Title-- Hazrun C-6 (part two)
Rating and Warnings-- G; no warnings.
Species and Characters-- Species is Aerha. Characters are XenBi (narrator), Pilot, Eng, Am, and VetDef. (Please note that, despite duplicate names, these characters are wholly separate from those of Jackpot.
Summary and Notes-- (Part One.) After a particularly devastating assignment that halves the number of living crew, the survivors of Hazrun C-6 start repairing their ship and scouring for new Aerhai to fill the roles left by the dead.



We didn't get any more hails. So, a week and a half after we first heard from the Hazrun veteran on a nearby colony world, we took off for her. With Eng's sister, our new Xenospeaker.

Pilot figured it out without Am slipping up, without Eng surrendering to his conscience and telling her, without me making some unthinking remark. Our Pilot never knew the old Pilot, Eng's older sister - that cat had died before Pilot got on the Hazrun. But still, she saw Eng and Am interact, and spilled the secret. Saved all of us a lot of creeping around the fact; Eng admitted it, I acted surprised, and that was that.

Pilot shared misgivings with me later. I echoed them. But really, Xenospeakers willing to crew a Hazrun are rare. Once we got six cats on-board again, then we'd see about tossing Am out to a safer ship and getting someone a little more hardened. Until then, we were stuck with a novice - and a cat very near and dear to Eng. Aerhai sometime do stupid things to protect their family. I hoped he wouldn't.

I promised Pilot and Eng they could finish the little nitpick repairs on the ship, once we docked with the orbital station over Creh Zehn and I went down to meet the vet. If I hadn't, we would've been immobile another week or two. Those two insist on tweaking every little thing after every single assignment. It was annoying. It had also probably saved our lives before.

I wasn't feeling charitable enough not to complain about it. Am was already on my nerves.

It wasn't a long trip - just a week. Enough time to let Am settle into her new quarters, get used to Pilot's no-nonsense attitude, and plenty of time for her to drive me up a wall. Xenobiologists often work with Xenospeakers. But the kid wasn't my kind of 'speaker, and I didn't respond well to her insistence that she and I review alien species together.

We docked. I was all too glad to get planet-side, and probably took a little too much satisfaction in telling Am that she had to stay with the ship. She hadn't been on-world in over a year, she protested - but she hadn't been on-ship for months on end, I countered. So she stayed.

It was weird. The old Am never would have let me boss her like that. Tails, Pilot would take my whiskers off, and Eng would just ignore me. Little Am still had some claw-growing to do, if she was so soft-pawed that she didn't stand up for herself.

Creh Zehn is a nice place to be. I've been there twice - once to pick up new crew, and once to drop off some medical supplies when they were having an epidemic. Nearly died that time. Bloody plagues.

I got off the station-to-ground shuttle and stepped outside. Big, deep breaths got me light-headed, and I enjoyed the smell of real grass, real dirt, real water.

"XenBi of Hazrun C-6?" a hoarse voice asked. My head turned, and I earflicked in acknowledgement. A big old Aerha stepped out of the little crowd near the landing pad, moving slowly. "I'm VetDef."

She looked grizzled, and so many scars tore through her rust-and-brown pelt that any markings she might have had were obscured. She was my size, which was good - I liked having bigger cats with me - and in possession of all her limbs, which was also good. Two of six tailtips were missing, though, and she only had one ear.

"Good to see you, VetDef," I greeted. I waited as she sized me up in much the same way as I'd just done to her, then she nodded.

"You look capable," she said.

"I am," I replied. "Pilot, Eng, and our new Am are still on-ship, making repairs. We have a week or so until we're perfectly set to go."

"Good." She didn't smile, but there was no glaze over her eyes, no slack in her expression. She wasn't one of the haunted veterans. "Let's hunt, then. I'm sure you haven't been out in a while."

My face betrayed my surprise; she growled a harsh, hacking laugh as I shook it off. "...I forget about hunting, sometimes," I muttered, feeling just slightly sheepish.

"I know. Come on - there's a herd within a few hours' trot."

I followed.