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They were watching him now.

Iago knew that he couldn’t fool them forever.  The ship itself would note altered schedules, unusual behavior, and especially in his case as a disgraced officer, they’d be watching.

Eyes, everywhere.  They watched and watched and watched and looked for a mistake, a fault.  Just one moment of weakness, looking at the strange shapes of reality around that accursed ship in the Terris system . . .

How many times had they been drilled?  The things related to zerospace, tenkionic matter, Leviathans, it was poison.  Toxic.

Cursed.

Any sort of contact one could think of, hell maybe even considering on it could lead to someone falling into a well of madness that they would never rise back out from.

And he had looked.

He coughed, spitting up something.  It might have been phlegm, but somehow he felt it was worse, different.

Elliot was in his room.  His son kept to himself a lot.  He had no friends on the ship until the other children returned, but – hard as it was – it was for the best right now.  All it would take would be Elliot saying a little too much and they’d swoop in and take away his son, his only reason for still going.

For Elliot’s protection, they’d say.  But who would protect him from them, when they decided his son was infected or tainted by his father’s failure?

His mysterious contact hadn’t said anything else to him since that one note, and he kept checking it, wanting to be sure it was real and not just some figment of his imagination.  Everything felt that way anymore – not real.  Food felt tasteless and weak.  Like chewing air.

Yesterday he’d been shocked when he’d put his hand into water that he knew was cold, but felt nothing.  Up to the wrist, and the basin might as well have been empty.

Nothing.  Nothing!

How much longer would he feel anything at all, he wondered.

Elliot was all that mattered.

All that was left was to wait.  There wasn’t long now, they’d arrive at Gohhi soon.  Then he’d leave, take Elliot, and . . .

And what?

The thought faded, and he could not recall thinking it.  They’d leave the ship on Gohhi, then they’d be safe and free.  That was all that mattered.

He coughed again, spit up something, but when he looked at his hand it was empty.

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As soon as Apollonia began reading about Abmon, she realized that this was going to be harder than she had expected.

Despite the fact that he was a five-legged pillar of rock with tentacles, he had been . . . so personable that in her mind his people were just like humans, only different looking.

Part of her had thought about going to visit their homeworld, which she had only just read was called Golgutt, to tell his family to their face that she owed her life to Squats on Sand holding the door even after being shot through by armor-piercing cannons.

But apparently that wasn’t an option.

She had known most of them lived on planets rather than space stations, which had created an image in her mind – but they didn’t have happy little families of mother and father and two children and a space crab dog in a little house.

Abmon had complex life cycles where they started as near-microscopic spawn, only a handful of which actually matured into adults.  The majority of their kind remained tiny, barnacle-like, sticking to rocks for a few years and then dying off without even reproducing.  The eggs all came from sessile adults who had entered into a prolonged state of mindlessness, being little more than immobile, giant armored egg sacs.  They might stay that way for decades before one day waking up and returning to their mobile, intelligent form.

Which meant that He That Squats on Yellow Sand had never known his parent.  Or parents – Apollonia was not actually sure if there were two parents or one or possibly . . . seven.  The writings were a little vague, but there were odd unique stages involved that did something or other in the process, but the Abmon were rather private on the topic.

Squats on Sand had been the first fully-developed spawn of his family, so he’d never known his siblings as anything other than wild larvae.  He’d left his world not long after attaining adulthood to go serve in the Abmon navy, which was very normal for them, but even though siblings of his had grown up since then, he’d only ever written to them.

Her head was practically swimming, which was fitting since Golgutt was also a high-G world, with an atmosphere so thick near the surface that it was functionally more like an ocean.  Not only was the pressure enough to kill a human, but it was toxic and there were huge, dangerous creatures ‘swimming’ through the air that would happily devour anything they met, alien or not.

The Abmon had evolved from bottom-dwelling things like barnacles, creating civilization largely to survive against those super-predators.

It was believed that it took them a million years to develop to the point where they could leave their world, only to find that the universe was far more hostile to their kind than it was even to humans.

While the pressure suits existed for humans to go down to the surface, they were incredibly hard to make, so only a few hundred people did it per year, and only for very good reasons, not . . . just to talk to someone’s family.

And all of this meant that she had no idea what it was like to live on their world, no frame of reference at all for their life.

Jaya had sent her the contact information, and she had a message open, ready to put in the words and hit send.  If only she could come up with something.

What the hell was she going to say to beings so alien?

Anytime she thought of something, she began to second-guess herself – she wasn’t sure how they might even react to her words.  Most Abmon cultures emphasized sacrifice, bravery, but often joked about the dead in disparaging ways – which they meant as the greatest compliment, apparently.

She realized that she was getting an alert that someone was at the door.

As the buzz went off for the third time, Apollonia hurried over, nearly tripping over a pair of coveralls on her way.

“Sorry!” she called.  “I was . . . busy.”

She reached the door and opened it, surprised to see that it was Zeela Cann.

The name popped to mind without too much thought, which she took as a good sign.

“Oh, uh, hi,” she said.

“Hello,” Zeela replied, smiling professionally and seeming not at all disturbed by how disheveled Apollonia looked.  “I’m sorry to disturb you, but I was wondering if you had seen my messages?”

“Uhh . . .”  Apollonia wracked her memory, and brought out her tablet.  She saw there was a message icon, and it had a 60 with a plus sign next to it.

“I guess I don’t really check my messages,” she said.  “Never really had much use for a message account.  I guess it just comes with . . . being on the ship?”

Zeela frowned, visibly confused.  “Well . . . some of them may be important.  I’ve been trying to contact you about your credits.”

Apollonia’s eyes widened.  Zeela was here to collect on a debt?

Fear seemed to paralyze her, as the illusion of the wonders of the Sapient Union began to crumble.

Would they now demand payment for months of her being allowed to stay here?  And if she couldn’t pay, what would they do?

“You have an outstanding surplus of over 20,000 credits,” Zeela said, throwing a digital image to her tablet.

Numbly, Apollonia looked down at it.  It was like she was having an out of body experience as she saw the number.

“I was wondering why you hadn’t been spending them, and I feel like perhaps you were not aware of your account?”

“I owe twenty thousand . . . credits . . . ?” she asked dumbly.

“Owe?  No, that’s a positive amount, dear.  These are your labor credits for the last two months you’ve been aboard.”

“I get labor credits?” she asked.  Her brain could still not comprehend.

“You get a stipend because you just became a citizen, but you also count as working full labor-hours due to your . . . well, the special status you have as a Cerebral Reader.  Technically, you are always working.”

Realization was starting to dawn on Apollonia.  “I have twenty thousand credits?!” she yelled.

Zeela looked concerned.  “Yes . . . and you’re not using them.  I thought . . . perhaps you’d want some things?  I know you’ve been eating and such, but beyond the basic necessities you can use your credits for goods or other services.”

Zeela’s eyes went across the room behind her and Apollonia looked back.

Aside from the basic furniture the place had come with – and a plastic crate she’d asked for from Dr. Y, who had given it to her without an issue – she had very little.

“Perhaps some decorations, even.  Or nicer furniture,” Zeela suggested.  “The default furniture is only meant as a placeholder.”

Apollonia stared dumbly down at her tablet some more.  “I had no idea,” she said.

“I thought maybe not.  There are quite a lot of things on the ship that you may want to learn about.  I’m afraid you missed our orientation talks with the others from New Vitriol-“

“Hellrock,” Apollonia insisted.  “That’s what I call it.”

“Hellrock,” Zeela said, simply accepting the new name.  “But there are recordings of them, and a manual to help you adjust.”

“I . . . I guess I’ll look at them,” Apollonia muttered.

Zeela clearly wasn’t going to let her off so easily.  “I highly suggest you do, dear.  You’ll be helping yourself by understanding your rights and responsibilities in the Sapient Union.”

The woman hesitated.  “I could spare some time to give you a basic overview, if you want . . .”

Apollonia had a feeling that she’d already taken a lot of the woman’s valuable time, and shook her head.  “No . . . No, that’s okay.  I’ll just . . . look at the videos.”

Zeela nodded.  “All right, well happy shopping!  And if there are things you don’t find in our catalogues that you’d like, we are coming to Gohhi Station soon.  You can turn some of your Ex in for External Trade Credits and buy goods from one of the shopping stations.  Though . . . sometimes their prices are quite high.”

“Okay,” Apollonia mumbled.  “And, um . . .  thank you.”

Zeela smiled again, but this time it was bright and honest and beaming.  “You’re quite welcome, Ms. Nor.”

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