Nyx jumped and hissed as she heard more thumps as the Donati entered hyperspace.

  She didn’t know when she had stopped paying attention, but the shaking from refueling had stopped, and she was now weightless. This meant they were now in FTL as fusion engines couldn’t provide thrust.

  Seeing the Az Gaper nearly get destroyed had released emotions she had been holding for so long. The constant fear. About always having to watch herself. Having to kowtow to the crew so they wouldn’t beat her.

  Until the ship had made the jump to FTL, there was a part of her still trapped on it. When it left, she realized she never had to go back. Those who tormented her for so long had gone away.

  Then there was Wrench. Yes, she never wanted to see the Az Gaper’s crew again, but could she abandon him to his fate there? Why was it fair she got to escape but he didn’t?

  What about the slummers that would never get the food Cai offered her?

  She noticed she was crying. When was the last time she’d cried? She couldn’t even remember. Tears showed weakness, and the crew took advantage of any weakness they could.

  There was another clang, which made Nyx jump.

  It was the sound of moving metal, and Nyx saw two sections of the hull opening up, showing the swirling motes of energy stream by.

  Nyx felt terrified and screamed loudly as her ears pulled back and her tail puffed up, “We’re gonna sparkin’ die!”

  Cai’s laugh caught her off guard, “Sorry, didn’t think opening the window covers would scare you so much.”

  Nyx growled at him, then when she looked closer, she saw a transparent bulkhead was keeping them from being exposed to the vacuum and energies outside, “Goddum it! Ya scared me ta Earth ‘n back!”

  “Sorry. I’m used to being alone, so didn’t think to ask.” He unstraps from his seat and floats away, “Let’s get you cleaned up and get a medical scan done while we’re at it.” He points ‘up’ to the deck at the opposite end of the one they’re next to, “I’ll also show you around the crew deck and give you your room.”

  Nyx looks to where he’s pointed. Her own room? And what was a ‘medical scan’?

  “Myaa… Yeah.” She’s still not used to being treated so kindly. Like a person. What was she supposed to say at times like this? She remembered. Slummers said it when someone helped them. “Thanks.”

  Cai raises an eyebrow, then gives her a smile that makes her heart flutter, “You’re welcome.” He pauses and looks at the holes the weird creatures had hidden in. “Oh, right. Forgot, I need to turn on the magnetic boots for the animals.” He fiddles with his wrist computer. “There. The poor critters can’t move in zero g well, so they wear booties with magnets.”

  Nyx recalls seeing the… animals. Critters? She recalls seeing little shoes on them, but everyone wears shoes at least sometimes, so didn’t think they were important, “Okay?”

  Cai shrugs, then uses his suit’s thrusters to move through the plants and to the next deck.

  Nyx follows, staring at the plants again. With the containers now closed, she couldn’t smell them anymore, which disappointed her.

  They quickly reached the hatch to the next deck, and Cai opened it, slipping through, “Blackie! Crap!” A pause, “Sparks! Did I lock you in here again? Sorry bud!”

  There was a voice that reminded her of the noises she made sometimes when she was grumpy, “Mreow.”

  Nyx paused. Another… critter?

  She peeked through the hatch and saw another critter sitting on a wall.

  Nyx felt her territorial instincts kick in, her ears flattened, tail fluffing, and let out a low rumbling growl, “What the sparks is that thing!?”

  Another four-legged thing stared at her. It was a little bigger than the chickens and had four legs like the cow, each with metal shoes on the feet. Worst of all, it had triangular ears like hers. Its irises vertical slits like hers in bright light. And had a tail like hers but much less fluffy, which gave her a sense of pride for reasons she didn’t understand. Why did this critter have so many of her features?

  It even smelled a little like her.

  The critter noticed her and reacted in almost the same way she did. Ears flattening, tail fluffing, hissing, and back arching, which Nyx realized she had done too.

  Cai looked between the two and started laughing, “This… too adorable!”

  Nyx hissed at Cai, “What the sparks is that… critter? Why the sparks does it look like me!?”

  Cai pet the critter, “Calm down Blackie. She’s living with us from now on.”

  Blackie hisses at Cai and swipes at his hand.

  “Okay, we’ll give you some room.” He turns to Nyx, “Cats don’t like strangers. Give him time. I swear he’s a lovable guy when you get to know him.”

  Nyx looked at Blackie wearily, “Sparks no! Dum cat thing is freakin’ me out!”

  She hisses at Blackie again for good measure, and Blackie hisses back before running up the wall to hide behind a pillar with a thin plant growing in it and stares wearily at her.

  Cai shrugs, “Checkup first, then I’ll show you to your room and you can take a shower. I might have some clothes you can wear until I can get the clothing fabricator to make you new ones.”

  Nyx finally enters the deck, “New clothes?”

  Has she ever gotten new clothes? Her space suit was whatever spare the captain had and the most damaged one at that. At least now hers mostly fit, but as a kid it had been a baggy nightmare. And a shower? Before she had to use a dirty rag and her water rations to clean herself.

  Cai opens a door, “Med bay’s in here. You don’t mind if I scan you and take blood samples?”

  Nyx feels her ears flatten again, “B… blood?”

  “Yeah, the computer will use it to check for any diseases and see how healthy you are.”

  Nyx follows him into the med bay. The Az Gaper had one, but the pirates tore it apart for the parts well before she’d ‘joined’ them.

  There was a bed with straps, a computer console, a machine with various controls and tools, and a hologram projector.

  This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

  It wasn’t a big room, barely big enough for three people if one was in the bed.

  Cai pats the bed, “Sit and put the straps on so you don’t float away. The straps have needles in them, so you might feel a pinch.” He pauses, “And can you take off your suit? If you don’t have anything on underneath, I can get you something light to wear.”

  Nyx swallowed as she looked at the cuffs, “Okay. I’ll be sparkin’ killin’ ya if ya be takin’ too much blood!”

  Cai looked amused, “Promise it’s just a little. You won’t even notice anything other than a slight pinch at first.”

  Nyx took off her tool pouch and detached her suit’s hardware that contained her air supply and battery. She then unzipped her suit, her body odor hitting her nose in full force. When was the last time she’d taken the suit off? When was the last time she’d washed herself?

  She looked at Cai. He was doing his best to keep a straight face, but she could tell he was straining to do it, and she let out a mewl of embarrassment.

  Then she took her boots off, and an even worse smell hit their noses. Far worse than that cheese stuff in the fridge.

  Nyx mewled again from embarrassment.

  Cai coughs, “Okay, please lie down. And maybe next time we should do shower first, then check-up.”

  Now that Nyx is just in her tattered and stained shirt and jean shorts, she feels much more self-conscious of her body. She’s all bone and looks like a child still, with no trace of womanly curves anywhere. She hadn’t grown in a few years, so she knew she would always look like a child.

  She moves to the bed and uses the straps to hold herself in place. As soon as she closes the strap on her right wrist, she winces as she feels a pinch.

  Cai moves to the console and activates it, “This shouldn’t take long. Starting scan…”

  A hologram appears above her while the bed hums.

  Her body appears in the hologram above her, showing more detail than she’d wish Cai to see, though thankfully it doesn’t show her skin.

  As she watches, she can’t tell what she’s looking at. It’s shaped like her, yes, but… is that really what she looks like inside? She also can’t make heads or tails of the messages that pop up, though she doubts the ones with yellow text are good.

  Cai purses his lips, “Okay, I’m starting to get your blood work in… Your vitamin levels are okay. Probably thanks to the nufuud, but you’re dangerously underweight. You also have lots of cellular damage from long-term radiation exposure. I’m guessing you’ve worked a lot on the engines when they’re running?”

  Nyx nods. The engine maintenance shafts were the only place she could get away while looking productive, “What the sparks is radiation and dum cellular damage? I’m gonna be dyin’?”

  “Radiation… think of it as light you can’t see that can harm your body. More stuff to teach you. I can have the computer synthesize some medicine to repair your DNA.” He looks at her arms and her belly, where one of her scars from an old puncture wound is visible as her shirt doesn’t cover her belly. There’s a beeping message. “Okay, the scan finished. You can unstrap yourself.” He reads several items on the list that appears with the beep. “Let’s see… you have severe malnourishment.” He glances at her, “It also says you have stunted growth, low bone density, and a heart defect because of this. Your DNA profile shows you should have grown about four more inches. You also have low muscle mass, but that’s normal for someone who lives in zero and low g environments..”

  Nyx gulps at the long list of conditions she has, “Goddum…”

  He continues, “Two missing teeth and another that’s cracked.” He pulls out a cylinder with a rounded end, “This’ll use sound to stimulate your body to regrow your missing teeth. I use it every fifty years to replace my teeth as they get ground down.” He waves the device by her jaw as he continues, “Let’s see… You have bruises on your ribs, right arm, and both legs.” He pauses as he reads something: “This is going to sound weird, but do you remember your parents or even where you were born?”

  Nyx puts her tongue in a gap in her teeth and growls at the memory of the captain’s boot striking her there. The bruising was from a beating she’d gotten on the FTL jump to La La Land Station.

  Cai’s question catches her off guard, “Never had goddum parents.” She thinks about her oldest memories. Of life before the pirates, “I was bein’ with other Felis kids. The cap’n attacked with a bunch ‘o others. It was bein’ Barnard Station? Sparkin’ Cap’n bragged about how much dum stuff they stole then likes to say I wasn’t worth the shunk and shoulda left me to die.”

  Cai nods, “Huh, other Felis kids? Do you know what happened to them? And no parents? Maybe it was an orphanage?” He pauses as he reads through more scans, “Okay… The scans show you’re in the eighteen to twenty-two age range. Assuming you were four or five years old when the pirates kidnapped you, that puts you right in line with the Bernard Station attack fifteen years ago. So you’re nineteen or twenty years old.”

  Nyx pauses, “What’s a year? And why the spark do ya need to know if I remember my goddum parents?”

  Cai looks confused for a moment, “Ah, I guess in space, days and years aren’t something you can keep track of without a clock or need to, really. As for your parents… just curious.” He opens a new holographic window, but Nyx suspects he’s hiding something from her as he continues, “Anyway, now that the scan is finished, let’s synthesize some things for you. I’ll let you borrow my shampoo and body wash until we can make your own. I’ll have the fabricator work on some medicine to repair your cell damage from the radiation. The computer predicts you’ll have cancer in the next twenty years if we leave it as is. I can also have it make some cream to heal your scars if you want. For the heart defect, we’ll have to have the Donati do some minor surgery.”

  Nyx looks at herself. There are the scars. If she removed them, would it help her forget her time on the Az Gaper? It wouldn’t. All but vague memories of a time before were of the Az Gaper. The rest of the things she didn’t know. “Yes, gimme the dum cream and clothes and whatever the rest of that shunk is.”

  Again, why’d she have to be too harsh?

  Cai nods, “Okay.” He enters some commands into the console. “It’ll take a few hours for the cream and clothing, and a few days for the radiation treatment.” He turns off the console. “You can borrow my clothing until yours are ready.”

  He uses handholds around the room for easy zero g movement and leaves the room. He then enters a room across the hallway, and Nyx notices there are four doors, two near the lower deck and two above near the upper deck.

  A low growl shows Blackie still hates her, and she’s once again weirded out by how similar her ears, eyes, and tail are to it. Unlike it, her hair is dirty and matted, which causes her to feel embarrassed again.

  Inside the room are another console, a sleeping sling, cabinets, and a flat section with a soft pad on it.

  “What the sparks is that for?” She points to the flat area.

  Cai glances over, “Oh, that’s a bed. Much more comfortable sleeping on it when we’re under acceleration.”

  Nyx shrugs, then follows him into a side room. Here, she sees a sink, a mirror, and a toilet. So far, it’s like the captain’s quarters. Which meant that behind the partition next to the toilet was the shower.

  Cai opens the partition and grabs two bottles, “This one is shampoo and this is body wash”

  He points to each one respectively and notes the spelling with her limited reading skills.

  They return to the bedroom, and he opens a cabinet that she sees has his clothing inside.

  “Pick anything you like.” He says as he moves aside.

  Nyx involuntarily sniffs the clothes deeply as she looks at a shirt. It has his smell, “Mya…”

  Cai gives her a knowing look.

  Nyx growls at herself and chooses some soft shorts that are surprisingly small for the man and a light shirt.

  Cai smirks.

  “What?” Nyx hisses defensively and cringes at how hostile she sounds.

  “Those are my boxers. Uh… underwear. Undergarments. Knickers.”

  Nyx doesn’t know any of those words, “The spark are those?”

  “You wear them under your clothing.”

  Nyx wonders why anyone would wear more clothing than they needed to, “Why the spark would ya wear this under yer goddum clothing?”

  She holds them to her chest. They look soft and comfortable, and she wants to wear them.

  Cai shrugs, “Okay, if that’s what you want. Another thing to teach you later, I guess. Anyway, let’s go to your room. It’s the one right above us.”

  Nyx follows him out and to her room.

  He opens the door, but doesn’t enter, “I’ll unlock the console and add you to the system. If you need me, press the green button on the console and ask the computer to connect to me. I’m sure you’ll be fine without my help.”

  Nyx nods, “The spark I don’t.”

  Cai leaves, and Nyx is alone for the first time on the ship. How could he trust her so much when she came here to steal in the first place? He was na?ve or trying to get her to let her guard down. There’s no other reason he’d be this nice to a complete stranger.

  Still, she couldn’t see any cameras, and it couldn’t be worse here than on the Az Gaper.

  She entered the place he’d called the bathroom and stripped her disgusting clothes off.

  In the mirror, she sees a dirty child with matted hair filled with dandruff and a face with a perpetual scowl on it. Did she always look so angry? So filthy?

  She did her business on the toilet and then entered the shower. Now she just needed to figure out how to use this shampoo stuff.

  Patreon for everyone until the end of the Writathon.