by C. R Corbin
"I wouldn't do that if I were you." said Fi.
"What's wrong with him?" I asked her.
"He has....a lot of regrets in his life. Not all of them are entirely cleared out at this point, he has trouble sleeping." she said. I had at first thought that she was just some monotone AI but she had an actual personality. A sweet if a bit over enthusiastic AI that would help me, I was grateful for her company. She hovers to my side and I glanced at her screen, only a pixel image of a blank face appeared.
"What kind of regrets?" I asked.
"Wars.....atrocities......innocence lost." she muttered. That last point, the point of his innocence being lost, that really struck something in me and reminded me of my own personal tragedy.
"Innocence lost." I repeated to myself, biting my lower lip and staring at his unconscious form.
I couldn't help myself and stepped forward, my eyes completely focused on him. He laid on his side as I inched my way closer and closer to his doorway. I peeked in and saw nothing but a blank wall and his dresser, although I did see a bottle of pills that sat on his nightstand. I backed away slowly before I heard his voice.
"I'm sorry Lauren." he said in his dazed state and I gasped. His statement proved Fi's assessment true, he was just putting up a front. He really wasn't the cold man that I thought him to be. Soon after my observation, I was pulled away by Fi's voice.
"Come on, come on, don't disturb him. I should have closed this door." muttered Fi in that electronic voice as I was guided over to my quarters. They looked the same as his, a sat down on the bedside and pulled the nightstand drawer out, no pills.
The door shuts and I creep below my covers, frowning as I thought about Janar during my descent into the dream realm. That regret, that sorrow, he was hiding something, I could sense that much from him. I could tell that there was more to his plan that he was letting on, more to what he was doing than what I knew.....but in the end all that I could sense was this strange inclination, this strange want to grab him and comfort him as he did to me when he repelled the darkness during the night time once more.
#
Janar
The following couple of weeks were uneventful. I would wake and get my meal, I tried my hardest to avoid her and it mostly worked but at night she ate at the same time as I did. I would spend my days maintaining the weaponry or watching out for any scouts that Khor might have sent out but there was no sign of him. As far as galactic warlords went he was quite powerful so his reach would be wide, I had to keep an eye out.
My lies to her had worked until this point so I was doing something right. She didn't question me or this strange "organization" that I worked for so I had earned some semblance of her trust that way. The only thing I had to worry about now was her snooping around the ship which she didn't do for the most part. I had Fi show her around the ship while I stayed in the cockpit, at times I could feel her presence, I knew that she was poking her head into the cockpit and watching me but I said nothing to her.
Words exchanged during dinner were sparse, I said very little, as did she. We mostly ate our meals in silence and kept to one another. Every so often she would ask about Jorath and at times I wanted to ask her about Earth but I stopped myself. I could not mess this up, Khor had to be stopped and this was the only way I was going to do it. I would not risk growing closer to her, I would not risk her learning secrets about me.
And the personal details were up for grabs as well.
"Do you have family?" she asked me one night.
"....No, none." I admitted. It had been a regret that had only festered in the pit of my being the more I thought about it. I had wanted a family, something to call my own, but it has been said that a Jorathian loses his ability to find a mate after 24 years of age, I was 27 at this point. The mating procedure was complicated in itself, you would only know who was yours after a long while with them but once you knew....you knew. There was a gland that would activate and you would sense it immediately.
"What made you leave then?" she asked me. I assumed that she was referencing Jorath.
"Boredom." I admitted, I didn't want to tell her too much but she seemed to be eager for details. I tried to keep my lips sealed.
"I feel you there. That's why I went to Arasin in the first place, there was nothing to do back home you know? I wanted to join some kind of expedition and maybe become a famous researcher." she stated, looking wistfully down at her bowl of Jorathian vine and koronin stir fry, koronin being a type of tree dwelling animal that we had back home. I didn't know what to say to that so I merely nodded and grunted.
"But....you didn't want a family?" she asked and I bite my lip, careful as to not reveal too much about myself but something in me told me to let go. I wanted to let her know about who I was deep down and it got out.
"I.....I did, but there is a time limit to determine when and when we cannot mate. I unfortunately fell on the wrong end.' I admitted and she frowned.
"I'm sorry to hear that." she stated and I nodded, she didn't probe any further that day.
Most of the time she spent her days with Fi in the chambers in the back. Apparently she was toying in the laboratory with something, other times she was with what archives I allowed her to read. A pile of books laid next to her bedside, they contained a variety of Jorathian literature that she engorged herself in. I peeked in on her every once in a while and saw her in the lab, observing the tissue cultures that were locked inside of the fridge. I had only used that room sparingly to make more compounds for my grenades or repair my guns, the bacteria were just samples that I collected on my spare time to study under the microscope that came with the ship to pass the time, but she really did treat it as her profession.
"So let's see here...if I take the log of..." she began to speak while I poked my head in through the doorway. Fi was hovering right behind me.
"Seems like you're taking quite the interest huh?” she asked me and I growled.
"Shut up.." I muttered. I did not need her teasing me about this woman that I was going to inevitably sacrifice. I was just curious about what she was doing was all. Unfortunately with that snapping reply I alerted Lauren and had to pull away from the doorway rather quickly to prevent her from seeing me. Fi never really let me live that one down.
Now it was 37 Earth days since her capture and she was sitting across from me, struggling to properly eat the bowl of root noodles placed in front of her. I stared at her and tried not to laugh when the clear spindles of root kept on falling off of her fork. They were quite slippery and there was a specific way we ate them back home, I could tell that she hadn't been exposed to much alien culture.
"Come on!" she hollered as they fall to the bottom of the bowl. I can't hold it.
"Ha..." I chuckled and she stared at me for a bit, smiling and raising an eyebrow.
"What?" she asked me.
"Let me show you." I said and got behind her. She blushed as I gripped her hands from behind, the feeling of her head on my bare chest was incredible. I feel her blond hair brush against my torso, her eyes shut and her hands gripping the spoon and fork as I gently guided the noodles into the fork and guided her hand to her mouth. She smiled as she took up the roots into her mouth and nodded.
"Thank you." she said in a high pitched voice, a voice that made me feel....quite warm inside.
"You're quite welcome." I muttered with a smile, sitting back down across from her and enjoying the rest of my meal.
"So Fi was right. You are a softie." she stated and I raised an eyebrow as I spooned up my own spoonful of noodles.
"I am not. I was just showing you. Foolish humans don't know proper Jorathian culture." I stated and she gasped playfully.
"Foolish? My I didn't think you had it in you to insult me besides growling and grunting? You really think i'm foolish?" she asked and I rolled my eyes with a slight smile, I couldn't stop myself now.
"A bit." I admitted and she only shook her head, the way that blon
d hair tousled over her cheeks and the way her white shirt rippled to only give hints as to what kind of incredible body laid under those sheets of fabric drew me into a daze.
"They don't make stupid people scientists where I come from you know? Maybe that's why you don't know my true worth, you're just a soldier." she bragged with her chin high, her hands resting on the table while I only chuckled.
"Sure, sure." I admitted, not wanting to tease any more than that. The rest of the evening continued with an atmosphere much more jovial than any night than in recent memory.
By the end of the 45th Earth day I was finally questioning her.
"So Earth.....it has a variety of lands then? Not just forest?" I asked her. Being from Jorath I was only accustomed to a one note environment, just lush rainforest and massive seas.
"Yeah like desert, grassland, ocean, mountain, arctic, rainforest." she stated and my eyes glazed over attempting to imagine all of these lands congregated on the same planet, it was a trip to be sure.
"And you were from?" I asked her.
"Oh a place called Minneapolis. It's...forest I guess? Although it does get really cold." she admitted but there was a flicker of regret when she said the name, like there was a great deal of pain locked in that town.
"Do you miss it?" I asked and she nodded.
"Yeah, kind of like how you miss Jorath in a way. I guess you only know how valuable things are once you lose them huh? Oh I could go on for days about all the fun stuff I used to do as a kid but I won't bore you. The town itself had lots of snow. You know snow right?" she asked and I nodded before she continued. "Well it was snowed in for half the year so all I would do was go outside and build snowmen, have snowball fights. I think that's the stuff I remember most about being from home, the winters that were spent horsing around outside before coming into a warm house for a nice meal.....It did get boring after awhile though. I took off after graduating from university, unfortunately I was never too good at planning and got stuck on the colony without a real opportunity for advancement." she muttered under her breath.
"Stuck?" I asked her.
"Yeah stuck. Like as in I couldn't advance in any meaningful way at all. I was stuck being a lab assistant and living in the dorms there, if I had stayed home I could have gotten another position and probably gotten a house but that's not where the excitement laid, at least in my mind. All of the exciting stuff was happening on the frontier and I guess with the most recent tragedy that assessment has been proven to be true." she said with a morose expression. When she spoke about her past I could tell that she was hiding something as well. A mistake perhaps?
She didn't speak much on the tragedy that had occurred at Arasin and I didn't think it right to question her any more than I did but she did seem to be mostly over it at this point. I could hear her crying at night sometimes, it only made me feel a bit worse for what I was about to do to her. I find myself zoning out and staring at her beautiful face, that smooth skin and the long blond hair falling over her cheeks, she sighs softly and nods to herself before glancing at me and giggling.
"What are you looking at?" she asked and I blushed, turning away and clearing my throat. I didn't think I could feel such mad desire for a human but here she was proving all of my assessments wrong.
"I....I never asked about how you felt regarding what happened at Arasin did I?" I asked her and she nodded.
"No you didn't....I'm fine now, I got over it soon after but at night I can still feel that darkness you know? Just from how you guys described Khor makes him seem like a demon and I get these recurring dreams of him looming over me and taking me." she admitted and I gritted my teeth at the thought of the man and what I had done in his name.
"I know I haven't been entirely kind to you but.......I want you to know that it was never anything wrong with you.....It's just that i've never had to deal with anyone....really. I haven't had to deal with anyone for a very long time." I state, a great deal of some sort of longing washes over me. My blue facade shifts as I glance into her eyes. I can feel some sort of kinship, some sort of adoration was lurking beneath my corneas, her glowing green eyes shining like dewy grass after the sunrise.
Her lips shift as I look her over. My hands inch closer and closer to her side of the table, my long fingers barely touching her's as she looked over my body, my face quivering slightly. I can feel her hands barely grazing mine, they were hot to the touch and I gasped as her fingers brushed over mine. My muscular blue chest tenses up and my arms flex before I pull my hands away. I grab my plate and get ready to walk away before she finds the words to say.
"I'm.....i'm not angry with you. If anything i'm grateful. I can tell that you're a good person and just trying your best so don't worry too much about me alright? I know you have a stressful job getting ready to take this guy down and all." she stated. I nodded while walking over to the cleaning machine, doing my best to hide my regretful expression from her.
CHAPTER SIX
Janar
"So what does that button do then?" she asked me.
"That's to eject the seat next to me." I joked.
"Really?" she asked me.
"No." I stated flatly and she whined. Seemed like she really did want it to mean that after all.
It has been approximately 50 Earth days since I took her onto this ship and she has grown a great deal more comfortable around me despite my efforts to dissuade such an occurrence. I guess she got tired of staying in the labs and the archives and decided to come to me instead this time. Not like I really had anything to do on this ship besides chat to her and Fi at this point. I sit there in the pilot's chair and she leans over, I feel my cheek rubbing her side and I feel my pants tighten before driving the thought to the back of my mind. I would not be friendly to this woman and desire her at the same time!
"So this is really all that you do? Don't you guys have a cryo sleep feature or don't you ever stop on planets nearby?" she asked me.
"What did you do on your journey from Earth to Arasin?" I asked her.
"We slept, a lot. Other than that we did have games and exercises machines to pass the time." she stated to me. We did have something like that here of I remembered rightly but it broke a while back and I never bothered fixing it. I usually just stopped on nearby habitable planets if I wanted to have more fun than what could preoccupy me on here.
"Well....we don't really have anything like that here. I don't know how to preoccupy you in any better fashion than what I already have on this ship." I groaned.
We still had a few months to go to Jasa and things weren't looking so good on my end. I didn't want to put us into a coma out of fear of what may happen if there are complications or even worse if someone attacks. We didn't have cryosleep which was still pretty risky, we were running low on supplies, however, that meant that there was ample time to land on one of these habitable planets along our course of flight in order to get something.
"It's fine, you don't have to worry about me really." she states and I glance her over, blushing as she smiled at me.
I didn't want to build this rapport with her but something drew me in every time. I tried my best to keep silent when I was with her but once she would utter something I would just have to respond immediately. It was impossible to deal with this strange feeling that was overwhelming me. I sensed a great deal of trust building in her presence, the more and more she discussed her life with me the more I was drawn in, the more I wanted to converse openly with her and.....on some nights I even wanted to invite her to my room and hold her while she slept.
A strange feeling i'm sure. Was I really forgetting the mission that I was on?
"I don't suppose we could visit a city nearby can we? You know to like look around? Just get out of this ship?" she asked me and I shook my head.
"No, no that I cannot do. There's a chance he has some contacts in this region so if they spot us then it'll make my job much harder. Best to just keep course....although." I mutt
ered.
"Although what?" she asked teasingly and I simply kept silent.
"We do have to resupply soon and will be landing on a nearby planet to do so. Not a city. There isn't any real civilization on there but there is life so we'll be landing in a few weeks once I figure we're going to be running out of water and food." I relayed. She leaned against the front seat, her chin resting on the headrest with her bountiful body swaying behind her. I almost got too drawn into her movements and she began to sway her hips playfully.
"What is it?" she asked.
I looked back at the control panel and she decided that she was going to go to the lab again to preoccupy herself. Once she departed I was left in the cold silence of the cockpit, left to wonder if my plan was falling apart.
Every night I went to sleep I thought about what I was going to be doing to her. She would believe every word I said, hang onto every drop of hope that I could give her. In the end I would damn her, I would leave her in that cave to rot even though for all these days she had trusted me. I knew I shouldn't have gotten her hopes up, I should have sedated her from the beginning and told her the truth but I justified my decision because sedation had health risks and I needed her alive. That was mostly a lie, the chance of death was low, I knew that.
So why did I let her walk around this ship unabated? Why did I allow myself to slowly build a rapport with her and....befriend her?
"Getting closer than you thought you would?" asked Fi, I growled lowly and rolled my eyes. In some ways FI had been the architect for this new friendship.
"Is this some kind of project of yours? Why do you have such a vested interest in this relationship Fi? You're jeopardizing the mission." I muttered.
"Readings indicate that both of your endorphin levels rise once you are in contact with one another. It is my duty as your AI to make sure that you are happy." she said in that sweet voice while I leaned back and ran my hands through my locks of black hair.
