Nowhere

"So," he said as a final demonstration of his academic prowess. "That's how we got the funding to study the agricultural gene mutation of the native species on Pontar IV. Professor Ventec said my contribution was a real asset."

The pilot, a pretty Ssian with mottled blue-green scales around her eyes and spinal piercings of copper and steel down her tail, said nothing more than, "Uh-huh."

Rhett chewed the tip of his tongue in annoyance. He'd been pretty certain his tale of how the University selected him to be part of the research team would have impressed the female, but she appeared much more interested in flying the ship than listening to him.

"So," he tried again to ensnare her interest. "How long have you been piloting transport ships?"

The pilot, whose name plate said Ilaan, flared her nostrils. Warm sands, now she was irritated! Great. All the rest of his research team was asleep, as was most of the crew, because the ship followed the solar cycle around his home planet, Drun. But he was too excited to sleep. And too chatty to successfully flirt.

"I've had my license for the last eighteen years," Ilaan said.

"Wow, so did you get that right out of school or—"

"I didn't go to extra schooling after the mandatory stuff," she cut in. "My family didn't have the credits for that."

"Oh, I understand completely," Rhett reassured her, placing one scaly hand over his heart (in his belly center) empathetically. "My folks are farmers, which is why I'm so interested in agricultural studies in the first place. I only got into the University because of scholarships and—"

An alarm sounded on the ship console, and what little attention Ilaan had been giving Rhett darted away, her claws typing furiously.

"Acid rains!" she cursed, pivoting in her chair to slam her palm on a big blue button. The alarm amplified then, sounding through the entire ship. Rhett covered his earholes, wincing.

"What's wrong?!"

"Pathway malfunction!" Ilaan shouted back, turning to shove Rhett into one of the pilot seats. Automated safety restraints shot out, encircling his torso. Rhett gasped as his view from the front screen, which projected what was going on outside the ship, flashed so bright he was temporarily blinded.

The ship jolted then, and his sense of gravity, induced by the artificial system onboard, was tossed aside. His limbs flew away from the chair, and Ilaan's heavy body crashed against the roof of the cockpit before sliding down one wall. All the force was coming from that direction now as if they were spinning in a vast centrifuge.

He wanted to shout or help or do something, but his lungs were struggling with just getting air in and out, and besides, what could a research student do in a ship spinning out of control?

The view screen caught his attention again, and in flashes, he saw space, something yellow, space, yellow, each time the blur of color getting closer and closer.

It wasn't until the ship hit the ground, in the instant before he lost consciousness, that he realized they'd crash-landed on a planet.

⟢⟡⟣

The sensor alarm for an incursion in quadrant eight blared loud enough to pull Maeve from her drug-induced sleep. She peered up from her nest under the console, trying to see precisely where it was in quadrant eight. Her eyes wouldn't focus, and she cursed, ripping her makeshift blankets off and climbing to her feet. Every joint hurt, but she was used to pain by now. It was her only companion. She limped to the screaming alarm and slapped it off. It wailed in protest but then shut the fuck up.

Fuck was a good word. It was a human one. She'd learned it from their historical records and music archives. It meant to mate and to kill and everything else in between. Stupid Orbixians didn't have a term like it. They were too proper.

What was she doing over here?

Oh yeah, the alarm.

The blinking light indicated the occurrence was in the farthest western region of quadrant eight, near the limestone cliffs. Or maybe they were granite. Or something else. Who knew? Who cared.

The storm that'd driven Maeve inside in the first place had died down, but it had probably sent all the other fucking assholes (another human term, place shit comes from) into their hidey holes too. If no one was out to see the newcomers, then there was a chance Maeve would be the first to get to them.

Which was good.

So even though her head hurt, and the blaring light of the Nowhere sun glowed directly overhead, she geared up and left her shuttle. Racer. Cruiser. Getaway vehicle. Unusable piece of junk. The whole fucking reason she was stuck here.

Quadrant eight was a good hour's hike north of Maeve's territory, and she spent the time collecting sap plants and humming a classic human love song to herself, keeping an eye out for movement, in case one of the other survivors here had spotted the new crash and decided to try to stake it out for themselves.

"There she goes, shaking that ass on the floor, bumping and grindin' that pole…." she sang listlessly to herself, scrabbling up one of the rocky ridges that denoted the end of quadrant one. Her quadrant. The best quadrant.

Off in the distance, she could see a long line of smoke, arcing across the sky and ending on the horizon. Great! A map.

Maeve followed the smoke trail, occasionally using her makeshift Fuck You Stick (FYS for short) to beat around the scrubby brush. Little bugs skittered this way and that, and she snatched them up, piling them into her snack jar for later.

By the time she reached the western side of quadrant eight, she was panting, and what little of her exposed skin was blistering already. She needed more cloth to make more wrappings. Maybe the new ship would have some she could harvest. The ship in question was well within view now, cracked into three big chunks and scattered across the dry land. Big reptilian bodies were scattered around, too, but that didn't bother Maeve. The more of them that were dead, the better. There weren't enough resources on Nowhere anyway.

She slipped down the ridge and hurried to the debris, keeping a sharp ear out for other scavengers. So far, all she heard was the various screams of the dying ship and the occasional pop and crack of power conduits. The middle of the ship would be her primary goal. Important shit like medical supplies, food, and engine rooms lived in the middle of ships. Mostly. Sometimes. Whatever.

Maeve found the dining and kitchen area by following her nose, and loaded as many ration packs and water vacs into her travel bag as possible, making it so heavy she could hardly walk standing upright.

Then she'd just have to find the medical ward, and she'd—

CLANG

She froze. What was that? Nothing happened. She waited. Nothing still fucking happened. Great. Now she was hearing things. Not like that was new; she'd been hallucinating for years now, but—

CLANG

No, that was for sure real. Real reality real. Maeve turned her head, following the echoing sound. It wasn't in this part of the ship. It was coming from the front compartment that'd landed a dozen puntuls away.

CLANG

Maeve crept out of her piece of the ship, glancing around the field of dead, but no other scavengers had arrived yet. She'd gotten a lot of food. She should just go.

CLANG

"Mother fucking fuck fuck," she muttered, hurrying (as much as she could with her big bag of shit) to the front end of the ship. Mother fucking is when you mate with your mom. Humans are gross.

CLANG CLANG CLANG!!!

As she moved along the giant corridors of the ship, Maeve noted its particular shininess. This ship was pretty new, with almost no patches or repairs. At least none visible. Maybe if she hid her bag over the ridge, she could come back and try to find tech components to help restore her shuttle? Would she have enough time? Surely others would be coming, and the last time she'd fought with the "Team," she'd broken half the bones in her hand.

Up ahead, the source of the clanging became obvious. The cockpit compartment sat wide open, and in the middle of it, a big lizard was strapped to a chair, using a broken power coupling to bang it on the console of the ship. A few other lizards, or rather Ssians, lay around, their bodies bent in definitely not alive shapes. He looked like the only survivor.

“Heeeelllppp!” he bellowed in Standard. Then he made a series of hissy clicky sounds she supposed was his planet's language.

Maeve started to back away. She didn't have anything to kill him with, and it wasn't as if she could afford to heeeeelp him. She did have her FYS, but it'd take a lot of time to beat a lizard his size to death. And energy. She needed to make it back to her shuttle with all her supplies.

She stepped on something broken, and it made a CRAACK sound. The Ssian looked up, his eyes filled with tears. Maeve paused, wincing. "Fuck."

"Help!"

"No!" Maeve took another step back.

"No?" The Ssian sounded baffled. "But my ship has crash-landed, and everyone around me is dead!"

"So?"

"So… So you help people when bad things happen like this!"

"I don't," Maeve said, turning away.

"Wait! Wait! I don't have anyone else! Please, have some decency!"

Maeve rolled her eyes, which only made her head hurt more. "What will you do for me if I help you out of your restraints?"

"Huh?"

She turned back, and the Ssian stared at her with his big amber eyes, his lips pulled back in horror. She grinned. "What will you do for me if I help you? You know, an exchange? My aid for your… something?"

"I don't have any credits," he started. Maeve scoffed.

"Credits don't mean jack shit out here." Jack is a particular human male, and shit is his shit. It means nothing. Jack apparently didn't shit. It was like a medical problem or something. "I need actual goods. Or labor. You got anything like that?"

"I… You can have anything you find," the Ssian said, wriggling in his constraints.

"I already did that," Maeve sighed. She couldn't keep wasting time like this.

"Wait! You're not very big. I am. If you help me out, I could help you lift stuff or… or carry things? Until the proper authorities show up."

That … wasn't the worst idea she'd ever heard. And she did need to go, but if she loaded him up with the stuff she wanted, then she could get double the goods and not have to come back when the other scavengers or the "Team" had arrived.

"Alright. You'll help me carry shit until the proper authorities arrive, right?"

"Yes, yes! Please, just get me out of here."

"Promise?" Maeve insisted, sneaking a half step closer.

"I promise!"

"Great." Maeve pulled out a piece of ship hull she'd sharpened into a fine edge and climbed over the dead bodies of his buddies to cut the restraints. He half fell out of the seat, hanging as he was. The floor of the ship, or what was the intended floor, was ninety degrees from Nowhere's earthen surface. He bellowed in pain, but Maeve was already on the move. She stripped the seats of their cloth covers and tossed them to the Ssian. Most ships had emergency med kits in all the common spaces, so she could gather those up from here and then work her way back to the center of the ship, where the medical ward was. "Hurry up!"

She could hear his scaly feet thumping along the corridor after her, his steps uneven like he was limping. Yeah, well, she was, too. Maeve jumped from the tattered end of the front of the ship, waiting in the considerable shadow it cast for the Ssian to join her. The moment he saw the landscape, she knew it cause he took in a big, shocked gasp.

"Where…." he trailed off, still half in the ruined tatters of his ship, staring across the empty desert of this planet. No buildings, no roads, no ships, no trees, no rivers, no local life aside from the bugs.

"Welcome to Nowhere," Maeve said. "Now hurry up, we gotta get more shit before the other assholes arrive and try to kill us."

⟢⟡⟣

Nowhere. Rhett had never heard of Nowhere, and how the wrapped-up creature said it sounded sarcastic. Like it was a funny joke that he'd crash-landed on an undeveloped moon. Rhett's gaze flickered over the nothingness of it all and then snagged on something colorful a few puntuls away. It was a body, the limbs bent at impossible angles, the torso wrapped in a decorative Lumi cloth.

"Professor!" He grabbed the side of the broken ship as he carefully picked his way down the wreckage, trying not to fall. The creature-person who'd cut him free just waited in the shadows, their expression impossible to determine under the many wrappings of rags they wore around their face, hands, and arms. Rhett landed in a puff of sand and hurried to Professor Psim's side. His skull was broken on one side, green eyes half open. Rhett hesitated before touching his professor's shoulder. It was stiff with rigor. How long had he hung in his restraints unconscious?

"Good find," the creature said in their heavily accented Standard. Its voice was rough and high, but not childlike. "That'll make a nice outfit change."

"Don't touch him!"

The creature, whose eyes were visible through a narrow slit in its dirty wraps, stilled, watching him closely. "You want to leave perfectly good clothes?"

"I knew him! I'm not going to rob him of his dignity! This Lumi cloth was handed down to him by his father's father, a sacred—"

RIPPPP

Faster than Rhett thought it possible for a person to move, the creature snatched one sleeve of Professor Psims's shirt and ripped it off his rigid arm. The cloth dangled in their grip, and they grinned, exposing cracked lips and sharp teeth. Very sharp teeth. Rhett stared at it in horror.

"Dignity dies here, get used to it. If you want to have something to wear in a year, you'll take this shit now. He's not going to use it, and you might. Or I might. Someone might. Better me than that stupid 'Team,'" it said, wadding up the ripped sleeve and laying it over their head like some absurd hat. It cast a shadow over their eyes, which in turn grew in pupil size. The iris was a golden-green color. They didn't have any lashes that Rhett could see, but little puffs of fluffy stuff stuck out of their rags. White fluffy stuff.

"What do you mean—"

"You promised you'd help me carry shit if I let you out. You're wasting time. If you don't want your professor's clothes, then leave them there. The others will gladly take them. We need to get to the medical ward on your ship and take as much as we can. Come on."

Rhett stood stupefied as the creature turned, hurrying across the hot sands in wrapped feet and scampering up into the middle section of the ship. He looked down at Professor Psims and, after a moment's indecision, bent to gently remove the Lumi cloth. He could take it home to the professor's family when he got rescued. Then he followed the creature into the middle section of the transport ship, careful not to look at the bodies strewn around. He'd known these people! Studied with them. Laughed with them. Tried to date several of them. And now they were just… gone.

"Is anyone else alive?" he asked as the creature stuffed a bag full of medical supplies, its movements fast and a bit erratic, some things returning to empty shelves only to shake its head and move on.

"Not that I saw, but I wasn't looking. It's better if they're all dead."

"Better?" How could that be better?!

They shrugged. "Yeah. The living only got two ways to go. Rough it out alone, like me, or join one of the various groups."

"How…." Rhett looked at the creature more closely, at its spindly, thin arms and rags so dirty there wasn't a patch of identifiable color or patterns. A piece of wrapping rose on its neck, and he saw skin. Burned and bubbled with blisters, angry orange. "—long have you been here?"

"By my count, three years."

"Three years?! And no one's come to rescue you?"

The creature let out a croaking sound, which he supposed was a laugh. "No one has come to rescue anyone. No one comes to Nowhere on purpose."

"But, how did you get here?"

"Same as you, Rocky."

"Rocky?"

"Yeah, you know, 'cause you're all… scaly and rough and shit." It stuffed the full medical bag into his arms, pulling open cabinet drawers and stuffing medical tools into a pillowcase.

"That's pretty speciest," he said, too numb to be offended. The creature shrugged in jerky little movements and tucked the stick they carried around under their arm so they'd be better able to stuff their pillowcase. The bag on their back was so bulging that it made them lean sideways. "What's your name?"

"No."

"No?"

"We're not getting to know each other and become like… intergalactic buddies. You're helping me carry my shit back to my territory, and then you're on your own."

Panic reemerged, his cold blood coursing faster through his veins. If this creature was telling the truth, and this was a forgotten or unknown habitable but not willingly inhabited planetoid or moon, then he could be trapped here for years! And he had nothing. No one. It was stealing all the usable supplies in the ship! Maybe it was lying. Perhaps it was some… what? A creature that chose to live in presumably terrible conditions and steal from crashes just for the fun of it? That didn't make any sense. He shook his head.

"You said there are other groups of survivors here?" Maybe he could join one of them.

It laughed again, that croaking sound vibrating the notes. "Yeah. There are. Come on, time to take my shit back. Time to hold up your end of the deal."

It gave him the second bag of medical supplies and turned to go, stepping on top of the Ssian wearing the medical uniform of the transport ship. Rhett winced and stepped over the male, lifting his tail so it didn't drag across the body. The creature darted from opening to opening, pausing and waiting for several breaths before moving on. Was it getting tired?

It waited a long time at the ragged hole in the ship's side, head swiveling left and right, by far more than his could pivot. Then it nodded and hopped down the great distance, landing in a puff and hurrying off. Its movements were too quick to follow, but Rhett thought it might be limping. He took more care disembarking the ship's remains and followed after, not really having anything else he could do. Everywhere, bits of metal, glass, and blood planted the landscape. He didn't want to look at the fallen, so he kept his gaze on the erratic footprints of the creature he'd agreed to carry stuff for.

They reached a steady slope before the creature paused, head twitching left and right before it cursed and grabbed him by the elbow, yanking him toward a sizable boulder. It was surprisingly strong, making Rhett stagger. "What's going on?"

"Shut the fuck up!" it hissed, pulling him down beside it and then glaring at his head, which was still exposed. He didn't know what fuck meant, but he got the idea. "Duck! Don't let them see you!"

That was easier said than done since standing Rhett was an average Ssian height, about seven puntuls tall. The creature looked to be no more than four. But he heard then what had probably put it on alert. Voices. Beside him, the creature was buzzing, its whole body trembling. Rhett hunched his shoulders and craned his neck to an awkward position so his head was finally behind the boulder.

Incrementally, the voices got louder, echoing off the stone cliffs and metal body of the transport ship, distorted but clearly speaking Standard. Beside him, the creature clutched its stick, the wrappings on its hands twisting as it adjusted and readjusted its grip. This close to it, Rhett could detect a particular scent… It wasn't a good one. He closed his nostrils and parted his lips to breathe through them instead.

"Thad! Check this out!"

Rhett resisted the urge to look and see what was happening.

"A living?" a deeper voice said. It sounded human, not that he was an expert. In this stretch of the universe, humans were pretty rare.

Wait… living?! There was another survivor!? Rhett lurched, trying to get to his feet, but the creature grabbed him by the wrist and yanked him back down. He toppled forward and crushed his face against the boulder, his scales scraping against its rough surface.

"Stop!" he hissed, and the creature dug its claws into his arm. Green blood welled up, and he gasped but shut his mouth. If it was this frightened, then maybe he should be too.

"Who are you?" Rhett recognized the Ssian accent, though not the particular voice.

"I'm Thad. This is Ruk, and over there is Spawus."

"Where… what happened?" the Ssian asked. Was it one of his team? Or ship crew? Rhett pulled his face off the boulder, rubbing the bloody spots on his cheek.

"Your ship crashed."

"I… I think my leg is broken," the Ssian said, their voice starting to wobble. Poor male! He probably was just realizing all that had happened, like Rhett did. He should help him! Rhett raised his head enough to see over the boulder's edge. The creature hissed and tugged on his arm, but he ignored it. There, not sixty puntuls away, stood three strangers around the prone Ssian. Indeed, the angle of its lower leg was strange, and green blood was seeping through his pants, staining the brown stand beneath him. "When are emergency services coming?"

One of the strangers, the human-looking one, laughed. "No help here, buddy. No help except for us."

"Oh."

"Tell us," another stranger said, this one looking more like a Lioshi. "What was your ship's purpose?"

"It's a transport ship. We're a university team with a grant to study—"

"Academic?" the third person asked. With blotchy skin and a delicate frame, Rhett didn't know what it was. "That'll have some new tech most likely. That's good."

"Mmmm," the human said, still looking down at the injured male. "What do we do with him?"

"He's big," the Lioshi said, scratching its hairy head. "If we patch him up, he'll probably be useful. Strong."

"A lot to feed, though," the colorful one said.

"Please! My leg," the Ssian male exclaimed, clearly as baffled as Rhett had been by this planet's callous people. "Help me."

"What do you think, Thad?"

Rhett held his breath, watching as the human propped his hands on his hips, his expression impossible to read from this distance. The Ssian stared up at him, his body tense. Then Thad shook his head. "Too much repair work."

Thad pulled out a weapon, perhaps a taser, and aimed it right at the Ssian's head. Before the Ssian could say anything more than "No!" there was a loud bang! And a flash of light. And then the Ssian's head was gone. Rhett gasped, and the creature grabbed him by the earhole, hauling him down beside it, but it was too late. The others had heard him.

"Who's that squatting in the dirt!?"

"Fuck," the creature muttered and then took off its bag and makeshift hat, stuffing them into his grasp. "Don't lose these, you fucking fuck face. And don't move. Don't do anything. At all. Alright?"

Rhett nodded numbly, and the creature stood up, taking its stick with it.

⟢⟡⟣

Thad the shithead (that's where humans poop on each other's heads) and his fuck buddies stood there, watching as Maeve came out from behind the boulder. (Fuck buddies are friends who mate with you for fun but don't want to raise the young or nest with you. But they'll eat all your food and go to sporting events with you.)

This is a problem, Maeve thought as she resettled her grip on her FYS. Well, a problem in that Maeve didn't like them, they didn’t like Maeve, and they are all after the same resources, so yeah. A fucking problem. (A fucking problem is where you have to mate with it or kill it to fix the issue. Those are the only solutions for fucking problems. Maeve guessed someone could also have a fucking problem if their mating parts didn't work. Huh, humans have such a diverse language.) And because Rocky gave away our location with his weeping, now it's MY fucking problem.

Thad grinned with his flat human teeth when he spotted her, his eyes all wrinkly at the corners, his dark brown skin a shade Maeve’s could never achieve. Hers just looked roasted. "Maeve, my favorite Orbixian."

She didn’t speak, watching as Ruk the Lioshi and Spawus the spotted (Who knows what the fuck that guy was. He could change colors. Like a rainbow.) pat down Rocky's dead buddy. They pocketed a few things, but Maeve couldn’t see what, instead tensing when Thad took a step closer. She raised the end of her FYS.

"This is my salvage. I got here first," she said in Standard.

Thad snorted, and Ruk finally looked her way, his big round eyes rolling. "There's no rules about getting to a crash site first."

"There aren't any rules," Maeve countered. "So if I want to stake this out as my crash, who's going to stop me?"

There was a sound behind her, but Maeve didn’t look around, hoping the stupid lizard could just keep his giant head down. The others peered more closely where she was standing, and Spawus started moving to the left, arcing around. Maeve pointed her FYS at him, and he paused, foot in mid-air. She smiled.

They're nervous of me, she realized, a rush of pride swelling her malnourished chest.

"We aren't just going to let you pick over this salvage uncontested, Maeve. That's ridiculous," Thad said, his tone reasonable. But he didn’t move. "It looks like you were just leaving anyway, so—"

Before he can say some more reasonable horse shit (horse shit is more valuable than human shit), Maeve made her move. She took three darting steps toward Spawus, who screeched. She raised her FYS like she was going to knock him with it, but when he raised his hands to block her swing, she dropped to the ground and grabbed a handful of the sandy dirt that covered everything in Nowhere. With the aim of a night predator, she flung it right into Spawus's eyes, and he screamed even more, clawing at his face as if that would help bits of grit in his orbs.

While Ruk stared in confusion, Thad pulled his blaster and leveled it at Maeve, but she was already sprinting across the distance between Spawus and Ruk, and Thad's shot went wide. Debris scattered as the shot obliterated the land behind her. Maeve didn’t slow; instead, taking a big leap-jump like she would from branch to branch back home, and landed halfway up Ruk's torso. She clung to his hairy body, and he bellowed in pain. Taking his distraction as a gift, Maeve burrowed her teeth into his chest and used her claws to climb fully onto his shoulder. Chunks of hair and a bit of blood fill her mouth, and Maeve spat it into Ruk's face. He bellowed again and grabbed her by the back of her neck. Her skin was fire in his grip, the burns and blisters where he touched making Maeve dizzy with pain. She hung onto his face even as he yanked her backward, her claws leaving scratches as he flung her away.

Her FYS landed two puntels away in a puff of sand, and Maeve pushed herself to her feet. Ruk was moaning.

"Get out of the way!" Thad shouted, presumably at his fuck buddy and not Maeve. She lunged for her FYS, and another loud BANG sounded behind her. Maeve launched herself sideways on impulse, and the ground where she'd been kneeling exploded. "Goddamnit! Like trying to shoot a fucking rat!"

Maeve pivoted, her head still spinning from the pain of Ruk's grab. Surely, the blisters on her neck were ruptured and weeping. The wrappings were gone, her flesh exposed to the unforgiving sunlight. Where was Thad? He was the one with the blaster. If she could just knock him with the FYS, then—

THWAP!

Maeve jumped, but nothing exploded.

Then, the blurry figure in front of her—Thad?—keeled over, falling on his face, his blaster stuck under him. Ruk looked around like the dumb fuck he was, and at that moment, there was another THWAP!

Ruk crumpled to the ground as well, and there, holding a big ass rock (having a big rear end is a good thing for humans. It makes you better than the others), was the lizard guy. Rocky. Or whatever. He'd knocked Thad and Ruk over the head.

Maeve crowed.

Spawus, who was just lying around with dirt in his eyes this whole time, made a shrill whistle-shriek and took off. He could run fast. Real fast. Like he was just skimming over the top of the sand. His skin was turning the same color as the land around them, and soon, he was nowhere to be seen. Ha, Nowhere to be seen.

"Are you alright?" the Ssian-lizard-Rocky asked.

Maeve shrugged, which made her damaged skin sting, so she winced. "Yeah."

"They were trying to kill you," he said.

Maeve shrugged again. "So?"

"But you saved me.” As if she wanted this embarrassing detail brought up.

"So?" she demanded more defensively.

"So… If you hadn't found me, then these killers would have, and they'd probably have just killed me sooner or later." His red and brown scales looked paler than before, if that's possible.

"Right," she agreed.

"Right… so… I owe you my life."

Maeve shrugged, winced, and then rubbed at her eyes. Everything was hurting. All she wanted to do now was go home to her shuttle and curl up in her nest. "We made a deal. You carry my stuff, I let you go."

"That's surprisingly honorable of you," he said, looking down at Ruk and Thad's prone bodies. They probably weren’t dead. But they were going to be pretty annoyed when they woke up. Maeve sighed and gestured for the lizard to turn around. They needed to get her stuff and go.

"Deal's a deal."

"Can we make another deal?" he asked, following her back to the boulder. There, all three bags waited. Good. Maeve hauled hers over her shoulders, her exposed neck skin searing with pain. She ignored it.

"What kind of deal?"

"You help me stay alive until rescue comes, and I'll help keep the big guys off of you."

Maeve turned to look at the Ssian, realizing by his somber expression that he was genuine. He wanted to form up some sort of team with her! "What?"

"You heard me. You help me live, and I help you not get beat up. It seems fair, don't you think? I won't take any of your supplies that I don't also help scavenge. I promise I'll pull my weight."

He was pretty big and strong. With him hauling stuff around, they could triple or even quadruple the shit they got from crashes. But he probably ate a lot, too. Plus, he seemed… chatty. Maeve let out a slow breath. It was so hard to think with the sun blaring down on her, burning her eyes and breaking open every piece of skin it touched.

"What's your name?" she asked finally.

He grinned. "Rhett."

"Alright, Rhett. I'll let you come with me. But if you turn out to be too much trouble, I'll kill you, eat you, and wear your skin to protect me from the sun. Sound like a deal?"

Rhett's smile faltered, but as his gaze slipped to Thad, Ruk, and the dead Ssain they shot in the head, he nodded. "Sounds more than fair."

"Great, now pick up your bags, and let's go. Don't wanna be out at night. The big bugs come out then."

"Wait," Rhett said as he shouldered the bags and followed Maeve back up the ridge. "What should I call you?"

She croaked a laugh. "You can call me Maeve, Queen of Fucking Nowhere."