The thing about sharing a spaceship with a guy in a hamster ball is you end up doing the grunt work. So here we are, en route to an alien planet, and I am once again hanging off the side of the dang ship. At least this time I’m securely fastened and not watching any approaching doom. Two hours ago we plowed through a molecular dust cloud and alarms went off, not of the “death imminent” variety. More of a “a bunch of exterior stuff just got scratched up like an angry cat went after it.” I am getting better at the piloting thing, which is not to say I am good. But I did get us safely slowed down and prepped for repairs. Hence my current hanging-off-the-ship situation: I am repairing the dings with an Eridian blowtorch, xenonite patches, and more blood, sweat and tears than I’d hoped to part with today.
“Wish I could help Grace,” says Rocky’s voice in my headset.
It’s slow going. I have never been accused of being nimble even without the lumbering Orlan. “Wish you could too, Rock. You’d be five times faster than my primitive human hands can manage. I’m giving this my whole ass and it looks half-assed at best.”
“Half. Assed. Grace referring to his posterior orifice, question?”
I giggle. It’s become a kind of competition, seeing how thoroughly we can confuse each other with our native idioms. “Hey, it’s like I always told my students, half a bum is better than none. What I wouldn’t give for an Eridian-sized Orlan,” I say wistfully. “You think you could fit into Ilyukhina’s?”
(I couldn’t stop thinking about the xenosuit, skin hunger, and the four year road trip to Erid. 3k, gen. Read the rest here on AO3.)
