The events of the previous day were still fresh in everyone’s mind as we tried to find some semblance of normalcy to settle into.

  After Sarah and I, though mostly Sarah, managed to make sense of the controls, detaching the shuttle from the big tree was relatively straightforward, and it didn’t take long for Mike to fly us back to our mothership, although it did take more convincing than I would’ve liked to get him to do anything at all, which concerned me.

  Due to the mothership and our positions in nearly opposite ends of our orbit around the planet, the rendez-vous maneuver took a good deal of fuel, more than would normally be responsible to use for such a thing, but still an amount that was gladly spent with the shuttles tanks having been topped up and us having no further use for it beyond getting us where we needed to be, which, given how high tensions were, could not happen soon enough. Once we were in range, the beauty of galaxy wide standardized docking port design meant it was trivial for an experienced pilot to connect the two vessels, after which we all wasted no time moving to the much larger space that the mothership provided. The transition to 1G after having spent two weeks in reduced gravity was slightly jarring, but the increased pressure it put on us was still a familiar feeling that we welcomed as a sign of things calming down.

  Of course, that didn’t mean we could just ignore the multiple elephants in the room and just go about our business like nothing was wrong, which was what had led to the current situation.

  I was sitting in Alice’s room, doing my best to keep her company in what ways I could, but she seemingly wasn’t having it, having wrapped herself up in all her various limbs and refusing to communicate.

  The place had at one point been a regular quarters reserved for times of rest and use during FTL travel, but it had been turned upside down since our return to the mothership. The sitting desk at one end had been trashed and anything that had been on it now lay scattered all around the room, along with the contents of the once soft mattress and covers that were now little more than shredded remains mostly piled on the indent on a raised spot on the floor that had once been a bed. Numerous deep gouges and claw marks lined the floors and, more worryingly, the walls and ceiling. Deep down I knew that these rooms were isolated from vital systems so there was little chance of anything important having been damaged, but the sight was still deeply unnerving.

  Sarah had told me a little about what had happened to her group since we were split up and I was honestly at a loss on how to face them. If I’d ever had any anxiety about my words being taken in the wrong way, this was that but unimaginably more extreme, as I couldn’t be sure how any attempt to help might be perceived, much less interpreted, so I had to settle for simply being there and trying to offer some comfort with my presence until she opened up and told me if there was anything I could do for her. This never actually happened, so we both just sat there doing nothing.

  Eventually, it became time for me to leave. I couldn’t be sure if I’d actually done anything at all to help but I could only hope that I had. Getting up, I thought about letting her know I was going, but hesitated just before placing a gentle hand on her slimy wet shoulder. Then the eye on the back of her head that immediately locked onto mine and tracked my every move sealed the deal and I left without saying a word.

  Outside, I was met with Alex and Sarah waiting by the door, the latter anxiously watching me and Alice while the former did the same in between glaring at Sarah, who made a point of ignoring him.

  “So, how did it go?” Sarah asked eagerly.

  “Honestly, I don’t know.” I replied with a sigh. “I was about to ask you the same thing, what did it look like on your end?”

  “Like you two just sat together for a few hours without saying anything.”

  “Yeah, that’s about the same as what I got.” I told her. “Still, nothing particularly strange happened, so I guess that’s a good thing?” I posited, the sight of her extra eyeball poking out of her skull still sending shivers down my spine.

  “We’re lucky nothing did happen, which is apparently more than we could ask of that other one.” Alex interrupted gruffly, his tone clearly confrontational, and Sarah was quick to rise to the challenge in his words.

  “That other one has a name.” She hissed. “That other one is your friend!” She continued, her somewhat spindly, hunched over form straightening to meet Alex’s gaze at the same level, the tentacles at her back brandishing their spiked tips and thick corded muscles that didn’t match her previous build visibly coiling beneath her skin. Alex tried to pull me behind him but I wasn’t about to just let him.

  “Enough, both of you!” I shouted at them. “This isn’t the time for this! If you go picking fights for no reason we will all be at each other’s throats before we can even start our trip home.”

  Sarah was the first to deflate at my words, and only once she’d done that, did Alex follow suit.

  “Sorry, it’s just hard to accept… everything that’s happened, I guess. I just wish we could all talk it out and go back to how things used to be.” She said. I could practically feel Alex getting ready to pipe up with something insensitive so I lightly elbowed him on the side and he took the cue to keep quiet.

  “Well, speaking of, do we know anything about Mike?” I asked.

  “Nothing much. He’s been sticking to the controls since we got here. If he didn’t have something to do, I would imagine he’d be the same as Alice here.” Sarah answered my question, stealing a glance at our sullen biologist as she finished her sentence.

  “I’ll go check on him. In the meantime, I’m assuming I can leave you two alone without worrying.” I said, pointedly looking at Alex, who sighed and nodded. “I’ll see you in a bit.” I told him, my gaze softening, before walking away.

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  The corridors that made up the large gravity ring going around the kilometer long spire that was the mothership were lit by sterile white illumination on dark steel that gave it an oppressive, claustrophobic atmosphere. It normally wasn’t a problem, as not much time would be spent here when the ring was not spinning and the ship not in warp, such as right now, but with how everyone seemed to be avoiding each other like the plague, we’d all ended up holing up in our quarters rather than in the communal spaces in the central spire, with the one exception of Mike, who made his nest in the control room, also located within the ring. The fact that more than half of our crew was gone didn’t help matters, as the halls that had at one point been filled with boisterous conversation were now eerily silent.

  Glancing at shadows like they might suddenly leap at me, I eventually made it to the control room, where Mike was slowly tapping away at the various screens with the energy of a DMV employee who hadn’t slept in a week.

  “Hey.” I greeted him, but he gave no answer.

  “How’re you holding up?” I asked him, more seriously this time.

  “We’ll be confined to quarters in twenty minutes.” He said in a low voice.

  “What was that?”

  “I’ll be activating the ring in twenty minutes so we can go into warp. Make sure everyone’s there by the time that happens so we can go home.” He said, for the first time lifting his gaze from the console he was working at to look me in the eyes.

  “Way ahead of you on that one, everyone’s already there.” I told him.

  Our mothership was a massive megastructure, so big, in fact, it did not even have conventional thrusters, as the size of them that would be required to move such a colossal steel monolith was simply impractical. Instead, it was only capable of moving using its FTL Drive, isolating a bubble of space around the ship and moving that across the universe, bypassing the mass constraint that would be a problem for conventional thrusters. There were two catches with this approach, however. The first was that such high speed movement and the destructive consequences of shoving a bubble of space into a spot that was already occupied made it impractical for moving short distances, hence our reliance on shuttles and orbital maneuvering pods to move around inside a planet’s sphere of influence. The second was the drive’s insane energy requirements, which, even with three quarters of the ship being dedicated to gathering and storing that energy, still meant that the drive couldn’t be active at the same time as most of the life support and true artificial gravity, so all crew had to be confined to the gravity ring around the mothership where the remaining life support was directed and live under the much more uncomfortable spin gravity for the duration of travel.

  “Everything okay with you?” I asked, moving closer to where he had gone back to focusing obsessively on his work. I could tell there wasn’t much for him to do at the moment, but he still focused on it like his life depended on it.

  “Yes.” He lied without a hint of hesitation or believability.

  “Do you want to talk…?” I asked tentatively.

  “Absolutely not.” He snapped, and that was that. It was clear there was nothing I could do, so I quietly left and made my way to Alex’s room. I’d told him I’d see him in a bit and having already made the rounds to see everyone, with the exception of Curt who couldn’t simply be talked to, it was time to go and hopefully relax for a little bit.

  Crossing the threshold into his room, I was met with him lying face up on his bed, his remaining arm draped across his eyes to block out the harsh illumination. Normally, he’d be able to control its intensity mentally using a small transmitter in his robotic arm, but with it missing, it didn’t seem like he had the energy to adjust it manually, so I went and turned it down to a dim warm glow just as he peeked one of his eyes from behind the arm covering them.

  “So how did it go?” He asked, not changing his position on his bed any more than necessary to look my way.

  “Awful, but I don’t know what else I expected.” I told him honestly.

  “Are you okay?” He asked, pulling his arm away from his face to lift his head up and look at me directly. He tried to push himself up with his left arm, but with it being gone, all he managed was to wiggle his stump a little bit before unceremoniously flopping back down with a groan.

  “About as well as I could be, I guess.” I told him. “Are you okay?”

  “Not really.” He said, and I sat beside him to encourage him to continue, which he did. “I’m just… I’m fuckin’ tired, Fae. Like, to the bone tired. The last two weeks have been rough to say the least and this isn’t even close to being over.”

  “What makes you say that? We’re finally going home!” I asked him, a hint of concern at his words coloring my voice as I pulled away slightly. He just pulled me back down to lay next to him before answering.

  “Call it a hunch.” He said, and those were the last words spoken before we both passed out into restless sleep.

  UVL, or the Universal Vocal Language, was the chimeric brainchild of some of the original members of the Galactic Federation, meant to be a way for the various species to communicate through the medium that most of them were already using, that being words transmitted through sound. It was a Frankenstein mix of several words originating from the most prominent languages each of the original member species had used that could put even a mess of a language like English to shame. This resulted in it being a mess of hisses, clicks and chirps to any untrained ear that was almost indeciphrable without help.

  On the flipside, with it being an artificial language specifically designed to facilitate communication, it was blessedly regular and fairly easy to learn if one could get used to the foreign sounds, a necessity if one ever wanted to travel the stars, so it still received near universal adoption from the majority of species that used any vocal language, and was the standard form of communication used in all channels where the identity and preferred speaking language of the other party wasn’t always a given.

  One major downside of it, however, was that with it being used almost exclusively in official channels –with the notable exception of the rare mixed species colonies– what few curse words it contained most often proved insufficient to hold any kind of civilized conversation, as was becoming apparent now.

  “Control, please confirm you did not just fucking say we cannot go to Earth!” Sarah yelled into the microphone in one of the consoles that lined the command room, switching from UVL to English to make sure her cursing appropriately conveyed how pissed off she was.

  “Repeating. You do not have permission to warp into a parking orbit around SOL-3 ‘Earth’, nor to descend to its surface from there. By your own admission, you are carrying an unknown, likely harmful biological agent you are incapable of properly disposing of. You are to stand by for an escort to a Terran United Nations site where your situation can be properly assessed. Please confirm the full reception of this message.” The person on the other side of the communicator repeated without mercy. I stole a glance at Alex, his words from a few days ago seemingly having come true, but he was too busy glaring intensely ahead to notice my eyes on him.

  “Confirmed, awaiting escort.” Sarah practically spat onto the microphone.

  Chapter 16: Consider yourself drafted