The Longest Voyage

The recycled air tasted metallic, a familiar tang that meant negotiations had dragged past the scheduled cycle. Samantha’s throat was dry, but she kept her posture straight, shoulders squared, as the Cygnian delegate droned on about mineral tariffs. The conference chamber was a half-buried dome on Cygnus X-1’s wind-scoured moon, its transparent aluminum ceiling admitting a bruised orange sky. Dust filmed every surface; her boots had left faint prints on the polymer floor when she’d entered. She felt the grit between her teeth.

Across the crescent table, Julian Croft leaned back in his chair as if it were upholstered velvet instead of impact plastic. His smile was small, patient, the look of a man who’d already won and was simply waiting for the concession speech. He hadn’t spoken in twenty minutes, yet his silence carried more weight than the delegate’s entire statement. Samantha knew that silence: it said, You’re junior, you’re late, and you’re wasting oxygen. She refused to give him the satisfaction of shifting under it.

Instead she flicked her stylus against the tablet, highlighting clause 4.3b—export quotas on rare isotopes—and cleared her throat. “The Alliance can accept a graduated scale, provided inspection rights are reciprocal.” Her voice sounded calm, almost bored. Good. She’d practiced that tone in the mirror at fifteen, learning to mask the tremor that always preceded her father’s lectures. It worked on delegates too.

The Cygnian’s facial slits flared, scenting advantage. Julian’s eyebrows lifted a millimeter. Samantha felt the familiar heat rise under her collar, but she kept her hands still, palms flat on the table. She needed this pre-summit concession in writing; Ambassador Thorne had been explicit. Without it, the Halcyon Treaty would stall before the opening gavel, and the Alliance would lose the lithium routes. She would lose the routes. Another year of shuttling between backwater moons, another year of Julian’s smile.

A chime vibrated against her wrist: secure priority. She glanced down. Thorne’s cipher glowed crimson. Delay unacceptable. Summit clock running. She thumbed acknowledgment without breaking eye contact with the Cygnian. “Reciprocal inspections, or we table until next cycle,” she said, letting the words hang. The delegate’s slits narrowed. Julian’s fingers tapped once on the table—irritation, or approval; with him she could never tell.

The Cygnian exhaled a whistling sigh. “Accepted,” he rasped. The translator rendered it flat, but Samantha heard the surrender. She saved the amended draft, encrypted it, and stood. “We’ll forward the ratification packet within six standard hours.” She didn’t wait for pleasantries; the dome’s airlock hissed open at her approach, and the sudden roar of the moon’s wind swallowed any reply.

Outside, the corridor was a temporary inflatable tunnel, ribbed and pale, shuddering under the same wind. She walked fast, boots ringing against the flex-steel plates. Her reflection rippled in the polymer walls: navy uniform crisp, black hair twisted into a regulation knot, cheekbones sharp from too many skipped meals. She looked like the diplomat she was supposed to be, not the woman who’d spent last night rehearsing insults for Julian Croft in the shower.

He caught up at the junction, footsteps unhurried. “Impressive,” he said, falling into stride beside her. His cologne was subtle, expensive; it reminded her of Earth evenings she hadn’t seen in three years. “You actually made him blink.”

“Clause was reasonable,” she answered, not looking over. “Alliance gets what it needs, Cygnia keeps face. Basic math.”

“Basic, yes.” His tone curled around the word, implying the opposite. “Though Thorne might prefer optics that don’t scream desperation. Graduated quotas look like retreat.”

She stopped. The tunnel flexed under their combined weight. “You want to reopen it? File a dissent.”

Julian smiled, teeth white against the corridor’s sickly light. “Wouldn’t dream of it. Just offering perspective.” He reached out, brushed an imaginary speck of dust from her shoulder. “Travel safe, Sam. Summit’s almost here. Wouldn’t want you stuck in transit.”

He walked away before she could answer, coat flaring like an afterthought. She stared after him, pulse loud in her ears. The message on her wrist buzzed again, impatient. She forced her legs to move, toward the port, toward whatever transport still waited. The airlock door slid shut behind her, cutting off the wind’s howl, but the sound followed her anyway—like Julian’s laughter, low and certain.

The port’s administrative ring was quieter than the conference dome, the air filtered to a sterile chill that smelled of ozone and lubricant. Samantha’s boots echoed down the corridor as she approached the docking registry, tablet clutched against her ribs. She already saw the red status bar before the clerk looked up: Courier 7-Alpha—GROUNDED. Mechanical failure. Estimated repair: indefinite.

She set the tablet on the counter. “There’s a mistake. That vessel was cleared for departure six hours ago.”

The clerk, a thin woman with Alliance insignia too new to be scuffed, tapped keys without meeting her eyes. “Inspection flagged a micro-fracture in the primary injector coil. Protocol requires full teardown.”

“Injectors don’t fracture in dry dock.” Samantha kept her voice level. “Run the scan again.”

“I’m not engineering, ma’am. You’ll have to file an appeal.” The woman slid a form across the counter—paper, archaic, designed for delay.

Samantha’s wrist unit buzzed: Thorne again. She ignored it. “I have summit clearance. Override code Reyes-seven-nine. Ambassador Thorne’s signature is on file.”

The clerk’s fingers hovered. “Override authority was… suspended this morning. Security bulletin.” She glanced at a display Samantha couldn’t see. “You’ll need Port Master sign-off.”

The Port Master’s office was three levels up, behind a door that stayed locked until her credentials scanned. Inside, the room was dim, walls lined with inactive holoscreens. Port Master Rinn sat with boots on the desk, chewing stim-root that stained his teeth green. His uniform jacket hung on a hook; the shirt beneath was wrinkled, sleeves rolled to show faded merchant tattoos.

“Courier’s grounded,” he said before she spoke. “Nothing I can do.”

“You can authorize a priority inspection. A fracture that size takes forty minutes to verify.”

“Policy says teardown.” He shrugged, picking root fibers from his lip. “File the appeal. Next cycle, maybe.”

Next cycle was ten days. Summit opened in eight. Samantha felt the numbers click like a round chambering. “Who gave the order?”

Rinn met her eyes then, lazy but alert. “Orders come from orbit. I just push buttons.” He leaned forward, lowering his voice. “Word is you stepped on someone’s lithium deal. Word is you’re lucky the ship’s the only thing grounded.”

The room’s recycled air felt suddenly thin. She understood: not malfunction, not bureaucracy—message. Julian’s fingertips brushing her shoulder, his smile. Travel safe.

She left without another word. The corridor outside pulsed with engine noise, cargo drones clanging against mag-rails. She walked past docking arms where sleek diplomatic cutters sat sealed and out of reach, their hulls reflecting the station’s warning strobes. Each berth required clearance she no longer had.

Her aide, Kwan, waited by the lift, eyes wide. “Ma’am, Thorne’s office is lighting me up. They want confirmation you’re en-route.”

“I’m not.” She swallowed the metallic taste of failure. “Courier’s dead.”

Kwan’s face paled. “Options?”

“None on the books.” She glanced at the public board—every licensed charter showed wait-listed or priced into orbit. She thought of Thorne’s cold summons, of Julian’s certainty. If she missed the summit, the lithium routes would be re-drawn without her, and her career would be footnote. She needed a ship that didn’t care about Alliance manifests.

“Gray market,” she said. “Find me something that flies under registry radar.”

Kwan hesitated, then nodded, fingers already scrolling on his pad. “There’s a cargo hauler, Stellifer. Xylosian captain, no diplomatic rating. Slow—three-week run—but it docks at Halcyon. Departure window’s in ninety minutes.”

“Book it.”

“No booking. Cash on ramp. And the captain’s… particular.”

She exhaled hard. “Show me.”

They descended to the freight levels where the air grew warmer, scented with coolant and alien musk. The corridors narrowed, lighting reduced to amber strips. Docking arm seventeen was a cavernous space echoing with loading drones. At its end sat the Stellifer: a blunt, scarred hull patched with mismatched plating, cargo cranes folded like sleeping insects.

A figure waited on the ramp—tall, silhouette broken by shapes that moved too fluidly to be arms. As she approached, the shapes resolved: two primary tentacles draped over humanoid shoulders, skin dusky violet where the ramp lights touched. A tail, long as her leg, swayed behind him, tip twitching in slow arcs that tracked her footsteps like a metronome.

She stopped at the base of the ramp. “Captain Marty?”

His eyes caught the light—large, dark, unreadable. “You need passage.” The translator flattened his voice, but the mouth shaped the words with precision.

“I do.” She climbed two steps, holding out the datachip with her credentials. “Halcyon Station. Departure tonight.”

His fingers brushed hers as he took the chip—cool, smooth, unexpectedly gentle. The tail snapped once, a sharp crack against the metal ramp, then stilled. He studied the chip, then her face, the silence stretching until the station’s klaxon echoed somewhere distant.

“Price is non-negotiable,” he said finally. “And privacy is absolute.”

She felt the weight of the ultimatum: accept the alien ship, the alien captain, the slow crawl through space where anything could happen. Behind her, the station lights flickered—another warning that time was almost gone. She thought of Julian’s smile, of Thorne’s red cipher, of the treaty clauses balanced on her next breath.

“Agreed,” she said, and stepped across the threshold. The ramp lifted behind her, hydraulics hissing like a sigh, and the door sealed out the corridor light.

The Stellifer’s interior was dim, lit by strips of amber that buzzed faintly overhead. The air tasted of ozone and something organic, a faint musk that clung to the back of her throat. Samantha followed Marty through a narrow corridor, her shoulder brushing the wall every few steps. The ship groaned around them, metal shifting under its own weight.

“This is your cabin,” he said, stopping at a recessed hatch. His voice was low, calm, but the tail never stopped moving—slow arcs, like it was tasting the air. “Compact. Clean. You’ll want to strap in during burn corrections.”

She stepped inside. The room was barely wider than the bunk, with a fold-down desk and a recessed console that blinked awake at her proximity. The ceiling was low enough that she could reach up and press her palm flat against it. No window. No mirror. Just the hum of the ship and the faint scent of him still lingering in the doorway.

“I’ll need privacy,” she said, turning. “And silence. I have work.”

Marty inclined his head. “You’ll have both. I don’t disturb passengers unless the ship demands it.”

His tentacles shifted, one curling slightly as if to emphasize the point. She watched it move, the way the joints folded and unfolded like a living hinge. Then he stepped back, and the hatch sealed between them with a soft hiss.

She exhaled. The bunk gave slightly under her weight when she sat. She set her tablet on the desk and stared at the blank screen. The ship’s engines throbbed beneath her, a slow, deep pulse that felt like being swallowed.

She opened her secure comms. No signal yet—still too close to the port’s interference grid. She closed it again. The cabin walls were thin; she could hear the distant clank of cargo being secured, the low murmur of Marty’s voice speaking Xylosian to the ship’s AI. The syllables were liquid, unfamiliar. She caught her name once—Reyes—and then nothing.

She unpacked quickly: two uniforms, a sleep set, a small case of diplomatic seals and encrypted drives. The rest was data, cloud-locked and inaccessible until they cleared the moon’s orbit. She lay back on the bunk and stared at the ceiling. The ship shuddered, then stilled—docking clamps released. They were moving.

She didn’t feel the acceleration at first, just a subtle shift in pressure, like the moment before a storm breaks. Then the gravity compensators kicked in, and the sensation smoothed. She closed her eyes. The hum settled into her bones.

A soft chime. The console blinked: Departure confirmed. ETA Halcyon Station: 19 days, 14 hours.

She sat up and opened the hatch. The corridor was empty, but she could hear him—somewhere deeper in the ship, the sound of water running, the low creak of metal under stress. She followed the sound.

The galley was a narrow slot between two cargo bays, lit by a single overhead panel. Marty stood at the counter, tentacles moving in tandem as he sealed a filtration unit. He didn’t look up.

“You’re awake,” he said.

“I don’t sleep well on ships.”

He nodded, as if that made perfect sense. “Tea?”

She hesitated. “What kind?”

“Xylosian. It helps with atmospheric transition. Your blood pressure spiked during launch.”

She stared at him. “You monitored that?”

“I monitor everything,” he said, pouring a cup. The liquid was dark, steaming, with a faint metallic sheen. “Ship’s sensors. Passenger vitals. It’s automatic.”

He held the cup out. She took it. Their fingers didn’t touch this time, but the tail did—just the tip, brushing her ankle as it passed. She didn’t flinch, but she felt it like a current. He didn’t apologize.

She sipped. The taste was bitter, then sweet, then something else entirely—like the air before rain. Her lungs felt clearer.

“You said you needed silence,” he said, turning back to the filter. “You’ll have it. But if you need anything else, I’m here.”

She watched the line of his back, the way the tentacles rested against his spine, motionless now. The ship hummed around them, a slow, steady heartbeat.

“I’ll let you know,” she said, and meant it.

The ramp creaked under her boots, the metal still warm from the station’s heat exchangers. Marty didn’t step forward to greet her; he simply waited, silhouetted by the cargo bay’s low amber light, as if the ship itself had grown a body and come to meet her.

Up close, the tentacles weren’t the smooth, rubbery appendages she’d expected. They had texture—fine, scale-like ridges that caught the light when they shifted, a muted violet against the darker skin of his shoulders. His tail moved in slow, deliberate arcs, the tip flicking once, twice, as it tracked her approach. She had the irrational sense that it could taste her heartbeat.

“Captain Marty,” she said again, stopping one step below him. The height difference put her eyes level with the base of his throat, where the collar of his shipsuit opened to show skin mottled in faint, geometric patterns. She forced her gaze up.

He didn’t answer immediately. Instead, one tentacle uncoiled—languid, almost lazy—and extended the datachip she’d handed him moments earlier. She hadn’t seen him move it to a reader, but the chip’s surface now bore a thin, iridescent film, like oil on water.

“Credentials verify,” he said. The translator flattened the cadence, but she caught the low vibration underneath, a resonance that seemed to come from his chest rather than the speaker at his collar. “Passage fee is thirty thousand, half now, half on docking at Halcyon.”

She blinked. “That’s triple the going rate for cargo bunk.”

“Diplomatic cargo carries risk,” he answered. “And you need speed I don’t advertise.”

His tail lifted, curling once around the railing beside him. The movement was casual, but the metal groaned softly under the pressure. She watched the muscle ripple beneath the skin—dense, controlled—and felt an involuntary clench low in her abdomen. It wasn’t fear. It was the sudden, visceral understanding that every part of him could be weapon or welcome, and she wouldn’t know which until it was too late.

She pulled her credit tab from the inner pocket of her jacket, thumb hovering over the scanner. “I want a locked cabin and full comms privacy. No entry without my consent.”

“Standard.” His eyes—black, pupilless—dropped to her hand, then returned to her face. “Consent works both ways on my ship.”

The phrase hung between them, oddly intimate. She tapped the tab anyway, transferring the first half. The tentacle still holding her datachip curled back toward his shoulder, slotting the chip into a reader she couldn’t see. A soft chime sounded from inside the bay.

“Welcome aboard, Diplomat Reyes.” He stepped aside, the tail sweeping wide to clear her path. As she passed, the tip brushed the back of her knee—barely contact, more suggestion than touch—but her stride faltered. She didn’t look back.

Inside, the corridor was narrower than it had seemed from the ramp, the walls ribbed with exposed conduit. The air smelled of warm circuitry and something organic, like crushed leaves after rain. She heard the ramp retract behind her, hydraulics sealing the door with a final hiss, and the sound felt irrevocable, as if the station—and every official safeguard it represented—had just been amputated.

Marty moved ahead to lead, his gait soundless. The tentacles rested again over his shoulders, but the left one twitched each time she shifted her weight, a tiny echo of her motion. She tried walking softer; the twitch stopped. She deliberately scuffed her heel a second later—the tentacle flicked again.

He wasn’t just aware of her; he was listening to her through the deck plates, through the air displacement, through whatever nerve endings lined those ridged appendages. The realization should have been invasive. Instead, it felt like the first honest thing anyone had told her since she’d stepped off the shuttle at Cygnus X-1.

They stopped at her cabin hatch. He keyed it open with a touch, tentacle tip dancing over the pad faster than fingers could move. The door slid aside to reveal the cramped space she would occupy for the next three weeks—walls close enough to touch from the bunk, no viewport, just the low hum of engines vibrating through the floor.

He waited while she stepped inside. When she turned, he was still in the corridor, tail coiled loosely around his ankle, watching her with that same unreadable calm.

“Departure burn in twenty minutes,” he said. “Strap in.”

She nodded. For a moment neither of them moved. Then the tentacle nearest her lifted—slow, deliberate—and tapped the control pad beside the door. The hatch slid shut between them, sealing her into the dim, private quiet of the cabin.

She exhaled, the sound loud in the small space. Her pulse beat hard at her throat, at her wrists, at the place where his tail had almost touched skin. She sat on the bunk, palms flat against the thin mattress, and felt the ship begin to wake around her—engines throttling up, metal sighing under new stress.

Outside, somewhere beyond the bulkhead, Marty’s footsteps resumed, soft and measured. She couldn’t hear the tail anymore, but she knew it was moving, charting her heartbeat against the dark.

She held the datachip between thumb and forefinger, the plastic warm from her pocket. Marty extended his hand—four fingers, no palm pad, skin matte like soft suede—and waited. When she placed the chip on his open palm she felt the faint raised seam of a scar across the base of his thumb. The contact lasted less than a second; still, the air in the cargo bay seemed to contract.

His tail snapped once, a whip-crack of motion that ended as soon as it began. The tip hovered an inch off the grating, perfectly still, as if embarrassed by its own reflex. Samantha’s ears registered the flick as a soft pop. She did not flinch, but her pulse jumped against the collar of her jacket.

“Payment schedule is non-negotiable,” she said, voice level. “Half on embarkation, half on safe docking. If you deviate from the filed flight plan without my written consent, the contract voids and you forfeit the balance.”

He closed his fingers over the chip. “Understood.”

“Passenger privacy is absolute. No biometric logging, no cabin surveillance, no data mining.”

“Agreed.”

She watched his pupils—if they were pupils—dilate until the black swallowed the violet ring at the edge. The translator bead at his throat blinked amber, processing silence.

“Then we have a deal,” she said, and offered her hand because the protocol demanded it.

He took it. Human custom required a brief clasp; Xylosian custom, she would learn later, required stillness. His grip was cool, dry, the pressure distributed evenly across her metacarpals. She felt the micro-tremor in his fourth finger, a vibration so faint it might have been her own heartbeat reflected back. His tail curled once around his ankle and stayed there, a deliberate anchor.

Behind them the port klaxon sounded final boarding. The ramp began to lift, hydraulics whining. She released his hand first.

“I’ll need a receipt,” she said.

He slid the chip into a reader strapped to his forearm. The screen flared green, spitting out a narrow ribbon of plaspaper. He tore it off with his teeth—an oddly casual violence—and handed it to her. The edge was warm.

“Welcome aboard the Stellifer,” he said. “Departure in twelve minutes.”

She folded the receipt twice, tucked it into the same pocket that had held the chip, and felt the ghost of his scar against her fingertips. The ramp clanged shut, sealing the bay in amber half-light. Engines murmured awake beneath the deck, a low vibration that traveled up her shinbones and settled at the base of her spine.

Marty stepped aside, motioning her toward the interior corridor. As she passed, the tip of his tail brushed the back of her calf—deliberate this time, a slow drag that left a stripe of warmth through the fabric of her trousers. She did not pause, did not look back, but the pressure lingered like a fingerprint on glass.

“After you, Diplomat,” he said.

She walked ahead, counting her breaths, listening to the soft pad of his bare feet and the quieter sweep of the tail behind him, mapping her speed, her stride, the minute shift of weight from heel to toe. The corridor narrowed, lights dimming to conserve power, and she understood that the contract had already begun—every step she took inside his ship was a line item, logged somewhere in the fine print of his alien senses.

At the hatch to her cabin she stopped. He reached around her to key the lock, tentacle moving in a fluid arc that brought the ridged underside within millimeters of her throat. She smelled ozone and something greener, like crushed stems. The door slid open.

“Nineteen days,” he said, voice low. “Try to rest.”

She stepped across the threshold. He did not follow. The hatch sealed, and she was alone with the low throb of engines and the taste of his scent on the back of her tongue. She pressed her thumb to the receipt in her pocket, feeling the indent of transaction codes, and realized the barometric shift had not been imaginary: the air inside the ship was already different—thinner, charged, tuned to a frequency her body had begun to recognize as his.