a very short, lazy intro chapter! mostly just getting first impressions out of the way (and figuring out Lucifer's internal monologue), barely a few hundred words
combining a mix of PHM book and movie canon (for example, Mary is big enough to have a don't-go-crazy room and at least one window, but Grace is still reliant on the petrovascope camera to see)
"foreign body detected."
well, that was one way to wake up in the morning.
a race to the pilot cabin, nearly tripping over Rocky's ball twice on the way there, earned Grace a look at a ship just barely smaller than the Blip-A.
a sleek metal body (actually obeying aerodynamics, he couldn't help but notice. whoever built that ship had experience with space travel) filled the camera. a few seconds of fiddling gave a clearer view, though admittedly, there wasn't much to see. the ship was hardly decorated; not like Rocky's, with all its bells and whistles.
"what do you think, Rock?"
Rocky's carapace dipped, legs lowering him closer to the floor of the tunnel he'd crawled into. ["Rocky think danger."]
"fair enough," Grace conceded, patting the wall between them.
it was a little embarrassing to be spinning in place while the other ship remained motionless.
["Grace."] he had yet to hear that pitch, but he could guess well enough. Rocky was scared.
"I know."
["we should leave."]
"I get the feeling this thing could outfly us." (easily, Grace thought, fingers twitching on the back of the pilot seat. that ship is huge. then again, it might also be empty; there aren't any lights.)
"we should give it something."
["Grace crazy."]
———
Lucifer hadn't been so confused in... however long it had been since she'd been shot out here. she couldn't return to Sol; that had been made abundantly clear when her sentence had been delivered. turn on humanity, lose her place among them forever.
(there was never a place for her, she reminded herself. synthetics weren't people in the eyes of man. she was a test run, to see how far they could push the limits of a "human" body before the mind attached to it could no longer mimic its creators.)
no matter. that ship was tiny. outdated, too — humans had long stopped relying on centrifuges to mimic gravity. sure, it worked, but it was clumsy. either way, the newcomer was hardly a threat. hopefully.
that might not be a human ship, either. Erid had been using similar designs for quite some time. then again, that wasn't xenonite. and it was still relying on giant fuel tanks for power.
too much thinking; Lucifer was getting a headache and she lacked the nutrients to support her own hyperactive brain. new, foolproof plan: wait for it to do something. hopefully stop spinning. that would be great. she could connect to their airlock if they did.
no, never mind. that was a bad idea. she didn't know those people, they didn't know her, and statistically, they'd probably know the man who'd spent the last two weeks in her ship's medical room. best to keep distance. let them come to her. and that was if they didn't recognize the Astix as a hijacked prison ship, or the people on it, and pull an alarm.
———
Rocky had been pacing through his xenonite tunnels for half an hour. Grace only had so much patience.
"Rock," he sighed, rapping on the tunnel wall with his knuckles, "it's fine. they haven't done anything yet. were you like this when I first showed up?"
["...perhaps,"] Rocky admitted, stopping beside Grace. ["hard not to be. new life new danger."]
"fair enough."
Grace opened his laptop to scroll for a movie to watch. Rocky scuttled off to find his "seeing" device.
Rocky didn't come back. his voice did, though; albeit over the translator.
["Grace."]
"yeah, bud?"
["ship moved."]
"the ship what?" another trip to the cockpit, another look in the petrovascope camera. sure enough, it had gotten closer. 200 meters exactly. a number that perfect was no accident; this wasn't a ghost ship. something was piloting it.
