CHAPTER 13 - RESPITE

Permission was given. Radd introduced himself to Blup, and the two went down to the engineering section. Of course, every movement of the bquaa was watched over, to make sure no unfortunate incidents would occur. The tour was tightly controlled.

"You see, and this is the valve that controls the flow of hot water to the mess hall and showers, all the way up," Radd gestured to a tangle of pipes, "it gets heated directly by the fusion reactor. Even a lilly fraction is enough to run it up to any temp, so it's basically free," he said, adjusting his wiry black hair so that it wouldn't get caught up in something.

"But how do you replenish that water?" Blup tilted their head.

"We don't! The system is closed, so nothing needs replenishing. Waste– all waste, from crumbs of food to you know what– gets piped into this thing," Radd gestured to a panel labeled 'SCWO' in stenciled yellow letters, which looked like the curved side of a large tank embedded into the wall of pipes, "the supercritical water oxidizer. All of it gets reduced into a fine ash by superheated water under pressure, and then is used to feed algae that we make noodles out of, the algae also feeds fish that we make filets from, as a side to the noodles. The algae also provides oxygen. Ideally, the system, called CELSS, I forgot what it stands for, needs only heat as an input, of which there is plenty. Of course, it can break down, but any starbase does CELSS repairs."

Blup simply looked upwards at Radd, but he could tell they were very enthused.

"I thought this was common knowledge?"

"No no. Blup didn't know. Nobody Blup mind-shared with knew, as Blup lived with fellow friends only on the homeworld of Hyya. Then it turned out that Tyakuaa, name is the same as the star, just a few days ago, had a major dieoff of bquaa due to a famine because of hydroponic failure. So Blup and entire home hive went to Tyakuaa to help repopulate it."

Radd raised an eyebrow. "Huh. Was the resettlement ordered by someone?"

"What do you mean, 'ordered'? We just did it as soon as the news came."

"Oh right, I think I heard something long ago about your species being a hive mind. Is that why you refuse to say 'I'?"

"Yes. 'I' isn't something Blup identifies with."

***

Jamaad, immediately after getting ready for the day ahead, woke up Artur. The two commanding officers performed their usual patrol of the ship's corridors… in the process nearly crashing into Radd and Blup as they were returning from the engineering deck. The sight of the bquaa, while not disgusting or otherwise repulsive to the captain, definitely startled him.

"What the hell?" Jamaad said, "Why do we have this guy on board?"

Artur just leaned against the wall, furrowing his eyebrows, and waited for Grant to respond. The engineer told the captain what Elektra told him, of the illness, of the hiveship, and so on.

Jamaad sighed. First a small snail, then a big and sapient slug. Logically, the next step was to take a shipment of a cage containing a Kweljurran mammoth-slime. But perhaps this was the least-bad option considering the situation.

"I… I have no words. We have to talk to Elektra. Where is she, Ensign Grant?"

"At the helm, sir. About to go to sleep again."

Elektra was already exiting when the two met up with her in the doorway.

"Chief Medical Officer Elektra," Jamaad pointed his finger at her, "your actions, such as letting a civilian onto the ship because you decided that not doing so would 'harm relations' with a minor nation, are…" he spoke harshly.

…

Elektra was anxious. Would her good heart really lead her to punishment? Unlike Artur's accident with the exercise machine, this was well and truly intentional, with the possible consequences completely known. She lowered her head and awaited her fate, like a convict at the gallows.

"...a commendable show of flexibility where it is warranted: in a complex situation with no obvious answer," Jamaad smirked, his voice much softer.

Elektra felt as if a rock was lifted from her soul. She resisted the urge to hug the captain– professionalism prevented that of course– and instead simply smiled and said "Thank you sir."

"We have rules for a reason, but they can't cover everything. Clearly, following them would have caused far more harm."

Artur snorted. "You're a better person than me, Elektra. I would have told them to f… nevermind. I… actually don't know what I would have done. I'd likely have just dithered and then gave someone else the choice," he then coughed twice, "I wanna talk to that slimeball once my shift is over. Seeya two later," Artur waved to Elektra and Patch as they left the CIC.

***

Time passed. The situation in the system was still calm.

While the ship was not quite all the way to the edge of the system, Kuw and Rachel sat down for dinner together, at a quiet table near the corner of the mess hall. With five days passing since they last had actual food, and not the total dreck provided by the CELSS, they had decided to crack open some of the cans and bags that were bought at FE-01. Of course, with the desiccated state of the food inside, the contents had to be given to the cook so that he could work his magic on them.

"So, are ya happy with me so far?" Kuw said.

"I am, sweetie," Rachel leaned forward, placing her elbows on the table, "but I still think it's a shame that we don't get much time alone together, you know? Like, in private."

Kuw giggled. "Me toooo. But maybe that time will come soon."

Their tray arrived. For Rachel, a flat bowl of tuna chunks, cheese, lettuce, and potato slices, fried to a slight crisp. For Kuw, a tall, red glass bowl of some kind of spiky yet smooth and rubbery orange spirals floating in a scintillating liquid. A sickeningly sweet smell emanated from it, visible as tongues of wispy green fumes, completely overriding the subtle and mundanely pleasant fragrance of the tuna dish.

"What… is that?"

"Qoosu-kelku. I dunnooo how to describe it," Kuw said.

"I wish I could try it," Rachel sighed, "shame those enzymes that allow digesting alien food are a goddamn pipe dream. They can't get them to not end up digesting the stomach lining."

"Well, one tiiiiny spoon of the juice won't kill ya, just not more. I don't want ya to fall sick."

Rachel nodded and very carefully slurped up the contents of the spoon that was offered to her: just the liquid, not a single piece of a spiral. Immediately, she felt an extremely tangy kick, followed by a stinging punch that evoked the feeling of a million miniature needles being stuck into her tongue. She then swallowed, and just stared down at the table, her eyes wide.

"What? Wanna more?" Kuw said in a teasing tone.

The catgirl gulped. "How… do you eat… drink… this?" she coughed repeatedly.

"Dunno. How do ya eat that tasteless stuff?"

Rachel sighed. "Sorry. Forgot you're all about extreme sensations and stuff."

Kuw giggled again and half-stood up from her chair. "And I wanna make ya feel some extreme sensations."

Rachel blushed. "Can we talk about this after? Just not now while everyone's listening."

"Sooorry!"

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They began eating, talking to each other about various fairly mundane things between bites and sips, and sometimes caressed each other's hands. Their shift was to be fairly soon, so after dinner was over, the two had to go to sleep fast, in order to get enough rest.

However, when the time came to shower, they looked at each other and went into the same stall while hugging, and planting many kisses on each other's lips.

***

"Heh, this took longer than a shower would've," Rachel smiled as she walked down the hall to the quarters, her partner in tow.

Kuw trailed behind, grinning mirthfully.

They only slept for about four hours, and the ship-day was still not over. After taking in, respectively, extra-strong coffee and a double dose of stimulants, Rachel and Kuw followed to their workplace. The two previous occupants were already gone.

Rachel leisurely scanned the system, as had become routine by then. Still the same picture.

They idly talked to each other for an hour or so until the ship entered warp by Kuw's order to Patch. The jolts were fairly light this time, and so were the voices: this jump was to be small, only six hours, and would be into another bquaa system: Vkyaa.

"Why do all their names sound so similar?" Rachel said.

"Oooh, it's because of how most of their laaanguage isn't actually pronounceable. That's where that gurgling comes from. So all the English transliterations get shortened to the pronounceable parts, which sound almost the same because of how their laaaanguage doesn't have a lot of sound variety," Kuw explained.

"Huh. So, you know, the route is the route, Jamaad planned it, but why are we going to Vkyaa instead of going to…" she checked the starmap, "Ghouls' Lair? Wait, isn't that in the–"

"Oh riiiight, Jamaad didn't tell ya the new route, and you must've forgooot to update the one on your map. Want me to explain the next three destinations? That's as far as the route is planned, after the shortcut Jamaad decided to not plaaan so far ahead in case there are more complications. Wasted time."

"Sure."

"Vkyaa, a bquaa system, just more of the same really. Mournful Signal, territory of the Silent Empire, dangerous due to the Silents there, but it's such an important shortcut. Glubb-enn, capital of the Glubb-enn Domain, while Glubb-enn is currently in a state of civil war, the home system should be safe. Anyways, we're doing this tiiiiny little jump to minimize the time spent in the Silents' turf."

"So after this, we're going through the fucking Silent Empire, then a potential fucking warzone? Did Jamaad lose his marbles?"

"Why do ya think the Admiralty didn't just send a drone?" Kuw laughed, "Yes, the drone might have gotten there more safely, had strong encryption, and the per-system transit time would've been faster. But it would have to go aaaaall the way around hostile and dangerous empires that don't have courier access. It'd boooounce like, ya know, that ancient humie game where a little ball hits random things in a box. We'll get there faster than a drone would! Much faster! And less time taken meeeans less risk of Ilsh falling!"

"Huh. I wish they had made that clearer during the briefing. Or maybe I missed it during that long intro. The admiral was such an ass. Wuuwbeeksa was it? She really gives all of you relmai a bad name," Rachel said.

Kuw laughed. "Ya mangled that! And ya Terrans say we can't pronounce humie names!"

"Guess I shouldn't have expected that to be a one-way street."

***

19 Apr 2231

Patch had joined in towards the end of the jump. It was perhaps the crewmember with the loosest schedule of all, due to its synthetic brain only requiring very occasional resets and defragmentation, which took far less time than organic sleep, and thanks to superconductive batteries, recharging was very rare. One could have asked the question of why every ship in the StarNavy was not crewed by quantum AIs, but it was fairly easily answered: the Terran leadership, and particularly the Admiralty, was more than a little wary of replacing everyone with robots. It was a combination of distrust towards true AI and reluctance to replace organics with synthetics. Organics were, after all, good enough, and nobody wanted to risk an astro-mutiny, considering a warship's weapons or even engines could easily destroy planetary cities. The StarNavy was not to be trifled with.

A scan of Vkyaa revealed it to be a nondescript orange dwarf with no permanent planetary settlements, for the reason that there were no planets whatsoever, except for one single ice giant. It clearly did not win the accretion lottery. Naturally, there were very few ships here, mostly a few bquaa vessels.

Meanwhile, Elektra sat on a cot in the medbay. Blup was curled up on the floor at her feet. "So, you said the voices don't really affect you at all, but when the post-warp jolt happened, your whole body twitched in a weird way, repeatedly. What was that about?"

"Blup didn't twitch," they said.

"I saw it happen with my own eyes, and then you passed out for five whole minutes."

"Nope. Nope. Nope. Didn't happen!"

Elektra would have raised an eyebrow if she had any. She pulled out her datapad and consulted the database. There was no confirmed record of bquaa experiencing short-term memory loss as a result of post-warp jolts. However, information on bquaa physiology was scarcer than equivalent reports about other species, due to the poor state of affairs in the Collective and the obscurity of the species. She did, however, find some reports by bquaa travelers that matched up with the description.

"I won't argue," Elektra said, "Anyways, to change the subject, you mentioned mind-sharing a few times before. What is it like?"

"Did you know bquaa slime actually has complex molecule-clumps in it that go into special nerve-holes other bquaa have and induce feelings and even simple thoughts? Mind-sharing is when two press together so that the feeling-induction is constant. Blup thinks it's better than talking."

"Huh. That does sound nice. It's a bit of a shame that, you know, I can't partake in it."

"Yes…"

A silence followed, but after a minute, Blup reached into their satchel with two tentacles to retrieve a small, thin glass circle. It was mostly clear, but had tiny black patterns on it resembling circuits, albeit recursive. When Blup rubbed the circle, the 'circuits' glowed purple for a brief moment. The disk was then handed to Elektra, who narrowly avoided cutting her fingers on the sharp edge.

"What is this?" she said.

"Blup can't explain in English. Circle's name not even say-able. You're going to the Silents, right? Open comms and show this to them when they come. Won't regret. Won't die. Probably. They'll leave."

"...huh."

"Every tenth bquaa near Silent border has a circle. We found a big cache of them, billions most likely, tens of years ago."

"Well, thank you very much Blup," Elektra smiled and patted their head.

She then told the bquaa visitor to try to not break anything before heading for the CIC. When she got there, Rachel and Kuw were in the middle of a rather one-sided 'conversation'. Kuw looked rather enthused despite seemingly not getting a word in, while Patch somehow looked bored out of its mind despite its lack of any expressive features.

"–and I tell him, that's the biggest cantaloupe I have ever seen. So then he, the rat guy I mean not the aadalu, shrugged and said–"

"Ahem," the two turned their attention towards Elektra, "Blup gave me this thing."

She explained the disk to everyone present, stopping Rachel's convoluted anecdote dead in its tracks.

Patch pinged and chimed twice. "Maybe I was too harsh towards that bquaa. But how will it keep the Gray Patrols away? I have a suspicion that the 'circle' is merely superstition."

"Well, Blup said, and I quote, 'they'll leave'. I think I trust them."

Some whirrs were heard. "Why?"

"Because they live here, and their civilization had contact with the Silents for decades. I suppose it's a worthwhile thank-you."

"And compensation for squatting here," Rachel said, "perhaps kindness wasn't the only reason to violate that rule."

Patch was in internal conflict. Part of its programming, self-instituted after its transfer from QDNE-32's lands to the Federation, was to obey all Terran laws without question. But here, not only was the law violated, but a tangible benefit was obtained from it: one that could protect the mission. That simply did not compute. The robot stayed silent, thinking and calculating its approximations of morality and ethics. It did not understand how its fellow quantum-AIs, those made by the Federation, let emotions and subjective morality suborn them.

***

Elektra and Patch soon officially took their shift, and it was under their command that the nearest bquaa vessel was tracked down to drop Blup off. It was a much smaller hiveship, perhaps only twice the size of the Pheidippides.

Jamaad and Artur were there to witness the visitor getting ready to leave as the ships approached. Elektra ran a last-minute auto-diagnosis to make sure that the Shriveling Pox indeed subsided to a non-infectious stage.

"You're healthy," she said.

The bquaa simply hugged her, squeaking softly. "It's sad to leave you, you were so nice to Blup. Will Blup see you again?"

Elektra tapped her chin. "I don't know," a sad smile crept up onto her face.

"Hey there slimeball," Artur said, "I couldn't find you last time I was off work. So I wanted to ask, do you guys listen to METAL?"

Chuckles resounded from the gathered crowd.

"What is?" Blup said.

"Is your BCI under the same protocol or whatever shit as Terran ones?"

"Blup has an adapter installed."

They shared temporary access passwords, and a large folder of music files was sent straight into the computer in Blup's head. The entire discographies of three obscure Canid bands. These files were then converted into the audio format usually used by the bquaa, and at the same time had their dynamic ranges adjusted.

Artur had a sneaky suspicion that this would be the reaction. The others certainly had more than a mere suspicion, but it was now too late.

'This reaction' was Blup flailing wildly, before bolting down the hall like a scared rodent. Everyone present looked at Artur. Elektra, in particular, crossed her arms and exhaled in deep frustration.