I laid on the ground clutching at my bones.

A four foot belly flop onto a metal floor was not a pleasant experience. I focused on stopping myself from vomiting, clenching myself into a ball for a moment to avoid the wrath of my caretaker. When my breaths stopped coming in gasps and I felt the adrenaline lose its touch I uncurled to see the eight limbed alien fixated on the computer.

Had I broken it? The thought of being responsible for damaging valuable equipment settled a primordial fear into me which filled my stomach like a lead weight. Surely, if I had done something terrible I would be punished equally harshly.

The longer the creature stared at the computer screen the more I fixated upon my mistake and my sureness of punishment.

Eventually the alien switched its eyes from the screen to me and for a moment it blinked, as if suddenly remembering that I was there. It wrapped a limb around its translator and I waited for the accusations.

“Was this terminal unlocked when you entered?”

I paused considering, I actively had no idea. I could not read the words on the computer and had no idea what I had typed in.

“I do not know.” I answered, turning slightly to brace for a blow that never came.

“Was the screen glowing?”

“Yes.”

“What color?” It drilled with the same bored translated monotone. The rapid changing of colors from red to yellow to its normal rocky-tan coloration gave away how emotional this conversation seemed to be even if I did not know what emotions.

“The screen was blue?” I ended up practically asking, I slowly moved closer and gestured to the keyboard. “I pressed these keys right here.”

“Interesting.” The monotone was backed by the octopus swinging a gigantic eye towards me. “Why did you choose those keys in particular?”

I felt towards my chest and winced, the wounds had been torn open again. Blood clung to my hand as it trailed down my shirt. I grasped the cloth and pulled it upwards revealing my bleeding wounds.

The squid’s eyes narrowed. “They cut the password into you? Why? Could they not write it onto a wall?” They paused for a moment considering, “What do these other symbols mean? Only some of these are letters.”

“I don’t know.” I answered.

“Did they tell you this is password? Is this to ensure you live? To make you useful?” By the end the alien was no longer asking me, but seemed to be simply projecting questions. “What do those other symbols mean?”

“I don’t know.” I repeated.

I sensed that there was something I was missing, an objective currently invisible to me. The octopus did not seem to care that I was on a computer as much as that I had managed to get onto it. Was it worried I now had access, or was it something else?

“Stay here, do not touch-” The octopus blinked, then flashed red for a moment. “Follow me.”

I began following, the creature walked out the door and waited for me to walk in front of it. Then we made our way down the labyrinth of halls and corridors.

~

“The primate knew the password? Why did it not tell us?”

I stood beside the human, who I had placed into the corner to prevent him from touching more things.

“He did not know the password, one of the unknown operatives during the ship invasion cut the password into his skin.”

My uncle turned a shade of green, then changed to a more questioning teal color. “But why cut it into the primate? And why so much, do the stars and the other symbols mean something? It is not in any language I know of.”

I considered the same questions, turning blue myself for a moment. But then I had wondered about the subject while making my way back to the bridge. The odds of me suddenly having a breakthrough in the next few seconds were low.

“We should focus on the more important issues.” My aunt decreed. “The alien can wait. If we can access the captain’s seat then we can begin mineral extraction.”

Mineral extraction was of course the first step to ship repairs and standard operation. Micro-meteors were a constant source of wear on the outside of the ship; we would need to begin maintenance immediately and jump to a new system as fast as possible. If the Ackyon discovered news of this slave rebellion they would send actual military forces to make an example of us.

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

“It is imperative for us to begin operations immediately.” My aunt began. “Begin equipping teams of miners, locate nearby sources of material, I want at least seven tons of hull plating in our storage bay in forty eight hours- no, wait.”

She pointed to me and one of my hearts skipped a beat. Surely since I had been the one to discover how to access the computers I would be given an important task, good work being rewarded with more work was a standard corporate decision after all.

“Continue equipping the human. Ensure he is trained in a simple task, and while doing so investigate his symbols.”

My hearts dropped, I was just given more busywork. “I am old enough to be fitted for equipment. I should be able to-”

Her glare was enough to silence me, and I subconsciously backed towards the door.

“This primate is favored by those rebel operatives who eliminated the Ackyon. Follow him and see if he has anything else we need to know.” She ordered.

I wondered for a moment if this was busywork, a distraction meant to take my attention so that I did not involve myself in more deadly industrial activities. The reasoning was logical, but then most lies needed to make sense to be believable. Surely there was someone older and more experienced to decipher these runes if it was so important? But then, was the maintenance and resource acquisition the more important duties that demanded our most trained individuals?

My question appeared to be self defeating. I did not believe my task was important, thus no matter what task I had been given I would feel upset about the role. I was doomed to covet the roles of others.

“Understood captain.” I responded.

I made my way to the door and tapped onto the human’s shoulder before switching my translator on.

“Follow.” The box intoned for me.

The human shook his head up and down, “Understood.”

The device in my hands translated human-ese into Ackyon script and repeated his phrase into my comms system.

“Optimal. If you touch something again without my permission I will beat you mercilessly.”

I was unsure of how well my translator would interpret that, but the human did turn pale. Did pale mean fear or anger? Either way the most efficient use of our time would be to go over the procedure on the way to the ship’s drafting room.

“I am in command of creating your hazard suit. I will be making your helmet first, as damage to your brain lowers productivity more than damage to any other body part. Thus I will need to measure your head’s bone food-processors and how your mouth flaps move.”

The human said, “Understood.” which translated to a sort of affirmation. But more than that I saw the way his head moved up and down, was human-ese partially verbal and partially gesture? His face colored sometimes to display emotion.

I took note because while it didn’t seem relevant I was currently in charge of the human segment of our command structure.

I turned left when we reached an intersection and then glared at the human until he made the same turn. We were angling towards our drafting room which was slightly down the hall from the machining workshop. Since I now had computer access it meant that this suit would be a synch.

The door whisked open and the human paused to stare at it, before hurriedly following me into the shop.

Instead of working off of mere pictures like I had tried, I could now make a three dimensional model of the human. I pulled him closer and began wiping my limbs across his body, trying to get a feel of his bone structure.

“What are you doing?”

“Quiet. Let this happen.” I ordered.

“What? No-” The human started slapping at my tentacles before he pulled away and tried to run from me. Did he think I was going to eat him? That was stupid, raw meat carried all sorts of parasites and undocumented xenos had a high chance of poisoning you outright. They seemed to always hold far too many rare vitamines.

“Be still, I need to feel one of your orifices.”

The human bit at me, but his jaws did not appear to be designed to cause crushing damage. It was not enough to get through the thick skin of my limbs. For a moment I casually wrapped around the flailing humanoid, eyeing the shelves on the left side of the room for the equipment I would need. I dragged the human over as I gathered a small computer-pad and a handful of trackers.

It would be best to perform this in a small empty room, but empty space was an anathema to ship travel. Rather than perform my tests in the cramped room filled with precious computer servers, data-pads and modeling equipment I took him into the hall.

I set the human down and handed over a limbful of small metal buttons, “Here, place these trackers along your leftmost limb. Especially on the joints.”

The human obeyed, nodding quickly and wordlessly. I watched as he began layering the small round devices along his arm.

“Include each finger joint.”

The human nodded again. Moving his head up and down was clearly an affirmation gesture.

With this I could now properly form a three dimensional model of his limb, a proper one that would allow me to more perfectly create blueprints for the machinists to follow.

“Now move your hand to mimic natural functions.” I ordered, bringing the data-pad to one of my eyes.

I watched as the human froze for a moment, questioning what exactly was expected of him, before he stuck his thumb in an upward motion.

“No, I said to perform a natural function with that arm.”

“As akin to what?”

“Mimic natural functionality.”

“What would that be though?” He asked again. “I don’t even know what tasks I need to perform around the ship. Could you at least show me?”

That question drove me to silence, for a moment I felt elation at how wonderful this worked out for me. I likely had been given charge of the human because I was considered too young to be involved in proper industrial work, but in all likelihood his equipment would need to be tailor made to protect him from said industrial work.

What was the other option, to have him sit alone isolated in his bedroom where nothing could fall onto him?

I rubbed a few limbs together, it may be possible for me to perform the human-task and the industrial-task simultaneously thus proving my superiority over my kin.

So I translated a message, “Follow me, you will be given a daily assignment.”

I could not take anything considered too risky like attaching mag-anchors to space debris. But surely he could perform simple jobs like raw material grinding, or even basic mineral transportation.

We entered one of the main factory floors, five nearly identical rows of machinery ran parallel to each other. The raw materials were collected from space in a nearby bay with void safeguards.

Here the raw asteroids and ship chunks would be broken up into a fine sand, separated and refined into useful building materials.

“You will be part of running this.” I gestured. “You and the other industrial workers will transform space debris into machine parts. I am in charge of directing you, and designing your hazard suit.”

The human seemed captivated by the size of this facility.

“Ah, so you are the manager in charge of this?”

It was such a simple leap of logic. Of course, if I was in charge of the human why would I not also be in charge of one of our resource extraction bays? I needed materials to design his suit, I would likely need a small team of machinists to perform the physical work. We would likely need to acquire said resources from somewhere, so why not harvest a high density asteroid or something?

“Yes. Wait here while I bring in a few sets of ten, no- a few hundred crew members. I will need to find workers experienced in this. And a few humanoids who share similar bodily design. And machinists!” I barely had time to translate my rapid color-code to a spoken language before I rushed out the door.

Then I thought better and dragged myself back in to wrap a limb around the human. He clearly had a habit of playing with machines