THE SPACE NAVY AU (18+)

"Damn right," you growl. The trip down the last few hallways is conducted in a blur that has your shoulders aching and your forehead unpleasantly damp. You really need to get in more swimming, you've gone positively weedy up top. You thumb open the lock on Lainey's door and roll inside.

"Lainey? Darling? Starlight?" you call hopefully. "Sweet potato?" Instead of your one true love etc. arriving, there's a clanking about from the kitchen that's definitely too large and too using-the-stove to be her. She eats her scrambled egg right out of the shell, it's horrifying.

You look up at Bel, and all the apprehension you'd managed to shrug off via indignant Arguus-protection and cunning Pancho plan-composing comes roaring back.

"Um," you say, urgently.

 

"Whitey!" you call out with more hearty comradeship than you feel. "Long time no see!"

He slouches out of Lainey's kitchen like a starlet's ghost, clouds of white curls even longer than you remember. He's wearing those embroidered bike shorts he always wears, probably what he considers a 'casual' pair since they're not encrusted with jewels, and he's only got a small fortune in gold, pearls, and garnets draped all over the rest of him. He's also wearing high-heeled sandals, which you don't remember being part of his ensemble before. He's nibbling on a skewer of what looks like fried tofu.

"Ugh, finally," he says with a theatrical eyeroll, "I'm so bored, there's nothing to eat here and Commander Gawker can't hold her liquor."

"I was puking black sludge, Whitey, don't be a brat."

"All right, but feed me. I'm ravenous." He looks you up and down in a way that should be lascivious, but somehow isn't; he's checking your combat-readiness, not your package. "You look like shit, Kadros, Jegus. You're not still contagious?" But without waiting for an answer, he comes heel-clicking out to reach for a handclasp.

And catches sight of Erskin.

It shouldn't be possible for someone that pale to blanch. "What happened to you?" he says anxiously.

 

((oh jeez i just realized if the original screen was small he's only seen erskin from head to waist, max, and might have had no real idea erskin was down a leg, much less that the darn thing's usually on the fritz these days.))

Your fins have folded themselves down and back, for all that it hurts ferociously and you may have cracked a few raw spots back open, and your shoulders have drawn in as you huddle into your seat. You did not tell any of your traitorous body parts to do this. Or for your fists to fold together between your knees and your brain to go running about in little circles, yipping.

"I, I, er, i-it's been a long, er, a. A l-long week," you say, your idiotic, adolescent stammer reasserting itself. Your lusus is back in Bel's hive, you try to tell yourself, but he's also here, in front of you, white and pink as moonlight on snow and looking at you with such concern. You're blushing terribly.

You force your hand out to shake. "Ca— Lord, er. Lord A-aspera. Captain. At your service."

 

"Lord Dasyat, ne'er-do-well, delighted to oblige." He bows over Erskin's hand, all moon-eyed, and you're considering how to break it up when he visibly shakes himself. "I hope my impatience hasn't caused you discomfort, Captain. Maybe we should take our business talk elsewhere so we don't disturb the good Lieutenant-Commander. She cannot drink for shit and is out like a fucking light."

"Where's Arguus?" you say.

Whitey shows no sign of recognition. "There's no one else here. We played Cards Against the Empire. It was ever so subversive. Are you awfully offended?"

"No, but I'm eyeing your snack covetously."

"Oh, don't, it's useless." He hands it to you.

It's pretty good, actually. You wonder how someone of his status learned to cook.

 

"Lainey can't outdrink highbloods, but I'll bet this ship she thumped you hollow on Cards Against the Empire," you say, distracted by pride.

With regards to Bel's snack: "We really did just eat, but Kadros here does a sterling impression of a nibbles event horizon and I could certainly go for a hot cup of something-or-other. Would you care to, er. To, to join us...? There's, er, kitchens? With food?"

You have recommenced shy blushing. Well, at least it isn't peeping like a little grub and pissing yourself, that's something.

 

"Fantastic," Whitey says, and sweeps out past the two of you in a cloud of extremely subtle and tasteful perfume. And hair.

Out in the passage, though, he checks himself and shortens his stride so as not to make Erskin have to break a sweat pushing his wheels. This is fascinating to watch, honestly. He says, "She did thump me at cards, as a matter of fact. Your matesprit has a twisted mind, Captain. I think I love her. Once she's slept off the hangover I believe I'll propose eternal friendship and offer her a ridiculous shitpile of money to run away with me and be my personal secretary and pocket pyromaniac, à la Pepper Pottes."

"She's no good at paperwork," you point out.

"Oh, I do all my own numbers," he waves airily, "what I need is someone to put the fear of Gl'bgolyb into people who don't have an appointment. Do you think she'll defect?"

((he's teasing, but it may not be obvious to someone who doesn't know him))

 

"You're not cute enough," you say, an old automatic joke. "She likes them run through a few garbage disposals first. You'll have to set people on fire yourself, s—Lord, er, D-Daysat."

 

"Just Whitey, please," says Whitey, and touches Erskin's shoulder.

"The caf in 3-R has egg salad going," you put in, tapping at your phone, "and the cook says she's got some frozen sea bass left from when I splurged on a shipment of fish. Shall I have her grill it up for us?"

"God, yes, but frozen? Really?"

"Welcome to the Fleet's least favorite ship," you shrug. "We'd be living on protein paste if I didn't spend half my salary supplementing our supplies, and if our Captain weren't some kind of gardening genius."

"You are?" he says to Erskin, looking more impressed and proud than he has any business being.

 

"What? No! I just spend a lot of time at it with my hydroponics division. Though that bit Kadros is on about about the protein paste—" you glare, "—is not accurate, we farm nutritionally complete grubloaf in tanks and quite a lot of minor game animals in the biomes. We were entirely getting along before he apparently started throwing his salary around like that without letting on. After giving me all sorts of lectures on being more clever about the finances, too!

"Anyway, we're getting a set of aquaponics tanks up to size, that was Kadros's idea, but he likes to putter around doing tsums and fighting zombies barehanded, so I don't know how much credit he gets for that either." You sniff disdainfully. "I have done so much reading. We're due for the first, er, harvest? in a few weeks, actually. Shame it's not sooner, but we can't put the wake for the infected off much longer, nearly everyone's well enough to attend. It's a damn sight more pleasant to send the ghosts off properly in the first place than go fucking about exorcising a heap this size. But it would have been more pleasant with fresh fish."

You're chattering. You glance nervously back up to see if he's exasperated with you.

 

Whitey is gazing down at Erskin with a soft smile of proprietary fondness, and you have no idea whether you ought to do something about that, or what you would even do. If you didn't need him for your scheme, you'd just kick him in the ankle and remind him he's not Erskin's lusus, but that seems impolitic.

So you just relax and bicker with Erskin, and let the future take care of itself. You seem to have that ability now, it's really odd. "The first meal you offered me aboard was a generic protein bar, Troubleface. A lousy one. Don't tell me you were doing fine, you were scraping by. And I can spend my salary however I like, so there."

 

You blink at him. "I did?" You concentrate. "I.... nnno, right, yes, well, we were touring about the ship and I stock protein bars in all the sustenance lockers. They might taste like a cardboard box lost a fight with an anthill—" this to Lord Daysat, "—but they fill you up and keep you that way for a good long while. No one on this ship's got to do any work hungry, ever."

You say this last bit with ferocious pride. You may also have shown a bit more fang than is strictly hatefriendly, but you're stung right in the emotion blister, or wherever it is that makes a fellow good and pissed off. You know hunger. It's your damn job to keep it the hell away from your crew. It's not your fucking fault that the most nutritionally complete and calorie dense generic ration offends the delicate palettes of trolls who grew up getting served tea and fucking crumpets in between artillery rounds.

 

"Oh, I'm not contesting that. Everyone's in amazingly good health considering how much fuckery there is with our supply shipments. I'm just saying --"

"What fuckery might that be?" Whitey puts in.

"Good grief, name a fuckery category and we're experts in it. Not even the things we're supposed to supply to docking ships are delivered to us regularly or without damage or shortages. Every damn quartermaster in the Fleet takes 'reserved for HICS Sunslammer' as code for 'embezzle freely, pad with sawdust, deliver late.' It's a wonder we're not drifting without fuel or atmosphere. And yes, he is a gardening genius, you should see his tidepools, they're gorgeous."

"Hm," Whitey says thoughtfully.

 

Your feathers unruffle. "We've got the atmosphere up to about 90% self-sufficiency, replacing the delivered carbon scrubbers with high throughput vegetation as they fail, but the fans are giving me the pip, you can't get trees to wave themselves about. And, er." You stiffle a sudden, inappropriate giggle. "We rather grow our own propulsion equipment, too. I mean, I grow it. It's fairly disgusting."

You run a hand through your hair, realize you've probably tracked grime and dust from your chair through it, and huff a sigh. "I know ships are supposed to be interdependent so everyone's got to work together and no one gets to go haring off on their ownsome, but for heaven's sake, you'd think if one didn't want disgraced Captains to resort to shady business in defense of their crew, one might present them a few decent alternatives."

 

"You would think," Whitey agrees with a little curl of his annoyingly plush lips -- is he wearing lipstick? -- and you know he's taken the bait. The way he too-obviously changes the subject clinches it: "I smell something edible, anyway, can't we go a bit faster?" He reaches for the handle of Erskin's chair. You smack the back of his hand. He looks affronted.

"Don't push the chair," you explain. "Even I don't push the chair, and I think it's sexy when he's mad."

"Well, I'm certainly not black-flirting!" Whitey laughs, and tosses his hair, apparently totally unembarrassed about being scolded.

 

You smile, despite yourself: the sight of him laughing like that unfurls in you, makes you happy. It's so difficult not to think of him as an actual, proper lusus naturae, just the sort that show up in books and shows and can talk.

"The handles are a test," you explain. "If someone assumes I care to be pushed about like some hapless sports ball, they fail the test and I bite their hands off. I have a whole pile now. I'm making a garland."

 

"You could coat the handles with any number of noxious substances," Whitey offers, as if he didn't just fail that test himself. You've reached the cafeteria, and even though it quite clearly is a cafeteria, he drapes himself onto a plastic stackable chair as if it's a throne and waits to be served. "But my dear Captain, what is the matter with your leg? You've got a very nice prosthetic, but you're bandaged up and in a wheelchair, so I assumed the injury was recent. Yet you've been trundling around in that thing long enough for a garland of hands to accumulate."

Rather than try to interrupt and explain that cafeterias are self-serve, you resign yourself to playing cabin boy, and go to fetch trays for everyone. Because if Whitey's not serving himself, then Erskin sure as hell isn't.

 

You turn to wheel after Bel, to get your own tray, but he gives you a Significant Glance and you awkwardly turn back around to go sit by Whitey's side. Being served always makes you feel like a blithering invalid, or the sort of chick who needs pre-chewed food bunged right into his mouth.

At the question, you struggle not to curl into yourself. You pull on one of your horns instead. "Er, I suppose I bounce back and forth, rather. I'm generally up and at them, on foot, er, but accidents can knock me back over. And, and, like I said, er, earlier, it's been a long week. I was caught unawares by one of the psionically-equipped patients four or five days— five? yes. Five days ago." You gesture at your fins. "Grounded a hell of a charge through me, I was out for a bit. So, er, well. I've rogue bioware seeded in me from a prior, sabotaged operation— helmsgrade, not prosthetic, it gets extra-frisky when a psionic charge comes through, trying to connect me to, you know, a control column, but obviously there isn't one. So the prosthetic stops fitting."

You shrug, trying to look nonchalant. "As I mentioned, we grow our own propulsion equipment around here, but it is completely disgusting. I'll get the excess cut out and sent off to the workblocks, then be up on my pins in another, oh, day or so. Routine. And now that you've brought Sergeant Pancho aboard, it should go even more smoothly, what? Nothing to worry over."

 

"Sabotaged -- helmsgrade -- excess? No, no, that won't do at all. My dear Captain, you're very lucky you met me. I'll get you the finest surgeons in the Empire --"

"Welp," you say as you set trays down.

Whitey shoots you an irritated look. "Excuse me."

"Sea bass," you reply, and wait to see if Erskin's too besotted to chew him out about the 'finest surgeons' thing.

 

"Lord Dasyat, the finest surgeons of the Empire are personal property of the captains and admirals to whom I am a personal, and professional, embarrassment," you say levelly. You don't mean to hurt his feelings: he means well, as did Pancho. They're just not properly acquainted with your circumstances. At least Kadros takes you and your baggage seriously.

You and Kadros sketch the situation out, riding right over any interjections the mutant might happen to make. Kadros is an absolute devil for research, and has all sorts of names and numbers to back you up. You are a joke Ascension bureaucrats played on the Fleet, and the Fleet does not find it very amusing. The Sunslammer is one of the necessary waste receptacle for whatever dregs and rejects are too much trouble to hang or cull. As such it is overtaxed and undersupplied, to keep the population ticking over neatly due to poor rations, faulty equipment, and exhausting work hours.

Kadros has suggested a recreational make-over: to use Murfey to add in a bar, perhaps later a casino. A bit of extra pocket change, a few more captains to tidy up your supply lines. You yourself want to sell out as brutally fast as you can for money, power, and protection, and you're not quite decided yet where your limits are, if any.

"Can you offer us these things, Lord Daysat?" you ask finally, picking over the bones of your fish. It's decent, even for frozen. "I'm interested in fostering situation of mutual profit, you understand, not charity, no matter how sincerely generous any of the negotiating parties might happen to feel."

 

"Lord Aspera, the things I can offer you!" Whitey laughs like a delighted child and claps his hands together, making his bracelets chime. "You mentioned a casino. Please allow me to be the one to establish it. Let me dock the occasional ship without records or inspection. And oh yes, mutual profit will come to pass."

"We have limits," you put in.

"Of course you do, Kadros, but you're going to have to trust me."

"That'd be stupid, Whitey."

He laughs again and claps your back. "An intermediary? Someone unofficial?"

"Huh." You lean back in your chair, nibbling a bit of pickled ginger thoughtfully. "I could go for that. Maybe someone from the old Reenactment crew."

"Any of them would be fine except Murfey, who is essentially a knockoff version of you, or that fellow with the beetle lusus. I just don't like him."

You don't like him because he's smarter than you, you think, but you just shrug. "What do you think, Erskin, could we let a civilian we trust check his shipments instead of doing it ourselves? Just to make sure he's not bringing something aboard that might blow us all to hell, and so forth."