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by Yolande Kleinn
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The ship they've discovered is even stranger on the inside.
Jamila Warwick has been captaining science vessels for well over a decade—nearly as long as she spent in her previous life as a chemist confined to lab work—but the handful of times she's wondered if perhaps she's seen everything, the universe has challenged her hubris by throwing dizzying new mysteries in her path. She navigates uncanny corridors now, still disconcerting even after having traversed the entire ship from stem to stern. It will be a relief when it's finally time to turn her footsteps back toward the place her own ship is docked against the outer hull.
Apart from her own people, the ship they've discovered is empty. Warwick's footsteps carry her along a path she does not need to think about, leaving her mind free to take in the odd contours of the corridor.
If she tried very, very hard—and if she didn't touch anything—she might be able to pretend she's walking through a claustrophobic cave, and not a living system of muscle and mass. A glow of bioluminescence runs along the rounded edges of the corridor, sometimes near the smooth ground, sometimes embedded within the rougher texture directly overhead, bright and steady enough to illuminate Warwick's stride. The gravity, the mechanism for which her team has yet to figure out, holds her down at slightly less than Mars standard. Even the air smells clean, if heavier and more humid than anything Warwick is accustomed to.
But the ship is alive. Someone built—grew?—created a spacefaring vessel out of biological impulses and living matter. The ship is alive, and complicated, and so wildly unfamiliar that it took the Obershaw's entire onboard contingent of scientists nearly fourteen hours to resolve that it was a ship. Then another six to find a way to dock with the mystery vessel, two more to board following rigorous safety protocols, and a full day to confirm that the inner chambers contain an atmosphere safe for humans to breathe.
Since then, Warwick has grudgingly and cautiously given her crew full run of the place, to gather and analyze every scrap of confusing information. They will eventually need to find a way to transport this biological innovation back to settled space for further study. So far, after four days orbiting an asteroid with their impossible find, the Obershaw and her crew have already made discoveries that will keep biologists and shipwrights busy for decades.
It's enough to make Warwick wish, if only fleetingly, that she hadn't allowed herself to be shunted away from pure science and into command. She's intimately familiar with the wistful tug of wishing she were coordinating a research team's deep dive into a new puzzle, or even better, studying the lab results herself.
But no discovery has ever made her feel that longing regret quite as acutely as this.
Yes, she has access to research data from every single department. She oversees every aspect of the Obershaw's operation, coordinates every mission, compiles and sends the reports back to headquarters. But those are broad strokes. Big picture. It's not the same as being able to immerse herself in the minutia of research, so focused that the rest of the universe falls away.
These thoughts fold grudgingly aside when she nears her destination. She slips back into the present moment as she approaches the end of the corridor, and she finds herself taken aback all over again by the way living flesh has been cultivated into something so clearly intended to accommodate travel between worlds. The interior walls look nothing like the smooth exterior of the ship. A shingled pattern covers walls and ceiling alike, uneven and unpredictable, like shards of dark shale overlapping along every surface except the ground. The edges look sharp, but Warwick knows better—and when she reaches out to touch it, the soft, spongy material gives way beneath her fingers—only to expand back into its original shape when she withdraws.
She takes one more step forward, but even knowing precisely what she's looking for, the hatch is nearly invisible. The line where the two sides meet hides easily amid the rough shadows and textures of the wall.
After a moment, the seam splits automatically open, musculature within the walls contracting to offer up a portal for entry into the room beyond. The gap is big enough that Jamila Warwick, with her broad shoulders and intimidating height, can pass comfortably through without having to duck beneath the edge of the aperture.
"You don't need me for this, Aida." Doctor Gima Natsuki's words sound almost like a shout, and Warwick wonders why the head of her science team is raising her voice, for precisely the length of time it takes her to realize the room's other occupant is buried beneath a rounded protrusion that rises and extends into the center of the open space. It could be a console, or an engine component, or hell, even a dining table for all that Warwick can tell looking at the shape. It seems to have grown directly up from the floor, out from the wall, despite possessing the smoothness of membrane rather than the rough texture of the walls themselves.
"Of course I need you." Aida de Luca's voice comes muffled from her hiding place, but she still manages to sound indignant. All Warwick can see of her are a pair of scuffed gray boots and the rolled-up cuffs of a set of standard-issue coveralls.
None of the crew, save the captain herself, has bothered with the crisp uniform of their station. On a mission like this, the trappings of rank matter far less than comfort and practicality.
"There's not room for both of us down there," Doctor Gima points out placidly, from her perch on a nearby bench formed of the same disconcerting material as the console.
"Come on, Natsuki." Aida's boots dig into the soft floor as she pushes just a little further forward. "Your expertise is invaluable."
"My expertise has better things to do than watch you crawl around under something that may or may not be a nav console."
Still standing unnoticed in the open portal, Warwick feels her chest warm with a familiar contradiction of possessive fondness and wry exasperation. Her comms chief has been aboard this vessel for less than an hour, and already the woman is pushing her luck. Aida de Luca is persistent to a fault. Warwick absolutely should not want to indulge her stubbornness. Even more, she should not respond to this familiar show of impatience with a dangerous pulse in the vicinity of her heart.
With the skill of long practice, Warwick tucks the inconvenient affection away, and steps fully across the threshold, putting a little extra space between herself and the corridor.
The portal constricts and closes behind her, drawing Gima's attention. The look they exchange is exasperated, but when Gima rolls her eyes, there's only humor in the gesture. A wordless shorthand made simple by the long years they've worked together.
Another moment and Aida retorts, "Maybe I just want to avoid having my wrist slapped later if you decide I exceeded my mandate."
"Are you planning to exceed your mandate?" Despite being pitched to carry through a bulwark of muscle and cartilage, Gima's voice manages to encompass all the times Aida has done precisely that. While the Obershaw is not a military vessel, there is still a chain of command, and Aida has no authority for anything that hasn't been approved by either captain or chief scientist.
"No," Aida says, but even muffled beneath the console, the word holds a suspicious lack of resolve.
"Then you've got nothing to worry about." Gima's tone carries a warning, even as she proclaims, "I'm leaving now."
The room—the primary navigation module, as Gima's initial survey team categorized it, though Warwick has the sense this is a vast oversimplification—isn't large, but it still takes Gima several steps to traverse the distance and join Warwick near the sealed hatch.
"Doctor Gima." Warwick nods in greeting. "Why is my comms chief under the navigation array?" This terminology also feels woefully lacking, but it's the best they have to work with.
"She insists there's a signal pattern coming from down there somewhere. Says finding the input mechanism should help her decipher the control panel somehow." Gima shrugs and offers a wry half-smile. Not quite the shortest member of the crew, but close, Gima has to tip her head back to meet Warwick's eyes. Her round face and sharp chin don't lend themselves to stern expressions in any case—not even with her hair locked into a tight bun at the back of her head—but she looks especially indulgent now. "To be honest, her reasoning seems thin. I think she just wants to see the components for herself, before anyone else has a chance to call dibs."
Warwick is inclined to trust Gima's assessment of the situation—and equally inclined to trust her apparent willingness to let Aida continue whatever it is she's doing down there. Aida may be an impulsive young woman prone to sticking her nose into all manner of quandaries outside the scope of her commission, but rarely does this tendency result in disaster. Hell, a couple of times it's actually brought new discoveries and insights to the puzzle at hand.
Still. "You're certain she can't get herself into any peril under there?" Warwick hopes her dry tone will conceal the more personal edge of concern. Yes, she is protective of her entire crew. But when it comes to harboring a powerful unspoken attachment to one crew member in particular, she tries not to show her hand.
"Certain?" Gima seems to give the question serious consideration before answering. "No. We still have no idea how any of these systems work. I can't guess which components might pose a risk, when we don't even know what most of them do."
Warwick scowls. "That does not reassure me, Doctor."
"Sorry. I can't give you 'certain'. But I am reasonably confident. We haven't come across any dormant security protocols or obvious malfunctions. So far, the most dangerous thing anyone's encountered is a containment bubble full of something like stomach acid on the engineering deck."
Well. There's an image Warwick did not need.
"Okay," she says, not entirely convinced but willing to extend a little trust. If the scientist who discovered the stomach acid had been hurt, Warwick would know about it.
"If you've finished doing your rounds, you could stay with Aida yourself," Gima suggests, and Warwick doesn't like the glint of something too knowing in her tone. "Make sure she stays out of trouble."
Warwick narrows her eyes at the head of her science team. "Is my presence in any way necessary?"
Gima shrugs again, and does not look the slightest bit apologetic. "Perhaps not. But I have other duties to manage, and I'd feel better knowing someone's here to stop Aida from wandering alone down ten miles of cave I haven't cleared for inspection."
Warwick snorts and arches an eyebrow. "It was significantly less than ten miles."
Still, it's a fair observation and reminder. A scant couple of months have passed since they put that particular planet behind them, with its unfathomable geology, and technology that felt more like magic than science. Aida's unauthorized jaunt was not entirely her own fault. Warwick can only imagine how disorienting it must've been, receiving such a persuasive and subliminal signal that no one else on the Obershaw's crew could detect. A subdermal implant offers many advantages for someone in Aida's position, but having comm signals routed straight through a human brainstem seems...
Complicated does not even begin to describe it, and Warwick honestly can't imagine volunteering to host such an intrusive technology.
Even in the absence of formal discipline—and Warwick still isn't entirely confident letting her wayward comms chief off the hook was the right call, implant or not—there is no pretending away the fact that on their last planetside exploration, Aida violated protocol and wandered off alone into what could have been a dangerous situation. That it instead brought about a vital discovery is secondary to the violation of standard safety protocols.
"All right," Warwick says when she realizes Gima is still watching her. Waiting to be dismissed, not due to the strictures of rank and decorum, but in an effort to make sure Warwick's fears have been assuaged. "Go on, then. I'm sure you're desperate to start analyzing those engine clusters."
The rest of the Obershaw's small survey teams have finally been allowed onboard, and her people have barely begun deciphering which parts of the ship function as engines. Working out whether a biological vessel might be capable of anything beyond sub-light travel will go much faster if Aida can find and translate a direct control mechanism, but Gima must be itching to get her hands on everything regardless.
Sure enough, she gives Warwick a huge grin, bright and lopsided, and then darts away through the hatch, which dilates for her and then closes just as efficiently once she's through.
When Warwick returns her attention to the thing that might be a control console, she finds Aida's position has changed. She can see more of Aida's legs now, all the way up to the knees of her coveralls, the material clean but well worn from years of crawling around strange environments, investigating confusing technologies and long dead worlds. Warwick crosses the space carefully, letting her eyes follow the contours of the console. It's as much physically alive as the rest of the ship, a steeply sloping ledge that stretches along fully half the perimeter of the compartment. The wall above it looks smooth and dark, and if it did not fit so perfectly amid the other components of the chamber, Warwick might wonder if a mechanical screen has somehow been embedded amid fleshier elements.
It is entirely reasonable that Aida wants to figure out how these components—whether biological or mechanical—interact, in order to sort out the linguistic puzzle of how to make the ship function.
Warwick studies the console as she draws closer. The surface is smoother than the rough, spongy shale texture that covers most of the walls, but there are shallow protrusions at irregular intervals. They have the pale, bulbous look of mushrooms grown at random in the shadows of a forest, and the urge to reach out and touch them is strong, her curiosity an almost overwhelming force. She resists, not wanting to activate anything that might complicate whatever Aida is doing beneath the console, contenting herself with a trace of fingers along the edge instead.
Her fingertips register a downy texture, softer flesh than the bulkheads and portals. She startles when the bioluminescence brightens around her. She can't tell if it's because she touched so near the controls—perhaps the entire surface is sensitized to control the ship somehow—or if the increased lighting is the result of something Aida has done in her little crawl space.
Warwick draws her hand away regardless, not wanting to risk interacting with any of the ship's systems, and settles on the bench beside it. The surface is firm, and surprisingly comfortable, and she settles in for an indeterminate wait.
Several minutes pass in unbroken silence, but Warwick doesn't mind. Her own duties will keep until the team reports start coming in, and in the meantime she's in no hurry.
Beneath the console, Aida breathes a wordless sound that, despite the muffled tones, carries unmistakable triumph. A brief wriggling, fidgeting moment ensues, as she squirms backwards out from her concealed position. When she pulls herself completely into the open, the gap she emerged from seals itself shut using the same mechanism as the hatch leading back into the corridor.
Aida sets aside a handful of compact devices—diagnostic tools, scanners, biometric sensors—and sits upright, there on the floor, massaging her neck as though she's been straining at an odd angle throughout her task. Her hair, dark and sweat-damp, is tumbling out of a haphazard braid that ends between her shoulder blades. Her narrow shoulders roll back in a deliberate loosening of tension, and the light brown of her skin looks flushed with heat.
She startles when she turns her head far enough to catch sight of Warwick sitting on the bench above her. Her eyes, big and dark and expressive, widen and she stares without speaking.
It's not an unreasonable reaction. Between being startled and the simple fact that the two of them aren't often alone together—especially now that Warwick has begun exerting conscious effort towards maintaining careful decorum—of course Aida is surprised to find her here.
A science vessel like the Obershaw—compact, efficient, designed to traverse vast sectors as quickly as possible—doesn't offer much by way of solitude. Each crew member has a dedicated bunk, the minuscule but functional quarters a necessary extravagance for a largely civilian population traveling extended missions through deep space. But otherwise, there is little opportunity to be alone, not with twenty-odd people sharing a too-small collection of rooms. Beyond the spaces dedicated to ship function, there's an observation deck, a gym, a cramped mess hall. A lounge that still resembles the converted cargo hold of its earlier life. A narrow expanse of hydroponics bays, tool shops, chemistry labs. And none of it conducive to private conversation.
After the wordless moment that passed between them the last time they were truly alone together, Warwick has been more careful than ever about putting herself in Aida de Luca's orbit.
Her fingers twitch with the phantom sensation of Aida taking her hand. Vivid memory conjures Aida's smile, bright and tentative and saying more than either of them can afford to admit aloud. Warwick should have withdrawn from the situation, but she did not, and that understanding feels dangerous in the silence between them now.
"Progress?" Warwick asks, stubbornly shunting aside an inconvenient surge of longing. She pretends not to notice the disappointment that shutters across Aida's expression.
"I think so." Aida no longer seems the slightest bit flustered, as she rises from the floor and wipes her palms dry on the front of her jumpsuit. The faded technician's coveralls—perfect for crawling around the innards of an impossible vessel—fit far too loosely over Aida's compact frame. The pant legs have been rolled up at the ankles, but they're still baggy on her. She looks a bit like a mad scientist, with sweaty hair askew and cheeks brightly flushed. Even the dark oil-stain smudges she just transferred from her palms to her ill-fitted clothing only add to the impression.
Warwick looks away, lest the distracting tableau draw some outward display of amusement. She maintains her usual stern countenance as she casts a slow gaze along the walls of the compartment. The last thing she needs is to let her guard down and allow Aida to glimpse the inevitable fondness in her eyes.
"What did you find under there?" Warwick presses, when Aida doesn't expound voluntarily. She doesn't allow herself to glance over, unwilling to risk the possibility that Aida is watching her reactions too closely. As captain, she cannot afford to encourage this distraction.
Even if she's not entirely sure what this distraction actually entails.
"Right." Aida gives a jolt in Warwick's peripheral vision, as though the question has jarred her out of her own head. "Yes. Sorry. Any investigation is slow-going, since we can't cut into the bulkheads."
Strictly speaking, they could expedite the process if Warwick were willing to make a different call. But no one has tried to convince her to change her orders, the decision backed unanimously by her department heads. Until they know whether the ship can feel pain, they are being very careful not to do any harm.
"But," Aida presses ahead, on a roll now that she's begun, "I think I found the node that connects the ship's natural electrical impulses to the navigation and communications array. This chamber—this console—seems to be both broadcasting the tight beam we intercepted, and receiving the signal that's tethering the vessel in place."
"So it is tethered to the asteroid?" Warwick hadn't realized this hypothesis had been confirmed. The first piece of data they collected as their thrusters brought the Obershaw carefully in range, was that this vessel seems to be perfectly matching velocity and position with a single large rock within a crowded asteroid field. There's little else of note in the solar system. Three barren planets that might be worth a future geological survey. A handful of moons barely more than rubble themselves. A small star burning brighter and hotter than Sol, but perfectly normal as these things go.
The field of asteroids is a remarkably effective hiding place, all things considered. The Obershaw would never have found the ship at all, if not for a faint but steady comm signal broadcasting out into the void. Not a distress call or an open frequency, but a signal on a narrow beam, aiming out into the immeasurable distance.
"Yes," Aida says. "The asteroid is emitting some kind of short-range homing beacon. Probably a device designed for this very purpose. Park the vessel somewhere relatively stationary—easy to chart—and make sure it can't drift off course. The vessel's holding a perfectly uniform distance from the source of the signal. I don't think we'll be able to move it without deactivating the tether."
"Can you tell how long the tether has been active?" So far, they haven't been able to gauge time frame or age from the ship itself, and Warwick is painfully aware of the gaps in her report where the knowledge simply does not exist.
"No," Aida admits. "But the signal is degrading. It's barely a noticeable fluctuation at this point, and even that's based on a whole lot of assumptions on my part. But the margin of error... our own technology might run for decades, maybe even centuries, before facing similar distortions."
"Which could mean anything," Warwick concludes, words crisp to conceal her frustration.
"It could mean anything," Aida agrees cheerfully.
"Can you co-opt the signal, or override it somehow?" The vessel is too large to fit inside any of the Obershaw's cargo holds. If it has a functional propulsion mechanism, attaching the ships together seems a dubious strategy. But if it can be compelled to follow where they lead, then they have real options for getting it back to the nearest permanent research outpost.
"Maybe. I'll have a better sense of what we're looking at once I cajole my way into the system."
"And that happens how?" Warwick presses.
Aida steps into the space directly beside her and nudges a sequence of the console's rounded protrusions. "By poking things until they start to cooperate. I think I understand how it works now. Well... maybe not exactly how it works, but... How to use it. How to access something I can interact with and start translating."
Even before Aida finishes speaking, the smooth panel above the console comes alight, filling with a long sequence of dipping, weaving script. The symbols and patterns scatter across the screen in response to whatever Aida is doing to the console, and Warwick raises her eyes to study the sweep of incomprehensible information.
"And all this?" Warwick nods toward the string of a language that she cannot hope to make sense of—but maybe Aida can.
"A security lock screen." Aida grins, clearly pleased with herself. Warwick's mouth twitches at one corner, despite her best efforts at restraint. "Obviously I can't begin to guess the password, assuming it even uses one. I've barely begun to decipher the language. But I've been trying to coax the ship to let me into the less secure sub-menus. I might be able to pull this off, now that I know the shape of the system."
"Do it." The words come out a gruff and unnecessary command. Even before they're out of her mouth, Aida is reaching for different controls.
The patterns rolling across the screen dim and scatter, replaced a moment later by a sequence of thicker lines, interlocked into an undulating grid that makes Warwick think of topographic maps or gravitational charts. When she risks a glance at her comms chief, she finds a gleam of victory bordering on smugness in the woman's dark eyes—and has a fleeting span of heartbeats to appreciate the sight before Aida's body goes tense. For a glimmer of a second, Aida stands so taut that Warwick wonders if she's in pain. Then her eyes roll back in her head, her hands jerk violently atop the control panel, and she crumples toward the floor.
*
It takes Aida several seconds to figure out why her surroundings seem wrong.
Her eyes are open. For some reason that's significant. And her senses are near overflowing with input from the crowded market. Even without looking upward, she knows the illusion of open sky above will give way to the vast stretch of an atmospheric dome so far out of reach it's barely visible through a haze of scattered clouds. Stalls and shop fronts form a predictable grid, but the paths grow gradually more winding and confused farther from the center of the square. The aromas of too many regional cuisines to count mingle confusingly, tinged just a little bit acrid by the fuel exchange at the far edge of the dome.
The cacophony of voices feels like a physical wall around her. Aida remembers this place. And that's the problem. It's a memory, old and dusty and yet strikingly vivid now that she's standing in it. A life she barely remembers, a Mars still clinging to its dome structure in the wake of a terraforming experiment that took generations.
Aida has not set foot in this particular market in years. Before she received her acceptance letter from the Jemisin Academy for Arts and Science. Before her talent for language, codes, ciphers got her on the list to receive the coveted comms implant that meant a lucrative career with her pick of jobs. Before she signed a contract that put her on the Obershaw, a collision course with Captain Jamila Warwick and a life of deep space exploration.
She cannot be physically here. In this market, unchanged by the passage of years. Surrounded by sounds, people, structures that are exactly as she remembers them.
As Aida turns in place, a more immediate scent of food washes over her from the nearest stall. Some kind of curried protein, rich and spicy and thick with potatoes. Her stomach growls, and she realizes she's hungry. Not just hungry. Starving. She can't remember the last time she felt hunger like this, but it hits her with a clench of fear that is just as familiar as the sharp-edged contours of her surroundings.
She's in a different portion of the market now—hates that she can't tell if she was walking without being consciously aware of movement—standing amid the more chaotic arrangement of stalls and blankets at the less hospitable periphery of the dome. Her hunger mingles with a gut-deep certainty that she is supposed to find someone.
Are they still waiting for her? She doesn't know, and she's not sure what she's meant to do if she finds them.
Not all of this is memory, she realizes with a disorientation that feels more like a dream. Yes, she was frequently hungry when she still lived on Mars. Sometimes so hungry that she genuinely feared she might die. But there are cracks in her perceptions. Details that flicker at the edges of her awareness like a bad dream.
Aida finally looks directly upward and finds a clear sky above her—a copper-tinged atmosphere burning too bright beneath an orange sun—no sign of the cloudy dome that should stretch above the market.
That's not right. She shouldn't be able to see open sky.
When she lowers her gaze, she finds Jamila Warwick standing before her. But Warwick also isn't quite right. Yes, she is an unmistakable and welcome sight. Dark skin and close-set brown eyes, broad shoulders above a powerful frame, tightly coiled black hair. She stands a full head taller than Aida, taller than most of the market patrons moving past her like a river parting for a stone.
But she wears an expression Aida has never seen on her captain's face, scared and hopeful and unguarded. Her posture is uncertain, a stance completely at odds with how easily Warwick always holds herself, how comfortably she exists in her own skin.
Then Warwick blinks. And Aida is still staring into her eyes when they open to reveal luminescent blue.
"Will you help me?" Warwick asks. She's standing closer now, and Aida has to tilt her head back to keep meeting the disorienting glow in those eyes.
This isn't her captain, she realizes with a dizzy hitch of awareness. This is someone else. Something else entirely. But the look on her face is so scared and pleading, and Aida can't bring herself to refuse.
"Yes," she says. And as the marketplace distorts and fades, she realizes she is falling.
*
Aida stumbles toward consciousness an aching eternity later, new information kicking around inside her with fractured urgency. Her limbs are heavy, her mind sluggish and sore, and for several alarming seconds her eyes refuse to open. Recognizing the effects of sleep paralysis does nothing to make the sensation less terrifying, but she forces herself to reach out more calmly with her other senses.
There's something cool and soft beneath her body, comfortable despite the way she's lying on her side, but it doesn't feel like a bed. Her cheek rests on something significantly warmer. Humidity surrounds her, alongside a subtly pungent aroma that seems to permeate every particle of air she breathes in. She can't be aboard the Obershaw. Nowhere on the ship smells like this, and she doesn't hear the familiar hum of the engine.
It takes several more seconds for her brain to chime in that, of course she's not aboard the Obershaw. She is on an impossible biological spaceship. And Captain Warwick is here somewhere, which goes a long way towards settling the nascent panic of not being able to move.
Warwick was here before. She must be close by. She would never leave Aida unguarded in dangerous circumstances.
The final detail Aida registers is the sensation of surprisingly gentle fingers brushing through her hair. The touch is steady and irresistibly soothing. Aida can't remember the last time anyone touched her this way, a tender trace of fingertips along her temple and scalp. A deep space science vessel—claustrophobic and full of colleagues—isn't exactly a stronghold of physical affection, even where some of those professional relationships have transformed into real friendships. The idle contact is nice. It slows her racing pulse to a more manageable rhythm.
Gradually, Aida's efforts toward movement start garnering actual twitching responses from her limbs. And when she finally manages to open her eyes and finds the dusky purple of Warwick's uniform jacket directly in her line of sight, she has just enough coordination to shift onto her back so she can stare dazedly up into her captain's face. Her head is resting on Warwick's thigh, and Aida has a fleeting heartbeat to recognize that Warwick really has been carding soothing fingers through her hair, before the touch falls away.
Aida immediately misses it. She clenches her jaw against the wordless protest that threatens to squeeze out of her chest.
Her thoughts are still a disoriented quagmire, but rumbling alongside the confused sense of urgency—the new information she has for her captain, no matter how garbled it feels bouncing around her synapses—there hums a more familiar ache. It's a longing she doesn't dare speak aloud, bright and sharp. It burns like an ember behind her ribs as she stares up into her captain's worried face.
Jamila Warwick is distracting to behold even with her expression tight and worried. Round jaw, stern forehead, warm brown skin, umber eyes that look like they're trying to peer straight through Aida in search of unknown harms. The small scar bisecting one eyebrow has scrunched forward with the furrow of her brow. Her tight curls have started going the slightest bit silver at the temples—a detail Aida has never been close enough to notice before, but she takes it in now as Warwick leans searchingly over her.
Warwick's wide shoulders and stocky frame look like they could shield Aida from any danger, and the intense expression written across her face says that is exactly what she wants to do.
It's dizzying to be the subject of such close scrutiny, from a woman who is so habitually careful. The wordless exchange skirts alarmingly near things they don't talk about. For a short span that feels like a slow and rolling tide, Aida stares up at her captain. Her face burns feverishly and her heart beats faster the more she wonders if her own expression is saying too much.
She's wearing multiple protective layers of clothing. How can she still feel completely naked?
When Aida braces and tries to hoist herself up from the floor, she doesn't get the chance to find out if her limbs will support her. Warwick's hand is at the base of her throat too quickly, palm big and warm and flat across her sternum, pressing with inexorable strength. Aida has no choice but to melt back down onto the floor, with her head in Warwick's lap and her heart racing faster at the protective fire in Warwick's eyes.
"Don't you dare." The same fire glints in Warwick's voice, a smoldering undercurrent beneath quiet steel. "I've called for medical support. Doctor Madigan is on their way, and you will keep still until they reassure me you haven't had a stroke or a heart attack."
Aida doesn't bother trying to argue that she's fine. She still feels far too wobbly to make such a claim in good faith, even if her mental faculties and motor control seem to be steadily returning. She doesn't make a habit of lying to her captain, and the last thing she wants is to give Warwick a reason—or even worse, more reasons—to doubt her judgment. So Aida subsides without protest, swallowing past the lump of inconvenient emotion tightening her throat.
There is anger in Warwick's voice when—continuing to hold her down, as though she doesn't trust Aida not to try again—Warwick says. "Now. Tell me. What precisely did you do?"
Aida licks her lips, pretending not to notice the way Warwick's gaze darts lower to track the movement. "I activated a secondary maintenance relay. I think." It's difficult to be sure, considering how little she understands the mechanisms and readouts this ship has to offer.
Warwick's eyes narrow. "And why did that knock you unconscious?" Her brow has furrowed more deeply than ever, and an edge of fear sneaks through the anger. "I couldn't wake you."
This is the least of the vital new pieces of information Aida needs to convey, but she takes the time to answer anyway. "Because the ship is capable of direct psionic communication. When it registered a system activating, it... woke up? Came out of hibernation? And mistook me for someone who could help. It tried to... interface... with my brain." Already pretty sure she knows the answer, she asks, "You didn't feel it?"
"No," Warwick says tightly. "Perhaps it accessed your implant. I've checked in with the rest of the crew, and no one else was affected."
Aida doesn't much like the sound of that. She'll need to get someone in medical to help her run a full diagnostic on the hardware at the base of her brain. She doesn't feel like her comms implant sustained any damage, but there are infinite ways for technology to go wrong when it's directly connected to human tissue and neural pathways.
Again Aida tries to sit up—and again Warwick holds her effortlessly down.
"Stop that." The sternness of Warwick's voice is roughened by a faint growl. "You will get up when Doctor Madigan assures me it's safe for you to do so. Not one microsecond before."
"Aye-aye, Captain." She tries to make it a joke, but the attempt at levity falls flat.
Warwick's expression softens almost imperceptibly. "How do you feel?"
"Dizzy," Aida admits. "But that doesn't matter. I have new information."
"Surely it can wait five more min—"
Under normal circumstances, Aida would never consider interrupting her captain, but she presses onward now. "Captain, this ship isn't just a biological construct. It's sentient. It's a living, thinking life form." She pauses, letting an avalanche of information course through her waking mind, until finally she manages to distill enough to add more softly. "She's alive. And she's scared."
"Fuck," Warwick breathes, and Aida sees the cascade of understanding rush across her features. When the Obershaw reached the asteroid field, the ship's energy levels had run so low that it was a wonder all the essential systems were still functioning. Even after a power transfer that was more guesswork than science, the vessel has been running on a steady minimum while the Obershaw's scientists do their work, collecting as much data as possible to make sure their efforts don't do more harm than good. Now, Aida can practically see Warwick imagining what it might be like, lost in a lifeless cluster of asteroids, stranded by something so tenuous as a homing signal, trapped in the effectively infinite space between worlds.
Alone, without any hope of rescue, as a plea that might have been broadcasting into the void for centuries goes unanswered.
The hatch is nearly soundless as it opens with a tightening of muscle, but Doctor Percy Madigan is not nearly as quiet as they rush in from the corridor. Their footsteps are heavy on the soft floor, their squat frame moving with familiar efficiency. And they don't seem to take any notice of the bleak silence they've interrupted.
"I'm so sorry." Flustered energy rushes Percy's words, but their hands are steady as they kneel beside Aida and crack open a portable diagnostic kit. "I didn't have the right equipment for a neural scan. I needed to go back to the Obershaw to collect—"
"Relax, Percy." Aida offers what she hopes is a reassuring smile, a flash of teeth. She's got no delusions that her current position will go unnoticed, but with any luck Percy won't follow up later with nosy questions about how exactly Aida ended up with her head in Captain Warwick's lap. "I'm not hurt. This is just a little light paranoia on the captain's part."
Warwick arches a thick and disapproving eyebrow, and pointedly does not withdraw her hand. Apparently she doesn't trust Aida to keep still for Percy's scans.
"Doctor Madigan, please proceed with your evaluation. Do not take de Luca's reassurances into account."
"Harsh," Aida mutters, but she recognizes her retort for the deflection it is. Her position feels even more disconcertingly intimate now that she and Warwick are not alone. Like this is something she shouldn't let anyone else see, not even one of her closest friends aboard the Obershaw. But Warwick gives no sign of finding any of this untoward, so Aida directs her attention to the results rolling across the screen of Percy's equipment, and tries to decipher the play of expressions on their face.
It's not that worry is an unfamiliar sentiment to see written across Percy Madigan's features. Aida has certainly given them ample cause for anxiety over the years they've served on the same ship. But there is quiet perplexity in the way their gaze flickers across the readouts, doubt in the big hand that scrubs back across a bald head, disapproval in the way the permanent lines etched into Percy's dark forehead furrow even deeper than usual.
With every passing moment, tension radiates more strongly from Warwick's body, and Aida knows her well enough to guess that she is actively restraining herself from interrupting to ask what Percy is seeing.
"Well?" Warwick snaps when Percy sets the scanner aside.
"The short answer is, Aida's readings are all within acceptable parameters. No evidence of a physical harm to cause unconsciousness." Percy reaches out to help Aida sit up, and their hands are warm and steady on her arm. On her other side, Warwick assists, and considering how much Aida finds herself appreciating the help, she must've gone down harder than she thought.
"What's the long answer?" Warwick presses.
"Complicated," Percy admits, then locks their attention on Aida to explain. "Something accessed your implant. These devices aren't supposed to be susceptible to external override. It will take me time to decipher the readings and make sure it can't happen again."
"I want a full report on my desk by the end of beta shift." Warwick stands and tugs her uniform jacket straight, turning a piercing look on Aida. "And you are relieved of duty for the next twelve hours. I want you resting in medical, in case there are any delayed side effects."
"Captain—" Aida starts. She has so much work to do. But her protest is quelled by a stern glare, so instead of arguing her case she asks, "What about the ship?"
"I'll order everyone back to the Obershaw for the night. The precautions we've been taking are clearly insufficient." Warwick pinches the bridge of her nose, rubbing as though to dispel a headache. "We need whole new protocols for this, and I don't even know where to start."
*
It turns out new protocols don't make much of a difference one way or another to their progress, as days turn into long and fascinating weeks. Every discovery is accompanied by alarming philosophical quandaries, now that Warwick knows the subject of their study possesses a sentient mind. The fact that her crew's presence—and careful explorations—are apparently welcome, does nothing to dispel the deeper questions raised along the way. Who created such a ship? How did they engineer or alter a living creature for such a purpose? Why abandon her like this, trapped and lonely and effectively helpless, clearly lacking any ability to override the signal tethering her in place?
There is no safe way to answer these questions, and Warwick chafes at all the unknowns.
The Obershaw remains in its position, camped out in the asteroid field and docked directly with the living ship. Warwick refuses to let her guard down, even as they approach the end of a full month, but there have been no further nasty surprises.
With every passing day, Aida has been able to communicate more clearly with their strange new friend—Cricket, Aida has dubbed the ship, for lack of anything more susceptible to translation—through consoles and view screens. No dangerous telepathic connections allowed.
"Why Cricket?" Warwick asks, just once along the way.
Aida only shrugs and offers up a rueful smile. "Feels right. She's... I don't know... jumpy? That's not quite the word for it. She's got a lot of energy fluttering around beneath the surface, waiting for a direction. Especially now that we're giving her fresh bio matter to use for fuel."
More than once, Aida offers to try and recreate a more direct psionic connection to expedite their conversations. The translation process is arduous. Warwick can understand why her eager and sometimes over-ambitious comms chief wants to indulge an effective shortcut, especially now that she knows she's talking to a sentient life form and not a mindless piece of equipment. Aida de Luca is inquisitive and aggressively sociable, not to mention stubborn as hell. Of course she wants to unravel this mystery as quickly as possible, especially as the clock ticks down and the Obershaw starts stretching the limit of how long they can justify remaining in one place studying a single mystery.
Warwick refuses to permit such an experiment. Even under more controlled circumstances, she's not willing to risk harm coming to a member of her crew.
She is especially unwilling to risk Aida herself, and if that makes her a hypocrite, so be it.
As they inch toward the limit of what can reasonably be accomplished in the middle of nowhere, with only the Obershaw's resources available to them, Warwick finds herself doubting her official mandate. It's not a comfortable feeling. As a scientist and a ship's captain, she's accustomed to navigating ethical dilemmas in the name of science. Every exploration, every discovery, every breakthrough comes with complicated questions, and it's her job to make the right decisions—or as close as humanly possible, when there is no right decision to be made.
This feels different. If she does as her contract demands, she will soon need to find a way to transport their discovery back to a research outpost for further study. Instead, she's been embracing every excuse not to make the announcement.
And her pretexts are wearing thin.
Her office aboard the Obershaw is usually a comfortable space, compact but well designed for easy maneuvering and comfortable seating for three people at once—less comfortable seating for up to five—with a viewport beside a smooth-edged desk and a plethora of screens that allow her to compare whole encyclopedias of data at once. Today the little room feels cramped and wrong, closing in around her like skin drawn too tight.
The problem isn't her office, of course. The problem is the knowledge building at the back of Warwick's mind that she can't put off the wrap-up order much longer, and the growing certainty that following standard procedure is the wrong thing to do.
An audible ping signals someone at her office door. Warwick swipes her screens clear, even though most of her crew possesses high enough clearance to view the information. Then she taps the control panel at the far corner of her desk, opening the door and implicitly welcoming whoever stands on the other side.
She's surprised to see Aida de Luca stride across the threshold.
Aida's hair hangs loose about her shoulders, just messy enough that Warwick wants to run her fingers through and straighten the staticky strands. She's wearing plain dark clothes rather than the heavy coveralls required for more intense work. Deep shadows beneath her eyes speak to the double shifts she's been pulling, learning to communicate more effectively in a new set of codes and language, talking with Cricket through hours so late that Warwick has considered ordering her to rest. She looks lovely, if exhausted, and Warwick glances down toward her desk, pulling up Aida's most recent report as an excuse to look away.
"You're supposed to be off shift," Warwick points out crisply. Realizes how harsh the words sound, and deliberately softens her voice to ask, "What can I do for you?"
The door slips soundlessly shut as Aida moves farther into the room. Instead of pulling one of the narrow guest chairs out from its dock beneath the desk, she puts herself directly before the viewport—directly beside the place Warwick sits behind the desk—gaze tracing the glittery shadows of asteroids and ice crystals lit by the bright local star. For all that Warwick has never tried to run her ship with anything like military precision, this intrusion is still a faux pas at best, a flouting of her authority at worst. And yet Aida, who usually at least tries to maintain a deferential professionalism, has done it deliberately.
It's a signal all its own, Warwick realizes. Aida is telling her without words that whatever they're about to discuss, it needs to be off the record.
Warwick shuts down her screen completely and turns in her chair so that she can study Aida's profile. She doesn't stand up. There's not enough space beside the desk. If she rose to her feet now, she would not be able to avoid crowding close.
And that is not a distraction either of them needs.
"I decoded the message Cricket's been sending out into space. Or... maybe translated is a better word." Aida shrugs, then crosses her arms over her chest, still peering out across a vast ocean of weightless rubble. "Either way. The direction of the beam hasn't changed in the entire time we've been here."
"Can we tell who she's trying to contact?" Warwick asks.
"Nope. Whatever the message's intended endpoint, it's too far away for our sensors to guess what's out there. We can't even estimate the distance, or whether the signal's strong enough to reach its intended destination."
"But you figured out what it says?"
"I did." Aida fidgets in place for a moment, then uncrosses her arms and hoists herself up to sit on the edge of Warwick's desk. Too close, but Warwick does not protest as Aida continues, "She's looking for her family."
Warwick's chest tightens as she echoes, incredulous, "Family?" Damn it, this shouldn't surprise her. Why wouldn't Cricket have a family, just because her physical form happens to function as a spaceship?
A sudden burst of rage bubbles up in Warwick's chest, at whoever left Cricket trapped in this asteroid field. It's a useless anger, aimed at people who must surely be decades, if not centuries, dead by now. But it rises in her just the same. There is something gut-deep and appalling in the idea, of a sentient being—used this way—and then abandoned, left to slowly power down and die.
Her voice feels harsh as gravel when she asks, "Is there any trace of an answering signal?"
"No," Aida admits. "It's possible our sensors simply aren't strong enough to pick anything up from such a distance."
"But there's also a chance there's no one left to send a reply."
"Yes." A considering silence stretches and lingers in the quiet office. Then, without taking her eyes from the viewport, Aida says, "We should let Cricket loose."
A shiver of gratitude courses through Warwick at these words.
"How?" she asks.
"Deactivate the tether. I figured out the mechanism yesterday. We can let her pick a direction and go. Give her enough of a head start that even once our reports have been filed, no one can catch up."
Warwick exhales, her sigh soft with relief and easing the tension that she's been carrying in her chest for days. "Headquarters won't like that." Then, before Aida can try to argue a point that requires no convincing, she adds, "But I see no alternative."
It probably does not speak well of Warwick, that Aida's shoulders visibly loosen at this reassurance. But when Aida turns her head and actually looks at Warwick, there's wild warmth in her eyes and an unguarded smile on her face. That expression is almost enough to distract Warwick from the possibility—slim but distinct—that the decision she's about to make could end her career. She's not going to escape unscathed if she lets a potentially lucrative resource slip away without bringing it in for further study.
But Cricket isn't a resource. And Warwick will not bring her in against her will.
Even if the inevitable captivity includes kind trappings and careful handling—and Jamila Warwick is not naive enough to assume those things—it's still captivity. Amazing really, how simple it's going to be, to make a decision that may well lose her the Obershaw.
Aida must sense the turn of Warwick's thoughts, because a moment later she posits, "I can make it look like an accident, if you want."
Warwick's eyes rise toward her hairline as she files this information away to consider. But what she asks is, "Can Cricket manage the journey, if she follows her signal to its destination?"
"No idea." Aida gives a helpless shrug. "Putting aside the fact that we can't guess how far she needs to travel, she was in rough shape when we got here. Hibernating just to keep from burning through the last of her energy reserves. But we've essentially got her powered back up again, since Gima's team figured out what kind of matter she can digest. Once she's not trapped in an empty asteroid belt, she might be able to find and collect whatever she normally uses for nutrients along the way."
"Might?"
"There are a lot of unknowns here, Captain. We've got only the most superficial understanding of how Cricket's systems function. We're pretty sure she's capable of more than just sub-light travel, but it's an educated guess."
"Can you ask her what she wants?"
"I can try." Aida's mouth twists into a soft, wry sort of smile. "There's still a language barrier, and that question is a bit... existential. Without a direct neural connection to help parse concepts, it's all clumsy translation."
"Just do your best," Warwick says. They need to let Cricket make this call, but there's no way in hell she's letting Aida open her implant back up to interference, no matter how well-meaning. "And... don't tell anyone else. If we're doing this, we do it without implicating the rest of the crew."
Warwick has handpicked every scientist and technician aboard the Obershaw. A solid certainty in her chest tells her every single one of them would support what she and Aida are about to do. But if her superiors don't play along with whatever fiction Warwick fabricates to explain the loss of this discovery, she doesn't want to take anyone else down with her.
If she can find some way to shield Aida too, she will. But for now, she'll settle for tackling the problem as discreetly as possible.
"I should go get started." Aida hops down from the desk, but hesitates instead of retreating. Her eyes are searching, studying Warwick's face with an intensity that feels both terrifying and intimate. When she sets a hand to Warwick's shoulder, the reassuring heat and weight of the touch sends a shiver along her spine, even before Aida asks more softly, "You okay?"
Warwick breathes out, long and slow, and sets her own hand on top of Aida's to hold it in place. A selfish gesture. She isn't sorry.
"Thank you," Warwick murmurs, pitching the words low and careful. "I'm glad you came to me with this. Let me know what you learn."
*
It takes Aida a full week to exchange the information she needs with Cricket and be confident of the answer. The work would go more quickly if she could do it via the Obershaw's powerful computer system, but she doesn't dare record evidence that can't be easily purged. Even if she were to delete the data later, the gap would be there in the ship's records. Incriminating and permanent. Better by far to keep the work to her own head, and to the precious commodity of physical material she keeps for especially sticky linguistic problems, when she needs the tactile grounding of pen and paper.
More than once she considered making her case for a more careful experiment with her implant, under Percy Madigan's expert supervision. But even at her most frustrated, she knew the request wouldn't go anywhere. Warwick is far too protective to take what she considers unnecessary chances with Aida's well-being.
So she had to get there the old-fashioned way. And now that she has succeeded—now that it's time to cut the cord and give Cricket her overdue freedom—Aida is so jittery she doesn't know what to do with the excess energy.
The Obershaw's operations deck is eerily quiet when she steps from the access hatch into what would normally be the bustling central hub of ship's activity. Sensor and nav consoles stand empty. A space that can easily accommodate a dozen strong on a busy day, and only Captain Jamila Warwick stands waiting for Aida's arrival.
Aida crosses the distance between them with efficient strides, her boots clicking on the metal bulkhead beneath her feet. She joins Warwick beside the primary communications console—Aida's usual domain—and resists the urge to tilt her head back and study her captain's face. She can picture Warwick's expression well enough without checking for herself. Measured focus and a stern air, dark brow faintly furrowed at the center, umber eyes shining with the intensity that comes with handling an important task.
"Where is everyone?" Aida asks, nudging Warwick aside and claiming the controls for herself.
"Dismissed until the end of alpha shift." Warwick doesn't retreat any farther, which leaves her standing closer than decorum dictates, peering over Aida's shoulder and watching her work. There's no way her proximity is deliberate. She's usually too careful, of personal space in general, and of Aida's in particular, especially since the moment they do not talk about, alone in a cave and understanding each other without a word.
Aida doesn't call her out. If she did, Warwick would retreat, and neither one of them truly wants that.
"No one will interrupt us," Warwick says. And even though she's only talking about their flagrant defiance of orders, Aida shivers at her words, at how easy it would be to read other implications into the assertion if they were both just a little more reckless.
"Last chance to change your mind," Aida murmurs.
She knows better. Warwick won't reverse course now, and even if she tried, Aida could still deactivate the tether before anyone could stop her. Even with Warwick standing so close that Aida can feel the shared pulse of body heat warming the sliver of space between them.
"Do it." The order comes crisp and quiet, steady strength in the syllables.
Aida draws a long, slow breath—then nearly startles at the unexpected sensation of a palm settling between her shoulder blades. The touch is steadying and sure, and Aida lets herself lean into it. Draw reassurance from it. Then she accesses the local system scanners and pulls up a frequency to match the tethering beacon from the asteroid.
"Okay," she says, and turns the beacon off with three quick taps.
The Obershaw doesn't come equipped with a central view screen, but the constantly updating star chart on Aida's console paints a more accurate picture anyway, as Cricket eases tentatively away from the asteroid that has been her prison for such a long time. There is no human crew left aboard the living ship. Warwick ordered everyone back to the Obershaw last night, citing new security concerns and alarming fluctuations in the tethering beacon. Wholly fictitious, of course, but an effective way to simultaneously gather everyone safely aboard the Obershaw and cover their tracks once the deed is done. The fact that Warwick then sent everyone away from their posts will undermine their chosen narrative, but it's still preferable to making anyone an unwilling witness.
Now Aida watches Cricket's rendered silhouette dance a jubilant circle around the perimeter of the asteroid. Then, in the flicker of a heartbeat, Cricket is simply gone, the Obershaw's scanners scrambling after her startling and instantaneous absence.
"What the hell?" Warwick breathes, and the words tickle the shell of Aida's ear.
"Hang on." Aida taps her console, adjusting the sensor feed and pulling up a multi-layered recording of the past few seconds. One of the recordings is visual, and as the data scrolls past alongside, she stares with incredulous elation at a bright flicker of light along Cricket's exoskeleton, a shimmer that swirls and spreads and ultimately flashes so bright that the ship's sudden absence seems like an after-image trick of the eyes.
"She's gone." Awe tinges Aida's voice, and she taps through more of the sensor data. Fucking hell, she's never seen a vessel move so fast between states, let alone without building any real momentum first. "I guess that answers the sub-light travel question." And raises a hell of a lot more.
Oh, headquarters will be furious at losing the chance to study this phenomenon up close.
"Indeed," Warwick agrees. "Thank you, Aida."
The sound of her given name in Warwick's deep alto lilt is enough to make Aida shiver, and when she turns her head, her whole chest warms at the sight of her captain's lovely face looking so much softer than usual. Even in profile, attention still held riveted by the display written across Aida's console, Warwick's expression has lost the habitual sternness she usually wears like a shield.
"For what?" Aida asks, doing her best not to sound breathless and pathetic. "I didn't do anything."
Warwick turns her head, giving Aida a disbelieving look. Too close. They're standing too close, and Aida's whole body gives a pulse of disappointment when the hand drops from her back and Warwick takes a decisive step away.
But the softness is still there in Warwick's eyes—and a moment later she reaches up to brush a wayward strand of hair behind Aida's ear.
"Yes," Warwick murmurs. "You did."
––––––––
THE END