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It occurred to Jester that the violet and tangerine expanse of the Wynandir galaxy looked like a spilt milkshake. A multi-coloured milkshake frozen in mid-tumble across a velvet black sky. Stars, making bright bursts of red and white, could have been sprinkles. It would have been a nice thought if it hadn’t instantly reminded her of how long it had been since she’d last had a real milkshake.
Caduceus always did his best, but long-haul rations could only go so far. The pale imitations of fresh products like milk and strawberries that packed the kitchen’s cupboards always tended to taste like dust after a few weeks of the same stuff every meal and every day.
The giant domed window above Jester was so clear, it may have been invisible. She may have been floating through the milkshake-galaxy, if she could only ignore the flashing lights of the ship’s walls in her periphery, and the pressure of the deck against her back. She’d packed a blanket under her head for comfort, but the metal grate of the observation deck’s floor still bit cruelly into her shoulder blades.
“Jester?” Beau’s voice echoed through an open port behind her. “You in here?”
“Here!” Jester called back. She rolled onto her side.
Beau appeared in the doorway. Her boilersuit was pushed down around her waist, revealing her oil-stained tank top and bandaged arms. Some of the bandages looked singed; she’d been scrambling through the engine pipes again, thought Jester, sure fire way to get a nasty burn.
“Caduceus wants a second pair of hands,” said Beau, wiping her brow and succeeding in only smearing more grime onto her face. “You busy?”
Jester shook her head and got to her feet. “Nope. Just enjoying the view.”
For the past four hours Beau had been searching for an anomaly. Veth had said there was something wrong with the engine that morning, that the numbers didn’t add up between the fuel input and energy output in some parts of the ship’s system. Beau, as usual, was tasked with finding out what had happened.
After sending Jester on her merry way towards the kitchen, Beau returned to the lower deck. Here, the lights were dimmer, the air warmer, and everything smelled faintly like burnt toast. It always took a moment for Beau to consciously remind herself that this ship didn’t burn wood or oil or coal, like some of the oldest machines back home, and there was never a danger of fire in the engine chamber. Didn’t stop her from worrying sometimes though.
Beau sighed, tugged her gloves back on, and plunged into the guts of the ship.
Everything seemed normal at first, but then again, she was only checking the fuel pipes at first. Her immediate suspicion was a blockage somewhere in the supply line. It had happened a couple of times before. Their fault for using a busted up second-hand ship (although it wasn’t as if they could have afforded a new one, and at the time they had no choice but to steal it).
Beau was forced deeper into the engine chamber to find the problem, getting down onto her hands and knees to crawl under pipes and boilers and dimly glowing display screens. She began sweating, sometimes holding her breath as she carefully avoided touching any of the scalding metal with her bare skin.
She wondered again why she hadn’t forced Veth to do this job. Veth was smaller and even more flexible than Beau. But Veth had, as usual, excused herself because she was “too busy managing the fuel”.
Beau wheedled Veth’s words under her breath as she wriggled between two humming metal tanks. “Bitch,” she muttered. “She’s getting the smallest portion from Caduceus tonight; I’ll make sure of it.”
Eventually, Beau found the problem. A transistor had broken.
The good news was that there was no immediate threat of an explosion or total system failure. The ship would continue to fly safely, if not at optimal power.
The bad news was that Beau had no spare transistors laying around. The one she was staring at, laying on her back only a few inches from a tangle of corroded mithril, was hopelessly broken and had no replacement.
Ten minutes later Beau dragged herself out of the pipes and into fresh air. She sat slumped against the wall of the engine room and drank sullenly from a self-chilling water bottle. After a while, a small orange shape slipped into the engine room through a small hatch next to the door. Frumpkin approached Beau with bright eyes and sat a couple feet away on the metal grate floor.
Beau saluted the cat. “Hey Frumpy.”
Frumpkin blinked at her, then his eyes flashed white.
“Beauregard, Veth tells me there is an issue with the engine,” said Caleb’s voice from the little speaker under Frumpkin’s chin.
“Yeah. There is.” Beau rubbed her eyes. “A transistor in the fuel handling system broke sometime last night. We’re at 70% power and we can’t go into light-speed.”
“But we do not have any spare transistors.”
“I know. When’s our next supply stop?”
There was a pause. Some muffled sounds of rustling papers came through Frumpkin’s speaker. “Hm. Twelve days. But at the speed this accident puts us at…” More rustling. “It will be at least two weeks.”
“Shit. We’ll miss our deadline at this rate.”
“Have you told Fjord about it yet?”
“No. I’m still in the guts. You let him know, Caleb, I’m gonna update Veth and see if she can work some stuff out. She might still have some of that fancy fuel she made back when we were tangling with the Shepherds– that really volatile stuff, remember? It could give us the boost we need.”
There was a great deal that Fjord was concerned by that day. The desk in his office was almost invisible underneath the piles of paper detailing their expenses, daily tasks, current cargo, a list of locations in the galactic locale which may prove to be profitable trade spots, and a similar list of locations they should avoid at all costs. Fjord was quietly updating the list of AVOID locations after an unfortunate event involving a giant worm on the previous dwarf planet they had visited, when his ansible chirped.
He pushed a stack of notes to one side to make room for his screen. It lit up, flickered a little – Fjord smacked it, cursing about faulty radio – and waited for the vague shadow on the screen to become clear, forming the impassive face of Yussa.
“Ah, hello Yussa. How are you?”
“Well. I assume you found nothing of note on GU446386, given you deigned not to update me on the matter.”
Fjord bit the inside of his cheek. He had forgotten entirely that Yussa had shown interest in that unholy lump of rock the last time the crew had dropped by his station.
“No,” he said, casting a bitter glance at the updated AVOID list. “Nothing of worth. Just some big angry worms that tried to eat our technician. Caleb thinks your detector was picking up the…uh…” Fjord scrambled to dig up another note from his jungle of paperwork. “Picking up the latent arcano-chemo-decay signature of the giant worms’ faeces. He said it could have easily been mistaken for a significant power source. But it was just shit, literally.”
“I see.” Yussa’s blurry face flickered into a tight smile. “Well, no harm in learning from our mistakes, no?”
Fjord recalled the large chunk that the giant worm had taken from Beau’s leg that day. He winced. “…no harm done.”
With the simul-call dismissed, Fjord deflated into his chair.
A moment later, Yasha stuck her head into his office. “Caduceus wants to know if you would prefer the green or red moss today, Fjord.”
Fjord thought seriously about it. Both varieties tasted identical, most of the crew agreed on it, and both tasted like moss. But it was the easiest produce to grow on the ship and was full of good stuff (Caduceus assured them regularly of it) so it featured in most of their dishes.
“Red. Tell him red.”
Yasha nodded, paused, then slipped into the room proper. “Have you seen Beau today?”
“Uh. No. I guess not.”
“Me neither. Not since the morning.”
“Do you need to speak to her?” Fjord sat up and reached for the button next to his mouthpiece. Ironically, the intra-craft speaker system was the one part of the ship which had yet to break in some fashion despite being the oldest element.
Yasha frowned and put out a hand. “Oh, no. I guess I was only wondering. I just hope she’s not doing repair work already, you know, when Jester had said she needs her rest.”
“She’s tough. Tougher than me.”
“Yes, but that worm took a real bite out of her.”
Fjord paused. He nodded. “You’re right. I’ll let her know next time I see her that Veth’s on tech duty for a while.”
Before Yasha could respond, a little hatch by the door opened for Frumpkin to join them in Fjord’s office. The robotic, but no less agile, cat leapt up onto the desk, crushing some paperwork, and immediately began speaking in Caleb’s voice.
“Beauregard tells me a transistor has broken in the engine. This will hamper our speed until we can purchase a replacement part at our next supply stop, which is over two weeks away.”
Fjord buried his face in his hands.
“Beauregard is going to speak with Veth about this,” Caleb went on. “They are discussing possibly boosting our speed temporarily with experimental fuel, but there is currently no guarantee we will make it to Nicodranas before our deadline.”
Fjord emerged from behind his hands, feeling his heart sink even lower. “…but our cargo.”
“It will expire before we reach the planet, yes.”
“…sixty-five platinum pieces, Caleb. Can’t you sound more upset about it?”
The cat blinked at Fjord. He dimly wondered how much time their navigator had on his hands to personalise his artificial pet to such a detailed degree that it even blinked.
“I am upset,” Caleb said through Frumpkin. “You cannot see me at the moment Fjord, but I am extremely frustrated by this turn of events and I wish I could do more to help the crew. This money could have funded much of my research which requires expensive tools and—”
“Yeah, okay, I’m sorry,” interrupted Fjord. He rubbed his face and sighed. “This job is a bust. We’ll need to look for new work until this is fixed. I’ll raise the conversation to everyone over dinner, is that alright?”
“Ja. That is alright.”
“Sorry.”
“No need. We are all very wound up right now.”
Frumpkin disappeared back through his hatch and away into the little cat-sized passages that wound through the walls of the ship. Fjord stared numbly at the wall in silence.
“What is your plan, if you don’t mind me asking,” asked Yasha. Fjord had almost forgotten she was still in the room with him.
“Oh. I guess we’ll have to turn around and head back to the last place we refuelled at…what was it called… that space station...?” He half-heartedly began rummaging through his maps and notes.
“Alfield.”
“There. We’ll ditch the spoiled cargo, find a cheaper job, and start looking for a replacement transistor.”
Yasha rubbed at her arms nervously. “Is the money going to cover…stuff?”
“Like what?”
“Anything?”
Fjord shrugged. “Probably not. But like always we’ll have to make do.”
The door to the tiny laboratory at the very back of the ship was not locked and had never been due to both Fjord and Jester’s insistence (apparently for multiple health and safety reasons), but the lack of a lock had sometimes bothered Veth. One of those time was whenever somebody charged into the lab and startled her, risking her spilling all kinds of corrosive, combustible, poisonous, and expensive materials across her worktable.
When Beau burst through the door, covered in dust, oil, and sweat, goggles still resting on her forehead, Veth had fortunately only been holding her ansible. Unfortunately, the fright had subsequently caused her to fling the device across the room and behind a shelf of glass vials.
As the bottles rattled to a rest, Beau sat herself on the edge of the worktable with a sigh and unbuckled her grubby maintenance goggles. “Transistor broke,” she grunted.
Veth hopped off her stool and went to kneel down and rummage behind the shelf in search of her ansible. She’d been reading Yeza’s most recent update from home before the interruption. She hoped the screen hadn’t cracked.
“That’s not something we have a replacement for, is it,” said Veth, without much hope, and with her arm jammed firmly behind the shelving unit.
Beau shook her head, now focussed on picking dirt from underneath her nails with one of Veth’s sharper alchemy tools. “Nah. Caleb’s letting Fjord know right now, but I think we’re gonna get a serious change in timetables. Maybe a couple weeks delay while we look for parts and slow-work.”
“Shit.” Veth let her forehead rest against the wall with a hollow thump. “I promised I’d visit home after this job.”
Beau made what Veth could only assume was intended to be a sympathetic noise. “Yeza would understand though, right?”
Veth chuckled. She pulled the ansible out from behind the shelf and brushed off the dust it had collected, making the screen light up again. “Yeah, he’d be fine with it. I’m not thrilled though.”
“I bet Jester’s gonna be heartbroken once Fjord lets her know. Isn’t Marion’s birthday coming up soon?”
Veth froze. “Oh, you’re right. That’s gonna hurt.”
Quickly, Veth learnt that Beau was interested in the experimental fuel that she had cooked up a number of months ago, to her surprise. At the time nobody but Jester had had any faith in it. Fjord in particular had warned Veth away from putting any of the “stars’ damned stuff” in his ship and had threatened to jettison her into the vacuum if she ever tried (although it was all in good humour).
But desperate times called for desperate measures. Veth showed Beau the tiny capsule she had safely stored her homebrewed fuel in for the past eight or so weeks.
“It would bring us close to lightspeed for about eight hours,” she explained, tapping the adamantine casing. Beau winced with each tap her of nail against the shell. “Very low chance of the engine exploding. Even lower chance of a total arcano-chemo-meltdown which would send the ship and all of us into a different dimension for the rest of eternity.”
“…how low are those chances?”
Veth shrugged. “Low enough to be negligible.”
Before Beau could reply, and it looked like she wanted to, the door slammed open again to reveal the looming frame of Yasha in the corridor.
“Beau.”
“Uh,” said Beau.
“You were in the engine again today,” stated Yasha. “I thought Jester told you to take it easy until your injuries had healed fully.”
Beau looked cornered. “Well, okay, yeah. But it was an emergency.” She glanced down at Veth, who raised her brow meaningfully, getting across the message that she had no intention to become involved in this spat.
“I know about the transistor. But you shouldn’t have pushed yourself.” Yasha approached and began gently examining Beau, lifting her arms one by one, then probing at her ribs and upper legs. Beau appeared to take it moodily. “What if you opened up that bite wound again? We don’t have an endless supply of medicine either.”
“I didn’t open a wound,” grumbled Beau.
Veth smiled to herself as she put away her tools and chemicals for the evening. As much as she wanted to make a comment about their tooth-rotting domesticity, it was probably better suited for a time when Yasha was not quite so upset.
“Ask Veth or Caleb for help next time,” said Yasha, releasing Beau’s shoulders. She appeared to be satisfied with her examination. “Or me.”
Beau scoffed. “No offence babe, but you wouldn’t fit between those pipes in a million years.”
“Yeah, okay.” Yasha crossed her thick arms. “But I can help in other ways. I can hold stuff, like spanners and things.”
“You’re so good at that,” laughed Beau, taking one of Yasha’s hands and leading her out of the lab. She looked over her shoulder to speak to Veth again as they went, hissing, “keep a hold of that fuel, Veth. I might help you convince Fjord to use it if things are as bad as they seem,” and shooting her thumbs-up, before going back to chatting with a slowly-brightening Yasha.
Veth grinned and loosened her lab coat. Those two had been agonising to watch for the first few months that the seven had been a crew; the awkward flirting, the missed chances, the various bets held among the other crew members wondering when the two would finally make it real, it was enough to drive Veth crazy. Part of her had wanted to push them together herself like two dolls in a playroom. Another part of her had wanted to sabotage their intricate dance, not out of spite, but simply to force Yasha and Beau to get over themselves.
Seeing them finally act this way, happy and in love, made Veth’s heart glow in the same way it did when her son had learnt to walk.
After cleaning her hands and letting her hair down from a tight lab bun, re-braiding it over her shoulders, and changing into a more comfortable dress, Veth made her way towards the front of the ship to join the rest of the crew for the evening meal.
Yasha sat next to Beau at the meal table. She used to sit between Fjord and Caleb, before she and Jester had decided to switch their habitual places a couple of months ago. Now she sat next to Beau. And now Jester sat next to Fjord.
She and Jester made eye contact, directly across from one another, as they settled into their seats in the common room. Jester smirked one of her trademark smirks. “Did you see the galaxy today?” she hissed, like she was sharing a dirty secret. Yasha leant over the table to join her game. “It looked like a milkshake! The sky has never been so clear, I’m sure of it.”
“The sky is always clear,” interjected Beau, pouring herself a glass of cloudy moss-wine. “We’re literally in the sky, Jester, there are never any clouds.”
Jester pouted. “It was extra clear today. I could see extra stars and extra solar systems.”
“Oh. I bet you did,” said Yasha, entirely serious. “Could you see Nicodranas?”
Jester lit up. “Yes! I totally could. I saw a teeny weeny little blue dot and I knew it was home. It was in a big splash of pink and green that I bet was the Menagerie system up there. I could almost see mama’s place too.”
Nobody at the table dared correct her.
“Wow.” Yasha smiled and sat back. She could hear Beau snickering into her drink. “That sounds wonderful.”
“It is,” said Jester, fiddling with the sleeve of her dress. “It’s not true, I know that Nicodranas is invisible to our eyes from this distance, but I felt it. When I look up at the galaxy I can feel whenever I’m looking at home, always. I don’t have to be able to really see it to know that it’s there.”
Soon Caduceus emerged from the kitchen door with a large tray of food. He set the tray down to a chorus of cheers and smiled at Jester to his left. “Thank for your assistance again, Jester. Everyone, help yourselves.”
Yasha ate her food quietly. The protein mix was flavoured well, thanks to Caduceus’ expertise in the miniature greenhouse he had installed in the upper deck of the ship shortly after joining the crew, and if she closed her eyes, she could imagine it being the kind of meals they would be served in the lounge of the Lavish Chateau. It had been a couple of months since any of the crew had eaten real meat or fruit or vegetables other than Caduceus’ ship-grown moss and garnishes. It had been showing on everyone’s faces at recent dinner times.
Yasha was not looking forwards to Fjord bringing up the bad news.
“How are Yeza and the boy doing?” Caleb asked Veth.
“Good,” Veth said through a mouthful of moss. “Yeza just got a major commission from the local council. Something about a more energy-efficient method of water-purification. I’m proud of him.”
“You should be.”
“And Luc started his first year in school! The teachers tell Yeza that he’s a precocious little one, but sharp. Just like his mother.” Veth grinned. “I pity whoever tries to dim that spark.”
“I bet he’ll want to work on a ship too one day,” said Jester, waving a lump of artificial poultry around on the end of her fork. “Because his mama is so cool, he’ll want to be just like you and he’ll learn how to pilot a ship like Fjord, or track the stars like Caleb, or make fuel like you, or be a medic like me!”
Veth grinned and cocked her head. “Wait, you’re a medic?”
Jester snorted and shoved the food into her mouth. “Of corth I am,” she said around her mouthful. “I’m the besth damn dogdor thith thide of the galathy.”
Beau laughed hard enough to almost shoot wine out of the nose. “Have you met Caduceus yet? He’s been with us long enough; you might have noticed him.”
“Jester is not just a medic,” said Fjord calmly, though he was smiling. “She does more than just bandage our scraped knees. She’s also the heart of this crew, you know that Beau.”
“Yeah, yeah, I was just messing around. We all love Jester.”
Fjord fidgeted under Jester’s glowing smile. “We do. And it occurs to me that you, Jester, might be one of the only people who doesn’t know the bad news yet.”
Jester’s smile faltered. “What bad news?”
Fjord looked meaningfully towards Beau. By Yasha’s side, it was Beau’s turn to squirm under Jester’s gaze. “Uh, so,” began Beau, fitfully. “We had engine trouble this morning. Me and Veth thought it was just a blockage or something at first, but when I found the problem it was…it’s something we can’t fix right away. We need to buy a new engine part to get the ship running like normal again.”
“Our schedule has been changed dramatically,” extrapolated Caleb. “I am sorry, Jester, but we will not be able to make it to Nicodranas in time to deliver our cargo. At our current speed, those crystals will decay and become entirely inert before we reach our destination. We will need to make a major detour.”
Jester was quiet. Yasha wished she were back on the other side of the table so she could offer some quiet support but was mollified once Fjord put a gentle hand on her shoulder.
“We’ll send a message to your mother today to let her know we’ve been delayed, okay?” he told her.
Jester nodded. She forced a smile. “Okay. Man, that’s some shitty luck.”
“That’s for sure,” sighed Veth. “Unless…” she began with a glint in her eye, “we use my fluffernutter fuel and blast our way across the quadrant at double-speed.”
Fjord opened his mouth to object but was interrupted by a tinny meowing from ankle-height. Everyone ducked and craned their necks to see Frumpkin winding his way between their feet under the table towards Caleb at the far end.
Caleb pushed his chair back to pick the little AI cat up from the floor. “…what is the matter,” he muttered to Frumpkin.
“What is it?” asked Fjord from the other side of Jester, who had seemingly forgotten her sadness in the face of Frumpkin’s arrival and was now eagerly waiting for Caleb’s update.
Caleb was fiddling with the tiny display attached to the cat’s collar. After a moment he announced, “we have just received a greeting from a currently anonymous source. It has addressed us by name though, so it is likely to be an official vessel, not pirates. They are aware of our vessel code and signature.”
“It might be an Empire vessel,” chirped Jester. “Like a travelling official, or maybe even the army! They might want to inspect our ship. Maybe they think we’re carrying drugs or something.”
Yasha made eye contact with Beau, who turned grey.
“Or it could just be another long-haul vessel like us,” said Caleb.
“Can your little machine tell us the type of vessel that sent this greeting?” asked Fjord.
Caleb blinked at him. “Frumpkin is not a machine. He is a cat.”
“Apologies.”
“And no. He can only interpret the most basic data from our ship’s mainframe. We will have to look directly at the interface to learn more about the nature of this message and its source.”
Fjord sighed and stood from the table, wiping his mouth, and pushed away his mostly eaten meal. “Sorry everyone. I should check this as soon as I can.”
Everybody waved Fjord away. Jester immediately began eating the leftovers from his plate.
“Such an eventful day,” mused Caduceus. “I’ll put on a kettle after the meal, stew some tea that I think will even us out after all this drama.” He chuckled. “Although, I’ve found we rarely experience a quiet day recently.”
It was not long until Fjord’s voice rang through the intra-craft speaker system. “Mighty Nein, report to the main deck.”
Caleb, Beau, and Veth all flinched to attention at the tone of his voice. Yasha reflexively put her hand on the heavy energy-pistol at her hip.
“We’re being hailed by a Dynasty vessel.”
Most of the crew was very nervous as they lingered in the reception room which adjoined the docking bay of their ship. Fjord was still speaking with whoever was helming the Dynasty vessel that had flagged them down in the docking bay. The other five crew members, plus Caduceus, sat and stood in nervous silence.
Well, Jester didn’t seem too nervous.
“We would know already if we were in trouble,” she whispered to Caduceus. “I bet Fjord is flirting with the captain right now, as we speak.” She giggled.
Caduceus frowned. “Aren’t you two…I was under the impression that this sort of behaviour is regarded as inappropriate.”
“Oh no, it’s okay. Fjord is super good at making people think we’re not trouble, especially when we actually are. And he’s the best at doing that when he’s either being super scary or super sexy. And he’s pretty sexy,” she said, wiggling her brows. “I don’t think it’s bad if he’s flirting to help the crew. He doesn’t really mean it, you know?”
Caduceus nodded. He didn’t understand in the slightest.
The door to the reception room opened. Fjord entered, followed by a severe-looking woman in a crisp black uniform and two helmeted guards. The guards carried only small weapons, Caduceus noticed, and both appeared to be on safety. None of the three newcomers carried themselves like they were immediately anxious of conflict breaking out. They excluded a pleasant air of diplomacy.
“This is Lady Jiyana, captain of the Dusk Comet. These fine people need our help,” said Fjord, motioning to the three Dynasty visitors. “They recognised our ship’s signature from our history with the Dynasty and flagged us down asking for some technical assistance. One of their generators has burnt out, rendering their radiation shell rather weak. They have asked for help fixing the generator.”
“Don’t they have their own mechanics?” asked Beau. She stood by Yasha, arms folded, stubbornly sceptical like always.
“No, apparently not,” sighed Fjord, rubbing his neck under the collar of his crumpled shirt. “Their mechanic left the crew three lightdays back rather abruptly and they haven’t found a replacement yet. And this is a rather urgent issue.”
“You said it,” muttered Veth. She was glaring at the woman in the uniform, though Caduceus was quite sure that she was sympathetic to their plight despite her rocky past with the Dynasty. “A weak radiation shell is a ticking time bomb. Their whole crew could be dead within the month if they’re not fast about this.”
“Which is why we’re going to help,” said Fjord slowly, holding eye-contact with Veth. “This is a very important and very kind thing for us to do for them.”
Veth seemed to understand. She nodded stiffly and walked away, slipping out of the room, towards her lab to collect some supplies, Caduceus suspected.
“Beau and Yasha,” Fjord went on. “You two will help Veth out. Beau – try not to strain yourself. Just keep an eye on Veth’s work and tell Lady Jiyana’s crew what they can do to help while you’re fixing that generator. Yasha – do what you’re good at and carry whatever Beau and Veth can’t.” He made eye-contact with Yasha for an extra moment. Caduceus understood; what Yasha was truly good at was breaking bones. She was accompanying Veth and Beau onto the Dynasty ship for more than one reason.
The two women nodded and followed Veth deeper into their ship. Fjord turned to the Lady and began speaking to her in a lower voice.
Caduceus listened into the conversation with a mild interest. The two were speaking politics, stuff he didn’t have a hope of understanding, but he cared enough to measure the tone of their voices. The whole crew was on edge about this encounter. He could feel the tension humming in the air around them.
“He totally flirted with her,” giggled Jester.
While Fjord spoke with the Lady, three more Dynasty visitors appeared in the reception room. Two looked like low-ranking crew members, navigators, chefs, or medics, Caduceus couldn’t say, but the third was dressed in similarly fine clothing to the Lady. This man was familiar to Caduceus and the Nein.
“Essek!” cried Jester.
She immediately pushed herself from the wall by Caduceus, bounded towards the man in the silver and navy uniform, and wrapped her arms tightly around him. Essek staggered, blinking, but smiled in spite of himself. Caduceus watched as a complex myriad of emotions flickered across his face like the readings on Caleb’s digital star maps.
“It’s been so long! How have you been? Why are you on this ship? Were you the one who found out about your ship’s broken generator, because you’re soooo smart, Essek? Did you know it was us? Did you call for our help because you love us so much?”
Essek laughed weakly in Jester’s iron grip. He wobbled in place and awkwardly patted her shoulder. “It is good to see you too, Jester. And the rest of the Nein,” he added, nodding respectfully at Fjord over Jester’s shoulder. “I did not expect to bump into your crew on this journey.”
“Small galaxy,” said Caleb. He had not said anything up until this point. Caduceus turned his attention to Caleb, who sat very still on a bench opposite the Dynasty brigade staring at Essek, as he cocked his head and added, “You have a new badge.”
Essek startled. He pried Jester away and looked down at his own chest, like he wasn’t aware of it himself. “Oh. Yes. I was awarded the silver Luxon award last season for my service to the Dynasty.”
“Congratulations.”
“Thank you.”
Caduceus smiled. The air between those two men was practically wobbling like heat over a stove.
“Essek,” began Fjord, sliding between Jester and one of the guards to reach him in the increasingly crowded little reception chamber. “Might there be a chance for a trade to take place between our ships? I am aware you must be on a tight schedule, but we have a long way to go until our next trade post.”
“Of course,” said Essek. “Lady Jiyana is the one to speak to about these matters. I am technically only a passenger.”
“Yes. Right.” Fjord blushed and turned back to the Lady, who gave him a tight smile. “Apologies. The Shadowhand is an old friend of ours. I had assumed…never mind. Lead the way.” Fjord followed the Lady into the docking chamber and onto her craft. The two low-ranking crew members followed suit, along with one of the guards. The remaining guard lingered quietly in the reception chamber.
“Are we being held hostage right now, Caduceus?” whispered Jester, as she re-joined him by the wall.
Caduceus hummed. “In some lights, yes. I wouldn’t worry about it though. We are not in any danger of being harmed and these people fully intend to make a fair trade of labour and materials.”
“They do?”
“Yes.”
“Wait…” Jester appeared to think very seriously for a moment. She looked up at Essek, who was still hovering awkwardly in the middle of the room trying not to meet Caleb’s heavy stare. “Essek! Do you have a spare transistor laying around on that ship?”
Essek blinked. “I believe so. We are well-stocked with replacement parts, only deficient in hands to make use of them.”
Jester gasped. “Oh, the suns and stars!”
Heavy footsteps heralded the return of the three women from Veth’s laboratory. They carried several kits of tools and all wore thick boilersuits. “What’s up?” asked Beau from behind a crate of spanner-like tools and graph paper, warily watching Jester’s little victory dance.
“Essek is going to trade us a replacement transistor!”
“Well, it is technically not me giving you the transistor,” corrected Essek, in vain.
Jester continued to cheer and clap. “We’re gonna make it to Nicodranas in time for my mama’s birthday after all!”
Caleb’s room in the ship had never been the quietest. It was close to the engine room, only a few layers of adamantine away from one of the booster units which propelled them out of a planet’s gravitational well, and many of the devices in his chamber perpetually hummed and buzzed and beeped an eclectic electronic chorus. Jester had once commented that she couldn’t understand how he ever could focus on his work as navigator with all the noise. But the noise helped him sleep.
So, there was really no excuse for him when a soft knocking at his chamber door made him almost jump out of his seat.
Caleb pushed up from his work desk, carefully put away his astrolabe, straightened his shirt, tightened his ponytail, took a deep breath, and calmly opened the door to his room.
Essek lowered his fist from where he had held it, about to knock a second time. He cleared his throat. “Hello, Caleb.”
“Hallo.”
“You should know, I was not lying when I spoke to you and your captain upstairs. I truly did not expect to meet you on this work trip.”
“How convenient we must be.”
Essek frowned. “I was not the one to suggest the rendezvous. Lady Jiyana made the decision. I was not even in the room when she sent that request to your ship for assistance.”
Caleb waved him into silence before he could say anything else. “I am pulling your leg, Thelyss. Come in.”
The uniform Essek wore was more complicated than the previous one he had worn. His recent service award had apparently granted him a uniform with fewer layers but far more intricate clasps, which Caleb struggled to undo whilst most of his mind was occupied by Essek's lips on his own. Essek helped him with the uniform eventually while poorly hiding his entertainment at Caleb’s frustration.
Some time later they lay together on Caleb’s bed listening to the intestinal rumble of the engine below them. Essek was quietly fiddling with some of Caleb’s hair, making his scalp tingle pleasantly.
“What do you think you’re doing, Thelyss?”
Essek smiled. His fingers brushed Caleb’s right ear. “I am currently inspecting your ship for any incriminating substances or documents which may suggest animosity towards the Dynasty, of course. It’s very important work.”
“I can tell.”
“You Nein are such a suspicious bunch, vivacious, and rather irresponsible too. It is a wonder that you are all still alive.”
Caleb chuckled. “Add ‘lucky’ to that list.”
There was some shuffling until Essek could look Caleb in the eye. “I do not believe that luck has much to do with it. Your fellow crewmembers are…well, they are remarkable people, as absurd as they are sometimes.” He slumped back to rest his head on Caleb’s chest with a sigh. “The people I must surround myself with these days for my career all seem so dull in comparison. Slow, egocentric, dull. Very dull.”
“You have your fair share of egocentrism yourself, liebling.”
Essek scoffed. “That is not the point I am making.”
“Then join our crew.”
Essek’s hands in Caleb’s hair froze. Caleb waited, knowing that what he had said was blasphemous, but he was nevertheless hungry for the response.
“You know I cannot do that. I must maintain the illusion of my loyalty to the Dynasty at all costs, or I risk exile, execution, assassination, or worse. Leaving my post to join your crew, as attractive an idea it is, would be…”
“Suicide, ja, I know. I was simply pulling your leg again.”
Essek huffed tiredly. “You’ve been doing that a lot lately.”
“I’ve pulled more than just your l—”
Essek lightly slapped Caleb’s shoulder with a faux gasp, shocking him into laughter.
Still grinning, Caleb pushed himself into a sitting position on the small bed. Essek was forced to rolled over to make room. Caleb stretched his back and rolled his neck, touching a hand to where Essek had been fiddling with his hair to find a thin, and particularly neat, braided plait hanging behind his ear.
He sent a glance in Essek’s direction. Essek shrugged. “Looks good on you.”
With a sweet little mirp noise, Frumpkin leapt up onto the bed with them. Caleb let his hand fall into his lap and sighed. “It will not be long until the girls return from their repairs on your ship,” he said, swinging his legs onto the floor of his room. “You should make yourself presentable. Your captain will come looking for you soon.”
Essek grunted. A pair of dark hands wound their way around Caleb’s middle from behind. “Can’t your cat run along and send a message to the Lady? Something about how I am sadly still very indisposed examining your star maps and recent trade associations? Make me sound oh so busy.”
“I would love to. But I would not put it past my own crew to become suspicious.” Caleb took Essek’s hands and turned to face him. He kissed him once, on the nose. “And we both know we cannot trust Jester with a secret.”
“True.”
Essek watched as Caleb dressed himself for a moment before rising from the bed and donning each, infuriatingly intricate, piece of his uniform. Frumpkin sat patiently on the crumpled sheets and watched them both.
Their relationship was strange and complicated, but everything on their ship was afterall. Sometimes Caleb wished they could let themselves be more public without risking Essek’s neck. Sometimes he wished he had never fallen in love with someone so untouchable. Sometimes he wanted to argue harder to keep Essek onboard after another one of their serendipitous meetings. The Mighty Nein had done so much for Caleb, he couldn’t see why they couldn’t work the same magic on a man such as Essek, who needed love so desperately.
But the suns and stars had other plans for them. They kept it behind closed doors.
“Someday,” said Caleb, leaning against the door to his bedroom as Essek smoothed back his hair in the corridor, “you’ll stay. You’ll want to stay, and you will. We’ll become eight.”
Essek smiled. “Is that a promise or a threat, Widogast?”
Smiling back at him, Caleb shrugged. “Don’t die before that day comes.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it. Afterall, I’ve become quite fond of this faulty ship and its crew.”