His brow ridges furrowed and his mouth edges turned down, but he listened to me. He took his machete and he left. Maybe he was sick of being around me, too.
“Liaso,” trilled Hak. “Come and look at these readings.”
I went, I looked. They made little sense to me. “You did cut the engines, yes?” I asked Hiss. He hissed in reply, nodding slowly.
“Then what is this build-up of heat underneath us?” I asked.
He never got to answer. The next thing I knew there was fire, and the sound of great, booming thunder. I was flung against the unforgiving wall of the ship, then tossed into the air before slamming down hard again. White-hot pain lanced up from my primary limb, and I screamed.
The next thing I remember is the human, soot clinging to his porous, rough face, moisture beading grossly on his forehead. He laid me on the slate without a word. I sat up just in time to see him running back into the inferno of the ship.
He told me later, as he tied the tourniquet around what was left of my primary limb, that something under the ship had exploded, sending it into the air like a child’s spinning top. Most of it had crashed, thankfully, onto the slope of slate, and not back on the grass. The impact of the pieces that did fall onto the grass caused more explosions, tossing them into the air again and again, until the pieces were too small to create enough force to explode further.
Hiss had been one of those pieces.
Hak had been impaled by a broken pipe.
Skee had died upon impact.
Asoi had succumbed to his burns within the first minute.
It was just me and the human left in the hostile wasteland.
My wound didn’t really hurt anymore. I felt cold. I didn’t even notice when we stopped.
“Damn,” the human muttered.
He lifted me, and I forced my eyes to focus. We had come to a sheer rock face the color of the orange gills of the fleece mushrooms back home. The color of the rare red moon. The color of the hair that grows in patches on the human’s body.
“It’s the cliffs from the first reports,” I heard myself sigh. “The flucurial is supposed to be on top of them.”
The human never even questioned climbing the cliffs. He had already committed.
I was the problem.
“I’m going to need my hands,” the human said. “Can you cling to my neck?”
I tried, I really did, but my secondary limbs had gone numb, and I could not grip with them.
“I’m dying,” I told the human again. I felt very calm about it, a mental defense mechanism, no doubt. Still, I thought I had to convince the human to go after the flucurial. “Salaseal will do a flyby in a month’s time if she does not hear from us. Get the flucurial, please.”
He looked at me for a long time. I had always hated his pale eyes. I know that there are humans who have darker eyes, and had often wondered why you had assigned one of the uglier humans to the crew. Strangely enough, in that moment, I didn’t hate his eyes.
“I’m going to get you that flucurial,” he told me, “and I’m going to bring it back to you, and you’re going to be fine.”
I didn’t believe him, but I didn’t say it.
He found a hole in the cliff to leave me in. He insisted on leaving his blaster with me, even though we both knew that he would be facing those carnivorous plants on top of the cliff. He had his machete—that hunk of sharpened metal that I had berated him for so many times.
He started climbing. I drifted in and out of consciousness.
I found myself back in the Halls of Silq, back in my very first year. The other children sat around me, listening to our lecturer.
“Fela-qui, also known as the Red Queen, is one of the more well-known of the Cloud Race, famous for her habits of going to dying planets and collecting samples of the life about to be wiped out. Her vast artificial satellites are her living monument, where her collections of extinct species can still be viewed by the public.”
“Lecturer?”
I glanced to my left, recognizing the voice. I saw you Salaseal, as you were then; your little fins underdeveloped, waiting for puberty to make them glorious, your skin the pale blue of childhood. I never told you, but I had quite the crush on you back then. Maybe you knew.
“Yes Sosalaseal?” said the lecturer.
“Is it true that the Red Queen saved the humans?”
“Yes, Sosalaseal, she did. The humans remain the only sentient species that the Red Queen saved.”
“So that’s who we have to blame,” I muttered under my breath. Sosalaseal shot me a look. I kept quiet, but I didn’t need to say anything. Liseosa said it for me.
“My mother says that humans are no good,” she piped up. “They just sit around in the satellite ghettos doing horrid things to each other, and when they get a spaceship, they just turn into bandits.”
“Don’t speak out of turn, Liseosa,” the lecturer scolded, but it was too late, the class had gotten excited.
“Nothing kills them,” I added. “And they breed like crazy. They’re like vermin.”
Half the class giggled at that. Sosalaseal did not.
“Settle down class, settle down,” the Lecturer told us. “You must drink.”
What? I wondered.
She looked at me as she said it again. “Drink Lia, please.”
Something pressed against my mouth.
“Please don’t leave me alone.”
It tasted sweet and bitter at the same time. It was almost disgusting, but the moment it touched the inside of my mouth, I felt a wonderful heat run through me. I drank and drank, and the numbness vanished, the pain that had become the backdrop of my reality faded away. Energy tingled through me, and I opened my eyes and saw the human looking at me.
He didn’t look well. There was an angry scratch across his sunburned cheek, and his orange hair stuck up in all directions, bits of leaf and vegetation caught in it. His pale eyes were rimmed with red, and green juice had stained the knees of his trousers.
No being had ever looked more lovely.
Then it dawned on me that I was the first person in centuries to taste flucurial. Joy flooded through me, its intensity in direct proportion to the depths of my earlier despair. “Hello,” I said, and the human laughed with joy. Even his barking sounded good.
We crossed the grass again, and I no longer feared that our weight would trigger an explosion. We reached the edge of the slate, and I clung to his back as he waded out into the now waist-high water. The sun was not so harsh then, and the flucurial had healed me enough that I actually enjoyed the walk. He taught me how to sing his Danny-child song, and I marveled at the novelty of using my speech organs to sing.
The second time the human crossed the slate took even less time than the first. I dozed off after a while, unable to stay awake as long as he could, and when I awoke I found that we were already back at the wreckage of the ship.
The rain hadn’t caused as much damage as we had feared. I directed the human towards fixing the communications. He did well—those nimble fingers of his more than made up for his lack of technical knowledge.
When he finished, he went into the burnt-out husk of the ship and returned with some salvaged foodstuffs. We ate at dusk by the light of the blinking distress signal.
The stars came out. Remembering the star charts, I found my home sun. I glanced over and saw that the human also looked up at the sky. “Do you miss your planet?” I asked him.
He shook his head slowly. “I never knew my planet.”
I waved my face tentacles in sympathy. “It must have been quite a terrifying place, to have produced your species.”
That made him laugh, and I found that I was coming to enjoy the sound. It had a round, rich feeling to it that was quite comforting.
I fell asleep in his lap, the heat of his body warming me.
I awoke to the sound of a space ship landing.
It was an older model, one of the Void Swimmers from the Silver Satellite. The human stood as
it landed on the slate field, carrying me with him. I was relieved to see the ship—I hadn’t been looking forward to even another day on that dreadful planet. The door of the ship opened, and out came a small group. They approached us, and I realized that they were also humans. Then, with a sinking feeling, I realized all of the crew was human.
They did not speak Collective. Instead, they spoke the language that the Danny-child song was in. They spoke to each other, then they spoke to my human.
“What are they saying?” I asked. I could feel my human’s tension as he held me, heard the increased beat of his heart.
“Shh,” he hushed me, and one of the other humans pointed to me and said something harsh, I don’t know what.
It all happened very fast after that. One moment my human held me close, the next I was falling to the ground. I didn’t get to see much of the fight, because I tumbled over the slight incline of the slate, and by the time I managed to catch myself on my secondary limbs, one human already lay dead, a smoking blaster hole in his chest.
I don’t think I realized how much I had come to care for my human until I saw the dead one. I thought that maybe it was him, and that made me feel sick with dread. But it was not him, he still fought the other humans, trading blaster shot for blaster shot. I watched, fascinated and horrified, as he gunned down another of his fellow species, then, when he ran out of charges, he threw the gun at the third one’s head, dropping him like a sack of rocks. The last enemy human blasted my human in the shoulder and I cried aloud in rage and anguish.
Sensing victory, the enemy human charged, but he had not realized that my human carried a machete. The enemy’s life ended violently and painfully, bleeding his red blood out onto the slate.
Breathing heavily, my human returned to me, and he picked me up, those killer hands holding me carefully, asking if I was okay, apologizing for dropping me. How very strange, that he could hold me so gently after being so brutal.
The rest is self evident. We took the bandit’s ship. They had been using the planet as a scavenging ground for some time, returning every so often to retrieve the scrap left by the exploding grass. My human told me they had admitted to killing the first ship of scientists.
So that is the tale, dear Salaseal. I don’t know what I learned from it. I mean, I was right; humans are violent, cruel beings. Those bandits killed for scrap money, and my human killed them just as easily. Then again, you were also right. I wouldn’t be alive today if you hadn’t insisted on sending a human with us.
I don’t know if I learned a lesson or not, but I did gain a friend.
I hope that the synthesizing is going well, and I look forward to seeing you again on the moon of Hapsoid, when we finally stop the plague.
Your dearest friend,
Liaso.
P.S. Yes, I did finally ask the human his name. It’s Frank. I don’t think I will ever be able to pronounce it.
Dyson Field Consortium Station, Apartment District
Stars flickered behind Nines’ face as Maz watched her on the apartment monitor, searching her girlfriend’s features for telltale flickers of emotion. All Maz could tell, despite her concern, was that Nines was waiting for her to continue talking.
“So … That’s at eight—the dancing, I mean, and we’re all talking about getting drinks before that.”
“Okay, awesome!” Nines said, her face bright.
“Yeah,” Maz said.
“Everything alright?”
“I don’t know,” Maz said, twirling a lock of her hair around her finger. “It seems weird doing something like this without you, you know?”
“Not really! You need to get out and have fun, Maz. The station’s a great place to try new stuff, whether I’m there or not. Have a few drinks! Have fun dancing! Hell, bring someone home!”
“You know I’m not going to do that!” Maz laughed nervously and flushed red.
“Well you should! Not like I’m gonna get any action here on the beetle barge. You’ll need to get enough tail for the both of us.”
“Oh, right! How’s the ship treating you?” Maz asked. To Maz’s discomfort, Nines caught the subject change with a wry smile. She humored Maz regardless.
“You know, things are fine. The adjustment’s getting a little easier, but the translator software’s still having trouble. Burg’s my girl, though, she’s doing an awesome job picking up the nuances of Anthrop.”
“Do you think the rest of the Grzzh will catch on that quick? On the ship, I mean.” Maz felt a twinge of self-consciousness toward the pronunciation of the species’ name. The Grrzh’s characteristic back-of-the-throat buzz had eluded her since she started consulting as a behaviorist with the embassy, while Nines had picked up the dialect much more readily. If Maz had bungled it, Nines gave no sign.
“What? Oh, no, naw. Burg’s an ambassadress, linguistics are just her thing. I doubt that any other Grzzh are gonna be able to figure out how I talk before my tour’s finished.”
“I’m sorry, sweetheart. But at least you’ve got her to talk to, right?”
“Yeah, Burg’s a treat. Sounds like you’ve made a few friends on the station, too,” Nines said, with an accompanying bounce of her eyebrows. Maz gave a guilty smile and reached for her hair again.
“The work at the embassy’s been pretty good for that. There are a lot more interesting people here than I ever had in any of my classes, so the change is nice. Even met a few humans I can talk to.”
Maz looked down. Her handheld blinked insistently from its spot on her lap as the timer she’d set at the beginning of the call counted down to phase two.
“Do you think you’re going to get any action? Your ship, I mean. I’ve been worried.” Maz watched Nines’ expression shift from jovial to concentrated. She hoped the change wasn’t too obvious.
“What, in a state-of-the-art Grrzh dreadnaught like the Protectorate Maul? Oh, no, I doubt we’re going to do any fighting any time soon. We’re probably just gonna waste these top-notch stealth and weapons systems wandering through the Dyson Field with the rest of the fleet, and scoop up any rebel patrols we find. We’re thinking we’ll just do passive defensive patterns for the next few cycles.”
“Yeah, it’s not like the sensors back on the station detected a jump pattern straight from the Maul’s patrol route into the heart of the rebel base, like we even know where that is. You’re totally better off sticking with the fleet and patrolling.”
“Oh, really? No point in spending time searching for those routes, then. Man, I guess the navy won’t get any chances to catch the rebels with their pants down. What a bummer,” Nines said. Maz tried not to wince at her girlfriend’s over-inflection.
“Hope you don’t die of boredom, babe,” Maz said, smiling.
Nines laughed. “Oh, I hope I don’t die at all! That’d be nice.” She smiled and reached her hand out to brush the screen with her fingertips. “Miss you, darlin’.”
“I miss you, too. Feels like you’ve been gone forever.”
“You’re telling me. It’s still so weird to be off the station.” Nines looked over her shoulder to something off-screen and turned back to Maz. “I think I need to get going, Maz. Looks like Burg needs me to fill out some forms.”
“I should start getting ready, too. Love you, Nines.”
“Love you, too, Maz. Have fun tonight!”
“Here’s hoping. You, too.”
“Oh, I know I will.”
Maz tapped hesitantly at her handheld and Nines disappeared from the cabin window, leaving only the debris-shrouded stars of the Dyson Field to mark her passage.
“Sarcasm? Your groundbreaking new military code is sarcasm?” A young man in a blue Consortium military jacket hoisted himself upward from his relaxed lean against Maz’s apartment wall. Like most of Maz’s interactions with Security Captain Simon DuGalle, the officer took painstaking effort to appear as nonchalant as possible—a typical social paradox undertaken by someone who wanted to impress a member of the interested se
x without their conscious acknowledgement. Unfortunately for DuGalle, Maz had some experience in that regard.
“It’ll be obsolete as soon as the war’s over, I think. If we’re unlucky, it’ll be a bit sooner,” Maz said, rising from her chair and slipping her handheld into her pocket, “But, yes, my code is sarcasm. There are a few Consortium species incapable of prosodic speech, but most of them get used to interpreting it after a few years in the galactic community. Same with the Grrzh: Rather than communicating intent with tonally implicit content, they use explicit language to communicate emotional meaning.
“So even if the Grrzh rebels can crack the navy’s encryption, which they’ve proven capable of doing because they essentially share the same coding methods, then manage to translate Anthrop, which the rebels have never heard before but can manage with some decent software, they still won’t have a method for discerning which parts of the communication are genuine.”
DuGalle blinked, inhaled, opened his mouth, and closed it again. “I think I understood about a third of those words,” he admitted after a moment.
“You took twice as many Consortium cross-culture lectures than I did! You’re the head of security for one of the most integrated stations in Consortium space!” Maz said. She watched in amusement as DuGalle winced sheepish, and smiled. She was about as romantically interested in him as she would be a toothbrush, but she could not deny that the captain was an outwardly charming man.
“The Grrzh produce a sort of humming buzz to communicate, right? They use varying pitch and intervals to produce words?” Maz asked. As she spoke, she walked to her apartment’s book-strewn dinner table and plucked a dress coat from the back of one of its chairs.
“Right,” DuGalle said.
“Well, the way that their language evolved, their speech doesn’t use differing vocal tones to communicate additional meanings, like emotion. They just use their words to do it for them instead.” Maz shrugged the coat on, checked the pocket for her Consortium consultant badge, and slipped her handheld in alongside it.
Humans Wanted Page 10
