Chapter 6

Leo regarded the green tablet on the small table in the rec room of the artificial spaceship he was on and considered what a miracle of psychopharmacology it was. He had, like everyone else in the Astro Navigation and Rescue Service, gone through the required history of the human space flight programs from before first contact. While the Devonian side of the human family had a sketchier, somewhat more incomplete idea of what their species space flight had been like, they did have a few concrete data files pointing to pre-Arcship designs, and a lot of biological data on long term exposure to microgravity and radiation for the Devonian form.

It was bad for them, shocking.

But they lacked the Terran side of things: The sociological experimentation. They must have done the science, but they had no record of their finding or their tests, but Leo knew all about the Soviet Mars missions, all about the bio-enclosure tests in the 20^th century, and the future social experiments in the 21^st, including the disastrous events of the 2078 First Shot colony on Mars. Basically, human beings of both branches, but especially Terrans, could not handle long term enclosure with other human beings in the confined spaces of a starship for any length of time.

It didn’t matter how much you loved your partners, how much you had trained, or how much your life depended on it, you would eventually devolve into paranoia, depression, and self harm. It just happened. Devonians had the same thing happen to them, save it took longer since they thought slower without Terrans.

With Terrans and Devonians on the same ship, you could prolong things ... but not forever. The Bonding was good, but it didn’t manage to replicate the environment that both species had evolved to live in.

Thus...

The little green pill.

“It doesn’t feel like enough,” Leo said, quietly.

“Eat up, monkey boy,” Midnight said as she walked past him. “I don’t want to deal with space madness.”

“It’s just...” Leo picked up the pill. “It doesn’t feel like enough. We’re gonna be stuck in this tin can for six months, and this is the only thing that’s going to keep me sane?”

Midnight snorted. “Uh, no, you’re going to keep you sane, Leo. That pill just means you can do that. It’s not magic.” She leaned against the back of his chair. Her tail looped around his belly and she murmured in his ear. “I’m going to help too. I am magic.”

Leo snorted.

He put the pill on his tongue and swallowed it. He felt the same. And if it worked, he would continue to feel the same, even a few weeks into the project. He stood up, stretched, then sighed. “Let’s get to work!”

The truth was that running a spaceship – even a fictional one – was a lot of work. Engines had to be monitored, electronics had to be checked and checked again, bodies had to be exercised, and minds had to be given a chance to unwind and relax. Schedules had to be kept, and the curious half-discipline, half-relaxation that was professional spaceflight had to be maintained. Leo found himself doing what he had been doing for most of his time training with the spacy. He managed duty shifts, helped two different personalities to find a common ground, talked over problems that seemed intractable – often in that case, he did very little save nod and say ‘hmm’ and then ask a few questions and, thus, provided the sounding board it took to get Bolide or Midnight or Gillian or, yes, even Tessa to the endpoint that they were looking for. He worked on the scheduled entertainments for the crew – the trick was to always give someone to look forward to in a way that made sure there was still a Monday and Friday, to keep everyone centered on still being a part of the greater human race, despite being millions upon millions of kilometers away from them.

He also-

“Hey, Captain!”

Bolide’s voice jerked his head up and around as Leo put the finishing touches on tonight’s entertainment hour – he had, he was pretty sure, picked the exact perfect movie to suit everyone’s mood for the evening. Leo flicked his handheld back into his pocket and grinned at Bolide as she leaned against the entry to the tiny closet space that Leo used for his admin work.

“Yes, Bolide?” he asked, knowing that asking her to call him Leo since they weren’t actually in a navy would run up against Bolide’s fetish for calling him Captain in bed.

“Um, I was just wondering if you could handle a little something for me,” Bolide said. “Sponson set another message.”

Leo sighed.

Two weeks into a six month voyage, and this was the second message that Sponson had sent. Yet...

He frowned. “Wait, didn’t the last one get here a day ago?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Bolide asked. “Why?”

“Well, it’s just, I figured if he was doing a weekly call to try and get you back – bad idea, considering you’re on a hypothetical xenon powered cruise to Callisto, then ... he’d ... try and make it a weekly thing, right?” Leo rubbed his jaw. “I’ll take a look at it, tell you if it’s anything you have to worry about.”

“Thank you!” Bolide said, her ears going from drooping to perked up again. “I ... sorry about being a big coward-”

“Hey, no, no, nothing to apologize about,” Leo said. “What are captain boyfriends for?”

“Commanding starships?” Bolide asked as she ducked back into the curved main corridor of the habitation ring. “Byeeee!”

As she headed out, Leo sighed. Should he continue to do the job he enjoyed doing and, thus, put off having to look at Sponson’s face for another few hours, or should he just get it out of the way. Leo rubbed his jaw. It was funny. Before he had met Midnight and Bolide, that choice would have eaten an entire day. As it was, he simply took out his terminal, accepted the file sent by Bolide with the forwarding message of “more like stinkson hehe ^..^ <^^>” and then tapped on the message. The view was of Sponson, midway into a beard growth that did not suit him in the slightest. He was leaning over the terminal in a small, dingy looking room, and he looked at the screen. He worked his mouth. Then said. “I...”

Leo frowned.

“Fuck,” Sponson said. “Fuck, this was a mistake.”

The image shut off and the big green message end lettering appeared.

“What the hell?” Leo asked, quietly. Then, shrugging, he said: “I guess he’s growing up.”

He frowned, then.

“Wait, what did he send last time.” He tapped at his terminal.

Her response message was another Fwd with “here ya go <3 <3 <3”

Leo hit play. The message was exactly what he expected – Sponson saying he wanted her back, and he missed her, and she shouldn’t shack up with Leo. He didn’t have any racial epithets this time. But Leo noticed something else: The footage was from one of those small apartments that you could get for free right out of school. Leo frowned and hit pause, cocking his head to the side as he considered what the fuck that meant.

Are you overthinking things? Leo thought.

Maybe. Maybe. But something at the back of his mind nagged him. He brought up Sponsons second message again. What was it. What was different? He frowned at the screen, his brow furrowing. He kept looking until a shadow fell across the doorway.

“Cap?”

Leo lifted his head.

Tessa was grinning at him. “I finished the replacement sims with Gill – I think we can manage a total swap on the ventral radiator in under an hour now. Without even being unsafe.”

“Awesome, great work!” Leo said, chucking his handheld down onto the desk. “And how are you and Gillian?”

“We’re doing better, I think,” Tessa said. Then, coughing. “Ahem. That’s, actually, uh, the other thing. Can you ... not ... schedule Twister again?”

Leo blinked, then nodded. “Of course. The Devonians will whine, they did invent the game but-”

“Why the fuck are you getting a message from a plughead?”

Leo blinked, jerked from his question to sitting bolt upright. “What?”

Tessa was leaning over the console. “Sorry, I know, visual privacy, Leo, but, like, that’s a plughead badge.” She pointed. “See? That’s one of their fuck head symbols.”

Leo squinted. “It looks like a tampon with an X through it,” he said.

“Yeah, cause they’re gonna stop being pussy whipped by Devis, they’re stupid fuckheads,” Tessa said, sitting her bulk down across the table from him. “Who is this vato?”

“Uh, he’s Bolide’s ex,” Leo said, then frowned. “How do you know what plughead symbols look like?”

“Oh, I got into fights with them all the time in New Shanghai and Addis Ababa,” Tessa said, shrugging her massive shoulders. Leo frowned and tapped at his terminal, bringing up the prior message, with mute on. They both peered down at Sponson going through the motions of begging for Bolide’s hand in bondage back. Tessa and he shook their heads.