I awoke midway through the next morning with something on my face. Reaching up to swipe it away I realized it was a hand. I gently lifted it off, turning my head to see a certain sidhe sprawled out across the bed, taking up as much space as possible. I chuckled to myself before sliding out of bed and heading into the bathroom. Once I had taken care of business and changed, I stepped back out to see the others starting to stir.

  “Ugh,” groaned Jara, rubbing her head. “Why did we drink so much?”

  “Shh,” hissed Ani, flapping her hand in Jara’s general direction.

  “Someone needs to invent a hangover-curing spell,” mumbled the bed hog.

  “Isn’t like half the reason for a hangover dehydration? A spell’s not going to help with that,” I pointed out, causing Isa to chuck a pillow at me. “Come on, you three. Let’s get you dressed and get some breakfast.”

  Jara groaned but slid out of bed. “I’ll go first.”

  The other two waved her off, causing me to smile. I wasn’t normally one to enjoy others’ suffering, but my friends were funny about it.

  “So, Miss Bedspread, how’d you sleep?”

  “Ungh,” she groaned.

  “You certainly seemed to enjoy the bed.”

  “Unghhh.”

  “Was it worth it?”

  She raised her head to glare at me. “Yes. But maybe not again tonight.”

  I nodded. “Yeah, I’m not surprised.”

  Yeah… she threw another pillow at me then groaned again.

  “That was my last pillow.”

  “Yeah, not your brightest move.”

  Finally, she sat up, her longish auburn hair sticking out every direction. I laughed, leading to another glare.

  “Would you two quit it?” Ani moaned.

  With a shrug, I sat down at the table and pulled out my tablet to read about local events. It was weird—had my plan not worked, I’d likely be on this planet at this moment, just doing something very different. I shuddered at the thought of what it would have been like.

  I learned Prince Oppold was still unmarried—I wondered if they were still waiting for me or just hadn’t found a replacement yet. It seemed strange that they would believe me alive after all this time, unless they actually suspected me of running away. Though, it would be stranger for me to have been kidnapped or killed with no message, so maybe they did think that. Had they figured out any of the details, though, I’m sure I would have been dragged back to the palace by my tail by now.

  After a bit of time, the others were all clean, dressed, and ready to go.

  “Where to, oh illustrious navigator?” asked Ani, looking a bit better than before, though still clearly hurting.

  “There’s a diner a few blocks away that should work well and be reasonably priced for the area.”

  “Lead on.”

  We made it to the diner and each ordered a traditional hash featuring a starchy root vegetable called goeden, some sort of eggs, and sausage made from a common local herd animal called a hinor. It was filling and tasty, not high cuisine by any means but a solid breakfast that seemed to ease the others’ suffering a bit.

  “So, what’s next on our agenda?”

  “I’d suggest shopping, but the selection is likely to be limited here for non-felids,” said Isa.

  Jara agreed. “Yeah, there’s probably not a lot of options for people our sizes. It’d probably be less frustrating that fun.”

  “Any gardens worth visiting?” I asked.

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  The others looked at me. “Not really what I expected out of you,” admitted Isa.

  Jara and Ani nodded in agreement.

  “What? I like gardens.”

  “She is a noble, isn’t that all they do? Take walks and gossip?” Ani had a twinkle in her eye that showed she was teasing.

  I stuck my tongue out at her, causing everyone to laugh.

  “You sure she’s actually a noble?” joked Isa.

  I rolled my eyes. “Can we get off the nobility thing? I’m a sailor first.”

  “Fine, fine. Let’s look up some gardens or parks, then.”

  We didn’t find any nearby specialty gardens, exactly, but we did find a large park that was supposed to have walking paths and ponds and such, so we decided to take an afternoon walk. It was relaxing, and even Isa seemed to be calm during it. We chatted about nothing important, mostly things like the weather and the different plants from a planet we had never been. We even saw some waterfowl enjoying the ponds.

  Later in the afternoon, we returned to the room to rest and regroup. Ani put on a local movie, some sort of adventure film. It was in Raugada, so the others needed subtitles. I hadn’t revealed my language skills yet, so they didn’t know that I understood the dialogue just fine.

  After the movie, we headed to a gastropub for dinner and drinks. Again, I abstained, and the others kept it tamer. We ended up playing some sort of shuffleboard game that I lost miserably at the first time, then decided to play using Telekinesis. The others knew the spell, of course—it was pretty much required for spacers—but none of them had practiced anywhere near as much as I had.

  After I dominated the board, Isa punched me in the arm playfully. “You holding out on us? What was that? How’d you do that with TK?”

  I shrugged. “Lots of practice.”

  “You made your shot curve around another puck.”

  “It’s all angles and physics and practice. Did you notice me stick my arms out? It gave me better leverage. Honestly, the physics mostly told me that it was possible, then I spent hours and hours practicing because it was fun.”

  “Weird flex, but I can respect it.”

  The other two nodded at that. ““Respect.””

  We hung out a bit longer, then turned in earlier than the night before. I think the others needed a calmer night, and I wasn’t complaining either.

  The next day, no one was hungover, so we got up earlier. We found a different place for breakfast, then Jara convinced us to visit some art galleries and museums. It was interesting, but I preferred the park. That evening, Isa dragged us out dancing again, though they didn’t drink nearly as much that time. It was still a lot of fun. My favorite part was when Isa flew up into the air in a fast twirling motion, startling everyone on the dance floor.

  That was our last full day, so we packed up the next morning and headed back to the base to return to the ship. I found I enjoyed being back on land, but I was also starting to get antsy to get back out there. Something about being in the void satisfying an itch that I couldn’t scratch otherwise. That, or I just didn’t like sleeping as an eye with a sidhe trying to stick a finger up my nose.

  Once everyone was back on the ship, the captain announced our new mission.

  “We have been assigned to do a first pass map of the route the derelict ship took on their ill-fated journey. Now, normally this sort of exploration of new routes would be assigned to a more experienced crew given the risks involved, but we’re nearby, and thanks to the accidental sacrifice that crew made, we know the route back. I won’t lie to you—this is still a dangerous mission, going out into the unknown, but I believe we have mitigated the risks as much as possible, and I believe in all of you. We will depart at 1100 ship time tomorrow. That is all.”

  I was in a lounge sketching at the time, and everyone there remained silent for a good minute just processing. Personally, I was torn between excitement at getting to explore uncharted territory and fear at the danger of doing so.

  “What are you all thinking?” asked Riyo, a felid marine I wasn’t too familiar with.

  “Honestly?” Isa said. “Kinda awesome. We get to be the first known people to explore new systems and survive? I’m excited.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed. “It’s pretty cool, though also nerve-wracking.”

  Some of the others nodded in agreement.

  “I hope we find a habitable planet,” someone said.

  “Not just a habitable planet—another sapient species!”

  “That’s not likely,” Jara pointed out. “If there was a planet with sapients on it, unless they were particularly primitive, the derelict probably would have tried to stop there for supplies, whether just barrels of water or something to repair the reclamation system.”

  “Not if the planet was earlier in their route or they missed it entirely,” I pointed out. “Then there could be a non-spacefaring civilization around. Of course, spacefarers would have been detected and noted, but they could have missed a habitable planet if they weren’t looking.”

  “True,” Jara admitted. “Well, we’ll just have to see, won’t we?”

  Everyone agreed with that, and I noticed the talk seemed to have distracted and calmed the most nervous people in the room, which was good.

  “What do you think we’ll find?” Isa asked me later.

  I shrugged. “Honestly, the most likely good option is that we end up finding a new route that shortens some of the long trade routes. Imagine if this ended up connecting to Arkon or something—you could potentially shave weeks off of travel from Arkon to Leval.”

  “You’d think they’d have discovered a route like that before.”

  “Eh, there are a lot of unexplored routes, even coming off major planets. It’s a huge risk to take an unmapped current out of a system, since you don’t know where you’ll end up or if there will be a route back home. A lot of ships have been lost over the centuries, and we don’t know why.”

  “True, but the rate of ship loss has gone down a lot more recently.”

  “Yeah, but a lot of that is that we just don’t explore as much anymore. Sure, it happens, but the empire is pretty stable, and our colony planets still have plenty of room.”

  “I guess. Still, it’s awesome that we get to do this.”

  I smiled at her. “It is, isn’t it?”

  She bounced up off the couch and wandered over to chat with someone else, leaving me to ponder alone what we would see and experience over the next few months.