Young Writers Society

Focci’s crustaceans were actually not that expensive. They reminded Ellipse of the itty-bitty dried shrimp the cafeteria lady on Titan used to sprinkle on every bowl of rice that ever saw the light of day, except, like everything on Mao, the crustaceans were tinged with blue and grew a thin layer of fur through their shells.

The grocery store was a sliver of a place wedged between two lots of private shuttle docks and stuck underneath a flashing specifus sign for nutrient packets. Ellipse followed Wrecktrix out, careful to keep her arms from knocking into the precariously stacked shelves while still fitting all the purchases into the crook of one elbow. She sipped some odd, green slush from a paper cup and winced at the flavor. It tasted like salty spinach and cranberries.

“This is nasty,” she told Wrecktrix, trying not to stumble on the tongue roll in the word for nasty.

He snapped his beak shut, and a loud crunch echoed into the pit stop’s metal halls. Evidently he had broken into Focci’s crustaceans.

“What even is this?” she tried again.

Wrecktrix crunched and munched and swallowed, and then hissed in satisfaction, eyes fluttering shut. “What is what?”

“This,” Ellipse said, holding up her cup. She sloshed around the green ice and smooshed her features into a grimace. “It is disgusting. Also, I know you have evolved to like things with chitin in them, but I do not need to hear you eat the stuff.”

When Wrecktrix shrugged, the giant bags of junk food in his arms all crinkled with a dry, hollow crackle. “It is tradition to eat crunchy things loudly. We tyran have complex gastronomic rules.”

“You tyran tell a lot of tall tales.” Ellipse knew for a fact that Wrecktrix never ate hard pretzels loudly, and every thin mint that had gone into his mouth the past few sleep cycles had died a slow, lightly acidic death. “You have cheeks. Use them to eat without telling the whole universe about it.”

He muttered something in a different tyran language, one with a lot of beak-clicking, and then rolled his shoulders back and craned his neck to stick his beak directly into the bag of dried blue shrimp. So much for manners and rules of gastronomy.

As Ellipse trailed after Wrecktrix, cringing at every crunch and smack, she peered at the unlit docking bay signs that lined both walls. Compared to the Fold Terminals, this pit stop was near-deserted. The flickering white lights cast hollow shadows across the curved floor, and a few neons signs sprayed colors onto the walls. The matte metal floors were scuffed with years of dirt and dust.

“Why does no one stop here?” Ellipse asked. She gave her weird slushy another suspicious look and tried it again. It still made her scrunch her nose. “The ships are no faster than they were when the Triune system made contact with other systems.”

Wrecktrix shrugged and shook up the bag of blue shrimp. “They aren’t faster, true, but resource management systems are a lot more efficient now. Even smaller ships don’t have to stop very often, and we mostly stopped to restock on snacks.”

“Why did you not just buy more at the earthling terminal?”

“Earthlings don’t sell a lot of the things Focci and I eat. I can only survive on the little brown cookies for so long.”

Ellipse could eat thin mints all day, but she supposed Wrecktrix had a point. She chewed on the straw of her drink for a moment and wondered if she would have to join Focci in the we-eat-raw-meat club. Dried kelp was starting to get old.

“Besides,” Wrecktrix continued, his words garbled by food, “Captain Maj tries not to buy earthling stuff. They’ll take money from earthlings but never give it.”

Um, okay then? Ellipse bit her lip, unsure if she should ask for the reasoning behind the captain’s biased purchasing habits. Maybe, as an earthling, she was not supposed to know.

“I think it’s silly, really,” Wrecktrix said. He popped another handful of shrimp into his beak and peered into the bag as he crunched away. Ellipse silently made a bet with herself on how much would be left by the time Focci got his mitts on the snacks. “But it does keep me from gaining too much weight. I can’t get good exercise in low-grav.”

To be fair, tyran never got good exercise outside of their home planet. Letting out a noncommittal hum, Ellipse returned to sipping at her nasty green drink. She figured she ought to just toss it, but she had yet to spot any kind of garbage disposal.

“By the way, you never told me what this stuff is,” she said, watching as Wrecktrix veered towards the left side of the hall.

He ignored her and pointed straight up at a sign flashing red and blue and green. “This says Conics, right?”

“Yeah. What is this green stuff?”

Wrecktrix swung open the nearest door and stuck his head in, beak wide open like he was about to announce the start of a rabid fraternity party. But in the next moment, he ripped his head back and shouted an apology and slammed the door shut. He swore in his clicky language and tried the door about a meter down.

“Focci!” he shouted, “how much longer until takeoff?”

From somewhere inside came a series of arpeggiated notes. Focci was confused.

“And you!” Wrecktrix said, snapping to look at Ellipse. “Get in here! Be quick!”

Ellipse wanted to point out that Wrecktrix had taken his sweet time in getting from the grocery store to the docking bay. “What is going on?” she asked.

“Nothing, nothing. Just some people the captain would rather not see. Hurry it up already.” He gestured inside with his head and clacked his beak as if saying “chop chop.”

Wrinkling her nose, Ellipse eased into a jog. “I thought this crew was at least vaguely respectable.”

“Oh, we are. Captain Maj is just doing business with folks the rest of his people sort of frown upon.”

Knowing the specifus, ‘folks’ could mean anyone from the sirens one planet over to space pirates. As she passed through the door, Ellipse raised her eyebrow at Wrecktrix and pursed her lips. She would make sure to ask about this later. Well, this and the green slushy.