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Airlock was not taking her time. She was eating like a black hole. She had one of the dry buttery things in one hand, half-eaten, and a big meat pie in the other. She seemed to be chewing on both at once, not even swallowing before taking another bite.
“You seemreallyhungry, Airlock Eve,” Emissary said.
I leaned forward and raised an eyebrow at her. “You must have been really active last night. Why don’t you tell us all about that?”
She spoke with her mouth full. “I don’t want to bias you two toward any one decision.”
“We’ve already decided,” I said. “We’re going to fuck. We’re tainted, so we might as well fuck.”
Emissary blushed “Don’t talk like that, Weapons, it’s gross.”
So High Commanddidknow what “fuck” had meant. Or at least Emissary did. High Command was reportedly not allowed to gossip. They must have gotten all their gossip straight form the horse’s mouth, but then they weren’t allowed to discuss it with other women like we did.
I leaned even closer in toward Airlock as I side-eyed Emissary. Then I met Airlock right in her very guilty-looking eyes. “Is it gross, Airlock? Didfuckinggross you out?”
She was red as a tomato. She tried to slouch down in her chair, but the thing around her torso—which I was pretty sure at this point was just a piece of cloth squeezing the crap out of her—didn’t let her slouch down very low.
Emissary shot me a bitchy look, like she was telling me I was being too hard on Airlock. She smiled at Airlock and squeezed the blushing woman by the back of her hand. “Airlock Eve, as a former member of High Command, I’mfamiliarwith the broad outline of sexual intercourse. You two probably think I know everything, but even in High Command we sought to protect ourselves as much as we could. I actually know very little about what it would really be like to…todo it.”
I shot Airlock a look now. From the way she looked at me, she must have been just as surprised as I was about how little Emissary Eve knew. Or claimed to know.
Emissary cleared her throat. “You probably both think we were lying to you about our archives getting scrambled. That part was true, actually. We have fragments and pieces, but not much more than that. We couldn’t reach out to other colonies to recover the data, as there was too much risk of male contamination. So, there’s a lot of things we don’t know, and there are many potential dangers we should be watching out for.”
“For example?” I asked.
“Cooties,” Emissary said. “The archives mention them as something that men can give you. There was a type of inoculation that men and women would get at a young age to protect against cooties, but we don’t actually know what cooties were or how dangerous they may have been. Still, I doubt a cootie shot would have inoculated us against cooties from Khetar males.”
“Maybe cooties don’t exist anymore?” Airlock suggested.
“Or,” I said, “maybe the Khetar don’t have them. Maybe cooties are a human thing.”
“That’s just it,” Emissary said, “we really don’t know. I may have been High Command, but Airlock Eve is the only one—”
“Do I still have to be Airlock?” Airlock asked. “Shouldn’t we change our roles now?”
“Breeding Eve,” I said, snickering.
Airlock sat up straight again, and she was no longer blushing so much. “And Breeding Weapons, and Breeding Eve II. What role do you think you two are going to have here? We’re all going to have the same role now. Getting fucked by aliens.”
“No,” Emissary said, sitting up straight and sticking her chest out. “We’re women of Eden. We won’t just roll over and do what these men tell us. We still have a duty to our planet and to our people. It seems inevitable that our old way of life will be gone, but the three of us are the first ones to establish what our new life will be like for all of Eden. Like it or not, we’re going to be important women in the history of our world. We have to set the tone for what women on Eden will do. Whatever choice we make, we must show the Khetar that we are not weak and will not just do whatever is asked of us.”
“Which is why I’m not Airlock anymore,” Airlock said, adjusting the big stupid feather on her hat to make it point up even straighter.
“I’m still Weapons,” I said, “whichever alien man I fuck, I’m going to get him to tell me how this technology works. I want to figure out all this Hive Mind stuff, and I’m going to find a way forusto interface with all of this technology. I don’t fully trust these aliens, and I’m pretty sure the only way we’re ever going to fight back—assuming we need to fight back—is if we can control their technology. Their weapons. So I’m still Weapons.”
Emissary nodded. “I’ll take a more diplomatic approach. I’ll work to get good terms and treatment for any other women who come ontoWrathor other packships, and inevitably for all the women on Eden when the Khetar start landing on our world. So I’m still Emissary.”
Airlock rose her chin high, like some kind of old-timey princess. “I’m not Airlock.”
“Excuse me,” the ship said, “but Thuliak has declared that youareAirlock, and anyone who addresses you by any other name will be thrown in the brig.”
“Excuse me?” Airlock asked.
“So,” I said, smiling, “if we try to give her a new role to call her by, you’ll suck us through those walls and spit us out in a jail cell?”
“Yes,” the ship said, “at least until you agree to call her Airlock again.”
“Looks like you’re Airlock,” I said, laughing. I was really starting to like the ship. And Thuliak.
