"Wow, you two look a little haggard." Dylan grinned as Kolya and Donovan shuffled into the room, bleary-eyed and yawning. Each of them held a bottle of hot coffee and took a sip through the attached straws before laughing softly.

"We were up late." Kolya smirked and glanced at the floor. "Um, really late."

"It’s all my fault." Donovan blushed and shrugged before yawning again. "Well, mostly."

"Wanna grab breakfast before we get started?" Dylan motioned around at the equipment Zadra, Lorkis, Peter, and Mila had just finished unpacking. Dylan and his wives had joined them after finishing their own breakfast.

"Nah, I’m good." Kolya smiled. "This is important stuff we’ll be learning, so I’ll grab something to eat after we’re done. Or when we break for lunch, whichever happens first."

"Same here." Donovan slipped his arm around Kolya’s shoulders, held in another yawn, and took another long sip of his coffee. "I should apologize in advance in case I fall asleep during the training session. It’s not from boredom, believe me."

"No worries," Zadra said, her voice carrying the same unsettling echo Ralissa’s had, prompting Dylan to wonder again what caused shonari voices to do that. "I’ve had my share of sleepless nights, myself -- often for the same reason, if my guess is correct," she added with a wink.

Cora smiled and stepped forward. "I don’t believe you two have been formally introduced to the rest of Ralissa’s team. This is Zadra Loseen." She motioned to the human and the minotaur and added, "And this is Mila Gerson and Peter Gonzales."

"Nice to meet you." Kolya smiled and shook hands with each of them before moving aside so Donovan could greet them.

"Ralissa’s busy with other mission-prep stuff," Zadra said. "Since I’ve already had the EVA training, I’ll be getting you up to speed. When we reach the Vancouver, a small team will board it, assess its condition, search for survivors, and try to get its systems up and running if they’ve been shut down. A second team will remain on standby in case of emergency or just to relieve the first team if they’re on the ship long enough to run low on oxygen." She glanced around at everyone. "Do any of you have experience at EVA or zero-G operations?"

"Quite a few years’ worth." Cora raised her hand. "I’ve been operational for a fair number of decades. Well over a century, if you count the time-skip between the day I was taken though one of those space-time rifts and the moment we all found our way here through another one."

"I’ve seen some of your interviews about that, but I still can’t imagine what a shock it must’ve been."

"There was definitely an adjustment period."

"More so for the rest of us," Syala said, "except perhaps for Grishnag and Dylan. Grish already went through such a transition when she was around Dylan’s age, and Dylan didn’t end up that far in the future. The rest of us came from primitive worlds, as we’ve mentioned before. My own discovery that my species has been exploring space and colonizing planets for thirteen thousand years was quite mind-blowing. I must have been taken from at least twice as far in the past, since my people hunted with knives and spears, lived in tents or huts made of straw, and knew nothing of other planets."

"I can’t even imagine what that must’ve been like," Kolya said. "I’m not sure I would’ve adjusted to it."

"It’s an ongoing process." Syala smiled and put her arm around Zilaka. "One thing that’s been a huge help is knowing I’m not alone in this, as most of the others are experiencing the same thing."

Nishara reached over to hold Syala’s hand for a moment. She motioned at Lorkis and said, "I can certainly understand what it’s like. My people were at a similar point in their history when I was taken." She turned abruptly to Zadra. "Oh, back on topic -- I have a bit of experience with zero-G operations. I’ve been in space only a few times, though, while the Mae Jemison was undergoing her refit. I found out about some training courses and wanted to take them because I was fascinated by the idea."

"We all decided to sign up with Nish." Dylan smiled and gave Cora a peck on the lips. "Cora bought spacesuits for each of us so we could take the course together."

"Mine was rather expensive due to my being so much larger than other species, I’m embarrassed to say." Ayastal chuckled and shrugged. "My homeworld was discovered less than a century ago, and my people are still quite primitive. As far as I know, I’m the only geltharan anywhere other than our planet. That meant a spacesuit had to be custom-built to fit me."

"It was worth every credit." Cora winked at her. "You look hotter than hell in it."

"Why, thank you." Ayastal laughed softly and turned back to Zadra. "I hope to get some use out of it on this voyage. Leaving it hanging on its rack would be a waste, after all the money Cora spent on it."

"I’ll ask Ralissa to put you on the primary team, then." Zadra smiled. "Sounds like you know the basics, but we’ll go over everything to fill in any blanks. Kolya, Donovan, have either of you gone EVA before?"

"Nope." Donovan shrugged, glanced around, and sipped his coffee again, possibly just to have something to focus his eyes on. "So I’ll need all the training I can get."

"I’ve done a few spacewalks," Kolya said with a grin. "Helped with a few in-flight repairs and some orbital cargo transfers on the ships I’ve been hitchhiking on."

"Sounds like you’ll make a good assistant, then." Zadra grinned right back. "I might be asking you to help with some of the demonstrations."

"I’m up for it."

"Alright then. Let’s get started."

***

Kolya tried not to laugh at Donovan’s startled moan when the gravity cut out. Having been through it a few times, she’d known what to expect. She grasped his hand, to reassure him and to give him an anchor. She smiled at him and took a slow look around the spacious lab. Luckily, all the equipment had already been secured in drawers and cupboards or otherwise locked down.

Even after several years of space travel, the thought of a ship’s gravity being switched off in specific rooms still kind of blew her mind. Only a few decades ago, Terran ships like the George Vancouver had used rotating sections to generate gravity. The new technology had come from a trade agreement with the mulathi, who had previously sold it to other species over the centuries.

The technology wasn’t perfect, though. There would be spots around the edge of the room where the rest of the gravitational field would intrude past the walls for a few centimeters, or even a meter or so. Kolya had learned that by floating into one such "tendril" of gravity not long after she’d left Earth. The crew members who’d seen her hit the deck had thought it was fucking hilarious.

"Easy, there." She gave Donovan’s hand a gentle squeeze. "Just keep away from the walls and you’ll be fine."

He nodded, kept his eyes closed, and held his breath for a moment, prompting another soft laugh from her.

"Normally," Zadra said, "we’d do this as a real EVA, but that’s not such a good idea while we’re in hyperspace. Once we arrive at Gamma Orionis b, we’ll need to get the Vancouver back into a stable orbit as quickly as we can, so we’re taking advantage of the transit time. So don’t worry about putting your helmets on. We’ll go over that later, but you’re in your spacesuits now so you can get accustomed to moving around in them."

Nishara flipped herself forward and her body pinwheeled in midair. Dylan grinned and several of the others laughed.

"Show-off," Grishnag said while applauding.

The end of Nishara’s tail slapped the floor and she winced. "Ow!" She giggled and shrugged her upper shoulders before pushing on the ceiling to regain control.

Another wave of laughter rippled around the room before Zadra got back to business.

"We’ll start with the basics. And by that, I mean learning how to get around in space without whacking parts of your body into the hull." She waited for more laughter to subside before continuing. "Once you’ve mastered that, we’ll start training with the thruster packs. Oh, don’t worry, they’ll be set at a fraction of their power level to prevent you from losing control in here." She motioned at Nishara and Kolya.

Kolya plucked her coffee bottle out of the air and tugged on Donovan’s hand. "Come on, you can help us out."

"I’m really not sure how I could help since I’m just learning this stuff."

"Well, I can use you to demonstrate a few rescue maneuvers."

"Gee, thanks." He tossed a lopsided grin at her.

"We’ll go easy on you," Zadra said.

"Hah. Where have I heard that before?" Donovan aimed a shit-eating grin at Cora, who snickered and gave him a theatrical bow that started her tumbling forward. Dylan, Zilaka, and Grishnag reached out to reel her back in, and Dylan managed to get both hands on her chest plate while halting her spin.

"Oops." He grinned and winked. "Totally an accident, I swear."

"Not that I’m complaining." She grinned and turned her head to kiss him.

Kolya laughed again and then took a sip of her coffee as Nishara floated over to them.

Donovan closed his eyes, took a few deep breaths, and visibly expended considerable effort in opening them again. He tightened his grip on Kolya’s hand ever so slightly.

"Okay," he mumbled. "Let’s get this over with."

***

"Oh, that smells so good!" Donovan drew in a slow, deep breath as he and the others filed into the mess hall. When Zadra paused the training session for lunch, they’d all headed here together.

Grishnag inhaled the aroma of spaghetti and meatballs, pork fried rice, and burritos coming from the table occupied by Ralissa and Lorkis, and chuckled.

Interesting combination. Looks like they’re sampling a variety of human cuisine. She’d done the same thing herself, way back when her tribe had been relocated to Earth, eager to try new things and find out what she liked. But more than anything, she’d been overjoyed just to have steady meals for the first time in her life.

"How was the training session?" Ralissa smiled as she stood, picked up her now-empty tray, and carried it to the compact dishwasher in the corner.

"Exhausting." Donovan plopped into the nearest chair and sighed. "Not from exertion or anything. It was just really tense. I didn’t make a complete fool of myself, though, so it could’ve been worse."

"Oh, you did just fine." Kolya nudged his shoulder, laughed softly, and pointed at the food dispenser. "What’re you having for lunch?"

"Think I’ll try the deluxe omelet."

"Comin’ right up." She found his requested item on the menu and returned with it and a plate of fried chicken, mixed vegetables, mashed potatoes, and gravy for herself. She glanced at Syala, then over to Ralissa and Zadra, as she sat. "I’m curious about something. Are the mulathi and shonari, like, ‘cousin’ species? Offshoots of an older species? Or is one an offshoot of the other? The similarities …"

"Their civilization is far older than ours." Ralissa smiled. "A common hypothesis is that we arose from a long-lost mulathi colony set up when they were first beginning to venture out into space. There are a few flaws in it. Even though we both have hooves and horns and glowing eyes, we’re not genetically compatible. I’m not an expert in biology, but I’d think speciation would take more than thirteen thousand years."

"Besides which," Zadra added, "the shonari homeworld is too far from the mulathi homeworld for their earliest colony ships to have settled."

"Unless one of them passed through a space-time rift like we did," Zilaka said.

Ralissa and Zadra stared at her before turning to gape at each other. Grishnag tried to hold in a laugh.

"Holy shit," Zadra finally muttered. "It’s … it never occurred to me to check the records of the mulathi’s first space missions for ships that turned up missing. It could actually be possible."

"Whoa." Kolya aimed a brilliant grin at Zilaka. "Mind. Blown."

"Yeah." Lorkis slithered over from the food dispenser, coiled up at the end of the table, and jotted a note into his comm. "I’ll have to find out if any research into that has already been done."

"None that I’m aware of, so it’s worth a try," Ralissa said with a smile.

"Hmm. That makes me wonder about something." Zilaka motioned at her face. "I bear a slight resemblance to two different animal species on Earth. Perhaps some of them found their way through those rifts, if any ever appeared there thousands or millions of years ago, and gradually merged into one species? I have no idea if such a thing is possible, but if it could’ve happened, they might be my distant ancestors."

"Whoa." Dylan’s lips parted slightly. "I noticed the resemblance when we met, but it didn’t occur to me that there might be an actual connection."

"Interesting." Lorkis cocked his head. "You might ask a biologist about it sometime. Could make for a fascinating research project."

"My curiosity’s definitely aroused." Grishnag headed over to the dispenser, selected an extra-large crab salad, and sat at the adjacent table. The others joined her over the next few moments.

"Speaking of aliens and whatnot," Kolya said, "what do you think is on the planet the Vancouver is orbiting? Ruins were mentioned in the briefing, so I’m having a little trouble keeping my imagination from running wild."

"That’s understandable," Lorkis said. "I’ve never had a chance to visit a world where no one has lived for thousands of years, but I imagine it must be a unique thrill."

Kolya nodded. "I haven’t been to any alien ruins yet, but I visited Stonehenge before I left Earth, and there was a palpable feeling in the air." She grinned and shivered slightly. "I swear I could feel the history of the place, centuries upon centuries of time just sort of hanging in the air. It’s one of the reasons I wanted to see other planets."

"You should visit the mulathi homeworld, Izanakha, sometime." Zadra twisted the cap off a bottle of water. "The recorded history of their civilization dates back well over twenty thousand years, and they’ve only been spacefaring for a little over half of that time. They’ve still got quite a few historical sites that have been preserved as they were millennia ago, and visiting them is quite an experience. Just standing there and taking it all in made me feel quite insignificant."

"I can imagine. I’ll have to add that to my bucket list. Where’s it located, by the way?"

"It’s in the Zeta Orionis system, seven hundred thirty-six light years from Earth," Syala said. "Its sun is also called Alnitak." She grinned and twitched one shoulder in a sort of half-shrug. "Once I became fluent in English and learned how to use computers, one of the first things I did was research the development of my species. Finding out how far they’ve come was amazing. It was also fascinating how they seem to have become kind of rigid and militaristic over the last few hundred years, when the culture I grew up in was much more carefree. What’s even better is that they seem to be loosening up a bit."

Grish winked at her. "You can probably blame the zorai for that."

"Whatever the cause, I’m thankful for the change. They’ve become too serious for my taste." She chuckled. "It’s nice to see them starting to embrace their sexuality again, not to mention learning how to laugh and have fun."

"I’m all for people having fun." Dylan flashed a brilliant grin at her. "And having sex. Especially the ones I’m married to."

Syala laughed. "Well, I know where to find dessert, then."

Donovan leaned over to whisper something to Kolya. Her eyes opened wide and she beamed at him while tugging on her collar. She began eating faster, as if trying to finish quickly and move on to something else before lunch ended and everyone had to get back to EVA training.

"So," Zilaka said a moment later, "about the ruins on Gamma Orionis b?"

"Oh, right." Ralissa nodded. "We’ve only explored a few of the structures scattered around the planet. From what we’ve seen, it doesn’t appear to be the remains of an entire civilization, but more like a network of outposts. The structures are similar in shape, but vary in size. They could have been research stations set up to study the local plant and animal life, possibly to figure out how complex life developed on a planet that’s so young."

"Another possibility," Zadra added, "is that whoever the inhabitants were, they were just beginning to set up a colony when most of the life on the planet was wiped out. Which brings up other questions such as, did they accidentally kill themselves and everything around them, or did someone do it deliberately?"

"There’s an unsettling thought," Donovan muttered.

"Very." Ralissa shrugged. "It’s possible that it was caused by a natural disaster. No evidence of ultraviolet radiation or anything similar damaging the bottom of the food chain, for instance, but there are too many other possibilities. Perhaps the newly developing ecosystem was just too fragile and a disease or a forest fire sparked off by lightning caused irreversible damage."

"We haven’t been able to translate any of the text we found, so we’re in the dark as far as whatever records of the event were left behind," Zadra said. "All we can do is speculate until someone figures that out."

"Once we prevent the Vancouver from deorbiting, we’ll land and take a look at one of the structures no one has explored yet." Ralissa grinned and glanced around at everyone. "Who knows, we might find something there that’ll give us some solid answers."

"That would be awesome." Kolya rubbed her hands together. "That’s why I’m here, after all."

***

"Whee!" Kolya leaped onto her bed, rolled over, and let out a long sigh. "I love learning new stuff, but cramming all those EVA lessons into a few hours kind of took its toll."

"No kidding." Donovan sat on the edge of the bed, groaned, and flopped over beside her. "But I got through it without embarrassing myself too much, so that’s one in the ‘win’ column."

She giggled and reached out to clasp his hand. "Like I keep telling you, you did just fine."

"Thanks. I guess I’ll get the hang of it sooner or later." He smiled and intertwined his fingers between hers. "So, what do you think we’ll find on the Vancouver?"

"Hard to say. There’s still been no communication from it, last I heard. The crew might be alive, but there’s a good chance we’ll find nothing but corpses. Or maybe skeletons, if the ship’s been lost long enough." She shrugged. "Maybe we’ll find aliens who tried to salvage it, or ancient artifacts the crew picked up somewhere."

"As long as it’s nothing that might kill us, I’ll be happy enough."

"Can’t argue with that. And even if we don’t find any survivors, imagine what might be on the ship’s flight recorder."

"Yeah. The crew logs, too. Plus whatever photos, video, and sensor data we might find. Depending on how those rifts work, if that’s what happened to the Vancouver, it could’ve popped up in another galaxy. Maybe more than one."

"Now that would be cool. I can’t wait." The downside of finding scans or images from another galaxy was that she’d never see those places in person without placing her brain in a cybernetic body unless there was a mind-boggling breakthrough in hyperdrive or life-extension technology -- or both. Still, thinking about it was one of the most fun things she could imagine herself doing without getting naked first.

There were other things to consider, as well. For one, the crew could discover something that would bring a significant payout, and if her cut was big enough to buy a cybernetic eye and have it installed by professionals …

Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. We might not find anything but an empty ship with nothing noteworthy in the logs. Still, prepare for the worst but hope for the best, right?

She scooted closer and snuggled against Donovan. He chuckled, slipped his arm around her shoulders, and turned his head to face her. They kissed and she raised her hand to let it rest on his chest.

"Hmm," he said softly, "I think I’m starting to regain my strength. Or maybe it’s just all the blood leaving my head."

She laughed. "Either way, I like the direction this is going."

"Oh, so do I." He kissed her again, then sat up and pulled his shirt off.

Her heart fluttered as she shrugged out of her own shirt and then hopped off the bed so she could drop her pants. She fumbled with her bra for a few seconds and shook her head. "Gotta remember to buy a few that clasp in the front."

"Allow me." Donovan stood in front of her, reached behind her, and unfastened her bra.

"Thanks." She flung it over her shoulder and grinned before kissing him again. His lips moved slowly under her chin, down her neck, and over her chest. She closed her eyes and moaned softly as he continued his journey downward. He tugged on the waistband of her panties, clenched it in his teeth, and pulled them off slowly. She giggled and he grinned up at her. He let her panties fall around her ankles and moved his lips between her legs, and she gasped. His hands slid up her legs to her hips and then around to grasp her ass gently. A moment later, he glanced up at her and raised an eyebrow.

"I suppose this would be a bad time to ask about the pitchfork wound?"

She burst out laughing, leaned over to look him in the eye, and gave him a quick kiss before standing up again. "First things first."

Next Chapter: Chapter 6: Ghost Ship