Air re-pressurized the Gerthtrude's cargo bay with a piercing hiss that stabbed at the ears as Jack cinched the final mag tether keeping the No Safety Measures secured to the deck with a grunt. She fit like a glove, a big glove made of steel and power and promised dreams. Jack sighed with relief as he twisted his helmet free one final time, tossing the expensive article aside with the care one usually reserves for left over trash or tax notices. A comfortable bit of space allowed the mechanic just enough room to walk around the craft and access every panel and system he could possibly need to, the man's eyes already sparkling with a near fervent desire to dig into the big girl's inner workings and learn everything he could about her.
"Hey baby, remember that ugly workboat from the other day? Well, let's just say, she's outta the picture." Jack winked at the No Safety Measures, chuckling as he unzipped his sweaty EVA suit. Of course, no response came from the silent metal, her fuselage as still as the day he'd first laid eyes on her. "I know, I know how it looks. And I get it! I see a pretty face and just toss aside my fling like yesterday's fad. But it's more than that!" Sucking air through his teeth, the love drunk mechanic leaned to place a hand on the shuttle's landing gear, his body shivering with passion and much too spoken desires. "It's like I just… I saw ya and I knew you were the one. Nothin' and nobody else can compare!"
"…"
"No no no, I swear! I'm not like that, this isn't some short-sighted thing. I can feel it, in here…" Jack pressed his forehead to the side of the No Safety Measures, his hands upon his chest. "Like magic, you and me. Everything came together to bring me back to ya. I can't wait to be inside you…" Jack cooed as Lix made her way down the slow lift, her face scrunched in discomfort at the sight of someone almost sexually rubbing her ship like some asylum escapee.
"You've got problems Jack."
"And I found the perfect gal to fix 'em." Terror laced the Kux'lar as the man wasted no time in scrambling to the massive nearby worktable, a diagnostics and reader pad in his hands before she could blink. Stutters and splutters flit from her maw as he began to unwind the long cables that would soon find their way into all manner of ports inside her ship, her ship, and there was no telling what he'd do. What he'd change! Would he be gentle? Would he buy her flowers first? Would he respect her wishes or be a brute? As with the first time she'd met him, Lix began to pace. One step one way, then one step the other, like a panicking animal, as he lowered the on ramp and boarded her home.
"Jack!" Lix followed, her claws scraping the cargo bay's deck before she leapt into the racing shuttle like a hungry predator on unsuspecting prey. "Um, w-what…" Surprise killed her words as she found the Human still in the entryway, his finger placed firmly on her scaly lips. A part of her wanted to bite him…
"I get it, yeah? I'm about to go rootin' around in your girl's guts. Let me. You hired me to do this shit, I ain't gonna fuck it up." A comforting arm wrapped around the Kux'lar's slender shoulders, pulling the still worried reptile through her ship to the cramped engine bay. "Besides, it's not like I'm gonna tear her down day one. I need to know how her insides churn. I'm just gonna be hookin' up some readers so I can get real time data on how she purrs." Lix pursed her scaly lips before clacking her jaws in rapid succession, the snak-snak-snak of her fangs bouncing off the steel walls like a pachinko ball. She knew she was being ridiculous; Jack had proven he could sling a wrench with the best of them, and this deep inner engine work was something the No Safety Measures needed if she was going to even dream of racing in the big leagues. Still… the No Safety was her ship, her home, her only friend for the past few years. Lix found her own tail in her clawed hands, the tip twisting about her fingers as she nodded.
"Right… sorry, it's jus-"
"She's your baby. She's mine now too. Like we birthed a big steel engine with a cockpit from one of your eggs or something." Jack murmured as he slotted wires from his reader into ports Lix hadn't even used before. "You lay eggs, right? Does that mean free breakfast once a morning every month if you don't bake a bun in the oven? Bah, never mind." He waved away her incredulous look, hefting the data pad he'd brought. "This little thing will forward me all sorts of juicy gossip on how your engine operates, down to even how much juice you're pumping into your manifolds per degree of thrust on the control module up in the cockpit." Gone was the carefree droll Lix was used to, replaced with an excited, almost ecstatic clip. "I can tell if the thrust is dirty like a two Roark whore, or if there's loss on top or bottom end, even the delay between command input and spark! Once I've got a baseline, I'll be able to tune her up to her most efficient settings and start leaning towards getting more power and maneuverability out of her. She won't just purr, the Safety Measures will sing!" Lix clacked her fangs again, her purview into ship maintenance failing woefully short of understanding anything the Human was talking about, but his enthusiasm was infectious. As such, she had the perfect words to encapsulate her blooming hope for the future under the headwind of this new partnership.
"Yeah, sounds cool." Jack simply glared at the fidgeting pilot, her toothy grin wavering and apologetic. "I probably should go fiddle with your navigation panel and route us to the closest station to the next race."
"I'll slave away back here in the dungeon." Jack grinned with a wink, turning back towards his work. Lix took that as her cue to leave, suddenly feeling… in the way. Ignoring the growing number of scratches on the Gerthtrude's decks, Lix returned to the cockpit with a growing pep in her paws. Things were looking up. When she'd arrived it had been terrified, alone, and wondering if she'd even make it to see the next day. Now she had a tried and true mechanic, and more than that, someone who appeared to be relatively street savvy and good in a tight spot. Her tail wrapped around her legs as the lift to the cockpit came to a shuddering stop, her fear giving way to relief as the raptor pilot skittered from the shaking death trap. Sighing, and making a mental note to ask Jack why his lift shook like it had an intrinsic need to send them crashing to the cargo bay next time she saw him, Lix padded over to the navigation suite to start the laborious process of routing towards the romantically named TRX-7789 Cargon and Co. trading outpost near the Kuppa Belt, a long ring of rocky asteroids orbiting a red star nearing the expansion phase of its life.
Faster than light demanded a little bit of help in the form of Twist Lanes, or Twisters; Large concentric rings that would link to a sister set at a predestined location somewhere far, far away. From her limited knowledge on quantum physics, the two rings would twist the space between them so that the area in one ring touched the destination in the other. In all actuality, a ship using a Twister would only move a few hundred meters forward or so before the Twister unraveled, leaving the traveler on the far ring however many light years away. Stations and planets were riddled with a massive array of Twisters that created webs of highways to and from destinations, and the traffic control systems in charge of organizing hundreds of thousands of jumps a 'day' were the only AIs in existence with full legal rights to eliminate any who would disrupt the function or damage a ring with the installed battery of high-powered rail-cannons. It was a science far beyond the poor Kux'lar's understanding. All she knew was how to use them.
A panel at the front of the cozy bridge came alight with an eye-catching, low intensity red glow. Lix tilted her head, padding over to gaze over the communications panel with interest. Someone was hailing them. Comms in space wasn't unusual. More often than not, other pilots would hail the raptor lady just to chat and chase away the loneliness of hours or days behind the stick… but this wasn't some minor request, it was a priority ping.
"Jack?" Lix tapped her tympanum to activate her ear bug, calling the man. "Might need you up here."
"Yeah, just got the alert. Who the hell wants to jaw at this hour?"
"It's the middle of the day cycle."
"Exactly, it's lunch time. Who the fuck calls during lunch? Actually… everybody calls during lunch time, usually right when my damn food is done. On my way." Curious, and with a bit of a sinking gut, Lix turned her attention to the cockpit's viewport, searching for any vessel that might be holding station nearby. Unfortunately, all her vision was dominated by was the expansive stretch of Koorka Station. Whoever was hailing them wasn't in front of the Gerthtrude.
"It might be someone on the station itself, quit being a worry wort." Lix chastised herself, huffing a warbling trill as Jack stepped from the lift. Leaning to reach the receive button, and squishing Lix against the back of the pilot's seat in the process, Jack accepted the incoming hail on a closed channel. He grinned as Lix pushed and shoved to no avail, opting to wriggle free from her Human prison instead and deliver a harmless kick to his shin, careful to avoid slicing the man open with her killing claw.
"This is Captain Jack of the Gerthtrude, go ahead with hail." Several terse moments passed before a clipped, sharp voice chattered over the line, the tone dripping with professionalism.
"Captain Jack, good day. I am Captain Ters Yotan of the Ring Raider. I'm looking for a lost associate of mine and word on Koorka is that you might know where she is." Lix flinched at the sound of Ters' voice, wriggling back between Jack and the pilot's seat to gaze out at the stars beyond, searching for the sleek racer that had nearly done her in.
"Well, I'm gonna need more than that, Cap. Lots of people come across my desk."
"Of course, the individual I'm searching for is a Kux'lar, female, marginally less than average height, red scales, and pilots a shuttle known as the No Safety Measures. I'm willing to pay handsomely for her whereabouts." Lix looked nervously back at Jack as she gnawed her claws.
"I did have a Kux'lar come through the shop…" He trailed off, his hand making its way to Lix's shoulder. "But she seemed skittish, terrified even. Koorka station isn't a place for heroes so I sent her along to some other sucker. That was… a day ago, maybe a day and a half." Lix hadn't ever expected the cold metal comfort offered in those mechanical hands to be so effective, but she found herself welcoming it. She also found herself bringing the collar of her jacket to her nose, each inhale of Jack's scent easing her nerves.
"Unfortunate, do you know you where you sent her to?"
"That's a negative. I just sent her on her way."
"I see, well perhaps these images I'm forwarding will jog your memory?" Jack set his jaw as a series of grainy images settled into view on his comms panel, each one a progressive view of him hauling the No Safety Measures into the Gerthtrude while she was tethered to the side of Koorka Station.
"Welp, that's pretty cut and dry." Jack began flipping switches, thrusting Lix into the pilot's seat. Her startled eyes grew wide until the controls were in her hands. They were completely different from what she was used to, each finger tracing a control or switch or stick. Jack snapped his fingers, pointing first to the large flight stick on her right, mouthing 'primary flight', then to the ball on its gimbal at her left, his lips reading 'maneuvering thrusters and drive.' Lix nodded, confidence welling as she gripped the comfortable flight scheme. "Look, I may or may not have who or what you're looking for, but I do know this fat bitch has sixteen eighty millimeters point defense cannons and about a metric ass ton of ablative armor. Anything you throw at me won't reach and if it can't be shot down, it won't hurt me."
"So quick to violence sir. I'm not here to pick a fight with an up-armored tub, I'm here for Lixistruzsias. I'm an honest pilot, how does six hundred Roarks sound for stuffing her in an escape pod and jetting her over to me?"
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
"Lookin' to make way more than that, buddy." Several loud metallic thuds echoed throughout the ship as Jack disengaged the mag tethers holding his transport to the station, his feet carrying him to the multipurpose panel currently displaying the fluctuating price of raw iron that he swiped away for PDC control. A flick of his fingers muted the comms panel, his eyes as hard as steel as he brought the sixteen powerful but short range PDC's online. "Space battle experience?" Jack asked, his fingers flying across a multitude of commands a Lix guided the ponderous vessel towards the proper Twister. "No, stick near the station, he won't play any games that risk damaging Koorka. Or so I hope. Fly along under the station's fuselage." Lix nodded, using the gimbal to change course.
"Not much experience in dogfighting or anything like that. I'm a racer, not a cop."
"Good copy, just listen out for my commands and keep her steady."
"R-Right." Lix glanced back at the man. His entire demeanor had changed from laissez-faire tranquility to a stern, sharp eyed countenance. It reminded her of the predators that lurked on the dark forest floor of her home world. The kind of beasts that snapped their jaws into unsuspecting prey at the first given opportunity and dragged Kux'lar woodworkers down to their deaths.
"She's got flight cams all over, give me twenty degrees yaw starboard, fly her with the strafing thrusters only. We've got more PDC's on her sides." Jack flicked his vision between his own feeds, searching for any vessel that was tailing them.
"We're getting painted, active scanners."
"I see 'em. Ten more degrees, keep on course. Belay that, starboard tilt fifteen degrees, switch to starboard quarter dorsal thrusters." Lix clacked her fangs as she frantically searched for the proper controls, adjusting their flight path to bring a mean, arrowhead shaped vessel into Jack's view. "That your stalker?"
"Yeah… That's the bastard. Careful, he's got a nasty laser emitter. Likes to melt drive bells of rival racers."
"He gets within two hundred meters and that green switch on the primary control stick will drop a glitter case. Shit sticks to emitter lenses like dust." Jack tapped several icons on his fire control panel, a pervading hum rumbling through the Gerthtrude as Lix watched her available power dip just a bit. "Gerthtrude to Ring Raider, I advise you break intercept and adopt a transitory course. How copy?"
"That's a negative." Came the tense reply. "Too much money riding on Lix's return. Either whole or in a baggie."
"All I needed to hear." Jack slammed the Ring Raider with a suite of active scanners, eight powerful point defense cannons tracking the fast shuttle as it began its screaming approach. The turret blisters swiveled, each eighty-millimeter cannon designed for both space battle and ground cover for mud driving troops bearing their fangs like starving wolves. "If he had a railgun we'd be in a tight spot, wouldn't we." Jack murmured as his metal fingers poised over several fire commands. A long, curving drive plume trailed the Ring Raider's approach, Lix biting her lip as she maintained course. Ters was a crack pilot, a boast he proved as he skimmed along Koorka Station's outer hull by only meters in pursuit. As instructed, Lix thumbed the gleaming green button on her flight stick, a THUMP echoing from somewhere down below. A sparkling cloud of debris expanded from the ass end of the Gerthtrude like an oil on the surface of water, sparkling in the star light and sending Jack's targeting algorithms into an aneurysm. That was perfectly fine, his face wrinkling in a grin as the Gerthtrude's tracking camera detected a searing line of heat blast from the nose of the Ring Raider and off into deep space. Visually, nothing had happened, but Jack knew that invisible beam of hot death would wreak havoc on his ship's armor. "Slow to thirty percent thrust, keep that roll." Jack barked as Ters slammed through the glitter, his vessel smeared with the twinkling bits of paper-thin metal.
"Standby, cover your ears!" Lix didn't even have time to ask why before a bone rattling BRRRRRRRRRRRRT vibrated her entire being in the pilot's seat. It felt as if the entire right side of the ship was about to shear right off into the void, her vision dominated by the smear of her camera feeds and eight, red hot lines of cannon fire rage that trailed after the fleeing Ring Raider. She watched as Ters banked, narrowly avoiding Jack's scarily accurate manual aim through the glitter cloud to spin below the Gerthtrude's belly, a proximity alarm blaring in her ears as the Human shouted once more. "Forty-degree roll, port side, I need a ten-degree yaw in the same!" Lix's mind obeyed before she herself even knew what was happening, her left-hand twisting and tilting the thruster ball as her right adjusted to the correct yaw.
BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRT
Once more Lix's vision split with the overpowering roar of the Gerthtrude's PDC battery, this time on the port side.
"We've got a hit, bogie trailing vapor!" Jack adjusted several settings on his panel, painting Ters' ship with a red outline on Lix's cameras. "Gimme speed, we're getting too close to the inner rings. We need to finish this or break away before the autocannons on the rich fuckers docking bays blow us both to memories." Several new alarms pulled the raptor's attention away from her new orders as the Ring Raider nearly tore itself in half with a maneuver that spun itself in its own drive plume, the shuttle slamming several burning lines across the Gerthtrude's ablative armor. "Plating is hot but holding, glitter is fogging up his lens. Decrease thrust, nose up!" Lix bit her tongue with a grunt as she pulled back both the gimble and the flight stick, her stomach tumbling in the all too familiar spin of heavy maneuvers in a gravity well, even one as slight as a space station's. Ters desperately tried to course correct, the cockpit blaring with scanner alarm that warned the Ring Raider was close to a cockpit lock.
BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRT
A cry of victory clawed its way from Lix's throat as she watched first four, then eight lines of eighty-millimeter chew through the forward nose of the Ring Raider, Jack walking the line of devastation back even through the headache inducing shaking to the rear of the shuttle. A brief flash, dampened by the cockpit HUD, reduced their opponent to an expanding cloud of gas as hefty rounds pierced the shuttle's engine bay and ignited the fuel within, the brief fire pathetically doused by the absolute zero cold and vacuum of space before the vessel was blasted apart by multiple hull breaches. Thankfully, away from Koorka station. All that was left of Ters Yotan was an ever-elongating cone of wreckage, off on a never-ending voyage to slam into something, somewhere, in a time Jack didn't give a flying fuck about.
"Eyes up for his friend, Momo or whatever." Jack reeled Lix's early victory back in, his eyes scanning his many cameras.
"Mo'Ona, and I doubt it. He's more of a carrion eater than a predator. But we shouldn't hang around." True to her word, Lix was already making way towards the proper Twister Lane, and queue, at a half burn. It would take nearly thirty minutes to arrive, a half hour that Jack spent in dead silence, his eyes glued to the cameras and pinging his active sensor array often. It wasn't until they were in the queue that the Human finally relaxed, setting the scanners to passive and leaning back with a stretch.
"Hooooo! Now that's a good ol' fashioned Koorka Station send off!" Lix attempted a wavering smile, her claws shaking as she came down from the adrenaline. Hesitant, she pulled away from the controls, stretched her scaly fingers, then tried again.
"Damn it…"
"I gotcha." Lix nearly screeched, she hadn't even heard the man approach. "Get up, do some jumpin' jacks, push-ups, run in place," He grinned, patting her shoulder as the pilot's seat swiveled to release her. "You'll get used to it."
"L-Lix is fine!" She snarled, nipping his metal hand as he helped her to her paws. "L-Lix can handle… this!" She waved about at the cockpit, though her trembling tail was still in the newly minted hole in the back of the seat. "Lix… I… need to be able to handle this."
"First combat action? You said not much, but was that your first?" His grin grew as the Kux'lar only nodded. "Then you did pretty damn good."
"You spoon fed me everything, I just followed instructions…"
"And you did 'em fine." Shoving his hands into her armpits, Jack lifted the reptile out of his way, jumping into the pilot's seat with a comfy sigh. "Ya didn't freeze, ya didn't fuck up the orders, and ya caught on how to fly a completely unfamiliar craft in the heat of the moment." His hands met the controls without looking as he grimaced. The seat wasn't quite as comfy as it used to be… "So, the rumors really are true. Asteroid racers really do try to kill each other outside of the races." Lix sighed as she began to squat, bending her digitigrade legs until the base of her tail graced the deck, then rising to her full, knee popping height. Over and over until she felt a pleasant burn in her wide hips.
"Yeah… I bet I have a freakin' bounty on my head from all the lost bets…" Jack grinned back at her, watching her squat.
Up.
Down.
Up.
Down.
"I'm glad we killed that bastard." He finally said when she looked away, purple coloring the spaces between her face scales. "He burned the shit outta my ship."
"We're going to have to deal with his death at the very least, in some way or another. Ters was a crowd favorite and one of the upper betting rings gatekeepers."
Up.
Down.
Up.
Down.
"Bounties… great." Jack leaned his head back as he idly guided his freighter forward in line. It didn't appear that anyone cared they'd just come from a space battle. In fact, such things weren't entirely uncommon around the station, though they often were conducted much further out.
"Speaking of bounties… you seemed to really know your way around a space fight." Lix tilted her head with a trill, apparently going for the record of most squats on the Gerthtrude's bridge. She was currently at twenty-five, and coincidentally, had already beaten the previous record which was zero.
"Yeah well, space battles are uh… a lot like fixing a ship you know? Just gotta find the broken bit and fix it!" Lix fixed the man with a stare, her squat slowing as he snapped his fingers. "Yeah. Used to run with a shitty crowd before getting to Koorka. Ain't important. So, we're heading to uh… the Kuppa Belt?"
"Yeah… TRX-Seventy-Seven-Eighty-Nine…" Lix trailed off, still piercing the man with a glare until she decided it wasn't her business… for now.
"Right, well, we still got about twenty minutes before we hit the Twister. Wanna head down to the galley and cook me up some Meelk?" Jack grinned, back at her, the crooked smile dispelling any lingering distrust she may have had. With a snort and a wave of her head, the Kux'lar padded off to the lift, her own stomach gurgling at the mention of food. However, it wasn't food on her mind when she rode the dark lift down into the similarly dim second deck. Jack had shown he was a scrapper, sure, but his performance during Ters' attack had been nothing short of… military. Maybe she was overthinking things… maybe that crate in his closet was just personal nothings… maybe she was just being nosy… Her scaly muzzle turned as her paws carried her close to Jack's quarters. It wouldn't take long… In and out, a quick peek, just to make sure her investment wasn't into some psycho. That was wise, right? That's what smart people did; They protected their future…
Lixistruzsias stopped in front of the Human's room with a grimace that made her hungry stomach churn.
"What am I doing?" She whispered, her killing claws tap-tap-tapping the deck harshly before moving on with a snap of her jaws. Maybe that's what smart people did, but it wasn't what friends did. Soon enough, the Kux'lar was rifling through Jack's fridge with a grin on her face, the Human's mysterious crate of secrets forgotten in lieu of glorious calories. Meelk was easy to make, in fact, and she hated herself for doing it every time, the product demanded you sing a jingle when you made the titular galactic meal. "Super wheat and vat grown meat! Add a little water and then some heat, it's Meelk!" Lix swung her tail and rear in time to the ambivalent song, glancing back just to ensure Jack hadn't snuck up on her as she grabbed a metal tin from his fridge filled with off white cubes. Pouring the unpleasant little squares into a portion tray, she found herself humming the tune as she added water to the fill line from the nearby sink. In moments, the cubes had turned into a white slurry reminiscent of sour dairy products. "Now a little heat!" She sang, tossing the tin in a convection heater and watching the gooey substance rise and turn a chunky red not dissimilar to her own scales. "Now for mine."
The process was the same, allowing for a moment where the Kux'lar's mind wandered. Soon, she'd be running her second race, and this time with an actual mechanic. How would Jack's inclusion change her run style? How would his adjustments to the No Safety Measures affect her precious racer? Trepidation and excitement warred within her to chase away the final vestiges of adrenaline and panic from the space battle, her head bobbing to and fro as she watched her own portion of Meelk rise like a growing bit of meat bread. Her smile wavered as the lingering specters of Mo'Ona, her possible bounty, Jack's possible bounty once the betting masters found out he was her crew member, and whoever else decided she was too new a racer to be placing in the upper tens hovered over her fragile good mood.
"No… not thinking about that…" Still, the Kux'lar couldn't shake the sense of foreboding, her claws grabbing the tins and returning to the bridge to deliver the meals, or Meelks, and to try out her favorite pass time on the Gerthtrude's camera suites, spaceship watching. Jack dug in with gusto, the man not having ate since the noodle shack. He'd continuously yawned throughout, only pausing to gently push the thruster control forward a bit as the line moved up.
"By the stars, I think we'd get there faster going sub-light." He groaned, using his finger to chase the final bits of Meelk crumbs around his tin. "Thanks, by the way, for the food."
"It's your food, I just cooked it." Lix mumbled, committing an ugly cargo hauler to memory. It was nothing more than a cockpit and crew hab, then a long spire with cargo container hard points, then an engine bay, the whole thing connected by a single elevator. It was terribly efficient but so ugly. She decided she was going to bully anyone she knew that owned one. Her long tongue slurped about her own tin with a grin as Jack yawned for the fourth time in as many minutes, the man nearly falling from the pilot's seat. "Geeeet. Go. Go nap. I'll fly."
"You sure?" He asked, blinking blearily.
"Yes." Her claws clacked the deck as she set her empty tin on the navigator's bench, nipping Jack's shoulder as he took too long to rise.
"Ack! Aight! I'm goin'!" The Human chuckled, rubbing his shoulder as Lix took his spot at the bridge. "Guess I'll catch some shut eye." His grin grew warm as her answer was a simple flick of her tail through the hole he'd made, his boots carrying him to the lift with yet another yawn. The darkness of the elevator threatened to lull him into slumber then and there, his eyes heavy as he fished his inhaler of painkillers from deep within his suit pocket. He couldn't wait to get out of his EVA and into a normal set of clothes… A deep draw of the narcotic gas banished the pain in his shoulders and head as he trudged towards his quarters, the siren song of a bed calling his name.
He'd almost missed the new claw marks in front of his door.
Jack knew every inch of the Gerthtrude, even the new scratches Lix was leaving everywhere, and these… these were new. These were deep. The Kux'lar had stood here and stressed. Narrowing his eyes, Jack marched into his quarters and flung open his closet, pressing his mechanical arms between the frame and the wall to haul himself up high to look at his crate. The small sliver of paper he'd squeezed between the edge of the box and the wall was still there. He'd quietly slipped it betwixt the steel bulkhead and the damn box during Lix's impromptu bed invasion not too long ago. Had she tampered with it, and then returned the crate, the slip of paper would have fallen. The sight of it still in place doused the sudden rising flame in his gut.
"Damn Jack, chill out dude…" He sighed, gently falling to the deck to trudge over to his bed, not even caring to undress. And as his head hit his pillow, he noticed with a grin, that his sheets smelled strange. "Ah… that must be what Kux'lar smells like…"