Chapter 5
Collision Course: Colleagues
Lily
“Algors are exceptionally agile and intelligent amphibious beings, perfectly adapted to both aquatic and terrestrial life.
The more tendrils an individual has, the more attractive they are considered in the single eye of their fellow Algors.
Their skin secretes a viscous mucus that allows them to spend extended periods far from their deep-sea spawning grounds, and they are particularly fond of long-range hunts.
Algors belong to the rare category of species whose homeworld once hosted two sapient species at the same time. Strikingly, the other species worshiped them as gods. Although this is history from many IMPERIUM eras ago, Algors still tend to regard themselves as exceptional among star-citizens.”
IMPERIUM Guide to Peaceful Coexistence with Registered Spacefaring Species
A lot had happened to Lily in the past two universal chrono-years.
She had been abducted from her homeworld, overpowered her captor, and walked away with a Herion-6 class starcruiser as her spoils. She had reached a station and finally met aliens who did not try to dissect her alive, although she did not escape being swallowed whole by their bureaucracy.
A pale, spiderlike enforcement officer with smooth skin had registered her and her biometrics, binding Helios’s legal ownership to Lily for good once she was granted refugee status.
As Lily learned, it was rare for a sapient whose species could not yet manage long-range spaceflight to be integrated into the system, but it happened often enough that the IMPERIUM had protocols ready for exactly this situation.
Lily received a two-chrono-year exemption from taxes. She was given a nano-injection that partially blocked diseases and infections and, of course, an alien translator chip.
The chip surpassed everything she had ever imagined about translation. It did not only render words. It interpreted intent, drastically reducing the risk of cross-species misunderstandings. In Lily’s opinion, it was nothing short of miraculous.
After a long discussion with the officer, she chose the version that anchored to the bone above one eyebrow.
When she looked in the mirror after the installation procedure, she felt a little like a futuristic cyborg.
Not even the placement robot’s politely amused comment about her “charmingly old-fashioned choice” was enough to wipe the grin from her face.
The officer, who turned out to be a matriarch of her species, also offered her a control chip that could be implanted into her skull and would allow her to operate most tools and ships by thought alone.
Lily refused.
“Are you certain?” the spiderlike being asked. “You only possess two grasping limbs. It would be highly beneficial if you did not have to gesture with them. You would simply think, and the task would be carried out.”
She waved her gnathal parts and rippled her long, knobbly legs, perhaps to demonstrate the advantages of having many appendages.
Lily might have appreciated the concern more if the sight had not made her want to sprint straight back to Helios.
The translator chip was mandatory, but it did not interface with Lily’s nervous system. There was no transmitter in it, only an internal datastore and a tiny supplementary AI. It could also be swapped out at any time in Helios’s compact med-bay.
The control chip, however, was another story.
Lily did not trust it.
Instead, she continued using Helios’s baseline wrist computer, Herion’s VoidBrace technology.
“A wrist-mounted, quantum-linked module that allows faster-than-light communication. VoidBrace, from Herion Tech,” chirped the advertisement Helios played when Lily snapped the slim, white-and-silver holographic band around her wrist.
On the station, Lily quickly noticed she was smaller and slimmer than the average alien and just as quickly learned not to draw long-term conclusions from that.
Physical strength and intelligence had very little to do with what she would have predicted based on appearance.
She met hyper-intelligent, physically weak, elephant-sized swimmers, and tiny, lightning-fast insectoids that could barely form words.
Eventually she reached a conclusion. To most aliens, she was the equivalent of a human hunter-gatherer.
Someone who had to fight hard for everything and became resilient because of it.
Modern life was easy for humans, but not as decadently effortless as it had been for many alien species for millennia.
Most species had lost much of their heavy dentition because they no longer needed to chew.
They were out of practice using brute strength because machines did everything for them.
Protocols were so deeply embedded in daily existence that they rarely had to solve problems with their own logic.
Life overflowed with amusements, so why struggle?
Measured against that, Lily might seem barbaric, but she had no desire to soften into the same comfortable inertia that marked the average star-citizen.
Well, if nothing else, I am definitely not ordinary here.
On Earth, Lily had been average in build. Brown hair, green-brown eyes, nothing remarkable. She was taller than most women, which she had usually experienced as a disadvantage. In the IMPERIUM, at least she was not diminutive beside representatives of Registered Spacefaring Species.
In truth, she liked herself more than ever. No one bombarded her with endless images of younger, prettier girls every single day, and she had never been in such good shape as now, when movement was no longer a duty but a joy.
Her two chrono-year introductory period, filled with hard lessons, passed surprisingly quickly.
Then Lily had to find a source of income if she wanted to keep Helios.
The ship was not very large, but maintenance was expensive, and the consequences for failing to pay taxes were severe: forced labor, or even conscription into “voluntary” experiments.
Fortune finally smiled on her when, after wading through an endless stream of dull and downright depressing job listings, she found a posting from Vegrun Fer’sink, an Algor oligarch.
“Seeking crew member of exceptional physical strength and endurance to maintain a Herion-12 class vessel. Familiarity with the class an advantage. Discretion essential.”
That was all Lily needed. She applied as best she could, and Vegrun immediately seized the opportunity to add another rare and valuable species to his service.
He even granted permission that, if Lily passed probation, she could dock her ship beside Vitromium at his expense, saving her a small fortune. Hard to compete with an offer like that. Lily decided she would do everything in her power to keep him satisfied.
She had never worked under alien supervisors, but she accepted they would be different from humans and resolved not to take offense at things that seemed strange to her.
The priority was simple: keep her marvelous starcruiser, the one that had carried her so far already. For that, she needed IMPERIUM credits.
The granite-gray giant who introduced himself as Khar and did not bother to ask her name struck Lily as a perfectly adequate colleague. He did not talk much and did not micromanage.
Yes, at first glance he was terrifying, with his massive frame, bulging muscles, demon-bright eyes, horns, claws, and sharp teeth.
But Lily was past judging aliens by appearances.
She shuddered as she remembered hearing the deep, almost resonant cadence of his voice, mixed with the strange, raspy quality of Divani speech, which made her very insides quiver.
While her translator enabled her to understand the meaning of his words, it did not diminish the full effect of his alien way of communication.
Upon closer inspection, he looked exactly like the demon a particularly talented Earth sculptor might have carved from stone, which Lily found extremely funny and, in a disconcerting way, extremely attractive.
Had aliens visited Earth long ago and inspired old human myths?
Or did life stabilize along a few archetypal patterns, so that most aliens fit snugly into familiar human categories?
Or was the human mind simply that inventive?
Whatever the answer, she had a feeling she would enjoy working with this space demon.
She knew Helios like the back of her hand, so handling the larger and far more prestigious Vitro came easily.
It belonged to the same development line of Herion starcruisers, which meant the organizing logic and command trees were the same or very similar.
If she had to use a human metaphor, Helios was a sporty yacht or speedboat, while Vitro was a luxury ocean liner drifting through space instead of water.
Throughout her two chrono-years of wandering, whenever Lily ventured onto a station or a planetary surface, she drew a lot of attention, and after her kidnapping, attention did not sit well with her.
She preferred working with only a few aliens who would get used to her presence and stop staring at her like some curious exhibit.
From that perspective, Khar was perfect.
Khar did not praise her, but if Lily had had to rate her first day, she would have said it went well.
Of course, she could have restocked faster, but she had needed to audit the existing system.
In the afternoon, Khar gave her a simple coding task to correct a navigation subroutine.
She fixed it quickly, and he dismissed her, saying he was busy and would deal with her again in the morning.
Maybe working with aliens was not that bad. She would learn a lot, and she might even make friends.
Besides, the uniform was perfection. Black, form-fitting material that somehow did not pinch anywhere, more like velveted silk than synthetic fabric, a second skin.
The base layer was sleeveless and ran in clean, elegant lines from her neck to her ankles, paired with a jacket whose shiny silver inlays resembled a leather biker coat.
Lily felt as if she were wearing a designer piece, and given Vegrun’s habit of sparing no credits on anything tied to Vitromium, she probably was.
She admired herself in Helios’s reflective panels, flexing her now-toned arms. The movement immediately made her think of Khar’s impressive biceps, which looked magnificent even without posing.
She flushed at the thought, then admitted to herself that so far, her new colleague certainly did not seem bothered by her presence.
The next morning, Lily felt even more cheerful when she noticed that Khar had followed her suggestion and raised gravity a little higher. It felt good to be considered. After two chrono-years of near-solitude, the small gesture warmed her far more than it otherwise might have.
She beamed at her unreadable colleague. Maybe today she would finally ask his name properly. By now she was almost certain they would get along.
“Vegrun, the owner of Vitromium, wants to speak to us in this chrono-cycle,” Khar said. “He can appear at any time, and we must be ready to launch at a moment’s notice. When he is aboard, we provide security and, of course, maintenance. Clear?”
“Yes, thank you, Khar.”
He answered with a noncommittal grunt, but it did not dampen her mood. Lily had not spoken with Vegrun yet, only with his secretary during the interview, but she hoped he would be pleased enough with her to let her keep this comfortable job.
Khar set their availability on the console, and the speakers chimed almost immediately.
Vegrun was calling.
With a practiced flick, Khar threw the holo-feed onto the main display, where Vegrun’s orange body filled the frame, all tendrils and a single, central eye.
“Khar, my loyal Divani. And our new Human hire. Welcome aboard my ship.”
Lily did not miss how Khar’s head snapped up at the word human, but that was fine. Once they knew each other better, she would ask him if he had ever met others of her kind.
For now, business. Time to deploy the skill that had always served her well on Earth: targeted flattery. Big egos loved to be polished.
“Vegrun, your ship is magnificent. Elegant, tasteful. A true rarity.”
Vegrun flushed a deep purple, and his tendrils twirled around him in delight.
“Ah, you have an eye for starcruisers. No surprise. If memory serves, you own a Herion-6 yourself.”
Lily answered modestly that hers was nothing compared to his, and in doing so, failed to notice Khar’s jaw hitting the metaphorical floor beside her.
Vegrun and Lily got along almost immediately. Vegrun spoke at length about how important constant availability was to him and how he expected absolute discretion from both of them. No one could know when he came or went, much less with whom.
“Of course, Vegrun. Naturally.”
“Splendid, splendid. Now then, Khar, how did our little Human female perform on her first chrono-cycle?”
Khar’s hands curled into fists and his body tensed, as if he were already in the middle of a brawl and bracing for the next blow. Even so, he did not ignore his employer, though his voice sounded forced.
“No problems.”
“Perfect. If she is teachable and diligent, everything will be fine, is that not right, Khar?”
The silence stretched dangerously long, but at last the least enthusiastic reply emerged.
“Exactly, sir.”
“Excellent. Then we are done here.”
One of Vegrun’s tendrils waggled playfully in Khar’s direction.
“And, Khar?”
“Yes, sir?”
“Give it thirty or so chrono-cycles before you challenge her to any scuffle. Lily, just so you know, Khar is Divani. For them, physical strength and combat skill matter more than anything. He has settled every question of seniority with a fight so far. I trust you understand this is culturally important to him. Do not worry, you will not come to any real harm. It is more of a formality. In the meantime, work together and keep my ship ready at all times.”
They both agreed, and the call ended.
Lily turned to Khar with one eyebrow raised.
“So… we are going to fight?”
Those demon-bright eyes regarded her, impossible to read. The pause stretched, and Lily covered the awkwardness with a laugh.
“Khar, I am a woman. You cannot just beat me up. At least, among humans, that is not done. I do not mean to insult your culture. If this is important to you, I will take part. Just go easy on me, please.”
The granite-gray statue finally gave a low, approving grunt, and Lily smiled at him in relief.
Thirty chrono-cycles were a long time. By then, they might know each other well enough that he would give up on the whole ridiculous idea entirely.