One

From space, the dome-like station looked to have been constructed from blown-glass.

It was an exuberantly daring departure from interstellar construction dogma, which almost without fail called for stark, functional structures. Starbases, space stations, manned spaceports, all were built with the same future-brutalist lines as if to reassure the casual observer that this place was safe in the unforgiving void. Gallaxina Station, by contrast—with its vast, curving expanses of transparent aluminum exposing the recreational activities within; and the vivid, colorful station-bearing lights—instead seemed to loudly declare into the void, Welcome to the Funplex! It was a shining, gaudy hemisphere embedded in an unremarkable, grey moon, spinning in a long orbit around an standard M-Class planet.

Through one of the vast clear stretches of its hide, one could observe two seemingly-tiny figures silhouetted against a lush and verdant backdrop. They embraced for a moment, then parted to face the view before them.

From within the station, the figures were actually normal-sized humans—a young man and a young woman. They both wore skirts made of synthetic grass around their waists. The man wore a loud, patterned shirt, and the woman ore only a coconut bra. Both wore holographic name tags: Renshi and Indira. Both carried yellow sombreros they'd ditched the moment they went off-shift.

"It's so beautiful!" Indira exclaimed swoonily at the view of Concorde IV's northern hemisphere, bisected by the brilliant line of its terminator. Indira had lived planetbound her whole life before this job, and never missed an opportunity to marvel at the miracle of seeing her world from space—even if it marked her as a ground-pounder. Indira had never been one who cared what other people thought of her.

"Yeah," Renshi—Ren to his buds—replied. He liked Indira's childlike wonder at the most basic off-planet experiences, her whimsy and joy. But was also scared of getting caught. If it was discovered they'd ducked out on the planetbound shuttle they could lose their jobs. He would lost the chance to get laid, and that was ostensibly worse. "We should go. They'll turn the sensors on soon."

"Just one more minute," Indira said. "I want to see the sun set over my house."

"You can't see your house from up here, silly," Ren said. "And the scramblers only work for a few minutes. We need to get out of the public areas."

"Wait…" Indira said, her deep, brown eyes fixed on the view out the transparent panel. "Wait…"

"Indy…"

"There," she whispered, satisfied. "Good night, Greenbrook." She turned to Ren and smiled her dazzling smile, the one that could charm almost any of the staff of the Taco Tiki Hut into doing whatever she asked. "Now let's go."

Holding hands, they darted out of the Rainforest Adventure and down the corridor and through an innocuous service doorway between Sunset Memories entertainment store and Love Bites, which sold exotic snacks for off-world pets. The plain, dimly lit service corridor smelled like industrial cleanser and non-replicated waste, and wound deep into the carcass of the station, branching off into offices, inventory storage, and waste de-resolution bays. Inventory storage was always best. Ren had learned that two years and six girlfriends ago, and he guided Indira to the small nook he'd carved out amid containers of Saurian pantsuits and Vulcan Seh'lat Chow. It was dark enough here that she was barely more than a silhouette, and he was confident no one would be able to see them in the background of a random security camera.

He didn't even have time to apologize and give his canned excuse for the lack of accommodations before Indira turned his face to hers and kissed him hard.

Sweet! he thought. Indira's other punched through the foliage of his uniform skirt with a dry rustle, and a moment later he felt her grip his erection. In his mind he asked "That's what you've been waiting for, isn't it?" but what he ended up saying was just a garbled form of, "Yes, baby!"

Indira smiled. She'd heard from the other girls who'd hooked up with Red that he was an easy score. You just had to be careful not to let him finish off too soon. She gave him an additional stroke—a promise of things to come—then released him. "Here," she whispered, taking his hand and slipping it beneath her own skirt. Her primary mission here wasn't to get Ren off, after all.

"Oh yeah," Ren breathed. "You're so…" but his language processing ability glitched out as he felt her heat and her wetness through her underwear.

"Let me take them off," Indira said, more breathlessly than she'd expected. She released Ren's hand again, leaving him to stroke her inartfully (but not ineffectively) on his won while she struggled with her skirt.

A red light flashed in the darkness of the storage room. Was it a sensor? An incoming comms message? Indira wasn't worried about it, but its incongruity momentarily pulled her away from the immediate promise of sex.

Ren noted her distraction. "What is it?"

Indira blinked. The red light was still there, but who cared, it was just a red light. It wasn't worth missing out on some post-shift sex. "Nothing," she smiled at him. "Just keep…yeah…doing that…" She kissed him hard enough for their teeth to clash and gyrated her hips against the movement of his hand. Pleasure arced up her spine and shuddered rippled through her arms.

A noise rumbled from the depths of the storage room. Boxes tumbling. They gasped in unison and squinted into the murky darkness. "What was that!" Indira whispered.

"I don't know…" Ren whispered back.

Then the red light blinked into existence once again, and Indira felt gooseflesh crawl up her arms. "What is…" she started to ask, but then she noticed it: a low, mechanical whine. A low hum. Like a machine…

In the darkness, a shape began to take form. Something large and blocky and—

The light flashed, angry and scarlet, and Indira felt the air around her crackle as if charged with energy. Beside her, she heard Ren utter a single, guttural noise, and a fine mist settled over the side of her face. She turned to see Ren's torso fall against a crate of Andorran frozen dinners. It was wrecked beyond comprehension, the head and right shoulder no longer existing, the whole thing ending in a neat, steaming, simmering curve of carved flesh. The arms flailed madly, but by then the scent of eared meat touched Indira's nostrils, and she let out a scream, guttural and horrified from the most primal place in her being.

The thing in the darkness moved toward her.