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The lights on the landing pad glowed bright blue, and Jane took it as a sign that her wandering was over. You've done it, space cowgirl, you brought in your bounty—a trident wielding space squidling hiding on some planet beyond the furthest asteroid belt and way too deep in troll space—the police are going to do everything else, and you can relax somewhere nice, using part of your reward cash.
And she needed to relax. Meenah was basically the worst space farer ever to space fare. Seven weeks with her screaming from the hold of the ship that she was going to fork a glubbing bitch when she got out made Jane just a mite cross. Just a wee bit.
She didn't even wait around to watch the offloading of the prisoner. Heck, she usually helped, but not now. Not after the time she had getting Meenah here. The threats. The promises to rip out her brain and replace it with cybernetics. The grumbling. Oh, the grumbling. Jane was plain and Jane didn't appreciate gold and Jane was a fuddy duddy cheapo, and thank goodness Jane wasn't cute at all.
Because not waiting and not helping were happening, Jane decided that she would use the time to explore the space station. It was, by and large, a major metropolitan city under a space dome. She wasn't terribly impressed architecturally. Once you've seen the golden towers and labyrinthine passages of Prospit, everything else seemed the same, only less sparkly. Space Station Alternia-0283 was a ghost of a place, really. It had some sky scrapers and a courthouse, but most of it was military installation, and troll military installation at that.
There was a certain swagger of unquestioned authority to the inhabitants, and it was very hard for an alien off-worlder (off stationer?) to catch a bartender's eye, Jane discovered. Oh really. You'd think they were lords of all creation and rulers of an interstellar galactic empire, rather than a hulking brutish species that still were trying to make bio-memetic warp drives work, and hadn't been able to discover light speed travel at all.
Some were quite nice of course. A friendly looking woman eyed Jane trying to hop up and down in front of the bartender, and leaned down, whispering: "What are you after, sugar plum?"
"Ginger ale," Jane said, feeling very tired and glad someone bothered to notice her.
The troll woman looked confused. "Is that some," odd pause, "Faygo variation? It sounds," longer pause, and when the troll spoke again, her tone held a hint of contempt for the words, as though soda was not generally mentioned in polite society, "swill-ish."
As Jane managed to display her astonishment through facial expression, because honestl, she couldn't even think of a response that didn't smack of rudeness, another troll butted into the conversation. "Holy shit! Actually, no, scratch that, it's not holy at all. It's the most fucking profane thing ever seen this side of my own hand slapping my forehead in disgust. Ginger ale is not Faygo. It's just carbonated ginger stuff, and no one would mistake it for some clown's weird elixir. I can't believe a dunderfuck who managed to get off planet at least doesn't have the horizons to at least know what it is that is going into their own rye and gingers!"
This troll had the blocky look Alternians preferred in their military. Stubborn and immovable, despite the fact that this man's arms were flailing all over the place as he tired to make his point. He probably hoped that if he managed to reach the other troll's chin, he'd be able to have one up on her.
The woman who had been asking about Jane's soda rolled her eyes and muttered "Vantas, please. Hey, I would like another rye and ginger, and an actual ginger ale over here, please."
"You all have rye and ginger, and you aren't familiar with ginger ale?" Jane asked, confused.
The blocky Vantas shrugged. "Generally no one has enough of a clue to ask what goes into their food. And you know drinking trends migrate weirdly. Where I was last stationed, everyone was drinking Andromeda Blues."
Ah, well traveled, and definitely military. He was probably in the army for life, then. Funny. Most trolls that she had met talked about going back to the homeworld when they reached a tottering pile of sweeps that made non-engineered humans envious. Trolls weren't casual about their traveling, either. Either they would be trying to impress an alien with how far they had ranged, in which case Vantas should have said where he had last been stationed, or impress upon an alien how proud they were not to have traveled.
Some of the questions got a little more urgent when the first troll sniffed. "Don't pay any attention dear. Vantas has a chip on his shoulder about his hemotype and it makes him try to show off."
Vantas' cheeks blotched darker in what was probably a blush, and Jane felt that the troll who had been so nice to her before was actually really rude. Also, she had seen trolls showing off. This sounded more like trolls trying to be awkward conversationalists. "Oh, that's fine. I like hearing about people's travels."
"Ooh, terribly kind. Why don't you take him over there, to that table, then?" the lady troll handed her the ginger ale that the bar tender plonked down and Jane nodded her thank yous, perplexed.
She did take the indicated table, though, because she was tired, and the table was empty. After a moment she noticed Vantas hovering awkwardly, although trying not to look as though he was hovering at all. "If you want to sit, sit."
He slid into the seat with alacrity. "Sorry about that. I'm Karkat Vantas, by the way."
"Jane Crocker, Captain of the Wooden Spoon. What was that all about?"
Karkat scowled. "The bit where people look at me and think I'm a rainbow drinker, or the bit where I just got promoted and passed my trials with flying colors, leaving everyone else in our squad easting dust, because it's almost certainly the second one with her," he looked a little smug, before sighing. "Well, there's couple of other things, too, that I imagine aren't making her so pleased to see me that she strews flora in my path and demands panegyrics sung unto my name."
"Does that happen a lot, Mr. Vantas?" As a step in interspecies diplomacy her voice was more wry and teasing than it ought to have been, particularly with trolls, who she knew tended to be more literal minded than most species.
"Oh all the time. You wouldn't believe how hard it is to get to guard duty on time with all the flora that just spilling from my hive block and down the streets. Of course not! Where on earth would anyone find a bunch of non-edible flora on an asteroid?! I thought you humans were good with figures of speech."
Jane tried to hide her smile. There was an engineer she knew in the Temi cluster who would have a field dy with Karkat Vantas. "I've been spending too much time with criminals who apparently really mean 'eat my shorts' when they chitter it at me. I just want to be sure."
"Oh sweet non-existent flora. I'm so glad our empire had managed to expand far enough that we've discovered other people's insults and completely messing it all up."
"Making a cake of yourselves?" she couldn't believe that she was making a cake joke. The last month should have cured her of all instinct towards puns imaginable.
The off duty executioner just looked confused. "I know some confusion about grubrolls put some rumors about, but trolls don't usually eat each other without getting locked up and dragged before the lawmen."
"Oh, no, it's uh, a human expression. It means, well, you've made a fool of yourself, because you made a mess."
Karkat's eyebrows worked through the phrase. He snorted eventually. "I'll remember that. Cake. Huh. Well, I've never understood the appeal of sugary baked goods—"
"I'll have you know they can be wonderful! A cake made with love is like a hug," Jane staunchly defended her hobby.
Perhaps she defended it a little too staunchly. Karkat rocked back in his chair a little. "Well, okay—"
"Hey, candycane! Nosveratu! Vantas!" Jane watched Karkat slap a hand to his grey face and hunch over their table. She moved his drink out of the way of accidental spillage, and less than a second later that turned out to have been a very good idea as Karkat was nearly whalloped on the back by a comradely buffet from another military looking troll. "Is this where you're hiding? And here we all had bets running that you were going to be running off with the lady fair as soon as she got dragged back to port, kicking and screaming."
"Yeah. So sorry to disappoint your need to see me court marshalled. Could you buzz off, Liqual? I'm already exiled so that not-rainbow-drinking-me mooching around won't mess with Casser's dating prospects."
"Oooh, are you going to bite me, Vantas?" the newcomer sniggered.
Karkat was getting blotchy again. Jane cocked an eyebrow. Trolls apparently found human teeth strangely disturbing, despite the fact that they naturally possessed pointed instruments of immediate death in their mouths. She smiled. "I might. It's been a long day, buster. You looking to make it longer?"
Karkat whistled as his colleague scampered. "What do you do? Most humans don't face up well to us."
"Nothing much. The Wooden Spoon's a transport ship, mostly. I bring in wanted fugitives, sometimes, when interstellar trade has found other routes. You know, get by as a person must. I have to say though, I'm not used to sharing my counter with someone so," she paused. Karkat's eyebrows were daring her to say anything about his blood color, she could tell. If there was one thing she had learned about trolls by now was that blood mattered to them. "So popular," Jane finished lamely.
"Yeah. Well, rainbow drinker plague and everyone thinking that I'm one and all that, people just can't stop falling over themselves to be friendly to me. Or is it scared, when they run screaming at the sight of your face? Why, I do believe it is scared. Terrified. Horrified, even. I can't imagine why. I've got the sunniest personality this side of a solar cluster."
He paused, then added thoughtfully. "I also blame you humans for starting that myth that rainbow drinkers have red human mutant blood."
"Huh?"
"Well, obviously, the troll story needed to be scarier so we started borrowing aspects from weird species, and your species has those vampire things—"
"We aren't weird!" Jane felt the need to defend everything human, which was a bit of a surprise as she generally preferred to work the dead zones of space. You ended up avoiding humanity all together in the non-colonial clusters.
Karkat gave her a long look "What else would you call a species that only has one type of rom com?"
From there the conversation devolved into defending human romance movies, which Jane was not familiar with, and Karkat could apparently be counted upon to be a walking encyclopedia for. But then he made the mistake of talking about the Maltese Falcon, and Jane was on vastly firmer ground, and by the time her second ginger ale arrived, they were scheduled to go to a drive in movie just so that Jane could see the finer points of why troll murder mysteries were no fun.
They exited the bar, tab paid by Jane because she ought to do something with her reward money, and Karkat was insisting that he was picking up the movie tickets and snacks. That had brought up a small worry for Jane. "Uh, you wouldn't know if humans can digest troll movie going food, do you?"
"Horrible trash you wouldn't feed a barkbeast is generally the same across all cultures and planets," Karkat shrugged. "But I've known some humans and they haven't died yet. The butterkernals will be fine for you. Ugh. Of course, I'd pick the one night when the walk up theater doesn't have anything remotely murder mystery. Let me pick out something. Hah! Yeah, let me bring an object lesson down on you, all from the mountain of obvious things that we were just arguing about! How's a quadrant swapping rom com sound to you? I usually avoid black like the plague, but this one is a classic in the genre."
While they were getting their popcorn—Jane was relieved to discover that troll popcorn was 1) plant based, and 2) could be bought without grubsauce—Karkat was just winding down his lecture about black rom coms and how Jane would love them, when something he said sounded very much like the behavior of her recent bounty. Jane stopped the rant about the overuse of insults to cue romantic feelings in the genre to ask if trolls ever tried to get black romantic with species that didn't understand it. Alright, she might have ranted a little bit about her recent prisoner, but she didn't name names, after all, as she was a professional!
Karkat has a lot of theories about that one, most of which, since Jane was working herself into a fever pitch about the prisoner, were actually very calming. She was glad. She would never see Meenah again, of course, but Meenah had really upset her. Karkat managed to make it sound all right.
"And look, we might flirt black with other species. It's not a thing you think through. Quadrants are very conditioned into troll society. You don't even realize when you're crushing on people, sometimes, right? You just move into the behavior that seems like a natural response, and it's all down to the terrible sociological circles that we swing around and around again."
At the end of the black rom com which Jane had found a little violent in places and a little silly bordering on that "too embarrassing to watch" in others, Karkat brought up the fact that she was a captain again, and this time he seemed to be fishing. Fishing for something very particular.
"Why do you want me to smuggle someone off this station?" Jane asked sharply, but quietly enough that she was sure no one else heard. Most of the other movie goers had fins, after all, and probably understood vibrations more than words, and background noise vibrations could be hart to interpret from a distance.
Karkat frowned. "I—look, I know it sounds bad. I mean I think it's a freaking nightmare and honestly I've completely lost what little sense I have for agreeing to help my friend, but look, you saw that rom com. Alternian society is very restrictive. Really really restrictive, and I have a friend who got born into one of the more restrictive classes. I think the rainbow drinker thing is bad? They have to deal with people thinking that they could end the universe, which would be cool and all, but you know, I known this person for nine sweeps now, and I've never seen a single horrorterror-y tendril break through the fabric of reality even when they were really mad. So, I'm planning on getting them away from trolls just sort of in general. Before they do something we're all going to regret.
Jane pondered. Jane pondered all the way back to her ship. As she was about to enter the docking area she turned back to Karkat. "I'm not saying I transport live goods, mind. If your friend can work as my crewman, we'd be able to do something. Say, to Jupiter Station. That's outside of Troll space. Anyway, bring them by. Here, let me give you my frequency channel. I'm planning on leaving pretty soon though, so you should have your friend ready to meet me before the end of the day."
Karkat's jaw dropped. "Wha—but. HOLY FUCK, maybe luck actually isn't a fakey fake thing after all? What are the odd—no. It's a MIRACLE. Holy pinwheels on the moon, I'm converted. Never again will I doubt in ye, angels who dispense poorly chosen beverages. Never!"
Jane laughed. There wasn't much else she could do, seeing a troll practically weeping and blessing every star that had made this horrible rotten worst job ever slightly easier. Jane did wonder about that when she went to bed.
Too bad in the morning she was levitated from her bed by someone yelling in her ear that she had to get moving, go go go! She was already at the thruster and raising the magnetic seal on her ship when her radio crackled to life with loud terrible threats of subjugulation, and Karkat was screaming back something about the Empress could go choke on her own frond, and Jane was clearing the artificial grav field before she even blearily realized that there was something quite wrong with this picture and it wasn't just that Karkat was strapped into the usually empty co-poilot's seat in full threshexcutioner armor, hyperventilating, his red eyes so wide that they seemed to take up most of his face.
There was an arm draped over the top of her pilot's chair attached to a passenger exuding gleeful evil smugness. Jane was not noted for being a morning person. Something the unexpected passenger knew.
She turned her head to the right and saw Meenah grinning at her with shark teeth and perfect lipstick, and even all of Karkat's calming words from last night failed to quell her fury.
"I hear," Meenah said, drawing the syllables out just to make Jane cringe in anticipation of the waiting pun which never came, "I'm to be your new first mate."
"KARKAT YOU SHOULD HAVE A MIDDLE NAME SO THAT I MIGHT PROPERLY EXPRESS MY HUMAN RAGE VANTAS!"