Learning to Blush: Swarii Brides, Book Two

by Korey Mae Johnson

  She picked up the communicator and put it to her ear. Fie answered the call on the other line. “Put Graham on,” Eleanor ordered immediately.

  “Probably not the best idea,” Fie said in an uneasy voice. “He's pretty loopy. I just gave him another dose of—”

  “Put him on the line anyway, Fie?” she begged miserably.

  Fie sighed. He probably knew about what happened at the hearing. Knowing the speed of word-of-mouth on the ship, he probably knew everything that had happened nearly as quickly as she did. “Sure, hold on.”

  She heard mumbling on the other end of the phone until she heard Graham’s voice. “Hello?”

  Even if she hated the Swarii, she still loved Graham! Even the sound of his voice sounded so good… “Graham? It’s Ellie.”

  “Ellie…?” came his confused drawl.

  She heard Fie explain, “Your wife, Eleanor, Captain.”

  “I’m married?” Graham asked Fie. “What? Who’s this?” he asked again on the communicator, confused.

  Ellie wanted to laugh and cry at the same time. “I love you, Captain,” Ellie whispered into the phone with a hoarse voice.

  “Jinga? What’s wrong, sweetheart?”

  Ellie grimaced, realizing that she was being confused with Graham’s youngest sister—the one that had been the first to die in the plague. It made Ellie sick when she remembered Graham’s loss—how could they let the Frians take out everything they’d ever known and still not appreciate the work that Ellie wanted to do for them? “I love you, Graham,” she said again, swallowing loudly.

  He gave a gentle, friendly laugh. “I love you too, Babygirl. Is mom with you?”

  Yes, Graham’s mother had also died a couple of weeks after Jinga. “I gotta go.”

  “Er-uh, okay, Honey. Give the communicator back to mommy, alright? You be a good girl.”

  Ellie hung up the phone, feeling even worse than she did before she called. Whatever they had Graham on must have been extremely strong stuff. But then again, they were trying to stimulate regrowth in his ocular nerves, which wasn’t something Earthlings had learned to do yet, but the Swarii doctors had told her that the process was quite painful if they didn’t zap the patient with enough pain medication to drop an elephant. The medication had the ability to make Graham forget the last fifteen years; even her.

  So, she had no one to drag comfort from. She cried herself to sleep, feeling alone, feeling rejected, feeling like the world was crashing down on her. She didn’t know what to do with herself now. What could she do without work? And for months she wouldn’t even have Graham!

  There was nothing to be done. No hope. She was in a world that hated her and didn't respect what she could do. She had talents she couldn't use, and she was in the middle of a war, forced to watch the people she loved come out on the losing end. What she needed now was a miracle.

  * * *

  Eleanor wasn't certain when she went to sleep. She knew she was dreaming, and where she was in the dream: she had been on planet-side, on Swaraan, where Graham's family compound was situated like a beautiful castle with the views over a waterfall and a jungle. In her dream, she was watching as her half-Swarii children padded in the stream to climb up to the swinging rope to allow them to dive to the water pooling under the falls. It was warm there, and she was so happy… Until the blearing noise started coming from nowhere, piercing her ears, making her cry out!

  She woke up as she was falling off of the bed, and the blearing noise was still there; even louder, and everywhere. She pressed her hands to her ears tightly, trying to block out the noise. The ship under her shook and rattled.

  Somewhere through the sirens she could hear Jack's voice cry, “Eleanor!” and she felt his mighty hand grip her arm and heave her to her feet. He pulled her into the doorway and pressed her to his chest as he hovered over her, covering her head with his body. He put his other hand over his own as if expecting the whole ship to collapse around him.

  She still had no idea what was going on, but eventually the rattling under and around them slowly stopped and then soon after the sirens quieted, leaving them in deafening silence, except for the pounding of their own eardrums and the sound of Jack's chest heaving with panicked breaths.

  Jack got down on one knee. “Are you hurt? Are you okay?” he asked in a desperate manner, so quickly that she didn't know if she should shake her head or not.

  “I'm okay, I'm okay,” she assured, nodding. “What was that?”

  “I have no idea,” Jack said, “but I'm sure as hell going to find out!” He got up and marched over to the communicator and put it onto his ear and adjusted it to his own face. Soon, he was yelling into the receiver as Ellie watched, still dumbfounded, from the doorframe.

  Eventually she got the courage to open the door and, on wobbly legs, walked to the twins' room. They were walking out of the room and met them in the hallway, wide-eyed and worried.

  “What was that?” Tom asked, panting. “Did we hit a meteor or something?”

  Jack suddenly appeared behind Ellie and put his hand on her shoulder and squeezed. “No, it wasn't a meteor. We had a run-in with a Frian vessel. They took off, but not before they took out a whole communicators tower!” He turned Ellie around so that she was facing him and grasped her face with both of his hands. “Are you okay if I go to work? I can stay if you need me, Babygirl. You only have to say the word. I'll understand if you're frightened… Or you can come with me, even! How about that?”

  She shook her head. “No, I'm okay,” she assured. “You go. I want to make sure Graham, Mike and Penny are all okay.”

  The admiral's face fell into a frown, exposing that he didn't really like her plan, but he didn't say anything against it. He stroked her cheeks with his thumbs and then dropped his hand into his pocket and pulled out a communicator. “Okay,” he allowed. “I want you to stay safe, you hear? Keep your communicator on you at all times, get me?” He put the communicator's ear-bud into her hands and closed her fingers around it.

  She nodded. The admiral didn't waste any time heading out of the apartment and towards the mothership's mission control.

  She and the twins left the apartment as well, and headed towards Penny and Thorton's apartment. “Tell me that doesn't happen often,” Tom begged. He still looked beyond freaked.

  “It's never happened!” she replied earnestly.

  Tim, who looked a little stoned, put his hands in his pockets, trolling along behind them. “It wouldn't have been so bad,” Tim mentioned. “You know… Dying out in space. I mean, that's sort of cool in a way! You know, a lot of people pay some buko bucks just trying to get their ashes out into orbit when they die…”

  Ellie stopped and turned around just to roll her eyes at Tim before she spun back around and continued marching, trying to make calls at the same time. She'd been trying to get in touch with Fie since she'd left the apartment. He finally picked up the other end. “Graham's fine,” Fie said shortly. “I have injuries to take care of here, Kitten. I'll call you after.” After that, he hung up the phone.

  She frowned and pulled the earbud from her ear and looked down at it, incredulous and annoyed. “If that was all the response I was gonna get from him, he could have at least taken my call earlier!” she huffed.

  “Aliens, huh?” Tim agreed with a rueful snort. “They got a lot to learn about decency.” He leaned over Ellie's head and knocked casually on Penny's door.

  The door opened very soon after the knock and Penny flew out of the opening, flinging her arms around Tim. “Are you guys okay?” she demanded. “Really scary, huh?”

  “It sure beats the piss out of a cup of coffee!” Tom assured, rubbing at the back of his neck. “So that shit can just happen?” he asked Ellie. “You know—people can just attack us?”

  Ellie raised an eyebrow. “We’re sort of fighting a war, Tom. That's part of my annoyance regarding the whole getting-fired thing,” Ellie reminded flatly. “How do they expect to win if they're not willing to bend some r
ules, huh? Riddle me that!”

  Tim reached over and ruffled Ellie's hair, releasing himself from Penny's embrace. “Penny, come with us to go see how Mike's doing,” he invited, nodding in the direction of Mike's puny digs far on the other side of the ship.

  “Mike's with Thorton; I already talked to him. They had to go work on something. Repairs, checks, I dunno—you know, mechanical crap,” she replied, waving her hand in the air. She looked tired, though, and her eyes looked puffy, as if she'd spent a lot of time crying or eating raw onions.

  “What's wrong?” Ellie asked urgently.

  Penny's lip quivered and she led them back into her and Thorton's apartment. “Nothing,” she sniffed.

  “Penny, did you get hurt during the—?” Tom began, reaching out to grab his sister gently by the arm.

  Penny interrupted him. “No! I'm not hurt…” She frowned and her eyes glassed over with tears. “I just… hate him! I hate that horrible, horrible bastard!” she said, seeming to point in the direction Thorton went.

  “Oh.” Ellie guessed right away that Thorton had probably spanked Penny; maybe even for the first time! Ellie wanted to console her, tell her it was just something that happened just in the very beginning of marriages and then died down… But she didn't want to lie to her. Swarii men were hard-handed and as stubborn as goats!

  In any case, she definitely did not want to talk about spankings in front of Tim and Tom, who were looking like a couple of lanky goons with bed-head, already slowly sneaking off to Penny's kitchen to look through cupboards, foraging for breakfast.

  Penny raised her eyebrow, looking distracted as she watched her brothers. “Are you guys… High?”

  Tim didn't respond with words because he already had a full muffin in his mouth. He pinched air between his thumb and index finger, leaving an inch of space to illustrate, 'a little.'

  “How is that even possible? Did you find weed or something?” she demanded, marching over and stealing a carafe of orange juice out of his hands.

  “Nope. Went to visit Graham, raided the cupboards at the hospital. There's ways to get high on every planet, Penny,” Tim said around a full mouth of muffin. He paused and then added thoughtfully, “Or between planets, as it were.”

  Penny gave a pained look. “Tim—you don't even know what you're getting high on! Try being sober for once?”

  “What's the point?” Tom replied for him, seething at nothing in particular. “We're getting sent away no matter what, Penny. We're basically kidnapped with no way of getting home. I had dreams, you know? I wanted to go to Cancun on spring break and have myself an orgy with a couple of chicks that have Daddy issues. Will that ever happen now, Penny? So what if we want to numb our senses a little?”

  “He talks a big game,” Tim added, motioning towards Tom with his half-eaten muffin. “But he didn't take nearly the dose I did. I'm gellin'.” He gave a wide smile. “And I already had an orgy. Kim Miller and Judy Faust,” he boasted.

  Penny made an angry grunt, but Ellie stepped forward, saying suspiciously, “I thought Kim and Judy were lesbians…?”

  “That's before they had a slice of Tim a la carte…” Tim bobbled his head back and forth. “I'm telling you; my side-business got me pussy up to my elbows! Here, I might as well donate my cock to science. It's not going to get any play otherwise… Four-to-one male-to-female ratio here, Penny! Four-to-one. I'm in hell, and hell's put on a sausage festival…”

  Ellie and Penny found themselves dealing with Tom's angry-drunk ranting and Tim's high regaling's of his sex life well through the morning. As the hours passed, so did breakfast, and before they knew it, Mike suddenly entered Penny's apartment without knocking, sporting a Dennis-the-Menace grin on his face. “Guys,” he said, swishing his hands through the air as if he was going to make an important announcement, “you won't believe what they just asked me to do.”

  “What?” Penny asked, figuring that if they couldn't believe it, then they probably wouldn't be able to guess it, either.

  “You know that thing Ellie designed for the Swarii to spy on the Frians? The Fledge? You know, that thing that picks up all the communications between the Frian ships?”

  “…Yeah?” Tom asked after Mike had made a lengthy pause to heighten the dramatic effect of his next words.

  “They just asked me to fix that! It's totally not working now, and the bridge of the Mothership is freaking the hell out! Total chaos. It's awesome.”

  Everyone just blinked at him. “So? Didn't you fix it?” Tom asked finally.

  Mike snorted loudly. “Fuck no! Not after Thorton was in my face for thinking for myself not last month! If they're gonna call and treat me like some damn monkey, that's exactly what they're gonna get!” Mike hooted. He then proceeded to give an impression of himself from an hour before, when they'd asked him if he could fix the fledge, “Why now, as you said… I'm stupider than cheese. I'm too young. Got too much of this pesky insolent human blood in me! And this project?” He whistled. “Looks like a lot of thinkin' work… Why don't you ask Ellie? Wait, wait!” He covered mouth with his hand. “That's right! You fired her this morning! Wow… Bad timing!”

  Mike gave Ellie a wink.

  Ellie's mouth dropped open. “You seriously said that? To who?”

  “The admiralty… And Thorton! The folks on the bridge came to him first. They figured he’d know how to fix it ‘cause he was your boss… Lo and behold, he couldn’t figure out what was wrong. Probably worked on it all morning.” Mike grabbed a muffin from the counter and shoved it hungrily into his mouth. “I tell ya, things around here are gonna get pretty fucking funny,” he said around a full mouth. “You wait. Right now I bet they’re brandishing up their forks and getting ready to eat a slice of humble pie.”

  Penny turned to Ellie. “Don’t cave,” Penny said, poking Ellie’s shoulder with her finger. “Don’t you do it! You make them get on their hands and knees before you pick up a single screwdriver. They can’t take advantage of you. They either need you or they don’t.”

  Ellie swallowed and churned that around in her mind. “Bet they come to the twins next. They won’t come to me RIGHT after firing me if they can help it. They don’t like the taste of humble pie, you see. It’s an acquired taste.”

  “I hear that. I fucking hate humble pie. It’s lemon meringue or nothing,” Tim agreed, winking.

  Ellie shrugged, looking skeptical. “They’ll never ask,” she said decisively.

  “You wait and see, Sis. Give them a week and they’re gonna come begging like dogs without a bone,” Mike said, reaching over and tugging on Ellie’s braid happily.

  * * *

  Fourteen Hours, Thirty Nine Minutes Later…

  “I’m not asking you, I’m telling you. I know you guys know how to fix this kind of thing. You’ve been working hand-on-hand with Ellie since you were old enough to hold a wrench!” Thorton growled. He didn’t know why, except for a final act of desperation from so much pressure from the bridge and the admiralty, but he added, “Do it or else.”

  “Oh, Massa wants us to go work on the Fledge!” Tim mocked, having already flatly refused—twice. “Wouldn’t want him to a go an’ get the hose!”

  “Swing Low… Sweet Chariot…” Tom added theatrically in song as Tim used an invisible whip on him.

  Thorton rubbed his temples. Penny was right; when he stopped by the apartment, the red-headed, angry little thing had told him that her brothers would rather die than raise a finger to help any of the Swarii at the moment. Particularly not by fixing a machine that Ellie created before she was canned. Yesterday the admiralty had gone so far to say that she wasn't needed nor wanted for any facet of the service!

  The admiralty forbid Thorton to even ask Ellie unless there was absolutely no other way. Well, Thorton was quickly running out of options. He picked up his communicator and called the admiral. “If you want the Fledge to work, it’s gotta be Ellie,” he told him as the boys still continued to horse around in front of him. “Her family’s g
ridlocked.”

  “Maybe you should ask Mike again.”

  “He says he doesn’t know how,” Thorton groaned.

  “He’s lying. He knows,” Jack replied.

  “I know he knows! All Ellie did for six weeks journey from Earth was tell him everything she’d ever figured out! But he’s going to play coy and stupid with us until the end. He wants us to crawl to Ellie. I had another Admiral—Admiral Kui, who even tried to bribe him.”

  “Did you try bribing the twins?” Jack asked.

  “With what?” Thorton cried incredulously. It was the most ridiculous suggestion he’d ever heard, even if Jack hadn't comprehended how farcical it was. Jack didn’t know the Jonas family as well as Thorton did. “What are we gonna offer the twins? Pie? A new video game? They’re the simplest people on the planet; and resourceful. Trust me; I’ve lived with them for two months. If you gave them a spoon and two feet of rope and sent them into a forest, they could build you a city. They don’t need stuff.”

  “Fine. I’ll come with you when we approach Ellie. The admirals are still claiming they’re not going to repeal their decision on her.”

  “I have a feeling that if they don’t repeal their decision, they’re not going to get their spy system.”

  “Ellie’s a good girl. She’ll know that helping us is the right thing to do,” Jack said, oh-so-confidently.

  * * *

  “Hey, Pop. What can I do you for?” Ellie asked, looking oh-so-casual—too casual!— with her hands under head as she laid comfortably on the couch.

  “Cut the crap, Kitten,” Thorton demanded. “I didn’t get a wink of sleep last night and I haven’t eaten a thing all day.”

  Ellie sat up and said, “This is what happens when big boys take their training wheels off too early…”

  “Eleanor,” the Admiral said lowly. “Be serious. The admiralty needs your help. Now, they haven’t repealed their decision, but it would be an act of good faith that might bring out good changes for you down the road if you’d help them fix their—”