THE SPACE NAVY AU (18+)

Erskin tries to eat a flower and Lainey stops him with practiced ease.

"Give it fifteen minutes, hot stuff," she says to Vaziok, and takes command of his hands again to apply glossy black polish. "I want you looking lethal. You're too pretty to waste time with cuter styles."

"I'm cute," Erskin says authoritatively, and tries to eat another flower.

 

"Very true," you agree. "Not that one, darling, it's toxic. Try the yellow ones, they're a bit peppery, my chef sometimes uses them for garnish -- feed me one?"

Erskin pokes one of the little yellow blossoms into your mouth, and the combination of its flavor with the scent of the claw lacquer just about short-circuits your frontal lobe. Eyes crossing with overload, you make a dazed mental note not to do that again.

 

Lainey puts down her drink and her little bottle of claw enamel with a frown.

"Hey. You doing okay, big guy?" She cups her hands to the sides of his face, right over each fin. Not hard enough he can't easily back out, but firmly enough to override any other sensory input. She's clearly gotten plenty of experience taking control of overwhelmed seadwellers.

 

Her fingers brushing your fins are the icing on the overload cake. You can't seem to find the words to explain. You just make a small glub of distress.

 

Lainey squints at Whitey for a minute, and when the fin thing doesn't seem to calm him down she shrugs and lets him go.

"Huh. That usually works on Erskin. Hey—" she waves at one of the unobtrusive waiter types lurking around, "—he's freaking out. What's he need?"

 

What do you need? You need for your sinuses not to be exploding at you. You need to be submerged in cool seawater. Water. You could drink water. Except there's no water here. Champagne, you suspect, would make things worse. You wrinkle your nose and try swallowing a few times but the pepper taste is still spreading and everything is epoxy fumes.

 

The empathic server examines her employer and says, "He'd feel better in seawater. Let's take him and Lord Aspera to one of the private recreation tanks."

"Eyy, beach party!" Lainey says, cheering up again. "Okay, pack up, boys, we're going. Up up up."

She gets Erskin upright and slings one of his arms over her shoulders. He nuzzles her head and goes, "Ponds?" very hopefully. "I'm frogs tonight. I want, I want you for frogs too. Let's frogs."

"Nope. You're getting a salt bath with your dadfriend and that's final. Server lady, you can wrangle your boss. I'm not up for dealing with someone his size. Come on, Captain, this way—" chattering brightly, she gets everyone out the door and off to Whitey's personal tank. She efficiently strips Erskin down to his shorts, slaps his butt, and pushes him over the edge, then sits down and dips her feet in the water.

"This is nice!" she declares, and looks the server up and down appraisingly. "You part of the party, hot stuff?"

 

That server is definitely getting a raise. You sigh bubbles as you slip below the surface, and your lusus comes to swim a close orbit around you so he can brush you reassuringly with his fins. Clean salt water bathes your mucous membranes. The stinging fades away. Lainey is such a considerate friend! And the water feels so nice on your skin.

Now much more coherent, you manage to introduce Raydad to Erskin in the underwater language of clicks and chirps.

 

"Ugh, I know!" Lainey agrees with the server. "They're fucking awful and we all hate them. Normally they're in and out in a week but this time's like, extra shitty. Erskin's a mess, we're way too far from the front they need transport to, they managed to blow out like half their hyperspace compressors which has stressed their helms rigs to hell and back, plus regular fucked up wear and tear, plus like, you know, we can't even do much of anything other than transport and loading anymore, because most of our crew is dead?"

She pauses for a moment, like it's just hitting her, then drops her face in her hands. "Oh, god," she repeats. "Most of our crew is dead. What an awful fucking season. Can you get me another drink?"

 

"You're a saint. Get me cargoed and then go feed those fucking clowns some rat poison, why don't you?"

Erskin paddles back up to the edge of the tank and folds his arms on the rim by her legs.

"Hey, grublumps," she says, scratching him between the horns. "How're you doing?"

"My dad has a dad," he reports. "I mean. Er. Not my dad, my— not-dads. It's dashed weird. Come swim."

"Sure, sure." To the server, Lainey calls out, "Gimme some pool toys too! I want a floaty chair."

 

Soon, Lainey is enthroned in a royal pink floaty chair with a pitcher of something fruity on its own little floating tray at her side, and you and Erskin entertain her by diving for interesting creatures and bits of habitat to show her. You've recovered fully from your encounter with the spicy flower, and are able to truly delight in the sensation of an urchin walking its spiny prickles across your palm. Erskin captures ruffly, colorful nudibranchs and pettable cuttlefish in cupped handfuls of water. Every so often, your lusus gently bumps her feet with his back. You show Erskin how to feed him, holding little scraps of clam meat in a flat palm for him to graze.

The drug wears off before too long, but this ship's beloved leaders clearly need some R&R, so you're not about to suggest bringing the party to an end before they're good and ready.

 

Lainey falls in a few times and paddles around on the surface of the water before climbing back on to her chair. She's not a strong swimmer, but unlike a lot of trolls in saltwater she's perfectly confident nothing bad is going to happen.

"Hey, moonflower," she calls, splashing the water from the side of her chair. "Come warm me up!"

Erskin immediately breaks off from following Whitey around to come over and present himself for makeouts. He's a lot smaller than Whitey and still high enough to purr enthusiastically at nearly anything, especially getting his butt squeezed.

"Mmm." When Lainey sees Whitey looking at them she gives him a goofy little finger wave over Erskin's shoulder. "You want us to take this somewhere private, or join in, sunshine?"

 

They're adorable, but of all the things you want to do with Erskin, makeouts is not one of them. "I ought to get back to work, honestly. I feel much fortified from this break, though. I'll keep the clowns out of your hair for a while. Feel free to avail yourself of my private quarters." As you slip out of the pool, you bend to give them both kisses on the tops of their heads. "Be good, darlings."

 

"You're my favorite," Lainey says, and waves him out the door with one hand still on Erskin's butt.

 

The next week passes slowly and unpleasantly. The Sunslammer loses another sorely-missed handful of crewmembers, while the Subjugglator crew gets composted by vengeful lowbloods at an extremely healthy rate. Ironfist divides his time between mauling Erskin to make Bel angry, mauling Bel to make Erskin freak out, and doing serious amounts of drugs at Whitey's.

Somewhere in the mess the indigo captain fills out single one of Bel's personnel requests with transfers of lowbloods from his own crew and the Sunslammer's crew jumps from 134 to 400. Lieutenant-Commander Gawker gets Arguus to promote her well past her station to full Commander, then immediately promotes the two most practical blues from the Zero Sum up to her former ranking. Just about every prior Sunslammer crewmember gets hastily pushed into management, training, and advisory positions in order to integrate the newcomers, who have all spent sweeps around Subjugglators and are consequently as mad as 266 boxes of boiled frogs.

Finally, Galley brings them all to the new battlefront, the remaining clowns are packed back on to their battleship and sent off to get repairs done somewhere else, and just about everyone breathes a huge sigh of relief. Erskin and Lainey spend a solid night and day passed out together in a pile of warm snakemom, then spend the next night pulling together a proper wake for the next day. The psychic miasma of so many clowns and murders and vengeful spirits needs to be dispelled before it's got a chance to really set, and the Good Riddance parties are, by this point in Captain Aspera's reign, a tradition.

 

The party seems to be going well, in that there's only been three stabbings, two by the same troll, and only one case of someone getting pushed into the bonfire. You normally don't splash out on the carbon/oxygen disruption of live flame but it has been a hellish two weeks and you really wanted a fire and nothing sends ghosts off like all their friends and family getting completely smashed and telling their stories and burning all their stuff. Spacing or re-allocating it just isn't as clean.

Also, someone's figured out how to manufacture marshmallows and the remainder of the music club's struck up some delightfully rude acoustic low-folk reels to the tune of fuck the empire and your lusus too. You're having such a good time that when Kadros stops dancing with some handsome new transfers to let you know Galley's having a rough time navigating out of the parsec and he's going to go hold his delicate mustard maiden's hand through it, you just salute him with your tankard of mint julep and forget all about it as soon as he leaves your field of vision.

An hour or so later, when you've got a hand down Lainey's shirt and things are really just completely excellent, you feel the distinct and terrible sensation of being turned so far inside out that you're right-way-around again, but this time a lot more sober. The chorus of dismayed and grossed-out noises from everyone around you indicates that they, too, got the same treatment.

"What the absolute fucking shit," you want to know, sitting up and looking around.

"I am going to strangle our Helmsman with his own wires," Lainey growls, "that felt like an ungrounded foldspace skip— he hasn't flubbed one of those for sweeps! Why the hell did you let him get a boyfriend?"

"Everyone should have a boyfriend," you protest. "I have a boyfriend! The same boyfriend, even. Everyone should have my boyfriend."

"Fuck you, fuck your boyfriend, and fuck our fucking Helmsman," Lainey says. "If I find out half the ship's upside-down now or made out of ants or god knows what, I am going to flip such a bitch."

You insert your hand back into her shirt, consolingly, and around you two the party gets back into the swing of things.

Then Galley pings your phone, and it's your turn to curse him.

"What," you snap.

"I'M SORRY I'M REALLY SORRY IT JUST HAPPENED I'M SO SORRY PLEASE I'M REALLY REALLY SORRY—"

"Shut it. Suspend punishment routine. What's gone wrong?"

"Bel," Galley says. He sounds absolutely frantic and every organ in your chest seizes up.

"IS HE DEAD," you demand.

"What? Who?" Lainey asks. "Oh shit, Kadros?"

"No. He's, he's—" Galley makes a whining, wordless, error sort of noise.

"I'm coming over," you say. "Hold your course, Helmsman." You scramble upright and make as if to go, before Lainey grabs your leg and you realize that pants are probably a thing that a Captain should wear while hauling ass off to the helmsblock. You drag your shorts and shirt back on, tell Lainey to hold down the fort, then head off at high speed. If there was ever a time to put your shiny new ability to run to the test, this would be it.

 

==> Be Belatu Kadros, a juvenile troll nearly nine sweeps old

One moment you're tussling in the dust and dry grass beside a desert oasis with your rival, and the next -- separated by an instant of utter vertigo -- there's cool metal under your hands and your sweat's drying in cool, filtered-smelling air, your horns telling you you're in an enclosed space crackling with psionic energy. Disoriented, you scramble for the nearest bit of cover -- back in a corner, crouched under a desk, pistolkind out and aimed at --

"Galley?"

But no, it isn't Galley, this troll is still a helmsman, and older, with short hair and unbroken horns. No burn scar on his face, no missing finger. His flight suit isn't that shredded-up monstrosity with the pattern like public transport seat uphlostery, it's a sleek black-on-black tunic and leggings that fit him like someone was proud of him and wanted him to look badass. And the biowires looped up into the ceiling aren't rotting and overgrown.

Still... that's Galley's face. And the metal floor is vibrating slightly under your bracing hand.

You think you might be in space.

 

"Oh, shit," Galley says. "Shit shit shit fuck shit fuck you, you idiot! And fuck me too with a rubber hose." He sits up his hammock, trying to blink away the visual dazzle of watching Commander Kadros ground an unreality overflow straight through his absurdly heroic spine.

"Wow," he observes, his voice wobbling. "Wow, okay, you're small now. Why did you do that? Why did I let you do that!?"