Your Wings Will Betray You

Chapter Seven

"Good news, everyone!" Jorim announced, bouncing onto the bridge with more enthusiasm than he had any right to possess. "I've managed to secure us new parts and a new ID code without selling a single biochemical aerosol weapon!"

Laetus looked up from her paper novel with a grimace adorning her face. "We have got to come up with a better name for those things."

"Fuck You grenades," Kiri suggested.

"The Fleshrender," Rike added.

"The Assblaster," Teodora said.

"Kickin' Chicken," Aeron proposed.

"I vote for Aeron's idea," Sidsal piped up.

Personally, Paika liked both Aeron's and Kiri's ideas. She knew the term 'Kicking Chicken' was used to refer to victims of nerve gas when they convulsed and thrashed around. Since these items were similar, the term could be applied.

Jorim waved his hands at them. "Enough, enough. I've also secured us safe passage to the Houska system."

"What planet?" Aeron asked.

"Galatine IV."

"Absolutely not. That's a backwater shithole mining colony. You know how many days out of the year that planet sees the sun? Five, at most, and that's little rays peeking through the pollution and debris. Every time you get close to completing your contract, your required work hours get doubled. All food needs to be brought in from off-world, so it's expensive as all hell. Black rot and lung crawl kill twenty times more people than any other cause of death."

"How do you know that?" Laetus asked.

Aeron glared at her. "Shut your mouth and go back to painting the walls."

"Oh, is that what you were doing?" Paika asked softly, leaning over as to not disturb Aeron's tirade, which she resumed rather quickly.

"Yeah, it's too white in here, and I don't know why I hate it."

"Humans reportedly feel calmer and more relaxed in spaces with a more natural, uniform palette," Paika explained. "In spaces with no variation in hue, it can elicit the opposite response."

Laetus smiled and rested her head on Paika's shoulder. "I forgot how nice it was to talk to smart people. Gods in hell, your shoulder is cold."

"I've never heard that phrase before," Paika said. "What does it mean?"

"Uh, hmm, give me a second. It's a reactive response, I guess, like saying holy shit or Jesus Christ, but without invoking specifics."

"I thought it was common for religions to have their deities reside in some form of positive afterlife like heaven, not hell," Paika replied, actively recording all of the new information.

"Yeah, that's a generational trend thing. The way I say it, I mean. Me and, like, half the people my age agree that if the gods or one god created all sins, then that is the only infinite crime and therefore they are the only ones who belong in hell. Yes, there is fallibility to that logic, but I mostly rationalize it by believing that bad people get help from people who aren't constrained by human morals or stuff like that, so eventually they might see their heaven, too."

Paika added a note to Laetus's file that she had a very positive outlook on humanity. Not many humans were like that these days, especially not the crew of the Grendel. They had the idea that humanity was a plague, ravaging every planet they set foot on and robbing it of all resources. Paika disagreed, considering she had been surrounded with humans at one point and all they cared about was taking care of the natural life and creating art.