I set down my tweezers and glance over at him. A rueful, reluctant smile tugs at my mouth. I can be a bit…short, and Adiron truly has been a friend to me. “I don’t need a personality if I live by myself.”
Adiron grins, and I know my sourness is forgiven. We go back a ways, he and I, and we’ve seen some shit. He knows I am who I am, just as I know he’s never going to change his affable, easygoing ways. I wish I could be like him, approaching the universe with a broad, eager smile. Instead, I’d rather the universe just left me the kef alone.
He approaches me and holds out a bag. “Some extra credits, just in case you need anything for Soph.”
I take the money and toss it down onto my cluttered workstation. “You’d better hope I don’t need it.”
“Oh, I do.” He smiles and then it fades, quickly. With a thoughtful look—rare for Adiron—he holds out another bag. “This is for Sophie…if we don’t come back. She’s a good kid, but she’s seen some shit. Just…if we don’t come back in a few months, promise me you’ll help her find someplace safe to land? Not with someone that’ll enslave her again.”
I grunt, taking the second bag and tossing it next to the first. “How do you know I won’t just take her credits for myself?”
“Because I know you.”
“Enslaved, huh?” I can’t help but ask.
Adiron nods. “Six years. Praxiians.”
I grimace. Not my favorite species. I refuse to feel sympathy for the human, though. She’s going to be one big nuisance. “You’d better come back,” is all I say. “You know I hate having a guest.”
“Sophie won’t be a bother. I promise. Like I said, she’s a good kid.” He hesitates again, rubbing his jaw. “Also, I feel I have to say this, but…don’t touch her, either. I know she’s human, but it’s her body.”
Does he really think I’m that keffing hard up I’d just grab his human and shove my cock into her? I glare at him, irritated, and knock on my leg. It clanks, metallic-sounding and hollow. I do the same to my arm, and then my side. “Remember all this shit? Remember how many pieces the Threshians left me in? You think sex is ever on my mind?”
He just grins, all dopey, easygoing buddy once more, and seeing him reminds me of our military days, when Adiron used to make the same expression right before we headed into battle. I’m surprised at how much pain his smile causes me. Thought I was over that shit.
Guess I never will be.
“Like I said, I had to say it. I wouldn’t leave her here with you if I didn’t trust you.” Adiron gestures back in the direction of the docking bay. “We’re about to head out. Sophie knows. Just wanted to say thanks before we ship out.”
“You know I hate emotional shit,” I manage gruffly, turning back to my workstation. “Just go on. I’ll hide my tears for later.”
He laughs, slaps my back so hard I nearly drop my tweezers, and it sends a riot of pain up my cybernetic synapses. I grit my teeth and ignore the sharp shock of it, because he didn’t mean it, and get back to work.
All gets quiet again. The Little Sister launches, shaking the hangar bay and a few parts off of my workstation. My junk lab is two rooms over, but the entire asteroid is a bit more “rattle-y” nowadays. Needs more work than I can do, but I’m just one person. Even if she falls down around my ears to nothing but one single room, I’ll manage. I can live in one room. Just one small, tight room with nothing but the sour taste of recycled oxygen in every breath and—
I push away from my workstation, hating the turn of my thoughts. I slap my cybernetic arm, because it sends a torrent of shocks up through the circuits and a zing of pain along my nerve endings. Good. The pain helps distract me. I pace away, shoving aside a rusted hulk in my path, and head out.
I need a carcinogel stick. Maybe two.
I keep trying to give them up, but some days, a male just needs a good, long puff of death on his breath to take away the taste of recycled oxygen. So I go to my quarters, pull out my too-light pack of carcinogels, and head across the old station toward the terrarium.
Once upon a time, back when I was a soldier, we couldn’t smoke our carcinogels in our quarters. If we wanted to puff up, we had to go outside. It was habit to grab your smokes and head on out, and the moment you passed through the doors, it smelled like old carcinogel sticks. There were always a few friends out there, and you could talk shit and smoke and unwind. I have fond memories of those days, and maybe out of respect of those long-gone friends, I still head “outside” when I need a smoke.
The terrarium’s about as close as I can get to outdoors here on the station. Once upon a time, when this was a military base, these quarters belonged to the females. Someone must have liked gardening and convinced the higher-ups that they needed a greenhouse of some kind, because the terrarium is one of the largest rooms on the station, and it’s top to bottom covered with greenery. I’ve let it get overgrown—mostly because I don’t care—but sometimes I like looking at it. Air feels fresher out here. Cleaner.
I flick the end of my carcinogel, igniting the self-lighting mechanism, and it flares up. I take a deep puff, inhaling the awful fumes, and watch the greenery around me idly. There’s no one to talk to, of course. All’s silent. But it’s a comfortable, familiar act and it calms my rattling nerves.
I hate that my brain’s misfiring after one keffing visitor. It’s because it’s a change, and I hate change. I like routine. I like…
My gaze falls on something ahead on the overgrown path. It looks like, well, I’m not entirely sure. Curious, I suck down another drag on my carcinogel and tuck the other into my pocket, making my way over to the dark lump on the overgrown cobblestones. As I do, a smell hits me.
And I realize what it is.
Keffing hells. Did Adiron’s human take a keffing SHIT in my terrarium?
8
SOPHIE
Even though I would love nothing more than to hide out in my room for oh, the next eight to ten weeks or so, there’s a few problems with that.
There’s no food dispenser.
There’s also no bathroom.
What kind of monster makes private quarters and doesn’t give someone a damn bathroom of their own? I’m a little irked at the thoughtlessness of it, along with the betrayed feeling I can’t quite shake at being left behind to care for a very expensive cat. Lizard. Whatever.
As if he knows I’m thinking shitty thoughts about him, Sleipnir butts his head against my hand, making that crackly noise in the back of his throat that means that he wants attention. Absently, I pet his head as he drapes his big body over my crossed legs, and I scratch at his smooth, sleek skin and consider my surroundings.
At first, I thought my room was a decent size and was kind of happy about that. The bed is two smaller ones pushed together, and the plas-blankets that cover it don’t seem to be the freshest, but they’re clean. There’s no pillow—that doesn’t surprise me after years of alien life—but I can make one. The good news is that there’s plenty of room for Sleipnir to cuddle up next to me, which he LOVES to do, and won’t knock me off of the bed like he did back on the Little Sister. But as the minutes tick past, I start to wonder.