Alex

I looked between Aeva and Iskender as they both stared blankly at me. “What? Am I not allowed to make observations about the way things are going?”

Iskender ignored me in favor of talking to Aeva. “You know, when I saw the pictures the others showed me of Alex, I thought that they were exaggerating the size aspect of him.” She looked at me a little closer. “He’s much smaller than I expected.”

“Yeah, well we can’t all exactly be goddamn kaiju, fukin’ sixty feet tall and shit, now can we?” I spat back. “It’s also kind of rude to talk about someone when they’re standing right in front of you!”

They both turned to look at me. “You’re lucky that Aeva’s as nice as she is, otherwise, I don’t think that she’d put up with you right now.”

“Yeah, Alex, do you know how many favors I’ve done for you in the past two days?” Aeva asked

I started to get a bit impatient. “Yeah, well, as much as I’m a man that keeps track of his debts, I’d have to admit that my ledger has gotten a bit full as of lately.” I scratched the back of my head as I started to mumble. “Mostly by you, but we don’t have to get into that.”

She loomed her head closer. “Sorry, what was that? I couldn’t hear you.”

I gave a sigh. “Yeah, yeah, I owe you a lot for the last two days, can we just get going?”

She belted out a laugh. “Yeah, we can get going.” She put her arm out for me to climb it once again. “What are you going to do with that?” she asked, gesturing to the mech.

“Well, I would prefer to take it back to my cabin so that I can plug it in and run the diagnostic program that I have on the computers back there, but that all hinges on this,” I said, while pointing to the mech’s finger that was still firmly stuck in the dataport. “I’d like to get that out before I leave, because that is a major intelligence leak that’s already leaked WAY too much information. I fear that if I don’t stop being such a big liability, they’re not even going to bother killing me quickly.”

Aeva looked at me funny. “Do Terrans kill other Terrans for things like this often?”

“Oh, absolutely. There’s even an entire portion of our history called the Cold War where people got killed for less all the time. The keeping of such a large and important secret as this,” I gestured to myself and then the mech, “Required certain draconian methods to make a comeback as we couldn’t risk our secrets spilling even a bit.” I turned back to the finger stuck in the dataport before pulling out my pad for the user manual. At least this was digitized. I did a keyword search for the datajack section. After a quick browsing through the section, I finally came to what I was looking for: the manual ejection of the datajack. “Ok, so I figured it out, give me a second to get it released so you can just pull the chair back and we can be on our way,” I said, starting to climb down the mech and onto the arm.

“So, we’re just going to gloss over the fact that you may be killed by your government? I’m sure the Hegemony would be more than willing to give you shelter so that you won’t be killed by your own people.”

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I waved my hand dismissively. “Nah, I don’t want to do that, because when I do, they’ll absolutely take me for a deserter and send a cleanup crew after me. Unless your government has top notch security, I doubt that they can do anything to stop the cleanup crew they’d send my way.”

“There’s got to be a way to keep you safe! It doesn’t feel right leading you to your death! Iskender, back me up here!” Aeva cried in horror.

“I’m with Aeva on this one, Alex,” Iskender said, getting closer. “After what you’ve done for this ship, I don’t think anyone would be comfortable with us shepherding you to what is most likely going to be your death.”

That comment gave me pause. These people actually care.

I stared at the two of them for long enough that Aeva finally said something. “What are you staring at us for?” she asked.

“Well, most Terrans you meet either don’t care about you, or are pretending long enough to screw you over in one way or another.” I thought for a moment before continuing. “I suppose you guys are a good change of pace.” The silence was starting to become awkward, so I decided to crack a joke. “And besides, I’m more likely going to be thrown in a jail cell for the rest of my life anyways.”

It was their turn to look at me as if I had just blown open their perception of the galaxy. “You Terrans continue to be an enigma, but not in a way that is good,” Aeva finally said.

Back on this train, huh? “Yeah, us Terrans suck pretty hardcore. Now come on, we have a mech to move,” I said, completely ruining the moment. Aeva nodded and grabbed the shoulders of the mech. “So, in theory,” I started, looking at the user manual, “I can pop open a maintenance hatch on the hand and manually disengage the lock system for the datajack, but you’ll have to pull the whole thing out so that I can deal with this later.” I chuckled. “It’s actually pretty cool, because the locking system to make sure that it doesn’t disengage when you don’t want it to be is just a simple system like a deadlock on a door. So long as the emergency motor for that shit isn’t also down it should be an easy process,” I explained as I got to the access panel located on the back of the mech’s hand.

“I don’t know who you’re explaining this to, Alex, you’re speaking to the head of engineering on this ship, I know how a datajack works,” Iskender said, sounding a little offended that I had explained that to her.

“Well, I don’t know what you all teach your kids in those xeno schools of yours!” I shouted back as I finally got the deadlock removed. “Alright! It should be ready to go!” I shouted over my shoulder to Aeva, who was ready to start pulling as I braced for the sudden change in velocity.

I thought I was prepared for it, what with my experience with mechs in the past and my unhealthy love for all things adrenaline, but I miscalculated one thing. I wasn’t strapped into a harness of any kind. I didn’t have any fall protection, and I wasn’t even grabbing onto the access panel very tightly to begin with. I’m sure that you can imagine my surprise when I felt my grip on the panel slip. Before I could react, I felt my body in a freefall, tumbling uncontrollably to the floor forty feet below me. I felt the world slow before me and my breath caught.

So, this is it, I thought to myself. If only my mom could see me now, she always thought that me getting up to this kind of shit was going to lead to my death. I realized that I should have started to panic at this point, but I work in security. Not coming home is one of the many uncertainties that’s included in the job description. I closed my eyes and prepared for the end, or as much as one can prepare when they’re going to have all their bones broken in a couple of seconds.

I suddenly felt something under me, breaking my fall far sooner than I was expecting. I felt around, feeling soft warm fur instead of the cold, hard, unyielding metal floor. I opened my eyes to see Iskender gently holding me in one of her hands. “Are you ok?” she asked, her face looming over me.

I just sat there and breathed for a moment, propping myself onto my elbows. “Holy shit, you just saved my life,” I breathed. “I’m fine though.”

She let out a sigh of relief as she put me back onto the shoulder of the mech. “Think nothing of it. Consider this a repayment for driving off those pirates.”

I nodded, still weak in the legs and breathing hard from my brush with death. “Alright then. Remind me to get a parachute fabricated for another situation like this.”