“Ka'sa!” the Ailian snarled, gesturing with her weapon again. “Suri te seresh te a'krai! Suri!” She took a step towards him, her fingers flexing on the rifle grip. Her form towered above his.
Jack felt himself growing angry, despite his fear. “Listen, I don't understand a fucking word you're saying!” He suddenly remembered that he had a pistol strapped to his waist, and his right hand flinched down towards it before he caught himself. If he grabbed it he would be dead for sure. “You can yell at me all you want, you overgrown housecat, but I don't have a goddamned clue what you want me to do!”
The Ailian opened her mouth wide, roaring at him. For a moment, Jack was sure that she was about to shoot him, and he stiffened, bracing himself. They faced each other down for a long minute, another breeze rushing through the clearing around Jack's crashed ship. Jack's eyes started to water from being open so long.
She opened her mouth again. “Seresh te a'kr-” She closed her mouth again, a low growl rumbling in her throat. She shuffled her feet impatiently, and Jack got the strange sense that she was trying to calm herself down. Her tail swished rapidly, dusting through the scattered leaves at her feet. Then she took a deep breath, letting it out slowly before speaking again.
“Sit,” she muttered. Her voice, speaking unexpectedly in English, had a strange accent to it, a trilling tune that emphasized the hard “T” sound of the word. “You sit. Now. With hands on your head.”
Jack was sufficiently surprised that he immediately sat down. Looking up at the Ailian, he placed his hands on his head, relieved that he finally knew what she wanted him to do. Once he was situated, she advanced on him, kicking his rifle away.
“You move...,” she said, coming behind him and kneeling, “...and I kill you. You understand now, yes?”
“Yeah, yeah,” Jack said. “I get it.”
The Ailian set her rifle down, grabbing one of his arms in a powerful grip and jerking it roughly behind his back. From her belt she detached a length of strong black woven cord, which she used to tie his arms together. Drawing the free end of the cord down his back, she pulled his legs up underneath him so that he was kneeling, and then she tied the cord around his feet. When she was finished, he was trussed up securely in a kneeling position, unable to move very much at all. Jack felt a tug at his waist as she pulled his pistol from its holster, and she tucked it into her own belt. That done, she yanked him up, setting him down upright by the fire.
“Agh!” Jack yelped, pain blossoming at his shoulders at her rough treatment. “Bitch...” He was hoping for some kind of reaction from her at that, but she gave him no satisfaction.
She came back around him, carrying her rifle to the other side of the fire, where she sat. She stared at him, the hatred still burning in her eyes. Jack stared right back at her, defiant now that he was reasonably sure that she didn't mean to kill him, at least not yet. The Ailian had her rifle settled across her lap, though it would be easy enough for her to aim it back at him if he tried anything.
Jack took a moment to look her over. He had seen pictures of Ailians before, but he'd never given them too much thought. They were the enemy, but an enemy in a war that he'd counted himself out of almost eight years ago. She was tall, of course, and built very strongly, though her femininity was evident in the curve of her hips and the swell of her breasts. The fur was the main difference, and the tail, as well as the shape of her head. She had a short, tiger-like muzzle with thin black lips and a black nose, and her furred head was crested by two short, pointed ears. Her eyes were an intense yellow, flecked with spots of gold, with thin catlike black pupils.
The Ailian appraised him in probably much the same way he was doing to her, with the difference that she maintained a calm air of superiority, considering their situation. Finally, after about ten minutes of this, she spoke again.
“Name,” she hissed at him.
“What?”
She swung her rifle off of her lap, aiming it squarely at his chest. “Name. Your name. You will tell me.”
Jack tilted his chin up. “You first.”
“I tell you that already,” the Ailian said. “Before. You tell me yours.”
“And I already told you, I can't understand a word of your language,” Jack said. He shrugged his shoulders as much as the cords would allow him. “If you want my name, I want yours.”
“Could kill you now,” she pointed out, flicking a switch on her weapon. A red sighting laser projected a gleaming dot on his chest. “Then your name not matter, yes?” She shrugged back at him, and she smiled for the first time, her white razor-sharp teeth gleaming.
Jack held her gaze, sweating a little, but he wasn't willing to risk that she might be serious. “Jack Squier,” he said finally, grudgingly.
The Ailian switched off her targeting laser, laying the rifle across her lap again. “Good.” She leaned back a little, curling her tail around her waist. She winced a little as her body tilted back, and Jack noticed for the first time that her flight suit was stained with wet patches of what looked like blood. “Why you are in this sector of space?”
“First tell me your name,” Jack shot back at her. “I told you mine, so you tell me yours. Fair's fair.”
“And I tell you I already say my name,” she insisted again. “Be-”
“Yeah, I get it. You told me before.” Jack was getting very frustrated with this woman. “And I told you before that I can't understand your language one bit. So if you happened to mention your name while we were blasting the shit out of each other in space, it kinda escaped me.”
The Ailian gnashed her teeth for a few moments, internally debating her response. Jack wasn't entirely sure that she wasn't thinking of the best place to put a bullet hole in him, but then it seemed she took another calming breath.
“Aria Me'lia,” she said. Her tail twitched. “Lieutenant Aria Me'lia.” Aria nodded her head. “Now you have my name. You tell me why you are here. You are human military, yes?” She gestured at his clothing and his gun belt.
Jack shook his head. “No. Not anymore. I was once, but I'm a civilian cargo pilot. I work for a shipping company.”
“Liar,” Aria hissed at him. “You in restricted Ascendancy space! Regular humans do not go there. You tell the truth, yes?” She hefted her rifle threateningly, wincing again. Jack thought that some of the patches of blood on her flight suit were a little bigger than before.
“Bite me!” Jack yelled at her.
“Bite you?” she repeated back to him. She seemed genuinely confused by the phrase. “I could do that. These teeth go through your neck like bread.” She bared her teeth at him. “Unless you tell truth.”
“I am telling the truth!” Jack insisted. He cursed at himself for giving her a clever idea. “I'm a civilian cargo pilot. Okay, yeah, I was running military supplies, but on a civilian contract, not a military assignment! The path I was taking was just the quickest route to my rendezvous point with the Navy.” He paused, catching his breath after his rushed statement. He looked at Aria, gauging her reaction to his words.
After looking at him for several minutes, she sniffed the air. Jack got the impression that she was smelling his scent, and he wondered what sort of information she could gather from that. He wondered if she could smell fear. If so, she would be getting a noseful of it right now.
“Truth,” she finally said, though she said it in a disappointed tone. She must have been hoping that she'd caught a spy or something like that. “You speak truth.” Jack let out a held breath. He watched as Aria seemed to slump a little. The patches of blood on her suit were definitely growing in size. She must have been injured worse than he had been in during her own crash landing. Jack was a little amazed that she was as strong as she was in the condition that she seemed to be in, and he shivered just a bit as he realized for the first time just how formidable an opponent an Ailian would be in combat.
“Uh...,” Jack said. He felt like a complete moron for wanting to ask the question he was about to ask. �
��Are you...uh...okay? You don't look so good.”
Aria snarled at him. “You will be quiet.” But her voice was strained now. Jack knew she must have been pushing herself pretty hard to get to his crash site from her own. “Medical supplies. Where?”
“Well, which is it? You want me to be quiet or you want me to tell you where my medical supplies are?”
She picked up her rifle, thrusting the barrel towards him. He heard a click as she disengaged her safety. Jack moved to hold up his hands before remembering that they were tied behind his back.
“A joke,” he said weakly, trying to smile. “I was...uh...joking.” He jerked his head to one side. “They're over there in the tent.”
Aria slung her rifle over her shoulder, standing with some effort and making her way to Jack's tent. She pushed the flap aside, going in. As soon as she was out of sight, he started struggling against his bonds, trying to get his hands loose. After a few moments he gave up; she'd tied them far too tight, and struggling was only making them tighter. A moment later and she emerged from the tent, his medical kit in one hand. It was a military-grade kit with much more stuff in it than a simple shipboard first aid kit.
Without looking at Jack, Aria returned to her spot beside the fire. She set her rifle and the medical kit down. The first thing that she did was to open the case and pull out an ampule of a painkilling drug, unscrewing the cap and then jabbing the sharp, pointed end into her thigh through her clothes. Her face screwed up in pain, and then relaxed as the medication took hold. As Jack watched, she unzipped her flight suit down the front, pulling it from around her shoulders. Her upper body exposed to him, Jack couldn't quite stifle a gasp as he saw at least four nasty gashes across her torso, all of them bleeding freely. Besides that, she also had what looked like a scar from a previous wound, a long one that traced through the thin fur of her underbelly, from her collarbone down between her breasts and almost to her navel. Clearly she was no stranger to serious injury.
Biting her lip, Aria withdrew a disinfectant spray from the kit along with an electric wound sealer, the modern successor to the old-timey needle and thread. She sprayed disinfectant along the gashes. Switching the sealer on, she started drawing along the wounds. There was a hissing noise as the heat from the instrument slightly singed her fur, but the wounds closed cleanly, leaving behind only drying blood and a ragged line in her flesh as evidence that she'd been cut. When she was finished with her front she moved to her back, the thicker fur there giving her some difficulty. But she finished the job all the same, and she replaced the supplies in the kit before turning back to Jack.
She didn't bother to zip her flight suit back up, and Jack knew it was because she needed the wounds exposed to air before they would fully seal. He also got the feeling that she was trying to unnerve him, in which case she was succeeding. He averted his eyes. Even though she was his enemy, it didn't seem right to stare when she was...well...exposed.
“Now,” Aria said, crossing her arms over her chest. “What I do with you, hm? We are stuck on this planet together, and you are prisoner.”
“What the hell are you asking me for?” Jack shot back at her, glancing over. “You're the one with the gun. Seems to me like you get to give the orders, yeah?”
Aria looked back at him, her face impassive. Then she nodded once. “Well, yes.” She crossed her legs, swishing her tail. She seemed much more at ease now that her wounds were attended to. “First thing. Your radio. Does it work?”
Jack blinked. “No, it doesn't. Whatever you did to it during the fight, you knocked it out completely. I tried using it as soon as I finished setting up my camp, and all I get is static on all channels.” His face took on a dejected look. “Believe me, the first thing I wanted to do was call for help, but you ruined any chance of that, didn't you?”
Aria shrugged. “War. I do what I must, yes?” She uncrossed her legs, standing up and starting to pace back and forth. “Is too bad. What to do...” She paced for a while, lost in thought, paying Jack no mind at all. Then she stopped, turning her head to look at him. “Well, then. If I want to leave this planet, I find my ship. Perhaps radio still work.”
Confused, Jack straightened himself as well as he could. “Find your ship? What do you mean, find your ship? You came from your ship to find mine, didn't you?”
Aria shook her head. Finally, she pulled her flight suit back up around her body, zipping it up. “No. I eject during crash. Escape pod take me away from ship. Far away, I think.” She nodded her head towards the edge of the clearing, a different direction than the one she'd come from. “All I know, somewhere that direction. Not know how far...Not even know if ship in one piece. But only chance to survive is go and see if radio works, call for help.”
“And so...what, you just leave me here to die?” Jack asked bitterly. “Tie me up and wait for some predator to finish me off? If you're gonna do that, just shoot me and be done with it.”
“No, not do that,” Aria said. She strode over to Jack, kneeling down in front of him. She looked into his face, an unreadable expression on hers. “You come with me. Help me find ship.”
******
Jack just looked at her, definitely not sure that he'd heard her correctly. Because there wasn't any way that she just said what he thought she'd said. She couldn't be serious.
“You're gonna have to repeat that one for me,” he said slowly.
“You help me find ship,” Aria said. She leaned back from him, sitting on her haunches with her hands on her knees. “I need working radio to call for rescue. You help me do it.”
“Uh...huh...,” Jack said slowly. He looked up, as though deep in thought. “Yeah, I'm gonna go ahead and say I'm not gonna do that.”
“Oh?” Aria said. She peered at him, tilting her head to one side. “Why not?”
“Why not?” Jack asked, incredulous. “Why not? I'll tell you why not! Because you've spent literally the entire time I've had the misfortune of being acquainted with you trying to blow me out of space, trying to shoot me down on an uninhabited planet, threatening to shoot me with a rifle, or tying me up. Because you've been talking to me like I'm some sort of servant or something. And because I just plain don't want to.” Jack looked away from her. “Give me one good reason why I should help you.”
Aria stood back up. “You want a reason?”
Jack rolled his eyes. “Yeah, I want a reason.”
“Alright.” Aria returned to her spot on the other side of the fire. “If we go alone, nobody to watch our backs. Predators, environmental hazards, nobody to help us through. Neither of us know this planet. Only way to survive is if we go together.” She raised a hand. “Easier.”
Jack rolled his eyes again. “Yeah, whatever.” But she made a good point.
“Sleep on it,” Aria suggested. She stood up, walking to his tent. “Plenty of time to decide in morning. I ready for answer then.” She pushed aside the entrance flap.
“Wait a minute!” Jack called, struggling against his bonds again. “You just want me to sleep out here? I got no way to defend myself! What if some animal comes along and tries to make me its next meal.”
The Ailian looked back at him. “You still prisoner, remember?” She shrugged. “If anything come, you yell. I wake up, probably.” She pushed her way into the tent, zipping it up behind her.
“Probably? Bitch...” Jack sighed, looking around at his campsite, and the now-dying fire. “Not the way to convince me to partner up...” He settled in as best he could with his arms and legs tied behind him, and tried to sleep.
******
When Jack woke up, the planet's sun was shining down on him. Sometime during the night he'd slumped over, and he was lying on his side. He blinked, feeling a tremendous itch on his head. As his eyes opened wider, he realized that a ten-legged bug creature about the size of a drink coaster was crawling across his face, spiny legs pricking his skin.
“Gah, motherfucker!” he screamed, jerking upright and shaking his head back and forth wildly,
trying to dislodge the bug. With every shake, its legs dug in tighter, stubbornly resisting. In desperation, Jack bit at the creature, and his teeth crunched it in half. The thing trembled, its legs tightening again before relaxing, and both halves fell down onto the ground.
Jack spat, trying to get the bitter taste out of his mouth and hoping to God that whatever he'd just bitten wasn't poisonous. His heart still pounding, he leaned back, trying not to look at the thing he'd basically started to eat for breakfast. His jaw clenched as that familiar headache starting to throb again.
Just once...I mean, it's not that much to ask, is it? he thought to himself. Can I wake up one time without being in pain?
He took a few deep breaths, looking around the clearing. Everything seemed just as it had been the night before, except the fire was nothing but a pile of ashes. Just as he was considering yelling again, to try to wake up Aria, the tent opened up and she emerged. As Jack watched, she settled down on all fours, arching her back just like a cat would do after waking up. She stretched herself in this fashion for several minutes before standing and walking over to him.
“'You yell, I wake up'!” Jack snapped at her. He was feeling justifiably grumpy this particular morning. “Remember? You said that. Glad I wasn't dying out here. Some fucking help you are.”
Aria shrugged, looking vaguely apologetic. “Tired,” she said simply. She sat down next to him. “Sleep well?”
Jack glared at her, his mouth opening and closing several times as he tried to think of something angry to say to her. When he thought about it, though, as tired as he had been he had slept pretty good, even considering the uncomfortable position he'd been in. “Yeah, I guess so.”
“Good. Need your rest. Healthy.” Aria produced a can of preserved food. “Hungry?”
“I could eat.” Jack twisted his head around, trying to look at the ropes tied behind his back. “So, you gonna spoon feed me, or what?”
“Not your mother,” Aria said, her expression souring. “Feed yourself.” She came around to his other side, and Jack felt her tugging on the bonds around his hands. After a few moments his hands were free, and he flexed his muscles, trying to work the stiffness out of his wrists. “Now. You eat, and then-...!”
Transmission Lost Page 3
