Tanwen juddered only slightly as they descended upon Caezo’s central landing pad. Outside, Malan could see engineers and techs bustling around, swooping in already to perform hull checks and do several of the scans mandatory in most ports. Even outside of UGC space, nobody wanted some devastating new microbe, or hitchhiking invasive species being carted onto their hard-founded colonies.

Still, Malan couldn’t help noting there were a few too many of the grey jumpsuited techs scurrying about beneath them, wiping beads of sweat from the jungle humidity away with their sleeves. A few were trying a little too hard to look busy without doing much of anything, whilst others were openly gawking.

It made sense, he supposed. Starbound rarely made appearances planetside, and almost nobody ever got the chance to see one up close with their own two eyes. Had he been them, he most likely would have suddenly remembered he had a job to do at this particular pad, too.

Of course, that understanding brought its own set of problems. He could quite understand and deal with people buzzing around his ship as though it were some kind of celebrity, but as Tanwen had said, they were one now. As soon as he stepped off of it, all the focus would be transferred to him, a thought that made him want to throw up in his own mouth.

“Landing sequence completed, Pilot,” Tanwen’s voice drifted through the bridge, a welcome distraction from the flies buzzing round them. “Engaging GM Locking Mechanisms.”

Malan quirked an eyebrow. “What is that?”

“My security system, now we have bonded, is tied to your DNA, Pilot. Nobody but you will be able to gain access to my interior without your express permission—or, I suppose, destroying the hull.”

“Well that’s reassuring, I suppose. Would destroying the hull left behind after I leave harm me, given our bond?”

“No. My part of the bond is not within the physical structure of the ship itself, it is simply how you interface with it as my Pilot. I am a part of that core in your chest.”

Malan nodded, reflexively touching the jewel embedded in his upper chest. “So if someone were to attack the ship when we’re planetside…”

“Your residual celestial energy would begin to repair it, much as the hull and shields slowly regenerate when we take damage in flight.”

“Good to know,” he said, standing and stretching out sore muscles. Outside, he could see the Sparrow’s ramp descending, and shivered. He like Elena, but he was glad he was no longer on her ship. “I’d better get planetside.”

He set off, leaving his bridge for the first time since bonding with Tanwen. The interior walls of the corridor outside of the bridge where mostly a brilliant white, with a strip of matte black along the tops and bottoms, separated from the white with a strip of orange lighting, that gave the whole ship outside of the bridge a peculiar amber glow, like walking through gentle flame.

As best as he could describe it, the layout of the ship was fairly simple. The bridge lay at the front, and a short corridor led to a large central space. It was largely empty, with a few crew seating positions to the side and a small counter space with some storage and cooking apparatus. Below, he knew from the bond that there was a reasonable sized cargo space.

An identical room lay mirrored on either flank, each of these also empty. These intrigued Malan because of the shape—two vague L-shapes attached to each flank, the point of the L aimed to the front of the ship. At the rear, lay a small gearing up space—or what he assumed it was, anyway. It neither looked like any suiting up station and airlock he’d ever seen, nor did it feel like one from the bond.

But, this was also where he knew his own exit ramp lay, so it was there he went, eyeing empty spaces curiously. He’d already surmised from the nature of the bond that he wouldn’t be able to simply go out and buy a lot of what he needed to fill this space. The way things seemed to work was on using gathered resources to craft somehow, and finding or, perhaps, unlocking various upgrades—both solutions requiring the use of gathered celestial energy to manipulate matter and create objects.

He reached the bay fairly quickly, only faintly distracted by the possibilities of what would hopefully be his home away from home for the foreseeable future. The thought of home, brought thoughts of his sister. When last he’d seen her, her eyes had said all that needed to be said. Accusation. Trauma.

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Malan couldn’t help but hope that when he saw Isolde again, she would give him time to explain. Maybe she’d even be able to understand. He hadn’t known back then. Had been as convinced of his own guilt as it seemed that she had.

Since then, there’d been no communication. Malan had needed to take a job to pay for her care, and the job he’d gotten had taken him out of range of most communications. Soon, he would be within range for the first time he’d left. Cel-Tech, the company Elena’s crew was contracted to took care of the payments. He wasn’t especially looking forward to seeing if he had any mail or messages waiting.

He did know, through Cel-Tech’s HR department, that she was out of her care facility and restarting her studies on a part-time basis. This had been one of the few bright spots of his life between here and the Jauda. Isolde had been a talented prospective engineer, and it had been wonderful to hear that at least one of them was managing to pick up the pieces of their life. He’d simply kept sending her enough money to keep her well looked after her so she could concentrate on that instead of having to worry about finances.

That pay check would stop now. He would have to find a new way to earn enough money to ensure his sister was looked after. If everything he’d heard about how the Starbound were looked after was true, he’d not have to worry at all, but that was a big ‘if’.

Of course, now everything had been flipped on its head. He wasn’t to blame for what happened, and it felt an awful lot like he’d simply been dropped into the life he’d worked so hard to earn before the Jauda. He didn’t quite know how to react to that—to any of this—yet, so instead he had to keep forging forward until he could take the time to process all of this.

As a result, he found himself walking into the airlock chamber that seemed to double into a suiting up room—an arrangement that made no real sense—and seeing no suits. That wasn’t such a big deal for right now, of course. Mykeser was plenty breathable, with few enough environmental hazards that one wasn’t needed.

Suits were, however, expensive, and it added another thing to his essentials list that he likely couldn’t afford.

He looked around the room, searching for anything he’d missed. Like the rest of the ship, this room thrummed with ambient celestial energy, though most of it seemed to centre around a black dais in the centre, made of the same smooth, almost liquid in appearance metal Tanwen’s sphere had made from. The rest was pretty plain. White and black walls, as the rest of the ship, without even any storage for spare suits to check.

“Groundsuit protocols active and ready, Pilot,” came Tanwen’s voice, after a few moments of no movement at all from Malan, who’d just gotten to looking for where the ship’s exit actually was.

“Ah, Tanwen? There are no suits here.”

Malan frowned as clear amusement pulsed through their bond, the first real emotion besides fear he’d felt from his Starbound.

“Step on the central dais, Pilot. Arms slightly raised, and legs shoulder width apart, and concentrate on the desire to equip your groundsuit.”

Malan hesitated, Tanwen’s amusement half making him think he was being set up for a joke, before complying. He stood on the dais, feeling only moderately ridiculous, and concentrated as instructed.

He shifted on his feet slightly, increasingly sure he was the butt of a joke as the seconds dragged on, before freezing on the spot. The ambient white mist of celestial energy swirled around him in growing intensity, before threads of it carved their way through the dais at his feet in intricate geometric patterns, creating gaps in the material that had not been there before.

The ground beneath him shifted, and small flakes of black flowed from the edge of the dais like drops of water along channels carved by celestial energy. Invariably, he saw, each of those complex channels led back to him, and so each of the flecks also flowed to him. The first of them attached themselves to his foot, each new shard joining with the last until there was a tightly woven chord that ran from his little toe to his ankle. Then more flecks and shards conjoined to form more chords, the pace of the flecks increasing exponentially.

In moments, the room was a storm of sharp black shards, swirling around him at a speed that could have cut any man to shreds. Only, he never once felt threatened or at risk, even from an accidental slice. Chords wrapped around him to form a weave, whilst others formed upon that base weave to create plates that covered large areas of flesh. Eventually, the storm of black reached his head, and the same material formed a helmet of black.

For a brief moment, the darkness surrounding him had him swallowing thickly, then something shifted, and the darkness bled away revealing his surroundings in their absolute entirety, giving him better all-around visibility than he had normally. With a start, he realised that this….suit worked the same way Tanwen’s hull did. Whilst he was in direct control of the ship, he was able to see as if he was the ship. Now, he could see as if he was the suit.

A thrum of ocean blue energy pulsed into view all around him, before fizzling out—his personal shields activating. Then, small bars for his shield and suit integrity appeared in the bottom left of his vision, as well as a few graphics that told him things like oxygen and environmental safety.

The shards had stopped now, and the suit-up chamber was finally peace. Malan looked down at himself and, stretching and moving his body tentatively, saw he’d been fully covered in a dense weave of material, that flexed as easily as he did. The larger exposed areas had been covered in a denser material, protecting mainly his torso and exposed limbs. Flexing his fingers, he saw that they, whilst covered, had a thinner weave, allowing him close to full dexterity.

“Holy shit,” he muttered, and almost jumped out of his skin when a notification slid into view in the top right of his view.

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