Cyrus blinked as he woke, the soft light calming rather than painful to his dilated eyes. He heard soft snores and grunts coming from somewhere in the room, and his mind momentarily panicked, springing his eyes open wide and darting from left to right to see what had invaded his bedroom.

  It took him a few anxiety-ridden moments to reorient himself. There was another brief moment of panic as he realized he wasn’t in his own bed, but overall, the fear gripped him much less than he had anticipated.

  He came to the conclusion that he was aboard the Cosmic Sentinel, the trickle of data from the ship ever so lightly noticeable at the corner of his consciousness assisting in the realization. His memories from the previous day rapidly replayed in his mind, coupled with the data streaming in, which allowed him to understand that the SCANT had been working overtime during several unconscious hours to not only repair and enhance his brain, but also his overall physical condition.

  Through his new connection with the ship, he had more intimate knowledge of what was occurring—not only with the repair systems along the hull and inside the ship, but also within his own body.

  He closed his eyes once more to calm himself and prepare to fully awaken, and he also found he was able to turn on an internal camera and see, from the corner of the room, the goblins also in the medical center as they, too, slowly started to wake. He saw that Daegnon was already out of bed and was making his way to the restroom. He could also see himself still lying on the floating bed.

  His body, perceived from this angle, looked slightly less bulky than he remembered from when he would see himself in the mirror in his apartment. His arms, which were exposed above the small sheet covering him, looked larger as well. His clothing was no better than tattered rags after the attack from Raknak and the others, but his blue collar stuck out above the sheet covering him. He wasn’t sure where the fabric had come from, but didn’t question it too much in this moment.

  ‘The SCANT has been working not only to improve your mental functions and connection to the Cosmic Sentinel but also throughout your body, improving muscle mass and moving unneeded fats back into your digestive system for removal,’ Hoshi spoke into his mind, reading his surface thoughts.

  As she said this, a gurgling sensation began in Cyrus’s colon, alerting him to exactly what the AI had been talking about.

  With some urgency, Cyrus threw the sheet from him and, knowing the bathroom attached to the medical center was already occupied from viewing the room through the camera, hustled down the hall to find the nearest restroom.

  Once he was finished with his more urgent needs, Cyrus took the opportunity to utilize the shower cubicle located in this bathroom to finally clean himself off.

  He stripped the torn and blood-stained clothing from his body and, very uncharacteristically, piled them on the bench near the door, wishing he had something else to wear once he was clean.

  He found that the shower used actual water, but it came in short bursts. It was complemented by what Hoshi described as “acoustic purifiers,” which pushed the water onto him, trapping any unwanted dirt, skin cells, and other microbes before it was once again collected below and sent into the disposal area, where the ship cleaned and reprocessed the water for other uses.

  The contaminants removed were then molecularly remodeled and used as part of the nutritional bars, a fact that both impressed and grossed Cyrus out.

  As he stepped out of the utilitarian area, he felt cleaner than he ever had before. He doubted that was truly the case, but having gone so long without being able to clean himself had been an ordeal he hadn’t enjoyed.

  There was no need for a towel on the ship, which he quickly found out, as he stepped out of the shower area and a large blast of heated air assaulted him. The gale-force wind whipped the water away in moments and left his hair especially frizzy.

  “Wow, where have you been all my life?” he asked upward, eyeing the small vent which had summoned the blast.

  Cyrus turned to the bench where he had left his clothes, a sour feeling knotting his stomach as he faced having to redon his old clothing. To his surprise, his outfit was nowhere to be seen, but in its place sat a nicely folded set of new gray clothes.

  “Oh, thank the gods,” he said to the ship.

  He picked up the first article and it unfolded to reveal a form-fitting t-shirt. There was nothing special about it, but it was clean and looked like it would fit him, so he pulled it over his head and over his chest. It fit well, falling to just below his stomach.

  The next article he picked up was a new, clean set of underwear, similar to the ones he had taken off, but seemingly made of a single piece of fabric, but without the hole in the front. Cyrus eyed the article and decided that he didn’t use the fly much anyway, so he slipped the underwear over his legs and pulled them up.

  Next was a pair of pants. These were a slightly thicker material, but the same color. He held them up and inspected them. They were utilitarian with a straight leg, but along each leg were several pockets, making them look similar to cargo pants, but without the bulkiness of the large pockets. They also had a built-in belt, but rather than the traditional loops, it was more like a tube the belt went through.

  This belt itself was round rather than flat as well, and the buckle was not something Cyrus had seen before and he didn’t exactly know how it worked. The ends draped from the ends of the tubes several inches, reminding him more of drawstrings.

  He had nothing else to wear, so he stepped into the pants and pulled them up. He went to tie the belt, but as the ends drew near, they automatically attached to each other and began to cinch.

  “Wow, that’s handy,” Cyrus said as the two ends pulled into one another, leaving a small clasp-type buckle sitting at the front.

  There was one final piece of clothing folded on the bench. This one was finally a different color, although not by much. He picked it up and found a light jacket. There wasn’t much to it other than a zipper-like device on the front and two small pockets where his hands could go. He slipped the jacket on and found the zipper was not in the center as he had thought, , but off to the right side of the jacket.

  He pinned the two pieces together, thinking he would need to find the pull, but similar to how the belt cinched itself, as soon as the pieces came close they attached and began to seal the jacket up.

  The seam rose, climbing to the left side, the connection sitting asymmetrically along his torso. It climbed to the top and the entire jacket seemed to relax a little, as though the stiffness of the fabric gave way, leaving the material more soft and comfortable.

  He looked down at himself, the line of the enclosure mechanism was outlined in black which went from the left part of his neck down to the right side of his stomach.

  ‘Searching through your planet’s databases, I found that many of your space-related programs utilized this simplistic yet convenient form of exterior covering. I hope you don’t mind, but I have dressed the Goblins in similar attire,’ Hoshi mentally told Cyrus as he looked over the outfit.

  There was a pair of sleek black boots he hadn’t noticed before sitting next to the bench, so he took a seat and began to slide them over his feet, the insides of the boots were so comfortable and fitted he didn’t feel the need for socks.

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  ‘This…’ he paused, once more looking over the outfit, its design bringing back memories of TV shows he had watched all his life, ‘This feels great, Hoshi. Thank you,’ Cyrus mentally thanked the AI as he processed the feeling of pride and appreciation.

  It had been a very strange shift in life for Cyrus, and although he had accepted this would be his new life, the enormity and absurdity of it hadn’t fully hit him until now. He turned to the mirror there and when he saw himself, wearing what basically amounted to a starfleet uniform, those feelings sank in, leaving him more grateful than anything for the opportunity he now had.

  ‘You are very welcome, Cyrus,’ Hoshi said as the AI appeared in his vision wearing the same jumpsuit. ‘There is one last thing I wanted to add, if you don’t mind.’

  ‘Okay, yeah, what’s that?’ As Cyrus mentally asked, a small silver pin began to form on his left chest. The pin was being created by the nanites within the material, and this was the first time he had been able to witness them doing something like this. They worked faster than he would have imagined, creating the pin in a small metallic cloud. Once the pin was finished, the cloud simply melded into the fabric of his outfit.

  The pin itself looked like a small representation of the Cosmic Sentinel in a basic design, as though seen from the side. It showed a triangular shape with a wider, yet only outlined, triangle side at the front and a fin extending downward from the rear and ending in a circle. Above the triangular representation of the body of the ship were four small, open circles.

  ‘That’s great, Hoshi! This is like our ship’s crew’s symbol then? What are the extra circles? Are those like my designation?’ Cyrus excitedly asked.

  ‘Yes, since you are the pilot, you have the same number of pips as Daegnon. His pips are solid to show his rank being slightly higher as captain,’ Hoshi explained. ‘Glix and Raknak will have three pips, and theirs will also be solid,’ Hoshi added with a smile.

  ‘That’s perfect, Hoshi. Great thinking,’ Cyrus said and made his way back to the rest of the Goblins. He had been ‘watching’ them the entire time. He found that his mind was exceptionally adept at multitasking now, and he had kept the camera in the medical bay on, even though he had left.

  He hadn’t focused on it, but still knew basically what had been happening in his absence. The information was present nonetheless, although in a very minor way.

  ‘This whole being a ship thing is going to take a lot of getting used to,’ he thought to himself as he exited the restroom and re-entered the medical center to join the other Goblins, who were now dressed in their own stylish jumpsuits and overseeing the re-awakening of their other three members.

  It didn’t take long to wake the three remaining Goblins. It took longer to explain to them what was going on. Then there was another waiting period while they all three apparently showered and dressed in the same bathroom.

  Cyrus wasn’t a fan of sharing a bathroom with anyone, but he knew that in most pre-modern civilizations, mutual bathing and restroom facilities were common. So, while it wasn’t something he chose to do, it didn’t surprise him that they all were fine with using the same facilities.

  Finally, all the Goblins, as well as Cyrus, were dressed in their matching uniforms and gathered around to find out what needed to be done and where they were to be assigned. Daegnon and Hoshi, looking like Grubnash, had been discussing how to best deploy the new Goblins, and Glix had offered her opinions as well.

  Luckily, the three new Goblins—Khibi, Prayda, and Gooniz—had the benefit of the SCANT working on them while they slept, so in some ways, they were further along in their enhancement than the original three.

  “Khibi, you and Raknak go back in the conduits,” Daegnon said, his command over the language noticeably better than before. An image of Grubnash waved them out the door. “Prayda, you are with me. We’ll start in the halls leading to the command center. Gooniz, you help Glix; do what she says.”

  Daegnon looked to Cyrus then, as did the rest of the Goblins. This was the first time Daegnon was going to use his authority over someone other than the Goblins, and they all were curious as to how the confrontation would go. This interaction could possibly set the tone for how the Goblins interacted with the human, be it as equals or as stubborn subordinates.

  “Cyrus, since you are too large to fit in the conduits, you can repair the Cyclotron Core before you return to the pilot's chamber,” Daegnon said with some apprehensiveness mixed with a little too much commanding presence, making it sound as though he were almost yelling but in a frightened way.

  Cyrus stifled a chuckle and almost began to speak, but he wanted to add a little something else. In all the good military movies, there was always a sign or a salute when given an order, so Cyrus wracked his mind for a second before actually responding. When he did speak, it was in a tone of respect, “Yes, Captain,” he said as he threw a backward peace sign with his right hand over his left chest.

  Daegnon saw the two fingers of the human come up and make the impromptu salute and understood that this was a good way to confirm that they were a solitary unit. He quickly mimicked the salute, bringing up two of his fingers to his chest and nodding to the human, a smile turning the corner of his lips as he did so.

  The next few weeks proceeded in a similar fashion, with crew quarters assigned to each of the crewmembers the next day. Khibi and Raknak chose to bunk together, which the other Goblins seemed to find humorous but didn’t question. Cyrus, not understanding the situation between the two, found the bunk arrangement odd, but didn’t feel he knew the Goblins well enough yet to ask them what was going on.

  The entire crew would meet in the morning to discuss the day’s schedule. At least what they were designating as morning. The schedule of day and night was difficult to adjust to, even though the ship had an internal time**-keeping schema similar to Earth, but without an actual sense of day and night, their bodies had a difficult time adjusting. Although setting their meals to eat a final time before sleeping did help them adjust, the “food coma,” as Cyrus put it at the end of the day, along with the tiredness of their bodies from performing the repairs and maintenance the ship required,allowed them to generally drift off to sleep easily.

  The binary star system they were located near provided additional resources and also helped recharge and repair some of the ship's systems. The gaseous streams provided rare minerals and molecules, which the Cosmic Sentinel was able to intake, process, and reuse.

  Raknak, using an amazingly high-tech space suit along with his new claw-like feet, which were helpfully magnetic as well, was able to conduct repairs outside the ship. His first assignment was to repair the repair drone manufacturing facility, which was also located on the exterior of the ship. This was a crucial step, as the facility was needed to produce the drones required for other vital repairs. The repairs to that system were a huge benefit, allowing the drones to once again be produced and contribute to further repairs.

  Once the facility was operational, he continued to assist with exterior repairs, greatly speeding up the repair process. While there were repair drones present outside the ship, his brute strength came in handy removing remaining rock from the hull.

  Glix took to her role as chief engineer faster than any of them had anticipated. She learned the systems in record time and even took and passed the exam that Hoshi had bypassed for her when she was forced to rescue Raknak. When she took the test for herself, she didn’t get a perfect score like Hoshi had but scored an impressive ninety-two percent.

  Cyrus, along with helping out and performing repairs that would have required the Goblins to use some sort of ladder or lifting system, also spent his time training in the Exo-pilot terminal to become more aware of the ship and its systems. The modules he went through showed him how to better use the ship's thrusters, onboard tools, and weapons. It also provided virtual training in areas such as tactics, using the JUMP drive, and how to locate additional resources the ship required.

  Hoshi had told him to refrain from making any other actual movements to the ship until repairs were complete, so he was unable to get any real-world experience. However, from what the AI had inferred, the virtual space was identical to real-world situations, and over the course of the following weeks, he flew numerous scenarios, even able to try dogfighting in some of the training modules.

  Daegnon, Prayda, Gooniz, Raknak, and even Khibi also spent a fair portion of their day immersed in training with the ship’s AI. These were often general knowledge information, but once each Goblin’s talents were assessed and confirmed, the training modules they worked through targeted the specific roles they would be taking.

  Daegnon, of course, was captain, so his training focused on strategy, negotiation, and a broad base of knowledge of the ship and its systems. Prayda lived up to Daegnon’s reference as being silver-tongued, so his role was to be in charge of communications.

  Gooniz, who Cyrus hadn’t had a lot of interactions with, had a penchant for biology. He was trained on how to run the medical center as well as being able to follow another of his hobbies and would be in charge of the horticultural gardens once they were able to find seeds to cultivate.

  Raknak, since he was the most inclined to violence and by far the strongest, was trained to be head of security. He excelled at weapons training as well as personal combat. His weeks were among the most tiring and included personal training each day to more quickly change his physique into losing the paunch and gaining some much-needed dexterity.

  Khibi stayed relatively neutral, no special talents or interests manifesting due to his training, although his intelligence overall was considered high among the Goblins. Due to these factors, he was set to be a more all-around generalist, not having an area specific to him, but able to assist in every role when needed.

  In this way, the crew of the Cosmic Sentinel repaired the ship, spent time together and began to bond as a crew, and prepared for what their new life as space travelers would bring. They learned each other’s quirks and personalities, while readying themselves for the adventures that lay ahead of them.

  The representative from the alien ship appeared at nearly full height, its towering form almost filling the room. It stood much taller than Daegnon and the other Goblins, whose short statures barely reached half the height of the creature. Its imposing presence filled the space, despite the lack of discernible muscle definition. The alien’s body was thin and wiry—almost too wiry—its stalk-like torso seeming far too small to support such a tall frame.

  The alien appeared nude, though it was possible it wore some sort of translucent material. Its skin shimmered with a strange, almost hypnotic quality, as though covered in rapidly shifting bioluminescent scales. These scales were so small they were nearly unnoticeable, yet ripples traveled over its body, causing subtle shifts in color. The patterns of these color changes were chaotic and unpredictable, giving the alien an even more mysterious and unsettling appearance.

  However, since the image feed focused solely on the alien representative, it was impossible for the Goblins to see the command center of the other ship. This made it difficult to determine whether the shifting colors were a natural trait of the alien or influenced by its surroundings.

  The alien’s head appeared much too large for its thin frame, yet it had a strangely captivating quality. Its head seemed fragile and ethereal, composed of delicate, wispy filaments that gave it a soft, puff-like appearance, as if a strong breeze could scatter it. Despite this delicate look, the alien’s most striking feature was its eyes. Large and disk-shaped, silvery and reflective, but with dark irises that resembled deep, endless pools at their center, they reflected the bioluminescent scales on its skin in a mesmerizing display. These eyes captured the attention of all the Goblins, and as Daegnon stared back, he felt as if the creature could peer directly into his soul, uncovering his deepest secrets.

  Embedded within the round, wispy mass of its head were a series of small, flexible openings along what seemed to be its lower face. The Goblins quickly deduced these must serve as its mouth. The openings pulsed and shifted as the alien spoke, emitting sounds that resonated like a blend of musical notes and natural whispers—like the soft rustling of wind through leaves. The effect was hypnotic, drawing the listeners in further.

  On either side of its head, delicate fronds extended, moving gently as if sensing the air around them. These fronds were covered in the same bioluminescent scales that adorned the rest of its body, enhancing the alien’s strange, otherworldly appearance.

  The filaments that made up its head and facial features constantly shifted and moved, creating a mesmerizing dance of light and shadow. This movement gave the impression that the face was never quite solid, always on the verge of dissolving into the air and floating away.

  The entire crew stared at the alien creature before them, slack-jawed and stunned into silence, forgetting what they were doing or why they were there. The pregnant silence extended for several seconds before the fluting voice of the creature filled the room with its musical resonance. Then, the harsh metallic voice of Hoshi, taking Grubnash’s form, rang out in translation, finally breaking the spell the Goblins found themselves under.

  “Greetings, I am…” The AI faltered slightly as it translated the alien’s words. What came through to Daegnon sounded like a garbled mix of sounds: “Shoo’Tooloo-Bikk’iitiimatashicituu—” followed by a jumble of clicking and melodic tones that didn’t translate properly. “Captain of the star vessel Nominal yet… Necessary… Aggressor,” the AI continued, the words dragging out oddly, as though they were too long for the sounds Shoo actually made. “It is… my honor to address you.”

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