Becky Chambers: The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet

“Hey!” Ashby sat up straight. “Not okay. I don’t want to hear that word come out of your mouth again.” As far as racial insults went, lizard was hardly the worst, but it was bad enough.

Corbin pressed his lips together, as if to keep further unpleasantries from escaping. “Sorry.”

Ashby’s hackles were up, but truthfully, this was an ideal way for a conversation with Corbin to go. Get him away from the crew, let him vent, wait for him to cross a line, then talk him down while he was feeling penitent. “I will talk to Sissix, but you have got to be more civil to people. And I don’t care how mad you get, that kind of language does not belong on my ship.”

“I just lost my temper, was all.” Corbin was obviously still angry, but even he knew better than to bite the hand that feeds. Corbin knew that he was a valuable asset, but at the end of the day, Ashby was the one who sent credits to his account. Valuable was not the same as irreplaceable .

“Losing your temper is one thing, but you are part of a multispecies crew, and you need to be mindful of that. Especially with somebody new coming aboard. And on that note, I’m sorry you have concerns about her, but frankly, she’s not your problem. Rosemary was the Board’s suggestion, but agreeing to take her on was my call. If she’s a mistake, we’ll get someone new. But until then, we are all going to give her the benefit of the doubt. Regardless of how you feel about her, I expect you to make her feel welcome. In fact…” A slow smile spread across Ashby’s face.

Corbin looked wary. “What?”

Ashby leaned back in his chair, lacing his fingers together. “Corbin, I seem to recall that our new clerk will be arriving around seventeen-half tomorrow. Now, I have a sib scheduled with Yoshi at seventeen on the nose, and you know how he loves to talk. I doubt I’ll be done by the time Rosemary docks, and she’s going to need someone to show her around.”

“Oh, no.” A stricken look crossed Corbin’s face. “Have Kizzy do it. She loves that sort of thing.”

“Kizzy’s got her hands full replacing the air filter by the med bay, and I doubt she’ll be done before tomorrow. Jenks will be helping Kizzy, so he’s out.”

“Sissix, then.”

“Mmm, Sissix has a lot of prep work to do before the punch tomorrow. She probably won’t have the time.” Ashby grinned. “I’m sure you’ll give her a great tour.”

Corbin looked at his employer with baleful eyes. “Sometimes you’re a real pain in the ass, Ashby.”

Ashby picked up his mug and finished off the dregs. “I knew I could count on you.”

Rosemary rubbed the bridge of her nose as she accepted a cup of water from the wall dispenser. The lingering edges of the sedatives made her head feel foggy, and so far, the stims that were supposed to counter those effects had done nothing but make her heart race. Her body longed for a stretch, but she couldn’t undo the safety harness while the pod was in motion, and the pod didn’t have enough room for anything except standing up and walking out anyway. She leaned her head back with a groan. It had been nearly three days since the deepod launched. Solar days, she reminded herself. Not standard days. She needed to get used to making the distinction. Longer days, longer years. But she had more pressing things to focus on than differences in calendars. She was groggy, hungry, cramped, and in all her twenty-three years—Solar, not standard—she could not remember ever needing to pee quite so badly. The brusque Aeluon attendant at the spaceport had told her the sedatives would suppress that need, but nothing had been said about how she would feel once they wore off.

Rosemary imagined the lengthy letter of complaint her mother might write after such a trip. She tried to imagine the circumstances in which her mother would travel by deepod at all. She couldn’t even picture her mother setting foot within a public spaceport. Rosemary had been surprised to find herself in such a place. The dingy waiting area, the twitching pixel posters, the stale smells of algae gunk and cleaning fluid. Despite the exoskeletons and tentacles milling around her, she had felt like the alien there.

That was the thing that had hammered home just how far from Sol she was—the menagerie of sapients standing alongside her in the ticket line. Her homeworld was fairly cosmopolitan, but aside from the occasional diplomat or corporate representative, Mars didn’t see much in the way of non-Human travelers. A terraformed rock inhabited by one of the GC’s least influential species was hardly a destination of choice. Professor Selim had warned her that studying the concepts behind interspecies relations was vastly different from having to go out there and talk to other sapients, but she hadn’t truly understood that advice until she found herself surrounded by clunky biosuits and feet that didn’t need shoes. She’d even been nervous speaking to the Harmagian behind the ticket counter. She knew that her Hanto was excellent (for a Human, anyway), but this was no longer the safe, controlled environment of the university language lab. No one would gently correct her mistakes or forgive her for an unwitting social transgression. She was on her own now, and in order to keep credits in her account and a bed beneath her back, she had to do the job she had assured Captain Santoso she could do.

No pressure, or anything.

Not for the first time, a cold fist appeared deep within her stomach. Never in her life had she worried about credits or having a place to go home to. But with the last of her savings running thin and her bridges burned behind her, there was no margin for error. The price of a fresh start was having no one to fall back on.

Please , she thought. Please don’t screw this up.

“We are beginning our approach, Rosemary,” chirped the deepod’s computer. “Do you require anything else before I begin docking procedures?”

“A bathroom and a sandwich,” said Rosemary.

“Sorry, Rosemary, I had difficulty processing that. Could you please repeat your request?”

“I don’t require anything.”

“Okay, Rosemary. I will now open the outer shutters. You may wish to close your eyes in order to adjust to any external light sources.”

Rosemary dutifully shut her eyes as the shutters whirred open, but her eyelids remained dark. She opened her eyes to find that the only significant source of light was coming from within the pod. As she had expected, there was nothing beyond the window but empty space and tiny stars. Out in the open.

She wondered how thick the pod’s hull was.

The pod swung up, and Rosemary shielded her eyes from a sudden burst of light, pouring out of the windows of the ugliest ship she’d ever seen. It was blocky and angular, with the exception of a bulging dome that stuck out from the back like a warped spine. This was not a ship designed for fussy commercial passengers. There was nothing sleek or inspiring about it. It was bigger than a transport ship, smaller than a cargo carrier. The lack of wings indicated that this was a ship that had been built out in space, a ship that would never enter an atmosphere. The underside of the vessel held a massive, complex machine—metallic and sharp, with rows of tooth-like ridges angled toward a thin, protracted spire. She didn’t know much about ships, but from the mismatched colors of the outer hull, it looked as though whole sections had been cobbled together, perhaps originating from other vessels. A patchwork ship. The only reassuring thing about it was that it looked sturdy. This was a ship that could take (and had taken) a few knocks. Though the ships she was used to traveling in were far easier on the eyes, knowing that there would be a solid, stocky hull between her and all that empty space was heartening.