“Yes, darling, but I must add that it was four attempts, not three. Me and poor Big Stan were dreadfully close to meeting our ends during that last assassination, isn’t that right dear? Hmm, yes. Thankfully, when we are together, nothing can stop us – not even the fear of heights when jumping through a hotel’s second story window when running away. So yes, I am directly calling out those boars that think they can kill us off quietly; no, you can’t, don’t even try. I’ll have you know my partner and I killed Zafar Ironskin. With help, of course, but you know what I mean. By the time our new ‘Pygmalion’ hits stores, I can assure you that our competition will be begging for mercy. And not in a kinky way, hah hah! Now, darling, we must dash, but this was a devilishly delightful interview. We have a spa appointment, and we simply can’t be late. Ta ta.” – ‘Little’ Stannock, Co-Owner of Le Deux Stannock Cosmetics, 2262. Recorded interview with Glass Tip Productions – ‘New Meteoric Rise in the Industry – Two Species, Two Men, One Dream’.

  Elias was whistling a cheerful tune as he wandered back into his and Chel-Lin’s shared laboratory a little past two in the morning. He only needed to grab some documents he’d left behind before he planned to return back to his room to continue his late-night work. Well, that and get in his exercise. After all, a healthy body was a healthy mind. That, and he didn’t want to squander Samson’s last gift to him. He was well aware that he had been condemning his coworkers lack of rest only a week prior when he invited them to poker, but Elias never claimed he wasn’t a hypocrite. Besides, he would likely be unable to sleep; the excitement at nearly moving onto the next stage of his research was enough to keep him awake for days on end.

  He had managed to acquire a spare S-Drive from Madison, a small model around the size of a standard combustion engine for land-based vehicles, and the allure of finally being able to tear one apart personally was undeniable. Combined with the fact that he would be able to mix the benefits of the device with those of the Tylas equivalent of a Bubble Field Manipulator, left his stomach in a constant feeling of being full of butterflies. Well, he did still need to figure out how exactly the S-Drive worked mechanically from its raw components and in-built software, but that would be soon. The only hiccup left on his path was confirming the last details for his fake project, the multi-species exo-harness, for the first supervisor check-in leading up to the IGS.

  Pushing the doors open as he thought of a new song to whistle, something from a retro game he had played on the interstellar trip to Kral-Thul, he absentmindedly flicked the lights of the lab on. His cheerful tune was shattered when he heard a yelp from his section of the laboratory as light filled the room. Frozen on the spot, hands raised in defence, Elias looked around the room only to see nothing. He was about to consider the noise a fluke of his sleep deprived mind when a certain Tylas floated up from behind a workbench.

  “Chel-Lin?” Elias asked. “What are you doing here? Why were the lights off?”

  A sheepish, if that expression could be pulled off by the alien, look took Chel-Lin as she guiltily dropped whatever she had been holding and floated over to him. Hands on his hips, Elias raised an eyebrow and pouted.

  “Naughty little kite, it’s well past your bedtime,” Elias said.

  “Sorry,” she said. “I’m going.”

  Huh, she usually put at least some effort into their, now friendly, back and forth. What was she up to? Before she could drift past him, Elias made use of her slow movement to dash over to whatever she had been looking at. Realizing she hadn’t put away what she had been looking at, she released some sort of Tylas cry in natural voice, and desperately drifted over the workbench to try and cut Elias off. It was rather humorous seeing the alien pushing herself hard to only glide as fast as a moderate walk, but he didn’t let the sight deter him from whatever she had been working on.

  He crouched and picked up the papers spread across the floor, the edges crinkled from where Chel-Lin must have held them in her appendages. He half expected them to be written in her native language, but found them to be, thankfully, written in English. Elias didn’t particularly see what the big issue was, until, he came across a series of detailed schematics on the Tylas BFM imposed next to a S-Drive.

  Huh.

  “D-don’t touch those!” Chel-Lin squeaked as she started snatching the documents away from Elias as he tried to piece together what he had quickly read.

  Bubble field. S-Drive field expansion and generation. Khernstowl’s equation on binding QIS patterns to the stabilization liquid used for FTL travel but with certain constants removed and replaced with Tylasian characters. A diagram of the quantum unmatter field that spread across a Tylas ship when accelerating to post C speeds.

  “Uh, Chel-Lin?” Elias asked.

  “Don’t ask. I… I just need…” she stammered as her frantic attempts at folding the loose papers into a large notepad of some kind failed, dropping another paper to the workbench she floated above.

  Cautiously, he reached over and picked it up as her eyes widened in, apparent, fear. Elias scanned the paper as he heard his lab partner flop to the surface of the bench in defeat. The document was written in messy chicken scratchings, and would otherwise be near undecipherable had it not been his own handwriting.

  “Chel?” Elias said cautiously. He wasn’t sure of the significance of the ‘Lin’ part of her name, but he felt that this was as good a moment as any to discard it.

  “Please… don’t tell anyone. I’m sorry.” She coiled her mantle around, like a scared child covering themselves with a blanket in the middle of the night.

  Elias could tell what she had done.

  “You’re working on something. A merging of S-Drives and the Bubble Field into one form of FTL travel. Am I right?”

  She didn’t respond.

  “My, oh my. I think Lucian would blow a gasket if he knew what you were doing. So much for not ‘rocking the boat’, eh?”

  “Please Elias… I’ll do whatever you want. I pay you, or do whatever you would find a suitable equivalent. Just don’t tell anyone about this. Please.” The desperation in her voice was palpable.

  “Don’t be so dramatic, Daksira. Come on.”

  Elias leapt onto the workbench next to her as he handed over one of the dropped papers.

  “Ok, look, so let’s say you wanted to use your people’s Bubble Drive to strengthen the altered reality field to stabilize QIS Patterns when using the S-Drive. How would you…” Elias thought for a moment, considering the research he had already done. “Manipulate the zohar emitter of the S-Drive to correspond to whatever frequency the internal spinner of the Bubble Field is running at? Would that work?”

  Chel-Lin lifted her head and squinted at him. She appraised his aloof expression and light smile, four slits of light scanning every inch of his face for hints to his motives.

  “No,” she finally said, firmly. “Not in the slightest. You haven’t even started to consider the level of distortion that would cause. The Bubble Field’s internal spin diffractor relies on quantum tunnelling from its power source to align the expansion of the field. Matching the frequencies would be pointless.”

  Stolen story; please report.

  “Right, but how about using a syraline drive plate alongside the Bubble Field?”

  “That… wouldn’t work either. Syraline, from what I’ve read so far, would block the field emission and would displace the whole shape of the bubble. Wrong bubble shape leads to completely different subatomic configuration. Next time you try to move with that you’d get a lot of pasted Tylas, and probably even more mashed humans. Maybe using a precursor metal?”

  She closed her eyes in thought for a moment, the whimsy of thinking about the larger issue at hand wiping away her previous fear.

  “Hmm… perhaps matching the Hiel’Thal’Manz constant of both devices would reduce some of the issues with aligning both devices, however.”

  “The what?”

  “The Hiel’Thal’Manz constant? The generated figure by any unmatter related material based on-“

  “Yeah, yeah, I know what you’re talking about. But that’s the Christchoff constant, not… whatever the hell that was.”

  “Stupid ape. It’s the Hiel’Thal’Manz constant. He probably recorded it centuries before your silly little race even started writing.”

  “Oh? If we’re such dim animals, how did one of us make this paper here…” Elias reached out to take a study, one of his own, from her grip and flipped to a page discussing the broader topic of the advanced components at hand.

  “Yes! This is what we need… what I need, sorry. If I can apply that section there, with a bit of tweaking, then maybe I can-“

  She paused, realization of her divulging everything over the past few minutes. Then, in one motion, she looked him dead in the eyes.

  “Oh. How did…” She floated closer to him, inches from his face. “You... You were planning the same thing, weren’t you? Your actual plan was to try and make this stupid idea a reality.”

  Elias shrugged. “I mean, I felt the hidden papers and schematics on Tylas ships and Bubble fields kind gave it away, don’t you think?”

  “This idea, it’s… madness. It’s insane.”

  “Yep. But you thought of it too, little jellyfish.”

  She drifted back, her composure reformed.

  “Valentari will be most upset if he finds out.” Chel-Lin cocked her head.

  “Uh huh. Good thing I have a cover project. A really difficult one all about needing to have - get this - different sized belts on the same manual labour harness so all species can wear it. Really hard stuff.”

  His cover project was actually significantly more difficult than he made it out to be, with the varied biology between the three sapient species, but Elias didn’t want to ruin the moment. Plus, it was fun to act like a smart ass sometimes. Well, most of the time.

  “I was starting to think that your project was too simple for someone like you,” Chel-Lin nodded.

  “Oh? Finally starting to recognise my wisdom.”

  “Well, you still don’t seem that wise, considering you’re trying this baffling idea. It has such a slim chance of succeeding and trying it at the most diplomatically sensitive event in all of our combined histories so far is moronic. But I suppose I wouldn’t expect anything less from you… dumbass.”

  “You can say my name. You’ve said it before.”

  “Dumbass,” she reiterated. “But… disregarding your natural idiocy, are you certain about this Savage? If this goes wrong… if either my people or GaltCorp finds out…”

  Elias snorted and flipped some of his hair back. “Please. I practically get off on walking the tightrope between being fired and making history with all of my projects. Now, the stakes are just a little bit higher.”

  “And the IGS? How are we going to handle that?” She cocked her head, the accessories hanging from her jingling quietly.

  “Well, if we can convince dear old Rannos and Valentari that we are actually working on what we claim to be, my interspecies harness and your…?” Elias trailed off.

  “I was working on an alternative form of QIS stabilisation liquid – one that would work for non-biological lifeforms, like myself, and would be less uncomfortable for the purposes of travel.”

  “Hmm, yes. That would work. Well, as long as we meet each of the assigned checkpoints, and assuming we can actually get our cover projects working, I think that might work.”

  “Are you serious? You think they might buy it?”

  “If we can make a good show of it, I think so. Rannos does genuinely wants to see us all working as one in the future, and both our, heh, ‘fake’ projects tie into that idea. I imagine Lucian doesn’t actually care, so long as everyone ends up shaking hands at the Symposium and he makes money out of it.”

  “Huh. That… might actually work. But what about afterwards? When the IGS is concluded?”

  Elias paused for a moment. Initially, he considered the fame and controversy such a discovery would produce, the places he could reach with such newfound presence amongst the masses. But then he was back in the present, looking into Chel-Lin’s eyes. What of Chel-Lin? What of her people, of her effort?

  What would she want?

  “I think it would be best to work out what want to do with it once it actually works,” Elias said. “Maybe this whole idea is a longshot, but we’ll never know if we don’t try. Worst comes to worst, we just smile and wave through the ceremonies and stuff, and we both just publish our newly made… Bubble…S… Drive… thing… later.”

  “Wow, great name,” Chel-Lin said with a snicker.

  “Yep, took all my grey matter to think of that one. Of course, this whole scheme would involve the balancing two, completely new and untested before projects at the same time. Now, I like to think I’m at least a little good at what I do-“

  “Really? Never could have guessed that, Mr Child Genius,” Chel-Lin interrupted.

  Damn this cheeky jellyfish. Elias felt he might need to get his own payback of sorts sooner or later. They’d gotten far chummier than he could ever imagine since their first meeting, and that scared him. Some sort of prank would help secure some distance. At least, that was what he told himself.

  “As I was saying, we run the risk of failing both our cover projects if this goes poorly. We fail to hit a checkpoint, and I can image we’ll have our access to the equipment we need restricted or we might even be kicked out.”

  Chel-Lin seemed to think on his words, nodding slightly. Then, she turned to him.

  “You know… it would probably be safer if you had more help with the development of this new FTL engine. To make it go quicker. Like if you had someone else to help you.”

  Elias grinned wide. “Hmm. I think so too. In fact, I actually have some Tylas sized vacancies in the project’s staff now that you mention it. Perhaps a certain someone would be free to help?”

  He jumped down from the workbench, dusted himself off and extended a hand. Chel-Lin floated down, adjusted her scarves and slowly extended a strap-like tendril forward. She froze just for a second before they made contact, then wrapped it around his digits and palm. For a few seconds they both tightened their grip as they fixed their eyes on one another. A firm shake later, and the deal had been sealed.

  The feeling of the soft, delicate and yet solid grip of her appendage in his hand gave a sense of contact he doubted he had truly felt before. Her glowing eyes, though lacking the ‘window to the soul’ of a human’s sclera and iris, were crinkled from the effects of an invisible smile – eyes that seemed to burn through his very heart. Elias doubted he could have ever imagined himself in the position he found himself after he first met Chel-Lin Daksira, but now the two of them stood, eye to eye, at the precipice of a new beginning.

  All he had to do now wa-

  A sudden tingling took his hands as he pulled back from her grip.

  “Sorry! Sorry!” Chel-Lin said, startled. “Got a bit… swept away. Started draining some energy. Sorry.”

  Elias tried to casually laugh it off as he shook hand back into his digits, but the surprise of the moment made his voice sound more nervous than he intended.

  “It’s fine,” he said. “Happens to all the Tylas I make secret deals with.”

  He sighed. Based on the nervous tone in her voice and the way she covered herself up in her outer mantle, feigning an exterior of stoicism, Elias was left thinking that Chel had not simply been ‘swept away’. Heh, the idea of a Tylas feeling that way towards a human? How very… silly. Hmm. Regardless, they said their farewells as Chel-Lin hurriedly returned to her room for meditation. Elias was left by his lonesome, though solitude was the last thing he felt as his mind rampaged with a billion thoughts clamouring for attention.

  The countless questions filled him as he took a deep breath. How the hell would they get the time to work on the project? Would the others find out? Would EXCAL know? The CAI would likely have access to cameras and the like. Could he and Chel-Lin actually work together? Would they devolve back to their first meeting; ego clashing with ego? And, most importantly, how in the actual fuck would they successfully tie the benefits of both FTL engines together without accidently teleporting Nucleus, and maybe the entirety of Kral-Thul?

  Damn, it was far too much to think about on with such little sleep. Elias was struck by how tired he was when he took the moment to pause. He needed some rest, that was for sure. Though it had taken some time to admit it, he was glad he was stuck with his Tylas partner. In the end, it was inevitable that Chel-Lin and he would’ve worked together on the secret project; to carry out such a goal whilst sharing the laboratory was delusional, now that Elias truly thought about it.

  Not that he minded working with Chel-Lin. Hell, seeing how intelligent she was, Elias was glad he had her over anyone else in the galaxy. That, and she had somehow managed to stomp down his ego a bit. Well, for her at least - Elias still planned to make the most of his bodyguard’s contractual obligation to put up with his shit by pushing Kurt’s boundaries some more. Until then, however, Elias found himself looking up and out of the skylight of the laboratory towards the twinkle of stars fighting through the nighttime mist of Kral-Thul.

  If light could fight its way through such thick obstructions, if it could find hope in the most difficult of situations, then Elias was sure he and Chel-Lin would make their dreams a reality too.