Chapter 2 #2
Okay, maybe calling Grace her friend was a bit of a stretch considering they’d never spoken to or seen each other and Grace didn’t even know Haven existed. But Grace was the point around which Haven built her new, secret life, so she was her friend.
Haven’s time on Holotulle was even better than the moon.
It was a giant ringworld. It was an alien wonderland.
There was more to learn, more to break down and rebuild, and much less of a chance that she would be caught.
While she was there, she began to develop her tools and really perfected her skills.
When Grace left, moving to her new job, Haven had been tempted to let her go.
To go off on her own and continue learning.
But maybe the desire for basic human contact, even if it wasn’t real, was strong even in her because she couldn’t bring herself to do it.
When Grace moved on, Haven followed her again.
And it was the best decision she ever made.
Hir-Fallow was a starship repair station.
Which meant that Haven had access to new tools and machines to both learn and use.
Things were already broken, so nothing she did was ever noticed.
And it was there that she created her ultimate tool.
An invention that allowed her to truly disappear in this world yet still interact with it.
Life was good. She was constantly learning. No one talked to her so there was no one to disappoint, but she had Grace, and that was almost like having one of her silent roommates that never acknowledged her back. And that was enough.
So, next time, when Grace moved on again, Haven had no compunction about following. Haven didn’t know why Grace had chosen to leave her great job as a dock master to live on a run down, old starship for a tiny delivery company, but she was ever so grateful.
The ship, she learned from listening to the others, was called the Humility.
It was the home for a bunch of degenerates turned delivery boys.
And it was a broken, rusted, ancient piece of crap being held together by duct tape, hopes, and dreams. Which practically made it a playground for Haven and her toys and tools.
The only real drawback she could find was the Big Guy.
Haven was pretty sure they called him Vytln. She overheard the others talking to each other, so she knew everyone’s names, but she had her own nicknames for them. There were two big guys, but she wouldn’t call the other one the Big Guy. Mostly because he didn’t act like the Big Guy.
But the big guy did. He was huge and surly and, unlike the other big guy, never tried to make himself smaller for anyone.
And he knew she was there.
Haven was really good at hiding herself.
Both from biological and technological sensors.
She knew how to cover her scents, her sounds, how to make herself invisible to most scans.
Most of the time, no one ever noticed her, and the few times they did, they convinced themselves they were wrong when they didn’t find any other trace of her.
But the Big Guy wouldn’t talk himself into thinking she wasn’t real. He saw the subtle traces and knew that someone was there. Haven had tried hiding from him, but she couldn’t help but leave behind some trace of herself as she had her fun poking around the ship.
It was really annoying.
At first.
Haven had never been so doggedly pursued before. When he initially started chasing her down, she’d been aggravated. She just wanted to work and learn and not worry about other people. Or about having to slip away before he caught her.
But then, somehow, it started to become a game.
She got a thrill every time she escaped.
She had to smother her laughter when he’d suddenly throw open a panel, but she wasn’t there anymore.
She couldn’t make too much noise. Some aliens had really good hearing, and she didn’t know if his species was one of them.
The Humility was old and clanged a lot, so most of her movements were disguised, but when he got that close to her, she couldn’t risk even an errant breath.
It very quickly became the highlight of her days. He tried harder and harder to track her down, and she started teasing him. Deliberately leaving subtle signs behind. Just to watch him lose his mind, and see the others not believe him. He particularly hated it when she messed with his wiring.
Though, really, he should thank her. His wiring was perfectly functional, but it was an absolute, chaotic mess. That she was untangling and organizing them should be counted as pure charity work on her part. He should be leaving her treats in the walls.
Life on the Humility was much simpler than life on Hir-Fallow Station.
On Hir-Fallow, there were tons of places for her to hide, and the home she’d built for herself was deep in the station, far from any eyes or ears or noses.
And because it was, she could do whatever she wanted there, and she even had access to everything she needed through the various maintenance tunnels and halls.
On the Humility, she had to eat nutrition powder mixed with water since she couldn’t get near the synthesizer without the Big Guy catching her.
But Haven didn’t really like eating anyway, it was just another annoying, necessary bodily function she had to satisfy.
Most times, she didn’t even taste her food as she was eating it while working.
So, the basic, unflavored food didn’t bother her.
The Humility being so old and repaired so many times over – she could tell it had just by looking at it – actually made her life easier.
It took her a bit, but she found a hidey hole to make into her home.
There was a secondary command center in the center of the ship, away from the main bridge, that was obviously an addition built sometime after the ship’s initial completion.
The secondary command room had been built on top of the subspace generator, within a slightly larger room that once had some other purpose, though whatever that was had been lost to time.
The walls and floors of the secondary command center were thicker, heavier, meant to protect the room in case of attack.
Not as much as the shelter room, which she could only see from the outside and absolutely could not access, but it was still impressive.
However, the room built within a room created a pocket not originally intended in the ship’s design.
A small space between the original walls and the added walls.
It wasn’t big enough for most of the aliens in the Coalition to slip into, but it was big enough for her.
And since it was beside the thicker, shielded walls of the secondary command center, her scent and sounds were totally disguised once she was inside.
But because it was in an old room, it also offered all the benefits of life support – warmth and comfort – without being out and about in the ship.
She made herself a nest there and only snuck out whenever she wanted to work on the ship, get herself food, use the privy, or mess with the Big Guy.
Haven knew other people would consider the way she lived strange, but she had long since given up caring.
She was odd. She was not like normal people.
For whatever reason, she didn’t think like them, and she had completely embraced that, choosing not to be bothered by it any longer.
In fact, she fully embraced her differences and enjoyed her strange life.
That’s how her time on the Humility passed.
She snuck around the ship when she could.
She learned about the various crew members by listening through the walls and through the cameras she had hijacked.
It was like a TV drama. They were her friends in the same way as Grace.
She considered them friends while they didn’t know she existed.
But that was the best way for her to have friends.
That way, she couldn’t disappoint or annoy anyone.
It was a good thing she had going. Really, it felt like her life had peaked.
And then one of the pipes burst near her little room.
Really, pipes bursting was a common problem on the Humility.
It was an old ship. She didn’t know how old, but she heard the others often cursing the decrepit vessel whenever it acted up, especially the Big Guy.
The in-between room she had claimed had been completely gutted before its renovation, and there were lots of exposed pipes.
But because they were hidden, the Big Guy hadn’t had a chance to work on them.
They weren’t scanned or documented as needing repairs during the stop at Hir-Fallow, and they were so old, they weren’t connected to the new ship AI.
It worked out great for her because there was absolutely no way for someone to detect her back there.
However, for the ship itself, it wasn’t good because it meant that this particular area got no maintenance.
It wasn’t vital to the ship’s survival, so there was no need to go digging into it, but it was still an overlooked area where things going to other parts of the ship ran through.
And when that pipe burst, the only person it inconvenienced was Haven.
The pipe was connected to one of the private room privies.
It drained the cleaning fluid from their mister back to the main collecting tank so it could be recycled and reused.
When it broke, she was sleeping. It was a rude awakening to suddenly find herself drenched and cold.
She didn’t know which mister it came from, but it was still gross and now her bed was soaked through.
The stolen blankets she gathered together to make into a pallet had come with her from Hir-Fallow.
They were placed in the most comfortable spot in her in-between room.
Which just happened to be the lowest point of the room, so the point that got most of the damage.