The hatch slowly lowered, gradually revealing a clean and bright room. Sticking out from the rounded metal wall opposite me was a reinforced door, above which “customs” was painted in green. The floor was tiled with tesselating green hexagons in various shades. As soon as I stepped out of the ascender, my eyes were drawn to the triangular panes of glass which made up the domed ceiling. Beyond it, I could see more stars than I had ever seen glimmering just out of reach.
I turned in a slow circle, watching the stars blur into streaks of pale light. My journey was almost over, now all I needed to do was... the next thing. But what was the next thing?
I stumbled as I spun, bumping into something hard and person-shaped. I immediately leapt back, ears flattened to my scalp as I stared them down.
The terran was unimposing, her expression placid despite the jostling. She wore green coveralls with the word “Tomiko” printed on the right side of her chest. She was staring at me.
“Excuse me,” I offered without lowering my guard.
She bowed her head suddenly, but respectfully. “I am Tomiko, custodian of this installation. You must be-” She froze mid-sentence and mid-bow.
I crept closer, and waved a hand in front of her face experimentally. I considered poking her, but before I could get up the nerve she suddenly continued. I jumped back again, unnerved by her erratic movements.
“-a visitor! Welcome to the jewel of the Argus system, honored guest!” Tomiko raised her head, and smiled without showing her teeth.
“A visitor?” I echoed hesitantly.
“My first visitor in over a hundred years!” Her left eye twitched as she spoke.
“Right,” I agreed tactfully, adopting a more neutral stance. “I’m a visitor. Just here to visit... the gate station.”
“Please, follow me to the atrium,” she insisted, eagerly rushing to the customs door. The frontier logo was sewn into the back of her coveralls, two capital Fs back to back, angled so they formed an arrow pointing to the stars.
“I’m just a visitor,” I mumbled to myself. “That’s not a lie.” I followed the odd caretaker though the customs door into a dim and cramped corridor. Panes of glass and a half-wall separated a section where customs officials would work, though there was thankfully no one on duty. I couldn’t help but notice the conspicuous hinges at the edges of the floor, and the yellow and black hazard paint marking a seam along its middle. As the door to the arrivals room shut behind us, my ears popped.
“May I please see your papers, visitor?” Tomiko asked sweetly.
The back of my neck felt hot, and the tip of my tail thrashed anxiously. “My papers?” I echoed lamely.
“Yes, may I please see your papers, visitor?” Tomiko asked sweetly.
“I do have papers,” I said carefully. “But I don’t have them with me right now.”
Tomiko’s face fell. “You don’t have papers?” The lights in the corridor turned red, but her eyes still shined bright green.
“No no! I do! I was just... so excited to come visit this beautiful station! I heard so much about it and I just had to see for myself! Who has time for papers when there’s such um... such... space station to be... seen?” I held my breath.
The lights flashed green, then the inner door slid open. “This way please, visitor!” Tomiko chirped, cheerfully strolling into the atrium.
I clutched my chest, gasping for air. White spots danced at the edges of my vision. “I’m gonna crash soon,” I groaned. “Have to find... transportation.”
“Transportation?” Tomiko’s head spun back to face me. “There is no transportation today.”
I dashed out of the customs corridor before she could change her mind about the papers. “Really, no transportation? This is just such a big station, I can’t believe ships don’t come through here.”
“Many ships patronize this station,” Tomiko replied indignantly, but my attention was arrested by the great brown trunk of a tree growing in the center of the atrium.
I wandered closer, picking my way carefully around crooked and raised floor tiles. It smelled familiar, not quite like the smell of cut sweetgrass, not quite like cement dust.
“Please don’t touch her,” Tomiko warned sharply.
I pulled my hand back. “Sorry. Is this... a real tree?”
“Yes. Her name is Lorainne.” Tomiko paused, then acquiesced. “You may pet her. Be gentle please.”
The coarse brown shell felt softer than it looked, oddly fragile for such a mighty thing. “Hey Lorainne,” I whispered, looking up at the leaves overhead, clustered around four grow lamps mounted to the roof. “You’re beautiful.”
“Lorainne thinks you are beautiful too,” Tomiko assured me.
I circled the tree, dragging my fingertips around its circumference. “I think I saw a painting of this tree on the surface,” I mused aloud. As we were leaving Goldmeadow, one of the murals on an apartment building featured a tree with similar coloring and the same leaf shape.
“Lorainne’s mother was an important person to the people that lived here before. The people destroyed valuable terraforming equipment to protect her.”
I paused, and glanced back at my tail as it stroked over the bark behind me. It trailed over a gash I hadn’t noticed, coming away sticky. Great. “So they grew Lorainne here to what, placate them?”
Tomiko solemnly nodded. “Lorainne would like personal space now, please.”
Picking my way back through the damaged tiles, I nearly fell as the floor shook. The lights flickered, and the rustling of Lorainne’s leaves sounded like running water.
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
I looked up through the ceiling as a colossal ship slowly passed by as if taking off from the moon below. My heart pounded as it kept going, and going, its hexagonal chassis flaring into a wider back half, until finally the red glow of its thruster trails came into view. It circled around above us, then began to approach the station. “I thought you said there were no ships today,” I remarked, eyes still glued to the starship’s matte grey hull panels.
“That ship is not for transportation,” she insisted. “The FFE-1313 is here for supplies, and then it will leave.”
Thoughts swirled in my head, ideas competing for oxygen until one shone through. “Gosh, it would be so cool if I could see how the loading process works. I’ve always been so interested in anything to do with starships.”
The caretaker squinted at me as she processed my request. “There are many interesting things for a visitor to see on the station. The Museum of Argus History is in the East wing.”
I nodded thoughtfully. “Right, right, a museum sounds super interesting, but we can always go see the museum after we watch them load their ship. We can’t go see them load the ship later because they’ll be done, and that means I’ll have to leave–”
“Stay!” Tomiko shouted, her head jerking to the side with a metallic crunch. She took a breath, fixed her disjointed skull with practiced hands, and dusted off her coveralls. “Please follow me to Storage Bay Beta,” she said with a small bow.
I didn’t like how easy it was to manipulate her, or how good it made me feel, but the alternative was to wait around for someone more dangerous to find me. I was too close to my goal to let anything stop me.
I followed Tomiko through another door into a corridor painted with stylized depictions of megastructures. Among them I recognized planetary-scale terraforming machines, dyson spheres, and arc-class starships; by comparison, the illustration of a space elevator looked insignificant.
“Do you like these paintings?” Tomiko asked.
“I’ve heard about most of these megastructures,” I replied. “They’re all kind of awesome.”
Tomiko paused to place her hand on the wall and admire the art. “The Megastructure Engineering Corps is the pride and joy of Frontier Federation.”
I glanced ahead anxiously. “We don’t want to miss–”
“Right this way please, visitor!” she interrupted with a small bow, then continued leading the way.
One last detail caught my eye; beneath each painting was the same word written in illegible symbols: “トミコ”. I didn’t spend long wondering, and hurried after my guide.
Past the mural corridor, and another bulkhead, the path forked with faded arrows on the floor pointing to the left and right, helpfully labeled “Alpha Storage” and “Beta Storage”. Against the wall was a vending machine; my stomach growled loudly.
I checked my pockets, but of course I didn’t have my GCA card with me. I licked my lips as I stared through the glass panel, dreaming about Choccy-Chalkies, Nori Nibblers, and Cricket Crunchers. “Satisfy your cravings today with new flavors from the frontier by Xenolife Eats!” the machine urged.
“I’d love to,” I grumbled.
I noticed Tomiko staring at me in much the same way as I was staring at the food. “I can give samples to visitors who haven’t tried the new flavors,” she offered.
I nodded eagerly. “Please! The um... curiosity about Xenolife’s new products is killing me.”
Tomiko placed her hand on the side of the machine, and a series of candy bars dropped from the top row. She stooped to pick them up, then fanned them out so I could read the flavors. “Which one?”
“Are any of them non-sweet?” I asked.
She removed most of the candy bars, and set them atop the machine. The remaining three were Fireberry, Europa Delight, and Spicy Udon.
I accepted the Europa Delight, tore off its wrapper, and was immediately hit with a salty, fishy scent. I chewed the sticky green candy bar, unable to stop myself from purring. “Thank you so much!” I gushed through an overzealous mouthful.
The caretaker watched me finish off my snack, then set the others aside too, and turned towards beta storage.
My stomach was still growling. I waited until she was a few steps away, then snatched the other two candy bars and tucked them into my sweatshirt-arm brace. It probably should have hurt, but mercifully I felt nothing more than an uncomfortable heat in my wrist. “Don’t focus on that now,” I chastised, and took off after Tomiko once more.
As we walked I couldn’t help but wonder about the custodian herself, to the point that my curiosity bubbled over into an ill-advised question. “So, if ships come and go all the time, how come you said you haven’t had a visitor in so long?”
I was beginning to wonder if she’d heard me by the time she responded. “Ships come for the syrup,” she explained.
“But what about people taking the elevator?” I pressed. “I saw one of the ascenders leaving the station this morning.”
There was another pause, and I noticed her shoulders slump. “That one was not a visitor. She had urgent business on the surface.”
“The bast woman, right?” I guessed. “With the...” I gagged when I thought of her eyes, now even more mis-matched thanks to me. “Augments.”
“She was rude,” Tomiko mumbled, then just her head turned toward me. “Not like you, visitor. You were nice to Lorainne.”
I couldn’t help but wonder what might have happened to me had I not been as kind to her pet tree. The mercenary, having her papers with her, would have gotten away with much more than I could.
We turned sharply to the left, and entered a doorway that opened up to a mezzanine overlooking a hangar loaded with barrels. In the far wall was a shimmering barrier, in the center of which was an opening leading to a dark tunnel. As I watched, a trio of workers wearing exoskeletons emerged from the docking tunnel, picked up a barrel each (which was impressive considering that the workers and barrels were roughly the same size), and headed back to the ship.
“Can we get a closer look?” I asked eagerly, leaning out over the railing.
“Sorry, visitor. This is as close as you are allowed,” Tomiko insisted.
I chewed my lip. My heart was racing. I could feel the adreno-spike wearing off, the fatigue eating away at the edges of my consciousness. A dull ache was beginning to form in my wrist, further evidence that the drugs were wearing off. “Do you hear that?” I asked suddenly.
“I hear everything aboard this installation,” Tomiko replied.
I hesitated, squeezing my eyes shut and psyching myself up before continuing. “Then you should probably go check on her.”
“Check on whom?”
“You know, just between us, I think that mercenary was crazy. She said something about burning a tree down when she got back to orbit. I’m sure she didn’t mean Lorainne though.” I forced myself to make unsteady eye contact.
Tomiko’s green eyes bore through my skull. I was sure she could see through my paper-thin lie.
“There it is again! It sounded like a plasma pistol to me. I’m sure it’s nothing though–”
Tomiko sprinted back down the corridor with amazing speed, leaving me alone in the storage bay.
“Don’t think about it. Don’t think about it.” I searched for a way down, and quickly found an access ladder. As I climbed down, more evidence of the Hangover Friends’ wearing off became apparent.
I gritted my teeth through the pain as I dashed towards the tunnel at the far side of the room, and ducked between the barrels.
I waited in agonizing silence for the workers to approach once more, chatting idly amongst themselves. They grabbed another three barrels, and carried them back. I waited until I could no longer hear them, then emerged from my hiding spot and leapt into the tunnel myself.
The floor of the telescoping docking bay was cold beneath my paws, and I was reminded of just how close I was to the vacuum of space. I hurried through the access corridor and found myself in the ship’s cargo bay, stuffed with crates and barrels and oh shit they were right there!
I dove between two crates, hoping they hadn’t noticed me; the workers went back for more barrels.
I waited for them to finish loading, and retract the docking corridor, then leave me alone in the cargo bay. The overhead lights shut off, leaving the room bathed in a soft red glow.
I took a deep, shaking breath, and wiped tears from my eyes. I made it. What came next could wait until after I had a proper nap.