Conics Unfortunately: 23

Because even the universe had declared three to be a magic number, the Savra station conveniently had three main halls—one for each member of the Conics—which were connected by countless loops and additional docking spaces. Once Ellipse finished explaining her plan, Focci headed for the luxury hall, Tejal wheeled his way towards the section for passengers and unimportant businesspeople, and Ellipse set out to survey the rest of the shipping area.

She waited until the boys were out of sight, lost in the crowd of saur and specifus, before hauling herself into the nearest bathroom.

The saur, being raptor-shaped and generally unable to sit, used squat toilets, and they kept huge gaps under the stall doors to create extra tail space. Ellipse just about tripped over a leathery, yellow tail as she crept down the length of the bathroom, eyes peeled for white roots and red vines. Her boots squeaked on the tiny, grey ceramic floor tiles, and she kept glancing back at the entrance in case someone walked in and found her acting suspicious.

By the time she made it down the length of the room, the yellow saur had finished up with the waste expulsion and was backing out of the stall like a car from a parking spot. Judging from the size, this saur was young and had not quite decided on a gender yet, but they still paused when Ellipse met their eyes. Maybe they thought she should have gone to one of the other bathrooms.

Ellipse only knew a few words in any of the hundreds of saur languages, but she tried a few combinations of soft syllables and tongue rolls and hoped she had sounded at least vaguely coherent. Then, before the little saur could react, she scurried out and rejoined the masses in the shipping hall.

A few hundred steps later, Ellipse turned down a quiet branching hall. Air-tight glass walls lined the walkway, and beyond each panel sat an empty docking bay with the metal sliding doors closed against the vacuum of space. Everything was oversized, especially in comparison to the saur, who rarely grew to even Ellipse’s height, and with the echoes of business still trailing down the hall, the emptiness left Ellipse feeling detached. Supposedly, the saur had requested extra space in order to further their asteroid mining industry, but they must not have gotten very far with that.

Ellipse glanced around the empty hallway for a moment, just to make sure the red specifus was not standing in plain sight somewhere, before ducking into yet another bathroom.

It was exactly like the last, from the tiny floor tiles to the dim, bioluminescent bacteria squirming about in the clear, plastic ceiling panels. Grimacing, Ellipse clomped up and down the bathroom, careful not to bend over too much and look like she was peeking. If she only inclined her head, she could make the excuse that she was searching for a stall with a lower door.

She found no red specifus in that bathroom, or in the next, or in the one after that. And in between bathrooms, she poked her nose into every open docking bay and itty bitty nook hidden between the giant cement blocks that made up the walls. Ellipse even found the emergency airlock doors (they were tucked behind long, thin strips of plastic textured to look like cement) and the backup atmosphere regulation system (behind the tiny window in a metal door marked ‘staff only’ with bright green paint), but she could not find the specifus.

By the time Ellipse made it through half of the shipping block, she had wasted forty-five minutes, and her boots scuffed and dragged with every step. Yes, she could survive some exercise in heightened gravity, but not an hour of speed-walking up and down hallways and wrenching open steel doors. Panting, she cracked open the door to bathroom number five, slipped inside, and immediately doubled over to catch her breath.

Some part of her brain reminded her to check under the stall doors, and Ellipse’s eye flicked towards the nearest stall, where a tendril of white curled around the shiny door hinge.

That was someone’s root, clearly. Gulping, Ellipse took a step back and shoved a hand in her pocket. She kept a mirror in there somewhere, from before she had realized that it was unwise to wear makeup while cleaning. When her fingers closed around the little plastic case, she pulled it out and flicked open the lid and held the mirror close to the ground.

It took a bit of tilting and finagling, but soon enough, Ellipse had a view of the red specifus. They had pulled themselves up to perch precariously on top of the raised part of the squat toilet, with only tiny roots extended to provide balance. Their deep red trunk and leaves were smooth with youth, and even though red coloration did not help with photosynthesis on the specifus home planet, this individual was probably just as tall as Ellipse.

Biting her lips, Ellipse closed the mirror and dumped in back into her pockets. Then she rooted around for her lightbox and shoved that under the stall door.

“Excuse me,” she flashed. “Would you happen to be-

Before she had a chance to think, Ellipse was on her back. Her forehead smarted, throbbing in time with her heartbeat, and she had a weight on her chest that kept her from breathing. She peeled her eyes open, not remembering when she had closed them, and came face to face with a writhing tangle of red vines and flashing lights.

“Who are you?” the red specifus flashed, lights bright and fast and angry. “Where did you come from, and what do you want?”

The red specifus could have at least given Ellipse a chance to speak. Suddenly glad that Focci and Tejal tended to push manual labor onto her, she pushed herself up onto her elbows and forced the specifus to tumble off of her chest. She fumbled for her lightbox, wishing that the room would stop spinning, and tried to come up with a response.

“I do not want to… hurt you,” Ellipse said. Her fingers felt slow on the lightbox, or maybe she was just woozy. “Or turn you in. I have been hunted before.”

“You can’t prove that. Get out of here.”

Ellipse felt her stomach turn, and she tried to pull herself towards the open stall, but the red specifus shot out a vine and curled it around her neck. She could still breathe, but the threat was clear.

“Don’t move. Just talk,” the specifus ordered.

“My… friends,” Ellipse managed to flash. “They are trying to build a fold generator. I want you to tell them about the Impending.”

“To discourage them? To help them? I refuse to step into your trap. I know you earthlings as a whole may not like Spec Corp, but stereotypes are dangerous.” The red specifus bristled, leaves shaking, and tightened their grip around Ellipse’s neck.

She wheezed. “Either outcome is fine,” Ellipse flashed. “I just do not want anyone to die when they test their invention. Besides, I want to help you. Surviving an explosion is not a crime.”

“I was under a contract,” the specifus said. “I was legally bound.”

“A contract means nothing if you had no say in the terms.”

At that, the specifus’s grip loosened. Ellipse gasped, throat cooling with the onslaught of air, and fought to keep a steady hold on her lightbox. “I am not blind. I have a hunch about the kind of governing that happens on your homeworld. If you will help my friends, I will help you reach safety. I know a safe house.”

“Your friends will meet me here,” the specifus said, vines curling in. “And while they come, you will tell me about this safe house.”

“Deal,” Ellipse flashed. She held out both hands, and the red specifus’s vines slithered up her arms. For a brief moment, the specifus squeezed, and then the agreement was sealed.

Immediately, Ellipse held her watch up to her face and tapped on it to send Tejal and Focci her location. Then she fished some crumpled paper and an almost-dry pen from her pockets and scribbled out a name and address. “Find passage to the moon Europa, in the earthling system,” she flashed, before pressing the paper into the red specifus’s vines. “When you get there, hail a cab and ask them to bring you to the first name on here. If anyone at the safe house asks who sent you, show them the second name.”

“I still don’t know who you are,” the specifus said, examining the paper. “But I am Soph.”

Ellipse smiled. “It is not the name I wrote, but you can call me Ellipse.”

The specifus crawled closer, as if needing to examine Ellipse’s face. “Ellipse? Like an oval? You would not happen to work on the Conics?”

How had- no, nevermind. It might not have been accidental, but Ellipse knew her name fit into the ship’s theme. Tentatively, she nodded.

“Ah, then I know I can trust you. Here is something you should know, earthling.” Soph pulled back and drew up to their full height. “Any specifus ship named after knowledge is a trustworthy one. Their crews may not like your kind, but they like Spec Corp even less. If you ever need help, find one of them.”