I stretched in the darkness, impressed by how much room the cockpit had. It was larger than those of the DDF ships. I engaged my light-line for a little illumination and checked the clock. 0430. Two and a half hours until I needed to report for class today.

All things considered, I wasn’t that tired. Just a little achy from—

Something was sitting and watching me from the inside rim of the cockpit.

The creature wasn’t like anything I’d ever seen in the caverns. It was yellow, for one thing. Flat, long, and kind of blobby, it had little blue spikes along its back, making a pattern against its bright yellow skin. It looked like a big slug the size of a loaf of bread, but thinner.

I couldn’t make out any eyes, but the way it folded up on itself—the front portion raised—reminded me slightly of a… a chipmunk? Like from the videos we’d watched in class of a few wildlife preservation caverns.

“What are you?” I asked softly.

My stomach growled.

“And, equally importantly,” I added, “are you edible?”

It twisted its “head” sideways to look at me—though it still didn’t seem to have any eyes. Or a mouth. Or, well, a face. It did let out a soft trill, a flutelike sound, from its back spikes.

If I’d learned anything from collecting mushrooms in the caverns, bright colors meant: “Don’t eat me, or soon my brethren will be eating you, sapient one.” Better to not put the strange cave slug into my mouth.

My stomach growled, but when I fished in my pack, I found only half of an old algae ration bar. I might have had barely enough time to get down to Igneous for food, but that would feel like… like slinking home, tail between my legs, beaten.

The admiral wanted to break me, did she? Well, she didn’t know what she was up against. I was a world-class, highly trained, longtime expert rat girl.

I leaned my seat up and dug around in the back of the surprisingly spacious cockpit. Usually, every centimeter of room was needed in a fighter—though this one seemed to have a cargo spot behind the pilot’s chair and what looked like a fold-out jump seat for a passenger.

Last night, I thought I’d seen some old tools in here. Sure enough, I found a coil of plastifiber rope. The sealed cockpit had preserved it, though this stuff was pretty much indestructible anyway. I uncoiled some and unwound it into string.

The slug thing remained on the control panel, watching me, occasionally tilting its “head” and making flute noises.

“Yeah,” I said. “Well just you watch.” I pushed the canopy open all the way—I hadn’t dared close it last night, for fear that there wouldn’t be ventilation—and jumped down. As I had hoped, I heard scuttling in the darkness and found rat droppings near some mushrooms along the wall.

I’d have preferred my speargun, but in a pinch, a snare would work—set with my ration bar as bait. I stepped back, pleased. The slug had moved onto the wing of the old ship, and it fluted at me in a way that I chose to hear as inquisitive.