"What is the true measure of a person?" @astrowave inquired, sitting his large body down in the center of one of the two light gray couches in our common area.

  I was busy setting out the Scrabble board so that we could plan our mission.

  "Where is this coming from?" @bitchfrog asked.

  @astrowave sighed. "I've sacrificed myself hundreds of times. But that's my job. Am I a good person for doing so? What if I don't want to sacrifice myself? And every time I sacrifice myself, I'm creating chaos, killing something or someone."

  "I don't know that now is the right time to be questioning your role with the crew," @foxcutter added, taking a seat next to him.

  "Yeah," @bitchfrog said. "What if you need to sacrifice yourself to save me?"

  @zerogstar was sitting in a chair, tinkering with some kind of old Earth artifact she had taken from Itokawa. Her attention had been focused intensely on that, but now she raised her head, as I did, to pay attention to @astrowave's response.

  He waved his hands in the air. "Don't worry about that, @bitchfrog. I won't let anything happen to you. And I'll say that's because I care, not because it's my duty."

  I set the Scrabble board down on the coffee table in the middle of the room, dumping the letters out loudly, in part just to get everyone's attention.

  "@astrowave, I know you were Thunder Ops." I spread the letters out, flipping them so I could see them and cursing when I found a blank tile. I hated blank tiles, the choose your own letter tile. Hard to describe. I understand why they are in the game, but the blank space on the board always irked me, an imperfection in a perfect arrangement of letters.

  "On this crew," I continued, "I don't expect you to be Thunder Ops. Perhaps you feel like this blank tile, unsure of what you're supposed to be. I recruited you to be my weapons expert. You are under no obligation to blow yourself up anymore." I looked around the room. "That goes for all of you. Let's try to stay alive, shall we?"

  I tossed the blank tile to @astrowave. "Outside of this crew and your role as weapons expert, it's up to you to decide who you are."

  "Hoowee, that was deep, Captain," @foxcutter said.

  "I spent too much time by myself on the i35, I guess." I continued arranging the letters, looking for a K. "Besides, I hate those blank tiles."

  @astrowave studied the tile, flipping it around in his large palms to see that the other side was blank as well. Then he acknowledged my gesture and pocketed the tile.

  "You can't keep that," @foxcutter interjected. "What about the game?"

  @astrowave looked slightly hurt and started digging in his pocket, but I stopped him with a motion of my hand.

  "Keep it. We'll get another. I have a fabricator pen around here somewhere." Then I addressed @foxcutter and the crew. "We're not playing a game. We're planning our mission."

  I found the last letter I was looking for. In the center of the Scrabble board I had spelled out shoemaker.

  "We need to find the Shoemaker," I explained. "This person is somewhere here on Eros. We have to assume that the name has nothing to do with shoes, but you never know. Supposedly, they will be keeping an eye out for me. This Shoemaker person, I believe, is the contact who will connect us with the group that is supplying people for the zombie virus lab tests."

  I spelled out the word bitchfrog. "@bitchfrog unfortunately plays a dangerous but critical role here. Our in with the group is to sell @bitchfrog. A human for sale is highly coveted, so we are sure to get strong interest. However, this is where the mission gets complicated."

  I spelled out the word aiways. "We know the virus infects aiways, not humans. We need to sell @bitchfrog, but she isn't going to be taken to the lab."

  Everyone was looking at me. I could see @zerogstar nervously fidgeting with her antique machiney-whatever and @astrowave clenching his fists.

  I spelled out the word rescue. "We need to rescue @bitchfrog before they take her off world. Tracking her will be a problem because they'll scan and remove any trackers and likely implant their own. We can use biosignatures, but only at very close ranges."

  "Our best shot is to hack their tracking device," @foxcutter suggested. "I should be able to do that."

  I nodded at him. "That can be Plan A. Plan B have to be biosignatures plus whatever @bitchfrog herself might be able to do to contact us, which is probably nothing." I studied @bitchfrog's face. "Sorry, but you'll probably just have to wait for us to get you. In either case, we will follow closely so we don't lose your position."

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  I spelled out the word starlab. "None of this matters if we don't get the location of the starlab where they are testing the virus."

  I paused. That was all I had. I knew they were going to ask how we get the location of the starlab, and I wished I had the answer, but I didn't know. I hadn't figured that part out yet.

  "This all feels very ... thin," @foxcutter said. I kind of hated him for saying it, but he was right.

  "Yes," I admitted. "But look. We followed a lead to Psyche and managed to get a contact, not even a solid one, just a cryptic instruction. But it panned out. We got what we needed on Itokawa. I didn't think we would, but we did." @foxcutter was going to interrupt, but I kept going. "And yes, that was an even more cryptic instruction, but here we are on Eros, ready for another part of the mission."

  I addressed everyone. "Don't forget, these traffickers want to make money. They want to make deals. They have this cryptic channel of communication on purpose, to keep people in the dark, to hide from authorities, to protect their business. But they want us to meet up with them. We just have to trust the process. That's the way the underworld works, particularly to outsiders who aren't trusted."

  "I guess that makes sense," @foxcutter replied, not sounding overly reassured.

  "I know it doesn't change how we feel about it. I don't like all these unknowns. We're going to have to stay alert, think on our feet."

  @astrowave stood up, leaving a nice dent in the couch, and walked over to the Scrabble board. The others came closer to watch him. He spelled the word how next to where I had put starlab.

  "How do we get the location?" he asked.

  Sango came trotting into the room, giving me a little more time to think. He chirped happily at the crew, stretched, and wandered over between people's legs, giving them gentle presses with his head and his little butt.

  "I figure we have to either hack their system, abduct someone, or identify a ship that we think would be carrying people tagged to be test subjects."

  @zerogstar was the only one who hadn't crammed in around the Scrabble board. Now she put her antique down on her seat, standing to join us.

  "You could sell me too," @zerogstar said. "I'm a skilled hacker, like @foxcutter, so I'd be more likely than anyone else to find a way to escape if I needed to. I've had to do it before."

  I didn't like that. Two people to rescue was not a good scenario, especially when one of them was human and the other could be turned into an overtaken zombie creaturebotic.

  "Hell no," I said. "Out of the question. I don't want anything to take focus from saving @bitchfrog."

  "But you had said on Itokawa that you were going to sell me," @zerogstar noted. "We would just actually do it."

  I shook my head. "I said that to appease the Thrusters, and you know that."

  @bitchfrog chimed in. "It's the right move, @kittyboy. Even if it puts my life in further jeopardy, you know it's the right move for the bigger mission."

  Fuck the bigger mission, I cursed in my head. This crew and this ship was a new home to me. I wasn't willing to sacrifice that. The fact that the Extrovert Starmada would even ask that of me just showed their true colors. But why was I surprised? It's the military. Mission at all costs, and lives didn't matter to them when you could bring us back with the flip of a switch. Humans were an outlier to them. They clearly didn't care.

  "Do you have a backup somewhere, @zerogstar?" I didn't want to entertain this, but she and @bitchfrog were right. Fuckitty fuck fuck. It didn't matter if I didn't want to. I would have to sell @zerogstar as well.

  "Of course, I do," she said. "I can't afford many, but I have storage at Forever Young Cryo Center." Mouths dropped open and everyone turned to stare at @zerogstar. That was a very expensive private facility.

  "It's my parent's money," she explained. "Don't look at me like that. I barely speak with them anymore, but they got me the spot, and I've tried to keep it. Maybe @bitchfrog can help me make a more robust backup here on the ship just in case, if you think the Extrovert Starmada might be willing to clone me."

  @zerogstar was full of surprises. "You want to enlist?" I asked, incredulously.

  She wagged her head around. "I guess. I haven't really thought about it, but it makes sense to me."

  I pondered that. Who was I to change her mind? Yes, I desperately wanted to be free from the Extrovert Starmada, but there was a sense of peace in knowing that they had me covered for eternity as long as I stayed. The cost of immortality, eh?

  "Just think about it," I said. "We can make a data backup, sure, but think about it. I think each of us has fantasized about getting out of the military at some point." I looked around to mostly nodding heads. @foxcutter seemed to be the potential exception here, happy with a military career as a biodatascientist.

  @zerogstar leaned over to reach for Scrabble pieces, brushing back her long braids. She placed the words sell and zerogstar on the board, using the last R from our spread of letters.

  "That settles it then," she said. "You'll sell us both. I'll find the starlab. You'll find and rescue @bitchfrog. Then you'll rescue me."

  Okay, so we had a plan. A group plan. A plan the entire crew had crafted and could get behind. I felt pretty good, all things considered, despite hating this part of the mission intensely.

  "And you feel okay about this?" I asked, addressing @zerogstar and @bitchfrog. "Both of you?"

  @zerogstar put up a strong front, but I wondered how much was just to show strength. "I'm ready. Like I said, I've done this before."

  The confidence of an aiways, I thought, and @zerogstar had some of that Itokawan resilience and ferocity to her. I was super glad I was able to extract her, and I could see now that bringing her with us would likely be a moment that changed her life for a long, long time.

  "And you?" I asked @bitchfrog.

  "I feel like a little piggy," @bitchfrog admitted, "waiting to be slaughtered."

  "We won't let you be. You may need to go to market, but we'll make sure you go wee wee wee, all the way home."

  "Are you saying I'm going to piss myself?"

  I laughed. I wasn't expecting that from @bitchfrog, and it was just what the team needed. "Yes, I think you might. Do we have any adult diapers on board?"

  She flipped me off, and in that moment, I felt like everything was going to be just fine.

  Boy, was I wrong.