Chapter 1 #3
“Are you done?” He asked, not at all caring about any of that.
As far as he was concerned, this was just more of the nonsense that Grace was supposed to do but didn’t concern him at all.
His job was to fix this ship and nothing else.
Any and everything else was a problem for a different crew member, or Tanin would deal with it himself.
It was a far cry from who J’tll used to be, but this was Vytln’s way of life.
A much happier one.
Even with nagging females.
Grace gave him a look – like she was annoyed with his interruption. Once again demonstrating her absolute lack of fear of him. He grumbled as she sighed.
“Yes, Vytln. Though I’m sure this was a heavy burden to you, I thank you for your kindness in helping me make your life easier.”
Vytln snarled at her. She huffed, unimpressed, before turning, flicking her hair hard enough to smack his arm, then flouncing away. Her skirt and hair bounced with each step as he grumbled, turning to head back to his workroom.
Not even a hint of discomfort. There was a time that he’d earned a name, the Brute, on Rik-Vane because people were afraid to speak his real name. They were afraid it might summon him or catch his attention. He was a monster whispered about in the night.
Now, he was hounded by three females small enough to fit in his arms all at once and too weak to fight back if he wanted to hurt them.
It was insulting.
But…
He wasn’t actually insulted. Those three naggy little females were his crew.
They weren’t meant to fear him. The fact that they walked around a crowd of murderers and challenged them without hesitation or concern was good.
It meant they felt safe with them. It meant that they knew they were all family.
Still annoying. A good, annoying thing.
Turning, he started down the hall, heading back to his workroom.
He had failed to locate the pest again, but he wasn’t giving up.
He knew something was in the ship, messing about with the internals.
Despite the fact that their many searches had turned up nothing, and that Alred, their AI, couldn’t find anything on scan, he knew he was right. He’d get that pest.
He just needed the right trap.
Vytln’s workroom was immediately adjacent to the engine of the ship. And that was by design. He’d deliberately chosen and adapted that space to his needs.
He was a southern pole lvtl, which meant his body was adapted for extreme heat.
The other half of his species, the northern pole lvtls, were adapted to the extreme cold.
They were two different races of the same species, fully capable of interbreeding.
Most would not, however, because as much as he could tolerate the heat, he could not tolerate the cold – and vica versa.
Besides that, interbreeding between the two races created a mixed-race child that was tolerant to neither heat nor cold.
For that reason, his species had a very strong division in the races.
His home planet was tidally locked, one side near always facing the sun and one side almost always facing away.
The very thin line between those two points where a mixed race lvtl could live wasn’t particularly habitable thanks to the overabundance of large predators.
Having a mixed-race youngling was not encouraged by the very planet itself.
Vytln came from the hot part of the planet.
His body was designed to take on a great deal of heat and radiation without consequence.
Hence, working right next to the ship engine had never bothered him, even before they’d fixed the shielding.
When the engine was at full blast, he couldn’t get too close to the heart of it, but he otherwise had no problems at all.
He rather preferred it. The rest of the ship was cold to him.
His workroom being so hot made it the most comfortable place for him.
He’d even utilized the heat, building a forge in his workroom.
He focused the heat from the engine into it, allowing him to craft his own parts and pieces, or repair the broken ones they already had.
The forge was crude and basic. It was the first one he’d ever made, and he’d needed to look up instructions on how to do it.
But it had also been repaired and upgraded, like everything else on this ship, and while it wasn’t pretty, it was perfectly functional for everything he needed.
His workroom was full of half-finished projects in various states of repair.
Engine pieces, the gutted remains of their old life support system that he was breaking down for parts, various components of their plumbing, atmosphere, and system parts.
He had the hollowed out remains of what had been their previous gravity generator, broken down to make the new one.
He was cannibalizing what was left for the metal to make other engine parts.
Since their last repair, the shielding had been replaced and repaired so that the engine, which was open and visible through the hole made by the two angled walls halfway into the room, was no longer pumping as much heat and radiation into the room.
The glowing, pale white line on the floor, walls, and ceiling demarcated where the shield was operational.
Half the forge was beyond the shields, gathering heat, but the half he worked on was in the noticeably cooler half.
It was uncomfortably cold to him now. He’d liked it better when he had the heat from the engine bathing his entire room. That had been more like home. Sure, it got too hot sometimes, but he hadn’t actually minded that.
However, the rest of his crew weren’t south lvtls. It wasn’t even just the fragile human females, none of the crew had been able to withstand his workroom for long periods. And it wasn’t just about the heat. The radiation was the real danger.
For their sake, he could tolerate the chill.
He wasn’t happy about it, and he certainly didn't hold back his displeasure when he grumbled every chance he got, but he could deal with it. At least his forge was still putting out a pleasant amount of heat – and since that wasn’t redirected radiation, just heat, he didn't have to worry about his fragile comrades and their skin’s inability to tolerate high radiation anymore.
The transition from the chilly halls to the cool but at least tolerable heat of the workroom was familiar and pleasant. The door shut behind him as he immediately crossed to his workbench, fully intending on figuring out a way to catch the pest.
It was moving in the walls. Which meant it must be small.
But that was a relative term, because Grace was certainly small enough to fit through those tight spaces.
Humans were smaller than the rest of the species in the Coalition, so what a normal person would consider to be a tight squeeze was probably nice and comfortable for them.
However, there were still limits to it. The engine, the subspace generator, and the life support systems all had higher protection in place that would prevent even the tiniest of pests from getting to them. So those were safe. Or, for his purpose, unlikely to be a place he could catch the thing.
But it had to be getting food. Which meant it was either getting into the food synthesizer or eating nutrition powder.
He’d already put up an alarm trap around the synthesizer and had only been alerted by the crew going to get food, so it wasn’t that.
Which meant it must be eating the nutrition powder.
That would be much easier to get to since the bags of powder filled the storeroom.
It would be harder to get a trap around all of those at once, but he could-
There. In the corner of his eye. Something was different.
Vytln stopped dead, heart sinking in his chest as panic filled his brain. When he turned, tools in hand, he caught sight of his trap.
Not any of his pest traps, his mating trap.
Opposite the engine, taking up the entire wall, he’d built his mating trap using the discarded, useless, and melted down pieces of the Humility he’d gathered through the years. Old broken tools, various metal pieces, things he couldn’t repurpose.
He’d started it with old, broken panels from the outside of the Humility. He used those to build the cradle of the nest within, then the rest of the trap was melted and welded around it. The result was an ugly, harsh, unappealing lump of metal.
Lvtl males built traps to capture females.
It was instinct. He couldn’t help himself.
He didn't realistically expect to catch anything, of course.
That was why it was in his workroom where no one but himself spent any real time.
He just had to build the damned thing. It was soothing, in a way, even as he knew that no female would ever find her way inside.
Except the tiny entrance, the small hole he’d built in a depression near the center, was practically sealed shut. The jagged, metal spikes he’d placed around it had all come down, each of them stabbing outward, a warning to anyone who would dare try to reach inside.
Because the trap had been sprung.
Something had crawled into his trap and in so doing, they’d locked it off so that nothing could get in or out.
Vytln started shaking, mouth dry, belly dropping as he came to grips with a horrible truth.
Because only something big could trigger that trap to close.
No one on the crew, not even the females, would dare to climb inside.
He’d made sure no one would be comfortable enough in his workroom that it would even be a danger.
That trap was never meant to be triggered.
But something was in there. In his mating trap.
And already he could feel instincts starting to rise to the forefront of his mind. As strong as the ones that demanded he build it in the first place. Instincts he couldn’t ignore. Couldn’t fight. Couldn’t resist.
Mate?
No.
No, it was an animal. It had to be. Sometimes, something other than a female crawled into a trap. If it was set off for that reason, his mating bond wouldn’t trigger. In fact, such an accident was worthy of mockery on his home planet.
Yes. He’d caught a beast. Or maybe the trap just failed and sprung around nothing. That could happen too, and maybe wasn’t as funny as mate trapping a beast, but would certainly earn a few good jabs from other lvlt males.
Yes. That’s all this was. He didn't need to fear.
But his heart was pounding as he stepped in closer. Slowly, cautiously, he peered past the spikes, through the now tiny hole of the entrance.
It was empty. It had to be empty.
Except when he looked through, it wasn’t empty.
Curled into a little ball on the soft nesting material tucked inside, sleeping with an unconcerned expression on her face, was a human female he’d never seen before.
Mate.