THE SPACE NAVY AU (18+)

These are new thoughts. The most ambitious you'd ever been before was to hide in the vents and become the ship's patron mystery. Stupid Galley and his stupid cameras, messing up a promising career at bein' in people's scary monster stories and shit. You could have been downright horrifying. Some nights all the grubcakes are just fuckin gone, man, nobody knows where they go, this ship's fuckin' cursed.

You force your eyes open, lift your head, and make yourself take another bracing sip of tea while you think it over. Your earfins perk in visible interest at that last bit. "You mean I can go and work with Twitchy all night??" You ponder more, over long, slow swallows of tea. On the one hand: Twitchy. On the other hand: critters. "Awh, fuck, that's being all kinds of hard to choose, though. See, I--" Your jaws gape in an unexpected yawn. "Mnnhhh. I'd love to be helping my girl out. But all's I know how to cook is, like, noodle pods and grubcakes." You snicker suddenly. "Plus we might all get up to foolin' around and all covered in flour and shit and then you'd get pap marks in alla y'alls vittles. But you wanna put me somewhere what's up my alley, man, plunk me down in a pile of lusii. You got any trolls up in here with the Empathy all living up in their panstems? 'Cause I got it. I hear'em all, ever since I was hatched. I can even be hearing your dad out there right now playin' his feathery ass off." Your smile softens as you rest your head back on your elbow. "I can't talk at'em none, but if one got sick or was all up in a shitty mood zone or refusing to get their cooperation on, I could be telling you why."

 

"That sounds tremendously useful. We have, technically, more lusii than trolls, because my moirail's lusus and my kismesis's lusus are matesprits and have five pups." You laugh at how silly that sounds.

 

You sputter and grin at him in delighted incredulousness. Without realizing it, you're wiggling your butt in the chair, you're that pleased. "Oh my LORDS, hell yes, put me in the baby pile, I'll help raise'em up good. I haven't seen me some littles in fuckin' forever, man, not since -I- was a little." You drain the last of your tea--and cough a bit at the spicysweet dregs. Gleh. You set the empty mug aside, feeling strangely accomplished. You drank the tea, good for you! "You got any lusii that can go the other way? Read me like I read them? I ain't met many what could. Like, my mom gots it a little bit--it wouldn't be surprising my ass to know alla them tentacle creatures got that in'em--it just ain't her thoughts goin' on in my thoughts, it's somethin' else I can't quite be explaining right."

 

"I wouldn't know, honestly. I'm your standard psi-resistant blue. If you find any, I'd be interested to know." You glance out at the aviary, where the game of tag has calmed down a little now that the principals have gotten their initial zoomies out. "I was going to offer you my couch for a nap, but maybe you'd rather nap in the bathtub. I can't tell from your fins whether you're aquatic. The captain's got a tidepool garden, maybe sometime he'd let you hang out there."

 

"Heheh, yeah, sure! Maybe I could be finding out all sortsa shit y'all didn't know before," The idea appeals, you have to admit--you've never been in a setting where your little gifts were of much use before. At that last bit, you dip your head and grin. "Ah, well, I'm kinda bein' inbetween, like, I got the teeth--" You pull the sides of your mouth wide to display them. "and bittyass fins and puny fucked up gills--they all work and shit but not too good. I figure I like couches and ablution traps both just fine, thank you kindly." Your jaw pops audibly as another yawn takes your face over. Blinking your eyes open again is getting harder and harder. "Mmnblgghh. Might check out them tidepools when there's time, though, I ain't been on a beach or nothin' in sweeps..."

 

"Let's go with the couch," you decide. "Then Twitch can join you if she wants, when she's done exercising my dad." You offer her an arm to lean on, but she seems too wobbly even for that, so -- "Up we go!" You scoop her up like a kitten and deposit her on the couch, tuck a pillow under her head and drape a cashmere throw over her.

The couch is built for someone your size. Two little girls could build a pillow fort on it and still have room for a tickle fight. Dangit, you're having those lusus feels again.

 

"Mmh, yeah, sounds good..." you mutter, already dreading the whole process of standing up and walking over and falling into it. Fortunately, Bel takes care of all of that by scooping you up. You are too out of it to do more than blink in surprise, but it doesn't upset you. As he carries you over, you idly appreciate his strong arms and chest and fuckin' perfect hair--not in any kind of lewd way, just noting that, yeah, you can certainly imagine how his moirail and matesprit appreciate those things too.

Weirdly enough, his concern over you doesn't feel pale--you get the impression he's nice like this to everybody, listening to their problems and helping them out and herding them off to wherever they're best suited. You can see why he's... he's... whatever his job is. You realize, as he's tucking you all in, that you haven't called him sir once since you got here, and he doesn't seem to mind. You curl up like a little limpet in your snuggleplane and smile your thank-you--the rest of you is just so tired, but not unhappy. He isn't going to space you, and he gave you tea, and Twitchy will be back soon...

Something about the couch and the pillow and the exact texture of the snuggleplane is just perfect, you don't remember the last time you slept somewhere this comfortable, and it makes something worried and tense in your pan click off and drift...

 

Smiling to yourself, you go back to the table to finish making sandwiches. You hook your headset on your horn and call Galley.

"Do you know anything about how this kid got aboard and who she's running from?" you ask him. "Erskin had regulations on his side to save Twitch, but I have a feeling it's going to be a bit more complicated with Lu, and I'd like to be prepared."

 

Half an hour later Twitch hauls herself back on the landing, dripping sweat and trembling a little with overexertion. She's got half a dozen big white feathers stuck through her short, curly ponytail, and a random scattering of burn holes across her clothes.

She makes a wobbly beeline for Bel's thermal hull and proceedes to raid it mercilessly. When she realizes she's being observed she goes:

"I can pay for this."

She has no idea whether or not she can pay for it, but is willing to lie until the situation is someone else's problem. She sticks another chunk of fruit in her mouth.

(Whoops ignore this for a bit)

 

Galley gives a long, somewhat embarrassed growl. "By the time I thought to trace her path through Rat King to get aboard us, we'd already disembarked from there ourselves, and I don't have the kind of servers to handle routine data pulls from stations that size, so, uh. We'd have to drive back there and ask them."

 

"How about a docking list, is that available? She's not a helmsman, so she probably came off a non-military ship. That could narrow it down." Judging your sandwich stack tall enough, you begin wrapping them up, saving one out for yourself. "If I'm hiding some batshit royal's whipping girl, I'm going to need to strategize."

 

"Oh! Shit, you're right, that's practically a text file, I should have that list and their to/from itineraries for everyone that perigee, up to our departure. It's one of the docking auto-loads, to make it harder for people to casually falsify their travel info. I'm gonna forward that to your husktop now."

 

"Thanks, babe." You get that out, and open the file as soon as it's transferred. You focus on the night or two before and during the Sunslammer's docking; you don't think Lu hid in the station very long. She's in such rough shape, you wouldn't be surprised if she just took the first opportunity to stow away that she saw, not trusting herself to stay upright any longer. Which means, most likely, a ship that arrived when the Slammer was already docked.

That leaves you with a pretty short list. A yacht, a couple of freighters, and a film crew. Your best guess would be one of the freighters, if she was used for labor. She's too beat-up for a servant on the yacht, though you suppose she could have been some awful pedo's 'quadrant'. The film crew is supposedly a documentary team on its way from shooting cloud rays on Raijin 4 to hunting the elusive opal crab in the Terpsichore system's inner asteroid belt. If that turns out to be cover for making underage porn, you will never again watch a nature documentary with a clear conscience, so you sincerely hope they're on the level.

You save your notes and put your husktop away with a sigh. You need more information.

 

Ok this happens now!

 

"There's a stack of sandwiches in there, grab as many as you like. Don't slam the door, your moirail's asleep on the couch." You pour yourself another cup of coffee, and get down a clean mug for her.

 

"I have a moirail?" Twitch asks, startled and delighted. She grabs three sandwiches and rushes off to go look, leaving the door of the nutritional item cooling unit hanging open.

 

Chuckling indulgently -- and feeling more like a lusus than ever -- you close it for her, and make her a cup of cocoa for when she comes back. Everyone likes cocoa.

 

Twitch edges closer to the big couch, studying the skinny kid intently, then clambers up to perch on the arm. She tears into one of the sandwiches while gently— cautiously— skritching between Lu's horns.

 

Aww, that's just cute as hell. You don't want to leave them alone in your quarters, but you guess you can give them the illusion of privacy by being otherwise occupied. You get out some paperwork to focus on.

 

The scritching starts up a mostly-asleep purr in you. You know those fingernails.

There are a few long moments where you're vaguely aware of Twitchy talking and Bel's deeper rumbly voice in return. You half-listen for awhile, drifting in and out of a dream where you're harvesting these amazing fucking peaches the size of your head, and then at some point you realize you're still on this couch and you're still all shivery and this nap needs another person in it to be perfect.

You grab clumsily at the scritching hand. There are amused sounds from Twitchy's end. Without opening your eyes, you stir a bit more and reach up to capture whatever's closest. You get an arm and pull, not with any real force, and tug stubbornly until she tips over--and then she's yours, you wrap both arms and both legs around her and pull her into your blanket prison. She smells like grass and bird and sweat and electric stuff and it's sort of awful and completely comforting. You sigh into her curls and drift deeper into sleep.