Digital Galaxies

It took us two weeks to get the new ship back into working order, which was actually a hell of a lot less time than I had been expecting. The speed of the whole operation was almost entirely down to the engineering of the long dead aliens who had built the thing.

Imagine if a drydock crew treated a spaceship the same way a master bladesmith might treat the one sword he makes every two years. That’s what this ship felt like. A piece of art as much as it was a vessel of war.

The biggest breakthrough in our quest to make the ship ergonomically functional for us humans was when Turshie bounced happily onto the reactor console display.

“Aliaaa,” she trilled, grinning widely. “Guess what I found!”

I let out a little micro-squeak of fright, but quickly covered it by asking, “What did you find?”

“Aren’t you meant to guess?” Turshie laughed. “That’s how the saying goes, right?”

“Uh, no…” I said, shaking my head. “It probably meant that way back in the day, but it’s just a turn of phrase now.”

“Oh,” she huffed. “That’s lame. Will you guess anyway?”

“Um…” I didn’t really feel like playing any guessing games. I’d just finished installing a new suite of sensors on the reactor and everything ached because of it. If we ever made it back to civilisation, I was getting some artificial muscles installed, along with bones strong enough to handle them. This ship had been made by a species that was obviously taller and stronger than humans, and it even showed in the weight of the components it was constructed from.

A pout formed on Turshie’s animated face. “Fine. I was all excited but now I’m just… ah whatever, you’ll still bounce around when I tell you.”

I let out a laugh. “Oh my goodness, are you going to tell me or not?”

“I found an alien version of a fabrication engine!” she told me, her voice lowering to an excited whisper. “It’s an industrial one too!”

My eyes must have looked completely round as joy and surprise intermingled within me. “Where? We searched the whole ship! How did you find it?”

“Well, the records are all… funky,” Turshie said, beginning to pace back and forth across the screen. “The alien AI tried to give it all to me, but it sort of prioritised the integrity of some data over others. I have virtually nothing to tell you about who these aliens were or why they were fighting the weird cyborg zombies, but it made dang sure I got the manual for this ship.”

“Okay,” I said, smiling to let her know I was following along.

“Well, despite the care that was put into making this thing, it looks like the ship was standard issue,” she continued as a whiteboard sprung up behind her. She began to use it to illustrate what she was telling me. “This ship is… well it translates to Valiance Class Frigate. The manual says there should be a big fabrication engine in the lower hold.”

“But there isn’t,” I finished, tapping a wrench on bundit’s hull for emphasis.

“Yeah… but there’s like, hundreds of these ships nearby, all broken and busted up,” Turshie said, grinning. “A scan showed that there’s a… well, a hunk of another Valiance out there nearby. It looks like the fab in there is still intact.

“Oh,” I marvelled, impressed by her thinking there. Well, that and kicking myself for not thinking of the simple idea to go and find another one in the wreck. “That’s smart thinking, Turshie.”

She shook her head wryly. “It wasn’t me. I was talking to Gloria and she had the idea when I was… well, babbling about random stuff. I can’t remember, but I must have mentioned how we were missing a fab.”

“Cute,” I giggled. The idea of Gloria dealing with a scatterbrained Turshie was just way too adorable.

“Yeah… Gloria is…” she mumbled, before her image went still.

“Let’s find the fab, shall we?” I asked, when it was obvious she wasn’t going to continue her sentence.

“Yes,” she said quietly, without her normal upbeat Turshie persona. “You’ll need to upgrade the thrusters on bundit. I think it’s the only craft we have right now that can move.”

“I wonder if there’s any alien tech I can use,” I said, pondering the large pile of alien gear that we’d collected into a bin nearby.

Turshie didn’t sound convinced. “That seems sketchy. Do you want me to get Cerri?”

“What else am I going to upgrade bundit with?” I joked, spreading my arms to show the jumble of junk in the room. “It’s not like I packed an extra set of thrusters and didn’t put them on my mech.”

“Oh… right,” she replied, grinning sheepishly. “That makes sense. Still, Cerri’s been studying all the tech and well, yeah. Probably best to talk to her.”

“You really want me to get her help on this, huh?” I teased, wondering what her angle was here. 

She performed a very energetic, almost aggressive nod. “Yes, because if something goes wrong and you blow up the ship, then I won’t have a body in DG anymore.”

“Who says I’m going to blow up the ship?” I sputtered.

“Murphy does.”

“Murphy?” I blinked. “Oh… right. Yeah.”

****

Half an hour later and Cerri and I were standing in one of the ship’s many cargo holds, staring at the mountain of random alien stuff we’d collected. When we’d arrived on the ship, it had apparently been abandoned in a hurry. Shit had been strewn across the place and very little of the objects we’d found had made sense to us.

So those of the crew that weren’t needed to get the ship’s systems working had instead spent their time documenting and categorising everything we’d found. The information, observations, photos, and videos we’d taken would be worth a massive amount of cash back in civilised space. That is, so long as we went about this as scientifically as possible.

“So, those suits over there have some low-power thrusters on them,” Cerri said, indicating what we had earlier discovered to be space suits.

We still didn’t know what the original owners of the ship looked like, but their suits indicated they had two arms, two legs, and a head. The resemblance to humanity grew fuzzy from there on, however. Their bodies were sort of flat, like a badger or something, with stubby legs and big paw hands to complete the look. In fact, now that I looked at them like that, they really did seem like they might be badger shaped.

“I don’t think strapping even more attitude thrusters to bundit will do much,” I replied, scratching absently behind one ear. Nobody ever talked about how itchy it was to have fur, even in only a few select places.

My whole body froze in place when Cerri moved to stand behind me, arms rising into a position where she could both press herself to my back while also scratching behind my ears. I waited for some sort of explanation, why she’d just casually done something that felt so intimate, and yet she seemed completely oblivious to it.

“I did find some alien exosuit things in the smaller machine shop,” she told me, letting one of my ears go so she could point to a mess of random mechanical parts. “I think they have proper thrusters on them.”

I couldn’t reply, even if I’d wanted to. Whatever thoughts I’d had of upgrading bundit were nothing but scattered dust before the gale force wind of emotion roiling in my heart. Holy moly, did she not even realise what she was doing to me?

Cerri, I typed, just barely managing to get the thought commands to coalesce. You're frying my brain.

She gave a start and stepped away from me, blurting, "Fuck, I'm sorry! I just… I'm sorry! I didn't think, I just wanted to…"

Turning to face her, I found myself caught in the magnetic pull of my growing love for her. I stepped up to her and threaded my arms carefully around her neck.

Her eyes widened and a small gasp escaped her lips. "Alia?"

Why won't you… you know? I asked shyly. I'm too much of a scaredy cat to… yeah. Cerri, please.

She gulped, still staring down at me with something like fear in her lovely dark eyes. "I… I… um… it's because… I mean, I can't. I don't… control is hard…"

None of that made any sense, I sighed, feeling my heart wilt and waver.

Her lips quivered, refusing to open. When her eyes closed and her head dipped towards mine, my heart stopped. It was done, dead in my chest due to pure shock. She didn't kiss me though, instead, her forehead landed gently against mine.

I'm scared, She told me, resorting to text now as well.

Scared of me? I asked tentatively.

She shook her head gently against mine. No. Scared of… history repeating itself. Scared of myself.

Why?

Because I am… this is really embarrassing, but please don't laugh because yes, it is amusing, but it is also very serious to me.

I squeezed her tight. I'm listening. Ah… no, I'm reading. You know.

She giggled, then growled gently. Don't make me laugh.

Well, I'm not trying to!

Her hair was up in a cute messy bun that left lots of fluffy bits on the back of her neck for me to play with. That's what I was doing when her message came in.

My last… and first, and only relationship… it was with Gloria. She and I… well, she expressed interest in me, as she did with you in the early days. But it was me who took things beyond flirting. I didn't know… it was so much to process, being like that with someone.

I gave an encouraging nod and stayed still while she typed everything out in her mind’s eye. I’d suspected, about her and Gloria, but it was nice to have confirmation.

I’ve done so much thinking, ever since. Trying to understand what happened. Just bear with me. I know I’m still very naive about things now. Imagine what I was like… back then. Imagine growing up to the age of nineteen without ever taking physical form. I don’t have to, because that’s exactly what happened with me. I was far more interested in numbers and knowledge. It took Gloria to draw me out.

“I can relate, sort of,” I whispered, pulling a hand back to stroke soothingly at her cheek.

I know. I wouldn’t even try to explain all of this to someone like, Roger, for example.

“Well, I’m all ears,” I said, lips quirking into a smile. “Well, at least like… twenty percent ears, anyway. By body weight.”

That got another giggle out of her and I caught a swat from her tail in retaliation. “Anyway! Gloria realised that I was still very new to myself, to being anything other than an entity of science. She tried to keep her distance, but… she was so intriguing to me. I won’t go into detail but… I practically jumped her. I guess that’s why she thought it was so funny that I picked a succubus as my form, in the end. It’s rather fitting.”

Wait, are yo— I began, before accidentally hitting the send button as my train of thought caught up. So you’re saying that you’re scared of going anywhere with me because you’ll like… you know. Gosh. Wow. I mean… ajdkghndsfkjh. Okay.

Swapping back to text, she continued to explain. I know what I’m like when I let myself go, when I give in to the emotions of a moment like that. Then there’s the fact that while for Gloria it was just about the sex, it was so much more than that for me. In the end, I had my heart broken. She and I are still friends obviously, but… I’m terrified of my friendship with you turning into nothing but… that. At least on your end.

I began to type out a reply, but it would never get sent. We were interrupted by the sound of someone clearing their throat.

As if she had been summoned, our pilot’s voice echoed into the cargo hold. “Uh… you two okay?”