Contact
When Captain Clarisse Kirkson had been not yet seven years old, her grandfather had pulled some strings to take her into space. Clarisse had been too young, really, to know what she was seeing, but she remembered the catch in the old man's voice as he introduced her to Axolikaduranifoxicisugit - Axol, to its friends.
She didn't think she could ever forget that moment. She remembered thinking it looked like Ms. Ladybug, from her book, except in a large grizzly bear costume, and she had gazed in frank amazement as it uncurled itself to look at her. She remembered raising her hand in greeting to the young creature, and reaching out to shake, like she had been taught to do. It had responded by reaching out two of its eight legs, and they had touched, in fact, for a few brief seconds, before the guard on duty had leapt into action and dragged her away.
She remembered the slick, smooth feeling of its hand-leg-claw in hers, and the clean, sharp smell of mint... but most of all, she remembered just how hot it had been. The claw had almost burned her hand, she remembered, but this had only made her want to grip it tighter. The chitin had done nothing to keep the throbbing, pulsing thrummmm of its beating heart contained, and never mind that tardigrades did not have hearts.
She probably would have dropped the handshake herself, if she hadn't thought it might be rude.
Clarisse woke up.
To be precise, she was waking up. The cryogenics process used on the great tardigrade-swallowed generation ships of the 2200s had still been very new, and it hadn't quite brought her back to herself, yet. For the next few minutes, she would have to contend with not quite remembering who she was or what she was doing here.
The memory of meeting Axol surfaced. She smiled, for it was a pleasant enough memory, even if much of the context of it eluded her. She remembered Axol's name, and the moment of contact, but who had the old man been, the one with tears in his eyes and a trembling hug?
There was an academy too, she was sure. She had gone there because she wanted to fly, she thought. And she had met Axol again, at some point, surely?
There was a knock on her pod's door while Clarisse was puzzling at the question. A worried, young face popped up in front of her helmet, waving her hand.
"Captain? Captain Kirkson? Are you with us?"
Clarisse thought about it.
"No!" she shouted back, and laughed.
"Captain, please, we're behind schedule as it is. The Axolika is in danger, and we need you!"
And suddenly, memories came flooding back. Of the draft, and of the final days of the dying, blasted Earth. Of her grandfather, waving goodbye, giving up his place such that someone younger could escape.
Of her and Axol being chosen as the first, or maybe last, hope of the species.
Clarisse stumbled out of her pod, and collapsed, still weak at the knees from muscle atrophy.
"I'm..."
She coughed.
And as her aides rushed towards her, panicked, the ship thrummmmed around them. The vibration knocked them all off their feet, and the bright flash of light that accompanied it left a blinding afterimage.
Captain Clarisse Kirkson forced herself to her feet, and looked up, smiling.
"Good morning to you too, asshole."
A generation ship is an incredible piece of societal engineering. Every one on board, starting with the seed population, has the incredible and unprecedented duty of safekeeping humanity itself, over the long, slow generations that the ship spends amongst the stars.
The designers of the Axolika mission had desired additional safeguards, on this process. Hence the policy that many key members of Axolika's crew were to be cryogenically frozen, their duties taken over in absentia by an elected government, but still nominally holding all the power their title implied.
All of which was to say: Clarisse had no idea when it had become fashionable to expose the bone on the back of your skull, but it was creeping her out.
"Brief me," she said, pulling on her incredibly well-preserved (and thus incredibly anachronistic) Captain's uniform, and trying not to stare.
The young aide sniffed, and brushed her hair back, making the exposed bone more obvious.
"The shipboard year is 2358, about a hundred and fifty years after launch, and a hundred and twenty after your last awakening."
Clarisse whistled involuntarily. She'd been awoken five times in those first thirty years.
"The situation is this: We've sighted what we're fairly sure are other spaceships."
Clarisse didn't even whistle, this time.
"Not human?"
"They're coming from the Betelgeuse quadrant, so no. And no, we haven't made any contact yet; it's been less than a day since we sighted them, and we haven't tried to hail them."
Clarisse's mind was buzzing. "Well, what on earth are we waiting for? Has no one been studying cryptolinguistics the past few generations? Let's-"
Her aide smiled, a little nastily. "What on earth is right. With all due respect, ma'am, we're not on Earth anymore. The Council would have been entirely happy completely ignoring the, uh, sensor anomaly, except for one little problem."
Clarisse furrowed her brow.
"Or, well, one big problem. Your friend, Axolika, seems determined to head in their direction. It's made about half a rad of course corrections, since sighting, and we haven't been able to fix it."
"And that's the problem?"
"That's the problem. Now, please, the Council is waiting for you. This way, ma'am..."
"Why are we not trying to make First Contact?"
Clarisse stormed into the room, and loomed over the chair that had clearly been set out for her. The Council was ... apparently comprised of four twenty-somethings, each with what she could only think of as a second, furiously reviewing notes at their side. She felt immediately, keenly, out of place.
The bald one, with the brilliantly polished skull and a placard reading "Command" in front of him, (Clarisse decided to call him "Helmut") recovered from her entrance first.
"Madam Captain! It is such a pleasure to-"
"Just 'Captain' is fine, thanks."
He paused. "Of course, Captain. To answer your question, it is because we do not have the resources of Earth of yore, and because we have a mandate to safeguard the ship and all on it. If the, uh, aliens are hostile, we have no satisfactory way of defending ourselves."
The redhead, who had accented her skull with a ponytail, her placard reading "Intelligence", took up the story. Clarisse decided her name should be "Veronica".
"We don't think they have any means to harm us at this range, and our trajectories never come close enough to even communicate without years of lightspeed delay, let alone use weaponry. Well, they didn't, until..."
Veronica looked towards "Communications", a boy who had somehow managed to make it look like his short blond hair was growing directly on his skull. Clarisse named him "Zahak".
"You see, the Axolika itself changed course towards the alien fleet. We've been attempting to get it to correct its course, but it just hasn't been listening to us!"
Finally, "Control" spoke. She was a dark-haired beauty, and she hadn't gone along with the exposed-skull fashion statement. She could be... Tabitha.
"And that's why you're here, Ma- uh, Captain. Our records state that the Axolika listens to you, and we were hoping you could convince it to change course back to our original destination."
Clarisse looked at them all. "And what if I disagree that that's the best course of action?"
Helmut and Tabitha looked at each other. Tabitha spoke. "Is that your considered position on this matter, Madam Captain?"
"You know what? Yes, yes it is. My considered position is that you all are nuts, and that Axol is the only even remotely competent person left on this mission!"
Veronica was looking between the Council and her frantically, but it was Zahak who spoke. He leaned forward, seeming to pick his words with great care.
"Captain, have you ... perchance forgotten that the Axolika is not human?"
Clarisse couldn't take it any more. She collapsed, heavily, onto her chair, and laughed and laughed and laughed, and the ship itself vibrated alongside her, thrummmmming contentedly. The terrified look on Zahak's face only made her laugh harder.
When she recovered, Zahak was flushing, Tabitha and Helmut were conferring furiously with their seconds, and Veronica was sitting back in her seat, smiling. It was this, perhaps, that gave Clarisse the idea to do what came next.
"You want my orders? Here are my orders: Axol, keep being amazing. You lot? Go stage a coup or whatever if it makes you feel better; it's not going to affect anything. And to the populace, out there?"
The low-resolution video recording that would later sweep the Axolita would show the Captain, blazing and resplendent in her old-time uniform, wink at the hidden camera at that point.
"You better brush up on your cryptolinguistics!"
Management would like to note that this piece is the middle part of a triptych, with lrig_rorrim and jem0000000's magnificent pieces forming the first and third parts respectively.
Management would also like to note that tardigrade spaceships are freakin' awesome.