Chapter 40 · Domesticity

The first day out from the Steadfast, the hum of the engines still carried the rhythm of discipline. By the second, it had already decayed into something rawer—less precise, less certain. The Mynock wasn’t built for elegance; it rattled like a hungry machine, each vibration a reminder that space would happily unmake them the moment they stopped insisting it shouldn’t.

The Mynock was also not built for privacy. It had the shape and temperament of a shipping container with delusions of grandeur, a hull barely large enough for two people who preferred not to acknowledge that fact. The corridor between cockpit and living space could be crossed in four strides, five if you pretended to stretch. The bunks were stacked like reluctant siblings. Every time one of them moved, the other learned it through vibration.

Eli spent the first few hours trying to convince himself the arrangement was temporary. Then he found the “sanitary compartment,” and optimism died a small, practical death.

It was a cubicle wedged into the bulkhead beside the cargo bay hatch, just forward of the engine housing—little more than a meter square, barely deep enough to turn around in. The toilet unit was functional in the same way a survival knife is functional: blunt honesty, no comfort. The disposal system hummed when it worked and sulked when it didn’t. Above it, a narrow rack held a single water line, capped and sealed with a note in Stent’s handwriting: Sonic array inoperative. Conserve fluids.

Below that sat a metal bucket.

Next to it, a folded cloth.

Eli stared at the setup for a full thirty seconds, then muttered, “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

From the cockpit, Stent’s voice drifted back, calm as vacuum. “It performs its purpose.”

“Yeah,” Eli said. “So does starvation.”

Stent appeared in the doorway with an untroubled expression. "The sonic shower was inoperative when I got the ship. Apparently, it had failed some time ago. The previous owner deemed replacement parts unnecessary," he said, pointing at the empty sonic shower casing. It was now being used to store meager toiletries and an extra cloth.

“Because this is a ship for what—half-suicidal minimalists?”

“Because water recycling suffices,” Stent said. “If one remembers moderation.”

Eli crouched, examining the bucket. It gleamed with the kind of obsessive cleanliness that implied long service. “You actually use this?”

“Daily.” Stent’s tone made it sound like a moral virtue. “You will adapt. The filtration system retrieves ninety-three percent of waste water. Anything more would require luxury modules.”

“Right,” Eli said, standing. “And we wouldn’t want luxury getting in the way of hygiene.”

He’d served on Imperial patrol boats with worse, but those ships at least had the decency to pretend comfort existed somewhere beyond the next paycheck. Here, the Mynock didn’t bother pretending. It was honest about its indifference.

By the second morning he’d learned the rhythm: heat half a liter of water on the galley coil, carry it carefully back to the cubicle, and perform what Stent called “surface maintenance.” The bucket routine left him smelling faintly of detergent and irony. When he complained about the temperature, Stent handed him an extra cloth and said, “Friction creates warmth.”

The commander had no sense of shame about any of it. He would step out of the wash-cubicle as casually as if he’d just come from a staff meeting, blue skin gleaming in the low light, body lean and pale-muscled like carved obsidian under frost. Eli tried not to look, failed, and catalogued differences automatically: the faint silver sheen under the skin, the cooler hue at joints, the absence of any visible scars despite a career full of them. The Chiss biology textbook did not prepare him for reality. Male Chiss have internal genitalia. Their penis and testes are kept inside a pouch that closes with a vertical slit. This was an evolutionary trait that protected these valuable organs from the extreme cold of their primitive environment. The skin in this area had a deeper hue and turned purple at the slit. Stent, noticing the glance, only said, “Is there a problem with inspection?” and walked past him walked past him to the closet, pulled out a pair of boxers, and put them on..

“Just cultural adjustment,” Eli muttered, and decided that future eye contact would remain strictly above the shoulders.

Food offered no refuge. The Mynock’s galley consisted of two drawers, a heating coil, and a sealed locker marked Emergency Rations – Do Not Complain. Stent treated meals as tactical refueling: open packet, add water, ingest. He could eat flavorless nutrient paste with the same composure he used to issue flight orders. To him, cooking was an inefficient delay between mission parameters.

Eli, on the other hand, had once traveled half the Outer Rim with parents who believed dinner was diplomacy. On the third day he dug through the galley stores, found a neglected sack of grain substitute, and declared the experiment underway.

Stent watched from the hatchway, arms folded. “You intend to contaminate the galley.”

“I intend to make it smell less like sterilizer,” Eli said. “You don’t like food that tastes like food?”

“I like efficiency.”

“Then efficient people should eat things that don’t remind them of insulation foam.”

The heating coil worked randomly. The grain burned the first time. The second, it merely threatened to. By the third attempt he produced something resembling porridge, served in two identical metal cups. Stent studied his portion as though expecting it to perform espionage. After one cautious spoonful, he said, “Acceptable.”

“High praise,” Eli said, taking his own seat. “Next week I’ll try edible.”

Eli had forgotten what that felt like.

He sat in the copilot’s seat, watching the stars smear into distorted streaks across the viewport. The nav system flickered every few minutes—old wiring and older software, both clearly held together by luck and spite.

“Your course calibration’s fighting itself,” he muttered.

“It’s not fighting,” Stent said from the pilot’s chair, his tone calm. “It’s negotiating. These old Imperial nav-computers don’t like Chiss updates.”

“Neither did the Empire,” Eli said dryly.

That earned a faint smirk. “You still miss it.”

“I miss the clarity,” Eli said. “Orders. Hierarchies. Even the bureaucracy. You always knew how far you could go before someone shot you.”

“And here?”

Eli leaned back, fastening the harness across his chest. “Here, they don’t shoot you. They just erase your name.”

Stent chuckled. “Welcome to Chiss diplomacy.”

They prepared for another short jump—the first real test of the ship’s battered systems and Eli’s nerve. The nav display pinged, highlighting the unstable corridor ahead.

The Chaos stretched endlessly ahead, that strange gray-blue half-light of a region where physics seemed to change its mind every few seconds. Gravitational eddies twisted across the readings, shallow distortions that the nav computer struggled to interpret.

Stent adjusted the stabilizers. “You know, we’re technically not supposed to be able to cross this route without a navigator.”

Eli gave him a sidelong look. “That’s comforting.”

“I said ‘technically.’ We’ve got math. And luck.”

“You don’t believe in luck.”

“I believe in you doing the math right.”

Eli snorted. “So—no luck, just pressure.”

“Exactly.”

“You’re taking us through the Way of Schesa?” Eli asked.

“Good eye.”

He squinted at the plotted arc. The figures looked strangely familiar. “Those are my equations. From the Irizi archives.”

Stent didn’t turn. “They have been turned into tables: match the gravitational parameters and you have the adjustments for a short jump. We’re not using them. We’re trusting them.”

The words hit harder than he expected. Trust wasn’t a Chiss word—it was a wager disguised as courtesy.

“Then let’s hope I didn’t make any human mistakes,” he said.

“If you did, we’ll know before you can apologize,” Stent replied, pushing the throttle forward.

The domestic truce extended as far as clothing.

Eli still wore his CEDF-issue jumpsuit, pressed and regulation black, because he hadn’t had time to grab civilian clothes before departure. Stent’s glance toward the insignia on the collar said everything. “You will replace that,” he said on the first day.

“Soon as we make port,” Eli replied.

“Now,” Stent said, opening the locker. Inside were folded garments that looked as though they’d been rescued from various lesser-space markets—faded grey trousers, shirts in rough-woven fabric, one battered jacket with the pockets of a career criminal. “You will wear these.”

Eli held up the jacket. “You realize you’re about half a head taller than me.”

“Then adjust.” Stent’s tone made it clear that physics was not his concern.

Eli changed without further debate, muttering as he tried to cuff the sleeves. The shirt smelled faintly of metal cleaner and long habit. It fit badly, but at least it didn’t advertise his rank. When he emerged back from the corridor where he had retreated into, Stent inspected him with the same critical eye he used on engine diagnostics.

“Better,” Stent said. “You will also replace undergarments. Fleet issue fabric carries trace identifiers.”

Eli blinked. “You’re kidding.”

Stent handed him a neatly folded pair. These also looked worn. “Waste is vented after replacement. Disposal through airlock one.”

“Fantastic,” Eli said, taking them. “We’re laundering my identity into the void.”

That evening the airlock cycled, a quiet whoosh marking the exit of discarded uniforms. The stars swallowed the evidence without comment.

In the narrow living space, life settled into a rhythm dictated by machinery and compromise. The Mynock’s engines drummed like a mechanical heartbeat; the recycled air carried a faint tang of metal and cleanser. When one of them moved, the ship reminded the other. Stent lived as though quarters were unlimited, striding through the cabin with the confidence of someone who believed in right angles and personal efficiency. Eli learned to sidestep at exactly the right moment to avoid collision.

Privacy became a matter of timing. When Stent retreated to the cockpit for navigation, Eli took his chance to wash or stretch or simply breathe without the sense of being catalogued. In return, he kept silent during Stent’s routines: the commander’s slow, meditative pacing before sleep, the way he aligned every tool in the galley drawer with geometric precision, the brief flicker of expression when he read on his questis before lights-out—something like remembrance, quickly buried.

Eli was in charge of the long navigation calculations, using his harmonics equations and cross checking with the nav computer on board. They would have to try and acquire either new software for it, with some crucial updates. Or maybe try their luck at getting a new nav computer on the next port.

They didn’t talk much, but the silence between them began to acquire texture. The kind that wasn’t quite comfortable but no longer hostile. Two professionals orbiting the same necessity.

One evening, while Eli coaxed the galley coil into civilized life again, Stent stood nearby tightening a fastener on the wall panel. “This vessel will require resupply within fifteen standard days,” he said.

Eli glanced up. “Fifteen. That’s generous for a ship with no escape pod.”

“We will stop at two outposts before that becomes relevant,” Stent replied. “Until then, conservation is strategy.”

“Strategy’s a fine word for running out of soap.”

“It is the same word for surviving longer than expected.”

Eli poured water into the pan, listening to the hiss as it met metal. “You ever get tired of surviving?”

Stent looked at him, expression unreadable. “Not yet.”

The answer held no arrogance—just fact. Eli nodded, accepting it. “Then I’ll make dinner worth surviving for.”

The commander didn’t smile, but the silence that followed was almost approval.