3. Chapter 3

Ava snagged the clipboard after entering the engine room. It was still sitting on the navigation panel, unmoved.

She tapped lightly on the biologics tanks as she passed it, watching them swirl fast in response.

“Ebel!” Ava bounded into the control room, hoping to shock him by opening the door suddenly.

No reaction. He didn’t even turn her way. Ava huffed in disappointment. He hasn’t moved at all since I was here last.

Ebel’s fuzzy yellow shape was reclined over a beanbag-like chair with his stubby back four legs sticking in the air. His front two pairs, which he used much like she did for hands, were tossing a little ball compulsively between them.

She tapped him on his shoulder.

Ebel’s multi-eyed head looked at her briefly to nod and grunt at her appearance, not even phased at her attempt at surprise.

Ava leaned in farther, looking over his shoulder to see on the monitor the latest Bohxi game, a daredevil sporting event involving a lot of fighting and gore. It’d looked dumb to her the few times she tried to watch it.

“What have you been . . .” Ava began, waggling the clipboard in her hand.

“Hold on, Ava,” Ebel clicked. His long fingers on his top pair of arms stopped throwing the ball and held it while his middle pair of arms reached forward to tap on the keyboard. He motioned to the screen and clicked again, “There’s only two minutes left.”

“Two minutes for this round,”Ava muttered while shaking her head and tapping her foot. She knew full well that if she wasn’t here, he would have gone right over to another game after this one ended. It was easy to tell by the complete lack of work that had been done the last few cycles that he had been at it awhile.

It must be the playoffs.

Ava clenched her jaw in annoyance. She ignored his feed and kept herself busy by opening the first aid kit to heal a small scrape she got on her leg last cycle.

The cut wasn’t too bad, though she eyed it critically, pants leg rolled up. It hadn’t even bled much. The ointment alone would seal it up.

She spread the green paste over it, watching the skin knit together before her eyes until only the shadow of a scab remained.

“What did you do this time?” Ebel said, his head swiveling her direction, watching her movements.

His Boxhi game just ended. He shut the screen off, silencing the onscreen celebrations.

He moved closer as his convex eyes narrowed on her wound. “Your outer layer is so fragile.” His antennas pressed on his fuzzy yellow skull indicated his concern, despite his teasing.

“Got snagged somewhere,” Ava said mulishly.

Before he could say more she continued, rolling her eyes, “Yes, I know, you took me on because I was advertised as being disease resistant. It didn’t mean not clumsy, okay?” She started smiling halfway through trying to look stern as she stiffly pulled her jumpsuit’s leg back down.

Ebel clicked, “It’s a shame you didn’t also come with a mute function.” He chittered at his own joke.

Ava pursed her lips and attempted to not react to his words.

He slid his fuzzy, yellow body over to the counter until he was right next to where Ava was standing. “Well, at least it shouldn’t balloon up and get infected. You’ve gotten so many of those at this point that if you weren’t so disease resistant I’d be needing a new helper.”

Reaching his fingers out he pushed her on the forehead until she stepped backward, glaring. He snagged the clipboard off the counter and began to look it over.

“And here I thought you enjoyed my sparkling personality and good looks.” Ava moved to the side to give him more space.

Ebel chittered without looking, not responding to her comment about her appearance or her personality.

Ava sat down at her desk area, across the small room from his, and absently clicked through the many alerts on her com feed. Look at all these alerts. Everyone is so on edge.

She looked up when Ebel spoke, his eyes still on her clipboard.

“There’s a new transport coming in today. I will fix your list if you go through the vents and tell me what they are bringing.”

“Yea, everyone’s talking about this transport.” Ava gave a mock frown, sorting through the alerts on her com, her posture stiff. “Also, holding the repairs the ship needs in return for me helping you is a new low, Ebel. Especially as you know I need to go spy on the new cargo anyways.”

She paused before adding, “And it’s not like I can refuse either.” She forced the words out heavily, nostrils flaring.

“Yes, but I have no other trinkets at the moment to give you incentive to go above and beyond.”

“Incentive,” she scoffed, closing her com with a snap. They’re not saying anything useful over the messages anyways.

Ebel chittered in return, his approximation of a laugh, before moving over to the first aid kit she used, still sitting on the counter. His long fingers forced it shut and stored it back beneath the sink before cleaning up the bits of bandage Ava had left strewn haphazardly.

He tapped the clipboard with his finger, right where Ava indicated the repair needed. “We just did these pistons three months ago. Cheap parts from the Tuxa never last.” He clicked again. “Of course, we only have more Tuxa parts on this trash heap to replace them with too.”

“Maybe the collective needs to up their contract bargaining,” Ava tossed out, feeling peevish over Ebel’s attempt to bribe her compliance. “Or at least find a contract that pays more to buy something other than the shitty supplies we’re getting.”

Ebel ignored this and turned to a second cupboard. This was full of half-opened gears. He began rummaging inside while muttering.

He eventually scooted back to his desk and opened a screen on his computer of their current log of inventory parts.

Ava felt unsettled, knowing she would be needing to spend a long stretch of time in the vents. It was one of her least favorite tasks.

As Ebel continued rummaging, Ava went to the food processor to try to program it for some breakfast. Her basic biology was loaded in it, but supplies were sparse and she hadn’t been able to get it to produce anything appetizing. After a few minutes of slow processing, it popped out a gray lump. Ava grimaced as the plate was presented to her, stomach churning, but grabbed a nearby fork and started to eat it.

“What kind of transport is it?” she asked to distract herself from the taste. It was gritty in addition to tasting bad. She eyed her food critically. Hopefully they would spring for better protein compounds at the outpost they’d arrived at this morning. This current contract had been cheap on everything though, so she doubted it.

“It’s a classified one . . .” Ebel turned around and waggled his antennas at her to be dramatic. Ava, forgetting her previous frustration, genuinely smiled at that around a forkful of the gray paste.

He turned back to the cabinet. “I have the rest of the parts to fix this junk heap in the storage alcove. After you eat whatever that is, you get up there and just wait. I don’t know what time exactly they will be docking. I’ll have this repaired by the time you get back.” He pulled out a piston and put it on the table before turning to her.

“That looks disgusting,” he said, eyeing her food with his antennas drooped.

Ava grimaced in agreement, eating another few forkfuls before she hurriedly washed down the food with more water. Water at least was never in short supply.

She put the plate, halfway eaten, on the counter. She couldn’t stomach any more. “Anything in particular to look for this time?”

“Hmm . . . you know, the usual. There’s been a big demand for chip implants lately but I doubt they will be on this transport. It’s only a small outpost, not a major hub. Write down anything they have a large supply of that we can potentially . . . ah . . . use.”

Ebel eyed her dirty plate before he moved back to his video feed and turned it back on. The screen began showing the security feed for the engine room again. “The mother queen collective was particularly pleased with the holograms we brought them two months ago.”

Ava looked over to the separate transmitter next to the main computer feeds that displayed a live feed of Ebel’s queen. The queen was close to laying more eggs so he had it broadcasting all the time to keep watch. She was resting in the middle of a pile of pillows, apparently asleep, sprawled on her side. Her gigantic abdomen didn’t even fit all the way on her bed. A half-eaten variety of foods was on the table next to her.

Ava glanced at her gray lump and back at the queen’s food hungrily, her eyes narrowed. “I’m glad she liked it. Hopefully it brought you more favor.” And hopefully she gave us credit instead of pretending it was all her doing.

Ebel grunted his agreement while continuing to click through the inventory. His three-fingered hand moved fast across the liquid panel while his back legs crouched to let his yellow body sit on itself. He might slack on his assigned work here in the engine and control rooms, but he would never neglect his queen if she needed something.

Ava walked away from the queen’s feed, dismissing her from her thoughts, and went to the sink under the flickering fluorescent light. She refilled her canteen and put her plate in the sink before she went to the bathroom in the back room. Then she picked up the knapsack she had stored in the control room and pulled out her flashlight before emptying the old contents into the trash compactor. She turned the bag all the way inside out and shook it to get some crumbs from a ration pack out.

“You really don’t know what time the transport is arriving?” she asked, repacking her flashlight and magnetic bracers in her sack.

She side-eyed Ebel, jiggling the knapsack on the counter to fit her notebook in it too. If there’s time, maybe I can grab some different food in the mess hall. Sometimes that food processor had different compounds loaded because of the contractors on board. The one feeding down to the engine room only got the leftovers.

“Soon, no delay,” Ebel replied, not even looking at her, all his eyes focused on his screen. “You slept a long time.”

“Yeah, well, beauty sleep and all that.”

Ebel chittered. “They never told me Humans slept so much either before your purchase.”

Ava laughed. “As if. You had another Human helper on board here before me. I saw the logs.”

“Well, they didn’t last long enough for me to get a fair impression of your species.”

Ava shivered and fingered her own hair in remembrance. The logs also confirmed the previous Human did not last long; their hair got caught in the engine. Ebel was adamant her hair was tied back every time she worked, and had strictly enforced the rule when she was younger. Now she did it herself out of habit.

Ava walked over to the closet, hand hesitating on the opened door as she looked at the clothes inside. “So you want me to go up there now, then? I’ll need the thermal suit for this one?” She fingered a crisp, gray stretchy suit hanging in the closet next to more of the jumpsuits Ava usually wore. It was designed to mask any heat signatures in case the transports brought any probes on board. Some species were more paranoid with their shipments than others. With the natural chill from the vents it meant she had a perfect track record of going undetected.

Ebel briefly looked up to meet Ava’s eyes. “Hmm. Yes, you always need it. I’ve received four coms from Wert this morning regarding ‘special instructions’ for this payload. Wert has also been complaining about needing to clean out the animal cages in the hold, so maybe we’ll see something interesting. The Tuxa specified they wanted the animal area available in their contract for this transport.”

Ava groaned, pulling the suit off the hanger slowly. She sweated so much when she wore it. A sour taste filled her mouth as she slowly unzipped the suit. She refused to strip to put it on since the material stuck to her skin, so instead she put it over her usual gray jumpsuit and zipped it up. She pulled the hood over her head and cinched it down under her chin. There was a gauze material she could pull over her face if needed but she left it open for now, dangling at the side of her right ear.

With it properly fastened she walked, mouth downturned, over to the floor-level vent next to Ebel’s computer setup. Turning around, she frowned at Ebel. “I hate this suit.”

“I hate hearing how you hate that suit,” he fired back, though he softened his gaze upon taking in her grumpy expression.

Ava stuck her tongue out at his back when he turned around again. It was easy for him to mock her when she was the one having to crawl all over. He got to sit here while wearing nothing uncomfortable over his fuzzy yellow body.

Popping out the rivets on either side of the vent, she opened it up and put it to the side where it leaned against the wall. Sitting at the bottom of the metal vent were a few ropes and magnetic grip hooks. There were also a few papers in there with a pencil to take notes. She had drawn the layout of the vents on these, along with some doodles. The blueprints of the vents were on file, but they didn’t have the markers she knew on there. Ava put the papers in her pack and gave it a reassuring pat.

Ebel looked up from his screen as he watched her get inside, clicking after her like a worried mother.

She took off her emergency com beeper from her wrist and placed it in his outstretched hand. He then helped her secure the vent behind her, sliding it into place. “Good luck, Ava. I will try to have something better for you to eat when you get back.” His convex eyes focused on her through the grate panel.

“Thanks, Ebel,” Ava murmured. She sat, looking up the shaft with a frown on her face, then started climbing, placing the magnetic hooks in time with the whirr of the engine. Maybe if she finished fast she could take another rest in the solarium.