It matched Tyson’s mood perfectly.
TWENTY
Thuk masticated absently on the flavorless protein-stick hanging from his mandibles. One of the larger farm compartments in the ship’s thorax had been corrupted with rotting light before they’d been able to head it off. They’d lost two entire gim crops, and although the humans’ rotting-light-eating bacteria had worked a minor miracle cleaning up the mess, it would still take a moon to grow a new crop from scratch to harvest.
They still had fresh greens and flowers, but no living source of protein. So, the harmony was stuck with survival rations for the time being. At least these new sticks had the advantage of being merely tasteless, as opposed to actively gut-churning as previous incarnations had been.
It was, by any reasonable measure, the least of their problems. But food meant morale onboard a ship, and one could damn near plot a graph of harmony satisfaction to the quality of available food. When one slipped, the other was guaranteed to follow. The longer the harmony went without something wriggling to crush between their mouthparts, the darker their mood would become.
Thuk held up the half-eaten, unappetizing twig and tossed it into a composter, careful to ensure no one saw him do it. If it wasn’t good enough for their derstu, it soon wouldn’t be good enough for any of them, not a situation he needed to encourage just then. He continued down the central spinal tunnel toward the Chusexx’s guts where he was supposed to meet a propulsion attendant who had made an impassioned plea to have the derstu come quietly and alone at once over a private line. Thuk had no idea what he was walking into, but at this point, he just went with the flow and hoped for the best.
“Derstu,” the earnest attendant said as he arrived at the cavern he’d been summoned to, “thank you for coming. You didn’t have to.”
Thuk sized up the attendant. A strong-back warrior caste like Kivits, missing a leg that had yet to grow back. Their shoulder stripes marked them as a group head, but they weren’t among the top-level leadership. Whatever they had to say, they were bypassing two levels of seniority to say it.
“A harmony loses its tune if every voice isn’t heard.”
“That is very wise, Derstu.”
“And you are?”
“Lynz, Derstu.”
“Lynz. What happened to your leg?” Thuk pointed at the stump and the artificial sap protective layer the healers had slapped over the top of it to keep infection at bay.
“Lost to an emergency hatch when the order came down to seal off the rotting-light corruption after the explosion.”
An order Thuk had given. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. If it hadn’t closed when it did, I’d be dead already, along with everyone in my cavern. It’s my own fault for not being quick enough. Those things shut faster than I realized. The healers say it should grow back out in three or four molts anyway.”
Thuk gestured approval with his midhands. “I’m impressed you returned to work already.”
“It’s my work that I wanted to speak to you about, Derstu. Please, come this way.” Lynz took off down a side tunnel at an impressive gait for someone dealing with a missing leg. Thuk followed. “As you know, we’ve been running integrity tests on the annihilation fuel spools we had to replace after the accident.”
“How is that proceeding?”
“On schedule, just. But, I came across something in my inspection. Something that should not be.”
Thuk felt the air chill. “We seem to be getting awfully close to the outer skin.”
“Indeed. We’re going outside.”
“We are?”
“We are.”
“Between the shells, or…”
Lynz wiggled his shoulders in the negative. “All the way outside.”
“How exciting…” All Xre ships, and likely human ships as well, were wrapped in double shells, an inner shell that acted as a pressure vessel for all the habitable caverns, and an outer shell that acted as a backup and mounted the heavy armor and the rotting-light sponges. A null space between them provided cold storage and access to much of the machinery for maintenance attendants. These null spaces were usually left unpressurized, but at least they weren’t exposed to the high-energy shooting gallery that was the vacuum environment inside a solar system.
Thuk was not particularly fond of sticking his thorax in the universe’s face and daring it to run him through with a micrometeorite. Lynz reached into a storage box and came out with a pair of masks and lung packs.
“We’re not doing full hardsuits?” Thuk asked.
“No need, we won’t be outside for very long, and it’s not like they slow the pebbles down enough out here to matter anyway.”
Thuk clicked his mandibles in agitation, but did not protest as Lynz helped position his mask and checked the seals. Amber lights inside his face shield display assured him everything was working properly. He reciprocated for Lynz, then double-checked the mouths and ears inside their kits to make sure they had solid communication. Belt tethers and sticky sandals followed, and moments later they were inside the lockout getting ready to go “all the way outside.”
Xre bodies had evolved tough, but not even the original mound-builders had any idea just how tough they were. The overlapping layers of their shells made them impervious to vacuum. As the air was pumped out of the lockout, the only difference Thuk could feel was a slight bulging.
With the air reprocessing capacity of their mask and lung packs rated at the better part of a day, the only limiting factor for their time
