“Great. I’ll bring in the seedlings. You bring the barrels in here.”
The assistant dips his head, making the water in his bowl-shaped helmet slosh.
After I’ve loaded up my hoverlift with the racks of seedlings in their little tanks, I return to the dry dock to see the king fidgeting with his helmet.
“Uncomfortable?” I ask as I swap seedlings for barrels of fish junk.
If a catfish man can blush, he does. “We are new to this form, suit, and way of movement. All of it is uncomfortable.”
I pull my tablet out of my bag and extend it to him while his assistant finishes the physical trade of goods.
Once the king has paid, I add a message to the receipt. “I’m linking a reference to your payment confirmation of another species who has been in space a bit longer and has developed more comfortable gill respiration for terran movement. They are allies of the federation. So they are safe to contact.”
He thanks me and studies the notification on his wristband. With my hoverlift loaded, I return to my ship. I close up the ramp and begin moving the barrels into secure storage for travel.
My lift hoist seizes when it goes to pick up barrel two. I don’t have time to fix it now and lower the hoverlift to the floor. I close the containment doors and switch on the stabilizers inside, so I don’t have soup when I open them back up. But I’ve got another seedling drop off to do.
I connect the barrel I have unloaded to my fertilizer processor that isolates nutrients and burns off the stuff I don’t need, then make my way up to my bridge. Resting in the pilot’s seat, I belt in and confirm with the Xaethzion that I’m cleared to depart.
When I get the okay and ease away from their ship, something feels moreoffthan simple inflation and my hoverlift’s broken hoist. So I check the scanners.
It’s just a blip, a hint of a ship. A situation I’ve been in many times already. There’s a small Novark ship riding like a leech on my hull. The Xaethzions have two.
“Xaeth Command, Brynna. You have two enemy Novark vessels attached to your starboard side! Attempting to resolve. Passing starboard side now.”
I bank back toward their ship, bring online my quill gun defense system, find the closest to the first Novark leech, and fire.
The EMP spear system lacerates and shuts down the enemy ship. It breaks away and drifts aimlessly into space.
Missile alerts flash on my screens. I bank hard and pray my precious cargo can take the G Force. The weapons race past and disappear into the void, darkening when they’re out of fuel.
“Sorry! We’re not good at this yet!”
“No fucking shit. Let me handle them, please, or you’ll never see me again!”
I circle back for the Xaethzion’s big bubble of a ship and aim my quill guns at their last Novark leech. I shred them and watch them break apart in space, then I turn my gun on the one down my port side. It breaks away in a shower of sparks and pieces.
“What did they want?” The captain asks over coms.
“Novarks are more skilled Denarso. They ignore social rules, cultural and species customs, laws, and they do what they want. They’re like Nebs, but less united.”
“Thank you.”
“Work on your defense system. It needs to have three or four backups out here. Brynna out.”
I dart out into space to the meet-up point for my second delivery of the day. When I arrive, there’s no one there. But I might have an infiltrator on board with the recent Novark leech.
I scan space and find the ship I’m scheduled to meet with is about an hour out. With some time to prep the delivery, I bring my ship to a stop, switch on my defense systems, draw the gun from my hip, and then walk my corridors between the hydroponic greenhouse chambers, the arboretum, my freshwater and saltwater tanks, and check my germplasm repository. Everything looks to be in order after the Novark appearance. I find no signs of forced entry and no signs of humanoid life except mine.
As I walk back to my fertilizer room and begin working on the broken hover lift hoist, the lights of my ship go out.
“Son of a bitch!”
Backup systems kick on, barely lighting the glossy white passageways. Drawing my tablet from my armored suit, I check the ship to find it inaccessible. “What the heck?”
I grab my gun and flip my visor over my eyes to show me the creatures in every wavelength of light. It ripples down the hallway when I step outside. Each room that I sweep and find empty, I secure it with a code only I know.
It could be a different Novark, hunting me for revenge. It could be scavengers looking to snatch up the food growing in my garden. Maybe it’s nothing but an electromagnetic field in space that wasn’t on the map. But when I round the corner and see the figure down the row of Fringe Foods, popular among very distant planets, I lock up.
