5. Skylar

5

Skylar

I swim to consciousness through viscous layers that feel like cotton candy, soft and sticky. Floating into view is Tylan, the sistan who is not my friend. They shake my shoulder gently. "Wake."

"No."

"You must wake for a moment."

They are telling me to wake up, something I do not want to do. Blinding pain rewards me as I turn my head in their direction. I close my eyes against the pain, but Tylan is insistent.

"What's your name?" They ask.

I groan in response. My jaw hurts. Even my teeth jangle with pain, stabbing and relentless. This is the worst migraine I have ever had, worst headache, worst sick ache, worst everything.

"What is your name?"

"I thought we did not share names," I mumble, and the very act of talking makes things feel ten times worse.

Tylan laughs. "Tell me anyway."

"Skylar." My head pounds. "Zavien." I choke out the last word, stars forming around the edges of my blurry vision. I want to scream, why did you wake me? But even the thought hurts like a thousand needles behind my eyes, so I let it pass. I don't want to know. Tylan thankfully leaves me alone after that, and I slide back into oblivion, nothingness and nowhere, away from the pain, away into the stars.

"What is your name?"

Didn't I just answer that?

It is Tylan again. "Too bright," I mumble. The room is bright white, blinding light, and the pain is back there in every part of my head, shoulders, teeth, jaws—anything connected to me hurts, pinpointed in the center of my head and radiating outward in waves of agony. I don't move my head this time.

The light in the room blessedly dims, and I am glad someone has listened to me.

"What is your name?" Tylan asks again. Is this some kind of game? Or ritual? Like the bathing ritual? Why do they keep asking me this same stupid question? It has been at least three or four times now, and always the same question.

"Why?" I respond and hear two chuckles in response. There is someone else in this space besides me and Tylan. "Who?"

My head aches, but I realize it is less, a little less, a teensy, weensy bit less agony, as my sister Ish used to say. I can think a bit more, but I still don't move my head, lest the small respite give way to the relentless agonies of before. No point in poking the beast.

"I need to know you are thinking," Tylan says. My vision is less blurry now. I can make out their figure and the details of their face swim into view, then drift away. I frown, and they come back into view. Behind them, in what I guess is a wall, lurks the Raiva? Raiva Tan Solish. Mangrel ?

No. Not a Mangrel.

But he was there, the last thing I saw before pain and darkness.

I should be terrified, but I'm not. Maybe I am dead? That's why I have no feelings. I am for sure su-uh-springled? No. The word is su-ur-prised, not su-springled. Wait, the Raiva is hovering in the background. No, not hovering. He is too big to hover.

I sigh in frustration.

"Your name?" Tylan asks again.

"Skylar Zavien." At least my teeth have stopped hurting. "Am I alive?"

"Yes. You had an accident, and a statue fell on your head."

I don't remember that. It sounds like something I might do, though.

"You have a concussion." A deep voice intones. A sexy voice. Is that the Raiva? He really takes care of his hostages? Or inventory? Or whatever I am as ship's bounty.

I remember that !

"You made me your bounty," I say. "What's bounty? And why do you have a hiccup in your name?"

Instead of answering me, the Raiva turns to Tylan and says, "Perhaps we should call the healer?"

"Your female spoke like this before her accident," Tylan explains.

I nod, then wince as I'm stabbed with an invisible icepick. Closing my eyes, I say, "That's right. I don't get the bounty thing."

"It means you are under my protection."

"Oh." I bite my lower lip. "You are very large."

"I am sorry I frightened you."

"I'm sorry too," I say, and yawn. "Raiva Tan—" I attempt the hiccup. "Solish, right? Do I have to hiccup every time?"

The deep sound of rumbling laughter fills the room. It fills me too, tingling through my body in a way that feels nice. Warm. Like home, not that I've had a home since our parents died.

"Just Tan," the Raiva says.

"Tan," I repeat and yawn again. Sleep is courting me. Dragging me under, even though I want to open my eyes and see what happiness looks like on the Raiva. On Tan. "That's nice. You laugh nice too."

"Thank you, Skylar Zavian."

"Sky." I can barely stay awake. "My head hurts," I say. "Will you let me sleep now?"

"Take this, baby," he murmurs in a soft voice, holding something to my lips. I swallow. "Baby is a proper term of endearment, yes?"

"For bounties?" I shrug, and the icepick taps at my skull again. "Sure. Sounds good."

When Tan wakes me again, he brings breakfast. My stomach has settled, and while my head still hurts, it's more an ache than an icepick. And I'm hungry.

I'm also balanced atop a mound of furs. Is it his bed? No, too small, I recognize. It is mine. My furs, and he walks a tray and sets it on the table beside me. My stomach growls. I also have to pee something fierce.

I sit up.

Tan is looming. It's not his fault. The alien, the Asheraah (not Mangel) is over seven feet tall, not counting the tail.

My mouth feels stuffed with cotton and tastes like something crawled into it and then got strangled to death with mint floss.

"Bathroom?" I ask. Then, for clarity, add, "Toilet?"

Instead of just pointing, Tan leans toward me, slowly, and extends an arm. He's watching me like he expects me to panic, which I guess makes sense, considering. But I don't feel like panicking.

I feel safe with him.

Tan lets me lean on him all the way to a separate room where, after a bit of creative problem solving, I do my business. He's still on the other side of the door when I wrap things up. My mouth still tastes awful, but there's a spray for that. It tastes like mint. My legs are shaking by the time I make it back to my bed.

He places a tray on my lap, and I drink down a savory broth with chunks of vegetables and meats. I don't know what they are, but they taste good. Tan sits beside me, his body unnaturally still and his gaze fixed as he watches me eat. It should be creepy. And maybe it is a little creepy, but mostly, I think it's sweet.

"You're worried about me, aren't you?"

"Yes."

"I'll be fine. This isn't my first knock on the head."

His hand clenches. "Accidents, I hope."

I shrug. "Something like that."

Tan looks ready to murder something. Or someone. Possibly on my behalf. He is not a Mangrel. He is an Asheraah. A different set of aliens. And I need to know more about that. It's stupid we have the same enemy and yet humanity hasn't reached out to them. Together, we might do more than put up a minefield and pretend there's nothing on the other side. If we can form an alliance, we might take it to the Mangel and win this.

"You're not a Mangrel," I say. "Or what did you call them?"

"Kohath."

"And you've been fighting them? What are they… er r… how are you doing it?" All we've done is contain them. Or, more accurately, trap them inside whatever Zone this is and let the Asheraah deal with them.

Is that what we've been doing? Ignoring the problem? Did the Federation just put up the minefield so they could dump the problem on someone else? Is that why only junkers like the Titan were even sent into that sector?

This doesn't speak well for humanity at all.

"You think of them as one, but Kohath are three. The Thrax Kohath are their warriors. Shock troops engineered for battle. Their ships are hives and whatever they swarm, they pick it clean."

That makes an odd kind of sense. As terrifying as the Mangrel—the Thrax Kohath—are to us, they have never seemed intelligent. It is why we put up the sphere of mines. Sometimes, one of their ships will try to breach it, but the mines hold them until the FUA can send in capital ships to pound away at the ones who remain.

"Our Masg heavy armor is based on their design," Tan goes on .

And things come together for me. Shadow black, red eyes. Yeah, that's why it had been so terrifying. And why I'd assumed the Kohath and the Asheraah were the same. My head has gone back to hurting, though I'm not sure whether that's the concussion or learning that humanity's boogeymen are not only real but come in more variety and with more viciousness than I'd ever imagined.

"Fex."

Tan's nostrils flare. "What is fex?"

"A curse. Saying it's supposed to make you feel better."

"Hnnn…"

"What about the second type?"

"We know less about them. The Gice Kohath are ghosts. Flesh Shifters. Their name means wraith-mirror."

My whole body goes cold. "Flesh Shifters?" That sounds terrifying.

"They will infiltrate a ship or planet, gather information, and commit sabotage if possible to make things easier for their Thrax siblings. They revert to form upon death."

"What can you do? How can you find them before they kill you?" I pull the sleeping fur up to my neck, my fingers clutching at the skin side of the duvet.

"We have passive detectors. They are imperfect, but a full medical scan will find them most of the time. The Gice Kohath are the main reason we insist all who join our ships have a mate or bond of blood. A wraith-mirror might take the shape of a friend or mate, but they cannot assume the memories or spirit of their prey."

And I realize in that moment the risk Tan took, claiming me as his bounty. He has no bond of blood or spirit to me, a random alien. I could, easily, be one of these Gice Kohath. How would he know?

And yet, he has been so kind to me.

"Thank you," I say, daring to meet his gaze. "For saving me. I was hoping I could make it to a planet and send a distress beacon, but if I'd done that, they would have had me." And after eating me, they might have taken my shape and sent me back through the minefield, using the codes on my pod to breach it and then infiltrate our side of the neutral zone.

Tan reaches out, places his hands over the lump of mine beneath the sleeping fur. "It was my honor," he says.

And as I stare into his gold-black eyes, I feel it too. Not exactly honored, or not just honored. Honored and … wanting something more? Wanting more of him?

Quit while you're behind, Sky. He's not thinking of you that way. And even if he is, how can he make that work? Humans are human shaped. With human parts. Asheraah…?

I glance down. Who knows what parts they have?

My face burns, and I know I have turned some ridiculous shade of red. I avert my eyes from the general direction of where one would expect such parts to exist, if he has them.

Tan coughs, and the scales on his arms seem to shiver. Is the gold on his face a bit more bronze? Do Asheraah blush ?

I bite my tongue. Some questions are best left as questions.

"And the third?" I ask. That's a question that might be better left a question too, but it's less fraught than the other one. "What kind of Kohath are they?"

"Araz Kohath. We have never seen one, but according to reports, they are the mind. The Ehan Raiva."

"Ehan means in charge, right?"

Tan nods and changes the subject. "When you are well," he says, "I have authorized you to tour the ship with your sistan. I will assign you a guard as well."

That takes my mind almost all the way off my embarrassment. Tan trusts me. He must, to allow me to wander his ship, even if he won't let me look around on my own.

"What do I need a guard for?" I ask.

His frilled brows lower a fraction as he narrows his eyes. After a breath too long, he says, "Ship protocol."

Well, that's a steaming load of fexcrement if I've ever heard it. But I will not complain. It's one thing to trust someone as a tourist, another thing to trust a stranger to root around your navigational systems. And either way, I want to get to know Tan's ship. Maybe I can even make a place for myself, if not forever, at least until he sends me back to humanity's side of the neutral zone.

If he's sending me back to the other side of the neutral zone. "How long am I going to be your bounty?" I ask. Maybe there's some kind of contract?

Tan says, "We will need to establish contact with your Federation, but not in a way the Kohath can trace. This may take some time. But we were assigned patrol here. Once we have made contact with your leaders, I can send you back in your repaired pod through the neutral zone."

That isn't an answer, and the non-answer should upset me. But it's not like I have a ship or a home to go back to. Except Ish.

By the stars, what if she thinks I'm dead?

"My sister," I say. "When you contact them, have them tell my sister I'm here. She was on the Titan with me. But she got away." She must have gotten away. I can't believe anything else. "I can give you her Citizen ID." Well, I can give him the fake one we'd used to get assigned to the Titan. "And mine. She'll know mine."

Tan looks thoughtful, or maybe pained, and his scales shiver again as he says, "I will see it done."