Krystal
The noises in the all rank’s bar were a distant hum to Krystal as she tapped away on her tablet, a line of concentration between her delicately arched brows. The clatter of a glass being put down on the table in front of her made Krystal look up sharply and drop the tablet in her hands. “Laila! You scared me.”
“We’re in a bar, Krystal. Put down the tablet and stop working, for once. OK?” The smile on her sister’s face was at odds with the seemingly harsh words.
The all ranks bar was not Krystal’s favorite place, it being loud with so many people talking and music playing. Tonight was no exception. There was a group watching, of all things, football, and at the table next to them someone had pulled out something that looked like a chess set but had three tiers. The game appearing to involve lots of standing and shouting at your opponent.
She was glad Laila had wrangled them a table, otherwise they might have had to stand at the bar. As it was, her feet didn’t reach the floor on this giant chair. That was the problem with being barely over five feet tall on a ship that was made by giants; everything was huge.
Krystal pushed back a stray lock of curly brown hair that had slipped past her headband and rolled her eyes at Laila, but she picked up the tablet and, turning, put it in the shoulder bag that was hanging on the back of her chair. “All right, though I was just thinking of a tweak to the cloak that’s been giving the pilots so much grief…” she trailed off as she paused, brown eyes unfocused as she chewed on her full lower lip. There had been an issue with how light was being refracted. The Taureans had approached the problem in a way that Krystal had seen as interesting, but not optimal. So she’d made some changes of her own and was almost ready to test the prototype.
Laila snapped her fingers in front of Krystal’s face. “Earth to Krystal!”
Krystal blinked, focusing on her sister. “Huh. That doesn’t really have the same ring to it anymore, does it?”
“I suppose not. Here,” her sister pushed a foaming neon green drink toward her across the small table. “Drink up.”
Krystal picked up the glass and sniffed the liquid, her nose wrinkling at the smell that reminded her of rotten eggs. “It stinks! And it looks like—”
“Engine coolant. I know. Give it a go, OK?” Laila laughed at Krystal’s wary expression and held her glass up. “Bottoms up!”
Screwing up her face, Krystal held her own glass up and took a deep breath. Since leaving Earth, Krystal had been pushed so far out of her comfort zone that she often felt adrift. Taking a small sip of the drink, she exclaimed in surprise at the taste. “Oh! It’s actually not too bad!”
“Yeah, sipping is the way,” Laila muttered under her breath.
“Hmm?”
“Never mind. So, how are you settling in? I know I haven’t been around much this past month. It’s been pretty busy for Zac and me with… stuff.” Laila waved her hand around absently.
Krystal knew there was a lot about Laila’s job that she couldn’t—or wouldn’t—talk about, and long experience showed that pushing Laila would get her exactly nothing in return, so she let it go.
“This is going to sound stupid,” Krystal began, looking down at her hands as she absently picked at a torn edge of one fingernail.
“Nothing you say would ever sound stupid, Krystal.” Laila tilted her head. “Is everything ok?”
No, it hadn’t been ok for a long time.
Krystal hadn’t wanted to worry Laila, not with everything she had gone through recently. Surviving the attack on Mars by the Xakul, being sent to the other side of the galaxy to join forces with the Taureans… Krystal’s problems had felt insignificant in comparison. And then when Laila had met Zac and had finally found a small piece of happiness, well, Krystal wasn’t about to unburden herself and spoil that for her only family member.
But now? Here she was, on a spaceship for crying out loud, and she still felt unsettled. It didn’t seem to matter where she was. There was something missing.
“I thought it would be different,” she blurted, avoiding Laila’s gaze.
“Different? What would be different?”
“I thought that once I was away from Earth that I’d feel more at ease, you know? I thought getting away from all the protestors and the riots would help. But I don’t think being on Earth was the problem.”
Laila cradled her drink between her hands where they rested on the table. “What was the problem?”
And wasn’t that the million-dollar question? Working in a factory for Space Force had been Krystal’s job until a few months ago when Zac had organized for her to join the engineering team on the Zataras. And itwasan enormous improvement from her life on Earth, which had become… difficult. Protestors were targeting people who worked for Space Force, and even civilian contractors like Krystal weren’t safe. Every day, she wasn’t sure if they would accost her as she tried to enter the factory. It had become so bad that a military escort had to be used, that had been after one worker was badly injured.
At best, the protestors didn’t approve of what they saw as interference in Earth’s affairs by an alien race, and at worst they didn’t even believe that the Taureans and Xakul existed. And the second type was the most dangerous of the protestors. Some groups had even been named terrorist organizations after starting riots.
It was the Mars Incident that started the entire debacle. The Xakul had attacked the red planet, destroying almost the entire human colony. The survivors had been sent to join forces with the Taureans, which played right into the hands of the conspiracy theorists who claimed the lack of survivors on Earth was evidence the attack hadn’t happened, or that nobody had died, and even that the Taureans did not exist. It didn’t seem to matter what evidence was put forward by Space Force, it still wasn’t believed.
But Krystal knew all too well what had happened. Laila had been one of the few survivors of the massacre and, for her troubles, Space Force had sent her to learn from the Taureans how to defeat the insectoid Xakul. Then Laila had been declared dead by Space Force while on a mission with the Taureans. Useful as a pawn and nothing else.
Any goodwill Krystal had for Earth’s military had gone, and all she’d wanted to do was to join her sister. And it didn’t matter if it was in space. It had taken a few months, but she had finally made it, with Zac’s help.
