Unfamiliar Faces
Visk had been in Vakko's office for a while, asking him questions for far longer than either of them had anticipated. By the time Vakko kicked him out to get back to his work, Visk had learned a great deal of information about the wider galaxy and where he currently fit in it.
The galaxy was called Prism, and several civilizations dotted its expanse. He was currently in the territory of the Interstellar Compact, which wasn't really one nation so much as several allied civilizations. There were quite a few others, including the Lirune Federation, who governed his species' homeworld, and the Halysian Empire, a reclusive monarchy of snake people who were long-standing enemies of the Compact.
Vakko had mentioned their destination was Nexus. From what Visk had gathered, the Compact's capital was a huge city in interstellar space, which had grown as a trade hub at the convergence of several slipways. He wasn't sure quite what to expect, but it sounded like a shining center of civilization, so if he needed anything he could probably find it there.
The captain had also briefly touched on the Federation. Being the homeworld of Visk's species, it seemed likely he was from there; according to Vakko, liralens were a fairly rare sight here in the Compact. The captain had also mentioned some sort of war going on in the Federation, which left Visk a little alarmed. Vakko had to go do other things mid-conversation, though, so he hadn't had time to explain specifics.
He still wasn't even sure he was from Lirune, but he figured war was as good a reason as any to fire someone into a planet. Who knows.
Before he'd cut the conversation short, Vakko had informed Visk that Nari would probably be in the kitchen around now. She and another crewmate, Amaki, tended to make dinner for everyone. Right now, Visk was in the elevator down to the 6th floor to see if that was the case.
Once the elevator reached the floor, both doors opened. He was looking towards the numbered wall, which was a small hallway of sorts. More of a junction than anything; it had a door to the left and right, and what he realized was a ladder going back up to the bridge.
Contrary to the other levels of the ship he'd been on, this one had some sort of attempt at greenery. On the wall hung a curtain of vines with thick green leaves, draping down from a hydroponics system mounted near the top. That's a nice change of pace.
"Hello?" he heard a voice ask from behind him. Quickly, he turned around to face a sapient he'd never seen before, someone he could only assume was Amaki.
Contrary to all the species he'd encountered so far, she had a mammalian appearance; her snow-white fur covered her head-to-toe, fluffing up mostly around her tail. From the side, Visk could spot that her face was fluffy too, white fuzz lining the edges of her four pointed ears, and running down her face as it tapered to a foxlike snout. Vakko had said she was a 'kilx.'
She was wearing square-rimmed glasses, and seemed fairly relaxed. She was in a kitchen, and stood in front of an electric stove, grilling some mixture of meat and vegetables in a red sauce.
"Oh, it's you," she remarked, then turned back to focus on her cooking.
"You're Amaki, right?" the liralen asked.
"That'd be correct," she replied. "Sorry if I'm a bit quiet. Little busy right now."
"No worries. Where's Nari?"
Amaki grumbled. "I'll tell you where she's not: putting my rice in the microwave right now. Could you get that for me if you don't mind?"
"Yeah, sure." Visk walked over to the counter in the middle of the kitchen, and sure enough, there were a couple bags of microwavable rice there; he picked them up and made his way over to the microwave.
"You can put both in at once," Amaki suggested. "Just put them in for three minutes instead of two."
Visk gave a quick thumbs-up with one of his free hands, and stuck the rice in the microwave. Just as he began to dial 3:00 into the timer, he heard a "ding," then footsteps running in his direction.
"Sorry I'm late!" said a familiar voice. "I was taking a nap and overslept a-"
Nari's words trailed off as she stepped into the kitchen and noticed the liralen.
"Visk?"
In an instant, he felt four arms wrap around him and pull him into a deep hug.
"Visk! I'm...I'm glad you're awake," Nari spoke after a little while of silence. "Mala told me you'd be alright, but I was just...nervous."
Visk almost thought he heard a sniffle coming from her. "So I'm...uh, glad you're here," she muttered. "Especially after what you did on that planet."
Before the liralen could reply, a BEEP sounded from the microwave. Nari jumped and scrambled over to it, taking the rice out and emptying it onto a plate.
"Okay, thanks," Amaki remarked, glancing at the commotion behind her. "Sorry to rush you if you're, uh, having a moment. Can you set the table soon, though? I'm almost done cooking this stuff."
"Yeah, sure," Nari nodded, quickly motioning to grab some dishes out of the pantry.
"I'll help," insisted Visk. Nari flashed him a thumbs up, and handed some plates over to the liralen as she grabbed several glasses out of a cabinet. Curiously, they were all tightly packed on an aluminum rack, rather than free-floating in the cabinet. Maybe in case the ship lost gravity?
As Visk watched, Nari set down all the glasses on the counter, then got a pitcher of water out from the fridge and filled them all up. She grabbed four of them, one in each hand, and began making her way out of the kitchen.
Visk was currently only using two hands to hold his pile of plates, so he grabbed the remaining two glasses and followed Nari.
The nerian had gone through an open doorway in the kitchen. Through the doorway was a dining room, with a second door on the other side of the wall, and a large metal table with six stools around it. Nari was placing the glasses on the table; she was currently on glass 3 of 4, and her eyes widened as she almost dropped it, awkwardly transferring it from her thumbless wing-hand to one of her newly free upper hands.
"Y'know, you could bring the pitcher with you, stack up the glasses, and fill them in here," Visk suggested as he carefully set down the plates and glasses he'd carried over.
Nari's free hand hit her face. "I've been on this ship for almost a year. How the hell did I not think of that?"
"Hey, it happens."
"Yeah. Y'know, sometimes I wish I had six arms, after all the times I had to carry Vakko's damn coffee over from the break room. Six-limbed sapients are rare across the galaxy, so I'm the one who always gets tasked with carrying people's shit around."
"That sucks."
"Yup. It'd maybe be a bit easier if my lower hands had thumbs. Wings aren't very useful in space,," Nari noted. "At least I don't get saddled with the underwater ruins like Mala and Shayle do. Biological advantages, I guess. It's why Taro always plops a mix of species on a team. It's good to be around another liralen, though. It's been a while."
"Wait, was there another liralen before me?"
"Yeah, me?" Nari asked, confused.
"I thought you said you're a nerian?"
The nerian shoved her face into her palm, without the slap this time. "Fuck. I didn't explain this, did I?"
She crossed her upper arms and sat back in her chair. "OK, so nerians are liralens. Same species, different subspecies. You guys naturally evolved. 250...er, 150 years ago, some of you guys created us for slave labor."
Suddenly a lot of things in Visk's mind started to click into place. "Oh."
"By biological definitions, we're liralens. But we're also 'nerians', named after Lirune's host star. So 'liralen' can refer to the original subspecies, or the species as a whole. Gets a bit confusing."
Visk scratched his chin. "I don't mean to press, but...are your people still enslaved?"
Nari shook her head. "No. Or, I guess, not really. We won our freedom in...uh, 217 CY. That pissed off a lot of folks; we were created to avoid the baggage of owning 'people', and those owners weren't happy that we were officially people now. Those sentiments never really went away, and that's why there's a...uh, civil war going on right now...where a lot of us are getting...uh, killed."
There was a darkness behind her eyes here, a hint of hesitation in her voice. Visk suspected this matter was more personal to her than she wanted to let on.
He opted not to pry further, instead reaching out to take a sip from his water. "Do...my people generally see you as lesser?"
"Depends," Nari spoke. "Lots do. Some don't. Official government position is 'yes'. There's an alliance of rebels harboring most nerians and teaming up against the LLP. They're losing."
The nerian shuddered as she spoke that last sentence.
Visk closed his eyes for a brief moment. The LLP. That sounded familiar, but he couldn't quite place it. He reopened his eyes to find Nari staring down at her lap.
"I don't view you as lesser," he muttered.
"Never thought you did, but I appreciate it. Genuinely," she replied, looking up at him. He wasn't sure, but he could almost swear he saw a single tear glittering amongst her scales.
As if precision-placed to interrupt the moment, a loud clang rang out as Amaki stumbled into the room. She held her pot in one hand, the plate of rice in the other, and two hot pads desperately pressed against her chest by her armpit. Both dishes had serving spoons jammed into them, which somehow hadn't fallen out onto the floor yet.
"And dinner is served!" she exclaimed joyfully, awkwardly setting down the dishes on the table, before placing down the hot pads, picking the dishes back up again, and placing them atop said pads.
"Don't quit your day job to become a juggler," Nari groused.
The kilx narrowed her eyes at the nerian for a moment before relaxing them. "Okay, fair, it wasn't very- shit. Where're the forks and napkins?"
Visk and Nari glanced at each other expectantly. "Oops," Nari muttered.
"It's fine, I've got it," Amaki said, sprinting back into the kitchen. As she left, Visk heard a ding as the elevator arrived, then a cascade of footsteps rumbled through the hall as the rest of the crew walked through the non-kitchen door.
Once Amaki returned with the silverware, everyone had settled into their seats and scooped up their own portions of the meal. Visk had actually already met everyone on the crew besides Shayle; he was another phosian with darker skin than Mala, more of a cobalt than a turquoise. Almost reminded Visk of his own scale color.
Now that he wasn't busy with conversation, he'd had a chance to get a proper look at the dining room. Like most of the rooms on SV-817, it was spartan in its design, with the same paneled white walls and black flooring he'd come to expect. Similar to the hallway on this floor, there were leafy vines hanging from the wall by the doors.
Visk started digging into his food. It was a pretty hearty dish, and tasted like heaven compared to what he'd been eating planetside, but what he'd thought was meat tasted more like some sort of substitute. Based off the looks on everyone's faces, despite Amaki's best efforts, it wasn't really anything to write home about.
"So, how's everyone's day going?" asked Vakko, looking around at the rest of the table.
"It's going," mumbled Amaki between bites. "Spent all day trying to crack the encryption on the flight computer Nari brought back. No dice."
"We've got a fuel stop coming up in a couple days," suggested the captain. "If you haven't cracked it by then, we can ask corporate for help."
"Yeah, we might have to do that," the kilx sighed. "I think there's a hardware lock on it. I don't know what the owner of that escape pod was doing, but they really didn't want anybody tampering with the flight software."
"I'd not mess around with it any further," Shayle recommended. "Might have tamper protection on it somewhere."
"Good call."
"On a somewhat related note," Vakko spoke, "Mala, how's the star chart effort coming along?"
After swallowing a bite of vegetables, Mala shrugged. "I've still got analysis running. Haven't gotten a match yet. It takes a while, the database is pretty big."
"Odd," remarked the captain. "Keep me posted if you find anything, aye? And we can send it over to corporate at the fuel stop."
"Yeah, of course."
Vakko nodded in acknowledgement. "Anyway, first meal with a new fella aboard," he noted. "Visk, I trust everyone's been treating you well?"
"Oh, yeah, absolutely!" the liralen replied. "Thanks for the hospitality. I really appreciate you not leaving me for dead."
"It is company policy," the captain chuckled. "And also it's the right thing to do."
"Fair enough."
"You've met...everyone besides Amaki and Shayle here, right?" Vakko asked.
Visk shook his head. "Met Amaki already, I got here a few minutes early. I think Shayle's the only one I haven't met until now."
The phosian glanced up from his food and looked at Visk. "Yeah, we haven't talked before. I'm Shayle; I'm the ship's mechanic," he explained. "Though everyone here does scaving too."
"Vakko also told me that Amaki does software stuff," Visk said. "Do you all have side jobs besides scaving or something?"
"Eh, sorta," Shayle shrugged. "Can't scavenge while we're in space, and someone's gotta keep the ship running. Amaki, Mala, and I do some engineering stuff while we're in flight. I personally don't scav a lot, actually, unless I'm one of the only guys who can do the job. Amaki and Mala go out planetside a bit more."
Visk nodded. "Nari mentioned something about you and Mala going on underwater expeditions earlier."
"Yep, exactly," Shayle laughed. "Gills, eh? Sometimes Amaki gets dragged into expeditions on cold planets too, since her homeworld would freeze all our tails off."
"Kalyx isn't that cold!" Amaki jokingly scoffed. "Just a little brisk."
"Amaki, it's 15 degrees colder on average than Phoris," Shayle grumbled. "It's cold."
Amaki sighed resignedly. The phosian had a point.
"Are there any environments Nari and I are specially equipped for?" Visk asked.
Shayle raised an eyebrow contemplatively for a moment. "Toxins," he answered. "Your homeworld is full of crazy bacteria, so you guys evolved a killer immune system. Don't even need to decontaminate in the airlock sometimes, though it's usually a good idea to."
The liralen sat back to ponder that. He hadn't known that about his own biology. Hell, he didn't even really know much about his homeworld.
Something to ask Nari later, I suppose.
He glanced over at the nerian. Mala had been chatting with her earlier, but both of them were now preoccupied finishing off their food. Visk was about to speak to Nari before Vakko set down his fork and cleared his throat.
"Well, that was pretty good," the captain remarked. Visk wasn't sure if he genuinely enjoyed it or just had a really good poker face. "Thanks for cooking as always, Amaki."
"I heard you helped out a bit too," he continued, glancing at Visk and raising an eyebrow.
"Anyway," he announced, turning to face the table, "now that we've got a new mate aboard, we've gotta figure out where to bunk him. I've got my room, and Mala and Shayle are together, so that means Visk bunks with Nari or Amaki."
"Wait, wait, hold on," Visk interjected. "What's going on here?"
"Ship's tight on space," Amaki frowned. "For habitation, we've got captains' quarters and three two-person bunks. All three of them have someone in them already, so either Nari or I are gonna have to lose our sweet solitude."
"No need to worry, Am," Nari grumbled. "I'll take him."
"Can't you two just bunk together and get him his own room, too?" Shayle suggested.
"Nonononono!" replied Mala with a shake of her head. "They're both angsty enough without being around each other all the time, we don't need-"
"Enough," Vakko remarked, not quite yelling, but raising his voice enough to make his point clear. "We don't need to insult each other about this. Nari, if you want to bunk with him, that works out for everyone. Visk, you have any preferences?"
"Nari sounds good to me," shrugged the liralen.
"Cool, then it's settled, aye?" nodded the captain, narrowing his eyes at Mala. "And let's keep things civil. We've all been through a lot over the years, we don't need to add each other to our list of ordeals."
The atmosphere in the room lingered in a sort of tension as one by one, everyone finished their food, cleaned up, and walked away.
"So, why?"
Nari's ears perked up as the liralen spoke. She paused her approach to the elevator and turned around to look at him.
"Why what?"
"Why the sudden turnaround? I remember a couple days ago, you were about to shoot me. Why are you so willing to go to bat for me?" He swallowed. "Why do you like me?"
Nari frowned, folding up her wings a bit and curling her tail around her waist. "Visk, we've known each other for a couple days now, right?"
He nodded.
"I've been on this ship for almost a year now," she explained. "447 days. That's about 7 months, which is 50 weeks or something. Long time."
Her tail dropped back down to the floor as she glanced away from him. "I've got no social life outside of work. The rest of the team is courteous, but they're still a team. Coworkers. You can't always really be yourself around them, y'know? And outside work, I stand out. I'm an oddity. Even on Nexus, there's barely any nerian diaspora, so no matter what room I'm in I'll never really fit in."
She turned back to look at him. "So yeah, I've known you for two days. Maybe it's just that there's no baggage between us, no fear of getting fired if I say the wrong thing. But even in just that time, since I've started working here, you're the closest thing I've had to...well..."
Her eyes locked with his.
"Well, a friend."