CHAPTER 8 - APPROACH TO ALACRITY

It was 8 PM when the ship arrived at the warp boundary of Eurydice. It was an orange dwarf much like Flamerider, albeit somewhat hotter, heavier, and thus yellower. The approach to Alacrity would take a shorter amount of time compared to the transfer out of Flamerider, thanks to Alacrity being somewhat further out from its sun.

The captain once again made an announcement that encouraged the passengers to rearrange the furniture, this time for the retrograde burn, which would reverse the direction of gravity. The evening and the next day were uneventful, and the Eurydice system was, from this distance, not outwardly different from Flamerider, even the star did not appear noticeably brighter.

23 Jan 2230

Lai went somewhere with Tiik for much of the day and didn’t return until night. Otherwise, not much happened aside from some more fun in Simulacrum.

24 Jan 2230

Early in the morning, while everyone was still in bed, Lai got a message from Amani. The first one. He hastily got up and showed it to Kayden.

"It’s in… I can’t read those hieroglyphs. Can you turn off the translator?"

"That requires me do go through three menus. Laggy menus. Stupid thing is old, the processor is aging. Naaah. And they're not hieroglyphs. They're syllabograms!"

Kayden sighed. "Then just. Translate it with your mad language skills then. Paraphrase the important stuff."

Lai squinted and rattled off "Well basically he’s saying Alacrity is too secure, being the sector capital, bhor them to unload the crates there, probably. He’s saying to, ya know, not get yaselbh in trouble by seeking them out, as they likely aren’t too aware obh ya and don’t consider ya a threat," the relmai then tilted his head and looked Kayden right in the face.

Kayden facepalmed. Of course Amani wouldn’t know about the tunnel incident! But it happened, and he had a creeping feeling that they did, indeed, consider him a threat now. Nheka had no real comment, Ray just gave a thumbs up, and Lai rolled his eyes.

"Well I told ya to not do it. I told yaaaaaa," he said, waving his hand in front of Kayden’s face. "Ya two will shoot yaselbhes," he then made a finger gun gesture and pointed it at his bare paw, "in the bhoot."

Kayden sighed. "Sorry."

"Sorry not sorry!" Lai said.

"That’s not how that phrase is used… whatever."

***

It was noon when, during Kayden and Nheka’s meal, they discovered that both of their food reserves ran out. When the last crumbs were picked out of the last cracker bag and the last bug legs were swallowed, Kayden sighed deeply. He still felt like his stomach was empty, his appetite exacerbated by the strain of high gravity.

"Well, I don’t want to starve for a whole day and I’m still hungry," Kayden then looked at the door and pushed a button to open it. "How about you, Nheka?"

The chohjozra silently stood up and walked outside with her human friend.

The mess hall, colloquially called the kitchen, was a large, narrow room, located in the ring. It was long enough to have its floor visibly curve upwards, much like the museum back at the spaceport, and lined with three rows of plain, utilitarian square metal tables with four chairs each. A fishy smell permeated the air of the establishment, one that the air filtering system could not remove faster than it emanated from the kitchen proper, which was located in the back of the room.

It was quite crowded, and amid the crewmembers and passengers of varying species, visibly-aging robots with torsos and arms but no heads or legs, the latter replaced by wheels, carried trays of the same meal: green noodles with pale filets of fish. Kayden sighed again and sat down at an empty table, then prepared to make an order for a small plate… then he heard the grating sound of metallic crumpling next to him and hastily looked up from the datapad.

Nheka sat on top of a heap of collapsed metal that, judging by the four splayed legs and snapped remains of a back, recently used to be a chair. They both could hear giggles and muffled laughter from the nearby seats.

"Oopss…"

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Kayden tried to hold back his laughter out of politeness. "Well what can I say, aluminum is like that… Be careful."

"Will I get in trouble… like with the s–" Nheka then suddenly fell quiet and looked around before lowering her head.

"Nah. It’s understandable. Our stuff isn’t really built for your species’ body plan, ya know? That and the materials used don’t do well in high gravity."

He then made the order, and soon one of the waiter robots brought them both their dishes.

In front of Kayden, on a shiny metal plate, was a tangle of light green algae noodles, mixed with square, boneless fillets of fish that certainly did not look or smell like normal fish, on closer examination. In fact, the smell was almost like that of burnt rubber, and the flesh itself had an oily sheen. He then glanced at Nheka’s dish, and…

Covering a circular tray was a red, fibrous mat of what looked like exposed, dark muscle with several tendrils sized and shaped like pinky fingers coming out from the top. The whole "meal" twitched occasionally, and the tendrils oozed slime while the edges bled thick and black blood. Nheka nonchalantly grabbed it with two of her taloned hands and took a bite, sending the aforementioned liquids dripping down her beak. "Tasstess… like leather…"

Kayden gagged and looked away towards his dish, which looked infinitely more appetizing in comparison. He tried not to think about where exactly the organic compounds composing it came from. It tasted better than he’d guessed; the noodles had a very leafy flavor like that of broccoli, albeit slimy and squishy, while the fish tasted like chicken, if chicken was slimy. He spat out what seemed to be a few malformed fins and solidified eyes grown into the fish’s meat. "Ew. I expected worse, but I don’t regret spending so much on all those crackers."

"Mm… Let uss go back…"

***

They returned to see Tiik and Lai arguing very loudly about something in the middle of the cabin. Despite the inherently soft sound of their language, it certainly seemed like there were a lot of nasty things said. As soon as Lai noticed his two other friends came back, he fell silent and whimpered as he sat down onto a bunk.

Kayden raised an eyebrow. "What happened, if it’s not a secret?"

Lai reached into the pocket of his jumpsuit to retrieve his datapad… or what remained of it. The keyboard, which was supposed to slide out, was hanging from the screen by two wires, and the screen was cracked. "I left it on the bed. He sat on it," Lai blurted out.

"Well, that sucks. Does the screen itself work?"

"Nah. It’s toast."

"It’s one day until we reach the planet, I’m sure you could get it to a repair shop there."

Lai paused for a while, then pulled Tiik into a tight hug. It was as if nothing ever happened. They embraced each other for a few minutes, and Lai calmly murmured something into his friend’s ear while patting him on the back and leaning into the fur on his neck. Kayden wasn’t sure if he saw them kiss or not, but they probably did.

"That ended quickly," Kayden remarked and sat down. "Oh and by the way, the food was trash but not as barf-inducing as I thought. With the exception of whatever it was that Nheka ate," he continued, somewhat souring the two relmai’s moment.

Tiik reluctantly broke off from the hug. "I tasted those bhillets once, during the journey bhrom Tama to here, and then I bhelt very ill. I ended up packing extra bhood and just sticking to the noodles when it ran out."

"Ah so your ships use a similar ecosystem. Whatever Nheka’s meal was looked like something out of a horror movie."

Nheka made another attempt at sighing, and silently began to fall asleep on her bunk.

***

The rest of the day was very uneventful… Ray was, as always, pretty quiet… until 8 PM, when Kayden turned on the viewscreen and panned around… to see the planet Alacrity! It appeared as a small green semicircle, splotched with blue. In fact, it looked a bit like orbital photos of Earth, except darker and without the yellow-orange of deserts. Finally, after a week of being trapped in a metal labyrinth, the travelers would walk on natural soil again. The planet’s moon, Aristaeus, was visible as a large object as red as Mars, though significantly smaller.

"Look! There it is!" Kayden said, pointing at the screen. Everyone: from Nheka, who was woken up by Kayden’s shouting; to Lai and Tiik, who had been playing a video game together; to Ray, who was in their usual lethargic state; they all stood to watch. It felt like the planet was approaching them and not vice versa… and given the physical concept of relativity, these scenarios were indistinguishable for them.

Soon, the ships transferring to and from Alacrity, and the satellites orbiting it, became visible as tiny shining dots, though the elevators were too close to the planet’s atmosphere to quite be visible just yet… and the gravity was weakening and weakening as the ship slowed its deceleration.

It was 10 PM when the ship began its rendezvous with the low-orbit elevator spaceport. The entire side of the planet was quite dark, though lit up by soft red moonlight that nevertheless did not obscure the network of yellow city lights that covered the continents of the planet like a faint spiderweb. Yes, faint– despite Alacrity having a high population compared to New Arizona or other barren colonies, it was far from a core world. Out of interest, Kayden jumped in place, and almost hit the ceiling.

Kayden panned the camera to see the station, which looked much the same as the one at New Arizona, but a bit larger.

"GREETINGS, PASSENGERS! THIS IS CAPTAIN JASMIJN EVERS SPEAKING. WE ARE APPROACHING ALACRITY SPACEPORT FOUR, TETHERED TO THE EQUATORIAL CITY OF LITTLEGULF. PLEASE PREPARE TO EXIT THE VEHICLE WITHIN THE HOUR."

***

The ship stopped as it approached the docking port, and the gravity disappeared completely.

"Let’s go!" Kayden said as he exited the cabin, his friends– and their luggage– in tow.