Nyx purred as she left the shower and dried herself off with the softest piece of cloth she’d ever felt. Was it okay for her to be so happy? Would she get into trouble for using this cloth? Would Cai punish her?

  She smelled her hair and found it smelled just like Cai, “Mya…”

  She stopped purring as images of the Az Gaper’s engine exploding flashed in her mind.

  Was Wrench okay? Had he been there when it exploded?

  She shakes her head. She had to believe he was alive, just like her friends.

  Nyx picked up Cai’s clothes as a distraction and smelled them. “Mya…” The smell differed from that of the shampoo, but still like Cai. Probably whatever he used to clean them.

  She then looked at the boxer shorts. Why do these shorts have a hole in the front that opens so easily? They were comfortable, though, and by wearing them backwards her tail fit through the hole so she wouldn’t have to cut one herself.

  Once she put the shirt on, she found it went down to her knees and was so baggy she was more worried about it floating off of her or Cai being able to see inside it at certain angles than how it looked. Not that she had much to hide…

  Now dressed, she checked herself in the mirror and felt silly with the clothes billowing off of her. But… She caught her breath when she saw her face and hair. Her hair was still full of tangles and matted hair, but now shone in the light and looked much healthier than it had. Her face looked cheerful for once, her skin now clean and her acne now noticeable. Did Cai have a cream for that?

  It felt nice to be clean. If only Wrench could be here too.

  Next, she rummaged through drawers but found them empty. Cai had said the other crew members had left a long time ago, so it made sense.

  Next, she fetched her old clothing from where they floated next to an air vent, and immediately recoiled. Had she really smelled this bad? Her clothes smelled of lubricant, unwashed bodies, and bilge. Scared she’d stink again, she left them in the bathroom and fled to the bedroom.

  Here, she noticed a light on her desk blinking. Maybe a message from Cai?

  She pushed off a handhold and floated to the desk, where she pushed the blinking button.

  The holographic display lit up. It took her a few seconds to decipher the words, ‘You have one new message from Captain Halley. Play message?’ There was a ‘yes’ and ‘no’ under the text.

  Nyx pressed ‘yes’.

  A voice message played, “Nyx, I’ll be on the utility deck if you need to ask me questions or you’re bored. It’s one deck up, and I’ll be working out for the next hour. I’ve given you some permissions on your console. Mostly learning videos and programs if you’d like to get a head start. Hope you enjoyed your shower.”

  The message ended.

  Nyx looked at the hologram, which now said, ‘Replay Message?’ There were other options too, but none of them interested her.

  She glanced around the room and felt terribly lonely. This unfamiliar place was too clean. Too quiet. It suffocated her. If there were something to fix, that’d be fine, but it was too perfect.

  Nyx left her room. Sure, she could explore the cupboards and drawers, but they were probably empty, and she could do it later, and she needed to get out of there before she went crazy.

  Nyx carefully looked around for Blackie, but mercifully she saw the evil thing gone. The hatches to both decks above and below were open, so it had probably gone through one of them. She hoped below.

  The deck above was as wide as the other decks, and half as ‘tall’ as the deck with the sleeping quarters, and wide open with no rooms. The walls, like the plant room, had opened so one could see outside the ship. On one side, various machines, one of which was knitting a shirt her size. There were other machines, but she couldn’t tell what they did from here.

  Then she found him. He’d since taken off his spacesuit and now wore a thin tank top and shorts.

  Nyx gulped as she took in his form and felt a twinge in her stomach as she looked over his large and defined muscles. She’d never seen a man with muscles this large, and the way they rippled under his shirt and skin as he pulled on some machine drew her eyes in. It was mesmerising. She’d thought his suit was bulky, but it turned out he was bulky. “Mya…”

  She caught herself staring and reluctantly pulled her eyes to his face, which was strained and covered with beads of sweat as he pulled on his machine.

  “Cai!” She says a little too excited for her own comfort, then whispers to herself, “Goddum it, Nyx…”

  Cai looks up, “Nyx. How was the shower?” He pushes away from the machine and approaches. His eyes focused on her hair, “Huh, I should get you a hairbrush.”

  Nyx touches her hair self-consciously, “What’s a goddum hairbrush?”

  Cai looks baffled, “No wonder why your hair is so tangled if you’ve never used one. It’s something you use to groom your hair.”

  “Never needed a sparkin’ hairbrush!” She runs her fingers through her hair to prove her point, but she immediately finds a knot of tangled hair, “Goddum it! Okay, give me a sparkin’ hairbrush, whatever the spark that is.”

  She cringes again at how hostile she sounds.

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  Cai heads to the hatch leading to the living quarters, “Okay, why don’t you borrow mine until I can fabricate one for you.”

  Nyx follows.

  Cai doesn’t stop until he enters his bathroom, where he pulls out a flat thing with short but stiff wires attached to a strange handle. The wires each had balls on the end.

  He hands it to her, “Here. I can help you brush if you need.”

  Nyx takes the brush, “How the spark do I be usin’ this dum thing?”

  Cai takes it back, “Here, let me show you.”

  He moves behind Nyx, which makes her nervous, “Mya… I can do it my goddum self!”

  Cai backs off, “Okay… Sorry. Just start from the bottom and go up as you get rid of tangles.”

  Nyx takes the thing and guesses the wires are supposed to go through her hair, so starts brushing only to hit a tangle immediately. It pulls her hair, causing her to yelp in pain, and turn to growl at Cai, “This sparkin’ hurts, goddum it!”

  Cai shrugs, “Your hair is pretty tangled. Just pull softly and work on it slowly. It’ll take a while. Or we could shave your hair off?”

  Nyx takes the brush as she looks in the mirror at the mess of tangled and matted hair and growls, “I’ll sparkin’ do it.”

  She runs the brush through her hair, though more gently, wincing as the brush constantly finds new tangles in her fluffy hair.

  There’s a meow, and Blackie walks into the room, eyeing Nyx suspiciously.

  Nyx holds back a growl.

  Cai smiles, “You hungry, Blackie? Let’s get you and your harem some food.”

  “The sparks is a harem?”

  Cai smiles as he pushes past her, “One man and multiple women as wives. You know, since Blackie’s the only male and the other animals are female.”

  Nyx pulled at a tangle and wondered why that was amusing.

  Blackie regarded Nyx with a weary gaze that made Nyx feel as if she wasn’t welcome, then rushed ahead, metallic clacks ringing out as his magnetized booties held him to the bulkhead.

  Nyx made a mental note to listen for this so she could tell when the disturbing thing was moving around the ship.

  They enter the plant deck when one of the chicken things flies by, startling her as she pulls at a tangle.

  Nyx hisses, “What the sparks was that!?”

  Cai looks at the chicken, “Oh. Chickens can fly in low and microgravity. They can’t under more than like zero point eight g, but they should leave you alone, so don’t worry about it. Just… watch out for their feces.”

  “The sparks are feces.”

  Cai thinks for a moment, “What crude slang is used for that now? Uh… shunk? Poop. Brown logs. That. Though chickens have white with black like most birds.”

  Nyx narrows her eyes and looks around for floating shunk, until now, she’d considered the Donati pristine, “The spark ya be lettin’ ‘em do that!?”

  Cai stops at a cabinet next to the creatures’ sleeping holes and notices the cow there waiting. There’s also an egg floating freely, “Well, there is a drone dedicated for cleaning it, but sometimes you get unlucky and take a hit before the drone can get to it.” He grabs the egg, “And it looks like one of the girls laid an egg.”

  Nyx sighs, she’s used to floating shunk and spittle, “Where the sparks does a dum chicken hide a dum egg?”

  Cai thinks for a second, then he slowly smiles, which unnerves Nyx, “Chickens have something called a cloaca. It’s pretty much if you mix the… Let’s see, I believe your cute term is azhole? Why does English seem to dumb down every generation? Anyway, the azhole and genitalia.”

  Nyx clenched her butthole as she imagined a Felis-sized egg coming out, “What the spark is a genitalia?”

  “For males, their cock, and females… well, I don’t think I need to explain.”

  Nyx’s eyes went wide, and she clenched the relevant parts of her body as the image of passing an egg from ‘there’ flashed in her mind. The chickens passed eggs out of their… “Spark that! Get that goddum thing away from me!”

  “Hey, they’re delicious and nutritious. Why don’t I make some for you? I’m dropping out of FTL early, and I think we can spare some time to cook some food under thrust. Can’t use the stove in low gravity.”

  Nyx is about to retort, but the thought of him cooking her more food catches her interest as well, “Mya? Early?”

  “Oh, I guess I should tell you since this involves you. You’re probably not going to like it, so I was going to let you relax a bit before telling you. Well… the computer finished analyzing your DNA, and it had unexpected results.”

  “Like goddum what?” Nyx flattens her ears, “I… Look, can ya be tellin’ me what the spark is being wrong with me?”

  “You’re a product of illegal genetic modification. Or at least it was illegal when the Earth government existed.” When Nyx looked confused about what he was talking about, he continued, “Someone made you. Like the first Felis on Mars two hundred years ago, except all Felis from the first hundred should have been born naturally, but your DNA shows even more modifications than normal Felis. The computer simulations suggest you have better low light vision and you have the anti-aging genes, which should have taken care of your radiation exposure, but considering how bad it was, I’m not surprised your body couldn’t keep up. There were other things too. It’s like someone decided to make a better Felis that’s not just cosmetic changes.”

  Nyx blinked. She understood enough of what he said to know that she was special, “I… Yeah, I’ve always been bein’ able to see better. Just thought it was a normal Felis thing.” She mulls some more, Anti aging? It hits her, “I’m a goddum Never Dyin’!?”

  “Yes, you’re basically biologically immortal like me if we heal your DNA damage. But the fact that you have all of this done to you is what worries me because there’s the fact that after Earth disappeared, we lost a lot of the ability to build large structures outside the surface of Mars. And the remaining Mars colony is a Genetic Purist colony, so I doubt they’d build something like that. So, there’s been a secret group continuing genetic research since before we lost Earth. And we know where it is.

  “Barnard Station. Where you got captured by the pirates. I can’t help but wonder if the pirate attack was a coincidence.”

  “So ya want to be goin’ back and takin’ a look at that sparkin’ place?” That this was about her floored her.

  “The pirates probably cleared everything, but knowing secret groups, they might have had a hidden area. Hidden well enough that Earth’s government inspectors missed it. If they missed it, then the pirates probably did too.”

  Nyx vaguely recalled Bernard Station. Had there been a secret room? She remembered crawling down a long and very cold drone tunnel when the attack scared her. Maybe she could also find out about herself if they went? Could she find her friends? This secret group might still have them. If she could, it would help with the guilt for leaving them. She could rescue them, “Cai, let’s be goin’.”

  Cai nods, “Okay. I’m hoping it might lead to other things. Like other places, they might have secreted away or even clues to why Earth vanished. I mean, any group that can make a whole planet disappear is pretty bad to leave alone. Though I doubt a group that could do that would need to hide”

  Nyx stared at the egg as she mulled over her thoughts and noticed it had a feather and some chicken poop on it.

  Cai moves to the kitchen, his grin widens as he notices her looking at the egg, “First, I’m cooking you some eggs.”

  He speaks a command into his wrist computer, and the ship exits FTL.

  Nyx mewls as she floats to the deck as the engines kick in, causing inertial gravity to return. Did she really have to eat the thing that came out of the chicken’s privates?