Fidelja pokes her head into one of the closest crew rooms. It's nice; nicer than a lot of the ships she's berthed on the past few years. And without any other crew and Mishek over in the guest cabin she'll have even more space to herself. Yep! All to herself. Even back home she lived elbow to kneecap to nose with all the other station folk. This will be nice and roomy. Shoving down a wave of homesickness and muttering a maybe less-than-perfectly-sincere prayer to her patron diety, the rotter, Fidelja heads out to get her bags. She has totally got this.
Mishek assists Fidelja with her belongings, since that at least he can do. Then he stands in his very nice room and considers it. He has no need for bed or chair and no belongings to speak of. He does, however, need to borrow the use of the mentioned grow light, and water, and perhaps a spray bottle. Those will take up a little space, when he gets them. For now, he leans himself against a wall and sings quietly, deep and resonant. It's been a very exciting couple of hours, and it's time to rest a bit.
Very, very early the next morning, the two new employees are prodded awake by service spiders and set to removing expired produce from the shopfloor and then covering and locking down all the various bins and barrels and displays and shelves for transport. With a rumble, Hamfast's unclamps from the asteroid and turns about to go make its Wednesday pick-up run. "Vegetables Monday, fruit on Wednesday, and animal products on Friday," Hamfast tells them. "I've a different supplier for each, but the trip out to any of them isn't that long. You can clean the place up a bit while we go, then help with the loading in and out."
Fidelja blinks indistinctly at the box of eggplants she is holding. Words. Words are a thing that keep happening. Words and spiders. It is so, so, early. She has made so many mistakes in her life. All of the mistakes. Accepting of her hideous fate, she wanders blindly toward the nearest produce shelf, bouncing off of Mishek as she goes. Words and spiders and trees. It is about an hour and a half later when the ship slows to pull into their destination. Fidelja is... marginally more awake. She has acquired breakfast. She has snuck in four cups of coffee in between rearranging crates and crates of produce. She has learned to dodge the spiders. Mishek is a chattery morningbird of sunshine and light and she hates him, but his on-and-off humming is very pleasant and actually makes her headache go away. She is just starting to believe in the mercy and caretaking of the gods again. So obviously things go wrong very quickly after that.
Mishek is mildly concerned by Fidelja's... lingering dormancy is probably not the proper term for a non-plant person, but it will do. He does his best to steer her in the correct directions, and chats with (at) her to be sure she doesn't go entirely dormant again, since apparently onboard this ship this counts for daytime. He looks up from studying one of the service spiders with interest when something seems to be happening.
"That's odd, I'm not getting a return signal..." Hamfast murmurs, steering cautiously in to the freight-crowded docking bay of a solar orbital orchard complex. "They can't be closed, I haven't heard anything about— oh. Oh drat—" The great blast doors of the docking bay slam closed. Hamfast swears in more colorful terms and reverses, spinning about, but it's much too late. The ship is trapped in the docking bay. After a few uncertain, wobbly moments, Hamfast gives a long, angry hiss, and sets down in a free berth. "Something's gone wrong," Hamfast says to the employees. "Yavanda Orchards has never behaved like this before, and I can't raise anyone on any channels. If either of you have any sort of interpersonal weaponry, I suggest you get it."
Fidelja pivots, moving towards the crew section at a fast clip, heart in her mouth. She has her ax in her quarters--it is mostly decorative, for the traditional festivals and ceremonie and such, but it is also a dwarven ax, and therefore exquisitely crafted, entirely functional, and perfectly cared for. More to the point, she has a selection of useful and interchangeable attachments for her cybernetic arm. Her muscles twitch with tension, but her organic hand is steady and well-practiced on the release points of her shoulder, shucking her claw hand and reaching for a thicker, sturdier piece of magitech from the row by her bed. For once, her welding arm is fully charged. The assorted power clamps tucked inside it will probably also not go amiss. She has not actually ever experimented with their use on living people before, but space travel has been a broadening experience. Slinging her axe onto her back, Fidelja grabs her welding helmet and skids back out into the hall, running into Mishek on the way.
Mishek leaves his beloved bromeliads in the sash, safely draped on the small table in his room. He hasn't had much experience with physical conflict, but he is difficult to damage and sturdy. And of course, he can always sing, to one effect or another. Calmly, he follows Fidelja back to the main room.
"Alright, good, excellent," Hamfast says nervously, cycling their airlock with slow, deliberate caution. "The air seems to be fine out there— pressurization's alright— and you can take a spider with you as well. Go see if you can find anyone, but do be careful. None of this seems right. It might be pirates, though I can't imagine how, farming collectives always ward against that sort of thing..." muttering indistinctly to themself, they finally pop the hatch and let the employees out into the dark, silent, empty docking bay.
"Oh, boy," Fidelja murmurs, stepping cautiously through the docking bay and hanging close to Mishek and his comforting way of being six feet tall. The cheerfully green spider clicking along the floor beside them is less physically intimidating, but still a heartening addition to their numbers. "Pirates. Orrrrr Not-Pirates. My favorite." Under her breath, she begins muttering imprecations and/or prayers at her god. Muamman Duathal is the caretaker of wanderers and expatriates. If he's going to claim her devotion he had darn well better continue with the caretaking. "This," she adds in an aside to Mishek, "is why I hate mornings."
Mishek blinks and looks down at her in wonder. "You dislike mornings because there is commonly a chance of encountering pirates or similarly malicious folk? I was unaware they preferred any particular time of day." He glances around at the dark space surrounding them and adds, "Is there a chance, incidentally, that you might be carrying a light? I do prefer things brighter, if at all possible..." He's a diurnal being, to be honest; asteroids and spaceships and the lack of a day-night cycle is not necessarily a sensible circumstance for an ent, but he must admit that things are very interesting out here.
"Well, I--" Fidelja gestures vaguely at her face, where her visible bionic lens implant gleams silvery in the dark. The other is hidden behind the fixed screen of her HUD. "The eyes kind of... do all the light adjustments themselves?" She feels around her person like a light might magically materialize, then turns to eye the little green spiderbot. She nudges it gently with her boot, but it just skitters to one side and swivels to eye her better as it walks. "Hm."
"Ah," Mishek says. "Well, blight. I'll manage. I suppose we had best head inwards, yes? Where, uh, the business is done?" The thing about orchards, he thinks, is that where there are trees there should be various tree necessities, such as fertilizers and grow lights and so on. He would rather like to know what resources are around.
The hallways beyond the docking bay are dark and still, with red emergency lights pulsing in stripes and arrows. Whatever orientation and labeling signs are around are written in a dialect of Elvish: it's like that any visitors who can't read it aren't supposed to be back here. The spider bot proceeds cautiously, only a step or two in front of the employees, and scurries back behind them when there is a very faint rustle and clank from the further end of a hallway they turn on to.
Fidelja bites down a squeak and fights the urge to hide behind the spider. It's only, like, a foot tall, anyway, she might as well hide behind her own welding helmet. She lifts a hand to the tipped-up faceplate of said helmet, then hesitates, wondering if she's more likely to get eaten alive by scary ship-monsters or get shot for wandering around uninvited through some elven collective, wearing the metal equivalent of a ski mask. She checks the charge on her welding arm and edges closer to Mishek instead. "Um." She has to clear her throat. "Hello? Is anyone there? We're from Hamway's."
Mishek considers the circumstances and his companion's unease and attempts the correct comfort gesture, putting a hand carefully on her shoulder. He thinks it's the organic one, but he's watching the end of the hall instead of looking, so he can't be sure.
A figure lurches into view. It's about human-sized, though with the bulky armored spacesuit it's hard to tell. The outfit is painted in bright warning stripes of black and orange, with a common symbol for 'Dangerous' spraypainted in glowing white across the chest. It's almost definitely a pirate. The faceplate of the armor is spiderwebbed from some sort of impact or projectile weapon. Despite the apparent head trauma, the figure lurches forward. Its armored gauntlets have big, hull-piercing hooked claws.
Nope, nope, nope. Why are pirates happening? No part of her life should involve pirates. "Stay back!" Fidelja tells the stumbling figure, bracing her feet, putting confidence she doesnt feel into her voice. Her cybernetic arm is up, the electrode at the end glows with heat, a bright point against the dark. Oh, hey, light for Mishek. Yay. Her own vision pulses bright-dark-bright-dark as the sensors in her eyes try to adjust to the contrasting light conditions they weren't really designed to handle. She forgot to put her mask down.
Goodness, an actual pirate! Somehow Mishek wasn't expecting this turn of event. The figure looks somewhat menacing, too, not at all open to reason. "I'm sorry if you get caught in this," he says to Fidelja, keeping his hand on her shoulder in hopes of reassuring. "Just stand your ground." Then he opens his mouth and sings, a deep rumble that could be drawn up from the root of a mountain. He thinks of fire, consuming, the anguish of burning, takes every scrap of fear the thought raises in him and uses his voice to drive it into the pirate's core, focusing as well as he can to keep the effect from spilling over onto Fidelja. If the opponent flees in terror, no one has to fight at all, which is much safer for all concerned.
The figure pauses for a moment, as if feeling the song as a physical wave. But then the effect seems to pass through it and away, and the figure keeps on coming forward as steadily as before.
