The first few hours after leaving the station were never busy at the casino. Usually, they would only get transit passengers but there were none from Colossus to Antio, mostly because the latter appeared on their flight plan only a few hours before they left the former. They didn’t pick that many passengers from Kashi-Sulak but Seidel sent out a memo that they will be full between Antio and Tiktik. Devon was grateful for a week of easy shifts before the upcoming hell. Right now, they had one couple at the cards table near the bar and they assured them with as much politeness as they could master that they didn’t plan to order drinks and would definitely call over if they changed their minds.

“Are you feeling alright? I’ve heard you’ve been present for the ugly business at the gate yesterday.” Sharifa poured herself a glass of water and drank it while leaning on the counter. She looked casual, a bit sleepy, and sounded as if this was a normal meaningless chatter they were used to.

They didn’t share more than a dozen words in the past week. Devon skipped the first shift after the revelation, took the cleaning duty afterwards, finally had a cry-on-a-shoulder with Rin, and after that talked to Sharifa only when the work required him to do so. She seemed to be willing to roll with it. Until now.

Devon glanced up at her from where he was sorting through the capsules of cocktail ingredients. He wondered if she was asking this for Shiloh’s sake (he avoided her too, which was easy when not sharing an assignment, and only answered her messages with simple noncommittal phrases). She didn’t look like she was mocking or plotting something.

He also really missed their casual chit-chat even from the times when they only argued about Shiloh.

“Yeah. We went downwell with Ri-” he caught himself, but easily corrected it. “-chard and Thoresson, but got separated from Richard on the way back. We were waiting for him when it all unfolded.”

Sharifa raised her eyebrows. “Oh, right, you are from Kashi-Sulak. Any chance to visit home?”

Devon shook his head and looked away from her. “Nah, the last place I lived at is on the opposite side of the planet from Ts’kk.”

This made her chuckle. “You speak Gemi with such a nice accent.”

He blushed and pouted. He didn’t speak Rh’z or any other Gemi language, not really. No human did. Vocalising it was not possible using human voice chords. But he could read the simplified Rh’z and was fluent in the Human Sign Rh’z developed specifically for interspecies communication. What Sharifa meant is that he pronounced the city’s name the way humans from Kashi-Sulak did and not the way most of the crew who had Earth Standard as their first language did. Devon was raised with ES but he lived on Kashi-Sulak for long enough to pick up Far-Galactic and HS Rh’z, and they all felt equal in his mind.

After a minute of silence, Sharifa tried again. “Hanging out with pilots then? Quite a move up.”

Devon sighed heavily and turned to her. “Perhaps, if everyone else didn’t treat them as celebrities, they could also do so? Thoresson, for one, never seemed above being friends with any person who appeared on his way.”

“And yet, pilots and engineers usually mingle amongst themselves and not with stewards. You know they do.”

Devon leaned back on the other side of the bar and shrugged. “Sure. But yet here we are. I didn’t become friends with Richard to make some kind of a point. He is just a nice guy, that’s all.”

They fell silent again, standing there in the quiet casino room with only an occasional sound effect from the occupied cards table. Devon tried to reach for his usual anger and annoyance dealing with Sharifa in the past few months but couldn’t find it. Instead, he only found longing for what used to be. Back when he was new on the ship and she was his friend. Now, Sharifa sat in the corner of the bar and scrolled through something on her interface. He couldn’t read her face. Bored, maybe disappointed. He took a deep breath.

“But yeah, it was quite ugly. Everyone knows Andrade is an asshole, but I didn’t expect Haasan to be so…” He pondered the right word for a moment. “... scary.”

Sharifa looked up, surprised. “Scary? Do you think he is also ex-military?”

Devon shrugged with one shoulder. “Could be. But he definitely looked… dangerous.”

He never cared much for the gossip about the members of the crew he didn’t cross paths with. Technically, Haasan was a steward but he rarely left the library or interacted with anyone outside the chiefs and those directly under them. There was gossip about him being very strict about the library interfaces and how Thoresson was scared shitless of the guy for that very reason. Haasan was also occasionally spotted in the gym on the Sixth deck using the treadmill with headphones on. But other than that, their conflict with Andrade seemed more in the “bitter exes” category than anything else. 

However, yesterday Devon saw hatred in Haasan he didn’t expect him to have. The ice in his words. Stop treating everyone as your property. And a jerk of his hand once he dropped the guiding handle for the hovercarts and was clearly about to punch Andrade. Rin noticed that and stepped in. Devon was sure he would just get into the line of the punch, but Haasan stopped with an impressive reaction time.

“What are you chuckling about?” Sharifa tilted her head, and Devon realised she had been watching him this whole time. 

“Oh, it’s just… Rin- Richard is quite short, and he was trying to referee these two tall guys who wanted to kill each other…”

“Ah yeah, Haasan is over 2 metres, right? I’m always grumpy about people who are taller but weigh much less than me. How dare they?”

Devon felt a sudden urge to reassure her. “You look so much better than him though! He is just endless limbs. You look like an actual human being with curves where they should be.” He immediately regretted this and felt his face flush.

Sharifa didn’t seem angry. She watched him for a moment and then a small smile appeared on her face. “Well, thank you, Devon. That’s lovely to hear.”

He had no chance to try and untangle this awkward situation as Petra Seidel walked into the casino. Both him and Sharifa straightened and tried to look as if they were busy with nonexistent work. She didn’t seem to care much and smiled. “Hello, sorry for the interruption. May I steal Devon for today, Sharifa? Doesn’t look like a very busy shift.”

Sharifa looked between them, surprised at even being asked, and shrugged. “Of course? Something serious?”

It couldn’t have been serious or Seidel would have sent him a message. Then again, Devon didn’t check his interface in the past 15 minutes; what if she did contact him and he didn’t see? 

“Oh, not at all. Just a delicate situation, and I’d like Devon’s expertise.”

Sharifa grinned. “Ah yes, he is one talented guy, indeed.”

Devon glared at her and received a smirk in return. It didn’t feel mean though. Just her usual teasing.

Once out in the corridor, Seidel walked to the lift pods and waited for one to arrive. “So… We didn’t realise this before the boarding was in full swing, but we have a Gemi passenger this hop. They seem to be able to read the signs but I worry about their well-being.”

Devon stared at her. “Just one?” Seidel nodded.

A Gemi travelling alone was almost unheard of: they were very social people. They lived in big families, not necessarily genetically related, and those who suddenly became single (after moving or losing family or falling apart with their previous one) could join special social groups or apply for a place in a dormitory. Back on Kashi-Sulak, Devon had several Gemi acquaintances and all of them were horrified to learn he was single and lived alone. After some explanation, they accepted this as a normal thing for humans but kept trying to introduce him to other humans out of the kindness of their hearts (actually, he had no idea if Gemi had hearts).

But of course there were times when a Gemi had to be alone, as in during travel. Gemi passenger ships had communal cabins and held regular group events for single passengers. Technically, the Hopestar held those too but they only worked for humans. A single Gemi on a human spaceship felt the same as a single human on a Gemi spaceship – utterly miserable.

Gemi occasionally travelled aboard the Hopestar but those were almost always small groups. They would have enough luggage with them to never leave the cabin for the duration of a flight. Could a single Gemi do the same?

“I was hoping,” Seidel said softly, her voice quiet, “that you could talk to them and ask about their wellbeing. Perhaps, explain how things are on our ship. And inquire what we can do to improve their experience here.”

They stepped into the lift pod, and Devon replied. “I can talk to them. If they speak Rh’z, of course. I can help connect their e-chit to our network. So they can send messages with automatic translation.” Gemi had their own tech and their own online networks, and those didn’t always work well with human counterparts. E-chits played a similar role to interfaces but were implanted and controlled with signals from the brain (or whatever substituted the brain for Gemi).

“Oh, that would be perfect. I worry they may require assistance and are unable to ask for it.”

The Third deck was somewhat crowded with passengers who started to explore outside of their cabins. There was a small line to the doctor’s office – those unused to the subspace travel looking for meds. On the way here, Seidel explained that the Gemi submitted their name as Iri Tazh Mu A, which the system didn’t catch as a Gemi name and therefore didn’t alarm her or the captain. It didn’t sound like a Gemi name to Devon either, the vowels and all, but it matched the travel ID, and the fee was paid in full so there was no reason to deny them boarding.

The door to the Iri Tazh Mu A’s cabin was closed and Devon paused in front of it before pressing the call button on the access interface. Seidel stayed near the lift pods so as to not disturb the passenger. She promised to not leave the deck until he was finished and came back.

Devon waited for a full minute and thought about calling again when the door finally slid open. The light in the cabin was dimmed, both bunks and the table were folded into the wall leaving enough space for a makeshift nest in the middle. Iri Tazh Mu A was in the centre of it, using two of the limbs to pull the part of the rustling reflective fabric of this nest over their upper body. It almost looked like they were hiding under a blanket. He took a deep breath, went down to his knees to be on the same level and raised his hands to sign.

HS Rh’z wasn’t silent. He still had to make noises to differentiate between concepts that were hard to distinct even with context. Polite greeting, need, help, question. For another long moment Devon fought a feeling of dread: what if they didn’t speak Rh’z, what if he messed up the signs, what if their religion forbade them from talking to aliens (the last one was doubtful. They wouldn’t have travelled on a human ship if so)? Finally, the Gemi raised a third limb revealing markings on the underside.

Oh.

The solitude, the time it took to understand him and reply, the human-sounding name – it all made sense now. Iri Tazh Mu A did not grow up on a Gemi planet, station or ship. They’ve been stolen as an egg or a larva by raiders, taken to one of the “empty” systems, and raised as a pet/slave. At some point, the human military fleet busted the raider ship and saved the Gemi. They then “returned” these captives to Gemi authorities (they usually dropped them at the steps of the Gemi embassy and called the job done). Iri Tazh Mu A had to learn not just a new language and fast but a whole new way of communication. And depending on when they had been freed, they either still struggled with it or never managed to master it.

Devon lowered his hands and asked softly: “Would you prefer if I spoke in Far-Galactic?” He said it in Far-Galactic, of course.

Iri Tazh Mu A reacted immediately and signed “yes” with three hands. They turned one of the limbs around to reveal a freshly implanted e-chit and a human interface that was held with bio-glue. The interface screen showed an error message. It took Devon a moment to understand but he leaned forward to swipe it away. “Ah, you must have had trouble connecting because it’s in Human Standard. Let me fix this.”

Once the interface connected, Iri Tazh Mu A started using it to show their replies in F-G and send messages to the online passenger boards. Half an hour later, Devin brought them a bowl of specially prepared nutrient mix and left them alone to eat it. He knew he was now responsible for them.