Sin and Grace - 28. Sin (Patreon)

Elaine found me laying on the floor some time later. I was staring at the ceiling. I'd forgotten about lunch and ignored a few too many reminders from my auxiliaries, so they must have snitched on me.

"Did Romulus sneak more stuff past you?" she asked.

"The support pod had a full firmware overhaul and there's been so many hardware upgrades that the only part left of the original is the casing. He even put in a new pad," I sighed and rubbed my eyes. "He swears he didn't do it, but Grace wouldn't pull a stunt like this."

A sound that was suspiciously close to a giggle reached my ears and I cracked an eye to look at her. She had a hand over her mouth to hide her smile, but her eyes were dancing.

"He's probably been anxious about your welfare for a while," she said, once she'd gotten a hold of herself.

"This is overboard, even for Rom."

Elaine shrugged. "Maybe. I think part of it is that he's not thinking about it like a human would. It could be that he's not bothered by the idea of 'too much' when there's areas of your life he can optimize. I read a paper once about synthetic intelligences and their relationship with self-censoring."

"So, if he hadn't been locked out of my spaces before now then he could have been like this the whole time?"

I tried to picture Rom sending advanced rations to Mimir and shook my head. No, he wouldn't have interfered there because he knew I wouldn't get benefit from it. Anything he sent to me would get absorbed by the captain or the other officers long before it ever reached me, which made it a pointless gesture.

"Perhaps," Elaine mused. "That said, I know you never met Jake, but I would be glad I didn't have to work in his leftover skin particles and dried sweat."

"Hey, I cleaned this place until you could eat off the floor," I defended myself.

She laughed and held out a hand to me to help me up. "I believe you, I was there for the robot uprising. I remember."

"I don't mind the new pad," I admitted, once I was on my feet and we were in the corridor. "It just feels like I'm in a scavenger hunt that I keep losing."

"Poor baby," she said with genuine sympathy. She bumped shoulders with me and lingered in the contact.

We'd gone from 'maybe interested' to 'leisurely circling' in terms of our interactions. For once, I could see what was coming and I was content to enjoy the journey it took to get there. That hadn't happened to me before and I suspected that was the difference between casual hookups and a real relationship. I leaned into the touch as well and enjoyed the way her smile brightened.

We were walking closely enough that our knuckles brushed against one another and, on impulse, I caught her hand in mine to lace our fingers together.

Elaine blushed. She didn't say anything, but her hand tightened on mine in a silent affirmation.

Amanda was in the mess hall when we arrived and she looked like shit, which was to be expected because she should have been off-duty at this hour.

"Sin, I'm gonna need to borrow some auxiliary time," she announced, tense and unhappy, as we approached. "That pest is still on board. It survived the air and vacuum flush. Coro spotted movement in the lower Works area when he was doing a visual inspection last duty shift. The bugkiller bots were clearly too limited to catch our stowaway. Do you think your auxiliaries can do the job?"

I thought about it. "They can probably find it, but the cleaner bots are a little too fragile to fight an intelligent pest. I'm assuming it's at least a little intelligent, based on how hard it's been to find it."

"It can't be that smart if we keep just barely seeing it," Elaine countered.

"It's smart enough to know when we're after it and it needs to elude capture, but maybe not smart enough to think far enough ahead to stay hidden the whole time," I allowed, after thinking about the matter a bit longer. "I wonder what its eating? We're not missing any food and Elaine would notice if it was getting into the aquaculture tanks."

"All our fish and vegetables are accounted for. I have a mini zapper on hand in the 'ponics shop to make sure it stayed that way," Elaine affirmed. She patted her work belt for emphasis, where she had holstered a small Quietus Neutralizer. It was rated for shipboard open carry because you couldn't do more than stun any known sapient race with it, but you could kill small pests with one. She was probably the only person on board who would need to carry one on a daily basis, though. "You two keep talking, I'll grab our trays."

"I think we're past the point where we can hope to get lucky and it ventures into some place where you can shoot it," Amanda admitted. "It probably radiotrophic and is scuttling around, comparing areas of the ship in order to identify the best feeding grounds. I've only heard of fungi feeding that way, but space is big and full of spots where evolution had to get weird in order to keep going."

"Good thing the fusactor chamber is sealed, in that case."

I didn't want to find out if there was a creature that could colonize a fusion reactor. So far, it had been spotted most often in the Works levels and had slowly retreated from crew spaces in search of its nesting spot. It didn't seem like it had been able to find the fusactor, which was located under the bridge and between the two cargo holds. Cassandra was designed so that we could jettison the 'tail' of the ship, if need be, and still have a small habitable area with communications equipment, food, and the backup atmospheric generator.

The fusactor chamber was sealed so, in the event of a spontaneous catastrophic meltdown, the chamber's built-in shielding would contain the blast and we wouldn't all die of radiation poisoning before we could limp into port using either our emergency solar sails or the backup thrusters. It would take the combined efforts of Brando, our engineer, and Grace, the captain, to even open a single maintenance panel. It wasn't a part of the ship that we were meant to be going in and out of, so it made sense to me that this critter, if it was looking for tasty ion radiation, was having trouble finding our biggest source.

This begged the question of why it wasn't out on the hull, passively consuming radiation out there. We'd proven that it could handle a hard freeze and total loss of atmosphere—but maybe I was my own best counter argument there.

I'd survived my vacuum adventure by huddling in an unsecured maintenance hatch, while my spot kept me alive. Even then, I had the sense that this was just something I could do, rather than a comfortable permanent environment for me. Maybe it was the same for out stowaway critter?

Amanda sighed. "You're telling me."

Just then, we were interrupted by an 'all hands' ping in the feed.

[Look alive, people!] Taj announced. [We've received an emergency consignment bound for Pava Deva II and it's being delivered by drone within the hour. I need all cargo handlers on hand at the receiving lock for a VTA transfer.]

"Seriously?" Amanda's faceplate snapped shut so we couldn't see her expression, or (perhaps) hear what she said to Taj in response.

It looked like our bug hunt was going to have to wait for a little bit longer.

A/N: Two chapters today because the muscle relaxers knocked me out on Tuesday. I was not prepared for that to be an issue. D:

Radiotrophic: organisms (mostly fungi) that use ionizing radiation as an energy source for growth.

Fusactor: Fusion Reaction Chamber

VTA Transfer: Vacuum-to-Atmosphere Transfer