I woke long before I managed to draw myself out from under my bed. Slowly, I crawled from beneath the furniture while disregarding the mound of blankets I had used to keep myself warm.
My first act was to look towards the vents in this room. There were two of them, one for heating located near the floor on the opposite side of the room and one for air circulation that was built into the ceiling.
Neither of them looked to be tampered with and I told myself that the demons I had seen so long ago were mere hallucinations. Nothing was going to tear through those grates and come for me, at that point I hadn’t eaten in weeks and was under a great deal of stress. It wasn’t monsters.
The fact I still slept hidden beneath my bed meant that I obviously didn’t believe it, but even days after we had seized control of the ship no one had reported anything out of the ordinary. There had been no disappearances and everything was as safe as could be expected for a ship of slaves on the run from an evil empire. Only a few stabbings had taken place and those had been resolved.
I did not need to get dressed, I only had one outfit and the aliens had no concept of my own biological extremities that other humans would find unacceptable. Despite this I slid my unwashed shirt over my head and jammed my arms into it as fast as I could. I could no longer stand the idea of going without clothing-
Being tied to a table-
I banished the thought and felt at my pocket to ensured the fallen’s identifications were still with me. Then I strode out of my room and made my way down the halls. At this point I was trusted to walk to my workplace by myself so I didn’t need to wait for my guide.
So I made my way towards the workshop I had been assigned to. I breathed in the recycled air as the fluorescent lighting bore down onto me. The ship felt unnatural and part of me rejected my artificial surroundings, screaming at me to escape this place. My base instincts to flee from here did not account for the vacuum outside that would rip the life from my body in a heartbeat.
My claustrophobia faded somewhat as I spent time on my feet, but never completely left. I had a thousand things I hated about this ship and for each and every one I had a reason to ignore it. The process of walking in a wide berth around every vent while stopping myself from obeying my instincts to rush out of the nearest airlock into the void’s cold embrace left me tense at the best of times.
Eventually I made it to my destination, I rapped my knuckles against the door a few times and waited for someone on the inside to open it for me. I was then greeted by one of those small insectoids, this one I knew personally.
I waved, “Hello Zrickick.”
“Hello John.” he answered. “Still no key?”
“They have said key cards are not a priority when I asked.” I answered. “It’s going to take them a while before they can get into stuff like that.”
“Keycards do not take long to make at all, there is usually a handful of mechanic keys premade for engineering bays like this.” The insectoid responded. “They need only assign one to you.”
“Yeah, I guess they are probably… Busy.” I scratched at the back of my head.
“It is much more likely that they do not like you or do not trust you with a keycard, John.”
“Yeah, probably.”
“I do not think it is a probability. They made all of us keycards John, that is how I got in and how I am letting you in right now. I believe they are not making you one because you are a primitive species.”
“Okay I get it. Thanks.”
“You are very welcome John. You should learn to pick up on things like this.”
“Right. I heard the suit should be done today?” I asked to change the subject.
“It was done yesterday, we just told them it would be done today so that they wouldn’t have us start testing forty minutes before our shift ended.” The insectoid started walking towards the far end of the machining bay.
The bright orange suit stood out even from across a warehouse. The mere color was enough to stand out in the sea of drills and grinders. Few things in here were painted, even less of them were a fluorescent orange designed to be easily seen from space. If there was an emergency or structural collapse I would stand out from anything other than other hazard suits.
“Few species have full body protective gear like this. You and the irvole will be the only ones on this level.”
I turned to the small green figure beside me, “Why don’t you have a suit like this?”
“I had parts of my head’s carapace removed at adolescence and replaced with this helmet, my body has natural bone plating elsewhere.”
The insectoids did have that going for them, they looked fairly well armored.
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“Will it protect against industrial accidents?”
“No, but the bone plating is too heavy to combine with proper protective gear. Our efficiency will drop to unacceptable levels. That is why each of the work stations have protective covers beneath the tables. We can pull these shutters down after we crawl under them, see?”
They pulled on the bottom of a table and a metal plate out, they then demonstrated how it could swing down to turn the table into a sort of bunker. I made a mental note in case I needed to hide from something.
“So you guys can’t wear protective gear?” I asked, “Nothing they make properly fits you?”
“The shape is not an issue, the weight is. Some tasks do require protective equipment and usually those are performed by another species or we will wear the equipment for a short time and change out workers rapidly. Sometimes we may even have a surgical procedure performed to remove our exoskeleton so that we may retain body armor.”
That made sense I supposed, I hadn’t really thought about how useful having different species to fall back on was from a planning perspective. It seemed almost like the games I had played as a child, a specialized character combining both racial features and class features to become an optimal build.
We approached our workstation, one positioned towards the far end of the room. I moved to my suit and ripped the straps up, loosening the chestplate so that I could pull it out and to the side revealing an opening guarded by a zipper. There were three zippers functioning as an airlock.
“These are very easily damaged.” Zrickick stated, “These always break first, usually very small breaks. If they are bent they will no longer be airtight. Report tears or bends in the metal immediately and check this first if you seem to experience pressure loss.”
I nodded, “Understood.”
I pulled the zippers open, then stepped into the suit. First shoving my feet into the boots, then pushing my arms through the sleeves, and finally pulling the helmet over my face before I went to tighten all of the various zippers and straps.
To allow the shoes to get onto my feet I had straps similar to the ones on my chest plate, leggings and on the interior of my helmet. It allowed me to strap my head in place to prevent the thing from shaking as I moved.
Finally I stepped back and observed myself in the mirror.
A bright orange jumpsuit with a small backpack soldered onto the back-plate. The extra thickness and the way it jutted out along my sides hinted at armor plating, though there wasn’t a way to be completely sure from looks alone.
Gretch lifted his large white furred arm and slapped me in the chest, eliciting a thunk.
I felt the impact in that my front plate vibrated in sync with the strike, but it did not do anything more than force me to find better footing as I stumbled backwards. It was much less than I expected given the size difference between me and the thing that looked like bigfoot.
The irvol nodded, then balled up his fist without warning and blurred his arm forwards. The impact knocked me onto my ass after I went stumbling backwards to try and keep my balance. I fell and slammed by head into the metallic workbench that Zrickick was sitting on.
“Jesus dude, warn me next time.”
Gretch tilted his mane, “That would invalidate the point of the test, wouldn’t it? Did you feel the strike?”
“No- No I think I’m fine, Jesus fuck.”
I reached up to pull myself to my feet, the metal plates sunk into my stomach and the weight on my back pulled me down. I ended up failing at sitting up to right myself, so I changed tactics and rolled to the side and pushed myself to my feet.
“The loss of mobility seems minimal.” Zrickick continued kicking his feet back and forth, the little insectoid was eating a bowl of nutrient slop through an openable hole in his mask. “What happens if you put him on his head?”
The bipedal gorilla grabbed my feet and pulled a shrieking me into the air.
“Now drop him, check to see if the helmet shocks work.”
Gretch nodded and then I fell straight onto my head. The suit crashed against the floor with the sound of a dropped bowling ball and I flopped onto the ground with an impact that knocked the air from my lungs.
For a moment I curled up, cradling my stomach in a fetal position. Then I muscled my way back onto my feet.
“What the hell?” I growled.
“We do need to test for suit effectiveness. Better to learn it does not work here than elsewhere. It seems to disperses force properly.” Zrickick thumbed through an empty bowl of nutrient paste. “Do the knee pads work? Run and then slide forwards on your knees over the metal ground and we can check if the skin is intact beneath.”
For a moment I started to ask if he was joking, then thought better. The alien seemed to be remarkably straight forwards. I ran forwards and managed to slide a few feet and felt no obvious pain. Whatever the bright orange material they used to cover everything was, it showed no strain from being dragged under me.
“It properly protects from abrasions. That is good, I did not know if the pads were properly placed to protect your knees.”
I turned to the green figure on the table, “You didn’t know?”
It shrugged, “Knees aren’t that important. Do humans not regrow knees?”
“No. We don’t.”
“Well, it’s better to make sure they don’t get too badly damaged then.” It reasoned.
I quashed the feeling of irritation that began to rise from my stomach. Clearly testing the protective abilities of the suit was a priority.
Gretch, the yeti, put a hand on my shoulder. “We have a jump at the end of the hour. Why not take a break for a few minutes? Have you eaten?”
His translator seemed to work almost perfectly and I paused for a moment considering my responses.
“No, I haven't eaten.”
The yeti frowned, “That is bad. You need to gain weight.”
“I know-” I could barely manage to down the slop we had access to. “-humans don’t tend to eat in the early morning though.”
“You can start bringing some in to work with you. Eat it in small doses as you work.” The irvole suggested. “If you want I have found some other foods you may be interested in.”
Gretch pulled a drawer open and pulled out a small package. It seemed to be a small box covered in wax paper, though the yeti tugged at one end and tore it open revealing a brownish color.
Meat? He handed the block to me and it felt closer to wood. A solid block of compacted bits of flesh.
“Ackyon don’t like the paste much either, they usually bring bits of food along with them. I can’t stand the stuff, the chewing and whatnot feels weird on the gums. Not to mention this was probably some bugger’s ass before it ended up in your mouth.” Gretch explained. “You’re supposed to cut chunks off with this.”
He put a foldable knife into my hand, I looked between it and the block and then got to work carving a small bit of compacted dry meat to chew on. It tasted similar to most dark meats I had tried, if those meats had been thrown into a blender and then the resulting slurry had been cooked into a solid block and left out for a few days.
It tasted awful. I shaved the block down and devoured two handfuls of the stuff.
“We should be warping soon. Put the knife away and maintain a seated position.” Zrickick ordered.
I nodded while chewing on my cardboard like meat, I could see why the locals weren’t super interested in this of all things. I closed the knife and tried to give it back to the yeti who held up a hand.
“Keep it. I have more.”
When I went to pocket the blade I noticed an obvious problem, I did not have pockets.
The insectoid noticed almost simultaneously, “Ah! Prototype failure, we will need to add straps for bags!”
The yeti nodded, “Maybe a separate harness to go on the outside?”
Then the ground started shaking, like the worst turbulence imaginable. The workbenches and heavy machinery began wobbling, producing a metallic creaking symphony.
I tried to bite my meat block.