As J'kabi's eyes closed, mine opened. The inside of our depressing little cosmic life raft greeted me, as it had every time. Even so, in the deepest recesses of my mind, I still held on to a childish hope that this was all a dream, and the next time my eyes opened I'd be back in my rack with J'kabi snoring in her shoebox-sized bed on top of my locker. 

She was always so cute when she slept. She curled up in a tiny ball and wrapped her tail between her legs so she could hug it. I made the mistake of telling Mei how cute it was one time, and every night after that I'd had to chase her nosy ass away from our room so she wouldn't squeal herself into a mental breakdown.

Even in these dire straits, watching J'kabi sleep had brought me some level of comfort. The first day had been the hardest. I couldn't bear it when she was still recovering, watching her shiver and whimper as her body healed from the ravages of hard vacuum. The first time she slept soundly through the night was a huge relief.

My eyes wandered over our meager supplies, compiling the same list I'd made a thousand times before. I had a dozen O2 pills in my pocket. The atmosphere pod came with a spare oxygen bottle, a CO2 scrubber, a heat lamp, a biohazard vacuum, a waste dehydrator, some water and calorie bars, and a medkit.

The oxygen and water bottles were empty, the CO2 scrubber was on its last legs, the vacuum was full of J'kabi puke, and I never wanted to see a waste dehydrator again, let alone use one. The only usable items left in the medkit were half a tube of the antirad/vitamix blend, a couple sheets of NeoSkin, and the laser sterilizer. 

Everything marked blue or red in the medkit was discarded. I repacked it with the NeoSkin, laser sterilizer, vitamix, and the last full calorie bar. There were still a couple bites left on a second one, and both of us were about to need all the calories we could get. With a quick warning to J'kabi, I chewed up a big bite for myself, then wrapped the last chunk in a bit of wrapper and sent it down for her. A tingle of gratitude warmed the back of my head.

I clipped the medkit to my belt on one side, and the oxygen bottle on the other. There was a refill station by both external airlocks, next to the suit bottles. We'd need one or both of them to still be functional in order to get J'kabi into a suit. If not, there were redundancies on every deck. Surely at least one of them would still be usable.

The CO2 scrubber whined, sputtered, and died. I sighed. I guess we wouldn't be reusing this pod. Without a scrubber, we'd have to burn a bottle of air mix every couple hours to keep the oxygen content at breathable levels. Of course the first pod I'd grabbed had a faulty one. We were literally scheduled to check our emergency equipment next week.

If only the universe would give us catastrophes when they were more convenient, I thought wryly.

When this all went down, I had just gotten out of the shower. My uniform was laid out on my rack. I was just reaching for my jumper top when a shotgun blast of white-hot rock, ceramic, and metal shredded it. The edges barely had time to char before the air left the room. A second later, a foot to the left, and I would not have been alive to save J'kabi. Even a scratch would've halved our odds of survival.

"Warning. Oxygen levels nearing critical levels. Air quality: severe. Estimated time to total depletion: one minute, forty-five seconds. If you would like to leave a final message for your emergency contact, audio recording has been activated."

"Wow, fuck you," I snapped.

I took one last look at the inside of the pod. Though these canvas walls had kept us alive, they would not be missed. The past seventy-seven hours had been hell, and I was more than ready to get moving. I had my supplies, I had no open cuts, and I had J'kabi safe and sound in my belly. 

Here it goes… I thought to myself.

With one last, deep breath, I tapped the control panel on the wall of the pod, and our bubble of safety burst. 

Every orifice in my body tightened. My face and neck swelled as the pressure dropped. My ears popped, and everything went quiet. The canvas pod repacked itself for the next deployment, the whine of its motor reduced to vibrations in the deck below my feet. The silence was absolute.

Space always felt so cold. I knew that was a misconception; space had no temperature, because there was no matter there to have a temperature. Scientifically, space wasn't cold, it was making me cold. What I was feeling was my own heat radiating out of my body.

Yet science lacked the proper terminology to capture the experience of space. The sensations felt by a sentient being did not align with numbers and measurements. Space was cold. Space tingled, like pins and needles in my extremities. Space was light and fast, unburdened by air resistance or atmospheric pressure.

We're in vacuum now, I informed J'kabi.

I know, she replied. You've got me looking through your eyes right now. 

Right, yeah. Sorry, it's a little different doing this with someone who can't do it back. I'm used to people wandering around my head instead of staying where I put them.

…You have no idea how nonsensical that would have sounded to me an hour ago.

You're doing very well, though! I've only ever done this with a handful of non-Ancients before, and most of them freaked out within five minutes.

I can understand why. I literally feel myself floating around in my own stomach right now.

Try swallowing yourself. I'm going to be processing how I feel about that for months after this…

I pushed the thoughts of what we were doing to the back of my mind, getting my bearings once more. The Horizon's Promise was set up like a skyscraper. A transport ship like this operated under continuous acceleration, so its decks were stacked in the direction of thrust to take advantage of thrust gravity. Engineering was the bottom of the ship, then Berthing, where we were. Cargo was a double-deck in the middle, then Mess and Recreation, Navigation, and finally the bridge as a sort of half-deck at the very top. 

We were in the main hall, an octagonal shaft that ran straight down the middle for the whole length of the ship. The once sterile, white-painted metal was dull and dirty, flecked with carbon scoring and the residue of some boiled liquid I didn't want to identify. The edges of the titanium plates at my feet were dented and discolored with heat stains. LEDs flickered in cracked plexiglass housings along the edges of our passageway. That was a good sign for us. There was at least some power.

I chewed my lip, contemplating our options. Cargo and Navigation had exterior airlocks. We had suits in both locations, as well as the gear locker back in Engineering. Ahead of me, the two-inch-thick porthole of the Cargo hatch was completely shattered. Behind me, the Engineering hatch was peppered with marble-sized holes.

That worried me. If the fusion reactor was damaged, it could have irradiated the entire deck. Ancients were no strangers to radiation, but even we had our limits. I didn't want to take the risk until I saw exactly how bad the damage was.

What do you think, Kabs? I asked.

I think that bite of calorie bar is in my hair, she replied. 

Focus, please.

S-sorry… 

She was quiet for a few minutes. I felt her little mind grasping the problem, turning it this way and that, listing pros and cons for every option. I kept my opinions to myself, leaving her to her own devices except to feed her things like floor plans and inventory when she needed more information. 

I don't want to risk it either. Space already tried to microwave me once; I'm not keen to try it again.

Up, then?

Yeah. All the sensor data is routed through the bridge anyway. Let's go Cargo, Navigation, Bridge, pull the black box, and use that to plan our next moves.

I like it. Let's do it.

I pushed off from what had been our floor, getting a feel for the near weightlessness. J'kabi rose inside of me, and I felt a sudden urge to burp. The sphincter to my stomach tightened in response.

For a moment, I was floating peacefully in the air. I closed my eyes, and I was instantly back home, reliving my first day of zero G training. I was so scared the first time the floor didn't come back. I remember spinning there in the void, eyes closed, until my instructor came to my rescue. The sense of calm he imparted through the linking carried me through the rest of that day.

Over the course of several seconds, I drifted down until I landed back on the wall a couple feet aft of where I'd started. Ooh, that was tricky. We had a roll and a pitch spin simultaneously. Probably due to some level of explosive decompression. I wouldn't know where or how bad until I looked at a damage report. It wasn't enough to generate more than slight gravity; no more than one rotation per hour on both axes. We were very, very slowly tumbling out of control, while traveling hundreds of kilometers per second.

Add firing the maneuver jets to our list of tasks when we get up to the bridge, I said. See if we can't get this spin under control.

I let my legs drift out from under me, reaching down to grab a handrail. Under thrust, we used magnetic lifts or ladder rungs welded to the keel side to traverse the central passageway. In zero G though, if all the hatches were open you could tug a rung and float all the way from Engineering to Navigation. No such luck in our case. All doors designated as airtight barriers were set to fail closed.

The muscles in my forearm flexed, adjusting my approach angle. This was why Ancients had such precise control of our musculature. We spent half our lives weightless, pulling maneuvers just like this one. I had to travel almost 10 meters straight up, with spin gravity tugging me backwards and sideways, while accounting for a gradual decline as I approached the axes of rotation. Without the ability to adjust the most minute angles of my trajectory, I could miss my target and fall all the way back to the bottom, overshoot it and cut myself on the shattered porthole, or simply stop dead in the middle of the corridor with nothing to grab onto.

Once my approach was perfect, I pulled.

J'kabi hit the bottom of my stomach and wiggled a little. My heart skipped a beat as I realized that I'd forgotten to account for the extra half-kilogram of free-floating mass inside of me. Her inertia was working against me, slowing my ascent. It wasn't much. I could still make it. I should still make it…

Everything okay? J'kabi asked. Your heart sped up.

It was close. Too close for comfort. Fortunately, traveling toward the center of the spin lessened the impact of her extra weight, and I was just able to catch the rung below the Cargo hatch with my fingertips.

Yeah… yeah, we're fine.

The hatch was machined from a single piece of four-inch-thick, reinforced titanium on a sliding rail. On the keel side, a smaller, manual hatch allowed access from the ladder in the event of power loss. In the event of atmosphere loss, however, both hatches were sealed with an electromagnetic lock that even a Mulvidian alpha female couldn't budge. 

A cautious yank of the crank wheel confirmed that the emergency systems still had juice. If I had my tools, I could pull a panel and cut the feed lines, but I dared not try in my current state. Effort was oxygen, and every sharp edge threatened to pop the balloon that was me.

That left the porthole, a circular opening maybe 40 centimeters wide. I could probably squeeze through there. I was pretty broad in the hips though; it was going to be close. Thankfully I'd lost some weight on the calorie bar diet, so I had more wiggle room than usual.

Kicking off from the floor, I drifted up to examine the hole more closely. The edges were mostly clear, save for a few shards of reinforced glass laminate poking past the rubber sealant. I pressed my fingertip against one of them. It wasn't too sharp, but it could still cause a cut or a scrape if I forced myself past it wrong. It wasn't loose enough to remove, either.

I gave a mental sigh, and yanked my tattered jumper over my head. Like I'd told J'kabi, modesty was the least of our concerns. If I was lucky, I'd get a vacuum suit top in the next room, and if I wasn't, I'd just have to be tits out in space for a while. 

With a foot gently tapping against the hatch to keep me upright, I stuffed my jumper into the groove around the perimeter of the porthole. I felt a small twinge of nervous embarrassment in my head as J'kabi realized that I was topless. Before she got a handle on her thoughts, I caught a few memories of her sneaking glances at my ass or my abs while I was changing, and just a little hint of sexual attraction. J'kabi you little minx. Was Mrrg right?

I bit my metaphorical tongue. That was something to unpack later, assuming we survived this. I wasn't entirely sure of my own feelings for her, and I didn't want to make judgments on that until after we got off this emotionally-charged rollercoaster.

I unclipped my belt and passed it through the hole first. Using my hands to press my jumper firmly into the groove, I turned my body perpendicular to the hole and pulled the two of us up and through.

It was tight. My hips scraped against the sides, and I felt more than one shard poking me through the padding of my jumper. My heart stopped and so did the rest of me. J'kabi bumped gently into my diaphragm. 

With shaky fingers, I felt around the edges where the pressure was the strongest, and found fabric. The glass hadn't pierced the material. I was still protected.

I placed my hands on either side of the porthole, and started to ease my hips up and out with very cautious wiggles. Inch by inch, rearranging my musculature to make room around the sharpest pieces. Once the widest part of my hips were on the other side of the porthole, the rest of me slipped right through without incident.

Just like J'kabi going down my throat, I thought, unbidden.

Heeeeyyyy!

Sorry. Intrusive thought.

The cargo hold was an open area. The corridor turned into a ladder at this point, with two tracks on either side for the magnetic lifts. I scooped up my belt as I floated past, and snagged a rung about halfway up to survey the damage.

It was a mess. Pieces of about a hundred black magnetic crates were strewn across the walls, floors, and ceiling, broken apart by the crash and reattaching wherever they landed. We'd been transporting fertile soil for the agricultural moons in the Cygnus Loop. Rich brown dirt was strewn everywhere, its moisture boiled away into a light fog that blanketed the still, empty space. 

Here and there amongst the shattered crates and scattered earth, I saw the telltale blue-green of Seirogi blood. Ak must have been in here when it happened. A long, grisly streak smeared across the port wall pointed to his fate. I turned my eyes away. I already knew what they'd find, and I didn't want to see it.

The airlock was to starboard. There were two doors that led to the outside: the shuttle bay doors for loading cargo, and the crew airlock where the suit locker was. The interior door to the crew airlock was blown off its hinges, the rent metal scraps that remained bent nearly in half by some massive force. Bits of magnetic debris peppered the doorframe.

I plotted a course through the destruction, and kicked off the ladder. Here at the center of the ship, the pitch spin was at its weakest. As I approached the outer edge of the vast, empty compartment though, the roll spin would pick back up. I had to arc my trajectory so I'd land where the airlock would be, instead of where it was at the moment. 

My feet touched down on the starboard wall, calves flexing to counteract the return of tangential velocity. J'kabi lurched in my stomach, bumping against the inside of my abs. I gave the outside a reassuring pat, which she returned. Steeling myself, I gritted my teeth and poked my head through the battered door frame to see if the cosmos was kind enough to grant us a miracle.

It wasn't.

* * * * *

I was very suddenly back in my body. One second, we were peering through the door of the cargo airlock, the next, crushing disappointment overwhelmed my frazzled brain, and I was once again staring at slimy blue-black folds as warm, squishy muscle massaged my nude body.

My legs kicked before my brain caught up to them. Fortunately, with how slimy and squishy it was in here, my feet just glanced off the pillowy ridges without injury to either of us. A splash of stomach juices floated into the air.

"What happened, I wanna see!" I protested.

Cygnus's mind touched my own again, and my head throbbed. It felt like my frontal lobe was trying to escape out the front of my skull. The comforting presence of my friend retreated, leaving me with a bizarre feeling of isolation. 

I'm sorry. You've taken all you can handle. Your mind's too overwhelmed for me to do more than talk.

"Can you try again?" I pleaded. "Please, I wanna see!"

J'kabi, you need a break, Cygnus warned. You're not built for this. Take a breather, and we'll try again later.

"Okay…" A gentle prod sent me sympathy. Even though the contact made my temples throb, I tried my best to hold onto it as it drained away. The inside of my own head had never felt lonely before.

Alone in a stomach, with no hope of getting out any time soon.

Without Cygnus's calming presence, the primal fears I'd kept at bay began to resurface. The tip of my tail curled and uncurled against my fleshy roof. I slipped my feet into the pool of juices at the bottom of her stomach, feeling their warmth run across my skin. I trapped a deep ridged fold between my legs and squeezed it for comfort. Blood pulsed through the veins as various muscle groups contracted and relaxed against my thighs. 

Grinding against me, trying to break me down into more easily digestible chunks. 

No. That's not what was happening. I mean it was, but that's just because the stomach did that to everything. It was a stomach. That was its whole purpose. I took shuddering breaths through my nose. We weren't using it for that purpose. I was not in here to be food. On top of that, I was not going to digest before we found my suit. It would be a couple hours at least before I had to worry… probably… 

Don't think about it, don't think about it…

Helloooo? Cygnus interrupted.

"S-sorry, what did you say?" 

Do you want to hear the good news or the bad news first?

"I-I don't think i-it really matters much…" I pouted.

The good news is we found the source of the explosive decompression.

"Hoorraaaayyy."

The bad news is, whatever punched out the airlock also shredded our suits.

"Yeah I kind of guessed that." My leg trembled, and the squishy muscle squirmed between my thighs.

I'm gonna see what I can find here that's salvageable. The refill station's fucked, but there's a bottle or two of air mix that survived. Maybe we can get some suit pieces too.

"O-okay…"

Cygnus's body bent forward. I rocked in the stomach like a hammock. The floating blobs of bluish stomach juices impacted the back wall, surface tension sucking them down into the pockets between the ridges. Down by my feet, I felt the mush of the calorie bar starting to drain into her intestines. The water level dropped, leaving my bare skin cold and a little tingly.

That could be me soon. 

No, it couldn't. It wasn't going to be. I had told Siggy already that I trusted her. She was gonna get me out of here. I knew it, and perhaps more importantly, I believed it. This was a protective measure. I would in fact be dead right now if we hadn't done this!

If only my dumb instincts would get the message, I'd be fine. Primitive Aizu brain didn't care about such trivial things as oxygen and spaceships. Most of the fauna on my homeworld were very big and very hungry for little pink snacks. With lizards the size of an Aëan bus, birds with 10-meter wingspans, and giant moss salamanders that were damn near invisible until they moved, primitive Aizu brain was extremely concerned with not getting eaten. I was in a stomach, and it wanted me to get out of the stomach. It was taking conscious effort to stop myself from kicking and scratching with my toe claws. 

Oh, fuck yes! The atmosphere pod survived! More air, fresh medpack, fresh CO2 scrubber… worst comes to worst, we can buy ourselves another week with this!

"C-cool…"

It was getting hard to breathe. Was the O2 pill running out already? No, it was still bubbling away in a fold somewhere. The air in my lungs still satisfied, but it felt like I needed more and more to keep myself alert.

Hey, I don't know what you're doing in there, but it's starting to give me a stomach ache.

I tried to release the stomach fold, but my legs wouldn't respond to my commands. My mouth was dry, my head was light, and I was starting to get tunnel vision as the light from my headlamp grew dimmer and dimmer.

"S-siggy…? I-I think I-I'm having a p-panic at..tack…"

Oh, Kabs… The genuine worry and compassion in her voice almost made me burst into tears. Do you need out? I can get us somewhere I can pop this pod.

"N-no! I-I… I d-don't w-want to waste it, y-you just g-got it. I-I can h…h-handle it. Just i-ignore me." 

Kabs, your two choices are come out or calm down. If you start hyperventilating in there, you'll use up more oxygen than I can replace, and then we're both fucked. We can reuse the pod if we need to.

"B-but that'll w-waste air… H-how will I get into my suit?"

Don't worry about the future right now. We'll make it work.

I tried to hold my breath, but my chest spasmed. The air was forced out of my mouth with a painful cough. My eyes were starting to tunnel again, and it only went away when I took short, quick breaths. Already, the air in here was starting to taste stale.

"What… w-what do I do? H-how do I calm d-down…?"

Um… breathe slowly. In through your nose and out through your mouth. While you're doing that, name five things you can see.

"I-I see a stomach, w-which is kind of my problem right now."

Fuck, okay… um. The other senses are probably out too then… Shit, um…

The slimy ridge slipped from between my legs as they finally obeyed me. I switched to rubbing my foot through the groove instead. It took concentration to do that. The zigzag pattern was engaging, and the soft slickness felt oddly nice on my toes. It wasn't enough to calm me down, but it was something.

The pain in my temples flared up again and the twitching, squirming, slimy stomach was quite suddenly replaced with the fully nude exterior of my Ancient friend's body.

"C-Cygnus! What the fuck?!"

I'm sorry! I'm sorry, I didn't know what else to do! All of the usual grounding exercises hinge on your surroundings, so I thought maybe I could shock you out of it, but I didn't want it to be a bad shock and make it worse…

"So you sent me mental nudes?!"

W-well you got all nervous when I took my top off, and you let slip that you stared at my ass when I got dressed—

"…y-you weren't supposed to see that! I-I… th-there's a… an interesting… nebula? Back there…?"

Kabs, eighty percent of my skin is nebula. N-not that I'm saying I mind it! I don't! Really, I don't! I just… the body around me swayed, inertia dragging me along a half-second later …fuck, now we're both panicky, and I'm starting to feel woozy…

"Shit." I was too, though I couldn't be sure if it was lack of oxygen or my continuing panic attack. "M-maybe popping that pod is the best option after all."

I'll head toward Mess and Rec. 

The body around me went into motion again. Muscles external to the stomach shifted against my side and my back as Cygnus twisted and weaved through the debris field that our cargo hold had become. Muscles internal to the stomach clenched against me, grinding that sticky gel residue into my skin. 

To take my mind off of the full-body groping I was getting, I turned my thoughts to the far better sight that had been implanted in my brain. Despite the initial shock, her strategy had merit. Even if she weren't absolutely gorgeous, the cosmic tapestry running across her skin was so visually busy that it consumed my attention. 

The white and pink nebulas that covered her torso and her right breast spiraled outward from a ringlike galaxy on her left breast. The nipple was almost lost in the whites and oranges, only visible by its shadow. Beneath that breast, an irregular spattering of white supergiants dotted the area where her stomach was. I had a vague memory of laying on that pattern a couple days ago. 

Her hips were like the sky at twilight, deep blue and covered in stars. If I looked close enough, I saw that some of those larger stars weren't actually stars at all, but galaxies! There was also this eye-like gas cloud in the… the crease of her, um… her pubic mound. 

It was only fair. She'd seen me naked already. And she did send this of her own free will. It wouldn't be bad of me to look a little right and a little lower, right?

We came to a stop and my cheek smushed into the stomach wall. Instantly, my fragile calm was shattered and reality crashed back in. I peeled my face away from the twitching flesh, strands of gel sticking and then dripping.

I both felt and heard the pop of the shelter going up. I heard it! Sound had returned! Precious, life-sustaining atmosphere was just on the other side of this fleshy prison.

I’m not proud to say I lost all composure then. My whole body collapsed into trembles that wracked my tiny frame and robbed me of any control I had left. My legs twitched, errant kicks smearing the thick wrinkles around. I wasn’t even trying to control my breathing anymore, panting with my mouth wide open. Some of the gooey coating dripped onto my tongue, and I retched and spat. Though it was mostly flavorless, my mind told me it was the worst thing imaginable. 

A powerful squeeze seized me, stilling my pathetic squirming through sheer force. Cygnus’s throat squelched, the esophageal sphincter unraveling moments before my head was pushed through it. 

My exit was much faster than my entrance. I was blinded by her slimy midnight blue throat, my headlamp smothered in its clutches. I felt a squeeze ripple up my entire body, and the next thing I knew I was passing her lips to spill out uselessly onto her galactic abs.

I clung to her, digging my fingernails into her skin. My toe claws clenched, little pinpoints finding purchase around her navel area. When she reached down to touch me, my tail wrapped tight around her wrist and didn’t let go.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” I whimpered.

“Hey, it’s okay, Kabs,” Cygnus soothed. Though her voice projected calm, I sensed a little surprise at my reaction.

“N-no, it’s n-not!” I said. Tears welled at the edges of my sky blue corneas, dripping down onto the white supergiants beneath her left breast. I was behind those stars, only a few seconds ago. “W-we barely g-got a-anything done b..buh…b-because I c-couldn’t h-handle myself!”

“Kabs, you were literally swallowed alive. I would have been more surprised if you didn’t freak out.”

“Y-yeah, but w-we can’t keep going like th-this… st-stopping every five m-minutes to let me h-have a p-panic attack…”

The hand at my back hesitated, then rested on top of me. Her thumb stroked my side. My tail wrapped tighter around her wrist and pulled her closer. The weight was comforting.

“I told you already, don’t worry so much about the air. There’s spare bottles all throughout the ship. We’ll have enough. Especially now that we have a pod with a working scrubber.”

“B-but we don’t know wh-what’s survived.. Wh-what if we don’t find more? What if we c-can’t assemble a full s-suit ever and we’re trapped here like this and a-all of th-this w–”

“Hey.” Cygnus’s voice took on an uncharacteristically commanding tone, and I quailed a little. Her hand rubbed on my back. “Thinking like that won’t get us anywhere! I said I was going to get you out of here, yeah?”

“Y-yeah…”

“So I’m going to get you out of here. I’ve lived in space my entire life. I know this ship from stem to stern. We will find more air, and we will get you into a suit. I promise you, everything’s gonna turn out okay.”

“O…o-okay…”

The abs underneath me rose, pressing into my cheek as Cygnus took a deep breath. I nuzzled my cheek against them, smearing stomach goop onto her skin. I probably looked icky right now. The arm in front of my face was covered in that same stomach goop. The blue, semi transparent gel overlaid on my pink skin was giving me gross purple splotches.

“Sorry… I didn’t mean to yell,” Cygnus said after a couple more deep breaths. “I know this is scary for you. It’s scary for me too. I’m trying my best to hold it together, but all I want to do right now is curl up in a ball and cry.”

“Oh Siggy…” I gave the underside of her breast a gentle kiss, and squeezed her wrist with my tail.

“I know you’re relying on me for emotional support, but sometimes I won’t be able to provide that. It doesn’t mean I don’t want to help. I just don’t have the emotional space to take on more than I already have. I’m sorry I snapped at you, and I’m sorry if it happens again.”

“It’s okay… I’m sorry too… I-I don’t want to give you more things to worry about.”

Cygnus nodded, and rested her back against the wall. We lay there for a long while, each lost in our own thoughts. I felt the tug of her mind through her warm, starry skin. It was like a bottomless pool, tempting me at all times to dive in. If I wasn’t careful, I’d find her replying to my thoughts, or me replying to hers. Each emotion was shared. It was a form of wordless communication for which I’d seen no equal in the entire galaxy. Ancients truly were remarkable.

That was part of my problem, I think. From the very beginning of our friendship, I had been in awe of her because she was an Ancient. As a result, I had saddled her with the weight of my unreasonable and uneducated notions of what an Ancient was. All the knowledge, experience, and accomplishments of her race… I placed them all on her shoulders. Of course when things went wrong, I looked to her for everything. To lead, to comfort, to fix it all and make everything better. Laying here on her abs, I was struck with the realization that Cygnus and I were the same age. She was 22 by the UGSC, too… wait, twenty-one?! I was actually older than her!

I looked up at her face, between her breasts. A blush stole over my cheeks, but I was a good girl and I didn’t sneak any more looks. As she looked back, her yellow, sunlike eyes turning orange with exhaustion, I saw her in an entirely new light. She was more like me than I had ever cared to realize. We were both just young adults, doing our best in these near-insurmountable circumstances.

I’m so sorry Cygnus, I thought. I’m sorry for putting you on a pedestal you didn’t ask for. I’m sorry that it took me this long to see you for who you are, and not what I thought you were…

Her index finger stroked my head a couple times. I didn’t know if she could hear me or not, but I knew the sentiment had reached her all the same.

We were going to get out of here. We had to. I just… had to learn how to deal with our survival method, somehow. Time, rest, and some emotional processing would help some. How much longer that enabled me to hold out though remained to be seen. 

“It was fifteen, by the way,” she said, startling me out of my thoughts.

“Huh?”

“You were saying we couldn’t do anything because you only lasted five minutes. It was fifteen.”

“Oh…”

“That’s also the second-longest a non-Ancient has ever linked minds with me. You should be proud of yourself, instead of beating yourself up.”

“Thanks.” I stretched my tired, achy limbs, then cuddled back under her breast. I was starting to get sticky. “Who… who was first? I-If you don’t mind me asking.”

“Old girlfriend. Nobody you would know.”

“Ohhh. So you’re um… g-gay?” 

Try as I might to restrain myself, hope–and shame for having that hope–welled up in my chest. I clamped down on it before it could slip through our connection; this was nowhere near the right time for that. I felt those eyes burning a hole in the top of my head, but I didn’t look up. I wiggled to the left a little to put her breast between me and her gaze.

“I’ll tell you the same thing I tell every human who’s asked me that question,” she said. I peeked out from behind her breast to see those eyes piercing me. “Once a species’ reproductive technology advances far enough, the societal pressure to be heteronormative disintegrates in a generation. The concept of gender’s gone in two.”

“O-oh! I didn’t mean it like that! Aizu are kinda like that too. Not with reproductive technology or anything, but more like… communal relationships, I guess? It’s pretty normal for multiple couples to make up one family unit, and swap partners and stuff. Males, females, and everything in between.”

“Oh, sometimes we do that too. I actually have three moms.”

“That’s really cool! I have two moms and three dads!”

“Oh wow. Sounds like you’ve got a big family.”

“When you have 16 kids, every extra set of hands helps.”

The steady breathing under me stopped as Cygnus took that in. “Sixteen?”

“Yup. Nine sisters and six brothers.”

“Holy fuck. That’s almost unimaginable to me.”

“Well, this is what happens when a prey species achieves an industrial revolution. We’re like… what’re those cute little fuzzy animals Mei loves… the ones with the big ears?”

“Rabbits?”

“Yeah, rabbits! Aizu are like if rabbits were the dominant species on Earth instead of humans. Big families, lots of kids.”

“For Ancients, polyamory is popular for the exact opposite reason. Birth quotas are very tightly controlled. Your chances of having a kid go up if you get three or four people to go in on it with you.”

My tail was cramping. I unwrapped it from around her wrist, draping it limply against her arm. I started tracing little circles around the stars on her belly. Her skin lit up in a trail that followed my finger, like a comet’s tail. I tapped on the stars, and they twinkled at me.

“When we get out of here, maybe we can meet each other’s families,” I said. 

Cygnus gave a wry laugh.

“I’d love to meet yours, but it’s gonna be a while before I can face mine. Linking and all…”

“Ohhhh, right. That might be a little awkward.” 

“I can already hear Momma Etyiashi. ‘Aliota, we could barely get you to eat your vegetables, and you go out and eat the tiny people now?’ ”

“Heeeyyyy!” I pouted.

“It’s what she’d say, I don’t know what to tell you. Lifers—er, Ancients who never leave the colony fleet—Lifers have no filter because they don’t know that lying exists.”

“Vegetables are tasty, too! I dunno what your problem was.”

“Vegetables are good. Hyponderas suck. Uhm… they’re this plant we curated. Think potatoes, rhubarb, lettuce, and blueberries all in one plant, except every part of it just tastes vaguely sweet and grassy. And they’re like seventy-five percent of our hydroponics, so we ate them every day.”

I felt curiosity rise in my chest, and with it, nervousness. I bit the inside of my cheek, unsure if I should ask the question dancing on the tip of my tongue.

“What did… what did I taste like?”

Cygnus sat up more, and I rolled down her front. I ended up in her lap, looking at her face naked and upside down. Oh shit, I forgot that I was naked! My cheeks burned with embarrassment and I hurriedly covered my breasts.

“You know, I wasn’t… actually paying attention. Like all that sticks out to me right now is that you were staticky from the sterilizer and when I put you in my mouth, your hair shocked my tongue.”

“Oh.” 

I didn’t know why, but I was disappointed with that answer. At the same time though, I didn’t know what answer I wanted to hear. If I tasted good, I’d be a little freaked out that even my friends found me tasty. On the other hand though, if I tasted bad, I’d feel guilty that Cygnus kept having to stick my stinky, bad-tasting body in her mouth. It was a no-win question for me.

“You didn’t taste bad, by any means. You kinda just tasted like… nothing.”

“I’ll take it.”

Cygnus snapped her fingers and slapped the floor, bouncing us a couple inches into the air. I clung to her pant leg with my toes.

“Sterile, that’s the word! You tasted sterile.”

“Must’ve been the sterilizer,” I teased. 

“Yeah probably could’ve put that together faster.” She scrunched her nose at me. “I’m tired, okay?”

“I think we both are.”

Cygnus yawned, resting her head against the canvas wall, then wiggled down onto the floor. 

“Pretty sure neither of us have slept well,” she murmured.

Wasn’t that the truth. I might have spent most of the last three days asleep, but that had been to heal from almost dying, and it hadn't been restful at all. As emotions calmed, exhaustion filled my bones, making my limbs heavy and clumsy.

“Maybe that’s why we had such a rough start.”

“Agreed…” Without looking down, she fumbled around in the bag at her side, then tossed the sterilizer at me. “Clean yourself up; you’re all sticky. Then we’ll take a nap, and try again in the morning…”

* * * * *

“You got the stuff?”

Mei was waiting for me outside the gym in yoga pants and a sports bra. After shift workouts were about the only times I saw her hair down. She had such long, beautiful hair. Jet black and pin straight, with a small streak of white at her temple. She used to tell me it was from hitting her head against the ladderwell her first time in zero G; a story I’d gotten probably fifty times. 

My own hair was done up in a messy bun, curls piled almost as high as J’kabi was tall and barely held together with a loaned scrunchie. This purple mane of mine was always breaking the ones I bought, but for some reason Mei had magic scrunchies. She refused to tell me where she bought them, too!

Ancients normally worked out in skintight bodysuits made with thin fabric that produced an endothermic (cooling) reaction when wet. Whatever material we made them out of though, I couldn’t find outside of the fleet. Thus, I too was in yoga pants and a sports bra. It was almost as good, which surprised me the first time I tried it.

“Okay I know that’s a reference, but you’ve never told me what it was referencing,” I said.

“Old Hollywood flicks, cop dramas and stuff. Means whoever asked it is looking for drugs.”

“What are drugs?”

“...Are you being serious right now?”

Sweat cooled on my neck and shoulders as the forced air system kicked on above me. I patted my neck and arms with a soft microfiber cloth, then tossed it in the laundry chute.  

“Assume that I grew up extremely sheltered in what could easily be described to other species as a utopia with little to no systemic issues or material concerns. Then you tell me if I’m being serious.”

“Damn, okay. You don’t know what drugs are. But you know alcohol, right? It’s stuff like that. Makes your brain feel happy.”

“Poisons, got it.”

“Accurate.” Mei twisted a strand of her long, silky hair between slender fingertips. “Soooo?”

“So what?”

“So do you have something to make my brain feel happy?”

“Ohhh! That’s what you’re asking about!”

“And it finally sinks in!” Mei threw her hands up in the air. “I thought you guys were supposed to have superbrains or whatever.”

“I use the extra wrinkles to hide my snacks. Here.” I tapped my wrist comm and flicked an image over to her. “You get one.”

"Scrooge."

"I don't get that reference either."

"It means you're being stingy." She pulled up her phone, and her eyes went wide. "Oh my goooooooddddd!"

"Keep your voice down!"

"Sorry, but she's just so cuuuuuute!"

Mei leaned against me, bumping my tit with her head. She excitedly zoomed in on the picture I had sent her: J'kabi curled up in her little shoebox bed, fast asleep and cuddling her tail. She had this adorable smile as she nibbled on the little tuft of fur at the tip. She must've been having a good dream.

"Thank you,” she said, dabbing happy tears from her eyes with the strap of her sports bra. “This'll give me serotonin for the rest of the week."

"You're welcome." I gave her a peck on top of her head. 

“Grooooosss.” She gave me a playful nudge. “You need a shower. You’re all sweaty.”

“You gonna join me again?” I tickled her ribs, and she squealed.

“Cygnus!” She feigned shock. “I can’t believe you’d suggest fraternization between the Nav Officer and the Chief Engineer!”

“Oh hush. You know Skips doesn’t care. So long as we do our jobs, our off time is ours to do with as we please.”

I stuck my tongue out at her. Some humans, with their eight tongue muscles, could turn the tip of their tongues into a three-leafed clover. Ancients had twenty-four. This tripled range of motion coupled with the finest muscle control in the galaxy made our tongues deadly weapons in any form of unclothed combat. 

To demonstrate this, I turned my tongue into a nine-leafed clover, and wiggled every tip at her individually. Her almond-shaped eyes widened again, and a blush swept across her cheeks. 

“You know I don’t like telling you no, but I have the midwatch tonight,” she said. “Skips wants that slingshot course by 0800.”

I pulled my tongue back into my mouth through partially clenched teeth. 

“No luck convincing him otherwise?”

“Nope. I gave him everything you gave me. All the star charts you got from your colony fleet, all the data from the asteroid spotters, and all the specs on our kinetic shielding. He says the risk is still minimal.”

“Mei, I really don’t want to go home through the Arcturus system. I have a bad feeling about this.”

Mei pushed herself off my chest, and stood up on her tippy toes to kiss me. I kissed back, but the sinking feeling in my gut didn’t go away. Her mind brushed mine, full of happy thoughts and reasonable logic. 

“I’ve done the calculations myself. You know how good I am at math, and I swear to god if you say it’s because I’m Asian I’ll stab you with my hairpins.”

“Again, not a reference I understand,” I said.

“Racial stereotype stuff; you probably wouldn’t get it even if I explained it.” She kissed me again, and transferred the math through her lips. “See? What are the chances it goes wrong?”

“One in eight-point-two million…” I pouted.

“And if it does go wrong, what are the chances of survival?”

“Seventy-six-point-two-three-six percent.”

“So why are you getting so uptight about this, you big worry wart?”

I sighed, and rolled my eyes. This was one aspect of dealing with the younger species that I was still getting used to: their eagerness to take risks. Yii and Seirogi were pretty good about sticking to the beaten paths, but Humans and Mulvidians saw the galaxy as their playground. Humans especially. Space was their metaphorical wild west, just waiting to be tamed. It was my experience, and the experience of my people, however, that space was much more likely to tame you.

“Because it’s more than triple the chance that something goes wrong than if we followed the shipping lanes. Like everybody else does.”

Mei giggled, and gave me a playful shove. She stepped past me, heading to her workout. I followed her with my eyes. Damn, yoga pants really did make her ass look good.

“If we all did what everyone else does, we’d never discover new things,” she said, giving me a sly smile that hinted at a double entendre. It was my turn to blush. “See you at breakfast, Star Girl.”