On a dismal and barely working settlement on a world that was habitable only on paper, Doctor Belq looked over at the miserable Hunzk male in her quarters/office as he quietly wept.

She swiveled her head away, their only way of averting their eyes.

“I… I can’t do this anymore…” he said quietly as he looked down. “I just can’t…”

“I know this is difficult…” Belq said, “Difficult isn’t the right word. It’s unthinkable. It’s wrong, fundamentally wrong. But, Gulpn, as wrong as it is, it is necessary. Many of your genes…”

“Heap rot my genes!” he snapped, “I won’t do it!”

“A child with Velxa will create a valuable point of diversity that we need, Gulpn. Our species…”

“Our species died when the Belzzor killed it!... We’re already dead!”

Something snapped within the gentle and caring Doctor Belq.

“Then die!” Belq hissed as she advanced towards Gulpn who backed away with frightened eyes. “If that is what you truly believe, stop wasting our water, our air… our food… and quit!”

Unbidden, her white and gold tail flared out like a peacock’s and vibrated, causing the flickers and shimmers of command.

“We are NOT dead!” she hissed like an enraged cobra, “And we will not die until I say we die! Do you understand me?”

His eyes partially glazed, Gulpn instinctively crouched before an enraged queen.

“This is my burrow, and it will not fail. The heap will not grow cold! And you… you are mine. Do you understand me? If you refuse, you know where the airlock is. Take your mate and go!”

He was going to be cast out, his nerves screamed. Instinctively, he curled into a ball, wailing in terror.

Belq froze in horror. When did she pick up the knife? What was happening to her?

She quickly threw the knife aside.

“Look,” she said more gently as she swallowed something terrifying… ancient… something that she didn’t even knew existed within her back down into the depths from whence it came. “Look… I know this is horrible. We don’t have the resources to do this every time, but we can spare the supplies to extract your spermatozoa and try artificial insemination. It is yet another abomination, but if you truly cannot lie with Velxa… we can try…”

“No,” Gulpn said quietly. “I’ll do it.”

“Gulpn…”

“You are right,” he said. “We are not dead, not yet.”

He gazed at her tail with a mixture of admiration and awe.

“And you aren’t asking me and my mate anything that you haven'y done. That others haven't done… The Heap… The Heap will not go cold. I… I just… Forgive me…”

“No,” Belq said. “Forgive me. What I ask… Heap…”

“The Heap will not go cold, my queen. It will not go cold. If I must lie with Velxa then I will. If I must rut with every woman here, I will if that is what it takes. I just needed to… Thank you… The Heap will not go cold.”

“Thank you,” Belq said quietly, “Thank you for your sacrifice and thank your wife for…”

“You thank her,” Gulpn said, “I can’t bring myself to face her until Velxa is with child. Excuse me, ma’am, I need… I need to go.”

Belq just nodded as Gulpn quietly left.

After she was alone, she collapsed into a shuddering mess. What just happened? She was ready to kill. A Hunzk… kill? Was she really going to throw out Gulpn and possibly his wife outside? They would be dead before the day was out.

What was happening to her?

She buried her face under her… Heap cursed tail and wept.

Far earlier than she wished, she uncurled, took a deep breath, and started making herself presentable.

She had to communicate with the ship… and her mate.

As she brushed her tail, she wondered what the strange humans were up to this time. They always were. Last time, it was trading a startling amount of supplies and even technical assistance for a video recording she really wished she hadn’t seen.

She snorted as she brushed.

It was probably poop related this time.

She hoped there was actually a point, not one of humanity’s numerous and confusing “kinks.”

***

“Look guys,” Grace said to the motley assortment of beings in the mess hall. “It really isn’t that hard. Your shit goes in the shit hole and your piss goes in the piss hole. What aren’t you getting here?”

“Why does it matter?” small creature covered in long floppy scales that looked a lot like brown grass squeaked.

“Because we need to keep the solid stuff and the liquid stuff separate,” Alan sighed. “We can’t do a lot about the ungodly combination of chemical compounds we all produce, but we can do something about the water content. Each waste stream needs to be handled separately. If you combine them, it screws up the whole process.”

“And you will be the one cleaning it out!” Grace exclaimed. “If you think I’m cleaning up your literal shit again, you have another thing coming!”

“But why?”

“Because we need to stop just dumping out those compounds and more importantly all that water,” Grace replied. “We need it.”

“But we don’t!”

“Gah!” Grace huffed. “Alan, make them see sense before I kill someone… It’s a figure of speech!” she added quickly to the captain. “You know, human talk.”

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“And it’s a human figure of speech for a reason,” the captain said and then turned to the crew. “I know it’s weird, but if Alan and Grace are correct, we can reclaim the vast majority of our water and… and I can’t believe I’m saying this, but our… stuff… can be turned into compounds that we can actually use… or even sell. I’m not quite sure I believe it either, but Alan and Grace have done things that I wouldn’t have believed were possible before. Just… Just poop where they tell you to, at least for now.”

“But it’s gross! I mean… That can’t be sanitary!”

“Trust me,” Grace said, “We humans have been doing this for years. It’s one of the reasons our ships can stay in space forever.”

“But why do we need to do that?”

“Because shit like Yellowstone… and the fall…” she added as the little critter known as Nos twitched, “happen. If you wait until it does, it’s too late. We don’t know what will happen over the next watch, much less what will happen tomorrow… or next week… All of this bullshit might be a lot of hassle for a few extra credits… or it could be the difference between life and death. Being able to point this ship “thataway” and just hit the gas might just save our asses one day.”

“And being able to make longer hauls along less traveled runs will save us a lot of docking fees and tolls that will save us far more than we make from our shit. If we don’t have to put in as much, that’s more profit and a bigger cut for all of us,” Alan added.

“Not for us slaves!” Nos, the crew’s designated pain in the ass exclaimed.

“Increased profits will trickle down to everyone!” the captain piped.

“Bad choice of words, dude,” Grace laughed, “I assume you mean that more profits mean better conditions for everyone?”

“And a pay increase,” the captain said to startled murmurs. “Alan, Grace, and I have been discussing something called ‘profit sharing’…”

“You guys are going to go for it?!?” Grace squealed.

“We discussed it during our last transmission,” the captain said. “Alan’s proposal is not only doable but an excellent idea. We think it will be a fantastic incentive and maybe even increase morale and retention.”

“What’s profit sharing?” Gurr asked excitedly, “It sounds nice!”

“It is,” the captain said. “Allow me to explain…”

***

After a surprisingly upbeat meeting and yet another demonstration of the new “facilities” Alan and Grace walked down the corridor leading to one of the engine rooms.

“You know,” Alan said, “You really do get used to the smell after a while.”

“Smells like money,” Grace replied. “You think it’s bad in there, you’ve never raised…”

“Hey, Vaa!” a high-pitched squeak cried out behind them.

Grace smiled at the new name that was catching on behind her back, a reference to an animal raised on Nos’s homeworld for milk (okay, it isn’t milk but close enough), a reference to her quite prominent “udders.”

Grace wasn’t overly endowed by human standards, but compared to the lactating species on board, they were titanic.

“What do you want, Smurf and Turf,” she asked.

“What’s your angle?” Nos demanded, the blades of his grass like pelt raising aggressively. “What’s your game? Profit sharing? Why did you gangsters do this?”

“We aren’t gangsters…” Alan replied.

“Sure you aren’t,” Nos snarked.

“And we didn’t do anything. This was the Captain’s and Doctor Belq’s decision.”

“Vaashit,” Nos squeaked.

“Okay,” Grace said, “We might have made a suggestion or two, and Alan may have done a little math for them that might… (snerk)… Fine… Busted. But you can’t be bitching about this.”

“The bitch is exactly what I am concerned about,” Nos chirped. “Giving away money… for free? Gangsters don’t do that. Neither do people like the captain. What are you buying here, and don’t tell me it’s just our shit.”

Grace smiled.

“Shrewd little fuck, aren’t you?” she replied. “We are buying something, and it’s exactly what the cap told ya. We are buying your work.”

“You already got that.”

“Smurf, please,” Grace chuckled. “We humans have a saying. Pretend to pay us, and we’ll pretend to work. You probably have a saying, too.”

“Hand me a chit, and I’ll hand you a shit,” Nos squeaked and then scowled, baring weird flat teeth. “You think we’re lazy, that we don’t give a fuck? The worms saved my life. They saved a lot of us. Just because we aren’t as strong or can work thirty-six hours without sleep or pull a fucking starship out of our ass doesn’t mean that we aren’t trying!”

His pelt started to vibrate.

“You know what, fuck you!”

Nos whirled around and started to stomp away.

“Shit,” Grace groaned and then looked at Alan hopefully. “Fix?”

“Nos! Hang on a second!” Alan called out as, to Nos’s intense displeasure, he quickly caught up to the little guy. “It’s not like that!”

“Sure it is!” Nos squeaked. “You think we’re nothing but garbage… because we are!”

“You got it backward, asshole,” Alan said, easily keeping up with Nos’s ever-increasing pace.

Nos just stopped and lowered his head.

“Void, take what little it left me,” he grumbled as he tried to catch his breath. “I can’t even run away from you assholes.”

“Nos, if we honestly thought you guys were garbage, we wouldn’t have done this. If Grace and I thought you were worthless, you know what we would do? We wouldn’t have pressed for profit sharing. We would have pressed for replacement.”

“You… You would… You actually would…”

“I wouldn’t want to,” Alan said, “But as cold as I am, the void is colder. We can’t afford dead weight. You know how Grace and I hate wasting food, right?”

“I remember!” (Nobody was going to forget that anytime soon. Grace was pissed.)

“There is no bigger waste of food than someone who doesn’t pull their weight. Do you honestly believe we would allow the worms to keep a waste of their rations about the place? Next time you are at an internet café, look up humans and what ‘waste of food’ means in our culture.”

Alan smiled a smile that could only be described as anti-reassuring.

“If we thought you, any of you, were a waste of food… you would know it. Fortunately, the worms and I just happen to agree on what constitutes said waste. From what I understand, the captain and the good doctor will sell off trouble, correct? It only rarely happens, but it has transpired.”

Nos nodded his head. It had happened twice since he was “recruited.” Each time, he was all too happy to see them gone. They really were wastes of food, weren’t they?

“Not every sophont is created equal. It’s not fair, but it is what it is. We all have our talents and our weaknesses…”

“But some of us suck at everything!”

“…and among each race, not all of them have the same background, privileges, and opportunities,” Alan continued, trying to stay on track. “Those inherent inequities do not define who is ‘worthless’ and who is not, well… not most of the time. Some guys are just fucked, but nobody on this ship is.”

Alan knelt so he could look Nos in the eyes and laid his hand on Nos’s shoulder.

“Things are about to change around here, big time. The shitter is just the start. You might not like some of those changes, like the shitter, for example. Others, you might. However, all of those changes must happen if we want to make a real go of this and if the Hunzk are to have a void’s whisper of a chance in the long run. They saved your life, right?”

Nos nodded.

“Well, we have a chance save thiers. But to do that, we need you…”

“You… need me?”

“Yes, Nos. We need you, not just what you do but what you can do. There are going to be a lot of tasks that go well beyond just moving boxes and picking through garbage. We aren’t just going to need you to work. We are going to need you to learn. We are going to need you to adapt. We will need you to not only deliver what you can now but to become what you can be.”

Alan stood.

“The job is going to get bigger, and it is going to get harder. We have every faith that you can and will not only continue to pull your weight but meet the challenges that will almost certainly lie ahead of you, ahead of us all.”

“You… you do?” Nos asked with an odd squeak and a gleam in his eye.

“Humans don’t waste food,” Alan said. “We also don’t waste money. However, we pay good people what they are worth. This is a way to do that, to cut you guys in on what you will accomplish… for all of us. It’s a tangible reward for the ass-kicking that we are going to be laying on each and every one of you. Do you think I’m a weird hard-ass now? Nos…”

Alan flashed one of those anti-smiles again.

“You have no idea how hard I can be.”

(Snerk!)

“Goddammit, Grace,” Alan grumbled as Nos giggled.

“My little stiffy has a point, though,” Grace said. “We are ‘buying’ your patience while we start doing and putting you through some freaky human shit. But little dude, the payoff is going to be huge, and you are now guaranteed a cut.”

“It is also our hope that this will help with recruiting and retention,” Alan added. “We are going to start doing some serious training…”

“T-training?!?”

“…and it will suck if that training keeps walking away with it when their bonds get paid off before we can even get them qualified. The ongoing financial bonuses should help. If you can make more here than elsewhere, why leave? We get a very hard-to-find skillset because the only place to get those skills in the Asscrack will be here, and you get more money in your pocket and an increasingly nice ship to live in. Understand our ‘angle’ now?”

“But… but where are you going to get all that money?”

“Weren’t you listening?” Grace laughed, “You little fucks are going to make it. We’re just making sure you get your cut, that’s all. We’ve learned the hard way if you don’t give your crew the cut they deserve, they will give you the ‘cut’ that you do. This weird, strange, unbelievable profit sharing? That’s just the cost of doing business the human way, and you want to do business the human way, especially when the other fucktards aren’t. If you don’t get it now, don’t worry. You will. We’ve made this galaxy our bitch since we made contact, and this? This is part of how we did it. Stick around, and you will learn the rest.”

“And learn it the good way and not the bad way,” Alan chuckled. “Everything we’ve done thus far is baby shit. We are about to start running a business… Um. I mean that the Hunzk are going to with our help.”

“Whatever you say… Boss,” Nos said with an incline of his head.

“We should have another meeting,” Grace said, “clear all this up with everyone.”

“You just did,” Nos grinned as he pulled out a wad of repair tape and cardboard.

“You little shit!” Grace exclaimed as she snatched it. “Is this a wire?” she demanded as she pulled out a knife and slit the exterior to peer at the surprisingly tidy wiring underneath. “Where did you get this?”

“I ain’t no snitch.”

“And I ain’t mad!” Grace exclaimed. “This is… Leggo!” she exclaimed batting Alan’s hand away.

She peered at the insides of the device.

“This is pretty good work. Who…”

“I said I ain’t no snitch!”

“Well, if someone needs to get off their ass and come see me. We need them doing this, not whatever it is that they are doing!”

“I looked at all of your test results,” Alan said, “There isn’t anyone here that should be able to do this.”

“Not everybody is good at taking stupid tests.”

“Feeling ya, pal,” Grace grinned. “See, this is why we are doing profit sharing! Whoever did this needs to be doing this, and making us all more money, than whatever the fuck it is that they are doing now.”

“Why didn’t they say they could do this?” Alan asked. “They could be enjoying a much nicer assignment.”

“I like the worms, but they don’t know spittle,” Nos squeaked, “They only know test.”

“Because they don’t have anyone who could properly assess their skills without it,” Alan nodded.

“Why didn’t they tell us?” Grace asked.

“You are a lot smarter than they are. They didn’t want you to call them dumb or laugh at them. I mean… You’re you, and they’re…”

“They are good enough,” Grace said. “Have them come see us.”

“But they aren’t good at spaceship stuff.”

“Not everything we need done is spaceship stuff,” Alan said. “And you know that training we were talking about? Whoever made this can learn to do a lot more… if they want to.”

“And their small size means that whoever this mystery tech is will be able to get places we can’t!” Grace grinned. “I mean, if they don’t mind getting their lawn dirty…”

Nos jumped.

“But… But… It’s not…”

“Sure,” Grace said, “Well we are about to go into the engineering spaces and do some things that whoever made this would love to see. If that isn’t you, then go tell them. If it is, come on, we don’t have all day.”

Grace smiled and walked away. Alan patted Nos on the shoulder and followed.

A few seconds passed.

“Screw it,” Nos squeaked and hurried after them “Slow down! You’re walking too fast!”

***

The door to the engine room opened with a fragrant belch. While the Freekegg had departed, their presence would never entirely fade.

Alan and Grace winced a little.

Nos clutched at his nose and belly, doubling over.

“Don’t worry,” Grace smiled as Nos released his first belly full of ‘greeting juice,’ “You get used to it.”