Kizzy grinned at Rosemary. “Maybe we saw each other’s lanterns. Oh! Did you get one of those ice creams there? The real milk ones, in one of those waffley bowl things, all covered with berry sauce and little chocolate bits?”
“Ugh, that sounds sweet,” Dr. Chef said.
“If memory serves, I had two of those,” said Rosemary. She smiled, hoping that it masked the tangle of homesickness filling her chest. She had worked so hard to get away, jumped through so many hoops, spent so many sleepless nights being afraid of getting caught, and yet… yet there were bugs on her plate, and artigrav nets beneath her feet, and a table full of strangers that could never know what she’d left behind. She was out in the open now, far from everything and anything that was familiar.
“Speaking of sweet things,” Dr. Chef said, setting his fork down with finality. “Who wants dessert?”
Even though her stomach was now full to bursting, Rosemary found it easy to make room for three of what Dr. Chef called “spring cakes”—delicate, chewy, reminiscent of almonds, dusted with some zingy spice she couldn’t identify. Not quite Remembrance Day ice cream with berry sauce, but then, nothing ever would be.
After he’d helped clear the table, Ashby settled into one of the benches tucked away in the garden. He pulled out his scrib, and took a bite out of the last spring cake. Captain’s prerogative.
He gestured at his scrib, directing it toward one of the Transport Board’s job feeds. “Establishing connection,” the screen read. “Verifying access.” As the progress icon pulsed in thought, he glanced back to the kitchen. Dr. Chef was behind the counter, showing Rosemary how to stack dirty dishes in the cleanser. She looked attentive, but a little lost. Ashby smiled to himself. First days were always hard.
Sissix approached, a mug of tea in hand. “So?” she asked quietly, making a small gesture with her head back toward the kitchen.
Ashby nodded and made room for her on the bench. “So far, so good,” he said under his breath. “She seems friendly enough.”
“I have a good feeling about her,” Sissix said, sitting down.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. I mean, she’s a bit… oh, stars, there isn’t a good word for it in Klip. Issik. You know that one?”
Ashby shook his head. He could muddle through Reskitkish, if spoken slowly, but his vocabulary wasn’t extensive.
“Literally means ‘egg soft.’ Like a hatchling’s skin, when it first comes out of the shell.”
“Ah, okay. So… inexperienced?”
She rocked her head in thought. “Yes, but not quite. It implies that you’ll toughen up in time.”
He nodded, glancing at her thick scales. “I’m sure she will.”
“Well, that’s the thing about being issik. If your skin doesn’t harden…” She let her tongue fall out of her mouth and made a choking sound. She laughed.
Ashby gave her a wry look. “You are talking about babies here.”
She sighed. “Mammals,” she said, with fond exasperation. She rested her head on his shoulder and put her hand on his knee. Coming from a Human, the gesture would’ve been intimate, but he was used to it with Sissix. This was her version of casual. “Still trying to find us a follow-up?” she asked, nodding toward the scrib. The feed had connected, displaying a neat table of contract offers.
“Just seeing what’s out there.”
“You won’t get far with this feed.”
“Why?”
“Because these are upper level gigs.” There was amusement in her voice. “You’re tired.”
“No,” he said. “I’m just… looking.” He would’ve left the explanation there, but he could feel her looking at him, waiting for more. He exhaled. “Just one of these pays more than our last three jobs combined.”
“Big ships get big money,” she said. “That’s always been the way of things.”
“You don’t need a big ship. Just a well-equipped ship.” He looked around the garden. Recycled crates, a scavenged window, hand-me-down planters. “With the right upgrades, we could start applying for these jobs.”
Sissix started to chuckle, but stopped when she saw his face. “Are you being serious?”
“I don’t know,” Ashby said. “I wonder if I’ve gotten so comfortable in this kind of work that I never stopped to consider doing more. And we could, in theory. We’re capable enough. We’re good enough.”
“We are,” Sissix said slowly. “But we’re not talking new circuitboards here. We’d need a new bore, and that’d cost you a standard’s worth of profits right there. I’d want a new nav panel, because the one we’ve got is sticky enough as it is sometimes. We’d need a bigger ambi stock, more stabilizers, more buoys—I’m sorry. I don’t mean to stomp all over your daydream here.” She gave his knee a friendly scratch with her claws. “Okay, let’s say you saved up enough, and we got all kitted out, and we could start taking high level jobs. What would you do with that?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean why do you want that, other than whatever Yoshi said that got under your skin.”
He raised his eyebrows and smirked. “How did you know?”
She laughed. “Just a guess.”
Ashby scratched his beard and thought. What did he want it for? After he’d first left home, all those years ago, he’d sometimes wondered if he’d go back to the Fleet to raise kids, or if he’d settle down on a colony somewhere. But he was a spacer through and through, and he had the itch for drifting. As the years went on, the thought of making a family had dwindled. The point of a family, he’d always thought, was to enjoy the experience of bringing something new into the universe, passing on your knowledge, and seeing part of yourself live on. He had come to realize that his life in the sky filled that need. He had a crew that relied on him, and a ship that continued to grow, and tunnels that would last for generations. To him, that was enough.
But was it enough as it was now? He was content, sure, but he could do more. He could build grander things meant for greater numbers of people. He could give his crew a bigger cut, which he’d long wanted to do, and they certainly deserved. He didn’t share Yoshi’s hubris, but he couldn’t deny that the idea of a Human captain doing work traditionally left to the founding species gave him a spark of pride. He could—
“Oh, not to change the subject, but I meant to tell you,” he said. “I got a vid pack from Tessa today. Ky started walking.”