Chapter 36 #2
These were, easily, the best days of her life.
She’d wake up in Vytln’s arms, with him tending to her so sweetly, it almost hurt in her chest. She’d go over his task schedule for the day, and help him where she could.
They had split duties between large and small, depending on the size of the hands best suited for the task.
She did the smaller, finer tasks. She’d taken over wiring completely, since his wiring was still absolute trash.
Though saying as much earned her a glare.
But his wiring really was terrible. It worked, sure, but it was chaotic and messy and made repairs more difficult.
She’d work with Vytln for about half the day.
Then, he’d leave and come back with her new, fortified menu.
It was mostly food from his home planet, with only a few dishes from other places.
Which made sense to her. If lvtl females needed more minerals for their pregnancy, it would make sense that their diet would naturally have what they needed.
The other dishes just happened to meet her requirements and had been added for variety.
After eating, she’d head over to medbay. She could only have her written language imprints every few days. Her brain needed three days after an imprint for the knowledge to be solidified, and doing another imprint in that time would make retaining all the information more difficult.
So, most days, they worked on Alred’s body.
They were still in the planning process.
It wasn’t as easy as saying left hand – robot, right hand – real.
They had to debate the benefit of every single limb, organ, and tissue in being organic vs cybernetic.
And there were a lot. And it only became more complicated when they considered hybridizing organic and cybernetic components.
They had to consider cost in terms of resources, the time it would take to create, and how it would integrate with the biological parts.
There was also Alred’s preferences to be taken.
For example, making a cybernetic heart was easy.
They even had ones that were programmed to make the ‘thumping’ sounds so that they could still have a ‘heartbeat’.
However, Alred wanted his organic heart back.
He wanted the real heartbeat again. The point of this wasn’t to make him an android.
That would be easy if that was their only goal, they just needed a person-shaped robot.
Which, while not super cheap, was readily available.
But that wasn’t the point of this. He was trying to be real. The heart, he felt, with its beat was important to that goal.
So, the decisions for what should be organic and inorganic had to be debated between all three of them for every single thing.
It really slowed down the process, but it was important that they got all these details hammered out now.
If they didn’t know exactly what they were working towards, this entire project would be that much harder.
But, as Alred said, this was not going to be a quick process.
However, it was a challenge, and an enjoyable one. Haven was having a great time working with the two of them.
That was the routine Haven fell into as they went about getting their delivery.
The weapons, mostly explosives, were carefully loaded into main storage by Rok and Tanin.
The explosives were, apparently, inert for the moment.
They needed some kind of something or other to arm them.
Haven was curious, but that was all she was told about their safety.
There were a lot of explosives, but they were completely safe until armed in person.
A signal wouldn’t be enough to arm them, so they didn’t have to worry about someone hitting a button somewhere to blow them up.
The arms company who made the weapons was totally neutral.
They deliberately did not take sides in conflicts and would supply two sides of the same war equally.
They were extremely careful about maintaining that.
They did not form alliances or teams with anyone.
That’s how they knew they were safe to take a job from, knowing that Kldyn couldn’t get to them.
So, with the cargo loaded, they started the subspace swing to their designated location.
The planet they were going to was called Trenot.
They were longtime Coalition members, species 81 out of 214, meaning they joined rather early.
They were also locked into a planetwide war that had been ongoing for nearly just as long.
Fully half the planet was destroyed because of the war, and the people were hardened and jaded because of it.
They absolutely refused Coalition help, and since they didn’t let the war expand beyond their solar borders, the Coalition did not have the right to step in and halt it by force.
The Coalition was a group of members, not an overarching governing body. They couldn’t actually command peace on a planet, so long as it remained on that planet. Or within the planet’s borders, since a species was considered owner of their entire solar system.
Because of that, the war continued without interference.
Warlords commanded power on the planet and operated their own individual armies.
They came and went relatively frequently, and even the longest reigning warlord had only been in place for a single generation.
It was an extremely unstable power structure that was constantly changing.
One of those warlords was their client. The explosives were for his army. Haven wasn’t sure she was comfortable supplying explosives for a war that had been ongoing near constantly for the entirety of a planet’s history, but it wasn’t her choice to make. It also wasn’t her place to judge.
Those wars had been ongoing on that planet for probably a couple thousand years at this point.
It was their culture, in a weird, twisted way.
It was their way of life. That was how they chose to live, and if they actually wanted to stop, they would at this point.
It wasn’t for her to tell them that war was wrong and destroying themselves over it was foolish.
She bit her tongue about the topic and just focused on her tasks.
It was easy since she and Vytln were focused on the ship and its components.
They weren’t really involved with the deliveries.
But Haven was able to track where they were in the process of each delivery based on where they were at in the subspace swing process.
When they were swinging, she and Vytln took that opportunity to work on the engine.
The swing process moved them across vast distances, crossing galaxies in a matter of days or marks all without using the engine.
In those moments, they could stop the engine and work on parts that, normally, were in use.
They never shut the engine down completely, as it would take too long to turn it back on.
It also didn’t cool down, despite not being fully functional.
For that reason, Haven had to wear her envirosuit as they worked on it.
That’s what they were doing now, as she explained to Vytln all the progress they were making with Alred’s body planning.
She was standing on his shoulders, working on a part of the engine that was, essentially, an alternator.
It wasn’t outputting as much energy anymore, so she was breaking it apart, trying to find the problem.
There were multiple alternators in their engine, so there was redundancy, but that didn’t mean they could leave it broken.
She was talking and working when Alred called out over the intercom that they were due to swing out of subspace soon. They had to start putting the engine back together so they could begin starting it back up.
“The delivery will be quick,” Vytln said. “We’ll be swinging again as soon as we unload, so we can finish then.”
“Grace has already picking our next job,” Haven said, closing the panel to the chamber. She started the process of bracketing it closed as she continued. “It’s not being a medical job; she’s still looking for one.”
“They probably have contracts with more established and bigger companies,” Vytln said, his hands stroking along her calves. She couldn’t really feel his touch through her envirosuit, just the pressure, but it made her smile.
He couldn’t keep his hands off her, and she loved it. Nothing made her feel so beautiful and appreciated as the obsession he had with her.
They finished closing up the engine and she climbed down off of him. He touched her again, just a gentle stroke across her back, as he walked away to begin the process of starting the engine back to full power.
Meanwhile, Haven stepped back across the barrier, into their workroom.
In the cooler area, she was able to pull her helmet off her head and set it down.
She kept the rest of the suit on though.
It was heated on the outside right now. She either needed help pulling it off or she had to walk around in it until it cooled down.
Her locs were back in a thick, messy bun, held up off the back.
It wasn’t so hot that her hair would be in danger, but it was easier to fit it in the helmet when she didn’t have them down.
Yawning, she began moving around the workroom, setting out the pieces of the alternator she’d brought out rather than put back together before they were done.
They looked fun to play with at first glance, but she would have a better chance to look them over out here than standing on her toes on Vytln’s shoulders.
She was a bit tired. It was kind of late, and she didn’t get much sleep anymore. Not with Vytln’s near constant attention. The male was insatiable. Not that she was complaining. She didn’t want him to go easier on her. She wanted to build her stamina so she could match him.
Maybe she should take a day off. It had been a while since she did that.
This wasn’t like a normal workplace where she clocked in and had hours – or marks, she supposed.
Regular delivery companies might work that way.
But this wasn’t really a job. Not for this crew.
This was their entire lifestyle, and they didn’t take days off because they couldn’t.
Vytln, especially, had to always be available and ready to work.
That was the downside of being the only engineer.
A bigger ship would have a whole crew for engineering, another one for navigation, another for cleaning, etc.
But they didn’t. They had Vytln and Sway and Garnet respectively, doing an entire crew’s job by themselves.
Haven didn’t jump, she wasn’t at all surprised, when Vytln wrapped his arms around her from behind. He held her back against his chest. Not at all bothered by the heat of her suit. He even let out a sound of contentment, like he enjoyed the radiating warmth.
“You should take a day off,” he said, making her laugh. “What?”
“Nothing. I just thought the same thing.”
He didn’t respond, but she felt him start in surprise. She looked up and back. “What?”
“You said that correctly,” he said.
“Huh?”
“You said, ‘thought’, not ‘thinking’.”
“Oh.” She paused, surprised. “Yeah. I guessing I did. Guess… I did.” The second correction wasn’t as natural as the first one.
Haven knew she didn’t speak perfect Standard. That was a consequence of learning the hard way by listening to other people and just submerging herself in the language. She was fluent enough to get by. She wasn’t refusing to improve, but she wasn’t actively trying to improve her language either.
Except for the written language imprints. It didn’t immediately include spoken word, but there was a direct, natural connection between reading a word and speaking it for the first time later. Maybe her language was improving just by virtue of that.
But…
“You sounding… sound disappointed,” she chuckled, focusing back on Vytln.
He turned her around, then grabbed her by the waist, picking her up and setting her on the workbench amongst the disassembled parts of the alternator.
“Not disappointed,” he said, though he certainly didn’t sound happy. “I liked the way you talked. It was… endearing.”
“You were about to saying cute,” she chuckled, running her hands down his chest. Her fingers bumping off the cracks in his skin. “I can keeping talking this way.”
“No.” He shook his head. “I don’t want you to do it on purpose for me. Keep getting better. It’s a joy to watch that too.”
Haven nodded, but she was more focused on touching him.
She couldn’t do that without the suit right now either.
Just like her suit was holding onto the residual heat, so was his body.
It would burn if she tried to touch his bare skin with hers.
The suit protected her from him right now, but they still couldn’t keep their hands off each other.
“Are you hungry?” He asked, stroking her back.
She thought about it before shrugging. “Not really.”
“I’ll get you food,” he said anyway, making her laugh. “Stay there. I’ll be right back.”
“Can doing!” She said, leaning back, happily kicking her feet.
He gave her one last lingering glance before walking from the room.
Not quite able to hide the bulge at the front of his pants when he did so.
A rush of hunger went through her, and she wondered if he could suffer temperature shock damage if she doused him in cold water to rapidly cool him off so she could put her hands on him and, better, have him put his on hers.