Aurora Awakening - Part 4

The next few weeks were as terrible as you’ve inkled.

Most of the time settling into a nice, easy orbit is my favorite part of any run. There are no urgent calls to worry about, so I can tinker with the Aurora from bow to stern. She was a fine ship when she came into my care, but I’m not venting steam when I say I’ve made her faster, more efficient, and even a little smarter. And almost all of that happens while we’re rolling planet and I really time to think.

Fa had a sharp mind and I’d been eager to put our heads together so she could help me dreamstorm, but that was before I’d crosswired everything. Now we were hopnear tiptoeing around each other, especially in the cabin. Fa kept her nose in a datastack, and we mostly didn’t speak unless we were apologizing for bumping into each other because we barely made eye contact anymore.

Fa was sad, but I recked she couldn’t be anywhere near as off-plumb as I was. I was the only one who knew we were both miserable.

And she was starting to open up and spend time with other people around the ship more. Which I recked was a good thing, and something that had to happen eventually, but that didn’t make me feel better about the reason. Plus she’d started hitting mess hall with a pretty young horticult, Tazuma. Nowhere near as pretty as Fa to my mind, but still. Tazuma had had her hair and skin dyed to look like those pictures you see of tigers – and she’d even have a slide job to give her bright green eyes with pupils like a cat. Not my thing, but there was no denying that she was gorgeous. Jamila caught me staring at them during evening mess and whacked me in the back of the head with the heel of her hand, which was no more than I deserved.

Tazuma and Fa whispered a lot and I sometimes caught them both looking at me. I recked Fa’s little chief crush was as good as dead. I should have been relieved about that, but I couldn’t seem to fund much bliss in it.

I finally did what I should have done ages ago and went and saw the hort chief. I owed her a favor anyway – might as well ask her if she wanted any tinkering. Beauchene recked she did. Our growrooms gave the plants doses of heat and artificial sunlight, but the timers just faded the lamps on and off in straight cycles. Beauchene recked that light that traveled so the plants could follow it would be better, and days that lengthened and shortened to match the home planet’s year would be better yet.

Once we got to thinking about it, I recked I could design and program some ductwork extensions to allow for random breezes to blow through and an extension to the entry lock that might mean we could bring real pollinators insects onboard. Which was best even though, truthing, tricking out mech pollinators to spec is one of my favorite things.

Programming the basic pattern of the growroom lights was nothing, but getting them to mimic the gradual changes through the year and randomizing proper breezes was fun and took some real fixing. I also figured out a way to randomize the misters while keeping an overall drop count to stay inside optimal specs. Beauchene couldn’t wait to try the whole system out.

Still, I recked we were dealing with a square room. Some of the plants along the central line were going to catch more artificial sun and start to shade out the others. So I worked out some retractable shade baffles and – this is the part I’m really proud of – started spending my spare time working out a system of swiveling mirrors that could take care of any runts that were missing out on sunshine.

I was packing up my personal stuff a little bit each evening to prep for the move, but the clutter was expanding. My desk and bunk shelf were full of mirrors, servos, and lens grinding gear. I hoped I wasn’t driving Fa sparky what with me spending most evenings cross-legged on my bunk grinding out new curves and sending flashes of light all over the room, but she was being so polite with me there was no way to really tell. One night I was concentrating hard and I felt her next to me. I thought she was maybe about to push my bangs out of my eyes and then stopped herself, but I recked it was my imagination. She just picked up the refresher stack on bot specs next to me and flopped onto her own bunk to read.

She did clamp a safety harness on me when she caught me hanging from a ladder by my knees to get a test mirror tweaked just right, though, so at least she didn’t want me to break my neck. I calculated that was as good as I’d be getting for a bit.

The Basic Maint crew probably wouldn’t have minded seeing me with a broken neck when they saw the work order for the dozens of extra clamps I wanted installed for the mirror system, but I called in some favors from Supply and the Galley crew and threw them a thank-you feast and those clamps went up lightquick. If nothing else, Fa was learning how a deep-space ship really runs.

Chief Beauchene was happy enough with the way the experimental growroom was shaping up that she offered to let Fa and me take a little tour planetside once most of the collecting was done. She even got us loans of some hort hot-weather gear for planetside – T-shirts that were even thinner than our tanks and khaki shorts. There hadn’t been a single med incident the whole planetstay and the horts were getting casual enough to enjoy themselves.

I’d hoped we could take it on separate shifts, but Beuchene said we’d have to take it during a crew shuffle when two transport slots were available, so we went. I was grateful that Tazuma wasn’t on our shuttle, but it made for a quiet ride down.

The planet was a stunner, though, full of green and nearly as pretty as Fa. The horticults still had work to do, so our guides begged off pretty quickly. They showed us the basics and gave us a cheatmap of the trails they’d been using and told us to spin off out of their way. It was awkward as all scratch, but after an hour or so, it was all so beautiful that Fa and I both started to loosen up. We tried all the paths and finally took a trail through what looked like hectares of deep green plants with big flat leaves like elephant ears and purple flowers. I recked if there was a beach, I wouldn’t mind spending my bundle setting up my retirement there.

We didn’t find a beach, but we did pop out into a clearing with a little pond in it that looked hopclose to perfect. I started walking around the edge and lost myself in the greenery for a bit, maybe getting a little distracted by looking at which plants were doing in the shade and which were straining for the light.

Which I shouldn’t have done. Like I said, Fa was stationborn and station raised. Which meant that anytime she’d been near a lake or a pond before, it was in a station enviro, engineered to be safe. If you grow up on planet, you know that you can’t just dive into a lake or a pond you haven’t swum in before, because there might be rocks just under the surface or who knows what kind of beasties in it. But Fa didn’t know that, and there’s no reason it would have occurred to her.

When I turned around, she’d stripped all the way down to nothing and was headed for the water. I gave a shout and she broke stride and turned her head just in time for me to tackle her. We tumbled into a heap and I ended up on top. I got three words into yelling at her for doing something so stupid when my breath left me in one big whuff.

Fa was under me, naked and more perfect than anything I’d ever made. Our legs were in a tangle and I could feel how warm she was against my thigh. I didn’t know if Fa realized that, but she thumpsure could feel my heart hammering against my chest. I watched her face change from astonishment at being tackled to a knowing grin. I scrambled back and away from her as fast as I could and handed Fa her skivs, but it was too late. She knew now that my problem wasn’t that I didn’t like her; it was that I did.

My shouting brought some third-class horticult charging into the clearing, and once he saw Fa hopping back into her shorts, he knew what was up. A third-class normally takes the abuse instead of giving it, and he lit in to Fa like he’d been saving it up for years. I let him yell at her for about the 45 seconds she deserved, then stepped in and said that I recked this was a team disciplinary issue, and if he had more to say he’d better take it up with Fa’s chief.

He declined.

Fa thanked me for sticking up for her and apologized, and I don’t even remember what I mumbled in reply – I couldn’t look at her face. We walked back to the main landing area to catch a shuttle and I could feel Fa’s eyes on me the whole time. I was glad I’d been spending so much time under the grow lights. I recked I was bright red enough even under my tan.

The thing is, see, it wasn’t just a shuttle ride back. When you’ve been on-planet, you have to go in the cooker to get sterilized before you can go back into the main ship. And somehow the horticults on our shuttle all scrambled into the other chambers together. I hadn’t remembered them being so clannish before. Maybe they were more annoyed with having to cart me and Fa down there than I thought.

So Fa and I surrendered our borrowed clothes (and our own skivs) straight to the laundry chute for a bleach-and-boil, and then the two of us climbed into the cooker to get clean. And that’s when Fa decided to repay me for the hurt I’d given her. I stood there under the red heat lights, wearing the dumb little goggles they give you and trying not to look at Fa or be looked at, as if such a thing was even possible.

But Fa basked. She put her arms over her head, stretching her slender, perfect form out as far as she could, and then laced her fingers behind her back and stretched again, pushing her chest towards me and grinning, knowing she was torturing me. I looked at the lights, at the walls, at the floor, anywhere but her. I recked the white outline of my tank against my tan couldn’t much compare to Tazuma’s tiger stripes, so I tried my best to pretend that Fa wasn’t looking at me. I was so ready to get back into the post-planet fullsuit I’d left for when we got back that I scratch-near fell over trying to get into it.

Fa wanted to talk to me when we got back to the cabin, but I lied told her I wanted to check the grow lights and get a workout in. I ended up doing both, because I couldn’t go back to the cabin with Fa there. I recked I’d figure out how to deal with her in the morning, but I needed some space between me and her until then. Or at least until I could stop feeling her heat against my thigh.

I threw weights around and ran in the hamster ball until I was dead beat, then said a silent thanks to the Aurora when I got back to an empty cabin. I pushed the thought that the cabin might be empty because Fa was with Tazuma down as far as it would go.

I was asleep as soon as my tail hit the bunk, but of course I woke back up when I felt Fa come back in. I stayed as still as I could as I heard her move right up to my bunk. She stood there for a moment, and then she gently trailed her fingers up my arm. I felt every nerve in my skin come alive as I wondered what to do.

Fa went to her own bunk and got in without even turning off the light. As if I hadn’t had enough torment that day, I heard her clothes hit the floor, and then the soft rustling of sheets as she began one of her performances – something she hadn’t done since I’d told her I was moving out. I heard the sound of her hands moving up and down her body, and then of her squirming against the sheets, and then the rhythmic sound of her wrist moving, sooner than she ever had. Something had her ready.

I’d never given in to the temptation before, but I recked I’d been sorely tested. And that with me moving out soon maybe just once, just once, it wouldn’t be so bad. And, scratch, Fa sounded so sweet. And there was a shelf full of mirrors right next to me. So for the first time ever, and just that once, I cracked an eye open and looked in one of the mirrors at Fa. And then I clamped it shut tight again, because what I had seen wasn’t at all what I expected.

Instead keeping those big blue eyes closed in pure bliss, Fa had been looking right at me.

I reck I took it pretty well, considering my brain was flooded with the realization of how dumb I’d been.

I could have gotten up and joined Fa right then, kissed her long and hard enough to make her forget every last bit of the last few weeks, and then pushed her hand away and finally let my lips go where my thigh had been so happy that afternoon.

I could have done that, sure, and Fa would have been as happy as could be.

But I’m a good fixer. And a good fixer likes to plan.