Page 1 of Mutiny

ONE

MEI

It was the dark hours on the ship; everyone else was asleep, and I had the manufacturing bay all to myself, if I didn't count that silent iridescent lump of a male in the corner, his teal skin outlined by the hot pink spikes that stuck out of his head. Asking him to leave would do nothing; he'd just stare at me with those big, dumb purple alien eyes with those thick lashes that I wished I could cut off his stupid shiny face. Besides, I didn't even know where to tell him to go, because no matter how many miles of those labyrinth-like hallways I wandered, the only place they ever led back to was here.

Plus, if he was lurking in that labyrinth, he might catch me when I started my mutiny.

So I didn't say anything, and he just stood in the corner of the room like a volunteer at an art gallery, saying nothing. The machine in front of me hummed, the progress meter ticking closer to completion as it finished the last part I needed for the open flame cookstove.

The part would produce far too much heat for the cookstove, which I already knew, because I was the one who had carefully tweaked the design to make it useless for the kitchen.

If I said what it was really for, that other alien Sigidi that Adesewa was hooking up with would get all panicky and start loudly declaring how I had no intention to ever try to take over the ship.

I got the message.

We were being watched.

Whoever had set us free only to trap us in a comfier cell was keeping an eye on us so that we didn't try to seize control of this spaceship.

It might be a lot nicer than that single room we'd been kept in for months, all crammed together like rats in a lab, but a prison was still a prison, no matter how many different-colored pillows you stuffed in the storage closets or how some of the other women were making the most of it. Noelle had gotten her kitchen she requested, an entire new room that appeared out of nowhere overnight, just like the manufacturing bay had. We had to design and assemble the appliances ourselves, but Sigidi had walked us through how to use some of the more complex machines in the manufacturing bay to utilized saved templates. It was just a matter of figuring out how the alien appliances would do the same things that Noelle wanted.

The machine in front of me let out a soft chime, and with a hiss, the safety latch released. My heart thudded as I lifted the lid and looked down at the small part nestled inside. This was it.

If I did this, there was no going back.

I would officially be starting a mutiny.

I knew I could count on several of the other women to back me if I needed, but not everyone. Sara and Lyssa seemed focused on cutting open as many of our previous captors as they could, removing the mind control chips in their brains and then setting them loose. They'd only succeeded with a few so far, including that lumbering lunk lurking in the corner and that other guy Andrea had immediately pounced on the moment he wandered into our new common room.

I had no idea what to make of the aliens.

They seemed just as clueless about what to do with themselves. The massive wall of muscle in the corner hadn't even protested when I told him he might as well be a literal Bulwark for all he did, standing around doing nothing but watch me like that. I talked it over with Adesewa, and she explained a little more about them and their experiences, and why they all seemed so hesitate around us. I went back and apologized and introduced myself and asked his name, and the meathead deadpanned that it was, in fact, Bulwark!

The whole interaction was so absurd that I gave up trying to be friendly and decided ignoring him was my safest bet.

"That will produce too much heat for the cooking apparatus you are making," Bulwark said. "If you use it without alerting the Captain, you could burn up all the oxygen in the room and suffocate."

I whirled to see that the wall of a man had snuck up behind me and was looking over my shoulder. I craned my neck to look up at him. I wasn't the smallest of women. My height was decidedly average, and I never felt short unless I stood next to a Valkyrie of a woman like Lyssa, but all of these alien males were the same towering height, like they were made with a cookie cutter but decorated with different frosting.

Given what we'd learned about them being essentially manufactured out of alien parts to serve as the individual ground units for some controlling machine overlord, that made sense.

My skin crawled to think of what would have happened to us if the ship hadn't been taken over by our unknown savior and new captor. We didn't know what he looked like or what he intended, other than to make us comfortable in our captivity. If he was willing to talk to us, I might not be as willing to go through with what I planned to do, but so far none of us had even heard of him. We only knew he existed because the aliens with us told us that the Captain was in charge of the ship and they were all going through an application to be crew.

When I asked Sigidi how to become crew, he said that I didn't have the right interface to apply.

That pissed me off.

I'd show him exactly what kind of crew I could be.

"Are you going to alert the Captain?" I asked. "All you've done is stand around doing nothing but watch me work instead of helping. Stepping in now to criticize and snitch on me is incredibly lame."

I don't know why I said that; I didn't want him to help. I didn't want anyone to help because then they would figure out what I was making and what I was planning to do with it. Those words were old irritations from the past rising to the surface.

Bulwark looked down at me, his chiseled jaw far too square for my liking, the strong lines of his muscles far too muscular for my preference; at least that was what I reminded myself. I had no intention of hooking up with an alien, even one that made my mouth water when my eyes drifted down to the edge of his trousers.

He probably had dick spikes or something equally horrifying, I reminded myself as I got a whiff of his scent. I took a quick step back away from him before I could breathe in any more of that heady aroma. He smelled like mint and sweet pea flowers, two of my favorite smells, and no man had the right to smell like that naturally.

"The word snitch didn't translate, and I don't know what that means. I am stepping in now because you didn't need my help before, but now it appears you do. The tool simply needs to be adjusted to add an air injector and an atmospheric shield," he said. He tilted his head at the machine for a moment, and his eyes widened in surprise. "The log indicates those features were removed."