I stepped out of the small workshop building, greeted once again by the depressingly gray scrapyard. 

“Ke’xian,” called out Ektol, eyeing the expression on my face as if trying to discern my thoughts, “were you able to get the starship?”

“Sort of,” I responded, “it’s conditional, ‘cause things didn’t really go how I thought they would.”

Shortly thereafter, Meixe followed suit out of the doorway, and stopped behind me. Ektol’s antennae twitched, and his pincers clicked loudly.

“Meixe?” 

I glanced at Meixe and was met with somewhat of a glare before I turned back to face Ektol. 

“You know her, Ektol?”

“Indeed, mas-”

“Ke’xian.”

“Indeed, Ke’xian. She was the engineer that I wished to introduce to you initially.”

Now, this was an interesting turn of events. Meixe looked at Ektol with a raised lower lip and a scrunched-up right eyebrow, and a slightly tilted head - this was far from the expression that one would make when meeting an old acquaintance, or so I would assume.

“Hey,” Meixe said hesitantly, “Who are you?”

“Do you not remember me?”

“Not particularly, no.”

There was a brief but awkward moment of silence between the two, broken by the clacking of Ektol’s pincers.

“I am Ektol, servant of mas-”

“You’re not my servant,” I reminded Ektol, massaging my forehead with the tips of my fingers, partially covering my face out of both frustration and embarrassment.

“He’s a friend, Meixe.”

Ektol paused for a moment, then continued.

“I made your acquaintance on board the Itsko, the xi’vaix class transport vessel.”

“The Itsko?”

“On transit between the sixteenth and seventeenth galactic half-sector, do you not remember it?”

Meixe looked down at the ground for a moment, kicking away a small pile of junk and dust, then up to the roof of Haven. She had a slightly troubled expression adorning her pale blue face. Her gaze then darted back towards Ektol.

“Oh, ‘course I remember,” Meixe said, the fiery yellow glow of her eyes sparking back to life, “you were the one eating mechanical grease from the exosuit I was working on!”

There was another pause.

“Um, Ektol…” I turned to face the insectoid, “I don’t wanna sound judgmental or anything, but, you eat mechanical grease?”

“Indeed Ke’xian, I am a consumer of many kinds of grease, though not for nutrients. It lubricates my pincers, you see.”

Ektol opened and shut his pincers proudly as if to demonstrate just how smooth and ‘lubricated’ they were, and I shook my head.

“Well, whatever,” I said, “Meixe here decided to join the team, only condition is we split the winnings.”

Meixe nodded in return, focused on Ektol. He was an interesting looking creature, to be fair, with his shimmering, black shelled body, and his spectacularly large stature.

“But, Ke’xian,” Ektol’s long, spiked appendages moved with a slight uncertainty, “How do you know that we will win?”

I sighed.

“Have a bit of faith, please,” I waved my hand at Ektol, “things tend to go my way, most of the time.”

Honestly, despite my assurances, I couldn’t quite be certain that I would win. At the end of the day, it was all still a gamble, realistically. But, the best possible result of the gamble that we were taking was me getting a fresh start; three billion te’vrei is hardly anything to scoff at. Hell, there were entire small planets which weren’t worth that much.

The risk was worthwhile.

“That’s all well and good, Ke’xian, but, doesn’t the Boundary Marathon need one more thing?”

I glanced over at Meixe, mildly confused.

“We’ve got a pretty fantastic pilot,” I declared with a wink and a smirk, much to her dismay, “an engineer and a… er, whatever Ektol wants to be, I guess.”

Ektol turned to me with a tilted head, his mandibles twitching. 

“I shall be a servant on the-”

“Right. Anyway, we also need a pretty fantastic scientist, mister fantastic pilot,” Meixe interrupted. I motioned to Ektol to stay quiet, and his feelers twitched in acknowledgment, albeit hesitantly.

“A scientist in a race? For what?”

“We’re traveling at faster-than-light speeds through space, anything could go wrong.”

“Ain’t that what the engineer is for?”

Meixe facepalmed so hard that I was scared that her brain might have been turned into mush.

“No, you moron.”

“Well, then, what is the engineer for?”

“Machinery, tech, mechanical stuff. What do you suppose would happen if antimatter storage got fucked up?”

I shrugged.

“The entire ship would be vaporized in a blast with, like, a gigaton yield?”

Meixe’s glimmering eyes narrowed.

“What’s a… gigaton?”

“It’s an Earth measurement of explosive power - wait, what do you use here? I assumed the ICD would translate it.”

“Ah, forget it! What if something goes wrong with the drive field during a quantum jump? Or the drive fails to collect enough exotic matter?”

I still wanted to know what the galactic standard unit for blast yield was.

“We would, um, be torn to pieces, I think.”

“And what if-”

“Okay, okay! I get the point. But where do I find a scientist?”

“I don’t know, you found me. Figure  it out.”

“Okay, and um,” I added nervously, “what actually is the galactic standard unit for blast yield?”

Meixe sighed and rolled her eyes.

“We use ‘ilvs’, same as for energy.”

“Ah, gotcha.”

“Now shoo, I’m gonna fix up that ship,” Meixe ordered, with a hand on her hip and the other being thrust in my general direction, “and you better be back here with a scientist, or the deal is off, cause I’m definitely not-”

“Yeah, yeah, cool the thrusters, Meixe. Come on, Ektol, let’s find us a scientist.”

And now, with my question answered, and my confidence trampled ever so slightly, I headed off in search for my final crewmate.

If it wasn’t already abundantly clear, Haven was a truly massive expanse of metallic buildings, walkways and city-scale platforms, and finding a scientist amongst all that would be like trying to find a scortori thorn in a couple thousand stacks of gron. Suffice it to say, I hadn’t an inkling of where to even begin.

Ektol and I began strolling back to the small, shitty little hovel I called ‘home’, while I thought about where a scientist may be hiding.

“Ektol.”

I continued walking, and heard no response.

“Ektol!”

Again, nothing but the sound of my own voice.

“Ektol, what in the galaxy are you up to? Hello?”

I looked around, and Ektol was standing there, sure enough, tentatively flicking his antennae.

“Ektol, damn it, I told you to quiet down for half a t’erg, you ain’t silenced for life!”

“Of course, Ke’xian, I am deeply-“

“Don’t apologize. Do you have any clue where to find a scientist?”

“Unfortunately not, Ke’xian.”

I folded my arms and leaned against a nearby wall, contemplating as I idly watched the ships sailing by. We were so close to actually getting this ridiculous race off the ground, so close, I just needed a scientist and I’d have a real shot at earning a ticket out of my miserable life. I’d be able to forget it all, move on.

I glanced back at Ektol, who appeared to be desperately fiddling with his MNID.

“What are you looking up?”

“Science labs, institutes, other locations within Haven where it is likely a scientist might reside.”

I sighed.

“Ektol, my exoskeleton-ed friend.”

“Yes, Ke’xian?”

“You realize we can’t just wander into a laboratory and drag a researcher out so they can race with us, right?”

“That is… a solid point, Ke’xian.”

“If it were that simple, we wouldn’t be in this mess.”

And just like that, we were back to the drawing screen again. 

Unfortunately, though my charisma brought me pretty far, all things considered, it never brought me in contact with a scientist. Meixe being an engineer was a pretty absurd coincidence on its own. Considering that we were only in this situation because of my idiotic drunk shenanigans, I had already struck neutronium once, and was probably not going to strike it again.

“Ektol, I’m starting to think we might have to pull a no-show and give up on this whole thing.”

“After the effort you have already put in, that would indeed be quite a pity.”

“Right? And we’d be losing out on a lifetime guarantee of freedom. That’s just… depressing.”

“Quite so, Ke’xian.”

My gaze fell to the floor and I was practically on the verge of ripping my own hair out of my own head. 

“Damn it all! If only I could-“

“Ke’xian.”

“What?”

I looked up at Ektol, who stared back at me with his fist-sized compound eyeballs.

“I have an idea.”