XT34

2. The Crucible

Blaeyde turned around, her back against the wall of the large simulator room, and she sat down. She pulled her legs to her chest and wrapped her arms around her knees. She sat there in complete silence for quite some time before the door hissed and clicked open. The loud and sudden noise of the door opening startled her, and she jumped to her feet in alarm.

Blaeyde turned to face whoever it was that opened the door, surprised to see of all people a nurse, clad in a white uniform. The nurse was short and squat and had her hair done up in two messy buns atop her head with a small nose and a nearly rodent like look to her features. The small woman instantly reminded Blaeyde of a hamster, and instantly her brain began playing an old song known as the hamster dance, as if on cue to the nurse's entrance.

Hamster nurse carried a clipboard and had about a dozen pens stuck into the buns in her hair. Blaeyde nodded at the nurse to acknowledge her presence, just before the nurse spoke up. "Please come with me, Miss Flynn." Hamster nurse said. Even her voice, which was high pitched and a little bit squeaky, made the nurse a perfect human caricature of a hamster.

Blaeyde followed hamster nurse down the hall, all the while nervously humming the hamster dance to herself in anticipation of what might happen next. Secretly she was hoping to herself that there would be no shots involved. Every other week Blaeyde's parents had taken her to this special doctor to get the same shot, and it had always been a vial filled with a glowing blue serum.

She hated the shots, but her parents told her that it was for allergies and that she could die if she didn't get the special shot. They never had told her what she was supposedly allergic to, and she suspected that the shot was for something else entirely from the way her parents and the doctor would talk about her in hushed tones. Now that she was seventeen and had finally moved out of her parents' house, them being suspiciously more than willing to emancipate her, she had secretly decided not to go and get the shot.

So far nothing had happened, but she wondered if one day she would wake up in a hospital because of the mystery allergies. She followed hamster nurse down long and boring hallways until they reached the ship's infirmary where Blaeyde was immediately checked in and given one of those annoying hospital wristbands. She was then seated in a large waiting room next to a black squid looking alien and something that looked like a large white walking hairball in a black tuxedo with small beady black eyes. Seeing aliens on the ship was not new to her, and Blaeyde didn't mind having to be in the same room as them at all.

"So, what are you in for?" Blaeyde casually asked them, trying to make small talk, even though most humans did not speak with other species or even acknowledge their presence in the room. There were usually very few aliens on board the ships in the iron sparrow fleet because most races liked to keep to their own kind, but occasionally there were other races on the ships. Blaeyde didn't care that they were different, though, because all her life she knew what it was like to be treated in an inhumane way just because she was different, and she made it a point to treat the aliens as equals. The squid guy turned towards her and pointed at a large purple growth on its head while muttering profanities that should never be repeated in any record of the event. The white fuzzy person rolled its eyes and said, "He would rather not discuss the matter at this time, and as for me, my mate is in labor with our twelfth child."

"Well, I'm happy for you." Blaeyde said to the furry man before saying to the squid like alien, "Er...Hang in there pal.", deciding not to make any further conversation.