It was dark when I opened my eyes. A dull, flickering yellow glow lit up the outside of the atmosphere pod. Emergency lumens. This deck still had some power, then. That was good. The further from the reactor we climbed, the more chances there were for the power lines to get cut. If there was still power this high up in the ship, there was a good chance that the important systems like navigation, comms, and sensors might still be operational.

From what Cygnus said before our nap, we were in Mess and Rec. This was where the galley and gym were, as well as the pool and a couple rooms for watching movies and playing games. Skips was into collecting old earth analog stuff, so one of the game rooms was dedicated to what he called “board games.” He wouldn't let us touch the real things, but he'd made some really detailed copies, hand painted on sheets of spare plexiglass with printed metal game pieces. They were really fun. He'd backed the plexiglass with magnetic strips so we could play even on Zero G days. Skips always said he played better without gravity because all his blood was in his brain, but he could never beat Cygnus no matter what game he brought out.

Cygnus always thrived without gravity, for obvious reasons. I bet she would crush at Su'kera. It was a sport we Aizu played in our trees, though we did have an official court design for taking it into space with us. It was kind of like a cross between the humans’ dodgeball and soccer, played in a three-dimensional field. She would decimate damn near any competition in a Zero G match.

The only reason I didn’t give her my complete vote of confidence was Mei. Our Navigator was the only person who could regularly take Cygnus on in Zero G sports and have a shot at winning. She’d won a planetary championship for Zero G Volleyball back when she was in college. That said, it was a team sport, and Mei would probably cry and forfeit the first time she hit an Aizu with the Su’kera ball.

The warm belly of my pod partner rose and fell beneath me with slow, even breaths. Cygnus was still asleep. It was to be expected; my natural sleep cycle was much shorter than hers. Aizu back home split up their sleep throughout the day, usually functioning in eight-hour cycles. Four asleep, four awake. Out here in space, we followed the galactic standard day of 18 hours, with 12 awake and 6 asleep, but I hadn't seen a clock in however many days we'd been adrift. My circadian rhythm was starting to revert.

In the dim light of our little bubble of safety, the Ancient's skin glowed. The swirling nebulas and twinkling stars shone bright against the midnight blue skin beneath, a cosmic tapestry laid out before me. She was like a slice of space given life. Not the cold, uncaring space that had nearly killed me, but the stunning, majestic space that drew me from the cradle of my homeworld with promises of adventure. I was still taken aback sometimes by how absolutely gorgeous she was.

Compounding my sense of awe was the fact that she was still topless. She was gorgeous in multiple ways. Her body was athletic, muscles toned from years of manual labor as a mechanical engineer. Her breasts were damn near bigger than I was. Each one was easily my mass.

Hesitantly, I put my hand on her left breast. The swirling spiral galaxy that covered it shimmered slightly at my touch, but Cygnus didn't stir. She was so warm. My mind slipped back to… earlier. Though my exploration into the galactic center was cut short by a panic attack, right now, the only thing I could remember was how warm it had been inside of her. My hand grew bolder, pressing in against the starry skin, fingers splayed. The way it felt in my hand, the softness, and the comfort of its weight all made my heart flutter in my little chest.

My cheeks burned red, and I withdrew my hand sharply. Why had I done that? This wasn't the time. Even if circumstances were normal, it wasn’t appropriate to just squish your friend’s boob while they had a nap. What had gotten into me?

It was so tempting to blame it all on the heightened emotions of our current situation, but I knew that wasn't the whole cause. My whole time with this crew, I'd been desperate for Cygnus to like me. She was an Ancient, for crying out loud! There was so much knowledge in her head, literally millions of years’ worth, transferred to her by psychic link. For an Aizu, a species that wasn’t even two decades into their Space Age, it was an honor to even breathe the same air as her.

But… I also wanted Cygnus to like me because she was pretty. She was kind, funny, and had a wonderful laugh. I liked how she teased and flirted with everybody. I liked the way her curly purple hair fell down her back when she undid her bun at the end of the day. It was hard for me to admit to myself that I had a crush on her, but I really did. A big one, too.

Maybe, just maybe, when this whole nightmare was over, I'd tell her about it.

The tangled web of my feelings was the last item on a long, long list of problems that needed solving. I couldn’t tell her I liked her if I was dead, and about a hundred things needed to be done in order to not die. We needed to find one of my space suits, plus one of my air canisters. We needed to reach the bridge to ascertain the level of damage we were contending with. We then needed to repair the ship enough to get it back into well-traveled space. All while maintaining approximately appropriate levels of rest, hydration, and calorie intake.

Despite the direness of our situation though, I couldn't bring myself to wake her. Seeing her now, with her glowing, sunlike eyes dark and shut, she looked peaceful. This was the only calm she'd had over the past three days. Cygnus had shouldered the weight of our survival all alone, something I had both allowed and, in my ignorance of Ancients, expected. She was more like me than I'd given her credit for. Just a young woman trying to make her way in the galaxy, finding the answers to her questions as she went. I felt guilty now about how I'd dumped all my problems on her, assuming this was just another day for her.

I crawled up between her breasts, nestling my pink little self in her cleavage. Not in a lewd way, more just like a snuggle. My tail wrapped around her right breast, and I laid my head against her chest. I wanted to hear her heartbeat again. I missed it…

Nuzzling my cheek against her sternum, I pressed my ear to her chest and closed my eyes. There it was. The steady thumping beat that had been my pillar while she ferried me through the vacuum of space. It was always so calm. Even in the midst of danger, exposed to the harsh, cold vacuum of space, with another being wiggling inside her stomach, her heart had never started to race. Except for when she’d mentally flashed me to try to get me out of my panic attack, but that was for different reasons. She’d never succumbed to fear or despair.

Listening now, I started to notice something that had escaped me during my trip down her throat. I was feeling that heartbeat from both sides of her chest. Wiggling up a little, I pressed my head to the right side of her chest. I felt the beat here, just as strongly. Throwing a leg over her boob to keep myself steady, I pushed myself all the way over to the left side of her torso and listened again, hand pressed against the right side where my head used to be.

With both sides covered, there could be no doubt. There were definitely two beats, alternating in near-perfect syncopation to each other.

“That’s my nipple your toes are gripping.”

My legs kicked, and I hit the roof of the atmosphere pod before my brain had even finished processing those words. Cygnus was looking up at me tiredly, but with a hint of amusement. I felt a little pang of guilt. I had been trying not to wake her up, and then I just crawled all over her like a space-themed amusement park.

“S-Sorry,” I said, my bubblegum pink cheeks turning hot pink with a blush. My toes gripped to the roof of the pod, claws tapping as I shifted my feet nervously. “I-I was just… do you… do you have two hearts?”

Cygnus relaxed subtly. I hadn’t noticed the tension in her frame until it dissipated. Had she thought I was feeling her up in her sleep? Not an irrational concern, but I’d gotten ahold of my intrusive thoughts very quickly. I really did just want to snuggle!

“Yeah, I do,” she said, leaning back down against the wall of the pod. “Both aren't usually on at the same time, though.”

I blinked. Of all the answers I expected to hear, that was not one of them.

“They… don’t beat together…?”

“It’s a little complicated…” Cygnus said. “You know how aquatic Mulvidians can rest half their brain at a time?”

“I-I didn’t even know there were aquatic Mulvidians…” I looked away, embarrassed. “The big lizards were scary to me back in school… I-I kinda blocked those lessons out.”

My toes let go, and I drifted back down to stand on her abs. As soon as my bare skin touched hers, I felt the pull of her mind. Warm and comforting, it embraced my own consciousness like a loving hug. I reached out to embrace it back, but it retreated, leaving me alone in my head again.

I don’t know why that hurt, but it did. I pouted slightly, but then I felt a prickle of reassurance in the base of my skull. She didn’t want to tax my mind more than necessary. We would link again when… when we inevitably decided to move on.

“Well there are, and they can. Same sort of deal happens here. They usually take turns pumping blood.” She traced two circles on her chest, then two arches through the middle of them. “Both hearts have a bypass valve, so when one heart is active, the blood flows around the other one instead of through it.”

“I see… So is it like a redundancy?”

“Yes and no. If one heart gets pierced, it does shut down to prevent bleeding out. But the main reason we have two is for Zero G.”

I tilted my head, staring at her chest. It took discipline to stop my eyes from wandering, but discipline I had. I racked my brain for all those lessons on what space did to a carbon-based body, trying to figure out the advantage of having multiple hearts, but I came up empty.

In the end, it was Skips and his love of board games that gave me the answer. He always claimed he played better in Zero G because all the blood was in his brain. When gravity was absent, blood pooled in the skull and upper body!

“Oh I get it! This is how the Ancients deal with the blood pooling problem!”

Cygnus smiled. The stars on her cheeks twinkled, and I felt a little thrill of pride. I could still make her sparkle, even in all of this.

“Yep! With no gravity, there’s not enough pressure to push the blood back down. When our inner ears detect the lack of gravity, both hearts start pumping to raise the pressure and reestablish equilibrium.”

“I’m remembering all that now!” I perked up, swishing my tail. “I remember my teacher saying we were ‘uniquely adapted to handle Zero G’ because we hung upside down so much. We have one-way valves in our veins and arteries, so blood can’t pool in our heads.”

“That’s definitely another way it can be handled, yeah,” Cygnus said. “A lot of the stuff in our bodies, we’re not sure if it evolved or was designed into us. Most of it’s from long before we had tactile telepathy. That at least I know we developed on our own; that and everything that lets us survive in hard vacuum. But the nitpicky stuff like second hearts, our lung structures, or even this fancy, spacey skin… there’s not really answers for why we have them. The data drives on our oldest ships only go back about 500,000 years, so a lot of that knowledge is lost to us forever.”

Once more, I was struck by the sheer enormity of the Ancients’ lived existence. Their data drives only went back half a million years. That was twenty times longer than the Aizu’s entire record of civilization. Even humans, one of the older species in the galaxy, weren’t walking upright back then. The Ancients had lost more knowledge than the rest of the sapient species in the galaxy had ever known, a hundred times over.

“I always wondered… Why stay in space? Surely settling on another planet would be easier?”

Cygnus looked away, a frown distorting her shapely lips, and my heart skipped a couple of beats. Oh no, was that offensive? I was only just realizing that I had no clue about the cultural aspects of the Ancients. Did I just make some kind of faux pas?

I felt another tingle of reassurance. No, it was just something she needed to think about before answering. I sent back a hum of gratitude, focusing on the area where our skin touched. Even without linking fully, this second layer of communication was incredibly helpful. Our minds were in tune, sharing conceptual data that said more than words ever could. Though I’d be more than happy to forget that this part of my life had ever happened, this part… this part could stay. I knew I would always cherish this feeling of absolute trust and closeness.

I caught another feeling, buried in the middle. She tried to hide it, but she was dreading the next step of our journey. Beneath the calm and the pleasant chatting was an icy cold fear at what waited for us in the last deck and a half of the Horizon’s Promise. We knew the fates of Harun and Ak. We were pretty sure what had happened to Mrrg. But Ot, Skips, and Mei… They were all on the bridge.

Until we went there, until we confirmed with our own eyes what had happened to them, she could hold onto that naive hope that maybe someone else had survived. That maybe… Mei wasn’t gone. That the last time they’d see each other would not have been in this very corridor, mere inches from where their pod now sat. Going their separate ways after breakfast, Mei to Navigation, Cygnus to Engineering. She still felt the soft kiss she’d placed on her human friend’s lips, still remembered the happy sway in her walk as she disappeared behind the airtight door to Navigation.

I came back to myself, realizing that I’d been pulled far deeper into the Ancient’s thoughts than I’d planned. Cygnus was trying so hard to hide it, but she was terrified. She was happy to talk for as long as I wanted, because it let her put off the inevitable for just a little longer.

And I was happy to let her talk. I had to be literally swallowed alive for us to continue. You'd be hard pressed to find an Aizu who looked forward to that. Even though the warmth of it would be welcome right now… Another thing I wouldn’t mind finding was some clothes! I was still naked.

“There are a lot of factors for why we stayed in space,” Cygnus finally said. “First, we weren't very advanced when our star exploded. None of our colony ships from the beginning even have FTL. Sure, we've spent millions of years in space, but we've been crawling through it like a Mulvidian rock snail.”

“You know I… I-I hadn't considered that,” I sheepishly admitted. “It probably took a million years just to find a habitable planet, let alone travel to it.”

“Next factor is loss of knowledge. Without proper education, it takes five generations on average for a colony ship to forget where they came from, where they were going, and why they’re even in space to begin with. And that happened a lot. Something like eighty percent of us forgot we’d ever lived on a planet. Even among the twenty percent who retained that knowledge, we lost our name, the name of our planet, the name and galactic coordinates of our star… all of it. It was only much later, once our fleets began to regroup, that the knowledge of our origins was shared across our entire species again.

“And by that point, it was too late to change course and colonize a planet. Turns out, living your whole life in a low gravity, sterile environment makes it really hard to survive on a real planet. We’d been atrophied and immunocompromised for hundreds of thousands of years. It took a complete overhaul of our entire way of life to reverse the damage, and we’re only now reaping the benefits. Lifers are still often too weak to set foot on an actual planet. It’s part of why so many younger Ancients are joining the broader galactic community. We finally can without winding up in the hospital because we touched a plant or caught the flu for the first time ever.”

“Wow…” I couldn’t think of anything else to say. What could I say? My education on space might have been a little lacking, but she wasn’t saying anything I hadn’t learned. I knew the effects of long term exposure to low gravity. I knew the challenges faced by generation ships. I had just… never put it together? The more she talked, the more I realized how little effort I had put into learning about her and her people.

And it wasn’t just her, either. I didn’t know much more about Humans, Seirogi, or Mulvidians than what was in the primers or what could be found with a quick netsearch. I learned more about Mulvidian culture from Harun playing pranks on Mrrg than from actually talking to Mrrg myself. I’d been too wrapped up in the Aizu propaganda. Be useful, be likeable, show everyone the Aizu can pull their weight in the big bad galaxy. Any effort spent learning about the other species was only done to help endear myself to them. I’d been so desperate for them to know me that I had neglected to know them in return.

Cygnus’ mind embraced me again, and I felt a little pang of embarrassment. I was so wrapped up in my feelings, I forgot she could feel them too. I didn’t know how much of that she’d heard, but it was enough for her to feel the need to offer support. I welcomed her in, letting her feel how warm and fuzzy she made me feel. How much I enjoyed being in her company. Everything but the feelings swirling around inside of me that I still couldn’t fully process myself.

Then I let her go. She slipped away, back into her own body. It felt so empty in my own head now. Would it always feel this hollow without her?

“Thank you,” I said. I reached down, grabbing her star-spangled fingers. I rubbed them gently, tracing the whorls of the pink and red nebulas that covered her skin. “But this is something I think I needed to learn. It’s not a bad lesson… I just wish I’d learned it when… e-everyone was still alive…”

“Oh Kabs…” Cygnus’ yellow eyes dimmed. I was getting to the point where I could assign moods to the shades of orange. This one was sad. I held her fingers to my face, kissing the tips.

“I’m okay,” I said. I was still working out if I meant it. “I’ve just… I’m okay.”

She already knew anything I was going to say, anyway. I’d set her as an ideal of perfection to strive toward. I’d listened to them all without bothering to hear their stories. I hadn’t learned a thing about them, besides what I could use to find common ground. She got it all straight from my mind, before I could even translate it into words.

She also knew I would do better. That I would be better. I was untangling the mess of preconceived notions in my head, and I no longer saw her as the avatar of a perfection I’d never be able to attain. And not in a bad way! Not like she screwed up and I thought she was a failure! No, I just… saw her as she actually was, instead of the fantasy I’d come up with. We were both young adults, both knowledgeable but inexperienced, both just trying to survive this catastrophe.

What she didn’t know, and what I was going to keep as safe and secret as I possibly could, was that this revelation had brought feelings I never thought I’d have to deal with back to the front of my mind. If she was just another person, no longer this goddess so far out of my league that it was laughable… I might actually have a chance with her.

And that kind of terrified me.

Again. Not the time, not the place. I still wasn’t even sure if it would ever be the right time. Especially after… seeing the thoughts swirling around her head about Mei. So I shoved that thought all the way back down into the deepest, darkest corner of my mind, squished it back into my box of stuff I would deal with probably never, and locked it up. Sometimes things needed to stay repressed. Especially when the object of those feelings was a literal mind reader.

“If it helps,” Cygnus said, making me jump slightly, “no one thought you were rude or anything. Everyone loved you. Especially Mei. You would have been her little pink teddy bear if she had her way.”

“What’s a bear?”

“Big fat fuzzy mammal with cute round ears.” A smile pulled at the corners of her mouth, and her eyes started to turn yellow again. “I had to ask too. I still don’t know why it’s named Teddy though.”

“Oh!” Something clicked in my brain, bringing back a memory from just before the crash. Fuck, was it really only four days ago? It felt like a lifetime had passed since we were all together. “Did she like the picture? The one of me sleeping?”

The yellow glow faded back to that sad orange, before her eyes brightened back up again. Her smile seemed to widen despite herself.

“She loved it… I’m surprised you couldn’t hear the ‘squee’ from our room.”

“Probably the soundproofing,” I said, nodding sagely before giggling. Cygnus managed a gentle chuckle.

Slowly, the smiles slid from both of our lips. The conversation dissolved into tense silence. That undercurrent of anxiety began to rise back to the surface. We both knew what the future held for us. If we wanted to survive, we’d have to face it soon. Yet neither one of us wanted to leave this moment. If we could have lived in this pod forever, never having to face the hardships ahead of us, I didn’t honestly know if either of us would’ve left.

But that just wasn’t an option. There was still a lot of pain to get through before it was over. One way or another, this would end, and I for one was not going to roll over and die. We were both still breathing. Until that changed, we could still make it out of this.

I met Cygnus’ eyes, and she nodded. She was with me. With a heavy sigh, she rolled her shoulders, and reached for the emergency kit bag next to her. She passed me a chunk of calorie bar, and filled the cap of a water bottle for me to drink out of. I accepted gratefully, digging into the meager meal with reckless abandon and a complete lack of table manners. I was hungry! I had a lot of calories to catch up on after sleeping off the chill of the void for a couple days.

Cygnus raised the rest of the bar to her own lips, and my eyes grew wide.

“C-can I make a request?” I hurriedly squeaked. “I-I don’t wanna be in there at the same time as food… I think I could probably handle it better if your stomach wasn’t actively digesting calorie bar mush all around me…”

“O-Oh!” Cygnus said, and I caught a little twinge of embarrassment from where we touched. “I’m so sorry, that hadn’t even occurred to me.” She wrapped the calorie bar back up, and tucked it back in the bag. “I can eat next time we pop the pod, before we go to bed. It’ll be gone by the time we move on.”

“I-I also don’t want you to starve yourself!” I added, my eyes still wide. “You need so many more calories than me. I-I don’t want you to be doing all the heavy lifting on an empty stomach!”

“I won’t be,” Cygnus said pointedly, and I felt my cheeks heat up. I’d walked right into that one, hadn’t I? “Once we get you into a suit, I’ll have more opportunities to eat. I’ll be fine.”

“Okay…” I said, chewing on a bite of calorie bar thoughtfully. “I just feel bad…”

“Hey, your comfort is paramount. You’ve got the shittier part of this deal. The least I can do is make it a little more pleasant.” A bit of an uncomfortable look flashed across her face before she hurriedly smoothed it over. “Besides. I kinda… don’t get hungry while you’re in my stomach.”

“Elaborate…?” I wasn’t really sure I wanted her to, but she’d already said it. My brain would probably make it worse than whatever her explanation was.

“Y-you’re not food!” she quickly clarified. “And I don’t want you to think I think of you as food. But psychologically, the autonomic part of my brain can’t tell the difference. It actually… kind of feels weirdly satisfying…?” She sighed and deflated, looking embarrassed and uncomfortable. “I’m probably fucking this all up. Point is, brain stops sending hunger signals because stomach is already full. Like… a placebo effect.”

She looked like she was just gonna keep going, so I held my hand up to cut her off.

“Just… take your foot out of your mouth and put me in it.”

“Right…”

Her hands scooped me up, and my tail reflexively wrapped around her wrist. I turned my thoughts to happier times, when we would walk around the ship like this. Me sitting on her hand, instead of on the little shoulder platform she’d been issued as part of the Aizu Inclusion Program. It just felt more natural that way.

Apparently it made me cuter too, something that the rest of the crew fully took advantage of. Any time we passed him, Mrrg would always stop what he was doing to scratch me on the head with one of his massive claws. I let Mei carry me once. She got overwhelmed within two minutes and hugged me so tightly my cartilaginous collarbones squashed out of alignment. She’d been so scared she’d hurt me that she never allowed herself to carry me again.

Cygnus opened her mouth in front of me. Black lips smeared with red and pink nebulas pulled back over white teeth, parting to reveal the deep, inky blackness I was about to sink into. The arch of her throat, so strangely unadorned, with the airlock sphincter already rotating into the open position to accept me. The surface of her black tongue twitching and squirming with the involuntary contractions of two dozen individual muscle groups.

My attempts to distract myself immediately derailed as my self-preservation instincts made the back of my head prickle. I felt the calm of Cygnus’ mind begin to wash over me, but this time, I did not embrace it. The longer I could hold on without linking, the longer we'd last in the void before I needed another break. I would need her. I did need her. But I needed to control this myself if we were going to have a real chance at survival.

Not yet, I urged her. I… I’m okay.

I understand. The comfort of her mind drained away, leaving me with a parting reassurance. I’m always here. You just have to say when.

Shutting my eyes, I tried to squash down my primitive fears by taking another train of thought. The mouth that was slowly enveloping my head was shockingly similar to my own. Sure, she had all these extra muscles, and those fancy sphincters that kept her pressurized in the void, but the look of her mouth was nearly identical. It was still so strange to me how alike the carbon-based races were. Sure, you had the insectoid Seirogi, but the rest of us all had a head, torso, two arms, two legs, and–with the exception of Mulvidians–permanent breasts. There were variations of course, like mine and Mrrg’s tails and digitigrade legs, but the basic template was the same. And as the Ancients had proven, the exterior of that template didn’t really change all that much. They’d been evolving for millions of years longer than us, yet their basic template was just like ours.

Our scientists said it was an example of convergent evolution. This form was just good at the tasks required to become sentient and spacefaring. And we weren’t alone, either! The flora and fauna of Aizi'kuri bore striking similarities to those of Earth and Mulvidia. We all had trees, bushes, flowers, fish, crustaceans, reptiles, amphibians, and insects, many nearly identical to each others’.

Cygnus’ mind probed me again as she gave the first swallow. I felt my neck stretch almost painfully for a moment before the rest of my body got the message that we were supposed to be moving, and followed. I sank in up to my shoulders. This was always the roughest part for me. My survival instinct was screaming that there was still a chance to get out. The predator didn't have me past the point of no return yet. It took everything I had to fight the urge to thrash and kick.

She wasn't a predator. She was my friend, and I had to do this. She was being so brave and so strong for me. I had to return the favor.

Clinging to the thin strand of soothing connection, I rode out the initial wave of panic. It was downhill from here. The adrenalin dump would wear off soon enough, and I'd settle. Feeling the structures of her neck rearranging themselves around me, making room for my shoulders, my pulse spiked again. Another swallow sent me deep enough for the rhythm of her heart—her hearts—to take control again. As my collarbones slipped out of alignment, I felt the ripple of her throat on my shoulders, then my chest. She was having a much easier time getting me down.

Applying some lessons learned, Cygnus said, and I felt myself pushed in almost to my hips. I clenched my jaw hard enough to feel my teeth creaking. Different arrangements of musculature, aiding with my hands, staggered peristaltic movements, stuff like that.

Please stop talking about swallowing me and just swallow me, I groaned.

Sorry.

My hips were claimed next. I gave a little wiggle as her tongue went across something I definitely didn’t want it to, pressing my thighs together hard. My cheeks burned. A stupid little thrill made my heart skip a couple beats. I felt guilty for even feeling that. Thankfully I was able to stop anything embarrassing from slipping out across the link, but it was close. I couldn’t afford too many more of those, or else something might escape.

I gently disconnected from the link, not trusting myself anymore. But also… I didn’t need it right now. As I slipped inch by inch down her throat, I felt the pulse of her heart against me. It was just as calming as it was last time. I felt my body syncing with hers again, a physical sort of linking that was nearly as intimate.

*Thump thump, thump thump, thump thump, thump thump…*

Now that I was mostly calm and alone in my head, I could feel the second heart. They beat on either side of the esophagus, a call and response that drew my attention side to side, side to side. Left heart ventricle, right heart atrium. Left heart atrium, right heart ventricle. Almost like her heartbeat had its own echo within her body.

Despite myself, I felt a sense of morbid curiosity welling up in my chest. I was inside of another living, breathing being. One whose body was so different from anything I had ever seen before. I wouldn’t call myself a biology nerd by any means, but… I don’t know. It was an incredibly unique experience, and the more I experienced it… the more I wanted to keep experiencing it. Without a doubt, this was the most harrowing thing I’d ever done. And also the most intimate. My deeply-ingrained fear of being eaten alive was battling with the desire for intense closeness that Cygnus’ touch had instilled in me. A desire that grew with every beat of those twin hearts.

I really hoped my brain wasn't making any associations right now…

The sounds of slimy flesh squishing wetly against itself came from up ahead, and my head pushed into the stomach. At the same time, my feet slipped off the back of Cygnus’ tongue and down into the softly groping flesh. I felt her lips close halfway down my tail, and suction pulled the rest of it through. I wasn’t… comfortable with feeling like a slurped noodle, but if it was efficient, it was efficient.

As soon as my arms were free, I pulled myself the rest of the way in. I felt the throat spasm around my legs, and the walls of the stomach closed in on me as Cygnus coughed. A spike of fear stabbed into my chest, making my legs tremble as I settled back in. Sheepishly, I felt around with my mind for Cygnus’ link like a child looking for their stuffed animal after a nightmare.

The connection presented itself in my mind’s eye as a gossamer golden thread, somewhere down by my legs. I set my foot on it, and immediately felt the calm of my Ancient friend washing through my mind. My heart began to settle.

“S-sorry…” I said meekly.

You’re okay sweetie. A little tingle of reassurance buzzed against the back of my skull. That just surprised me, that's all.

“Okay…”

I turned my headlamp on, and the unfortunately familiar stomach illuminated before me. Swallowing hard, I took a moment to let myself get used to this again. The puddles of juices lapping at my feet, the sliminess of the gel that protected the stomach lining, the slightly bitter tang of the air that tickled my nostrils, the whoosh of air entering her lungs, and the bubbling and groaning of her intestines below me. I needed to see, smell, hear, and feel it all. I had to convince my primitive impulses that this was my friend, I had been in this stomach before, and she would let me out. Otherwise I was liable to start kicking.

I forced myself to take in every detail. Those midnight blue walls, gently sparkling and coated in a sheen of gel. The deep wrinkles sagging down from the roof and the walls, hiding zigzagging channels where they connected to the stomach wall. I knew from Cygnus’ brain dump that the fleshy folds were longer because their stomachs had evolved to digest in zero G. Surface tension kept the juices down in those deep crevices.

As an added bonus, the extra thick piles of pillowy rugae made Cygnus’ stomach floor very soft and cushy. Like reclining on a mattress stuffed with Kurundi down. If it weren’t wet, slimy, and squirming in here, it would almost be identical, actually. The warmth really added to it. Finally feeling the chill of space leave my bones made me miss home.

I ran my foot through the zigzagging crevices on the stomach floor, watching the folds clench and squirm. A calming habit I’d picked up from the last trip down Cygnus’ throat. Honestly, it wasn’t that bad in here. I still wasn’t doing well, by any means, but… I could tolerate it. It was warm and cozy. That was something I could hold onto. It made it easier to tell myself that this was a safe place.

The sphincter above me unraveled itself, and the O2 pill bounced off my head, landing in my lap. I flicked it off into a crevice where it started to fizz. Within a couple breaths, the bitterness in the air started to clear.

“Wow that happens fast,” I said, amazed.

These ones are quick release, Cygnus said. I have longer lasting ones for spacewalks, but those are with my suit. These ones I kept close, for emergencies just like this.

“Well… I’m glad you did.” I chuckled, a sort of bittersweet amusement settling over me. “Betcha never expected you’d have to share.”

Kabs, nothing else in the fucking universe could’ve been further from my mind. I’m literally a living space suit right now. I’m struggling to think of something even close to this experience.

“U-unfortunately, my end of the experience brings something to mind…I-it’s not that close but there's a connection with… with mouths…” I shrunk in on myself, a little embarrassed at what I was about to say. “There’s a category of… of p-porn that’s just Aizu riding Mulvidians’ tongues, a-and in one of them the Aizu got reeeeaaaaallll close to the edge of the throat when she finished… I-I think her tail was down in it…”

A zap of surprise and delight made a muscle in my neck twitch. I covered my face in shame, even though I knew it would do nothing to hide me from the scrutiny of Cygnus’ mind.

J’kabi! she said, a teasing lilt in her voice. Did we misread who you had a crush on?

“N-no! Wait, n-not no you misread, I... uhm…” My little heart was racing, my mind scrambling to clamp down on any spare thoughts or feelings. “W-well, I…”

I’m just teasing, Kabs. I’ve been away from the colony fleet long enough to understand the concept of privacy. Who you like, if you even like anyone, is your business. As are your porn searches.

“I-it wasn’t porn! I-I mean it was, but like…” I took a deep breath. Honesty was always the best policy when talking to a telepath. “Look. When I found out I’d be working with Mrrg, I tried to netsearch Aizu/Mulvidian relations. I wanted to find common ground to start conversations, y’know. B-but most of my search results were Aizu and Mulvidians… having relations…”

…That’s so much more adorably innocent and wholesome than I was expecting.

“Aaand that was the start of a very… informative deep dive…” Now that the dam had broken, everything was spilling out all at once. I didn’t know how much of this was nerves and how much was me trying desperately to change the subject, but I couldn’t shut myself up. “Of all the sentient races, Aizu and Mulvidians are the most biologically compatible. Similar enough not to poison each other, b-but different enough not to catch any diseases. A-and some of their… s-secretions bind with our neurochemical receptors for… p-pleasure and sexual arousal…”

Getting less wholesome the more you talk.

“…S-so yeah, Mulvidian saliva makes us horny and their s-sexual fluids induce a euphoric high… B-both male and female. Which is where the whole tongue-riding thing originated!” I uncurled a little, though my cheeks still burned. “Th-that’s all I wanted to find out… because the big lizards are scary and I couldn’t believe that any Aizu would willingly crawl into their mouth just for porn…”

That certainly was a deep dive… Mei’d call it a rabbithole. To my immense relief, I felt no judgement coming from my Ancient protector. She had only amusement, mixed with nostalgia-flavored grief. The latter was pushed aside as cautious disbelief bubbled to the surface, and she spoke again. Not sure how reputable those sources were though. I’ve never heard of any biological interactions like that, but then again, the Ancients’ reaction to most things is severe allergy.

“I was skeptical too, of course!” I cleared my throat, crossing my legs and squeezing my thighs together. I sure wished I could shut up right about now. “Until… I-I got a little Mrrg drool on me… I-If you remember that one dinner where I excused myself in a hurry and didn't wait for you, that's what it was.”

Wait, that's why you made that dramatic exit?

“Y-yeah, so I could— u-uhm… yeah it's real.”

The stomach floor lurched, tossing me up into the air as Cygnus let out an uproarious laugh. Long rugae caressed my chest and thighs, clenching and pulling away, dragging their wrinkly ridges across my pink, stripey skin. My arms and legs shot out, steadying me until a slimy caress across the back of my hand made me snap all my limbs back to the center. I floated there for a moment in a tight little ball, before the slight spin gravity of tumbling through space slowly drew me back down.

Mrrg thought he'd grossed you out! He started using a fork after that so you wouldn't get upset again.

I smiled, feeling some of that same grief and nostalgia tugging at my little heart.

“I may regret my lack of effort to learn about Mulvidian culture, but I don’t feel regret learning I made him a little more civilized…”

Conversation petered out, and I was left alone with the sounds of Cygnus’ body. It was too easy, this. The long conversations, the reminiscing, the thoughts and feelings shared between us with little more than a thought. I scoffed to myself, shaking my head. We’d walked right back into the same trap, eyes wide open. How I wished we could stay like this forever.

Yeah, yeah, we couldn’t, staying here was wasting oxygen… I beat back the typical arguments, huffing. A girl could dream, even if those dreams were impossible. I wiggled down into the cushy stomach folds, taking a deep breath through my nose. There were still traces of that bitterness; I doubted it would go away completely. I exhaled from my mouth, letting all the anxiety and fear of the unknown out with it. No more excuses. It was time to move on.

As if agreeing with me, Cygnus took her own deep breath and held it. The roof of my little sack of safety encroached further on my personal space. The long, squishy folds were millimeters from my skin now. If I moved my legs, they flexed and pulled away, the edges becoming all curly.

Pod’s popped. Let’s get this over with…

I set my foot back into the well-used, zigzagging crevice, gently flexing my toes against the soft, pillowy flesh. My tail came up from between my legs, and I hugged it against my chest. I ran my fingernails through my own wet fur for comfort. I was fine. This was fine.

To my surprise, it actually was fine. Something had fundamentally changed in me since my last visit to this slimy, squishy sack. Though I still felt a primal fear at being swallowed alive, my rational brain was able to keep it in check. Mostly. As Cygnus began to move, inertia dragging me along a millisecond later, a jolt of fear broke through my calm. My toes clenched, my foot traveling the familiar path between the slimy folds. I locked my gaze to the pulsating roof of Cygnus’ stomach. One of her hearts was right there, not even an inch of muscle and membrane between us. Its beating was clearly visible to me, though the sound was not nearly as sharp down past the aortic arch.

Watching the beating of her heart against the stomach walls calmed me. I felt myself syncing with her, pulse slowing until we once again beat in time with each other. My breathing slowed, and I turned my attention to the worried prodding against my frontal lobe.

I’m fine. I promise.

I understood what had changed now. In removing Cygnus from the pedestal she’d occupied in my mind, I had also removed her as a crutch for my emotional well-being. She was still the big strong branch to my little twig, but the dynamic was different. I realized now that I had to process these feelings myself. More importantly, and certainly a little surprising to me, I found that I was able to handle my own problems, and far better than I ever thought I could!

I was stronger than I knew. And that made me happy.

Pride welled up in me. Not my own pride, but Cygnus’ pride. Whoops. I really needed to remember that somebody else was in my head when I went off on these tangents. This half-link was less unconscious than when we were fully melded, but strong emotions still spilled across. She must have caught the excitement of my self-actualization.

Finally starting to see in yourself what I see in you, huh? she said.

“I still feel a little useless,” I pouted, cheeks heating up.

Well once we get your suit from Navigation, you’ll become the important one. I’m only your ride until then.

“What about your suit?”

I’ll take the extra protection, but I’m not wasting the oxygen when I don’t need to breathe.

I bit my lip, silencing my next thoughts. Oxygen talk was going to dominate the foreseeable future. It was already running through my mind, and through Cygnus’. Cygnus’ mind was a mess of calculations. I only got bits and pieces across the link, but that was okay with me. She was far better with math than I was, and she remembered far more than I did. I was missing a lot of data. I needed my blueprints and an inventory list before I could even start making an estimate.

“What…” I started, hesitating for a second before continuing. “What do you think our chances are?”

Cygnus’ abs flexed, pressing in on me. I clenched my jaw, breathing through my nose to keep my heart rate steady. I felt the shocks of some sort of strenuous activity traveling up her arms, making me sway inside of her. I spread my legs out a little wider to maintain my balance, bouncing up about an inch into the air. The gel that coated her soft insides made a terribly wet, slurping pop as the seal against my back was broken.

They just went up. The galley survived.

I breathed a slow, steady breath out. Tension I didn't even know I was carrying dissipated as one of our major logistical worries melted away. At the time of the crash, we were eight months out from Aëa, the major hub world of the carbon-based community. That meant we had enough food and water to last six people eight months. The Seirogis kept their food in their own compartments to avoid cross-contamination, so everything in there would be safe and edible.

“How's the power situation?”

Lights work, microwave works. The oven's sparking a little, so I wouldn't trust it until we have a look at it. Everything's packed in the cabinets or the food storage locker, so we don't have to worry about the freezer. At most, we lost somebody's leftovers.

Cygnus' stomach let out a loud, groaning growl around me. I shot my hands and feet out, pushing the slimy, groping walls as far away from me as possible. My wide eyes stared wildly up at the entrance to the esophageal sphincter, as though the Ancient could feel my accusatory glare through her throat.

“Are you hungry or something?” I snapped.

Sorry, sorry… I just… I realized that this means we could actually have a hot meal. I can barely remember what that’s like at this point.

“Neither can I…” I said, slowly releasing my hands. “I… the longer time goes on, the more I'm losing… N-not just feelings, either. Most days, I can hardly remember what Harun's laugh sounded like, or the colors of Mrrg's frills when he got embarrassed…”

It's normal to forget, Cygnus said. I felt her fingers press in against her abs. I pushed back with my own hand. Don't worry. The most important parts… those you'll hang onto.

I smiled, though my heart wasn't fully in it.

“Thanks, Cygnus.”

We'll remember them. We may not remember everything, but the place they held in our hearts will always be there.

I didn't know what else to say, so I just patted the stomach wall. Two soft pats with my tiny little hands. Cygnus returned the gesture, rocking me gently in her stomach's swaying embrace. Inertia pushed me into the floor as Cygnus shoved off again, heading back out to the main corridor.

Let's keep moving forward. Coming up on Navigation now.

“How’s it looking?”

Well, the airtight door’s fucked, but it’s fucked in a way I can crawl through…

The stomach around me tilted. I spread my arms wide, bracing against the sides as my feet slipped a little further down the slimy, gel-covered floor. My inner ear did a little loop de loop, making me feel like I was about to fall. We were further from the axis of rotation, so the spin gravity was higher here. High enough for me to feel the upset to my equilibrium as Cygnus knelt down and shimmied through the airtight door and into Navigation.

Fuck…

“What?” I tensed, feeling the macabre amazement bleeding across the link. It was the kind of feeling one got when witnessing the aftermath of a disaster. “You can’t just say ‘fuck’ and not elaborate!”

Right, sorry… It’s structurally intact, and there’s some power, but… I’ll just show you.

My vision swam, the blue-black stomach walls melting into puddles of smudgy colors. The next time I blinked, I found myself looking through Cygnus’ eyes.

It looked like a bomb had gone off in the main corridor. Carbon scoring covered everything, blackening the walls and warping the metal. Every single door on this level was blown almost completely off its rails, and a section of the wall was buckled outward like something had burst through. A fine layer of white dust covered everything. The emergency lumens weren’t on, but they also appeared to all be smashed. A bundle of exposed wires sparked, making me jump.

“I see what you mean by ‘some power.’ Good news though, it’s arcing from the side not connected directly to the reactor. At least one of the redundant systems is still intact.”

The wires aren’t what I wanted to show you. Look over here.

Cygnus walked over to the section that was buckled out. Kneeling down, she peered inside so that I could confirm what she already knew. My heart sank. The oxygen lines were ruptured. Several possible scenarios flipped through my mind, but only one explained the level of damage I was looking at here.

“Backdraft?” I asked cautiously.

Backdraft.

“Fuck.”

My head began to swim as I pieced it all together. A backdraft is what happens when oxygen is rapidly introduced into an environment full of particulates hot enough to self-ignite. The micro-asteroids that holed our ship would have instantly ignited through air resistance alone. Scanning Cygnus’ field of vision, pieces of the walls were scorched through, almost like they had been burned by plasma. Class D fire? The ship's interior and support structures were made from a lightweight alloy containing magnesium, and the asteroids would have been more than hot enough to start it burning. The metal caught fire before the atmosphere bled out. Without oxygen, the magnesium couldn’t burn, but it was hot enough to vaporize. It was also hot enough to melt the aluminum oxygen lines, reintroducing an oxidant into a room full of superheated magnesium vapor. Cue massive explosion. All this white dust was magnesium oxide.

“Fuuuuuuck…”

Navigation was the only place this could have happened, because of how the fire suppression system worked. Every other deck on the Horizon’s Promise used dry powder extinguishers. Navigation used inert gas, because Navigation housed all the incredibly delicate and expensive computer systems for our sensor arrays. RADAR, LiDAR, EMF, thermistors, accelerometers, gyroscopes, magnetometers, gravimeters, star sensors, local star sensors, virtual horizon sensors, all feeding a never ending stream of data into the navigation supercomputer to determine our exact position in the galaxy.

So when the magnesium caught fire, the fire suppression system kicked in and leaked inert gas into the fucking void.

“How bad is this?” I groaned.

It’s not good, but it could absolutely be worse. We’re incredibly lucky this happened in the main corridor. Anywhere else and we would have lost something vital. Possibly even the whole supercomputer. Here, it just scorched a bunch of hallways.

“What about the refill station?”

I already knew the answer, but I had to hear it for myself. Before she even said anything, I felt the carefully tempered despair she was feeling.

No oxygen lines, no refill station. Pressure from the backdraft may have blown the whole thing up. We won’t know until we get there. It might still be possible to salvage some of the nozzles. We really only need those anyway.

Our oxygen supply was looking decidedly more meager now. Each deck had its own air supply, but the Cargo Hold and Navigation were the biggest sources of oxygen in gaseous form. They needed copious gas and gas storage in order to operate the airlocks and service crew spacewalks. Most of the other decks used hydrolysis to get oxygen from water, and sodium peroxide air scrubbers to recycle carbon dioxide back into oxygen. That water was typically stored as ice in a layer that wrapped around the inner hull, serving the dual purpose of extra radiation shielding.

There were emergency oxygen reservoirs, of course, but those wouldn’t last us very long. In order to make use of the vast majority of our air now, we would have to repressurize a deck, restart hydrolysis, and make sure the air scrubbers still worked. Partial or full restoration of a deck was now a top priority, something Cygnus agreed with me on.

That’s something I can work on while you’re between the hulls. If Engineering isn’t an irradiated voidscape, I can get the fabricator working on new panels and a temporary airlock. If it is, I’ve got a laser in my room. It can cut and weld, and that’s all I need it to do.

“Okay… I can reroute the water lines anywhere you need ‘em.”

We’re getting ahead of ourselves. Let’s just get to the airlock. Then we can try to make plans.

Cygnus started moving again, shouldering her way through what was left of the door into the airlock corridor. She didn’t say what was on her mind, but I got it anyway. If we could use the fabricator, we could just make a new refill station. She wasn’t about to put that out into the universe though, in case it came back to fuck us over. Neither of us were superstitious… but neither of us wanted to risk it, either. We could call it pragmatic if that helped us justify it. No use planning for something we didn’t know if we could use.

We could also call it not wanting to get our hopes up, just for them to get dashed again.

Speaking of our hopes getting dashed, we came upon what was left of the refill station just then. The worst case scenario had indeed come to pass. Pressure from the backdraft had blown it off one side of the hall and into the other, mangling it beyond all recognition. Gingerly, Cygnus knelt down and turned it over, careful of any sharp edges. The delicate nozzle array had been completely and utterly obliterated. There was no salvaging anything useful from it.

Well, that’s that. Guess we’re gonna have to improvise…

“What about the redundant systems?” I asked. “There’s gonna be one on every deck, right?”

Backup in the Cargo Bay was toasted. Navigation’s spare is on the bridge, so it likely took the full brunt of the hit. That leaves us Crew Quarters and Mess & Rec, unless Engineering’s habitable. Unfortunately, the redundant systems all use standardized nozzles. Standardized for my size of bottle.

I deflated a little, feeling a sense of hopelessness starting to creep over me again. Every step of this journey just added to the odds stacked against us. We had food, we had air, we couldn’t use either. I was getting tired of trying to remain optimistic.

“So I’m still fucked…”

I didn’t say that, Cygnus said. She planted her feet on the floor, worming her fingers into the crack of the door that led to the suit lockers. I said we’d have to improvise. We have options, Kabs. There’s plenty of gaseous air left in the ship. We can still do this.

She hauled back on the unpowered door, forcing it open just enough for us to wiggle our way inside. Lined up on the back wall, each behind its own plexiglass door, five white and blue vacuum suits hung from pegs, held aloft by complex harnesses of straps and hoses. Completely untouched by the chaos just.a couple feet away. They looked so out of place, pristine and orderly amidst the filth and chaos the rest of the ship had descended into.

Despite my earlier despair, I felt a small spark of hope rekindle inside of me. That was two things that had gone right, now. Perhaps a little optimism was deserved.

Sitting in its own little case, directly below Cygnus’ suit, was the foot-tall mini locker that held my spacesuit. I’d crafted it myself, using spare bits and bobs from the machine shop. Mrrg offered to teach me how to use the fabricator, but I had wanted to do it myself. Which meant I had to look at my own shoddy handiwork every time I went to put my suit on, so it got banished to the Navigation airlock, where I didn’t have to look at it as much.

Right now though, it looked like the most beautiful thing in the world as Cygnus popped open the slightly-warped plexiglass door and pulled out my suit. It looked like doll’s clothes in her sparkling hands. Cautious relief flooded through our minds as we anxiously pored over every stitch of the reinforced multilayer fabric. Fast as thought, our eyes darted from detail to detail, me prodding Cygnus for closer looks when I spotted something she hadn’t.

It was perfect. No holes, no rips, no worn out joints. Hose connectors were in good shape, no scuffs or scrapes. Battery pack fully charged. No cracks in the bubble helmet. Backpack propulsion unit primed and ready with full tanks of nitrogen for the maneuvering jets.

All I needed was a bottle of air, and everything would be perfect.

Cygnus moved on from my suit, digging around in the footlocker beneath hers. Her thoughts were moving too fast for me to keep up. Several half-ideas flitting back and forth, interspersed with ever-changing variables and a lot of calculations. Reaching down beneath one of her jumpsuits, she pulled out a fat pill bottle about the size of her fist. Unscrewing the lid, she carefully tipped it over and poured out a handful of blue tablets. More O2 pills!

Tipping the pills back into the bottle, she tightened the lid back down and tucked them into the emergency kit. Standing, she turned her suit around, checking on her pack. Fully charged with full air tanks. That pushed one thought to the top, eliminating about half the ideas and most of the math, leaving disturbingly few options left to consider. Though I didn't catch more than a few glimpses into her thoughts, a sense of trepidation began to well up in my chest.

“I’m not gonna like where this is going, am I?” I grumbled.

Probably not. A little wash of guilt and pity splashed into my mind. But you’ll know it’s the right thing to do.

“Give it to me straight, then.”

I’m set for a very, very long time with these O2 pills. A bottle like this'll last me eighteen months, minimum. That means every breath of oxygen has to go to you. With no nozzles, the only thing I can do to refill your bottles is hook your quick charge cable into the emergency air line on my pack. That’s barely 30 minutes of air at a time.

Thirty minutes of air was more than I was expecting. I started to perk up a little more, mind running through the various routes throughout the ship, and the spots where I knew major wiring junctions between the hulls. I could accomplish quite a lot with thirty minutes of air, provided we found some of my tools.

I sat up, the stomach making splrtch noises as I peeled my back out of the slimy gel coating. Trapped air bubbles popped beneath my fingers, adding to the fizzy bubbling of the O2 pill somewhere down past my toes. I saw what Cygnus saw, but the rest of my senses remained in her gut with my physical body. Her stomach was starting to squeeze me again, like it was trying to break me down into nutrients. I still cringed away from that feeling. Even knowing she wasn’t going to do that, the reminder of where I was, what this fleshy organ did to things inside of it, still made me uncomfortable and fearful.

“That’s better than I was hoping,” I said.

Calculations swam in our head, moving too fast for me to keep up. Schematics, dimensions, safe operating limits, oxygen consumption, acceptable atmospheric pressure, inventory lists, all zipping through her head at the speed of light. I was impressed by how much she could remember. She had near-perfect recollection, but then again, that was to be expected from the most advanced civilization in the galaxy.

It’s possible. But we have to be really fucking careful with how we use our air. Which means… we can’t pop the pod anymore.

My heart skipped a couple beats. “Wh-what…?”

Look. I’ve done the math over and over in my head. If it’s even possible, the absolute earliest we’re going to get out of here is 187 days. That’s if it only takes 7 days to fix the kinetic shields and repair maneuverability. At this point, we’ve really only got one option to get back to the shipping lanes, and that’s Mei’s slingshot route. By the time we get back on track, it’ll take four to six months until we can get close enough to drop a distress beacon. Average time between initiation of distress call and rescue is around 2 months in this part of the galaxy.

At the absolute maximum, if Engineering is salvageable, we have 46470 liters of usable oxygen left on board, if not, 31608 liters. Not counting any other pods, because we can’t harvest the bottles out of them without damaging them. You remember your oxygen use numbers?

“Y-yeah,” I nodded “Three-point-eight liters an hour at rest, average of twenty-six-point-five while performing standard job tasks. U-upper limit averages twenty-point-eight-three liters per hour, over a galactic standard day.”

Comes out to 340.8: 318 for twelve hours of activity, 22.8 for six hours of resting. Or an upper limit of 375. Factoring in nothing else, we have a lower limit of 84 days before we run out, and an upper limit of 136.

“B-but we only need it until we get a deck repressurized,” I countered. “At that point we won’t need to burn our oxygen anymore.”

You gonna stay in the pressurized deck all day, or are you gonna be out with me working on repairs?

“...Touché…”

What?

“I dunno, it’s something Skips used to say whenever he knew he was losing an argument.”

That still leaves you burning an average of 318 liters a day, working on the ship. And we're not guaranteed a working compressor to charge the tanks with the air we get from hydrolysis.

I could see where this was going. Math and logic was spilling into my brain much slower now, enough for me to pick up her next points. To my dismay, those points were incontrovertible. I wiggled down inside her belly, grumpily splashing my feet in a puddle of juices.

“And the pods are not designed to be opened in a vacuum…”

Yep. It takes 1200 liters of oxygen to get the pod to .3 standard atmo. The minimum survivable pressure. And with no compressor, we’re not getting any of that air back, which drops our lower limit down to…

“...twenty-one days…”

Nineteen days. That’s just to keep it pressurized. Air scrubber should keep the air clean, but I turn into an oxygen sponge when I’ve been out in the void for too long. Two of us, six hours in the pod, I figure it’ll take an extra 100-150 liters to keep the pressure where it is.

“So every time we pop the pod, we lose four days of oxygen.”

Yep.

I twisted my mouth into a scowl. If we wanted to get out of here, we had to prioritize repairs that let us maneuver, which was a one to two week job, depending on how extensive the damage was. We couldn’t start working on repressurising until we were back on track, which would take another one to two weeks. I'd be out of air long before we got hydrolysis running again. It was a shit situation, one that I couldn’t see a way out of.

“So the solution is…”

I’ve been upgraded from a space suit to an atmosphere pod.

I was right. I didn’t like it.

And she was right, too. I agreed that it was the right thing to do. There really wasn’t another way out of this. She’d done the math, and I couldn’t find any flaws in it. If we kept my oxygen consumption to 318 liters a day, we could stretch our air rations to 146 days at maximum. And that was just if I worked the full twelve hours. With 8-hour days, we could get it to 219, and as time went on and we had less to fix, we could stretch it even further.

I just had to spend the other 8-12 hours a day in her stomach.

While that solved the air situation, it opened up a whole host of other logistical concerns. There were so many more biological needs than just air, and while air was the most important, we wouldn't last two weeks without the others. As I lay there, naked, covered in slimy bluish gel, getting massaged by soft rugae inside of my friend's stomach, I felt all of these questions encircling my heart, gripping it in a painful squeeze of anxiety. They welled up in my chest with each repetition, swelling and swelling until they burst from my lips in a rush, tumbling over themselves as they raced to be spoken first.

“When will you eat? How will I get in and out? Wh-when am I gonna go pee? When am I gonna get to clean off? Won't there be sanitary issues? I-I don't want to give you an upset tummy… Oh fuck, if I'm gonna be in here for hours, h-how will I survive w-without getting digested?”

Easy, Kabs. Relax. I've got some ideas. First, I don't expect you to stay in my stomach for eight straight hours. You'll be safe for four, maybe five. So I'm thinking three in, six out to start, and then we'll play it by ear. I can eat when I let you out, and it'll be gone by the time you have to go back in.

For letting you out, I'll leak some air out into my helmet and let you out. You can get dressed in there, then I'll open the visor. Same thing to get back in. Use the bathroom in your space suit. It'll recycle the water and eject the rest.

She paused, letting out a small mental sigh.

I don't really know how we're gonna handle sanitation. I definitely can't fit the laser sterilizer in my helmet with you. My gel lining is decently antimicrobial, but that’s going to dry and gunk up your inner lining if you keep jumping straight from mouth to suit. It won't kill everything either. That one we'll have to figure out as we go I'm afraid.

Her eyes flicked around the room, as though she was looking for a solution to materialize from the walls. The only thing in there were suits. Some big, some small, some weirdly biological-looking. The Seirogi's suits were so alien to me. They were made up of a similar chitin as their exoskeletons, and were completely unpowered, relying on the Seirogi’s natural electromagnetic fields to operate systems and patches of bioluminescent algae to provide light. When they suited up, it looked like they were stepping into another, slightly bigger Seirogi. Instead of air, they ran a breathable, oxygen-rich fluid through the spiracles on their abdomens. If push came to shove, we could use it, but it didn’t work well with our lungs. The best way for one of us to make use of it was… rectally… Certainly not my first choice, but it was an option if things were looking exceptionally dire.

Mrrg's suit stood out too. It was the only one besides mine with a tail and digitigrade leg support. His boots alone were twice as tall as I was, splitting into three flexible toes with blunt caps for his toe claws. His helmet was massive, with a sunglasses-style visor and a long, white snout cap covered in bleached white whalebone carved to look like jaws.

“How hard do you think it'd be to make Mrrg's helmet airtight?”

Cygnus brightened, catching on immediately.

There should be suit repair kits with sealant on every belt. I could fuse the neck dam shut, easy. It'd take about three liters to pressurize, though. If we're doing 3 in 6 out, you're looking at between 6 and 9 liters a day.

“So we work 11 hours instead of 12 and come out 17 liters ahead. I'll take it so I can shower.”

How am I getting you into it in the first place?

“Same plan as before. I'll get dressed in your helmet, but at the end of the shift, I'll crawl into Mrrg's. You pressurize it, I strip, clean myself and my gear, get dressed again, hop back over to your helmet. That way I'm always clean going in.”

Perfect. Let's move on to the bridge, then swing back through and pick everything up on our way back down.

My heart sank.

“Y-you’re not letting me out…?”

It's more oxygen-efficient to keep you in. Even with all the air in the ship, we're almost 40 days short of rescue. Until we have a pressurized deck with a steady supply of air, I am going to behave like this is all we get.

I grumbled under my breath, crossing my arms and sulking. This was the correct move. We couldn’t plan around an eventuality that wasn't certain. But fuck. I was tired of uselessly stewing in Ancient guts. All this talk about what we were gonna do was starting to grate on my already-frayed nerves. I just wanted to get out of here and do it already!

This is only until we can get back in atmo. Then you'll never have to do it again.

“I remember when it was just until we found a suit,” I snapped. I immediately felt guilty for taking out my anger on her. “I'm sorry. Sorry. I know it's not your fault. My frustration is with the shifting goalposts, which I know you have no control over. I’m just… getting tired of rescue sounding more and more like a fantasy with every passing moment.”

I understand, Cygnus said. The warmth of her mind’s embrace cooled a bit, though. This is taking a lot out of us both. But we’re gonna get through this, you and I. I know it sounds bad right now, but we’re planning for the worst-case scenarios.

“Yeah…” I sighed, emotional exhaustion settling into my bones. “I know… I’m sorry for snapping, and I appreciate you being patient with me. I appreciate everything you’ve done for me, really. You’ve been amazing.”

Thank you, Kabs. I know you feel like you haven’t done anything for me, but… having you with me has given me the strength I need to keep going. That’s more important than you know.

I gave a little half smile, and bonked the side of her belly with my head. She tapped back with her index and middle fingers.

Well, that was that. We had plans. We had a heart-to-heart. Only thing left for us to do was find out how much damage the Horizon’s Promise had sustained. The anxiety began to settle over our minds again. One more door separated us from the inevitable. Once through it, whatever lies we’d told ourselves for comfort would be rendered useless by harsh reality

The hearts above me pounded with nervous energy as Cygnus stared off into the corner of the suit locker. I could feel the anxiety rising inside of her. She was leaking a lot of images to me across our link. Flashes of Mei’s smiling face, her bubbly personality, her excessively energetic excitement…

Her hands were trembling. I felt it as though they were my own, my mind being drawn across the link as she lost control of it in her anxiety. I tried to send comforting thoughts, but I was much worse at directing my attention than she was. I was left simply hoping that she'd gotten the gist.

Fuck it.

Cygnus suddenly stood. I yelped as I was pressed into the stomach floor, then catapulted into the ceiling. I barely had time to reorient myself before a slimy wall squished against my cheek and chest. Through Cygnus’ eyes, I watched the corridor fly past me as she expertly glided through the vacuum.

It was as natural as breathing to her. I soon forgot the sensations fed to me from tumbling around her stomach, pulled in by my awe at her exceptional grace. I felt the ground beneath our feet, the precise adjustments of our muscles that shifted our trajectory by mere millimeters. We had broken out into the main corridor again. Blood singing in our ears, Cygnus bounded over the blackened wreckage, pivoting mid-flight and pushing off again, sending us perfectly through the airtight door and onto the bridge before the anxiety could catch back up to us.

We landed with our eyes to the floor, all three of our hearts pumping with emotion and exertion. Though every fiber of our being dreaded what we were about to see, we slowly raised our head, our glowing sunlike eyes casting an eerie yellow light over the grisly scene before us.

It was bad. Really bad. The foremost wall of the ship had been punched inward by about a dozen baseball-sized holes, shredding the external monitors and raking deep gouges into every surface. The micro-asteroid cluster had hit dead center, shattering on impact and sending fragments out in all directions. To either side of us, small fragments of rock still dotted the walls, blackened dents pocking the reinforced metal. The larger chunks had punched straight through, going on to cause destruction and mayhem in the lower decks. The edges of the holes had melted and rehardened, flecked with bits of white. More evidence of magnesium fires.

Ot had been in the pilot’s chair when it happened, so he'd taken the full force of the blast. He’d been liquefied, a thin layer of blue-green sludge flash frozen to the floor in a long streak from his station all the way to the wall under the grated metal landing we now stood on. Red icicles dripping down from the ceiling told us that Skips had suffered a similar fate. There were bits of… of meat, frozen to the walls too. Looking closer at some of the pockmarks in the walls, we noticed that some of them weren’t asteroid fragments.

They were bone fragments.

We felt my body convulsing inside our stomach as I fought to keep from retching. Though Cygnus and I were fully linked, the thread that connected me back to my own body must have communicated enough horror to induce a physiological response. One that I failed to control. I coughed, feeling both the rattling in my lungs and my body doubling over in my own stomach.

Cygnus set her jaw and tore her eyes away from the spectacle of gore. Her gaze turned starboard, hearts pounding so hard now it hurt. Just below the grated landing, where the Navigator sat. She would have been out of the way, partially shielded by the computer banks feeding her data from the supercomputer a deck below.

Seated in the navigator’s chair was a shriveled, frozen mummy, long black hair with a white streak at the temple done up in a neat little bun and secured with two hair pins. Her face was reddened and cracked with millions of burst capillaries, a hole the size of a marble straight through the middle of her forehead. Her final expression was one of mild shock, as though she hadn't even realized she was dead before the vacuum of space evaporated the liquids from her body, preserving her forever in ice.

“O-oh god…” Cygnus croaked into the void. Steam poured from her mouth as the moisture in her breath instantly boiled. “Mei…”