Max 2 (Patreon)

Lunsdie and Ckkkrt's tale is already at 13k words! That's just crazy. I'm not even trying to make a book of it, I'm just playing with ideas you guys have suggested.

In other words, I'm having a great time creating this, so I hope you guys are enjoying it too.

Now, let's take break from the anup/sourang romance and check in on Max. How's he doing after leaving his best friend, Rustham, behind?

———

The ramp was huge, but it had to be for it to support lio-sized loads of supplies. When Max crept over it, it didn’t so much as creak. That wasn’t truly a surprise though, as he weighed only five hundred grams—less than a lio’s dinner.

As he climbed higher, Max found that the ship had six decks: three mysa-sized decks in the lower-most two meters of the ship, and the rest of the ship’s volume was dedicated to three lio-sized decks. He wondered how many of each crewed the ship. A half-dozen lio? Fifty mysa does? He had no idea, but he knew there’d be a lot more mysa than lio.

Max skipped past the mysa decks to the lowest lio deck. He figured that with the tremendous size difference between the two species, that it ought to be simple enough to find a hiding place within the lio areas. He took a moment to catch his breath, then scampered into the dimmed deck in search of a way into the ship’s utility spaces.

In the largest of the lio’s ships—the sort that could never land on a planet and had to be serviced in space—the utility spaces were true corridors that snaked throughout the ship’s walls giving techs access to everything from electrical cables to the ship’s plumbing. The smallest ships—shuttles and taxis—had no real utility space at all. The designers simply covered the tech stuff with plastic panels that popped into place. These were easily removed to give quick access in an emergency.

But a mid-sized ship such as this? They had utility spaces somewhere between these two extremes. Mid-sized ships had easily-removed plastic panels, but these covered spaces that mysa-sized techs could move about inside without disturbing the occupants in the ship’s living area.

Max crept past stateroom after stateroom, glancing nervously at the doors that towered some two meters over his head. Something was missing from the doors, but with the vertigo they gave him, he was having a hard time placing exactly what. Then it dawned on him—locks.

Each—relatively—flimsy door was held shut with only a simple latch. Anyone—well, anyone who could reach the latch—could walk into any of the rooms and take whatever they wanted. And the rooms didn’t seem to belong to anyone in particular. Up at a lio’s eye-level, each door had a small disc on a spindle colored red on one side to indicate the room was occupied and blue on the other to indicate vacant.

Max’s mind reeled as he tried to envision what it would be to live without a lock on his door. No one had much of anything in Bucksburg, but a good lock was the difference between having a little something versus having a little nothing. There wasn’t quite as much theft in Doetown, but even there they kept their doors locked tight.

Max wondered what the staterooms looked like down on the mysa levels. Did they have locks? But curiosity aside, there was no way he’d be headed down there to find out!

Past the staterooms, he found a porthole. Using his tail to help grip the edge of an access panel, he climbed until he was standing on the steel sill below the glass. Then he cupped his paws around his eyes to push out the glare and stared off into the night. There wasn’t much to see, just the silhouettes of dark buildings in the moonlight. The window must have faced Bucksburg.

The does—though far from wealthy—had some access to paying jobs, so many could afford to burn their lights now and then. Few bucks had electric lights—or could even afford candles for that matter. They had to rely on their senses to navigate the night. Some bucks were supported by female family members, but the rest—like Max and Rustham—lived solely off of welfare. And although better than nothing, government support wasn’t much.

Many bucks blew their welfare checks on alcohol and maxamethyline just to escape. Life in the ghetto was a real shit-show.

Max gazed out the window and wondered if Rustham was down below, staring back up. Max missed his best friend already. Perhaps Rust had been right, that this was a terrible idea. Perhaps he needed to flee before he got stuck aboard. He rested his forehead against the cool glass for a long while, wondering.

No, he finally decided, even if it does cost me my life, I’m taking this chance! I’m never going to get another opportunity.

So, he peeled back the edge of one of the plastic wall panels and slipped inside. Though pitch dark, his nocturnal eyes quickly adapted. The lio dimmed their hallways at night but by Max’s standards, they were still dazzlingly bright. Enough light bled between the panels that he wouldn’t be forced to navigate solely by touch.

Having found a place to hide, there was nothing left to do but wait. Max still didn’t know where the ship could be headed, but he figured that once underway, they couldn’t exactly kick him out.

Well, I suppose they could kick me out, he thought, but I really don’t want to contemplate that possibility.

———

Reviewer's link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1m9ErmLJr1fT1FKowhrV3bm_gKIPskeuL5fhkdt5K-c4/edit?usp=sharing

Short scene, I know. I promise the next one will be more fun. Thoughts?