Chapter 8: Questions

After that night, I saw Akiko around more often. Most of the time she trained in the training room with Rei, and sometimes I would go and watch.

There were hundreds of different weapons in that room, and she was an expert with each one. She did, however, have a favorite weapon. It was the simple knife she always kept at her side. She practiced with it every day, holding the blade down and out, slashing invisible adversaries.

Rei was an excellent sharpshooter, maybe not as good as Akiko, but it was very close. She didn't practice much hand-to-hand combat, but she knew enough to break away, though never enough to win against Akiko. It was fun to watch. The only thing I could participate in was meditating which Akiko did a lot.

If I wasn't in the training room, I was talking with Tammy.

"When can I take off the sync rings and when can I stop wearing the clothing brace?" I asked one day.

"We left it on but not activated because your muscles need to heal completely first. Otherwise, any muscles that aren't healed yet will die. When you can change clothes in under a minute."

"Why does Rei and Akiko's food look the same but taste so different?"

"Rei and Kiko come from the same planet. Their food tastes differently because Rei has no cooking skills and Kiko is very good at it."

"Where are you from?"

"A planet called Thereon."

"Why does your hair glow?"

"I'm not human. My hair contains voltaic currents that allow me to interact with electrical objects."

"Oh … you're not human?"

"No. You're the only human on this ship, besides Vaughan."

"I am?"

I knew I asked a lot of questions, but I didn't think Tammy would mind. Since Akiko had previously commented on the 'ridiculously fragile' nervous system of humans, I'd assumed she wasn't human. And I'd had a feeling the others weren't human either because we only ate dinner together every other night. Of course, I went to the kitchen on the other nights and ate alone, so maybe they did too, but I never saw them.I also noticed none of them liked talking about their past, nor did they bother asking me about mine. Sure, I wondered about a few things, but I never got hung up on them. I figured they would tell me what they wanted me to know, and I was okay with that.

#

I had been aboard the Jago for about three weeks, and time seemed to fly by. I wandered around or played cards with Rei, which I always lost. Some days I would just lie in the sky deck; that's where Kiko always was when she wasn't busy. Yep, that's right; I called her Kiko. It happened one day while we were lying in the sky deck. She was cradled in a hammock sort of thing while I was stretched out on a cot not too far away but not too close either.

I rolled over onto my side and studied her profile. "Hey Akiko, would you mind if I made dinner tonight? I don't know too many dishes, but I've been practicing, and I'd like to pull my weight somehow."

Keeping her eyes on the stars above her, she chuckled. "I don't think you'd last very long trying to cook enough food for all of us."

I frowned.

"Go for it, but only if I help you out. Tammy would kill me if you ended up hurting yourself even more."

That was a better answer than yes. Now I'd be helping out and spending more time with Akiko. Even if it was because she thought I was too weak to handle cooking alone.

I smiled. "Thanks."

"Yeah, and you can call me Kiko."

My smile grew bigger. "Thanks, Kiko."

My dinner turned out great thanks to Kiko. I didn't think she'd ever made any dishes from Sola, but somehow they were way better than mine even though I told her what to do. I think she was secretly adding ingredients, but when I asked she denied it, of course. Everyone enjoyed it, and it brought back memories of when I used to cook for the Professor and Lone.

Before I realized it, Crux was only a few days away. Tammy told me they'd chosen to take the Vaughan job even though it was on the outskirts of the galaxy for the money. Vaughan's head was worth a pretty good price because none of the other intergalactic bounty hunters could, or wanted, to spend the resources to get there, or they simply didn't have the skill to complete the task. Therefore, the bounty kept increasing as time passed.

"We happened to be around the area." This time Tammy was in her workroom, which was a few doors down from my room, talking to me while using tweezers to fiddle with a thin rectangular device while looking through a large magnifying glass. "Our ship was damaged in an earlier conflict, so we decided to make a pit stop on Sola to grab some extra cash."

They decided to challenge the planet's greatest fighter on a whim … that's great.

"Oh. I see." I watched her pull a strand of her hair with the tweezers and place it inside the tiny device. "What are you doing?"

"Working on a vocal transmitter. It allows its user to speak the language of the person they are talking to. I added a strand of my hair to have a direct connection with it." She put the thing back together. "I don't have all the pieces yet. Once we get to Crux I will be able to purchase the necessary items to have it fully functioning."

Was there anything Tammy couldn't do?

She was about to reach for another small transmitter when she suddenly stopped and looked straight ahead at the wall. I was about to ask what was wrong, but she quickly answered that for me.

A loud alarm rang, and her voice echoed throughout the ship. "Warning: hostile ships approaching quickly from the stern. Estimated contact in … thirty seconds."

After giving her message, she came out of her seemingly trance-like state and headed for the flight deck. I followed, wondering how often they dealt with stuff like this. Screens projected in front of her, displaying a map of the space around us, and she examined the approaching ships.

Running footsteps came from behind us.

"Who is it?" Cashel asked, catching his breath as he took his seat at command.

"They're demanding the return of Vaughan through an open channel."

Cashel projected one of the ships on his dashboard. "I see we made a lot more friends on Sola than I thought."

Through the flight deck's sun shield, large battleships started appearing one by one just as Kiko and Rei arrived to witness it as well. So many ships against just us did not bode well. Kiko was an amazing fighter, sure, but that didn't translate to this type of battle. Was my newfound freedom and happiness going to end so quickly?

Kiko took a look outside. "He's persistent," she muttered.

We watched through a hologram rendition as hundreds of colossal battleships dropped out of hyperspeed to surround our tiny ship in battle formation.

"So," Rei asked, "how do we get out of this?"