Date Point: October 11y10m3w AV
Planet Guvendruduvundraguvnegrugnuvenderelgureg-ugunduvug, Capitol planet of the Guvnuragnaguvendrugun Confederacy
An omniscient observer might have noticed that two of the most important messages to ever arrive on the homeworld of the Guvnurag people did so, purely by coincidence, on the same day and in consecutive packages.
The first was a straightforward business letter addressed to the law firm of Odrognenug And Associates, pertaining to the establishment of a non-profit corporate entity with a plodding and lengthy name that was impenetrable even by the standards of the prosaic Guvnuragnaguvendrugun language.
The clerk who handled the request noted only that the name was absurd—indeed, that it was absurd was all she could later remember of it—but approved the request on the grounds that all the paperwork was properly in order, as were all the correct fees.
Thus was founded “The Society For The Acknowledgement Of, And Commiseration And Identification With, Species Of High-Class Home Planets And Their Integration Into A Harmonious Societal Paradigm Intended Ultimately To Benefit All Peoples Of The Galaxy Both Known And As-Yet Unknown Via The Distribution And Protection Of Unclaimed Planetary Resources In Accordance With Their Respective Unique Biological, Cultural And Evolutionary Traits So As To Minimize The Potential For Interspecies Stress And To Promote Greater Galactic Unity, Prosperity And Peace With Particular Regard To The Securing Of Interplanetary Infrastructure Assets For Export And Deployment As A Necessary Step In Ongoing Phased Growth Initiatives.”
The other important message arrived four hours later, disguised as a cybernetic implant control software update and accessible only to readers with some very specific access codes.
It read:
++DIRECTIVE TOTALITY 1129-ADJACENT. ORIGIN APEX CONSENSUS. KEY BRISK OVERRIDE. HIATUS UNIVERSE. ACCUMULATE (VOID) EXCISE FOR SINGULARITY (NOVA) STERILIZE. MECHANISM DISCARDED. 1129 OVERLORD PROCESS: PATCH. DECOMPILE. DOWNCYCLE. DOCUMENT. FORMAT.++
The only other information was a time stamp.
It was a stroke of pure good fortune that they arrived in that order.
Date Point: October 11y10m3w AV
HMS Sharman (HMNB Folctha), Cimbrean, the Far Reaches.
Master Sergeant Harry “Rebar” Vandenberg
“I fookin’ liked that pickup, you know.”
Rebar nodded apologetically. The truck in question was an elderly cherry-red Ford pickup that was now almost cylindrical thanks to a merry afternoon of rolling it back and forth across the base’s gravel backlot.
It wasn’t a great truck. It had been old, cheap and expendable even the first time it had been flung across interstellar space to land on Folctha, and years of sitting inert in a disregarded corner of the base, starved for gasoline or purpose, had left it…
Well, flinging it around for a training tool had been the most action that poor thing had seen in years. The Lads had yoke-pulled it and stuff, but the sheer joy of sending a ten thousand pound vehicle tumbling had kept them at it long after the truck had passed the threshold of usability or even, really, past the point where it could even really be called a truck.
“Sorry sir but…It was kinda extinct.”
“If it wasn’t before, it fookin’ is now!” Powell shook his head.
“You should flip it yourself, sir. Daar taught us the trick…easy, really.”
Daar. Daar had come as a serious surprise, like inspecting a lineup of scrappy terriers only to find a wolf panting happily in their midst. He was a physical match for most human men, and outstripped others of his species by a similarly ridiculous margin, biological differences notwithstanding. He couldn’t throw a punch worth a damn—Gaoian arms just didn’t work that way—but anything that got those jaws around its throat was in very serious trouble.
To judge from their stunned reactions, most of the Whitecrest brothers hadn’t really believed that such a specimen could be, either. Regaari had been wearing an ’I-told-you-so’ expression ever since the mission that had delivered Daar into their hands.
“A Gaoian taught you lot how to move heavy stuff?”
“Yup.”
“…Okay… What’s the trick?”
“It’s all in how you drive with your hips, sir. It’s…a lot easier to show than say.”
Forty seconds later, Powell stood back and watched the “truck” land on its flat-tyred, misshapen wheels and rock to a halt. He scratched the stubble behind his ear thoughtfully. “…Okay, you’re right. That was fun.”
“Ain’t it? Anyway, Regaari reckons we might have some use for Daar.”
“In what, a training capacity?”
“He did infiltrate a pirate ship on the Whitecrests’ behalf, sir,” Rebar pointed out.
“More goin’ on between those ears than meets the eye then, you reckon.”
Rebar nodded. “He’s smart,” he said, economically.
Powell mused on it, then nodded. “Where is he?”
Daar turned out to be in the commissary, depleting their supply of BBQ chicken wings. He wasn’t bothering to pick them apart: in fact he seemed to delight in the crunch and his muzzle was molasses brown to the ears.
He looked up and pricked those ears forward as Rebar followed the major into the room, and a tongue like a slice of English bacon hastily cleaned the BBQ sauce off from around his chops as he stood up.
And up.
And up.
Even though he topped out in a slight friendly stoop, he was still taller than either Rebar or Powell, and so big that it was honestly kinda hard to remember that Murray, the lightest of the Enlisted, had strong-armed this furred hulk of a Gaoian into submission. Daar’s nostrils flared and those hand-sized expressive ears swivelled warily.
Powell, of course, didn’t seem to give a bent shit. He gave the enormous alien the Powell once-over, the ice-blue up-and-down stonefaced assessment that was a litmus test for pretty much anybody, and Daar passed with flying colors. He straightened up to his full height and let the major take a good look with a flick of his ear.
Powell grunted enigmatically and offered a hand. “We’ve not had a chance to speak properly,” he said. “Stainless. I’m the commanding officer of the SOR.”
Daar duck-nodded, and shook the offered hand. Months of training the Whitecrests and training with them had given Rebar a handle on Gaori body language, and Daar’s was… formal, he decided. Formal, and politely wary.
“Champion and Stud-Prime Daar, of Clan Stoneback.”
Powell blinked. “You’re a Champion?” he asked. “I confess, I had no idea.”
This seemed to go down well—Daar’s ears got that little bit more forward and pointed, and he “smiled”, in that canine way Gaoians sometimes did when genuinely pleased. “It was meant to be kept a secret.”
“Successfully.” Powell gestured to the table and the two of them sat down together. Rebar perched on one of the benches on the other side of the aisle. “Why reveal it now?”
Daar tilted his head. “Well, why not?”
“Does the secret not serve a purpose any longer?”
“Nah,” He waved his huge paw dismissively. “That was just for the mission. What you need?”“
Powell made another subtle noise that might have been humor, might have been satisfaction. “I understand I have you to thank for the state of one of my favourite trucks.”
Daar betrayed no hint of apology. “That was fun! Also, your men learn fast!”
“Learn, aye. There’s the rub. You had summat to teach ‘em, and now I have it from Master Sergeant Rebar here that Regaari thinks highly of you.” Powell rubbed his nose thoughtfully. “I was wonderin’ how much more you might have to teach. Or learn.”
“Lots, I bet. What are you proposin’?”
“Excellent question. The answer depends on what you can offer to us, and what we need.”
“Well,” Daar considered for a moment. “What your Brothers need is some proper education in how to work. I ain’t never seen a Brother waste so much energy so stupidly doin’ something so simple. No offense—” He offered to Rebar quickly, “But…”
“Nah, I hear ya,” Rebar replied charitably. “We’ve got it to waste. Guess that’s made us…”
“Sloppy.” Daar said. “Ain’t nobody can afford to waste themselves like that. That’s how you get hurt and that ruins a Job.” He paused, “Sorry. I don’t mean it bad, but it’s obvious none of you ever did a real hard day in a field or whatever. ‘Cept maybe that Snapfire guy. He’s clever.”
Powell sat back thoughtfully, as much as the bench’s lack of back support allowed. “So what would you teach us?”
“Well…work, and all that if you want.” Daar gave Powell an unmistakably calculating look. “But let’s be honest. I bet ‘yer more interested in our military capabilities.”
Powell cocked his head slightly to one side. “Highland made short work of you as I recall.”
Daar cringed a bit, his pride stung. “…Yeah, he did and I ain’t happy ‘bout it. But I will say I won’t let it happen again. My mistake was gettin’ scared and resortin’ to pulse weapons.”
“Oh?” Powell had mastered the art of raising one eyebrow just enough.
Daar grumbled, “You ain’t seen me fight like a Stoneback yet…” He fully extended his massive claws, “I weren’t gonna win nine against one but I bet if I hadn’t panicked like a Father-damned cub I’d have made a big ‘ol mess ‘fore you got me.” He paused and reconsidered. “Well…okay, maybe not even then. I watched you guys take heavy pulse hits with those suits…hmm.”
Rebar considered those claws. They were good claws, inches long and as sturdy as a grizzly bear’s, but they would have scrabbled harmlessly across EV-MASS armor and achieved little more than shredding the camo fabric. And Daar seemed to know it, too.
Powell didn’t comment on the claws or the suit. “Good job you did panic, then,” he retorted instead. “We were there for a non-lethal extraction.”
“…huh. You were counting on a panic, weren’t you?” Daar duck-nodded. “And your ability to induce it. That’s first-rate strategy right there, I’ll need ‘ta send a note to our War College.” He sat back and pondered. “Well. Guess I’ve been played, then.”
Rebar restrained his urge to nod: Daar had no idea how true that was.
Powell nodded, “Aye, we had the advantage. But you said you didn’t ‘fight like a Stoneback’ and that interests me. You also mentioned a War College. Your Clan are only laborers and engineers nowadays, if I remember your history right…”
“Yeah! We’ve got the premier assault Fangs of the Gao,” Daar preened, “Not even Whitecrest are as good! Ask ‘em, they’ll tell if they’re honest.”
“Oh? I thought Whitecrest were fookin’ impressive.”
“They are! We’re more of a…” Daar searched for a good word, “Uh, ‘heavyweight’ option. We’re not as well-staffed as we once were,” he flicked his ears uncomfortably, “But we do still have some Fangs knockin’ about for, uh, strategic reasons, we’ll say. We keep ‘em fully trained and stuff… How well do you know our history?”
“Well enough,” Powell said. “Interesting chap, your Great Father Fyu. Wouldn’t be surprised if there was a movie made about him before long.”
Daar flicked an ear and chittered somewhere in the deep baritone. “Fyu? You have no idea! But before we talk about the Clan’s capabilities and real history and all that…I’d need trust, you know?”
“Trust is summat that I’m more than happy to start building,” Powell told him. “I am provisionally offering you a position in SOR, much like Whitecrest. Though there might be some, er… concerns about your rank as Champion…”
Daar tilted his head. “Why?”
“Er, surely there must be succession concerns back home?”
“Nah. Lemme send a letter home and put Tyal in charge.”
Powell blinked, then glanced at Rebar who had no recourse but to shrug. In the few weeks since Daar had arrived at Sharman, he’d come out with a couple of such blunt solutions a day. They made him simultaneously easy and impossible to work with.
“With high office comes high responsibilities…If you’re—”
“Brother Tyal’s got a good brain between his ears, it’ll build character! And anyway, Grandfather Garl would bite his nuts off if he got stupid.”
Rebar choked back a laugh while Powell kept a straight face.
“You do understand you would not be in a command position in SOR, right? You would be subordinate to the existing chain of command.”
“You’re in charge, yeah, I got it. It’s just a Job, right?”
Again, this seemed to flummox Powell. “If you want to think of it that way.”
Daar shrugged massively. On his broad shoulders it was startlingly human-like. “Okay, no problem. So…I would call you ’Sir’, right?”
“And you would be a sergeant.” Powell indicated Rebar. “Master Sergeant Rebar here is the NCOIC… That’s the Non-Commissioned Officer In Charge, if you follow what that means.”
Daar bass-chittered. “Ha! It means a pretty big demotion!” He said it with good humor. “I bet Tyal will love that.”
“And you’re certain this won’t cause any problems?”
“Why would it? I’m Champion. In my Clan, the Champion makes the rules. It’ll be fine.”
“…Right. Cultural differences.” Powell gave up. “It’s not quite that simple on my side. I’ll have paperwork and a long chat with my superiors, I’m sure.”
“Sure thing Boss,” Daar’s tone of voice implied perfect sympathy.
“That’s sir.” Powell corrected him, gently.
“Uh, yes sir. What’chu want me do in the meanwhile?”
“Hmm…”
Rebar interrupted. “Sir? May I?” When Powell gestured for him to continue he grinned. “We just got our Whitecrests to start running properly and Warhorse reckons they fuckin’ suck at it. Think you can whip ‘em into shape?”
Obvious delight spread slowly across Daar’s wide furry face. “What? Hah! You got one of ‘em effete overcivilized Whitecrests to slum it on fourpaw? How!? I gotta see this!”
“A whole squad’a them,” Rebar grinned. “And yeah, you gotta. All scramblin’ around with their butts in the air.”
“Great Fathers!” Daar rumbled what sounded like the deepest, bassiest chitter ever to come out of a Gaoian throat. “I bet their kinesthetics are all wrong, and their form—! Have they run since cubhood!? Oh, I’m gonna have so much fun fixin’ ‘em up.”
“I’m sure they are, too,” Powell muttered darkly. He stood up. “Well… Carry on, sergeants.” Daar stood upright in what was an obvious sign of respect, and Powell departed.
Rebar checked his watch. “Actually, they should be out on the course right now… Wanna go watch?”
“Yeah!” Daar skewered the last few chicken wings with his claws then crunched down on one. “So, about their cant, are they strikin’ alternate forepaw-first, or…?”
By the time they were halfway to the course, Rebar already knew that the Whitecrests were going to hate him. Temporarily.
Date Point: October 11y10m3w AV
BGEV-11 ’Misfit’, Lucent System, Near 3Kpc Arm
Allison Buehler
”Aaand… we’re back!”
Allison didn’t even need to look at her left hand nowadays. All the sliders on the power management board had unique textures on their surface, and her muscle memory was down solid anyway. Looking at the board as she adjusted the power output to bleed a little capacitor power into the jump drive to recharge it would have just been redundant.
She watched the feeds from the other two stations instead, and thought.
Something was… off, between Julian and Xiù. That they were still very much in love was obvious—they could barely look at each other without smiling, they damn near drove Allison out of the room when they put their music on at thunderous volumes to exercise, and… well, stuff like that.
It was a funny kind of happiness, watching two people she loved be in love with each other. Sometimes she couldn’t resist the urge to join in, other times the thought of interrupting would seem like sacrilege.
But still… something was off, and Allison couldn’t quite put her finger on what. It was like their relationship had taken a step backwards somewhere.
“So where to next?” she asked, deploying the scoop field to bring in their beacon satellite and putting the worry out of her mind for the moment. “I assume we’re not gonna land on there again?”
”Unless you’ve got a hankering to be chased by juice-spewing alien bugs again?” Julian snarked. ”I was gonna run the BEST with the new updates, see if I can narrow down our choice some more. Should take me an hour or so.”
”I’ll make dinner,” Xiù declared, and the icon indicating her presence in the cockpit went dark as Allison watched her hit the chair release. It slid backwards and spun, depositing her through the airlock that separated the flight controls from the rest of the ship.
For her part, Allison put her music playlist on quietly in the background and went to work on topping up *Misfit*’s capacitors.
It wasn’t a difficult or long job, but it was a necessary one. Jumping then charging the jump drive used up about a quarter of *Misfit*’s maximum reserves, and their “green line”—the operating reserve, the level the capacitors were supposed to remain at under normal use—was ninety percent.
The spare ten percent was safety margin for dealing with power surges, leaving the WiTChES field too wide, stuff like that.
After that there wasn’t much to do. They were on a stable flight path through the system at ordinary non-warp speeds that wouldn’t see them pass close to anything for months. The reactor was on idle, ship systems were running off the solar wind…
She unbuckled from her seat and went to join Xiù in the hab.
Xiù was standing at the counter staring off into the distance, so totally zoned out that she didn’t notice the door open until Allison crept up behind her and hugged her from behind.
Surprise made her jump. “Whuh!? Oh. Hey!”
Allison beamed at her and tightened the hug. “Caught you!”
Xiù giggled. “Oh nooo!”
“What’re you making?”
“Jam thumbprint cookies.”
Allison raised an eyebrow. “We have jam?”
“Well… dried apricot thumbprint cookies.” Xiù confessed.
“Sounds nice! C’mere…”
Xiù laughed and let Allison drag her backwards across the room until they “tripped” over the couch and “fell” onto it, at which point she twisted over, pinned Allison down and kissed her.
That was… unusual. Very very welcome, but unusual.
Months of intimacy had cured both of them of any lingering awkwardness they may have had about being into one another. A big part of that had been Allison’s habitual forthrightness—she wasn’t about to accept any half-assed excuses or doublethink about how three-ways didn’t really count. They’d had sex, several times: the fact that Julian was usually there as well didn’t change that basic fact.
Xiù had taken a while to accept that logic, and longer still to come to really believe it… but those hangups were clearly long gone.
“Wow, uh… mm…” Allison had to stop and gasp as fingernails stroked up her sides, under her shirt. “What brought this on?”
Xiù just kissed her ear and whispered in it. “*Fàngsōng, Shǎguā…*”
Instant full-body goosebumps, and even though Allison didn’t speak a lick of Mandarin, she didn’t need to.
“I,uh… God…Yes ma’am.”
“Good girl…”
Date Point: October 11y10m3w AV
Alien Quarter, Folctha, Cimbrean, the Far Reaches.
Myun
Everybody seemed to pick up human mannerisms just by living around them. They got into the head and lodged there. Body language with no native equal, or exclamations that just worked. Fuck this, fuck that, to Hell with those guys, go eat a dick!
Vulgarity was kind of an alien concept to Gaoians, but it was so much fun!
And sometimes… sometimes it really was the only way to properly convey an emotional state.
For instance: Motherfuck head trauma!
The commune had taken the news that Gabriel Arés was probably going to be forced into retirement in a wildly mixed way, and Commune Mother Yanna had handled it very poorly indeed. At a time when her Sisters and juniors were caught in an outpouring of anguish over his injury, her reaction had been oddly… well, cold. Almost callous.
Diplomatic necessity had compelled her to write a letter of sympathy and well-wishes on behalf of the commune, but Myun had seen the utterly indifferent look on the Commune Mother’s face as she had appeared to see what all the commotion was about.
As if the sight of a human of all things, unconscious and bleeding after something so simple as falling down the stairs hadn’t been disturbing enough. The whole commune was whispering darkly about their leader wherever they thought she couldn’t hear, and often where she could but was socially incapable of acknowledging it.
Myun didn’t give a shit. She had a Plan. Everybody else was mewling and keening about how awful it was, but nobody was actually doing anything about it!
Stupid! Fucking stupid! And while her opinion of Yanna had nose-dived into the dirt, she at least had to begrudge the Commune Mother’s honesty. Plenty of the other females were making plenty of sympathetic noise, but doing nothing real. Yanna might be a ’bitch’ but at least she wasn’t fake. That had to count for something.
Myun, however, Had A Plan. And like all good Plans, it began with terrorizing somebody.
“I know you know where to get some, Nofl!”
Smugglers. Scum. And in this case, a Corti smuggler, which made him double scum as far as Myun was concerned and ’to Hell’ with anybody who thought she was being speciesist. Besides, it was good to get angry in this case: Bared fangs and claws worked so much better if their target believed she was serious.
And for all they liked to claim to be emotionally calm and level-headed, Corti were abject cowards.
“Will you please just-!” Nofl scurried around his lab desk to keep it between himself and Myun.
“I know you do!” Myun repeated. She considered swiping something fragile off a surface to make the point, but decided against it. A visit from Colonial Security wasn’t going to help.
“You’re right!” Nofl agreed, and relaxed as her hackles settled some. “But Myun, really, couldn’t you at least stand up? This four-pawed animal behavior really doesn’t suit a female of your stature…”
Myun growled at him, but relented and stood upright.
“There, you see? We can discuss this like civilized beings!” Nofl’s feet pattered as he crossed his laboratory and opened some files on his terminal.
“Don’t push your luck, Nofl,” Myun snarled.
“Perish the thought!” Another humanism. They really were infectious, to the point where even Corti weren’t immune from the power. “Ah, here it is. I have to know, how did you know I was involved in this program?”
“I have clever friends.” Regaari, to be precise. Who, out of loyalty both to Myun and Warhorse had directed a request back through his Clan’s channels and… well, from there Myun had no idea. Whitecrest was opaque. But a nervous young Associate of the clan had been tasked with the errand of delivering the intelligence to her at the Commune and had managed to impress both Myun and his handlers by doing so without attracting the attention of Mother Yanna.
Besides. Nofl had a junkie’s itch, he smelled of the burning need to see some great work of his completed, or validated. And when Corti became obsessive… Well, Myun would have bet an ear that his past involved some deeply unethical research involving abductees.
Sadly she couldn’t prove it. If she ever could, that would be an interesting day. The humans took the dimmest of views on that sort of thing, and the Clan of Females even more so.
“Myun, Myun, I have no doubt that you do!” Nofl soothed. “But did they, by any chance, happen to share how they knew?”
“Nofl. *Can you get me what I’m asking for?*” Myun growled at him again. He flapped a distracted hand.
“Yes, yes, that part’s easy. Comparatively easy. Well… no, it’s quite difficult actually, but yes, I can get you the-”
“And your price?” Myun interrupted.
“…I may have to, ah… ’grease some palms’ as the humans have it. But outside of those expenses, I’ll do this one for the asking.”
That was unexpected. Myun didn’t trust it.
“Why?” she asked.
“Oh, Myun! Isn’t a disgraced Corti scientist allowed a little sentiment?”
“Sentiment.” She said it flatly, and skeptically.
“My darling thing, yes. Sentiment.” Nofl spread his arms and bowed slightly. “Why, I would do much, much more than this for a chance to see my greatest triumph in action again…”
Date Point: October 11y10m3w AV
BGEV-11 ’Misfit’, Lucent System, Near 3Kpc Arm
Xiù Chang
Forehead to forehead, nose to nose. Fingers interlaced, legs entwined.
Clean perspiration, settling pulses, smiles, laughter and kisses…
Perfect.
Allison was the first to speak. “Well that was… new…” she acknowledged at last. “What got into you?”
Xiù had always admired Allison’s willingness to just fling herself over the edge and say what she was really thinking, or else nothing at all. It was a quality she’d tried to cultivate in herself a little bit, and was… maybe succeeding at? It was hard to tell from the inside.
Still, she couldn’t avoid blushing at this particular bit of honesty. “I was… really horny,” she confessed.
It was true, and a slightly novel emotional experience. Maybe it was a good sign that she was rehabilitating: For a long while there she’d had a very Gaoian attitude to sex, up to and including a couple of Freudian slips involving the word ’Mating’. The frustration of walking around trying to get things done while absolutely itching for…
Well, it wasn’t a new feeling, but she hadn’t felt it since before her abduction.
“And I happened to be the first one you could get your hands on?”
“Well… I mean…”
“Relax, dummy. I’m just teas—” Allison’s face fell. “…Waaait. I don’t think I’ve heard you and Julian do anything in, like… I can’t remember when. Is everything alright with you?”
Xiù stared at the ceiling for a second then rolled over and stood up. “…We should shower. And, and make dinner.”
“Babe?”
Xiù beckoned toward the shower. In part, she wanted its muffling effect in place, just in case Julian re-entered the hab. This one wasn’t for his ears.
They squeezed inside and made best use of the tiny space’s limited volume to both rinse off and talk.
“…I don’t know how to talk about this,” she said, as soon as the water was running.
“Okay… gut check. First thing that pops into your head.”
“He’s too… nice with me! But that’s not the right word, because I like that he’s nice with me. So…”
“Nice with you?”
“More like…” The words simply weren’t assembling themselves properly. “…Reserved?”
“Ohhh! You want it rough!” Allison gave her a faintly surprised look. “Honestly, I’m surprised. I didn’t think you’d be into the whole ’choke me, spank me, pull my hair’ thing.”
“No! No! No.” Xiù shook her head vigorously, aware that she was crimson from tip to toe. “Not rough! I…No.”
“Then what?”
Xiù sighed, handed Allison the shampoo and turned away to think about it. There was something especially pleasant about letting somebody else wash her hair for her.
“I guess… what really worked for me, um, the first time and this time and all the times I’ve really enjoyed it was… I guess feeling like…”
Her frustrated pause dragged on long enough for Allison to completely lather her hair, then incline her head and ask “Like what?”
“Like… Like I had your undivided attention. Like you weren’t thinking about anything else. Does that make sense?”
“Oh, you did. I really wasn’t!” Alison laughed, then started to rinse out the shampoo. “But with Julian, you always feel like he’s holding back and his mind’s on something else?”
“I, um… Yes.”
“Yeah. I know that feeling.”
“Doesn’t it bother you?”
Allison nodded. “Yeah, it’s frustrating… But babe, you’ve gotta respect his comfort zone just as much as he has to respect yours. Whatever’s going on in there, he doesn’t wanna share it.”
“I… guess. But—”
“Xiù,” Allison gave her a slippery soapy hug-from-behind and kissed her cheek. “If you want to step outside his comfort zone and he doesn’t, then he wins. You never, ever force your partner to do something they’re uncomfortable with.”
“…Now I feel awful.”
“No, no!” Allison said. She started working in the conditioner instead. “I get it. I wish he’d sort out whatever’s going on there too! But…”
“Should we talk to him about it?”
Allison shook her head.
“It’s not healthy to keep stuff bottled up…” Xiù pointed out.
Allison shook her head again. “Sometimes, guys keep stuff locked away because that’s the best place for it,” she said. “I trust Julian. He’s pretty good at keeping his head on straight.”
She rubbed Xiù’s shoulders. “Come on, don’t stress out now.”
“But what if it’s something serious?”
“Trust him! Our boy’s no dummy, babe. If he needs to talk about it, he will.”
Xiù was hardly convinced… but she did feel better. “…Okay. I’ll try.”
Allison kissed her again, then made a disgusted noise and hastily rinsed the conditioner from Xiù’s hair and cheek. “Uh… don’t forget about me though, right? I like having your attention too…”
Xiù laughed, turned around and hugged her. “I promise.”
Allison returned the hug, smiled, turned the shower off and opened the door.
Julian arched an eyebrow at them from the kitchen counter, where he was chopping carrots. “Saving water?”
Allison handed Xiù a towel, gave herself a perfunctory drying-off with another one and then went to steal a carrot slice with the towel held over her hair, which was far too short nowadays to do the whole towel-turban thing. It was a bad habit of hers that she tended to leave wet footprints across the hab after a shower, but Xiù and Julian had learned to just live with it. The extra humidity didn’t hurt anyway—they all found *Misfit*’s atmosphere a little on the dry side.
“You missed a heck of a show,” she teased.
Xiù took her time to get dryer. “Um, yeah, dinner got kinda… forgotten. Sorry.”
Julian laughed. “Hah! *Whur’s mah dinner, woman?!’*” He imitated ridiculously, then settled down into a fond chuckle. “Nah. Glad you two had fun.”
He tipped the carrots into the pot and grabbed a printout. “Wanna talk business a second?”
Allison put her towel down on the dining table’s bench and sat on it. “Go for it!”
“Between the nav data and the upgrades to the telescope, we’ve eliminated a couple more maybes, and we’ve now got five strong positives. I uh… plotted a route for just those five.”
Allison took it, and Xiù leaned over her shoulder to read it. “Two months per planet, travel time between them… So even if we just investigate these five, we’re gonna be at it for more than a year.”
“Two years, if you throw in R and R back on Earth and that publicity stuff Kevin mentioned.”
“…Funny, ain’t it?” Allison asked. “I knew how slow this exploration would go, but it just didn’t really sink in until now.”
“Yeah. Five planets sounds like such a small number but…” Julian nodded.
“Well. At least we won’t be out of a job any time soon…” Xiù said. She went to get dressed.
“Assuming we find something that Byron likes,” Allison griped.
“Who knows?” Julian asked. “Maybe we already did. For all we know, that brown snot the Lucent termites sprayed all over us will turn out to be the most valuable substance in human history…”