“My unique situation?” she asked, not sure she should be offended. Men like Pigeon, feeling as if they needed to help the poor females in their industry, were all too common. Alexa couldn’t count them on two hands. Whether in training, or in the field, there were always a few.
And why had Hysterian asked someone to look out for her? Did he think she couldn’t take care of herself?
Alexa shook her head. It didn’t matter. His opinion was less than nothing.
“That this is your first job. It’s not easy, spending long spans of time in space. Your circadian rhythm gets all jacked even if you follow the health guidelines, you’ll see. Your feminine cycle—”
“Is none of your business,” she snapped. Alexa stopped Pigeon again when he grew flustered and tried to apologize. “I don’t need your apology. I appreciate your concern and will come to you if something should happen that I can’t take care of myself, but this is hardly my first time traveling through space. I can watch my own back.”
Pigeon smiled. “Good to hear.”
“You two coming or what?” Raul called.
With one last glance at the locust, whose creepy gaze followed her every movement now, she joined the others at the new crate.
The rest of the afternoon went on without incident, and by nightfall, Alexa was certain that her first meeting with Hysterian and the crew wasn’t something that would often be repeated. She could still manage to make herself relatively invisible.
Except to Raul, who was always where she was.
He’ll be a problem, she mused when she hauled a bushel of leaves to the male locust’s enclosure. It was feeding time, and even though the creature had calmed down after the tranquilizer spray from earlier, it was still very much alert. It’d only acted up again when he saw the female locusts being placed in their enclosures.
The females, unlike the male, were less aggressive. After their initial fear, they settled easily into their spaces. It gave their enclosures time to replicate a small, simulated habitat for them. Raul was feeding them while she took on the male.
A stream of drool fell from the side of its mouth as she placed her bushel into the drawer. Whether it was hungry for food or her, she had no idea.
She didn’t care to know.
She didn’t like the locust either way. Alexa closed the drawer and let the food drop into the space. The male grabbed it with its four arms and tore into it, crushing chunks of bark with each bite.
If they could see it now… She thought of Horace and Daniels. As she stared at the locust feasting with a violence that didn’t make sense, since there was nothing it needed to fight to keep its food, she thought Horace had the right of it.
I’d want to know if I was sharing the small confines of a ship with a monster like that. But she knew when she applied for the job that she’d be working for animals and creatures from around the known universe. It was in the description.
The locusts aren’t the only monster on this ship. She frowned.
The ping of the ship’s intercom went off, and Daniels’s voice came through. “Take off commencing in fifteen. Lockdown initiating in five. Say your goodbyes to Earth, everyone. We won’t be back for months.”
Raul grunted in response. “Earth needs no goodbyes.”
Alexa agreed.
“Come help me if you’re done.” He pointed to the third female locust. “She still needs her bush.”
With one last glance at the male, who rolled its jaw as it finished the last of its food, Alexa grabbed the remaining female’s bush and dropped it into her drawer. Raul came to stand beside her. “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.”
“They’ll need to be fed once more before shift’s end. Then we’ll finally be able to take a load off.”
“Yeah.”
“You okay?”
Her eyes shifted his way. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Captain wanted to talk to you alone. I didn’t want to leave you, wasn’t sure if you were in trouble. Sorry about that.”
Alexa wiped her palms on her pants and turned toward the menagerie’s central computer panel where her workstation was. Raul followed her.
“I wasn’t in trouble,” she said. “He wanted to formally introduce himself to me.”
Raul sat down in his station and strapped in. “Odd.”
“Why odd?” she asked, doing the same.
“He never formally introduced himself to me.” Belt buckles clicked. “Whatever. Maybe it’s because you’re…”
“I’m what?”
“I was going to say a woman then thought better of it,” Raul said. “I have no problem with your sex, but who the hell knows what our captain thinks? I shouldn’t have assumed.”
The lights flickered, lowered, indicating takeoff lockdown. Questor’s AI listed off safety measures, which were all redundant. When it was over, Alexa sighed and sagged into her seat. “It doesn’t matter what he thinks or what anyone else thinks. Let’s just do our jobs, okay?”
“You’re not a talkative one.”
“No. I’m not.”
“Fine by me. Though I’ll crack you open someday, Ms. Dear. It’s not like we’ll have much else to do to occupy our time between missions. Crew becomes family, ya know? Maybe it doesn’t seem that way at the start, but you’ll see. The people you work with—survive with in space—when there’s no one else for billions of miles to rely on, they become your family real fast. Some of the best people I’ve met were on previous jobs.”
Family? Right, she thought dryly. She had family once, but it was taken away from her. The lights lowered further, and a whizzing sound filled the space. The locusts were curled up in balls, probably responding to the thrusters. There were anxiety supplements added to their bushels she and Raul fed them. She hoped it was enough.
Daniels’s voice came over the intercom again counting down from five. Alexa closed her eyes and counted down with him in her head.
Earth needs no goodbyes.
She’d been on it a little less than a month, and had no plans of ever returning.
In fact, she was certain she wouldn’t. It was more likely she would be dead after all was said and done. Killing Hysterian—if she managed it—would be tricky to walk away from. There’d be an investigation, and she wasn’t an idiot. Cyborgs recorded everything they saw, keeping it within their databases.
No, if Hysterian didn’t kill her first, and she managed to do the deed, it would take more than a miracle to survive what came after. She knew what she signed up for.
The ship shuddered; internal gravity shifted. She clutched the armrests.
There was no turning back now.
Three
Two days back in space, and he was already pent-up. Hysterian clasped his hands behind his neck and stretched, cracking the metal joints in his back and neck.
In that time, he’d firmly established himself as captain, gaining the respect of the two men he worked the closest with—Daniels Waller, ex-miner freight co-pilot, a man who had years of experience maneuvering large, obnoxious behemoth ships through space, and had a keen desire to prove his manliness, and Horace [Redacted], his navigator and stand-in for when Hysterian wasn’t around to deal with the locals they would eventually encounter. Horace had been to more places throughout the universe than even Hysterian had. The direct knowledge that his navigational specialist had was something he grossly lacked.