Digital Galaxies

Sadly, I was not able to nap until I had checked the ship top to bottom to make sure our situation was stable. I went through and checked every single gravity plate, both the actively malfunctioning and not. I found each to be either fine or fixable, thank goodness. Of course, if any had been critical we’d probably have exploded by that point. We were all incredibly lucky that I was biased towards helping Cerri.

Next came the busted water filtration system, which had a bunch of ruptured pipes that needed replacing. Thankfully the unit itself only had a few loose components that required tightening or reseating.

After that, I went on to double and triple check that the reactors were okay, because if they exploded or stopped working it would not be pretty. I also went through and made sure that power delivery to critical systems was working fine, patching cables as I went.

It was a hell of a lot of work, the whole lot taking me almost twelve hours to get through, no rest or anything.

While I worked on the ship, everyone else was going over the data coming in from the ship’s sensors. If there was anyone out there, we’d be a blazing beacon of active scanners that would be hard to miss. Fortunately, or unfortunately, it didn’t seem like there was anyone out there with the capability to see our metaphorical firework display.

I found the rest of the healthy crew in the rec room rather than the bridge. Apparently this was more comfortable. Walking into the room was like wandering onto the set of some crime drama. Data pads lay everywhere and all the large screens in the room had various maps, each with so many labels on them that my brain hurt just glancing in their direction.

Cerri was on a sofa surrounded by various data pads while she tapped away on another. Ed and David were working together on the floor looking through screeds of data and very obviously hating it. Gloria had fallen asleep on one of the other sofas with a similar array of screens around her. Roger was still back in the bridge manning his post there, along with Warren who was working on rerouting systems past damaged components.

I went straight to Cerri, pushed some of the pads out of the way and curled up into a ball next to her without a word, using my tail as a blanket. I was so dead tired I didn’t have any words to give her. She seemed to understand though, reaching out to brush her fingers through my mussed hair before teasing out any knots. She liked doing that, and I liked it when she did too.

When I woke again, all the tablets and screens were on the floor and Cerri lay next to me, holding me in her embrace while she slept. I was all cuddled in close to her chest, the blanket that covered us all but hiding me under its length.

A sense of profound, soul-deep safety enveloped me, much like my friend’s arms as she slept. She was hugging me to her chest, it wasn’t a position I’d wriggled into on my own. She wanted to be holding me like this while she slept. That little fact sent shivers of happiness across my skin. I was soooo screwed, my feelings for her seemed to be progressing so quickly I could barely figure out what was happening.

At the same time though… I felt so good, so happy. This level of peace with myself and my life was completely foreign to me. It was like life was worth living now that I was digital and Cerri was in my life.

On a whim, I tilted my head up slightly and placed a gentle kiss on her collarbone, because I desperately needed some way to show the level of affection I felt for her in that moment.

A wave of awe and love smashed into my mind like a rogue planet striking the moon. It obliterated my sense of reality for what felt like minutes as I rode the surge caused by that little kiss. Oh god, what was going to happen to me? How was I going to keep being platonically intimate like this if I all but passed out from her touch?

All I could do was fall further and cuddle closer against her, riding the swell of emotion that gently ebbed and surged inside me. I guess, in the end… so long as our friendship stayed like this, I could be happy, even if… even if I secretly wanted so much more.

Five minutes later, she shifted and groaned, beginning to wake. Panic. What if she didn’t mean to cuddle me like this? What if I was wrong and she didn’t want to be holding me? I needed to find a way to get out— 

“Alia,” she whispered softly, her arms filling with conscious purpose as they locked properly around me. “Gosh, this is nice.”

Oh. Okay… nevermind, false alarm. She wanted me here.

My reply was a wordless, happy, “Mmmm,” because if I opened my mouth I was sure I’d blurt out my feelings for her in a rush. I was so totally unable to cope with everything that was happening within my heart.

“We figured out so much last night while you were sleeping. There’s two different styles of ship here, the attackers and the defenders. It looks like the attackers actually lost the battle here, but as they left they unleashed some sort of super weapon that wiped out the planet and most of what was left of the defenders,” she told me, jumping right into business. Well, actually… business wasn’t the right word, because it was super interesting and she was very excited about it.

“You have no idea how hard it was to let you sleep, Alia,” she giggled, snuggling her face into my hair. “I wanted to wake you up immediately when we got everything figured out.”

“I wouldn’t have minded,” I told her, a broad smile on my face. She had wanted to tell me about the cool alien space battle! She wanted to share cool things with me.

“Yes you would,” she laughed, shaking me slightly for emphasis. “You wouldn’t take it out on anyone but you’d feel terrible and I’d be able to see it. You were so exhausted you passed out almost instantly.”

“Okay, fine,” I grumbled. “What does Roger want to do now?”

“Explore!” she replied, grabbing me and wriggling around excitedly. “This is first contact in the game, sort of. Top priority is to explore the hulks and see what we can do to get our ship FTL capable again, then we scan the living heck out of this system for info and explore as much as we can. Once we’re home we’ll be able to sell it all and be super rich! Hell, could probably sell some working tech to other players for real money if we wanted.”

“Oh, that sounds really fun,” I said, now matching her excitement. I wanted to actually see her excitement though, so I wriggled back slightly to look up at her.

Instead of excitement, I found wide, star-filled eyes staring directly into mine. She was so pretty, her soft skin that was so perfect, her horns arching forward and then gently back with a slight twist.

Reaching up with a hesitant hand, I traced the length of one, marveling at how warm it felt. They were like translucent lengths of glass or gemstone, dark swirls of blue coiling throughout their inky blackness. They also glittered with false starlight, much like her eyes, giving the impression that she had whole star clusters trapped within them.

Her lips parted slightly, distracting me from her horns and causing me to glance down at them. They weren’t huge, but they weren’t small either. What they did have was perfection of shape, so artfully curved and full for their size.

My heart was racing as I stared at them, wishing I had the courage to lean forward and put mine to hers. She was doing the same as me too, exploring my face with her gaze. Was she mapping every inch like I was? Was she memorising every subtle curve of the cheek, every fleck of colour in my eyes as I was hers?

I could feel her breath mingling with mine as we held that precarious eye contact, and I felt my heart begin to hope that just maybe, possibly, she was feeling something too.

“Cerri, Alia, are you— oh shit. Uh, my bad,” Roger said, entering the rec room to find us nose to nose. He tried to turn and leave, but his momentum carried him inward, and with his broken leg in a cast now, he sort of wobbled and spun, crashing to the ground. “Ah, fuck!” he squeaked as his crutch landed on his chest while he grabbed his leg and continued to swear under his breath.

My heart dropped even as I fought to stop my laughter at our captain’s comical entrance. The moment was gone, but at least it was done with humour.

Cerri gently eased herself out of our compromising embrace, although not without her fingers trailing down my waist and hips. We shared a look, one that did nothing to shed any light on what had just happened. Cerri’s thoughts and feelings were opaque to me.

“Let me help you up,” she said with an amused sigh, long, bare legs carrying her the short distance to Roger. She pulled him up with ease, handing him his crutch in the same motion. “We just woke up now, what do you need?”

“Ah, sorry for walking in on that, although you two should really—“ he began, actually blushing a little. Who would have thought that good ol’ put-together Roger had a hard time with PDA?

I interrupted him with a shake of my head, quietly explaining, “We just woke up, we were… ah, um… just talking about, you know, what you all found in the system while I was asleep.”

Cerri added a wordless sound of agreement, hand going to the horn I had been touching. “Yes. Just… that.”

“Right,” he said slowly, staring at everything in the room except our faces. “Well, we’re planning to get the Turshen moving soon so… if you could both be ready…”

“Sure thing Cap, we’ll be there in five minutes,” Cerri nodded, arm dropping to her side.

“Uh, good… well… I’m going to do a U-turn properly this time and head back to the bridge…” he smiled awkwardly. “Catch you both there.”