by S M Matthews
CEPH
By the Void. How has it come to this?
I follow along, bringing up the rear. I find myself looking over my shoulder, convinced someone is watching me.
All of their floors are hard, and I am so glad I wore my foot covers. I bet every flat surface is slimy, and I don’t want to touch anything. The lights are a little too bright, and the vaguely chemical smell is confusing my senses, blocking out everything else.
Just being onboard this ship makes me feel like my fur will slither right off my body.
Doing deals with the Ta’Naw now. Disgusting.
And I don’t trust any of this. I mean obviously I don’t trust the Ta’Naw, not a single one of them. They’re clearly up to something.
None of this adds up, the chance to rescue sentient beings and turn a profit? Fish never just jump into the boat. We've just never been that lucky.
All we have to do is…withhold a little truth from our potential customers. They will likely be able to smell that we are not being entirely truthful but….no one ever is, and it’s not exactly polite to go asking prying questions…it should be fine.
It should be simple enough.
If I keep reassuring myself like this, I might start to believe it. Maybe.
We just have to get through this…small price to pay for a very healthy sounding profit.
And we could always say ‘no’. We’re not beholden to the deal just yet. I hope.
We follow the Ta’Naw into a holding room, and I instantly have to cover my nose. The smell is pretty awful. The difference in lighting levels makes me squint, it’s so much darker in here than in the bright corridor. I can almost feel my pupils dilating to compensate.
We follow him over to a holding cage; he’s got quite a few of them laid out in stasis. Humans, apparently. The Ta’Naw opens it up and Neb goes in to inspect.
He moves carefully amongst them, not wanting to hurt any of them. They are all female; and all naked. I’m already suspicious about what might have been done to them. The Ta’Naw don’t do anything without a reason. Usually a seriously nefarious reason.
Unless they don’t naturally wear clothes. Maybe it’s that.
They've been laid out in haphazard rows and, as we stand here, inspecting them, I slowly come to realise…Lam and I are both now breathing deep. Stood over here, next to the humans in stasis, they smell amazing.
Neb suddenly moves, getting our attention; he’s zeroed in on something that’s caught his interest. He lifts one, seemingly at random, and carries her over. The collective smell of all of them is almost overwhelming, and yet I can’t stop myself from dragging it in. Once he’s stood in front of us, the one that Neb is holding smells…she smells like…I’m not sure; we look at each other. It’s dulled by the stasis; I wonder what she will smell like once she’s awake. I know she smells good. Somehow better than all the others combined.
Neb obviously has the same thought, he looks over to the Ta’Naw, “We will take this one now.” Next to me, Lam huffs a sigh. Neb isn’t thinking straight.
I don’t think I’m too far behind him though, because when the Ta’Naw refuses him, the disappointment that washes through me is almost a physical thing.
When the Ta’Naw speaks, it sounds like bubbles breaking out of a muddy swamp.
“No. All or none. They will be delivered now.”
We look at each other again, and there’s a moment where Neb glares at the Ta’Naw, bristling.
“Neb,” Lam growls a warning at him.
Neb puts her gently back and leaves the cage. He’s clearly not happy about it.
The Ta’Naw locks it again, and we stand together, Lam doing most of the talking. I look back, watching the Humans. There’s a tight knot of anxiety forming in my guts. I don’t want to leave her here.
We had a long list of concerns before coming over here. Number one being that the Ta’Naw were trapping us. Then that the Humans could be deliberately infected with something. That they could be literal time bombs. Any number of underhand tactics.
But they'd sent us a language file, ‘proof’ that they were intelligent. They'd sent us scans of them, reassured us that we would have the opportunity to scan again before delivery. We’d reassured each other and ourselves many times that if they were out to trap someone on their ship…they certainly wouldn't choose us. We’re nobody’s. But we’re not going to get rich without taking a little risk now and then. When we’d taken scans of their ship, we’d seen how few crew they have, making it even less likely.
It was all way too good to be true. We could sell them on for a pretty profit, and all we had to do was shrug and say, ‘no idea what they are, sorry, they’ll make great pets though.’
By the time anyone catches on and they are legally declared intelligent, we will be long gone.
You can’t backdate a ruling anyway, so us selling them on won’t technically be criminal activity if they are declared intelligent after.
We just need to keep very quiet about the Ta’Naw involvement; no one would ever deal with us again. Well, at least until the fuss died down.
I get the fur crawling sensation again. They are up to something.
But we also can’t leave these vulnerable females with them if we have a chance to fix it. They will probably be better off being sold amongst our people then being left to rot here.
And then there’s that smell.
I want that one; even if it means we have to buy all the others to get her.
They are done talking; we turn to go. There’s another, much smaller cage we must pass again on the way out, and I realise now it is the source of the horrific stench. I also now see there’s another human, she’s made her way to the bars to watch us.
She also doesn’t look in very good condition compared to those being held in stasis. My brothers pass by but I crouch in front of her; she reaches for me desperately. The smell is so disgusting it’s making my eyes water. The overripe concoction of her waste, the sick smell coming from her. The sweet rotting smell of old blood from old injuries. I resist the urge to cover my nose even though I’m desperate to. She’s sobbing now, her voice hitching with desperation. She’s gripping me like a lifeline. A jumble of noises punctuates her sobbing.
I knew the Ta’Naw were thoughtless, cruel, selfish…I knew those things. But to see this…it’s horrible. I can hear my brothers trying desperately to negotiate for this one as well.
It will not sell her. They are running a skeleton crew…but we are still not in any sort of position to force the issue. There’s only three of us, and our vessel is designed for long range and trade. It isn’t weaponised. We are just civilian traders.
And we now have the rest of them to think of.
I look back to her, filled with regret and pity. She smells like death; I don’t think she will last much longer in these conditions. She must read it in my expression because she truly starts to panic now, enough to be able to smell it over all the other smells.
She refuses to let go of me; the desperation shining in her eyes. I know the Ta’Naw is coming, there’s nothing I can do to stop it. It sedates her. I feel absolutely appalled; but I expect nothing less from one of them.
I follow my brothers out, claws itching, eyes forward. I can’t look at her again.
LAM
Ceph heads straight for his room, and a shower. I don’t blame him; she’d smelled utterly revolting. How he’d kept his lunch down, being that close to her, I’ll never know.
He’s also moping but…not everything goes your way.
The poor thing was being kept in dreadful conditions, and who knows what they are up to with her.
I’d done as full of a medical scan as I could whilst we were standing in the airlock;
before we got
back onto the ship.
Neb and Ceph have both had physical contact, so if there was anything up with the humans I may be able to detect something. It’s highly unlikely that they’d be carrying anything which would affect us; but you never know. They are alien, and the Ta’Naw have had them for an unspecified amount of time. They most certainly were not going to tell us where they got them from.
The Ta’Naw have tried to use biological weapons against us in the past, so long ago now all the details are lost. Whatever they did, it was successful and hugely damaging to us at the time…but we retaliated. And won. They can’t let that go.
It does mean there’s no record of what they actually did to us. Our victory meant they no longer had a planet to go to, and with their remaining people spread so thin, it has left them in no position to try anything since.
The one that was kept awake makes me particularly uncomfortable, so I scan Ceph more thoroughly than Neb. They had her awake for a reason, I’m sure. And she’d been in those conditions for a while; that would mean feeding her, and a certain amount of care from them. They wouldn’t go to more effort for her if they could have just kept her in stasis. Probably experimenting on her, or taking genetic samples. They would need her awake for that, cells taken from a host in stasis are in stasis themselves; once out of their support system they usually die after a relatively short time. A small number of cells can’t properly come out of stasis without their ‘support system’ waking up as a whole.
Ceph’s back just as the Ta’Naw crew deposit the cage; I take the opportunity to do one more scan.
It’s hard when you don’t know what’s ‘normal’ for them; but they aren't so different. Not really.
I can see my brothers, lingering restlessly. Probably trying to keep eyes on every movement the Ta’Naw crew make. We are all on edge being this close to them; dealing with them.
The Ta’Naw withdraw and we do a quick swap, using the lifter in cargo bay to bring the cage fully onto our ship. Ceph and Neb scurry about re-organising some stock and clearing a bit more of a space. Once the hold is locked back down, I do yet another scan, checking that the stasis is holding. The last thing I need is any of them unexpectedly waking up.
I’m vaguely aware of Ceph and Neb making sure the Ta’Naw ship has fully disengaged from us. They are watching the scanners now; making sure their ship is moving away.
Neb must think that all is well, he calls something to Ceph about getting us back on course.
Then he calls to me, “You satisfied yet, Lam?” he comes over to examine their sleeping forms. “Can I get her out of there?”
I make myself stop and try and think logically about this. A part of me is clamouring to just get her out and wake her up and I worry it’s clouding my judgement. I mentally check the list of what I’ve done and try to think if there’s anything else I could do.
I shrug to myself, there’s practical things to think of, food and clothes, things like that. She might want her own space, like we do. All of that can come after.
“Yeah,” I shout back, “get her, I’ll get a translator.”
I head to our small medical bay and get what I need.
When I come back I find they’ve pushed a couple of storage containers together and laid her out on a large blanket.
Ceph and Neb stand on the other side of her, waiting. We all stand and look down at her, she’s so smooth and…sort of beige. She has the shortest mane out of all of them, and it’s very dark, almost black. Her claws are flat and stunted, no good for anything really.
“Are we sure about this?” I ask them.
Ceph shrugs, “I have no idea, but if this doesn’t work out we can just put her back to sleep?”
“Yeah but…what are we expecting, exactly?”
They both shrug at me this time. There’s only one way to find out, but other than knowing they have an extensive language we don’t really know anything.
If nothing else she might be someone to have a sensible conversation with. I hope.
The effects of the stasis would eventually wear off on their own now that she’s been removed from the range of the field, but I give her something to move it along a little.
“Can you two talk, please. And hold her.” I unwrap the translator and I am poised, holding it ready. I think I’m holding it, more or less, in the right place from what my scans show so far.
I watch my scanner, as she starts to wake, her brain starts to pick up on what’s going on around her. I can see where sounds are processed; and then she groans.
I insert the translator; she frowns in her half-sedated state. Only vaguely aware that something has just happened.
Now that I’m not concentrating on what I’m doing, I start to absorb my brothers’ conversation.
“Yeah, but the clothes are just an assumption. She might just…prefer to go naked.”
“Well, I mean. I wouldn’t object, exactly. They are strange looking though…practically bald.”
I roll my eyes. Stars give me patience. “You can let her go now; I was just worried she’d react when I put it in.”
Ceph snorts, “I hope she reacts when I put it in.”
Neb flicks the top of his ear, and this instigates a brief scuffle between them. I sigh.
I find myself really hoping that this flat faced human at least has a sense of humour.
CORA
“Right.” I’m sat on a box. Absolutely everywhere seems to be being used as storage of some sort or another. I rub at my temples at look up again at the three identical tiger people sitting opposite me. I look down again. Breath Cora, just keep breathing.
Then I force myself to look back up at them.
“Let’s go through this one more time. I was abducted by aliens. Not you, different aliens.” All three nod in unison. “You three are also, obviously, aliens.”
The one perched on the left lets out a chuffing laugh. “You’re pretty alien yourself.”
He’s trying to flirt, again. I ignore it, again.
The middle one does an ear wiggle that is somehow vaguely suggestive. I wave dismissively at them.
I list off on my fingers as I speak, “You don’t know where Earth is. You don’t know why they took us. You’ve never even heard of humans and you don’t know how long they’ve had us. So what do you know?”
The first leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees. It makes the muscles in his arms bunch…and not for the first time I wish they'd put some proper shirts on. Super distracting. “We know that you’re better off with us than you are with them.” He injects so much venom…so much utter disgust into the ‘Them’…it makes me think he’s being pretty truthful about that part, at least.
The green blobby creature I’d seen had looked less than pleasant.
I rub my temples again, then run my hands through my short hair. I’m wrapped up in a very large blanket at the moment, held up by tucking one corner down the front, bath towel style.
“How can we understand each other?” The question suddenly occurs to me, so I spit it straight out. I know we’re not speaking the same language; I can hear the long rolling growling noises that they are actually making. It’s just over the top of that, in my head, I hear the words. I hear it in the same timbre as their growling voices.
The one on the other end speaks this time.
“We fitted you with a translator; the computer does the rest.” All three of them start to wag their tails. Just the tips. That can’t be a coincidence, but I’m just not sure yet, and to be honest I’m trying to interpret their body language on instinct.
I could be totally wrong but…they’re just so open.
But then, there’s a pretty strong counter argument to me trying to marry their body language to anything I could ever recognise.
They are literally aliens.
At the moment I trust them about as far as I can throw them.
I also don’t like the word ‘fitted’. Have they just gone ahead and done something to me without me kn
owing? I don’t like that.
They do also have well over a dozen more human women in a cage.
Something like that can make you form an opinion of someone pretty damn fast.
When I’d first come around, they had pretty quickly allowed me to cover myself with a blanket. I’d got up to just sort of…walk it off. Maybe I’d hit my head, I’d thought. Maybe this is a particularly vivid dream. I’d walked a short lap of the room, moving between all the stuff that was stored here. I’d tried pinching myself really hard, and that had really hurt. I don’t know why I’d done that to be honest, it just seemed like the thing to try.
The three of them had just sort of sat and watched me.
When it had finally started to sink in that this was probably really real I’d had to sit with my head down for quite some time; feeling so overwhelmed I didn’t know if I was hyperventilating, having a panic attack, about to pass out, or all of the above.
Eventually I’d calmed down enough to take the only option available to me; make conversation with the locals.
NEB
She’s walked around the bay, smelling quite distressed. At one point she’d done something to her arm, and then rubbed at it. The sharp smell of her fear had been quite distressing, but we’d just sat it out as best we could. There was no threat to her that we could deal with.
The smell had made us very uncomfortable, and at one point I’d had to stop Ceph from getting up to go to her. I’d been pretty sure that would make it worse. She’d had a brief period of panting with her head held low, in a very odd position. I’d had to stop Lam from getting up to investigate that, but he is ships medic. Well, he is the closest out of the three of us to being medically trained, anyway.
“So what’s going to happen to them?” She gestures delicately over at the other humans.
“We’re going to sell them,” Ceph says with no preamble whatsoever. I elbow him sharply; she doesn’t miss it and narrows her eyes at us.
“Sell them? To who? We are not things you can just buy and sell.” She’s doing well to keep her voice level, but she is angry. Anger is preferable to the waves of utter distress that had been coming off her while she’d been wandering around the bay.
