Reentering Stellaria’s bubblegum pink atmosphere never got old.
I’d once asked Ziggy if everything here was glittery to camouflage a Stellarian’s yassified true form, but he hadn’t seemed eager to answer the question—which was answer enough for me.
The silence is LOUD with that one.
Regardless, I was looking forward to visiting some of our favorite local haunts—like the dunes where you could race tricked-out vehicles, or the “safest” bazaar in town.
Complete with the occasional blood puddle for ambience.
As much as I enjoyed our space adventures, I was also more than a little excited to play house until our next assignment. Ziggy preferred to exist in his Earthling skinsuit even here, and seeing him puttering around his modest home—cleaning his weapons, organizing his weapons, obsessively feeding and watering me—gave me all the domestic feels.
The first order of business was handing off Pedro to Honnor, which didn’t sit right with me. I trusted Ziggy’s maker implicitly, but walking into the audience chamber of Candyland Court always triggered me. This was probably thanks to the time Ziggy put me to sleep so he could fight the entire Astrum Force Command by himself, only for me to still need to face off against the Head Commander while thinking the love of my life was dead.
Good times… said no one.
To their credit, Honnor and their partner, Bron—the space dads, as I liked to call them—had put serious work into revamping Astrum Force. It was no longer a totalitarian dictatorship, and the missions assigned to its Star Units, or stray mercenaries like us, were more focused on humanitarian efforts than colonialism.
Case in point: Rescuing kidnapped alien babies and returning them to their natural habitat.
Wherever that is…
As if knowing I was thinking about them, Pedro made an adorable trilling sound and snuggled closer in their makeshift sweatshirt baby carrier.
Ugh.
“Hopefully, that creature isn’t imprinting on you,” Ziggy muttered as he strode beside me down the bustling Gumdrop Pass. “It will make the handoff difficult.”
I sighed, doing my best to ignore how indifferent he sounded about the situation. Zig used this same emotionless tone inmostpublic situations as part of his mercenary mask, but I’d thought a furry ball of cuteness might crack his stony exterior.
After all, I managed to do it!
In the end, he was a product of his orphaned upbringing, although he’d come a long way from the emotionally constipated, Deathball-playing ‘hero’ in a stolen skinsuit I’d first met at my family’s house back on Earth.
Nowadays, hetalkedabout his feelings—occasionally and only to me, and mostly when Dr. Micah was in session—but he wastrying.
Baby steps.
So, while I didn’t necessarily expect him to leap at the chance to fulfill my Mando and Grogu Space Daddy fantasy, I was determined to get at least one photo of them together before my dreams died.
“You’re right.” I dug Pedro out of their nest and held them out for the taking. “Maybeyoushould transportthe assetfrom here.”
Ziggy instinctively shrank from the bundle of joy, but as soon as he realized I was serious, he sighed and dutifully let Pedro climb him like a tree.
The instinct is real.
Once the little creature reached Zig’s shoulders, they draped themselves around his neck like a scarf—creating the perfect photo op.
“Must you?” my man grumbled as I took at least twenty rapid-fire photos with my phone.
“Yup!” I cheerfully replied, taking twenty more.
I’d made it my mission to get the two of them acclimated to one another during our short flight back to Stellaria, mostly through the same form of trickery I was using now.
Forced proximity and big puppy dog eyes.
While they weren’t the besties I’d hoped for—or the scrappy father-son duo I’d dreamed of—at least no one washissinganymore.
Including Zig.
