Conics Unfortunately: 53

A week and a few days from the Triune fold monitor, the white-blue planet of Mao ballooned in the Conic’s cockpit window. Its blue oceans glittered, the icebergs reflecting extra light into space, and the massive glaciers cascading towards the equator were ridged with deep blue canyons and crevices. Ellipse pulled a lever for a bit of backwards thrust and turned to face the rest of the pilot’s cabin.

The boys floated behind her frowning over a small metal tube and prodding at it with a pokey tool that looked like it should have stayed in a dentist’s office. Of course they had started on a new prototype. The one floating around Titan and the one plugged into the Conics’s mainframe were not enough.

“I know your project is of utmost importance,” she sang, “but I was wondering if we could get a list of the other ships docked at this station. If we can get help at all, I want to know before there is trouble.”

Focci grumbled and swam towards her, shoving Tejal lightly to get the movement started, and after Mouthbot translated, Tejal looked up from his work, his pokey tool dangerously close to his eyes. “Someone’s proactive today.”

“I am always proactive,” Ellipse muttered. The boys could at least give her some credit for trying to help. She craned her neck to see the list Focci had pulled up on one of the dashboard screens and squinted, trying to make out which ship names were typed in the braille-like specifus writing. “Endurance, Sun-Seeker… Prolifera… Can we narrow it down to just the specifus ships?”

Focci gave her a look but fiddled around with the controls anyways.

There were a lot of specifus ships at Mao. It made sense, really, given how thoroughly specifus tech had uprooted gato society at first contact. But Ellipse wished there was another filter she could use to sort through all the ship names.

“Mm, maybe we should just assume we will not have assistance here,” she hummed, turning her attention back to the window. “Can one of you radio the station and let them know to open our docking gate?”

Focci groaned, and Tejal followed suit soon after, but Ellipse heard Tejal speak into the radio soon enough.

“This is the Conics,” he said, “requesting permission to dock.” He waited a few moments, still drifting a little from when Focci used him as a springboard. “Alright. Thank you.”

A moment later, Ellipse heard the snap of two magnets clapping together, and she looked up to see Tejal floating next to Focci, the new fold generator prototype in one hand and the other sliding off the dashboard.

“They’re opening up our dock right now,” he reported.

Mao’s space station looked unlike any other. It had, after all, been the first aside from the specifus home planet to even get a station, and the specifus had not yet seen reason to build the gato a new one. The station looped in one long spiral, like a spring stretched out, with a single hallway running the length of the spiral that no one had to walk ten full circles to get from one end to the other. The design was not awful, but it certainly was not as nice as the rings with the cross-circle elevators.

And like the pit stop on Triune’s gas giant, Aether, the station was dirty—a relic of older, slower space travel. The cement’s color had faded from sunlight exposure, and bits of debri stuck to the edges of the spiral. At least all the metal doors were clean, since rusty doors were not quite as vacuum-proof as not-rusty doors.

Ellipse craned her neck and kept her eyes peeled for their dock. All the doors for the Mao station were set into the thin edge of the spiral, so Ellipse would have to make a sharp turn inside of the space between loops. That was the worst part of the design, honestly.

She turned a vulture-like circle around the station, following the outside edge of the spiral, occasionally slipping a little too close to other circling ships. Then she spotted an open door with an LED display below it that read “Conics” in flashing teal.

“Alright boys,” she said, “time for you two to get into the hold.” She flicked on a boatload of backwards thrust and eased the ship into the space between loops, ears on alert for sounds of scraping and for confirmation that Tejal and Focci had anchored themselves for landing.

“We are clear!” Focci sang, and then Ellipse dunked the Conics through the door and forced on the landing thrusters. The ship thumped onto the station floor, and Ellipse heard the slap of Focci’s rubbery skin hitting something metal. She winced and hoped he had not fallen too far.

As Ellipse powered off the engines and put the pilot’s dashboard to sleep, she heard the vacuum doors rumble shut, loud enough to vibrate the ship’s hull and shake the acrylic upper floors. The cabin lights brightened, and Ellipse stood from her chair and stalked downstairs.

She found the boys lying on the floor, Focci with his tail in the air in the tween-girl-at-a-sleepover style, and Tejal still prodding at the inside of that little metal tube.

“I leave you alone for ten seconds,” Ellipse complained, dropping to the floor from atop a stack of cold, metal crates. She stomped up to the boys and set her fists on her hips. “Let go of the new prototype. We need to make a game plan for searching this station so that I do not wind up captured again.”

Tejal looked up, paused for a moment, and squinted. “Is that a skirt? You wore a skirt in zero-g?”

She crossed her arms and pouted, petulant. “I have shorts on underneath. Also I am borrowing your jacket again, and I put on that icky lavender sea salt perfume before starting my pilot shift.”

“You’re going to fend of bounty hunters in a skirt?” Tejal asked.

Focci wrinkled his nose. “Oh, that is why the cockpit smelled so bad. Can you get perfume that smells like fish?”

“Yes,” she said. “No,” she sang. “Now can we get to planning?”