The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet

Day 163, GC Standard 306 PORT CORIOL

Ashby wasn’t a judgmental man, but anyone who didn’t like Port Coriol lost a few points in his book. GC space had plenty of neutral markets that welcomed spacers of all species, but the Port was something special. Even if you didn’t need to stock up, the spectacle of it was well worth the trip. Sprawling streets stuffed with open-air shop fronts, overflowing with clothes and kitsch and sundries. Grounded ships, gutted and transformed into warehouses and eateries. Towering junk heaps lorded over by odd tinkerers who could always find exactly the part you were looking for, so long as you had the patience to listen to them talk about their latest engine mod. Cold underground bunkers full of bots and chips, swarming at all hours with giddy techs and modders sporting every implant imaginable. Food stalls offering everything from greasy street snacks to curious delicacies, some with rambling menus of daily specials, others with offerings so specific that the only acceptable thing to say at the counter was “one, please.” A menagerie of sapients speaking in a dizzying array of languages, shaking hands and clasping paws and brushing tendrils.

How could you not love a place like that?

On some level, Ashby could understand how Port Coriol might be a little jarring to someone accustomed to the glossy prefab trade centers you could find throughout the GC, each as sterile and uniform as the other. The markets of the Port were anything but corporate, and the colony’s independent, anything-goes attitude was exactly what made it so beloved—or, to some, rather unsavory. Ashby conceded that the Port was a little dirty, a little scuffed around the edges. But dangerous? Hardly. Crime, for the most part, was limited to low-stakes scams aimed at tunnel-hopping students or gullible tourists. So long as you had two brain cells to rub together, Port Coriol was as safe as anywhere else. Trade was well regulated, too—that is, as regulated as you wanted it to be. Merchants who risked the ire of the port authority didn’t last long, and even those dealing in shadier merchandise had plenty of honest permits and legitimate goods on hand to keep watchful eyes happy. Port Coriol’s black market was no secret, but it was carefully managed. Not that Ashby ever tried his luck with such things. Losing his license would ruin him, and possibly his crew as well. Despite Kizzy’s regular pleas to let her buy something that would give the engines “a li’l more kick,” it was smarter to keep things above board.

The Port’s soft orange sun warmed Ashby’s skin as he led his crew through the crowded shuttle dock. Accustomed as he was to living behind sealed walls and thick plex, being outside was refreshing. As usual, though, he had forgotten about the smell—a heady mix of fuel, dust, spices, fire, perfume, kitchen grease, solder, and the natural odors of a dozen or more sapient species. Behind it all was the constant mossy funk emanating from the surrounding shores. The moon of Coriol was tidally locked, which allowed an uninterrupted source of sunlight to fall upon the skins of matted scum that capped its quiet seas. The merchants and traders who kept permanent residence on the moon often made their homes on the dark side, away from the sun and the stink.

For many sapients—Sissix and Dr. Chef included—the smell was too much to handle unfiltered. Respirators and breathing masks were a common sight, even among the people who lived there. The shuttle docks were lined with booths selling masks to newcomers who had not been forewarned of the Port’s signature scent. But Humans, with their relatively poor sense of smell, could wander the streets with nostrils fully exposed. Most Humans, anyway. Corbin had opted to wear a full breathing helmet—the Exolung Deluxe, a weighty contraption that boasted the best airborne allergen and pathogen filtration system available. Ashby thought it looked like a jellyfish tank fitted with limp balloons.

“Destination, please,” droned the AI at the quick-travel desk. It wasn’t a free-thinking program like Lovey, but a limited model, unable to do anything beyond scripted tasks. Its casing was meant to resemble a Harmagian head, complete with chin tendrils for making facial gestures. The long, doughy face was coated in a skin-like polymer, and it was not entirely unlike the species it mimicked. But its digital voice cracked around the edges, and the tendrils twitched with palsied age. Nothing about it could be confused for something alive.

“Two to the bug farms,” said Ashby, indicating himself and Dr. Chef. The AI chirped in acknowledgment. Ashby pointed to Corbin. “One to the algae depot.” Chirp. Ashby pointed to Jenks. “One to the tech district.” Chirp. Ashby turned to Sissix. “And you guys can walk, right?”

“Yeah,” said Sissix. “Our sundry run starts right through the gate here.”

“That’s all,” Ashby said. He waved his wristwrap over the scanner on the counter. A short beep indicated that payment had gone through.

“Very good,” said the AI. “Your quick-travel pods will be dispatched momentarily. Should you need additional transport or directions, look for the quick-travel symbol, as displayed atop this kiosk. If you lack a sense of sight, you may request a complimentary location indicator from this or any—”

“Thank you,” Ashby said, though the AI was still speaking. He led the crew away from the booth. Jenks remained behind.

The AI continued on, unphased by the departure of its audience. “Location indicators come in models fit for all species, and can provide alerts in a variety of sensory inputs, such as smell, taste, sound, dermal stimulation, neural stimulation—”

“Is Jenks coming?” Rosemary asked.

“Jenks always waits until the end of the speech,” Kizzy said with a fond smile. “Just to be polite.”

Rosemary looked back to the jittery AI. “That’s not a sentient model, is it?”

“I don’t think so,” said Ashby. “But try telling Jenks that. He always gives AIs the benefit of the doubt.”

“Which is absurd,” Corbin said. His voice was muffled by the breathing mask.

“So is that thing on your head,” muttered Sissix.

Ashby jumped in, addressing the group before Corbin could fire back. “Okay, folks. You know how this works.” He saw Jenks give the AI a courteous nod before walking over to join them. “Same drill as always, but this time, we’ve got GC expense chips to buy stuff with. Necessary purchases only. Everything else goes on your wristpatch. The GC’s not going to like it if they get a bill for four-course meals and body massages.”

“Well, there goes my afternoon,” Jenks said.

“Rosemary, everybody’s got their chips, right?”

“Right,” Rosemary said. “And everyone should have a list of approved expenses on their scribs, just for reference.”

“Good. Once you’ve knocked everything off your list, you’re free to do whatever you fancy until morning. Let’s try to be on our way by tenth hour.” His scrib pinged, indicating he had a new message. “Sorry, just a sec.” He pulled his scrib out from his satchel and gestured at the screen. The message appeared.

Ashby’s heart skipped.

No signature, but Ashby didn’t need one. The message was from Pei. She was here. And most importantly, she was okay. She was alive.

Even though he could feel tendays of tension leaking away, Ashby managed to remain nonchalant. He placed his scrib back in his satchel and rubbed his hand over his chin. Shit. He hadn’t shaved. Ah, well. Pei was a cargo runner. Even though her species lacked hair, she of all people could understand a lapse in personal grooming.

Sissix was eying him as he turned back to the group. He raised his eyebrows at her, then put his captain face on. “Well, what are you all waiting for? Go buy stuff.”

Rosemary hurried after her crewmates, anxious to not get lost. The shuttle dock had been crowded enough, but now that they were weaving their way through the market gates, the likelihood of her getting swept away in a sea of traders had increased. Getting lost wasn’t what scared her, exactly. It was more the prospect of getting mugged. Or harassed. Or stabbed. She’d seen a few people that definitely looked stabby. And weren’t wristpatch thieves a thing in places like this? Hadn’t she heard a story about someone who had visited Port Coriol, wandered their way into the wrong shop, and woken up in an alley with their patch arm amputated? Okay, maybe that was a little far fetched, but given that she’d just walked past an Aeluon whose entire face was a mosaic of implants, she wasn’t ready to rule out the possibility of arm-stealing patch thieves just yet. She was grateful to be with Sissix, whose presence was reassuring, and Kizzy, who was probably loud enough—both in volume and clothing—to deter stealthier criminals. They both looked like people who knew what they were doing. She hoped some of that might rub off on her.

“You sure you don’t want to go to the tech caves, Kiz?” Sissix asked.

“Nah,” said Kizzy. “Jenks has my list. I’ll pop in later to say some hellos and ogle the gizmos. But I’m all space-twitchy. I need open sky and fresh air.” She threw her arms wide and inhaled dramatically. “Ahhhhhh.”

“Mmm. Yeah. Fresh air,” Sissix said, huffing through her breathing mask.

“You know the feeling, right, Rosemary?” Kizzy bounced over to her. “You grew up planetside.”

“It’s nice having real gravity,” Rosemary said.

“Aww, have you been spacesick?”

“Just a little around the edges. But it’s no trouble, I’m getting used to it.”

“We’ll look around for balance bracelets. I’m sure somebody’s selling them.”

Sissix scoffed with amusement. “Those things are such a scam.”

“Are not,” Kizzy said. “My grandma, she wears ’em every time she goes up and she says they work like awesome.”

“Your grandma also thinks she can talk to her imubots.”

“Okay, yeah, but she never gets spacesi—oh, shit.” Kizzy looked down at her boots. “Don’t make eye contact. Don’t make eye contact.”

Rosemary averted her eyes once she saw the source of Kizzy’s panic: a simple, friendly table, covered with sealed terrariums and clay (clay!) bowls filled with info chips. Such tables were a common sight in the public squares of Florence, and the outfits of the table’s keepers were instantly recognizable. They wore heavy biosuits, like ancient Lunar explorers, sealed and padded to a degree that made Corbin’s helmet look almost sensible. Rosemary had heard that their used suits were placed into sealed containers and shot into space. Standard decontamination processes weren’t enough for them. There could be no risk of corrupting their immune systems—or worse, the natural flow of Human evolution.

Gaiists. They certainly were their own brand of crazy.

“Shit,” Kizzy said. “I made eye contact.”

“Nice job, Kiz,” Sissix said.

“I didn’t mean to!”

A Gaiist man beelined for them, cupping a round terrarium in his gloved hands. “Hello, sisters,” he said. A small vox below the suit’s faceplate transmitted his voice. His Klip was good but heavily accented, full of imprecise consonants that hinted at a lack of regular use. “Would you like to see one of the small wonders of your mother planet?” He held the terrarium out to Kizzy and Rosemary, ignoring Sissix altogether.

Rosemary mumbled a “no, thanks.” Kizzy babbled about being “late for a thing.”

“I’d like to see it,” Sissix said.

The Gaiist man’s face went stony within his helmet. With a strained smile, he held up the terrarium. Behind the plex, a complicated yellow flower sprung up from a cradle of moss. “This is an orchid,” he said, the foreign word jutting oddly into the surrounding Klip. “A delicate plant that once grew in Earthen swamps and rainforests. Like much of Earth’s diverse flora, these beautiful flowers went extinct in the wild during the Collapse.” His eyes kept darting between Kizzy and Rosemary, anxious to see them take interest. “Thanks to the efforts of our hardworking folks back home, orchids have successfully taken root in a few restored rainforests.”

“It’s beautiful,” Sissix said. She sounded like she meant it. She pointed at the flower and turned her head to her companions. “Your genitals look kind of like this, right?”

Kizzy burst out laughing. Rosemary felt her cheeks flush.

“Hey, I have a question,” Sissix said, addressing the now-stammering Gaiist. She reached out to touch the terrarium. Within his suit, the Gaiist recoiled at the sight of alien claws hovering over Earthen moss. “The scientists in the Samsara Project, do they work with orr-kids, too?”

The Gaiist frowned. “They may,” he said thinly. “But one cannot have much success with dirt if one lives with his feet in the sky.” A hint of piousness crept into his friendly tone.

Rosemary almost felt sorry for the Gaiist. Sissix was baiting him, trying to make him drop the nature lesson pretense and come out swinging with the tenets of Gaian Purism. On the surface, the Gaiist goal of healing their species’ barely habitable homeworld was a noble one. But this was the same goal shared by the scientists of the Samsara Project, who lived in the silvery orbital ring that encircled Earth—a ring built not by Humans, but by philanthropic Aeluons and Aandrisks. And though restoration efforts on the ring were headed by Humans, many scientists working alongside them were from other worlds. Die-hard Gaiists—especially the kind who braved shuttle docks in search of lost souls—hated that.

The Gaiist turned to Rosemary and Kizzy, the edge leaving his voice, a bit of desperation creeping in. “If you should have some time to yourselves during your stay here”—in other words, away from the alien—“please come see us again. We have many more Earthen wonders to share, and even more in the habitat tanks aboard our ship.” He switched the terrarium into his left hand and reached into his satchel. “Here,” he said, handing them each an info chip. “Take these as a gift. They contain videos of some of the magical places that await you on our homeworld. Just stick them in your scrib and enjoy.” He smiled, as if the mere mention of Earth brought him peace. “Do come see us again, sisters. You are always welcome among us.”

The Gaiist man retreated to his table, leaving the three crewmates to make a hasty departure.

“And that,” said Kizzy, tossing the chip into the first trash box she saw, “is why you never make eye contact. Way to go, self.”

“You know, there are crazy speciest Aandrisks, too,” Sissix said. “But they don’t go bugging other people about it.”

“What do your crazy speciests do?” Kizzy asked.

Sissix shrugged. “Live on gated farms and have private orgies.”

“How is that any different than what the rest of you do?”

“We don’t have gates and anybody can come to our orgies. Except the Laru. They’re allergic to us.”

“Stars,” Kizzy said, leading the way into the marketplace proper. She pulled a bag of algae puffs from her satchel and began crunching away. “I can’t believe Mala used to go for that stuff.”

“I can’t believe she used to be a Survivalist,” said Sissix. “She seems so grounded. No pun intended.”

“Sorry, who?” asked Rosemary.

“Mala. Jenks’ mom,” said Kizzy. “She’s in the Samsara Project. Works with mammals. You should ask Jenks to show you some pictures of her little fuzzballs. Oh my stars, the wombats—”

Rosemary paused. She must’ve heard something wrong. “Wait, she was a Survivalist?” That couldn’t be right, not if this woman lived on the ring. Survivalists were as extreme as Gaiists could go. They weren’t just xenophobic, but technophobic to boot. They believed that technology was what doomed their planet from the beginning, and the only way to achieve redemption was to live like the animals they were. Survivalists were strict hunter-gatherers and genetic purists, abstaining not just from routine gene therapies, but from vaccinations, too. Weakness, they believed, had to be bred out. They seemed to ignore the fact that the only reason Earth had land capable of supporting them at all was because the Solar Republic had given them a large territory of restored grassland, filled with edible plants and herds of prey all brought back to life by scientists using frozen DNA and gestation chambers. Rosemary didn’t know Jenks well at all yet, but how could that level-headed, laid-back comp tech come from a Survivalist mother?

“Yeah, she fell into it during her teens,” said Kizzy. “Ran away from home, hitched a ride to Earth, joined a clan, ate honest-to-god wild meat, the whole thing. Can you imagine?” She fell into a theatrical stalking crouch. “You’re like, all sneaking through the grass”—she skipped from side to side—“dodging snakes or rats or whatever, and you’ve just got this big pointy stick, and you have to run up to this fucking buffle—”

“Buffle?” said Sissix.

“It’s like a big cow or something. And then you stab it and stab it and stab it, and it’s all throwing you around like oh, shit—” Kizzy flailed in nonspecific pantomime, unaware or uncaring of the other marketgoers eying her cautiously. A few stray algae puffs flew from the bag. “And there’s hooves in your face and blood everywhere, everywhere, and then it’s dead, and then you have to take it apart with your hands. And eat it.” She raised her hands to her mouth, making messy chewing sounds.

“Ugh, the end, please,” Sissix said, grimacing.

“Did Jenks grow up down on Earth? In a clan?” Rosemary asked.

“No, but he was born into one. That’s why he’s small,” said Sissix. “No prenatal therapy.”

“Oh,” Rosemary said. “I thought he was a genetweak, but I wasn’t sure how to ask.”

“Yeah, no, it is a genetic thing, but he was born with it,” Kizzy said. “And by the way, I’m sure you scored some points with him by not pointing it out right off the bat. He doesn’t mind questions, but he does get tired of it.”

Sissix continued. “See, Mala didn’t get any routine screenings after she got pregnant. She—”

“She almost died during childbirth,” Kizzy said. “Seriously almost died. Can you believe that? Who dies in childbirth? Fucking archaic. And Jenks’d totally be dead too if Mala hadn’t decided to be awesome. Her buying into the crazy Survivalist stuff stopped the moment there was talk of killing her kid.”

Rosemary’s mouth dropped. “They were going to kill Jenks?”

Kizzy nodded, stuffing a handful of puffs into her mouth. “Srvsts mmdn mmf—hrm.” She swallowed. “Survivalists abandon babies if they’re sick or different or whatever. Just like, oh, hey, this one’s kind of weird, better leave it behind so we can weed out the weak genes.” Kizzy clenched her fists, crushing the puffs within the bag. “Gah! It’s so stupid!” She looked down at the bag as if seeing it for the first time. “Aww.”

“So what happened?” Rosemary asked.

“I made crumbs.”

“No, I mean to Mala.”

“She ran away again,” Sissix said. “She got away from the clan, found a group of scientists working planetside. See, they—”

“No, you’re missing the badass part,” Kizzy said. “She had to walk, okay, like a crazy long way, just hoping she’d find someone past the Survivalist border. No skiffs, no skimmers, no shuttles. Just walking. Bare-bloody-foot. With, like, lions everywhere. Lions.”

“Not everywhere,” Sissix said.

“Listen, when you’re talking about lions, it doesn’t matter if they’re literally everywhere,” Kizzy said. “Knowing that there are a few lions that might be around is bad enough.”

“Well, anyway, the scientists on the Ring gave Mala and Jenks safe haven, and she got around to the fact that they weren’t so bad. She took a shine to biology, and that’s where she’s been ever since.”

“No university or anything,” Kizzy said. “Just started shoveling shit in the breeding pens and learned the ropes from there. She’s still a Gaiist, though, just in a mellow way. A lot of the Human scientists on the Ring are, actually. They believe in all the souls-tied-to-the-planet stuff, and they don’t like being far from Earth, but they scrap all the speciest whatever for the fuckery that it is. And apparently she was only mildly freaked out when teenage Jenks decided to go see the rest of the galaxy. She’s totally fine with it now. A lot of Gaiists are cool people. Unlike those assholes.” She jerked her head back toward the missionaries.

“Could Jenks not get gene therapy when they went to the ring?” Rosemary asked. “I mean, even the Gaiist scientists must be okay with standard medicine.”

“Yeah, they are. They’ve got imubots like the rest of us, and they vaccinate, thank goodness. Gene therapy’s kind of iffy. They’re usually cool with tweaking for quality-of-life reasons, but not cosmetic ones.”

“Then, why—”

“Why didn’t Jenks get tweaked? Like I said, only for quality-of-life. Just look at that happy bastard. His life would be total quality at any size.”

“But they couldn’t know that when he was a baby.”

“Mala wouldn’t let them do it. Jenks says once she got the doctors to admit that him being small didn’t mean he wasn’t healthy, it wasn’t even a question for her. Didn’t have anything to do with the Gaiist stuff at that point. He says she was just sick of people telling her that there was something wrong with her kid.” She stopped and looked around. “And I’ve totally been walking the wrong way.”

“What’s first on our list?” asked Sissix.

Kizzy pulled out her scrib. “Plex cleaner,” she said. “Followed by scrub bot dispensers.”

“Can we get unscented ones this time?” Sissix begged. “Ashby always gets the lemon ones, and I hate coming into the bathroom after cleaning day and smelling citrus.”

“You’ve got something against being lemony fresh?”

“You know iski?”

“No.”

“Yes, you do. Little green fruit, grows in clusters of three?”

“Oh, yeah.”

“Smells like lemons, right?”

“Kind of.”

“Yeah, we anoint our dead in iski juice.”

Kizzy laughed. “Oh, no, eww. Okay, unscented scrub bots it is.” She took another look at her list, and tapped it emphatically, like a politician making a speech. “Listen, we are going to be a rock-solid shopping team today. We’re sticking to the list, and that’s it. I always spend way too much here on shit I don’t need.” Something over Rosemary’s shoulder caught her attention. “Like those.” Without another word, Kizzy ran off toward a stall full of juggling supplies.

Sissix sighed. “And so it begins,” she said, watching Kizzy dig through a box of shimmering batons. “If you thought today was about getting supplies, you’re wrong. Today is about Kizzy wrangling.”

As they walked after the mech tech, Sissix put her arm around Rosemary’s shoulder. The easy familiarity made Rosemary blink, but she also felt a spark of pride. Even if she got mugged before the day was out, at least she was in good company.

Jenks walked down the ramp to the underground tech district—or, as it was better known, the caves. At the entrance, an Aandrisk man with a stun gun sat on a stool near a multilingual sign. The text read:

At the bottom of the sign was a handwritten addendum, only in Klip:

As Jenks passed by, the Aandrisk nodded congenially, his twin ocular implants glinting in the busy artificial light. Every shop and stall in the caves had different lighting mechanisms to help distinguish themselves from the others. The caves were a cyclone of ambient blues, shifting rainbows, simulated sunrises, projected starfields. Within each shop, the lighting could be appreciated, but in the corridors in between, the overlapping effects created an odd mishmash of color and shadow. It was like walking through a drunk kaleidescope.

Jenks felt at home in the caves, and not just for the endless rows of neatly packaged, hand-hacked goodies. Many of the folks there were hardcore modders, people prone to removing their own limbs in favor of synthetic replacements. Walking through the caves, you might see metallic exoskeletons, or swirling nanobot tattoos, or unsettlingly perfect faces that betrayed a weakness for genetweaks. Facial patches, dermal ports, homebrewed implants. Alongside such oddities, his small stature was nothing special. It was hard to feel weird in a place where everybody was weird. He took comfort in that.

He walked through the pathways, making mental notes of places he’d have to check out later. Jenks was a veteran of the Port, and he knew that there was only one acceptable place to begin before he started throwing credits around.

The shop front he arrived at wasn’t as fancy as some. A sign made from a broken circuit board hung overhead. Old bits of junk had been stuck to it in the shape of letters. “The Rust Bucket,” the sign read, and in smaller letters, “Tech Swap and Fix-It Shop,” and in smaller letters still, “Pepper and Blue, Proprietors.”

Jenks stood on tiptoe to look over the top of the counter. Pepper was hunched over a work bench, her back to him, muttering to herself. She reached up to scratch the back of her hairless Human head, leaving behind a smudge of machine grease. If she noticed, she did not seem to care.

“Hey, lady!” Jenks barked. “You know where I can score some stim bots?”

Pepper turned around, not bothering to mask her irritation at being asked such a stupid question. Her face brightened once she realized who was doing the asking. “Jenks!” she said, wiping her hands on her apron and coming around the counter. “What the hell are you doing here!” She knelt down to give him a friendly hug. The hug was warm, but her arms were thin. Too thin. For as long as Jenks had known Pepper, her hugs always prompted a burst of sympathy within him.

Pepper and her companion Blue were escapees from a fringe planet called Aganon, one of the last bastions of the Enhanced Humanity movement. Unequivocally cut off from the Diaspora and the Galactic Commons, Enhancement colonies bred their people in gestation chambers, basing their genetic makeup on calculations of what their society would be in need of once they reached maturity. Their genes were tweaked beyond recognition, improving health, intelligence, social skills—whatever was needed for the jobs they were destined to fill. Menial labor was performed by people bred without any genetic alterations at all, save two: infertility and a lack of hair (to make them easy to spot). The Enhanced were so convinced of their superiority over the laboring class that they had been utterly unprepared for Pepper’s improbable exodus, which began with a lucky late-childhood escape from a tech manufacturing plant, and culminated within a massive junkyard that became her temporary home. There, among countless other cast-off things, Pepper found hidden treasure: a derelict interstellar shuttle. Using only what scraps she could find, Pepper patched and hacked and coaxed the shuttle back to life. It took her over six standards to get the thing flying, and nearly a standard more to steal enough fuel. The cost of her freedom was severe malnutrition, which had almost killed her by the time her shuttle was picked up by a GC patrol ship. She’d been on Port Coriol for eight standards, long enough to become a staple of the local modder community, and her health had been well looked after during that time. But though she loved to eat (she had taken her name after discovering the joys of seasoning), her metabolism just couldn’t catch up. Her waifish body was never going to fill out.

The fact that Jenks and Pepper could be standing in the same place—she from a world where genetweaks were a mandate, he from a mother who had shunned traditional healthcare altogether—was a real testament to the openness of the Port, as well as the weirdness of Humanity. It was also probably why he and Pepper had always gotten along so well, be it out of compassion or sheer amusement. Well, that, and their deep, undying love for all things digital. That undoubtedly helped.

“How’s the Wayfarer?” Pepper asked. This was always her first question, and it was not small talk. Her interest in his ship—in all ships, for that matter—was genuine.

“Flying smooth as ever,” Jenks said. “Just did a blind punch to Botas Welim.”

“That’s the new Aeluon colony, right?” Pepper asked.

“Yup.”

“How’d it go?”

“Textbook. Except our new clerk didn’t take to the sublayer well. Blehhh.” He pantomimed an explosion from his mouth.

Pepper laughed. “Oh, I want to hear all the gossip. You got time for a cup of mek after we get our business sorted? I’ve built a brewer that’ll change your life.”

“Well, I can’t say no to that.”

“Good. So what’s next? You got something else lined up?”

“Yeah, actually,” Jenks said with pride. “You hear about the Toremi alliance?”

Pepper rolled her eyes. “Honestly, what the fuck are they thinking?”

Jenks laughed. “I dunno, but we’re getting some awfully good work out of it. Tokath to Hedra Ka. That’s us.”

“No way,” Pepper said, her mouth falling open. “You’re going to the Core?”

“Yup. And an anchored punch, to boot.”

“Shit. Really? Wow, that’s a serious haul. How long?”

“About a standard. GC’s got our tab, though. All we got to do is get there and punch back.”

Pepper gave her head a quick shake. “Good for you guys, but I’m glad it’s not me.” She laughed. “Oh, man, I’d get so twitchy on a ship that long. Still, though. The Core. How many people can say they’ve been there?”

“I know, right?”

“Wow. Well, that explains why you’re here. I take it you have a shopping list for me?”

“Most of it’s from Kiz. She’s off getting sundries.” Jenks handed her his scrib.

“You tell her she better poke her head in here before you guys leave orbit. I won’t let her leave without a hello.”

“Like she’d let that happen. We could meet up with you and Blue on the dark side later, if you guys don’t have plans. Do dinner or something. I did just get paid.”

“I like that idea a lot. Especially the part where you’re buying.” She scrolled through his list, slowly. Reading wasn’t her strongest suit. “Okay, current modulators. Go to Pok, the Quelin down by the bot alley. You know him?”

“I know of him. He’s creepy as hell.”

“I can’t argue there, but he’s not a bad guy, and he doesn’t package his stuff in grax like the others do. Trust me, his modulators are top notch.”

“What’s wrong with grax?”

“It’s good, cheap protection for your tech, but it’ll dull your receiver nodes if you leave them wrapped up too long.”

“No kidding?”

“Well, folks who sell grax disagree, but I swear my tech’s been pluckier since I stopped buying anything packaged in it.”

“I’ll take your word for it.”

Pepper continued with the list. “Switch couplers, go to Hish.”

“Hish?”

“Open Circuit. Hish is the owner.”

“Ah, okay. I’ve never been to Open Circuit. I’ve always gone to White Star.”

“She charges more than White Star, but I think she’s got way better stuff. Tell her I said so, she might knock a few credits off.” She read on. “Six-top circuits I can do you for, as long as you don’t mind getting them used.” She reached up to a shelf, grabbed a hand-wrapped circuit pack, and set it on the counter.

“Your version of used is usually better than new,” Jenks said. He meant it. Pepper was a wizard when it came to bringing tech back from the dead.

Pepper smirked. “You charmer, you.” Her eyes flicked over the scrib. “Coil wraps,” she said. “Hmm. I think I’ve got some tucked away somewhere…” She pawed around, then tossed a bag of tiny metallic bundles onto the counter. “There ya go. Coil wraps.”

“How much?” Jenks asked, pushing back his wristwrap.

She waved her hand. “You’re buying me and my man a meal. We’re square.”

“You sure?”

“Positively.”

“Fair enough,” he said. He cleared his throat and lowered his voice. “Pepper, there’s something I’m looking for that’s not on the list.”

“Go for it,” Pepper said.

“Just out of curiosity. Nothing serious.” It was, of course, a very serious request, but even with a friend like Pepper, it required a bit of caution.

Pepper gave a slow, understanding nod. She leaned forward on the counter, speaking in a hush. “Purely hypothetical. I gotcha.”

“Right.” He paused. “How much do you know about body kits?”

Pepper raised her eyebrows—or rather, the spot where her eyebrows would be if she had any hair. “Damn, you don’t start small, do you? Oh. Uh, no offense.”

“None taken. Look, I know kits are tricky to find…”

“Tricky to find? Jenks, that kind of tech is so banned it practically doesn’t exist.”

“There’s got to be somebody, though. Some modder with a bunker somewhere—”

“Oh, I’m sure there is. But nobody I know offhand.” She searched his face. “What do you want a body kit for anyway?”

Jenks tugged at the spacer in his left ear. “If I said it was personal, could we leave it at that?”

Pepper said nothing, but he could see in her eyes that she was putting pieces together. She knew what his job was. She’d heard him talk about Lovey, however casually. Jenks could feel himself begin to sweat. Stars, I must look pathetic, he thought. But Pepper just gave a lazy smile and shrugged. “Suit yourself.” She thought for a moment, her face growing serious. “But may I say, as a friend, that if a body kit comes your way—and yes, if by some astronomical stroke of luck I find a supplier, I’ll contact you—I really, really hope you know what you’re doing.”

“I’ll be careful.”

“No, Jenks,” Pepper said. All room for discussion was gone from her voice. “I’m not talking about you getting arrested. I’m talking about you doing something dangerous. I hate to pull the my-past-is-a-sad-story card, but listen: I am the end product of a few very stupid, well-intentioned people who thought it would be a great idea to redefine Humanity. It didn’t start with much. A tweak here, a splice there. But things escalated, as they always do, until it became something completely beyond reason. That’s exactly why body kits are banned. Some people who know a hell of a lot more about ethics than you or me decided that they didn’t think the GC was ready or equipped to support a new kind of life. And yeah, as things are now, AIs are treated like shit. You know I’m all for giving them full rights. But this is murky territory, Jenks, and much as I hate to say it, I’m not sure body kits are the solution. So however innocent your intentions, think about what you’re doing first. Ask yourself if you’re ready for that kind of responsibility.” She held up her thin hands. Her palms were thick with old scars, leftover from a decade of digging through sharp junkyard scraps. Memories of hunger and fear and a world gone wrong. “Ask yourself what the consequences might be.”

Jenks thought hard. “If you feel that strongly about it,” he said at last, “then why would you tell me if you found a supplier?”

“Because you’re a friend,” she said, the edge leaving her voice. “And because making connections is what I do. And if you’re serious about this, I’d rather you go through me than some back-alley hack. Though, truth be told, I’m also hoping that by the time I find someone, you’ll have decided I was right about it being a bad idea.” Pepper put a little sign on the counter: In The Back, Yell For Service. “Come on, we need some mek. And I want to hear about this spacesick newbie of yours.”

Ashby sat in the hotel room he’d paid for an hour earlier. He was thinking about waterball. Not that he particularly cared about waterball, but it was easier to handle than the alternative. When he’d woken up that morning, he’d been ready for a day of haggling and spending credits, the high point of which might’ve been drinks and a good meal in a sleepy bar. Now, he was on the dark side of Coriol, surrounded by thick pillows and ugly wall hangings while he waited for Pei, who was not only alive and well, but close by and intent on having sex with him. Waterball was easier to process.

Okay. Titan Cup finalists, year 303. Let’s see. The Whitecaps had to have been playing, because Kizzy freaked out when Kimi St. Clair tore a ligament. The Starbursts were there, right? Yeah, you bought Aya a Starbursts jersey for her birthday that year. She said they were her favorite.

Left unchecked, his thoughts jumped like a deepod, ducking in and out before he could lay any of them to rest. He had too many feelings lobbying for attention. Relief for Pei’s safety. Joy over seeing her at any moment. Baseless worry that her feelings had ebbed. Determination to follow her lead (stars only knew how she was feeling after tens of tendays spent skirting warzones). And fear. Fear, which he felt every time they met. Fear that in the tendays ahead, after she’d returned to more dangerous space, this hello might end up being a goodbye.

No, no, the Starbursts had to have been 302, not 303. That was the same birthday Aya got her first starter scrib, which means she was starting school. Which means 302.

There was a vague anxiety, too, the concern that they’d get caught this time. He couldn’t think of anything he’d left unchecked. Their system for avoiding notice was old hat by now. He always found the hotel—nothing flashy, something off the beaten path, and preferably somewhere they hadn’t been before. He’d make it clear to the desk staff that he needed some rest and didn’t want to be disturbed for any reason. Once in his room, he’d send Pei a message with nothing but the hotel name and the room number, which she’d delete after reading. Two hours later, long enough to prevent anyone from suspecting anything, she’d arrive at the hotel, and request whatever room number was adjacent to his. This was easily done, as complex numerology was a well-known component of traditional Aeluon culture. There were so many conflicting systems for finding meanings within numerical sequences that no matter what room number Ashby got, Pei could find a way to put a positive spin on the number she requested. A non-Aeluon desk worker would assume that Pei wanted a room with a number that symbolized peace or good health, whereas an Aeluon would just see her as unusually old-fashioned for her age (and perhaps a little silly). After settling into her room, Pei would knock on the adjoining wall. Ashby would make sure the hallway was empty, then leave his room. After that, they were good to go.

A lengthy song-and-dance to go through just to see each other, but a necessary one. As open and generous as Aeluons generally were to their galactic neighbors, interspecies coupling remained a mainstream taboo. Ashby didn’t understand the logic behind that—it was a non-issue for most Humans, at least where bipedal species were concerned—but he understood the danger for Pei. An Aeluon could lose her family and friends over an alien relationship. She could lose her job, especially when on a government contract. And for someone like Pei, who took pride in being a hard worker with a honed skill set, that kind of shame would cut deep.

Ashby, focus. The Whitecaps. The Hammers. The… the Falcons? No, they haven’t made it to a semi-final match since you were crewing aboard the Calling Dawn. What about the—oh, stars, Ashby. Come on. Waterball.

Alongside all the emotional distractions he was trying to subdue, Ashby was engaged in a battle of wills, a fight between brains and biology. He knew it was pretty much a given that he’d be getting laid any moment, but he didn’t want to be presumptuous. He had no idea what she’d been through prior to this meeting, and until he had a clear sense for where she was at, he was going to let her make the first move. And even if she was on the same page as him… well, he still had good manners. Even if his body was getting ahead of itself.

Ashby. Waterball semi-finals. Year 303. The Skydivers won. Who else was—

A knock came through the wall, quiet but clear.

He left the Titan Cup behind.

“Soap!” Kizzy cried, pointing to a stall full of bathing goods. “Look at ’em! They’re like cakes!” She ran off, her hefty bag of purchases bouncing against her back.

“I guess I could use some scale scrub,” Sissix said. She and Rosemary followed after the mech tech, who was already poking through display baskets.

The shop was run by a Harmagian merchant, whose offerings catered to the needs of many species. Coarse brushes and bundles of herbs for Aandrisk steam baths, fizzing tablets and warming salves for the icy plunges preferred by Aeluons, skin scrapers and cleansing tonics for Harmagians, a modest yet cheerful selection of Human soaps and shampoos, and dozens more jars, bottles, and tins that Rosemary could not identify. The galaxy’s sapient species could find many cultural commonalities, but few topics were quite as contentious as the proper way to get clean.

The Harmagian—a male, as Rosemary could tell by the color of the spots across his back—whirred over on his treaded cart as they approached. “A pleasant day to you, dear guests,” he said, his chin tendrils curling happily. “Have you come to browse, or do you have something special in mind?” The dactyli on the ends of his three front tentacles spread open in a helpful gesture. He was elderly, and the pale yellow skin covering his amorphous body lacked the moistness of youth.

Rosemary had known Harmagians before—her Hanto professor, for one, and several of her father’s regular dinner guests—but she always had trouble reconciling their appearance with their history. The person before her was, like all his species, a mollusk-like blob who couldn’t move around quickly without the help of his cart. He didn’t have teeth or claws. He didn’t have bones. Yet somehow, there had been a time when this squishy species had controlled a significant portion of the galaxy (and they still did, if you watched where the credits flowed, but they weren’t in the habit of subjugating indigenous sapients anymore). She had once read a paper by an Aeluon historian who suggested that the Harmagians’ physical frailty was exactly what had helped them develop a technological edge over other species. “Want and intelligence,” the historian had written, “is a dangerous combination.”

When she considered the historical context, Rosemary thought their presence in the shop made for a rather odd tableau: a Harmagian (an aging son of a former empire), an Aandrisk (whose people had moderated the talks that granted independence to Harmagian colonies and ultimately founded the GC), and two Humans (a meager species that would’ve been ripe for the picking if they had been discovered during the days of Harmagian conquest). All standing together, amicably discussing the sale of soap. Time was a curious equalizer.

Kizzy poked around the Harmagian’s offerings. “Have you got any—Ooh! Can I ask you in Hanto? I’ve been taking a course on the Linkings and I want to practice.”

Sissix eyed Kizzy with skepticism. “Since when?”

“Dunno, five days ago.”

The slits on the ends of the Harmagian’s eyestalks crinkled with amusement. “Please, let me hear.”

Kizzy cleared her throat and coughed out a few wobbly syllables. Rosemary cringed. Not only had Kizzy spoken nonsense, but without the accompanying gestures, the attempt had come across as a bit rude.

But the Harmagian ululated in laughter. “Oh, my dear guest,” he said, tendrils quivering. “Forgive me, but that was the worst pronunciation I have ever heard.”

Kizzy gave a sheepish grin. “Oh, no,” she said, and laughed.

“It is not your fault,” said the Harmagian. “Humans have much difficulty in mimicking our tonal shifts.”

Rosemary put a hand near her collarbone and waggled her fingers, as she had done many times. It was a crude imitation of tendril gestures, but it was the best a Human could do. “Pala, ram talen, rakae’ma huk aesket’alo’n, hama t’hul basrakt’hon kib,” she said. Perhaps, dear host, but with some extended effort, we can share your fine words.

Kizzy and Sissix turned their heads toward Rosemary in unison, as if seeing her for the first time. The Harmagian flexed his tendrils with respect. “Well and successfully done, dear guest!” he said, speaking in his own tongue. “Are you a spacer merchant?”

Rosemary stretched her fingers. “Not a merchant, and only recently a spacer,” she said. “We three crew aboard a tunneling ship.” The words were true, but they still sounded strange, as if they belonged to someone else’s life. “My friends and I have come to the Port to acquire supplies.”

“Ah, tunneling! A well-traveled life. You will need plenty of things to keep you clean along the way.” The Harmagian straightened his tendrils cheekily. His eyeslits dilated as he shifted his gaze to Kizzy. “Have you found something to your liking?” he asked in Klip.

Kizzy held a brick of blood red soap. “I need this,” she said, pressing her nose against it and inhaling deeply. “Oh my stars, what is this?”

“That’s made with boiled eevberry,” the Harmagian said. “A very popular scent on my homeworld. Though, of course, we don’t mix it into soap. What you hold there is a fine blending of our two cultures.”

“I’ll take it.” Kizzy handed the Harmagian the soap. He took hold of it with two of his smaller tentacles, each covered in a sheath-like glove to protect his delicate skin. He zipped behind the counter and busied himself with foil and ribbon.

“There you go, dear guest,” said the Harmagian, handing her the attractively wrapped bundle. “Just chip off a little piece of it at a time, it’ll last longer that way.”

Kizzy stuck her nose to the wrapper again. “Mmph, that smells good. Check it out, Rosemary.”

Rosemary couldn’t help but inhale as Kizzy shoved the block of soap into her face. The scent was thickly sweet and sugary, like a cake. She imagined using it would be like bathing in a meringue.

“That’s eight hundred sixty credits, if you please, thank you,” the Harmagian said.

Kizzy stuck out her hand to Rosemary. “Can I have the chip?”

Rosemary blinked, not sure if she had understood. “You want the company chip?”

“Yeah, it’s soap,” Kizzy said. “Soap is cool, right?”

Rosemary cleared her throat and looked down at her scrib. No, soap wasn’t cool, not fancy soap, but how could she tell Kizzy that? She had come onto Kizzy’s ship, been welcomed by Kizzy with open arms, let Kizzy buy her too many drinks, had vastly less experience than Kizzy in things like tunneling and shopping in neutral ports. But even so—“I’m sorry, Kizzy, but, um, we can only use the chip for common-use soap. If you want special soap, you have to get it yourself.” She felt the words come out of her mouth, and she hated them. She sounded like a killjoy.

“But—” Kizzy started.

Without a word, Sissix grabbed Kizzy’s wrist and pressed it to the merchant’s scanner. There was a corresponding chirp, indicating her account had been accepted.

“Hey!” Kizzy said.

“You can afford it,” Sissix said.

“A pleasure doing business with you,” said the merchant. “Do come back when you are next in port.” His voice was friendly, but Rosemary could tell by his twisting tendrils that the exchange over payment had made him awkward. She gestured a quick, silent apology. He gave her a respectful flex, and scooted off to help other customers.

Sissix frowned at Kizzy as they exited the shop. “Kiz, if we’re flying through a rough patch, and I tell everybody to drop what they’re doing and strap down, what do you do?”

Kizzy looked confused. “What?”

“Just answer the question.”

“I… stop what I’m doing and strap down,” Kizzy said.

“Even if it’s inconvenient?”

“Yeah.”

“And if you need everybody to not use water taps for a while because you need to fix the lines, which is hugely inconvenient, what do we do?”

Kizzy scratched the tip of her nose. “You stop using taps,” she said.

Sissix pointed at Rosemary. “This woman here has the worst job of all of us. She has to live on our ship, with all us gloriously stubborn dustheads, and tell us which of our well-worn habits are against the rules. That sounds scary as hell to me, but she’s done it without coming across like a hatch parent. So even though it’s not always convenient, we’re going to listen to her when she needs to do her job, because we expect her to do the same in return.” She looked to Rosemary, who was busy hoping the ground might swallow her up. “And you, Rosemary, have the right to kick our asses over stuff like this, because not passing inspections or getting grounded over unpaid invoices is every bit as much trouble for this crew as anything else.”

“Unpaid invoices won’t suck you into space,” mumbled Kizzy.

“You know what I mean,” said Sissix.

Kizzy sighed. “Rosemary, I am sorry for being a jerk,” she said, looking at her toes. She lifted up her block of soap as if she were paying homage to royalty. “Please accept my soap as an apology.”

Rosemary gave a little laugh. “It’s no problem,” she said, relieved that she hadn’t been perceived as the jerk. “Keep your soap.”

Kizzy considered this. “Can I buy you lunch at least?”

“Really, it’s okay.”

“Let her buy you food,” said Sissix. “Otherwise she’s going to come up with some other ridiculous gift out of penance.”

“Hey, you liked the Twelve Days of Jam Cakes,” Kizzy said.

“That I did,” said Sissix. “I almost wish you’d break my scrib more often.”

“Knocked it into a pot of soup,” Kizzy confessed to Rosemary.

“And stuck her arm in after it,” said Sissix.

“Out of reflex!”

“And spent the next hour in the med bay getting her burns treated.”

“Whatever. You got jam cakes, stop being mean.”

Sissix pointed at Rosemary’s scrib. “We need anything else in this district before we eat?”

Rosemary scrolled through the list. “I don’t think so. Didn’t you say you wanted some scale scrub?”

“Yeah, I didn’t like what he had, though,” Sissix said. “Mind if we keep looking?”

The three crewmates drifted from stall to stall, inquiring after scale scrub. After several apologetic noes, one puzzled look, and one long-necked Laru who swore that his holistic desert salts would work just as well, Kizzy tugged on Sissix’s vest. “I bet that lady’s got some,” she said, pointing.

“Where?” said Sissix, turning around. Her face softened when she saw the merchant, an old Aandrisk woman seated beneath a small woven canopy, surrounded on three sides by tables full of handmade goods. The woman’s feathers were faded, their frills worn and sparse. Her skin was cracking, like old leather, and though the single garment she wore—a soft pair of pants—was bright and clean, something solemn hung around her scaled shoulders.

Sissix said something to herself in Reskitkish. The sibilant words were lost on Rosemary, but she saw Kizzy’s eyebrows knit together. Sissix pressed a palm toward her companions. “Sorry, ladies, wait here. I’ll try not to be long.” She headed for the merchant, who was too busy stirring a cup of something hot to see Sissix approach.

Rosemary and Kizzy looked at one another. “Do you know what she said?” Rosemary asked.

“My Reskitkish sucks,” Kizzy said. “But she sounded upset. Dunno what she’s up to.” She nodded at a nearby bench. “Guess we’ll chill for a bit.”

They took a seat. Across from them, the merchant looked up at Sissix. The old Aandrisk smiled, but she looked hesitant, as if she were embarrassed about something. Rosemary could see Sissix’s mouth moving, but the words were lost to distance (not that Rosemary could understand the language anyway). As Sissix spoke, her hands wove in subtle patterns, shifting and darting like small flocks of birds. The old woman’s hands moved in response. At first, their respective motions were discordant, but as their conversation continued, they began to mirror one another.

“Do you know Aandrisk hand speak?” Rosemary asked.

Kizzy glanced up from the lock of hair she was braiding. “Not really. Sis taught me a couple of ’em. Just basic stuff. ‘Hello.’ ‘Thanks.’ ‘I enjoy your company but I don’t want to have sex.’ ” She watched Sissix and the merchant for a moment. She shook her head. “I have no idea. They’re way too fast. But Sissix is speaking out loud, too, which is interesting.”

“Why would she speak if she’s using sign language?”

“No, no, it’s not like a sign language. Hand speak doesn’t match up with Reskitkish.”

Rosemary was puzzled. “This is a stupid question, but then what is it? Is it like facial expressions? Or Hanto gestures?”

“No.” Kizzy pulled a ribbon from her pocket and tied off the braid. “Hand speak expresses things that are either too basic to waste words on or too personal.”

“Too personal?”

“Yeah, stuff that’s really important or hard to say. Like about love or hate or stuff you’re scared about. You know how when you have something big to tell someone, you stammer through it or sit in front of your mirror practicing what to say? Aandrisks don’t bother with that. They let the gestures take care of all the awkwards. They figure that big, deep feelings are universal enough to be defined with just a flick of the hand or whatever, even though the events that cause those feelings are unique.”

“That must save them a lot of time,” said Rosemary, wondering how much of her life had been spent trying to find the right words in difficult conversations.

“Seriously. But back in the day, you could also use hand speak while you spoke. It was used to add emphasis to stuff you said out loud, so that folks knew you really meant it. Sissix says you can still use it like that, but it’s old-fashioned, and you only do it in special circumstances.” She nodded toward the stall, where the two Aandrisks were now moving in sync. “What we’re seeing here is Sissix being super respectful. And honest.”

“But she doesn’t know that merchant, right?”

“Dunno. Don’t think so. But that lady’s old, so maybe she’s just being old-fashioned for her sake.”

Rosemary watched the Aandrisks. Their hands moved in a graceful, hurried dance. “How are they matching each other?” she asked.

Kizzy shrugged. “I guess they agree on something.” Her eyebrows shot up. “Oh. Like that.”

Sissix had sat down with her back against one of the tables, spreading her legs to either side. The older woman joined her, leaning her back against Sissix’s front. They adjusted their tails accordingly. The old woman leaned her head into Sissix’s chest, her eyes falling shut. Sissix pressed one palm against the old woman’s stomach, holding her close. With her other hand, she spread her fingers wide and ran them up from the old woman’s scalp to the tips of her feathers, tugging the shafts gently as she went. To Human eyes, they looked like reunited lovers behind a bedroom door, not at all like two strangers in a open-air market. Even across the street, the old woman’s face was easy to read. She was in bliss.

Rosemary was bewildered. She knew Aandrisks were uninhibited (by Human standards, she reminded herself), but this went beyond what she was expecting. “Um,” she said. “So…”

“I have no idea,” said Kizzy. “Aandrisks. I don’t even fucking know.” She was silent for a few seconds. “Do you think they’re gonna go for it?” she whispered, leaning forward with childlike curiosity. “I bet they are. Holy shit, is that even legal here? Oh, I hope they don’t.”

But the Aandrisks did not couple, though they continued their spontaneous intimacy for a good half an hour, stroking feathers and nuzzling cheeks, oblivious to the stares of passersby. At one point, two other Aandrisks strolled past without more than a casual glance, as if nothing was going on. Rosemary wasn’t sure if she should avert her eyes or not. Sissix clearly didn’t care who was looking. As Rosemary watched, the peculiarity of the act began to melt away. It was alien, yes, and sudden, but not uncomfortable. There was a weird sort of beauty to it, something about the way their hands moved, the ease with which they touched each other. Baffling as the thought was, Rosemary found herself a little envious—of the old woman or of Sissix, she wasn’t sure. She wished someone would give her that sort of attention on a whim. She wished she were confident enough to give it back.

Finally, there was a flutter from the old woman’s hands. Sissix let go and helped the old woman to her feet. They began looking through the old woman’s wares. A jar of scale scrub was selected. Sissix’s wrist was scanned. A few more words were exchanged, but without hand speak. A normal discussion between customer and merchant, made all the more surreal by what had come before.

The old woman reached up and plucked a feather from her head, wincing as she did so. She held the feather—a faded blue—out to Sissix. Sissix took it, bowing her head low. Her expression was one of gratitude.

“Oh, wow,” said Kizzy, putting her hands over her heart. “I still don’t know what’s going on, but that just made me go all mushy.”

“What?” Rosemary kept her eye on the Aandrisks, as if staring long enough might provide an explanation. “What’s that mean?”

“Have you been in Sissix’s room yet?”

“No.”

“Okay, well, on her wall, there’s this big fancy frame with a mess of Aandrisk feathers hanging from it. Every Aandrisk’s got one, as far as I know. See, if you’re an Aandrisk and somebody really touches your life in some way, you give that person one of your feathers. And then you keep the feathers you get from others as a symbol of how many paths you’ve crossed. Having a lot of feathers on your wall shows that you’ve had an impact on a lot of people. That’s a pretty big life priority for most Aandrisks. But they don’t give feathers out casually, not, like, for helping you carry something or giving you a free drink or whatever. It’s got to be an experience that sticks with you, but it can totally be between strangers. Oh, hey, check it.” Kizzy gestured with her chin toward Sissix, who was giving the old woman one of her own feathers.

“Has Sissix ever given you a feather?” Rosemary asked.

“Yeah, she gave me one a while back, after she got news that one of her hatch fathers died. He was old, but she was really broken up over it. I put her in the shuttle, flew her out to the middle of this nebula, and just let her yell for a few hours. I got a feather the next morning. I think the whole crew’s got a Sissix feather by now. Well, not Corbin. Probably not Corbin.”

Sissix walked back over to the bench, carrying the jar of scale scrub. She looked between Kizzy and Rosemary. “I… apparently have some explaining to do.”

“Uh, yes,” Kizzy said. “Explaining would be great.”

Sissix nodded toward the road, indicating for them to follow. “A person her age should be settled down with a house family, raising hatchlings.”

Rosemary tried to remember everything she’d been told about Aandrisk family structure. Young Aandrisks were cared for by community elders, not their biological parents. That much she knew. And there were several familial stages Aandrisks went through as they aged. But beyond that, Rosemary was fuzzy on the details.

“Maybe she just didn’t want to,” Kizzy said. “Maybe she liked it better out here.”

“No,” Sissix said. “It’s because she can’t socialize well.”

“She’s shy?” Rosemary asked.

“She’s a rashek. There’s not a word for it in Klip. She’s got a disorder that makes it difficult for her to interact with others. She has trouble understanding other people’s intentions. And she speaks oddly, that much was obvious when I first approached her. I offered to couple with her, but she couldn’t quite bring herself around to that. So, yes, she’s shy, but she also has a hard time figuring other people out. It makes her act a little… well, for lack of a better word, weird.”

“Why snuggle with a weirdo?” Kizzy asked.

“Being weird doesn’t mean that she doesn’t deserve companionship. The fact that she’s running a shop instead of living on a farm somewhere means that she has no house family. And yeah, there are elders who choose not to have house families, but she doesn’t even have a feather family. And that’s…” Sissix shivered. “Stars, I can’t imagine anything worse than that.”

Rosemary looked at Sissix. The familial terms were lost on her, but something clicked anyway. “You were comforting her. That’s all it was. You just wanted to her to know that someone cared.”

“Nobody should be alone,” Sissix said. “Being alone and untouched… there’s no punishment worse than that. And she’s done nothing wrong. She’s just different.”

“There are lots of other Aandrisks here. Why don’t they do anything for her?”

“Because they don’t want to,” Sissix said, her voice growing fierce. “Did you see the two Aandrisks walk by while I was with her? Locals, I’m sure. They knew her, I could tell by the look in their eyes. They can’t be bothered with her. She’s an inconvenience.” Sissix’s feathers had puffed up. Her sharp teeth flashed as she spoke.

“Don’t be fooled by all the warm fuzzy talk and snuggles,” Kizzy said to Rosemary. “Aandrisks can be assholes, too.”

“Oh, we’ve certainly got our share,” Sissix said. “Anyway. Sorry to keep you waiting. I hope I didn’t make you feel awkward. I know Humans can be—”

“No,” Rosemary said. “No, it was a very kind thing to do.” She watched the Aandrisk woman as she walked beside her. Her body was strange, her ways were strange, and yet, Rosemary found herself in deep admiration.

“Yes, awesome, go Sissix,” Kizzy said. “But I am now starving. What sounds good? Noodles? Skewers? Ice cream? We’re grownups, we can have ice cream for lunch if we want.”

“Let’s not,” Sissix said.

“Right. I forgot,” Kizzy said, and laughed. “Ice cream makes her mouth go slack.”

Sissix flicked her tongue with disapproval. “Why anyone would make freezing cold food is beyond me.”

“Ooh! What about hoppers?” Kizzy said. “I could seriously go for a hopper. Mmm, spicy peppers and crunchy onions and a big toasty bun…” She looked at Rosemary with eager eyes.

“I can’t remember the last time I had a hopper,” Rosemary said. It was a lie. She’d never had one. Grasshopper burgers were street food, and that wasn’t a realm of cuisine she’d ever been privy to. She imagined how her mother would react to her chowing down a bug sandwich wrapped in greasy paper while sharing a table with modders and smugglers and arm-hacking patch thieves. She grinned. “Sounds great.”

Ashby ran his palm down the bare torso pressing against his own. He’d had his share of lovers before her. He’d felt plenty of skin. But none like hers. She was covered in tiny scales—not thickly layered, like Sissix’s, but seamless, interlocking. She was silvery, almost reflective, like a fish in a river. Despite all the time he’d spent looking at her, despite how comfortable he was in her company, there were still moments when the sight of her made his words stick in his throat.

It was pure chance, of course, that Aeluons so often managed to check all the boxes on the list of Things That Humans Generally Find Attractive. On a galactic scale, beauty was a relative concept. All Humans could agree that Harmagians were hideous (a sentiment the Harmagians heartily returned). Aandrisks—well, that depended on who you talked to. Some people liked the feathers; others couldn’t get past their teeth and claws. The Rosk, with their skittery legs and jagged mandibles, would still be the stuff of nightmares even if they weren’t in the habit of carpetbombing border colonies. But Aeluons, by some weird fluke of evolution, had a look that made most Humans drop their jaws, hold up their palms, and say, “Okay, you are a superior species.” Aeluons’ long limbs and digits were alien, no question, but they moved with fascinating grace. Their eyes were large, but not too large. Their mouths were small, but not too small. In Ashby’s experience, it was hard to find a Human who couldn’t appreciate an Aeluon, even if only in the most objective aesthetic terms. Aeluon women didn’t have breasts, but after meeting Pei, Ashby had found that he could do without. His teenage self would’ve been horrified.

Lying beside her, Ashby felt like a hairy, gangly mess. But given what they’d been up to for the better part of the last two hours, he figured he couldn’t be that repulsive. Or maybe she just didn’t care about the whole hairy, gangly thing. That worked, too.

“You hungry?” Pei said, though her mouth did not move. Like all Aeluons, her “voice” was a computerized sound that came from a talkbox embedded in the base of her throat. She controlled the talkbox neurally, a process she likened to thinking up words while typing. Aeluons lacked a natural sense of hearing, and had no need for a spoken language of their own. Among themselves, they communicated through color—specifically, iridescent patches on their cheeks that shimmered and shifted like the skin of a bubble. Once they began interacting with other species, however, verbal communication became a necessity, and so, talkboxes came to be.

“I’m starving,” Ashby said. He knew that as he spoke, the sounds coming from his mouth were collected by the jewelry-like implant set in her forehead. As her brain did not have any means for processing sound, the implant translated his words into neural input that she could understand. He didn’t quite grasp how it worked, but he could say the same for most tech. It worked. That was all he needed to know. “Your room or mine?” he asked. That was another part of their standard operating procedure: Make sure only one person was in the room when room service arrived.

“Let’s see what they’ve got, first.” She reached over the edge of the bed and pulled the menu from a nearby table. “What are our odds?”

This was an old joke between them, the question of how likely it would be that each of them would find something they liked on the room service menu. Multispecies menus meant well, but they were always hit or miss. “Seventy-thirty,” he said. “Your favor.”

“How come?”

He pointed at the menu. “Because they’ve got a whole section dedicated to roe.”

“Ooh, so they do.”

He let his eyes slide down her body as she perused the selection of fish eggs. He saw something peeking up over her hip—the edge of a scar, thick and milky white. He hadn’t noticed it earlier, but then, he’d been a little distracted. “This one’s new.”

“What?” She craned her neck up to look. “Oh, that. Yeah.” She went back to the menu.

Ashby sighed, a familiar weight growing in his stomach. Pei had many scars—corded stripes across her back, healed bullet holes on her legs and chest, a warped patch leftover from the business end of a pulse rifle. Her body was a tapestry of violence. Ashby had no illusions about the risks a cargo runner faced, but somehow her neat clothes, her polished gray ship, her quick wit and smooth voice made it all seem very civilized. It wasn’t until he saw physical proof that someone had hurt her that he remembered how dangerous her life was. The life he couldn’t share.

“Should I ask?” Ashby said, running his finger over the dull flesh. The way she was reclining prevented him from seeing the extent of it, but it trailed all the way to her back, widening as it went. “Shit, Pei, this is huge.”

Pei laid the menu across her chest and looked at him. “Do you really want to know?”

“Yes.”

“I’m not going to tell you if it’s going to make you worry more.”

“Who said I was worried?”

She stroked the creases between his eyebrows with a fingertip. “You’re sweet, but you’re a terrible liar.” She rolled over, bringing her face to his. “There was an… incident at a drop site.”

“An incident.”

Her second pair of eyelids fluttered, and her cheeks went pale yellow with flecks of red. The intricacies of her color language were something Ashby would never be able to learn, but he was familiar enough with it to distinguish emotions. This one, for example, was somewhere between exasperated and embarrassed. “It’s going to sound so much worse than it actually was.”

Ashby drummed his fingers against her hip, waiting.

“Oh, fine. We got jumped by a small—very small, I might add—Rosk strike team. They were after the base, not us, but we got a little mixed up in it. Long, messy story short, I ended up on top of one of their heads—”

“You what?” Rosk soldiers were built for combat right down to their genes. Three times the size of an average Human. A fast, raging mass of legs and spikes and keratin plating. Given the opportunity, he didn’t think he could prevent himself from running away from a charging Rosk soldier, let alone climb up on her head.

“I told you this was going to sound bad. Anyway, the second-to-last thing she ever did was buck me off into a stack of crates. As I went crashing down, she took the opportunity to grab me in her mouth. I’ve got good protective gear, but Rosk jaws—” She shook her head. “What you see there on my hip is the result of one of her mandibles slicing through. But it ended up working out well for me, actually. Being in her mouth gave me a nice, soft place to shoot.”

Ashby swallowed. “So you…?”

“No, that wasn’t enough to kill her. My pilot’s second shot was, though.” She cocked her head, second eyelids sliding in sideways. “You’re bothered.”

“It’s hard not to be.”

“Ashby.” She reached out to touch his cheek. “You shouldn’t ask.”

He pressed his palm against the small of her back, pulling her in close. “I really want this war to be over.”

“You know most of this”—she took his hand and guided it over her scars—“happened in GC space. This one’s from an Akarak who tried to board my ship. This one’s from a smuggler who didn’t want me to call the authorities on his phony bots. And this one’s from a genetweak headcase who was just having a bad day. Nobody protects me when I’m in uncontested space. Nobody but me. With military work, I get escorts when I’m out in the open, and armed guards when I’m unloading down planetside. In a lot of ways, military work is safer. Pays better, too. And it’s not as if they send me into heavy combat. Soon as I drop my goods, I turn right around and come back home.”

“Do… incidents happen often?”

“No.” She studied his face. “Are you more bothered that I was attacked, or that I shot someone?”

Ashby was quiet for a moment. “The former. I don’t care about you shooting that Rosk.”

She stretched out a leg and hooked it around one of his. “That’s an odd thing for an Exodan to say.” Pei, like everybody else in the GC, knew that Exodans were pacifists. Before they had left Earth for the open, the refugees had known that the only way they were going to survive was to band together. As far as they were concerned, their species’ bloody, war-torn history ended with them.

“I don’t know if I can explain this,” Ashby said. “I wish war didn’t happen, but I don’t judge other species for taking part in it. What you’re doing out there, I mean, I can’t find fault in what you do. The Rosk are killing innocent people in territories that don’t belong to them, and they won’t be reasoned with. I hate saying it, but in this case, I think violence is the only option.”

Pei’s cheeks went a somber orange. “It is. I’m only on the edges of it, and from what I’ve seen… trust me, Ashby, this is a war that needs to be fought.” She exhaled in thought. “Do you think badly of me for—I don’t know, for accepting business from soldiers?”

“No. You’re not a mercenary. All you do is get supplies to people. There’s no fault in that.”

“What about me shooting the Rosk, though? The one that had me in her mouth? You know that’s not the first time I’ve had to… defend myself.”

“I know. But you’re a good woman. The things you have to do don’t change that. And your species—you know how to end a war. Truly end it. It doesn’t get in your blood. You do what needs doing and leave it at that.”

“Not always,” Pei said. “We have as many dark patches in our history as any.”

“Maybe, but not like us. Humans can’t handle war. Everything I know about our history shows that it brings out the worst in us. We’re just not… mature enough for it, or something. Once we start, we can’t stop. And I’ve felt that in me, you know, that inclination toward acting out in anger. Nothing like what you’ve seen. I don’t pretend to know what war is like. But Humans, we’ve got something dangerous in us. We almost destroyed ourselves because of it.”

Pei ran her long fingers around his coiled hair. “But you didn’t. And you learned from it. You’re trying to evolve. I think the rest of the galaxy underestimates what that says about you.” She paused. “Well, about the Exodans, at least,” she said, her cheeks a sly green. “The Solans’ motives are a bit more questionable.”

He laughed. “Not that you’re biased or anything.”

“It’s your fault if I am.” She propped herself up on the pillow. “Don’t change the subject. You haven’t finished your original thought.”

“Which one?”

“What it is that actually bothers you.”

“Ah, right.” He sighed. Who was he to talk to her about war? What did he know about it at all, aside from news feeds and reference files? War was nothing more than a story to him, something that happened to people he didn’t know in places he’d never been to. It felt insulting to tell her how he felt about it.

“Go on,” she said.

“The Rosk that bit you. She’s dead.”

“Yes.” Her tone was matter-of-fact. No remorse, no pride.

Ashby nodded. “That’s what bothers me.”

“That… a Rosk died?”

“No.” He tapped his chest. “This. This feeling in here. That’s what bothers me. I hear that you shot someone, and I’m glad of it. I’m glad that you stopped her before she could hurt you more. I’m glad that she’s dead, because that means you’re still here. What does that say about me? What does it say about me, being relieved that you can do the thing I condemn my own species for?”

Pei looked at him a long time. She pressed close to him. “It means,” she said, her forehead against his, her lithe limbs wrapped around his body, “that you understand more about violence than you think.” She pressed her fingers against his cheek, a touch of worry crossing her face. “And that’s good, considering where you’re headed.”

“We’re not going into a combat zone. The Board says the situation there is perfectly stable.”

“Uh huh,” she said flatly. “I’ve never looked a Toremi in the eye, but they do not sound stable to me. That species was sending our explorers back in pieces before you guys even knew the rest of us were out here. I don’t buy this alliance, and I don’t like the idea of you going out there.”

Ashby laughed. “This coming from you.”

“There’s a difference.”

“Really.”

Her eyes shifted, displeased. “Yes, really. I know which end of a gun to point at someone. You won’t even pick one up.” She exhaled, her cheeks turning a pale orange. “That’s not fair, I’m sorry. All I mean is, I know you. I know you’ve probably thought this out long and hard. But I don’t know the Toremi. I only know what I hear, and—just, please, Ashby, be careful.”

He kissed her forehead. “And now you know how I feel every time you leave.”

“It’s an awful way to feel,” she said with a smirk. “And I wish you didn’t feel it either. But I suppose it’s good, in a way. It means that you care for me as much as I care for you.” She placed his hand on her hip. “I like that.”

They put off room service for another hour.