You couldn’t consider yourself lucky until you had passed through the Ozleo Siblings star system without being assaulted by pirates. Part of the Uncharted Region, a place in the galaxy that the Five Ranked Species still hadn’t discovered, illegal aliens and lawless factions had made the three star systems their home.

We certainly knew the chances of getting attacked by the black spaceships before we even decided to follow that route, but it was the quickest way to Yaerus, humanity's home planet since we abandoned Earth. Yaerus was also home to the great Institute.

I was sitting in my room, ready to have a shower at the end of a particularly long shift in the bridge. I removed my clothes and adjusted the temperature of the steam shower of my room. I looked myself in the mirror and tried to untangle my messed up hair after hours being caught in a ponytail. My hair curtained my shoulders, a black waterfall that I never got used to, I couldn’t help but think about Jay.

I shook my head, clearing my thoughts before I took my first step in the shower pod. Piloting the spaceship through this system was exhausting since the autopilot feature didn’t work in the Uncharted region. So, at least one member of the crew had to stay up at all times to adjust the course if needed.

I still asked myself why Silver couldn’t get all the shifts, but then, again she was an android with a particularly advanced artificial intelligence system. It was easier for me to treat her like another one of the crew than like a regular robot. At least that was what I said to myself many years ago when I decided on that. Now, the water running down my naked body, I wasn’t sure I had made the right choice.

But, with the hot water calming down my nerves, relaxing my muscles and dulling my senses, I realized that Silver was not the thing that had occupied my mind lately. For the last six months in space with Jay, the symbiotic alien I knew nothing of, many things had changed.

I was drying my body at the air pressure room when the alarm started ringing through every hallway of the ship. Using the first setting, a warm wind bustled through the air holes around the pod. I was back in my clothes in less than a minute, ready for action.

I ran out of my room and bumped straight into Jay. His beautiful, platinum silver body and big, purple eyes made me gawp for a second. I was afraid he might pick up on something, especially since the last two months, I ended up at the same room as him every single time. However, thick as ever, he proceeded to make one of his usual, irrelevant remarks.

“Is something wrong with my attire human? Your eyes run up and down my body for quite some time now,” he said.

I flushed and kept my mouth open for a second, still tight from the sudden alert. He was wearing a dark blue, sleeveless uniform that kinda toned down his huge muscles. Out of nowhere, I remembered the last time he touched me, six months ago, back at Primordial Earth.

I sighed, and when the words finally came, I wished I had just nodded and ran.

“No, no...not at all. You look hot...I mean, not bad. Yeah, that’s it. Not bad.”

A hit straight at the Hull shook the whole ship. Fortunately, it was Silver’s shift. That meant that we had a high chance of getting away unharmed from this chase. Among the four of us — me, Jay, Silver, and Zan — she was the best pilot by far.

Well, she’s an Android, you can’t hope to rival an Android in piloting. Or in anything, in general.

There was nothing she wasn’t great at, except for cooking. That, she couldn’t do.

Still, the ship was shaking under out feet, both of us trying to stay up, gave our little scene a surrealistic tone. I knew I wanted to run, but the Pirates were not the reason.

“You humans are so strange. We’re in the middle of a fight, and you seem more slower than usual. We should get going, Eladia,” he finally said.

Jay...well Jay was a big question mark. Jay wasn’t a human or part of any of the known species. It was like his whole existence was deleted from the Known Galaxy Archives way before I was born, or way before the human history was even created.

Six months ago, while at an excursion on Primordial Earth, Silver and I found his crashed ship and managed to wake him up from a one-hundred-year slumber, a slumber that caused him to forget everything about the Esuh of the Two Faces, his people.

Long story short? He was a moody, irritable alien with a big idea about himself that kinda winded up with us because our most prized Nusae relic didn’t go anywhere without him.

Yeah, stories like this are not just movie clichés.

Still, during the last six months visiting countless planets to amass more information about the cube, we passed from the generic ‘human’ stage, to him calling me by my first name, occasionally.

At least, from his side. He turned his back on me and I breathed in. I had to focus on the attack, and not the tall, black haired, alien male walking before me. Another hit on the hull shook the ship and snapped me from my deep thoughts. The same thing happened every time I bumped into him like that.

I ran down the end of the hallway and found the elevator door. The swishing sound somehow calmed my nerves. I passed by Zan’s room. I figured it would be best if I sent him to the bridge with Silver. He hadn’t been amid a space dogfight before and since he was a primordial human, he must have been really scared.

“Zan? Are you okay?” I knocked twice but he didn’t answer.

There was no time to lose so I decided to get inside. “Zan…?”

His room was empty.

Right then, I finally remembered. Silver and Zan always shared the shift. Zan, the cute teenage boy with the overgrown hair all over his body, was another hitchhiker from Primordial Earth. He was protecting Jay’s cryo-pod and kinda attacked me when I woke Jay up, only to get into a surprising budding relationship with Silver. They were best friends now, always talking and spending time together. I kinda felt lonely sometimes since she spent most of her time teaching him our language, but at the end of the day, it was okay. Zan was one of us now after all.

“Eladia? Where are you? Jasih is already down the armory, manning one of the cannons. You need to hurry down there and help him,” Silver said through the speakers, her electronic voice no less intimidated.

There were times I considered getting an upgraded assistant, but I always ended up turning down the possibility. Silver was a very special morpher and had been my assistant for as long as I was a Chronicler...which I must admit wasn’t that long.

When I finally got at the armory, I heard Jay swearing down the hall.

“Die you Setrin fucks! You’d wish you had never been brought to life from your hometown cubes!”

Jay had a very particular way of swearing. Most of the time I didn’t understand what he was talking about. But his loud voice was somehow comforting. I would have hated to come down here alone.

I got inside the right canon while Jay was already firing from the left. This was only the second time I had been here so I needed a moment to get comfortable with the equipment. I had to put on the optic helmet, that much I remembered, but I couldn’t remember if the red, flashing button in the left meant danger or was danger itself.

Come on, girl. You have to figure this out quickly.

I put on the helmet, and I quickly got into a virtual image of the outside of the ship. Everything was black with many dots at the horizon distinguishing the distant stars. At first, I felt dizzy and disoriented since my point of view had changed to that of the cannon. But as the first enemy fighter approached, my instincts took over.

By using my hands, I could shoot and ion beam -- a system in the mainframe tracked my movements and synchronized them with those of the cannon. It was high-tech alright, but it was certainly nothing compared to the huge, army dreadnaughts. Those beasts had the most advanced weapons in the galaxy.

Silver was doing her best to maneuver our way out of this situation, but Pirates were best known for one thing, being extremely persistent. However, shooting down one or two of their spaceships usually made them retreat. They had to keep their losses to a minimum since pirating was their only means to get more resources and they could only repair their ships by salvaging.

Most of their firepower was currently focused on Jay’s side. He managed to keep three fighters at bay, all by himself while I tried to work my way around a single target. A small, type 1 fighter, custom build and speed enhanced, tried to intimidate me by firing flares. But I was not that clueless.

I turned my head, aligned the ship’s targeting system, charged the ion cannon, took a deep breath and focused on the right moment.

I took the shot.

I saw the ion beam tear the blackness of the empty space and waited to see the explosion signaling the end of the enemy ship. Only to miss, gloriously.

“Eladia, I can’t keep them very long all by myself. Can you take some load off me?” I heard Jay bellow behind me.

The swarm of fighters had grown bigger on his side. The three fighters had doubled to six, and I couldn’t even handle one. But, for him to ask for my help in that way, I had to try again, this time seriously. During the last six months, he hadn’t even asked me to cook for him or something. He did everything on his own.

So, for the second time, I started the process my dad had taught me in the past -- I aligned the system, charged the cannons, took a deep breath and waited.

‘Don’t just trust the system to make the shot for you. Follow your instincts and always shoot a tiny bit to your left.’

To be honest, I never understood why he said that last part, but I decided to follow my pa’s advice. I followed the target with my eyes, I tried to shut out Silver’s constant status reports, and I took another shot.

The beam traveled quickly through space again, and while I was sure I had missed again, I heard the sound of a crash.

“Boom!!!” I shouted.

I felt Jay’s eyes on me and I tried to cup my mouth with my hands, only to get stopped by the metal helmet. I smiled at my own incompetence.

“I never knew you had it in you,” I heard Jay say behind me.

Well, strange alien stud, neither did I.

But, with renewed confidence, and a new wave of enemies approaching our way, me and Jay quickly managed to scare them off by both destroying a couple more of their forces. By the time we were passing by Hoevis, the last planet of the system, we were way out of the danger zone, and luckily, still in one piece.

The first thing I noticed was my head feeling heavy. I had never had an adrenaline rush like this before. I wasn’t proud I had killed three entirely strangers today, but the excitement of surviving a battle like that somehow had brought me an unprecedented joy.

I wanted more.

The second thing that came to my attention, was that Jay was looking at me the same way I was at him earlier. His eyes nailed in my body, and I felt the blood climbing up to my cheeks.

“Eladia, Jay, we’re out of danger for now. Estimated time of arrival to Yaerus: two hours. I think it’s time for a brief up. Come to the brief room as soon as you can.”

Silver’s voice kinda broke the spell between us. We turned our heads away from each other at the same time.

The Nusae Cube was my priority from now on and meeting the Professor was the only important thing for me now.