Chapter 16 Stowaway Science #3
I record this on my data pad: Papa heart-eyes rating via comm screen: 10/10. Dove claiming-mark touch: involuntary bonding response. Combined romantic output: off the charts. Both subjects proving my entire thesis in real time.
“You’re both disgusting,” I say happily. “I love you.”
Papa’s laugh is warm and surprised and the best sound I’ve heard all day.
The Rolling Pin’s night cycle lights are on — the dim amber ones that make everything feel like a blanket.
Dove’s in the pilot seat, running post-flight checks.
I’m curled in the copilot seat with a thermal blanket she pulled from the emergency locker and tucked around me without asking.
Nesting behaviour, I noted. She doesn’t even notice anymore.
My data pad rests on my knees, the screen dim, atmospheric readings saved and filed.
Through the viewport, the Veridian Arch glows in the distance — all those baby stars burning gold against the dark. We’ll be home by morning.
“Dove?”
“Hmm?”
“When you used to fly alone through here. Before Pickles. Before us.” I pull the blanket tighter. “Were you scared?”
She’s quiet for a moment. Her hands rest on the console — still, for once. Not flying, not adjusting. Just resting.
“Not scared of the flying. Scared of the stopping. Every port I landed in, I’d look around and think, I could stay here. And then I’d think about staying and my chest would lock up, because staying meant losing, and I’d already lost —” She stops. Breathes. “I’d already lost enough.”
“But you stayed with us.”
“I stayed with you.” She glances at me. Her claiming mark catches the amber light — purple-gold, pulsing faintly, like a second heartbeat.
“You know what made me? Not your papa’s markings or his big dramatic speeches, although those are excellent.
It was you. In the hydroponics bay, the first night.
You grabbed my hand and dragged me to see your plants, and your claws were pressed against your palm so carefully, and you talked and talked and talked, and I thought —” Her voice catches.
Goes rough. “I thought, this kid lost her mama and she’s still brave enough to grab a stranger’s hand and say, please be my family.
And if you could do that at eight years old, after everything you’d been through — then what was I so afraid of? ”
My eyes burn. I blink hard. My throat does the tight thing that means I’m about to cry, and I don’t try to stop it this time.
“Eight and three-quarters,” I whisper.
“Eight and three-quarters. The bravest kid in the sector.” She reaches over and smooths my hair back from my face. Her hand is gentle. Certain. The hand of someone who isn’t going anywhere. “I’m glad you stowed away, sweetheart. Don’t tell your father I said that.”
“Pickles is recording this.”
“I am recording everything. I always record everything. This should not surprise anyone at this point.”
Dove laughs. The real laugh — the one that sounds like bubbles, not the polite courier one. The one Papa’s markings light up for.
I wipe my face on the thermal blanket. Dove pretends not to notice.
But her hand stays on my hair, fingers moving gently through the strands, careful around my claw tips where my hair tangles, and I realise she’s doing the thing she does at bedtime — the thing Mama used to do — the slow, patient untangling that says I’m here, I’m here, I’m not going anywhere.
“Pickles?” I whisper.
“Small person.”
“Mission assessment?”
A pause. The good kind.
“Operation Stowaway Science. Overall assessment. Preparation: four point seven — improved from previous attempts. Execution: seven out of ten — deductions for the soil jar noise and the elbow bruise. Scientific output: eight point five — the atmospheric sensor data is genuinely valuable and your methodology was sound. Navigation aptitude: eight out of ten — the course correction was clean and the gravity wobble identification exceeded expectations for a first-time copilot. Crew bonding: nine out of ten.”
“And the thesis?”
“The longitudinal pair-bonding study?”
“Yeah.”
“Your data is comprehensive, your analysis is astute, and your conclusions are —” He pauses.
“— entirely correct. The Captain exhibits seventeen documented nesting behaviours consistent with Lividian bonded-mate integration. The Terraforming Specialist’s bioluminescent response to her proximity has not diminished since the claiming.
If anything, it has intensified.” Another pause.
Longer. “Your family unit is functioning at optimal capacity. I am... quite proud to be part of it.”
Dove’s hand stills on my hair. I hear her swallow.
“Pickles,” she says, very quietly. “That might be the nicest thing you’ve ever said.”
“I said no such thing. I provided a statistical summary. Any emotional interpretation is the responsibility of the listener.” A beat. “However. For the record. I would not choose a different crew.”
The cockpit is quiet. The Arch burns gold through the viewport. Dove’s fingers start moving through my hair again — slow, steady, untangling.
I close my eyes. My markings settle into the family rhythm, the slow warm pulse that matches the glow of Dove’s claiming mark and the memory of Papa’s steady light through the comm screen and the quiet hum of a ship that sounds like the AI who loves us.
Three instead of two. That’s what I asked for, in the hydroponics bay, that first week when I was scared and brave and desperate. I said, I miss having three instead of two.
Now we’re four. Papa. Dove. Me. And a sarcastic military-grade AI who expresses love through biometric surveillance and filing comprehensive reports.
“Mission success,” I whisper.
“Mission success,” Pickles confirms. “Now go to sleep, small person. You have a disciplinary hearing at 0800 and your cortisol levels are elevated.”
“Worth it.”
“I neither confirm nor deny that assessment.”
But his voice is soft. The way it only gets for me.
I fall asleep in the copilot seat with the Veridian Arch burning gold through the viewport, Dove’s hand in my hair, wrapped in a blanket she tucked around me without being asked — because that’s what family does, the nesting and the guarding and the staying — and my markings glow warm all the way home.