I woke with a soft gasp, a warm hand pressed against my cheek. I fumbled to pull the earplugs out, the drilling turned from a vibration to a background rumble as I blinked my eyes open.

  “Good morning, Elsy,” Nicole smiled down at me.

  “H-Hi,” I smiled, sitting up and pulling the blankets around myself. “What are you doing here?”

  “My research has been halted,” Nicole replied. “All non-essential personnel have been informed to shelter in place.”

  “What?” I gasped, glancing past her to my balcony door. The artificial sunlight was flashing a deep red, a clear alarm signal I had missed.

  “I made you your usual,” Nicole added, offering me a smoothie.

  “What’s going on?” I asked, slightly panicked, though I took the smoothie.

  “No need for alarm. We are simply about to exit hyperspace shortly,” Nicole replied. “It’s routine.”

  “Oh,” I sighed, taking a breath and then sipping the smoothie. It wasn’t exactly a reassuring answer, but it could be far worse.

  Nicole tisked. “Your hair is all tangled,” she declared before marching into my bathroom and returning a moment later with my comb. “Scoot, scoot,” she instructed, motioning me to shuffle over.

  I begrudgingly did and allowed her to fuss with my hair. “Tobias sent you to keep an eye on me, didn’t he?” I asked with a disappointed sigh.

  “Yes,” Nicole confirmed. “But I would have come regardless. He was in a mood after his visit last night.”

  “He was upset?” I frowned. “Why? What did I do wrong?”

  “Nothing,” she replied, experimentally running the comb through my hair. I didn’t grimace. Nicole was always gentle.

  I didn’t want to pry further; I still felt wrung out from last night. “When I am allowed to cook, you must teach me your recipe,” I sighed after a moment. Nicole always made me excellent smoothies.

  “It is a simple recipe,” Nicole replied, amused. “Milk, Greek yogurt, strawberries, banana, peanut butter, chia and hemp seeds, some tofu and spinach, vanilla extract to flavour.”

  “I don’t know what most of those things are,” I grumbled.

  Nicole ran her fingers through my hair. “Nutrients your body needs to grow.”

  I sighed. “I know what milk is, we have cows aboard, don’t we? And I know yogurt is made from milk,” I braved.

  “Correct. Strawberries and bananas are both old fruits native to Terra Prime,” Nicole began to explain. “Peanut butter is a processed mixture made from peanuts, salt, sugar, and various oils.”

  “There’s no butter in peanut butter?” I asked with a frown.

  “No dairy at all,” she replied, combing through my hair. “Though it shares a similar consistency and lipid content, with peanut oil in this case rather than milk fat.”

  I tried my best to understand as Nicole rattled on about ingredients. But every new description had its own words I did not know. It was a frustrating process, but Nicole had endless patience with my unending questions.

  By the time I had finished my smoothie, my hair had been tamed, and my brain hurt from learning.

  “But why is a banana a berry when a straw-berry isn’t?” I sighed.

  “Old botanical categorization is separate from naming practices. I am a scientist, thus I ascribe to scientific categorization for simplicity, but a chef would certainly not classify a tomato as a fruit,” Nicole said.

  “It doesn’t make any sense,” I grumbled, really trying not to seem petulant.

  Nicole set the brush down. “That is understandable. You have not been provided with an education.”

  I nodded as Nicole stepped away to stare out the glass balcony door. Her white hair looked red under the flashing light.

  “Why was Tobias angry with me?” I eventually asked. “I don’t know what I am doing wrong.”

  “You are not doing anything wrong,” Nicole blinked, head snapping in my direction.

  “He is supposed to love me. I do not feel like he loves me,” I whispered.

  “Of course, he does not love you,” Nicole frowned. “He is arrogant and self-centred. You only exist to provide him with an heir.”

  “How can you speak about him that way?” I frowned, more than a little surprised. I had never heard her criticize Tobias before.

  “What use would I be to him if I could not speak the truth?” Nicole explained. “He is surrounded by enough sycophants.”

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  “Doesn't he get angry with you?” I frowned.

  “Yes, but he knows I am more intelligent than him. He needs me. And… once he finds a way to reassert his masculinity, then he is more than happy to claim my work as his own,” Nicole replied.

  I sighed. “How do I make him happy then? I can barely keep up a conversation. I don’t even know how to read.”

  “He wants an heir, that is how you can make a man like Tobias as happy as can be,” Nicole grimaced slightly.

  “And once he is happy, I will be happy,” I nodded.

  Nicole put a hand on my shoulder and gently squeezed. “Give it time, Elsy. Give me time.”

  I didn’t really understand what she meant. But she looked so sincere, I just nodded.

  A voice crackled across the intercom. “This is your captain speaking. Folks, we're about to break through into the Nibdonian System in T minus 15 minutes. A reminder, we'll be disabling the artificial gravity for as smooth a ride as possible. I’ll be counting us down shortly. Please buckle up and secure any belongings.”

  “Oh dear,” I exhaled, nerves fluttering through me.

  “Relax,” Nicole reassured, lifting up and folding the bed back into the wall. She unzipped the large velcro bag thing below. “You already did this once before, you know what to expect.”

  I nodded, trying to convince myself of that fact as I awkwardly got down onto the floor. Nicole casually plucked up the handful of loose belongings before securing them in the various cubbies designed for just these moments. She returned to help me shimmy into the fabric. It was like crawling into a really big sock.

  I tucked my arms in awkwardly, feeling uncomfortably compressed as Nicole did up the straps to keep me secure. I hated it, but it was safer for the baby than a seatbelt, and I would get tossed around far less than the civilians on all those decks below.

  Absently, I wondered what they did with the cows as the captain announced a countdown update.

  Nicole walked over and unfolded a seat from the wall. She secured herself in place with ease. She was not far from me, but not close enough for more than a little comfort.

  “I feel ridiculous," I sighed, straining my neck to look at her.

  “You look ridiculous," she replied solemnly.

  That at least got a snort out of me.

  “Gravity being disabled in 10, 9, 8, 7…” the captain counted down.

  “Just breathe,” Nicole reminded me. “Just breathe, and please don’t throw up.”

  “Don’t put ideas in my head,” I groaned, already feeling a little dizzy.

  “4, 3, 2, 1…” the captain finished. A loud whirring echoed through the ship, and my stomach lurched. A dizzying feeling of pressure wormed its way into my skull before, with a groan of metal, we were weightless.

  “You’re doing great,” Nicole offered. “That’s the worst part done.”

  “That is not the worst part!” I hissed.

  “Alright, folks,” the captain’s voice crackled again. “We’re almost there. Ejecting from hyperspace in 10, 9, 8…”

  Nicole, as always, was entirely unfazed. It was unfair. I squeezed my eyes tightly shut and focused entirely on breathing.

  “It will be okay,” Nicole said confidently.

  “3… 2… 1… and… shit,” the captain's voice cut out.

  An explosion reverberated through the hull of the ship.

  Metal screeched, loud and powerful. Then the drill went quiet. Alarms erupted across the Starship Euphorion.

  “Nicole,” I called, my voice more a whispered whimper than anything else. I looked up to see her unbuckling herself before rotating in the air to kick herself towards me off the wall.

  “It’s okay, we just got a little stuck,” she explained. “Trying to get the vibration frequency correct is famously very challenging. The drill likely sustained damage, but the hull is still secure.”

  “How do you know?” I asked, heart thudding in my ears.

  “We’re still alive,” she replied, undoing the straps that held me down.

  “Oh great,” I croaked, shimmying free and immediately starting to float off before Nicole grabbed my foot and tugged me over.

  I flailed in the air for all the good it did me. “What do we do now?” I asked, finally managing to grab her and cling on for dear life.

  “If the drill can’t be repaired, then the engines will be detonated to get us out of subspace. At which point the Euphorion will be a rapidly ticking clock until everyone suffocates,” Nicole explained, tearing one of the straps off and trying it around my wrist, and securing the other end to hers.

  “Oh gosh, surely it can’t be that bad,” I whined.

  “Probably not,” Nicole smiled. “But if it is that bad, then we will be waiting to evacuate on the bridge. Assuming the captain is not utterly incompetent, we should at least exit into the right solar system.”

  “Is that where Tobias is?” I reflexively asked.

  “Yes, the entire bridge of the Ephorion is a detachable shuttle,” Nicole explained, kicking off the wall and dragging me along towards the door.

  “But what about everyone else?” I flailed, just catching myself before I bounced into the wall.

  “The shuttles are designed for short intersystem transport back and forth. Even if not panic-launched early, there is only capacity for about half the passengers,” she said matter-factly.

  “Oh God,” I shuddered, scrambling to push myself after Nicole as she opened the door and tugged me into the hall. “This is horrible.”

  I might die. Dozens might die. Hundreds even.

  “Fuck,” I added experimentally. I had never sworn before.

  Nicole glanced back to give me a bewildered look.

  “It just… felt appropriate,” I defended.

  “Fuck indeed,” Nicole nodded, as we awkwardly floated our way down the hall. “No elevator," she stopped me. “If the power cuts out, we’d be trapped.”

  “Okay,” I nodded, already out of breath. I was hardly mobile on the best of days. Let alone trying to propel myself sideways through the halls of Euphorion. “What do we do then?”

  “Stairwell,” Nicole tugged me along impatiently.

  “Thank you for this. If I didn’t have someone to tell me what to do, I would have just cowered in my cocoon,” I laughed nervously.

  Nicole scanned her badge and pushed open the door to the stairwell. She didn’t even look back. “Don’t thank me for this, Elsy, I’m just following orders.”

  “Oh,” I mumbled to myself, doing my best to push my way up the stairs sideways the same way Nicole did. I really did appreciate her rescuing me. But I didn’t push further.

  Now in deafening silence, we scurried our way up to the bridge of the ship.