THE SPACE NAVY AU (18+)

"Kadros?" you ask. "Kadros?"

The sounds of fighting, but something heavy hitting flesh, not metal, and a note of pain you never needed to hear in his voice.

"Galley. I need location on the Commander right now."

He doesn't even reply verbally, just brings up the map on your phone with a big purple arrow. You nod to Murfey and Arguus to take care of one another and take off running. The convoluted maze of halls and workblocks around the docking bays confuses visiting trolls while giving you and yours any amount of shortcuts, and with Galley opening doors before you even get to them you nearly fly.

A labor unit has apparently gotten the drop on Kadros— his husktop is smashed, there's a terrible blue gash across his forehead, and his— his horns— eurgh. You drive the pitchfork straight through the robot and into the deck, pinning it like a flutterbeast to a card, and then kick it's head off from sheer upset anger.

"Kadros," you say, going to one knee and patting his hip. "Kadros, old thing, this isn't time for a nap."

 

You don't know where you are, or who you are, or what's happening. But you know you're in pain and full of aggression. You flail toward the familiar silhouette of your rifle, which is bobbing out of reach in the heaving sea the whole world has turned into. The act of rolling on your side makes you vomit, and the puking makes pain sparkles burst across your vision and blind you. "Medic," you slur, and, "Sergeant, take over."

 

You skip back sharply to give him room, and grimace when he spews. His horn— you can see dark blood beading up in prickles through the pale, broken core. The busted fragment is nearly as long as your hand, and you pick it up very carefully, as if it might splinter further. You have, hmm, you have a water bottle. That should work. You break the seal, pop the broken bit in, screw the cap, captchalogue it. Take a very, very deep few breaths.

"We're safe, Comm— Captain," you say, kneeling down and easing Kadros back from the pool of yuck. At least his hair's still back. "Easy, now, Captain. Easy. Let's get you to medical— can you sit up?"

 

"Hn," you agree, and do your best. You end up leaning hard on this -- on the -- soldier, friend, you can't remember, he's one of yours though -- but that's fine, you need to keep your head down. You can't hear firing at the moment but that doesn't mean you don't need to stay low.

Every time you move, the whole world lurches. You feel lopsided in a bizarre, pervasive way. You flash back on a guy who got swatted with a treetrunk by an owlbear, how his whole left horn popped off along with a chunk of his skull... your stomach heaves again as you try to find your head with your hand.

 

"No, no, don't touch— you're alright, Kadros. A prong came off, I've seen this before, nasty accident— we'll have you put back together in a trice," you say with manic cheer. You catch his groping hand and try to get his arm over your shoulders. The weight isn't the problem, so much as his sheer irritating bulk, and his huffing, half-panicked discombobulation. "Deep breaths, old thing."

 

"My horn?" For a moment you're on the verge of tears. "My fucking horn." No point asking if he dug the pieces out of the mud. The medics will just cauterize the stump, pump you full of painkillers, and send you back out. You breathe as instructed. You can take it. You're made of truck. "I'm made of truck," you inform your helpful buddy as the two of you lurch and stumble along. "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger. Except Marines. Marines will finish you off on the backswing." You giggle; your nose and eyes are running from the pain. Suddenly, you remember he called you 'old thing'. "Aspera? What're you doing down here?"

 

"Getting you to medical, with any luck," you grunt. When he stumbles it nearly mashes you up against a wall. You've hauled around much larger beasts than one trauma-tipsy blueblood, back in your wilding days, but generally you made sure they were dead first. "Hold up, hold up—" you lean him against a bit of wall with a helpful pipe for him to hold on to like a handle, then rummage in your sylladex.

You thought so: your crutches have an adjustable twisty bit. You measure Kadros up and down, adjust one to be as tall as it can go, lock it again, and stuff it under Kadros's arm.

"There," you say. "Good on us I've got so much experience being an absolute disaster. You're in professional claws, here." You burrow back under his other arm. "Better?"

 

"Did I hurt my leg?" you say, utterly confused, but the crutch does help you balance.

There's a long, foggy interval full of nausea and bafflement. Sometimes you're plodding through mud and corpses. Sometimes you're reeling along smooth hallways decorated with the occasional broken robot. Briefly you're at your fifth wriggling day party, which results in you quizzing Pancho on why she's a seadweller now and what happened to that pretty blue dress she was wearing a minute ago. Then you remember that's not Pancho, that's Aspera, and you want your moirail so bad it's like a punch in the gut. But Aspera's okay; you explain that to him. He shouldn't be dirtside, it's too nasty for him down here, but you'll look out for him. Show him how to tell if he's got a horrifying alien microbe incubating in his marching blisters and stuff.

You're still trying to explain about how if there are mushrooms growing out of a cut you have to tell someone right away, even if it makes you feel happy and content, when you're tipped onto a padded platform. It jars your broken horn, which makes you howl and try to curl into a ball.

 

"Good heavens, Sal, I just got him here, don't maim him right in front of me," you protest, and get elbowed for it as the chief medic bustles around examining the damage. Kadros's face gets a quick scrub and a sticking plaster, and then Sal takes hold of Kadros's good horn to examine the bad one and your Commander doesn't react well. Sal's good enough at his job, but he's got a sadistic streak that needs watching.

"Easy, easy," you shush your first mate, fighting his delirious, instinctive attempts to claw— a bad sign, you think, for a fellow so disciplined and strictly-trained. You push his shoulders flat to the table, let him have at your back all he likes. "Shh, Sal's got to fix your horn now, it's going to hurt, I'm sorry, you're doing very well. Just a bit more."

"Give the broken bit," Sal says, sticking out a hand, and you hand him over the bottle.

 

"I want my moirail," you whine. Everything hurts and is terrible, and there are hands holding you down and hands on your horns, and where is your helpful friend, where's Aspera?

There he is, right in front of you, right in front of your face, and suddenly somehow this is all his fault and you're snarling blame and insults, trying to haul him down by the lapels and bite his lips off.

 

"Ohh—" you manage to moan, "oh, oh, fuck you, god— how dare you—" biting him back, tearing into him. He's caught you, and caught you on fire, his claws in your hair and his big stupid arm slung around your shoulders, you get a fistful of his shirt and really pin him, eager to drag a surrender clean out of his loathsome hide.

"Thank you, enough," Sal says, pushing you away, and you want to rip his head off for it. But Sal just squares his shoulders and lands a brisk ashen slap across your fin. You cringe back, whining placatingly when he makes as if to get your other fin. When he points to a chair in the corner of the room you slink over and sit.

You still have Kadros's blood on your lips. You lick them slowly, savoringly, and watch Sal slotting in the hornbrace pins. He's going to have to do more than box you around a bit to keep you off Kadros for long— not with the way he's looking at you like that, a bright blue possessive fury, his lovely mouth still spitting curses.

 

"As soon as they're done, you hear me?" you're promising darkly while the medic dicks around with all kinds of things that aren't cauterizing your horn stub. "I'll teach you to look down on me for being what they made me. All superior with your fucking hippie morals like you earned it somehow instead of -- OW! Get your damn hands off me, I need to pop that smug motherfucker's eyes out and skulldrag him to Valhalla on my bulge."

There's a sharp pain in your bicep. You whip your head to look, but it makes you dizzy, and by the time you've reoriented yourself with regards to things like 'up' and 'down', warm peace is spreading through you.

"Now that's what I'm talking about," you sigh. As the bliss overtakes you, you make one final effort to impress upon Aspera just how completely fucked he is as soon as you're cleared for duty, but all you manage to do is point at him and lick your teeth. Then everything goes beautifully black.

 

You're kneading your claws into the seat cushion, as intent on Kadros's pain and anger as a mewbeast at a mousehole, but then Sal gets him with a sedative and his eyes glaze over, drift shift, and he starts to purr. You feel robbed.

"I have extra horn pins," Sal says, blocking your view of Kadros's idiot-slack face. "Get out if you don't want."

"But—"

Sal rushes you, pins in one hand, clamps in the other. You give a frankly embarrassing squeak and scurry out of the block, slamming the door behind you.

Oh, look, you have messages. Lainey has found out you left Arguus alone with a stranger and has given you explicit instructions on how far up your ass she'd like you to insert your head. Tonight is going so well.

 

Eventually, lucidity dawns, with terrible slowness so you can fully savor your returning memories, such as they are.

"Sal?"

"Commander. You're awake finally?"

"Sal, did I hatesnog the Captain?"

"Yes."

"Oh god."

"Yes. Very unfortunate. But, good news, your horn is -- no touching." He grabs your wrist to stop you, but then he fetches a mirror to show you the retaining band on your horn. That explains your headache.

"Right. Good job, thank you. One more question. What the hell happened?"

He tells you. You don't believe him. A murderous labor bot? With a vacuum cleaner? That's just dumb.

 

After the last of the labor units have been rounded up and dropped in the docking bay for Mechanics to deal with, you find yourself drifting a bit aimlessly after Murfey. You can't go pester Kadros, and Arguus is having a melt-down Lainey wants you nowhere near. You feel distinctly unloved.

"I, ah," you say, and scratch at the back of your fin when he looks back at you quizzically. "Would you like to be shown around? The bits of the ship that aren't infested with killer robots, I mean to say."

 

"He's lovely," you comment. "You two must be quite a sight on the ground."

You go to lead him on foot off to Kadros's place. Residential's a bit of a walk from here, but driving a cart around in front of a longbeast is just silly. And you can get some nibbles along the way, then show off some of the fields and unused storage bays and warehives, see where— and what— he's thinking of building.

 

You're watching a trifle wistfully. "Yes, it's always completely adorable when lusii get along. There's some unconventional pairings and triads around here I've seen set up like concrete, and half the time their charges want nothing to do with each other. I hear it makes scheduling in some of the recreationblock slots a tremendous headache."