Page 6 of Shellshock

The comms fell quiet. She felt the expectation of both alien men waiting for her to say something.

“Hi…”

“HiLucca!” Morwong said, ten times more boisterous. “Beautiful ship. It’s a real wonder to lay eyes on a properly cared-for vessel. What exactly are you here to research?”

Guess we’re doing this. Her eyes kept slipping to the fuel station but there was nothing she could do. She had to pretend a little longer that she belonged.

“I’m making a map,” she said. “My conclave believes it’s the best way to bridge the gap between us.” She hated lying. She hated herself for lying.

“Your conclave. From the Outskirts?”

Lucca imagined the Outskirts to be the area of planets that orbited further from their sun. Similar to the area beyond Jupiter, where the planets stretched further and further out.

“Um, yes!”

“Strange accent,” observed the merchant. “What is it?”

Her heart ground to a halt. “What?”

He seemed to ponder it. “Don’t tell me. I have an ear for these things. Anaora?”

“Already asked her that,” said Caligher. “Anyway, she can’t be Anaora.”

WhatwasAnaora?

She searched her database for notes but came up empty. Humans had never heard of it. Someone from the Outskirts should have known what it was, right? In her lengthy silence, the Ternetzi men made a guessing game of it.

“No, you’re right,” said Morwong. “Talk more, Lucca. I need sample data.”

“Can we please not?”

“Hmm…Argh,it’s right there, but I can’t place it. Why can’t I place it?” He grunted a final growl of defeat. “I give up, Lucca. Tell me where you’re from before I pop my shell off.”

She knewnothingabout the distant planets. Even if she claimed one as hers… that was too specific. Too easy to go wrong.

She wouldn’t be able to keep up with that lie.

“Not a planet,” she said slowly, wiping sweat off her palms on her suit legs.

“Not a planet? So… a ship?”

“Yes. A ship.”

Caligher’s tension reached its own kind of loud. “You grew up canned, Lucca?”

“Canned?!”

“Don’t be rude, Caligher. Your friend was born among the stars.” Morwong talked as if she was a fucking mermaid.

Lucca wasn’t born among the stars. That wasn’t it. When she was a little girl her dad took her outside and showed her the Milky Way and she basically shat herself with amazement. And that was when she’d declared with her six-year-old confidence that she would be an astronaut one day, and he had said, “Sure, Lucca. You can do anything you set your mind to,” or some bullshit he didn’t believe.

From the hectic beams of light coming from Caligher’s windows, it was clear she’d set him off.

“But she hasn’t even jumped.”

“Caligher,” Morwong scolded.

“What? She hasn’t. She has no star. She doesn’t know how to fly—”

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