Marlene tumbles into the ship with an urgency that makes Maxie scramble into action before she can even hear Marlie yell ‘fuckin’ go, go, go!’ and collapsing into short-breathed pants until they’re out of the Aerelian atmosphere. Marlene fixes her hair, black and electric blue, before slinking off to her room without so much as a greeting.

Only when they begin to cruise in orbit, masked by layers of radar scrambling and tech so beyond Maxie’s capabilities they resorted to just calling it magic, did they flick the ship into autopilot and join Marlene in the lounge.

“You mask us?” She asks, feet propped up on the sofa, flicking a beer cap at Maxie’s face.

Maxie nods, catching it and rolling it around in their palm like a coin. “I don’t know what Duane did to the ship, but it works.”

Marlene shrugs. “He’s a tech wizard, man. Check it,” she rises, crossing the room to the cabinet in the far corner.

She opens its doors in one graceful, dramatic sweep, her arms flourishing in a way that highlighted her collarbone and swan-neck. Maxie loves that uniform on her, black, skin-tight save for some very tactically placed cut-outs for ‘ventilation’. It almost makes them want to keep doing heists.

Marlene grins. “Stop looking.”

Maxie burns up immediately. “I wasn’t.”

”Don’t worry, sugar. You can see all you want tonight,” she replies, stepping back from the cabinet.

Maxie’s insides jolted at the pet-name. Humans from Gaia had speech variations called ‘accents’, and Marlene always called hers ‘Southern’. This had led to a good three months of Maxie thinking her to be Bangladeshi, and when ‘Southern American’ finally entered the mix, Maxie had thought Chilean. It took a year until they had realized that the ‘South of The United States’ meant Mississippi.

The existence of a ‘Mississippi’ a ‘State of Alabama’ within a ‘United States of America’ within a ‘continent of Northern America’ within ‘Gaia’, was another sociopolitical mess that had taken the Martian whole year to wrap their head around.

But they didn’t have time to dwell on that. Not with a cabinet stacked high with the purest grade Pixie Dust in this sector of the Milky Way.

“Oh…great Dunes, Marlie, this is—“

Marlene finished their sentence for them. “The entirety of Kaiser Escobar’s stash. All for us, and the great citizens of Gaia, Mars, and any other sad soul in this sector. For a small price, of course.

Maxie’s stomach tightened, though they still didn’t understand Marlie’s nickname for Kaiser Enlascarr, they knew one thing:

They had stolen from the most prolific mafia man in the solar system. And he surely was going to be after them next.

Maxie had never got their ass to the control room faster. They yanked out of autopilot immediately and slammed on the gas to hightail out of the planet immediately.

They engaged all systems, boosting speed to overdrive. Almost immediately, a chorus of groans rose up from the body of the ship.

”Who turned the heating off?”

”I didn’t save my game yet!”

”The beer’s gonna fuckin’ go cold!”

Appearing behind them, were three incredibly pissed off team members.

Dwayne stood at the front of the group, beside Marlie. Behind him, A’aron, the scaly, floaty, snakey Venusian, and loyal cartographer.

“Maxie. Would you care to explain why you thought it wise to turn the WiFi off just before I level up in Adventures of Pluto?” His voice (accented ‘Australian’, according to Marlie) was steely cold, red light from the control room gleaming off of his dark temples.

Maxie stuttered. “I—“

A’aron spoke up next, voice low and croaky, light and melodic at the same time. “My heat lamps are off. So, if you would like this journey to be documented, and not have an unconscious cartographer until we see some Sun, kindly turn them back on.”

Maxie smiled awkwardly. “A’aron, you have to—“

Marlene cut them off. “Fridge’s off. My beer’s getting warm, and so is all your food.”

Maxie sighed. “Marlie, this is your fault. Team, I apologise for the apparent powercut, but I had to redirect all non-essential power to getting the fuck off of this planet.”

Fuck. Maxie liked that word. It was the only one Marlene had taught them that didn’t have a sufficient or superior equivalent in Martian.

Dwayne cleared his throat again.”I see that, oh Glorious Captain. May I ask why such a decision was made without consulting any of us lowly crewmates?”

Marlene gave Maxie a look that said ‘don’t you fucking dare.’

Maxie dared anyways. “Marlene heisted all of Kaiser’s gear, and it is all on this ship.”

That evening, despite the feast born from the necessity of saving as much food as possible from rotting in a lukewarm fridge, the atmosphere was tenser than Marlie’s trigger finger, even as they whizzed through the cosmos at untold speeds.

Dwayne cleared his plate in five minutes flat and excused himself to ‘the library’, otherwise known as the single bookshelf installed on the far side of the lounge, filled with majority shoplifted pulp books and porn mags, which he was clearly forcing himself to care about. A’aron followed suit, though he barely touched his plate, and began searching the ship like a cop, trying to find every spare blanket, comforter and hoodie currently going unused.

Neither of them looked at Marlene.

Maxie coughed an unchewed piece of cowmeat down, embarrassed by the little noise they were making in front of Marlene. She hadn’t spoken to them in some hours now, and they were staring to suspect she wouldn’t again for a while.

Marlene pushed a glass of water in Maxie’s spluttering direction.

“I’m…fine…” they choked.

Marlie raised an eyebrow.

Maxie gulped down the water.

Marlene sighed, pushing her half-empty plate away. “I’m going to bed. Goodnight guys,” she said, without addressing Maxie specifically.

Only when they heard her heels clacking off in the East Wing of the ship, did anyone speak.

Dwayne whistled a low note, not looking up from his book, a crappy looking Western featuring a sufficiently distressed and shockingly underdressed young woman on the cover. “Maxie, baby, you’ve really angered your girl.”

Maxie turned from their place at the table. “I have?”

A’aron piped up once from his blanket hoard in the corner. “She’s mad,” he said, voice thin with the effort of staying conscious on a ship ten degrees below normal.

“But, I—“

Dwayne cut them off. “I don’t like it either, Maxie. But you need to speak to her, so it doesn’t feel like we’re down a sharpshooter with the whole sector’s mafia after us.”

Maxie sighed. “How do I do that?”

Dwayne chuckled. “How do I cope with this boring ass analogue entertainment?”

“How do I stop feeling like you’ve all abandoned me on Neptune to die?”

And then, as if by magic, the cabinet door swung open, revealing a treasure trove of answers in the form of a fine, green powder.

The green powder shimmered strangely in the low ship-light, almost breathing inside its little glass vials. Thousands of credits sat stacked in neat rows behind the cabinet doors, enough narcotics to destabilise a moon colony or finance a small war. Dwayne stared at it like a man looking at a loaded weapon someone had tossed into his lap.

“Well,” He finally said. “That’s terrible.”

A’aron made a noise like a serpentine hiss. “You cannot seriously be considering selling that.”

“Can and am.”

Maxie stepped toward the cabinet carefully. “I still do not understand what this substance actually does.”

Dwayne looked offended. “Maxie. Baby. Sweetheart. Have you seriously never encountered recreational narcotics before?”

“I’m Martian.”

“So, no then.”

Maxie folded their arms defensively. “Mars has stimulants.”

“Coffee does not count. It was an import.”

A’aron slither-floated closer to the cabinet, blankets draped around his shoulders like a paranoid monarch. “Pixie Dust is a euphoric hallucinogen,” he explained. “Mild in small quantities. Extremely dangerous in large doses. Popular among wealthy tourists, clubgoers, and junkies. And,” A’aron continued louder, “it is exceptionally illegal in almost every inhabited system.”

Maxie’s stomach dropped another inch. “More illegal than our usual crimes?”

Dwayne considered this carefully.

“Yes.”

Maxie grimaced. “Marlene cannot actually want us to sell this stuff.”

Silence settled over the lounge again, broken only by the distant groaning of the ship straining in overdrive.

Maxie glanced toward the East Wing hallway. Marlene still hadn’t come back. They hated this feeling. It sat beneath their ribs like swallowed metal. On Mars, conflict was loud, direct. Someone challenged you, you challenged back, maybe there was a knife involved, then everyone got drinks afterwards. Humans just ignored each other until the atmosphere became uninhabitable.

Dwayne must have noticed them staring because he sighed and shoved himself upright from the sofa and exhaled sharply. “Well. We can’t put it back,” he stated, turning attention back to the cabinet. “And we can’t dump it: the scanners’ll pick up the chemical signature.”

A’aron’s eyes widened. “Dwayne. No.”

“Oh, absolutely not,” Maxie said.

Dwayne grinned. “We hide the evidence. Just a little,” Dwayne said, already reaching for a vial. “A teeny-tiny, legally-insignificant amount.”

A’aron grabbed his wrist. “Dwayne. We are fugitives. We cannot be fugitives and intoxicated.”

“Buddy,” Dwayne said, popping the vial open with his thumb, “we’ve been fugitives and intoxicated many times.”

A’aron groaned. “I am going to die on this ship.”

“Not today,” Dwayne said cheerfully. “Today we microdose.” He tapped a glittering pinch onto the back of his hand and inhaled. “Oh,” he said, blinking rapidly. “Oh that’s… warm. That’s very warm. Why is everything warm? Why is Maxie glowing?”

“I am not–” Maxie began.

A’aron cut them off. “C’mon Maxie. He’s high.” He muttered something in Venusian that sounded like a prayer and then reluctantly took the smallest possible amount.

Maxie watched them both, horrified.

Dwayne held out the vial. “Captain’s orders.”

“You are not the Captain,” Maxie said.

“Maxie,” A’aron croaked, already swaying, “if we are caught with this quantity, we will be vaporised before trial. Please. Reduce the evidence.”

Maxie groaned. “This is irrational.”

“Correct,” Dwayne said. “Now hurry before I start seeing colours that don’t exist.”

Maxie pinched a tiny amount between their fingers. It sparkled like Gaian snow even beneath the dimmed lights.

“Oh Great Dunes,” they muttered, and inhaled. A slow, syrupy warmth spread through their limbs, and the ship’s hum suddenly sounded like a lullaby sung by a choir of affectionate engines.

A’aron was lying face-down on his blanket pile, mumbling about the heat death of the universe being “a little rude, honestly.”

“Right,” Dwayne announced. “Now that's sorted. We need to fix whatever’s wrong with Marlene.”

A’aron pointed immediately toward the hallway, face still buried in blankets, or at least, Maxie thinks he did. Directions were starting to mean less and less. “Yes. Send Maxie.”

“Why me?” Maxie asked.

“Because she likes you,” A’aron slurred.

“She does not.”

Dwayne barked out a laugh so sudden he nearly choked. “Oh, you poor bastard.”

Maxie frowned, head suddenly heavy. “What?”

“Maxie,” he said gently, “Marlene lets you touch her hair.”

“I fail to see the significance.”

A’aron slurred. “On Venus that is a marriage proposal.”

“That explains a lot, actually,” Dwayne muttered.

Maxie felt heat creep up the tips of their ears. “Humans are impossible to understand.”

“And yet,” Dwayne said, pushing them lightly toward the hallway, “off you go understanding one.”

“I do not think she wishes to see me.”

“That’s true,” Dwayne agreed. “But she definitely wishes for you to apologise.”

“That is irrational.”

“Correct again.”

Maxie glared at him.

Dwayne grinned. “Look, Captain, you accidentally told us all she robbed the most dangerous man in the solar system. In front of the crew. Directly after she specifically warned you not to.”

“When you say it like that–”

“Because that is what happened.”

Maxie groaned quietly.

Behind them, A’aron was already dragging blankets into the ventilation stream like a nesting animal preparing for winter.

“Please resolve your mating dispute quickly,” he called weakly. “I am dying.”

“We are not mating.”

“Yet,” Dwayne said, before pausing to stare at his own hands like they were telling him secrets.

Maxie felt… floaty. And brave…and stupid.

Mostly stupid.

They marched toward the East Wing with a borrowed confidence and the ship suddenly felt much quieter, the absence of laughter or music, or Marlene tinkering with another gun swelling within the ship’s walls like a blister.

Marlene’s door was half-open. Maxie hesitated outside it, heart kicking strangely against their ribs. Through the crack, they could see her sitting on the edge of her bed, still in uniform, slowly cleaning one of her pistols beneath the warm amber glow of a bedside lamp. The sight hit Maxie embarrassingly hard.

Marlene glanced up. “There a reason you’re lurking outside my room like a government agent?”

Maxie straightened immediately. “I was not lurking.”

“You’re high.”

“I am part of a very detailed plan…to destroy as much evidence…as quickly as possible.”

Marlene pinched the bridge of her nose. “Oh, for fuck’s sake—”

They paused, immediately shaking the floatier bits off the high off. “…May I come in?”

Marlene spun the pistol once around her finger before setting it aside. “Suppose so.”

Maxie stepped inside carefully. Marlene’s room smelled faintly of gun oil, perfume, and something sweetly chemical underneath it all. The walls were cluttered with stolen signs, casino chips, old photographs and pinned-up polaroids from planets Maxie had never visited.

Gaia looked very blue in pictures.

Marlene leaned back on her palms. “So. What d’you want, Captain?”

“I made a social error,” Maxie declared, stepping inside and immediately tripping over absolutely nothing. “I said the thing you said not to say. I said it loudly. In front of the crew. And A’aron is dying.”

“He’s not dying.”

“He said he was dying.”

“He always says he’s dying.”

Maxie nodded solemnly. “Then I am dying.”

“You’re not dying either.”

Maxie blinked at her. “You are very pretty.”

Marlene laughed then, a short, tired laugh.

The knot in Maxie’s chest loosened slightly. “There she is,” they blurted before thinking.

Marlene blinked. “What?”

“You were angry,” Maxie said quickly. “Your face looked different. I prefer when you laugh.”

For a moment, Marlene just stared at them. Then she looked down at the pistol in her hands, suddenly very interested in polishing it again. “Well,” she muttered, voice quieter now, “you’re hard to stay mad at, you know that?”

Maxie continued, because their mouth was no longer connected to their brain:

“And when you laugh, my chest does the thing. The… the thing.” They gestured vaguely at their sternum. “The warm thing. Like a heat lamp. For emotions.”

Marlene stared.

“Dwayne says that is because you wish to mate with me.”

Marlene nearly dropped the gun.