly blurted from behind me. I glanced over my shoulder to see her staring wide-eyed in more than mild fear at the approaching ground. “I mean… they don’t speak our language, do they?”
“Omni can automatically translate the majority of known languages,” I assured her.
“What if it’s an unknown language?” she shot back. Her eyes were glimmering pools of amethyst.
I smiled at her in reassurance. “Then he might take a day or two to learn the syntax, but he’ll be able to still translate it within a week.”
That had happened before. Not very many times, but it’d happened.
The AI suddenly dropped down another mechanical arm and gently patted Akela on the head like he did for Neka whenever she was upset. The mechanic gave a start but didn’t shove the AI away.
“All will be well,” Omni told her. “Do not worry. Although it might not seem like it, Colby does know what he’s doing.”
“Thank you?” I said. I didn’t know if I should take that as a compliment or not.
“You are welcome, Colby.”
Not much else was said as we made our final descent. Within a handful of minutes, our ship shuddered once more as the Lacuna Noctis settled on the surface of Proxima V.
We had made it.
“Well, crew! Who’s ready to get paid?” I exclaimed as I spun in my captain’s chair. Neka grinned at me in glee. Akela still looked a little frightened. “Come on,” I said. “Everything is going to be just fine.”
I stood up from my chair with a flourish and walked over to extend my hand to the still pale mechani
c. Neka bounded over to the woman’s other side and offered one of her hands, too.
“Planets are a lot of fun,” the cat-girl said with a smile as she reached out and took Akela’s hand. Her ears and tail wouldn’t stop moving in excitement. “The air always tastes different! Cleaner. Not like ships and oil and fuel.” She made a disgusted face. “And! And the gravity even feels different, too! More… real. And don’t get me started on the food,” she said. Her eyes narrowed in pleasure, and she licked her lips.
I smiled at my assistant, grateful that she was doing her best to put Akela at ease. The two women had come a long way from Neka glaring at the mechanic in the shop on Theron and the mechanic scowling back. I think the two of them were just finally happy to have a friend. Neka had Omni and me, but I know that wasn’t the same as female friendships. I hadn’t asked her, but I assumed Akela had no one but her mother back on Theron.
The mechanic also seemed to recognize what the cat-girl was trying to accomplish. Gratitude shone in her violet gaze as she took first Neka’s hand and then my own and slid to her feet.
“Guess I gotta see for myself then, huh?” she said with a thin smile.
Neka purred in happiness and, hand in hand, we all walked toward the cargo hold.
Omni met us at the loading ramp in one of the mini-drones. I narrowed my eyes at it.
“Did you get taller?” I asked the AI. The drone seemed inexplicably taller but not any notably different besides. I tried to pinpoint if there were any additional pieces that weren’t there before.
“Maybe,” the AI said nonchalantly, “but that’s not important right now.”
The drone turned to my assistant and mechanic and executed a formal bow. “Now, the moment we’ve all been waiting for. Ladies, I welcome you to Proxima V.”
The mechanical arm of the drone reached out and pressed the button to release the loading ramp. Once the door cracked open, the cargo filled with the smell of salt, and as the ramp lowered, I realized I could hear the water.
Neka could hear it too because her bravado faded a bit and her ears flattened closer to her head, but I watched as Akela squeezed the cat-girl’s hand and returned her earlier smile of reassurance.
