Taji From Beyond the Rings

by R. Cooper

  Taji From Beyond the Rings

  R. Cooper

  Copyright © 2019 R. Cooper

  ISBN: 9780463072608

  Cover Art by Lyn Forester

  Editing by Charlie Knight

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Content tags: imperialism, disabled character, racial inequality in an alien culture including use of a slur, references to past genocide, political scheming, physical assault, sexual assault, violence, references to torture, onscreen death, onscreen sex, drinking, nonbinary characters both human and alien, nonbinary sex characteristics, one possibly claustrophobia-inducing scene, imprisonment, restraint device

  This story started out as a bunch of comments on Tumblr late at night several years ago, as many of us discussed the greatest, cheesiest, tropes to come out of sci-fi show-inspired fanfiction. Somehow, this is the result. To anyone still with me who waited this long, I hope Trenne is all the heroic space marine you need.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  The End

  Chapter One

  THE DRINK in front of Taji had three names that he knew of. The fact that fermented fruit, no matter how potent or delicious, could have at least three different names in one city was one of the reasons Taji was drinking in the first place.

  Simple translator devices wouldn’t work with ‘Asha. Not that translators were ever that effective for anything in any language beyond directions and yes and no and thank you. Even then, there were cultures that didn’t have the concept of a direct no or where trying to express gratitude for an act freely given was an insult so thanks did not exist. The black cuff curled around the shell of Taji’s ear could feed him correct words in a bland voice for the full length of Mirsa’s orbit around its dwarf star and he could still manage to offend someone because translator devices didn’t understand history or culture.

  ‘Asha was the language used in the capital city and throughout most of the Sha empire. The vocabulary and some grammar had been fed into IPTC’s databanks and converted to an Anglisky alphabet, for all the good it did. Taji was still here, in the capital, trying to make sense of the world around him.

  The drink in front of him was midye according to his translator, and his files, and every person Taji had been permitted to speak with during his time on planet. But, according to overheard soldier’s gossip, ordering midye meant Taji would be charged more by any server outside the capital’s Garden District and then avoided. Requesting zhatren, which translated very roughly as ‘tree gift’—something Taji had only learned by accident—earned him surprised and suspicious stares but a lower price on his drinks. Asking for wine marked him as not just a human offworlder, which his appearance would have anyway, but a human offworlder who hadn’t bothered to learn a common word. None of that even took his accent into account, which as far as he could tell, was a mix of a lower class city accent and the distinct, especially soft tones of the uppermost classes.

  In Taji’s defense, his ignorance was due to the fact that he was rarely outside of the Garden District and that his useless fucking translator was not sensitive to class distinctions. One of the many faults of translation programs. One of the many reasons Taji had been dragged to this place. One of the many reasons he was boiling over with frustration.

  Taji’s translator offered him random words from the conversations around him whenever it picked them out from the hushed din and it was giving him a headache. The restaurant he’d chosen for his outing was packed; every low table had two or three Shavians around it, talking earnestly over small glasses of midye.

  Midye was a shortened version of midehye, the name of the fruit the drink came from. The act of shortening the name was symbolic of squeezing or pressing the fruit to make the wine, a verbal representation of the original written character for the drink itself. That happened from time to time in ‘Asha, usually with older words. Ancient characters decorated the estates in the Garden District and many of the buildings throughout the rest of the capital.

  This restaurant might have been built then as well, although it didn’t have the look of any of the walled estates where the old families had lived since their ancestors first arrived as conquerors. Taji had chosen this place because it was small. The food was all right, or at least Taji thought so, but no one around him seemed very interested in eating. Then again, pubs or bars were difficult to find in the nicer parts of the city. It was possible that this was the place respectable middle class Shavians went to drink without getting noticeably intoxicated, which was probably a test of the Shavian obsession with self-control. This was the second restaurant or pub Taji had stopped in where no one cared much about the food.

  He slumped down against the cushions beneath him, and shifted to make this position more comfortable. Despite their sheer mass, Shavians must be ridiculously flexible to sit cross-legged for as long as they did. Not that Taji had ever gotten a chance to personally discover how flexible they were. Or that he probably ever would, at this rate.

  His semi-stolen night out was now slightly pathetic as he was reminded that he was still alone at the table he’d chosen several hours ago, and all he had to show for it were the remains of his dinner and two empty glasses of midye. His third was before him, untouched.

  Taji considered the earthen cup and the sweet red liquid inside it. He had forgotten the most important rule he had learned in all his travels: any intoxicating beverage served in a tiny cup was to be regarded with caution. The ancient Sha families did not drink midye without first watering it down with unfermented juice or chips of ice. Even the workers and tradespeople around him sipped at theirs.

  Taji had thought the curious looks from the servers was due to being the only human in the place, but now suspected they had been waiting for him to pass out, or start dancing on the tables, or something similar. They probably expected him to, as an offworlder. As a human.

  “B’lyad,” he swore under his breath. Several Shavian ears twitched in his direction. Taji was making mistakes left and right. He pushed his cup away, then realized he had no other reason to linger at his table and pulled it back to him. A small sip left him thirsty and licking his lips but he forced himself to put the cup down.

  His table was low to the ground, although Taji was small enough in comparison to the average Shavian that he could lean forward and put his elbows on the surface with no problem. Next to his plate was his DD, the data device screen dark with disuse. He turned it on, saw messages waiting for him, and quickly turned it off again.

  “Nope,” he murmured, pleased with himself for the simple act of defiance. Those ears flicked in his direction once more, followed by a few looks.

  Taji straightened, but resisted the urge to tug self-consciously at his clothing. He was dressed appropriately for his location, in a loose, long-sleeved comfortable shirt and the same dark pants and boots he’d worn for work on the planet’s outer shepherd moon. He wouldn’t have had anything else, anyway. He migh
t work and live in the Garden District, but the nicest item of clothing in his wardrobe was the belted soria that had belonged to his predecessor. Taji wore it to the formal events he was required to attend, but itched at being in a dead man’s clothes, no matter how soft the fabric.

  Before tonight, Taji thought he’d been doing pretty well with the language, considering he’d never planned on learning modern ‘Asha fluently. He almost drank to that and caught himself just in time. The room was, if not swaying, then definitely moving too much for his liking. The murals on the walls—a depiction of some event, as was usual for Sha artwork as far as Taji could tell—almost flickered to life like a vid.

  Taji blinked rapidly a few times to try to clear his vision, then eased back, hoping the darkness of his corner would help shield him from sharp Shavian eyes. The restaurant was dimly lit. Shavians could not see in full darkness, but their vision might be better than humans’, like their hearing.

  Taji darted a glance to the nearest table, occupied by three figures. The beings from Mirsa were large. On a planet as oxygen-rich as Mirsa, everything was large, from the people to the trees, but Shavians felt bigger than the other Mirsans Taji had met. Probably because he was surrounded by them.

  Adults were generally around or under two meters in height, with a few even taller than that. They were built on a large scale as well, broad-chested, with long arms and legs. But what struck humans upon meeting them—at least going by the historical records—were their ears. The inhabitants of Mirsa had as much variation as any species was capable of. There were islands where the people all had blue eyes, countries where small tails were the norm. Across an ocean, in a nation that had once also been part of the Sha Empire, there were people with six digits on each hand and not five. But all of them had the same large, mobile, vaguely triangular, fluffy ears.

  Like dogs, Taji had first thought, but then changed his mind to think of them as more like cats. Giant, intimidating cats, built like battleships, who had once controlled this entire planet and its moons before their empire had fallen apart.

  Nothing else about them was especially feline however, except for a tendency for some to move silently. Shavians had no tails or whiskers. They walked erect on two legs, with their spines straight, and only some of them seemed to have hair, or fur, that could crop up in unexpected places.

  Those ears faced forward most of the time. But they could move to track sounds, and the hairs at the tips helped catch noises imperceptible to human senses. That was probably why their language tended to be soft. It didn’t need to be loud.

  The three at the nearest table were speaking too quietly for Taji’s translator to pick up much, aside from human, which they said more than once.

  Taji sighed. If he wasn’t going to have any interesting conversations—or anything else—tonight, then he could have at least spent the time researching. But no one wanted to talk to the human offworlder.

  He hoped that was the reason, and not that everyone here found him repugnant. He wasn’t an engineered sex worker from one of those high-priced places, or as good-looking as a vid actor, but he was clean and he smelled nice and he was reasonably polite when he put in the effort. His skin was a dark hue that gleamed under Mirsa’s violet rings, his eyes were brown and warm—if a little too inquisitive, according to his dad. His curls were short, growing out from the easy-to-manage close cut he’d kept up while working on the moon. He had a full mouth, which someone had complimented once—a compliment that Taji clung to probably more than was healthy, but compliments about anything other than his work were rare. His defects, the bad leg and the discolored lines spreading up from his hip across his torso like pale roots, were not readily visible.

  He was under the impression that sex and gender did not matter much to Shavians when looking for potential partners—they did not have words for sexual preferences that he had found so far, although they did have gender categories no one had explained to the human who tried to define them. Taji had no idea how he presented to them, unless human trumped all of that as far as they were concerned. But he couldn’t help but feel that someone should have been interested.

  Instead, it was like any other day on any other planet, except now he was being actively ignored and there was no silent shadow to keep him from having another sip or two to drown his sorrows. The messages on his data device probably meant otherwise, but something about the midye and his first night of freedom in months kept Taji from checking.

  Two of the three at the nearest table appeared to have forgotten about him. The third glanced over, more obviously this time. His attention went from the cup to Taji’s face, almost curiously.

  Taji identified him as male-presenting mostly by size and the sheathed knife on display in the belt of his soria. Like humans, Shavians had more than two sexes. The Shavians had at least three, or possibly, one sex with degrees of variation distinct enough that some chose to claim a type and some did not, though it did not seem to affect their gender markers much one way or the other. That was what Taji had gleaned from I.P.T.C. files and gossipy messages from a few lusty traders, which meant Taji’s information could very well be wrong. Taji himself had yet to be lucky enough to see a Shavian naked. He likely wouldn’t ever be.

  He smiled anyway, and enjoyed the brief thrill of nervous excitement at the idea of flirting even if the Shavian’s ears dipped low and flicked back and forth, which Taji thought could be safely interpreted as “confusion.”

  Shavians did not reveal much emotion with their faces or their hands. They had mouths, with lips slightly darker or lighter than the rest of their skin. Two eyes, and what Taji called eyebrows, though some of them had none, which could have been a cosmetic choice or genetic. They had large hands with textured palms and fingertips. But most of the time, if Taji caught one expressing a bad mood or feeling playful, it was by watching their purple-tipped ears.

  That had taken him months to fully figure out, and even then, body language was generally specific to individuals and he was basing his guesses on a very small sample size—two Shavians. Well, one really. But he did confuse that one a lot, so he assumed he’d confused this one as well.

  Taji couldn’t see why his flirting was such a puzzle. Human and Shavian physiologies were compatible, as human traders had discovered decades ago, even if Taji had not personally verified that information, to his regret. Taji hadn’t been laid in almost a year, and that had been a brief, drunken encounter in a seedy pub on Mirsa’s moon, with a traveler on their way out of the system, and Taji couldn’t even remember the guy’s name. The Shavian now studying him with a bemused air was built, with the decent clothes and work boots of the middle class. Perhaps a craftsman—hopefully with a craftsman’s rough hands.

  He wasn’t the tallest in the room, or even at his table, but the dark black metal of his piercings said he was doing well or that he liked to show off a little. His coloration was pretty too. It didn’t fill Taji with jha, a particularly tricky ‘Asha word that his translator dryly insisted meant attraction when it clearly meant more, but it was nice. He had deep swirls of brown at his forearms and the hint of his upper arms visible beneath the shirt under his soria, more rich color at the back of his neck and at his cheeks.

  Millennia ago, according to family documents the nobles called histories, the beings of Mirsa had sported fur, although that trait was long gone for most of them except for the top of their heads and other small patches. Some still had a thin strip of fur running down the length of their spines. Some were hairier than others, which didn’t make them too different from humans and a couple of other species scattered across the universe. The patterns and colors on their skin might have indicated the colors their fur would have been.

  Cats, Taji thought again, although he knew at least one Shavian who could have worn a collar like the most unwaveringly patient dog in existence. He’d stand at attention for hours without even a single complaint until Taji would be forced to give in and do whatever it was he was pointedly n
ot being asked to do—and then, just like that, the Shavians were like cats again. Which was probably offensive as shit. Not that they had cats here to understand the comparison.

  Taji had another sip to banish that thought, and the Shavian forgot himself enough to let his lips part. He seemed surprised. Taji hadn’t heard of any rules against direct flirting, so he wasn’t certain what the issue was. Possibly humans didn’t come to this part of town, or this restaurant, and this Shavian had never gotten a human’s attention before.

  Taji rested his chin in one hand and left the other curled lightly around his cup of midye. He glanced to his audience before taking a casual sip, then licked his lips as he returned the nearly empty cup to the table. His body was flushed with heat, almost sticky beneath his shirt, and he had a feeling he’d realize exactly how drunk he was the second he stood up.