Page 82 of Mazorium Buys a Human

“Hello, Nadia. Are you hungry? Tired?” She waved both hands in the air. “Oh, do you want to work on your motor skills? We could playgrab the colorful object. You like that.”

He pulled a long piece of colorful fabric off his belt and dangled it in the air. He carried several lengths of fabric in different colors everywhere with him for Nadia to play with. She grabbed it and put it into her mouth.

“That’s good!” he praised the baby. “This one is blue. Blue.”

I loved that no matter how much work there was to be done or how distracted Maz was, he always had time for Nadia.

I pulled the fabric from her mouth and tugged it free of her grip before handing it back to him. “You should get back to work.”

He froze. “Are you sure?”

“We can move all this stuff later,” I said.

“Yes, that’s true,” he said. “But don’t you need me?”

“I had a lot of fun, but I’m tired,” I said. “I’m not used to interacting with so many people. I’m going to feed Nadia and then see if we can take a nap together.”

He sounded another rumble of agreement. “If you’re sure you don’t need me to help, then I might check the bot station on stump F3959.”

I knew it had sent failure messages the day everyone arrived. We’d been so busy with our guests that Maz never got a chance to go over there and find out why it stopped working.

He tried to problem solve from here, but nothing worked. He was sure a limb had fallen on the docking station. He’d only mentioned it once, but it was clear he was stressed about it. Poor guy didn’t like it when things went off schedule this much.

“Go check,” I urged.

“I’ll be back in three marks at the most,” he said.

“There’s no rush,” I said. “As long as you come back before it gets dark.”

Once he'd come back with the flier covered in so many bugs there were dark patches obscuring the exterior panels. Maz assured me even if the flier was covered in bugs, it wouldn't be a problem.

I wanted to believe him, but the concept of bugs simply flying around still freaked me out. The thought of him hitting that many bugs at night gave me severe anxiety. I’d demanded he never fly at night, and instead of arguing with me, he’d agreed.

“I promise,” he said, sounding a purr. He leaned over, brushed his lips over mine and then on top of Nadia's little head.

Grabbing a bag of tools, he rushed off to the flier. Hopefully when he got back he'd be less stressed.

Mazorium

“That's odd,” I muttered as I righted the bot docking station. There were bots scattered everywhere, but what was most alarming was the way the receiver had broken.

Picking it up, I found that not only had it dislodged from the station, it was smashed beyond repair. The damage didn't make sense.

Taking off my Ident, I brought up the weather data for this area. There was no evidence of abnormal winds or other forces that would've caused the breakage. Could there be a type of animal I hadn't found yet? It had happened before, but it was rare for something large enough to do this to have slipped past my initial surveys.

After righting the docking station and reloading all the bots that were fully functional, I carried the broken receiver to the flier and set it in the back. I had a replacement back at the ship. If I hurried, I'd still be able to fix everything before nightfall.

Climbing into the flier, I started it up and headed back home.

Home.

It was such a strange word to use in connection with my ship. Before it'd always been my ship or mobile dwelling, but Mika and Nadia made it home.

I’d always felt disconnected from the word home. It seemed a meaningless addition to the use of the word domicile, but now it all made sense. A domicile was a place you ate and slept. Home was where you felt the deepest contentment one could ever hope to experience.

I was halfway back when the receiver let out a last blip and transmitted a few data packets. Curious, I set the flier display to show the last things the bots recorded. Most of it was leaving and returning notes from the bots. Then something interesting caught my eye. There was some odd data about temperature variants not long before the receiver was destroyed.

Then I saw it. A highly localized temperature spike on the same stump as the docking station. The only thing that could cause the temperature to rise that quickly was a shuttle or ship landing. That could only mean one thing.