Throttle Seven

Ahvie didn’t know what to make of the strange sentients that had shown up at the door to her dock.

She had fully expected Krison to murder them. The osel was basically untouchable, at least on this station and around the dustball below.

Ahvie knew better. She might have been nothing more than a lowly clanless mirian, but she had some common sense to her. She had been to hundreds of stations, sometimes going back and forth between two star systems to deliver something particularly lucrative, and sometimes she had to jump from system to system to arrive at some far-flung destination.

She knew what little people like Krison were like. The osel was high off of his own digestive gasses.

He had shown up to threaten her, to scare her into compliance. Not to drop out of the race, of course. The osel would look bad if no one showed up. No, he threatened to make her life terrible if she so much as dared to try to win.

It made her heart beat faster, and her tail wanted to lash out.

At least, it did that once the osel was long gone. At the time, she had been so scared she thought she might turn tail and run back to her ship, malfunctioning life-support processors be damned.

The Dirah system was a hole anyway. She could pull on a suit and hope that she had enough breathables to make it to the next system.

Her contract had been to carry biowaste over to this station; every day she ate into her reserves in a way that was deeply unpleasant. Already, she’d lost several Fed-standard days worth of wages.

She had cursed the planet and its backwards location at length. All the things that made delivering here worth it had come to bite the tip of her tail. No one had the parts she needed, and no one wanted to deliver them for anything resembling a reasonable price.

But then the strange sentients had shown up.

One had a bright jumpsuit, not too dissimilar to the suit Ahvie herself was wearing under her sweater. It was covered in strange logos in a language that Ahvie didn’t know. Then again, other than Federation standard and a mix of Mirianian clan tongues, she didn’t exactly recognize that many languages. It wasn’t too uncommon to meet someone who didn’t speak Fed-standard out in the tail-end of the galaxy.

The other wore a long garment over an armoured body. It was strange, like a skirt that started at the shoulders and swept down, with a slit down the front. Ahvie had seen similar garments before, but never with that kind of cut. The hood was a little more common. The amount of weapons they carried was… not.

A warmech? That seemed unlikely, though the sentient was certainly intimidating enough.

Maybe they were one of those truly tiny sentients that build large mobile machines for themselves. Or one of those mineral-based races, like the lonzi? She didn’t quite know, but if travelling a lot had taught her one thing, it was that there was a lot she didn’t know.

That the sentients were there for her job offering was strange. She didn’t expect anyone to want to take up the offer when it was so clearly a terrible deal.

That the sentients were carrying very, very illegal weapons so casually was also strange. But then, Krison and his buddies were armed too.

Maybe he’d report the sentients, but that might mean admitting that he was carrying that kind of thing too. Ahvie thought it unlikely.

She escorted them into her hangar while rubbing at her face. Nothing had been broken. The mirian were a delicate people, but they were also light, which counted for much when one received a blow to the face.

“Ahvie presents the Slow and Steady,” Ahvie said. In reality, there was a string of numbers in the name, but that wasn’t very interesting, and it wasn’t common to have two Slow and Steadys in the same system at the same time. “Ahvie owns this vessel and uses it to transport goods across the galaxy.”

The sentients looked suitably unimpressed. The more meaty of the two looking up at her big hunk of a freighter with undisguised curiosity.

The fleshier sentient said something in its strangely rhythmic, but still guttural language, and the larger machine-sentient replied right after.

“Ahvie,” the smooth robotic tones of a translation device said from the metallic sentient. Ahvie almost jumped.

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“Ahvie is listening, yes,” she said.

“First, might I inquire about your pronouns?”

Ahvie wasn’t insulted. Her species were bi-gendered and had some dimorphism, but it wasn’t always obvious to others. The scent of a male didn’t matter to those who had no noses, and not every race could see the difference in colour of fur patterns. “Ahvie is a potential mother,” she said. “You can address Ahvie that way, if your species has the same?”

“Thank you, Miss Ahvie. I prefer masculine forms of address, though gender-neutral is perfectly acceptable as well, and my mistress leans towards the feminine. A second query; does your vessel have faster than light capabilities?”

Ahvie considered the question. The sentient likely meant to ask if she could travel from system to system, which she could… though not while staying alive. Translations were a little tricky, at times. She had had more than one frustrating conversation that had her wanting to bite her tail off because of poor translation.

“Ahvie’s ship can’t, not right now. Ahvie’s in some trouble. The ship isn’t entirely functional, and Ahvie doesn’t have the resources to fix it. The plan is to participate in the Overflow Cup. The prize would allow Ahvie to repair her ship and get on her way.”

“What is the prize for the race?” the sentient asked.

Ahvie gestured towards the ship. “Parts. Ahvie needs those. As well as money. Ahvie is willing to share half of the winnings. If there are any winnings. But Ahvie must warn you, the competition is not easy. Come, Ahvie will show you her scrap racer.”

The two sentients talked some more, even as they followed Ahvie into the Slow and Steady’s hold. The sounds the meatier sentient made suggested that she was either impressed at the ship waiting for them within, or disgusted. She didn’t know enough about their species to guess.

“My mistress wishes to know if your racer has a name,” the sentient in the mecha asked.

A mistress? Was that the other sentient’s title? Or was this sentient a servant of some sort or another? “Ahvie hasn’t named it.”

That was a lie.

She had a name for it, but it was entirely unfit for civilized conversation. Many Federation citizens already looked down on the mirian for being quasi-nomadic and quick to settle in new homes; she didn’t feel the need to add to the specism by using crass language where others could hear.

She waited as the sentients spoke between each other, and eventually the one she had been speaking to turned back towards her. “My mistress expresses great interest in racing alongside you.”

“Ahvie is happy to hear that?” Ahvie said. So, the other one was insane. She expected any clear-minded sentient to take one look at her vessel and run for it. The thing was well-made, for something cobbled together from scrap and Lonzi spit, but it was still little more than a cockpit strapped onto some engines and a fuel tank, with a bit of armour added where she could fit it. “Ahvie is curious, does your mistress have any experience with this kind of thing?”

“Oh yes, my mistress is very fond of racing. Though she has never participated in this sort of race, she has tried several dozen different racing formulas. Most recently long-distance cross-system racing.”

Ahvie nodded. In her mind, she placed the other sentient in the ‘thrill-seeker’ box. A few species were like that, and as long as it was all done in moderation, there was nothing wrong with it. “Ahvie looks forward to racing with her, then,” she said.

Had she any other option, she’d take it, but as it was, she would take what she could.

“Wonderful! By the way, my name is ChaOS, and my mistress is Diana, Diana Danger Slowbane. I am certain that working together we will achieve great things, Miss Ahvie.”

“Ahvie hopes so as well. Do you want to see the ship up close?”

ChaOS nodded its head, and Ahvie assumed that it was a positive gesture. “Certainly. Forgive us for the need for translation, my mistress will have a better method to communicate shortly.”

“Ahvie doesn’t mind. Though… does Diana Danger Slowbane know Federal Standard?”

“She does not. And please, just Diana. The full name is something of a formality to us.”

Ahvie nodded, imitating its own gesture. “As long as we can communicate, Ahvie is sure that everything will work out.”

After all, the gulf between two species was rarely all that big, she found.

***