2. Outside

2 OUTSIDE

I wake up outside.

For a moment, my entire body is too shocked to react. Outside is not a concept it has been familiar with for quite some time. When your life is lived in the cold void of space, outside is something to be very much avoided.

It has been years since I laid on the ground and looked up at the sky. I haven't smelled the kind of air that has all sorts of organic content in it. I haven't felt the warmth of sun on my skin. It's nice. It's all very nice.

For a moment, I am entirely too comfortable to be worried.

I think I like outside. I should have done more outside before this, not that there's much opportunity on a spaceship. If I'd tried to spend more time outside on the Mare , I'd have been sucked into space inside out, or something like that. We always liked to theorize what would actually happen to the human body if it were to be tossed into the void, but we never actually tried it on anyone.

I open my eyes, then close them again. There's something about the way sunlight hits my lids that just feels good. Not a lot has felt good lately. Most of my days have been consumed with worry and concern. Finding myself lying in thick grass under an alien sun is almost an ideal outcome in some respects — as long as I don't think about how I got here, or why I've been put here.

Maybe I'll just stay here. Maybe I'll lie in the grass and just let the world go around me. I don't have to get involved in this stupid conflict. I'm not entirely sure I understand it anyway. I know Lettie is annoyed by what happened to her, but a lot of terrible things have happened to a lot of us in a lot of places, and we haven't gotten involved in what should be a civil conflict before. It all sounded like a good idea at first, but now it just seems like a disaster.

My sunny peace lasts about two minutes before I hear a rustling in the bushes. I open my eyes, which is already an inconvenience, and find myself looking into another set of eyes. These belong to a red and black scaled animal around the size of a golden retriever. It has large lizard eyes, flashing fangs in a mouth designed to eviscerate, and oversized claws on little hands that have three fingers.

"If I get eaten within two minutes on this planet, I'll be the most unfortunate one of our crew yet," I say.

I haven't moved. It might be if I stay still I will avoid being attacked.

Nostrils sniff at me. It twists its head in a very avian type way, back and forth, looking at me with its beady green eye on the left side of its head, and then on the right side of its head.

I'm not sure it knows what to make of me. I hope it decides not to make me dinner. I rack my brains for something I can do to improve the situation, but conclude the answer is more or less nothing.

"Get back here, Deek!" Someone shouts the command at a distance.

Someone is coming. I continue to keep very still. It's working so far.

Deek sniffs at me again.

"DEEK!"

The voice becomes thunderous with annoyance. Deek heeds the tone and scurries off after the saurian. It must be more of a pet than a wild predator. That's pretty cute. I wish I had a pet, but the crew of the Mare didn't have pets, just like they didn't have babies, or mates, or uppity notions of being captain.

I settle back into my grassy spot and think annoyed thoughts about how Lettie just fucking screwed me. I never liked her. Well, I did, actually. But I retroactively don't like her anymore. She might have had good intentions to start off with, but now she's on a power trip and she thinks anything she does is justified because it is in the service of her goal. She's become obsessed with the ends, which are impossible, and she doesn't care about the means.

To hell with it. I'm taking the transponder off. I don't want to be used as her bait. If she wants to catch some big, evil alien, she can damn well come down here and do it herself. As far as I'm concerned, she's a mutineer. Captain Sullivan would never have treated any of the crew this way. She might have put us at risk from time to time, but she was always the most at risk herself. Lettie is sitting up there in the Mare , treating the rest of us like pawns to be sacrificed on some big alien chessboard.

As I reach down my body to try to find the transponder, I discover that it's been sewn into my pants. That's a problem. The fabric of this outfit isn't exactly expedition ready. Most of the crew wear special suits when they go down to alien planets. The suits are awesome. They are full body coverage and they are stocked with dozens of little tricks and tools to get the wearer out of tight spots. This outfit is a tight spot and offers nothing besides likely death by exposure if the weather turns one way or another.

I sit up and pull at the transponder. It starts to come free, but just as I think I am about to get rid of it, the seam rips and the left leg of the pants detaches entirely.

"Stupid," I curse, pushing it down my leg, off my foot, balling it all up, and throwing it as hard and as far as I can — which isn't far.

I have a real problem. I have to find shelter and food, otherwise I'm going to pass away out here. One of those little dinosaurs wasn't so bad, but I've heard them talking about the very, very big creatures that could consume you just by inhaling you.

Of course, Lettie's antics of late have turned all the saurians against us. I'd be lucky if one of them took me in without squishing me like a bug just for being an annoyance.

I sit up, which feels about as proactive as I can manage right now. This action reveals that I am not in the wild as I first suspected. I am in a city park, as evidenced by the buildings all around the perimeter of the grassy, bushy area. There's a lake here too, a very extensive one. And in the midst of the lake and the grasses and looming high over my head is a very, very big skeleton belonging to a creature so large it could probably swallow one of the buildings in a single bite.

I stare at it for a while, imagining how big this creature must have been when it was alive. The size of a small city. Definitely as big as a town. What did it eat? It must have been constantly ravenous. I feel a sense of pity for the creature, for having lived and then having died and being so big that its bones have remained exposed for hundreds of years.

Grave City is quite literally a bone yard, analysis has revealed. It's a place where the big wild creatures who stalk this planet used to come to die. Now it's the place where the sentient race of humanoid scaled aliens has chosen to live.

Those saurians are strolling back and forth along predetermined paths, avoiding the longer grasses, which is the only reason I have remained undiscovered so far. I decide to lie back down again, mostly because now my head is poking up above the blades and bushes and I'm going to be spotted and then they're probably going to set their pet dinosaurs on me, and then I'll be eaten in a…

"Nobody is going to know."

"They're going to know."

"They're not going to know. Look how tall the grass is here. We can do whatever we want. Nobody will see us."

Two lowered voices are approaching, sounding sketchy, as if they're up to something they shouldn't be. I've heard that tone before a lot on the Mare .

One of them hits my foot with their foot and gives a little scream.

"What is that!?"

Two saurians peer down at me. They look like a couple of young adults, and they don't look like they want to make any trouble.

I put my finger to my lips and make a shhh sound.

It's a universal gesture, I guess, because they nod and continue on their way, giving me a wide berth. I don't know if they're going to go tell some authorities, but I do know there's no point in getting up and running, because that's just going to expose me more.

Lettie dumped me somewhere I have practically no chance of staying undiscovered. The next time I see her, I am going to give her a piece of my mind. I am also going to make sure she pays. I've never been one for vengeance before, but this little interlude has made me as vengeful as I've ever been.

What the hell am I going to do now? I don't have a plan. I guess I need to get some cover, hide somewhere, find something to wear that won't draw attention. Best way to do that is probably to sneak into someone's home. Maybe I can hide in a basement or similar and go unnoticed. I have some experience living in such a way as to go entirely unremarked upon, and I am half the size of these saurians. I bet I could sneak around in a big enough house, creeping out at night to eat and maybe to clean a few things as a means of payment. I could be their equivalent of a gnome or an elf, or one of the spirits humans used to believe in before electricity.

My mood, which was initially great because of the sunshine, is now tanking fast. This is so damn stupid. The stated mission is for us all to get the hell away from this planet. We wanted to save Captain Sullivan, save Captain Raine, save everybody else, and then carry on our way. I don't know that I share that vision anymore. If I can be abandoned on the surface of this planet while the captains shack up with sexy saurians, then the whole point of being a crew has been lost.

Thinking bitter thoughts, I start moving through the grass, crawling on my belly in an effort to stay low. It has been a very long time since I did this, and there's something about the way grass and ground feel beneath my body, sun beating down on my back, which give me vibes of summers long lost to a history that turned increasingly tragic with age and time. It's weird to feel those old good feelings rising in the midst of what is a terrible thing. It's like my body and mind are at odds with one another and confused as to how to react.

Finally, I reach the edge of the park and find a big stone wall. It looks like it was built a very long time ago. The stones are cut rough, like they were made by hand tools. There's cement between them that reminds me of old Earth tech. When I reach out and touch it, it radiates heat.

Have I been cold for a long time? I feel as though I'm reacting to the warmth of everything in a way that feels very extra.

At the edge of the wall is a hole. It's probably a small hole for a saurian, but for a person, it's a damn big one. I can fit in there, I bet. I'm not usually one for crawling into random gaps in stonework, but desperate times call for desperate measures.

I crawl in on hands and knees, keeping an eye out for signs of anything. There's a little light coming from below, something like an interior. That's a good sign. This could be the basement layer to a very big building, and that bodes well for me.

FLUSH!

A rush of water comes at me suddenly. The deluge hits me face first and sends me spinning backward in a turbid flow that expels me not out of the original hole I crawled through, but out a different, narrower aperture with much more pressure.

I am blasted out of a pipe and into the lake I first saw when I arrived in the grass.

I do not know how to swim.

I barely know how to float.

There's no time to learn. There's no time to do anything besides desperately attempt to survive. I flail, splashing and coughing, legs kicking desperately as I try to propel myself to safety. I'm suddenly very glad for the fact that I'm barely wearing any clothing at all, though the boots on my feet are quickly getting saturated and feeling more like weights. I've never felt gravity as intensely as I do now, a force attempting to suck me down to a dark oblivion beneath the skeleton of a creature so much greater than I ever could be.

I try to cry out for help, but all I get is a mouthful of water. If the Mare was monitoring me, they could suck me up out of the lake, but I threw the transponder away. I am going to drown because I was mad at Lettie. There might be some kind of lesson in that, but I'm not going to be around to benefit from it, so I I don't bother trying to learn it.

I kick and I flail and I bob up and down in the effort to stay alive until finally a big, clawed hand grabs me by the remnants of my suit and starts pulling me along.

"Look what I got!"

I am dragged from the water by a swimmer and tossed onto the bank like a piece of garbage.

"What is that?" Another saurian voice intones the question. I look up to see that these two saurians are both of a gold and green hue, and maybe one and a half times taller than I am. There's something about the way they look and the way that they are talking that indicates to me they're young saurians, late adolescents.

"Something from the water," the one who saved me says.

"Gross! Step on it!" The other is not at all interested.

"I'm not going to stand on it, Filas! It's far too large to squish."

"It doesn't have any scales. I bet it would squish real good."

These are clearly young male saurians with an abundance of curiosity and a complete lack of empathy. I am going to be lucky if I get out of here without having my leg pulled off just to see what happens.

I prepare myself for something truly terrible to happen, but before it can, a shrill, authoritarian voice cuts through our little scene.

"Boys! Boys what are you doing!?"

"No! It's Adaine!" The one who was about to poke me with the stick hurls it into the water and swings around to face his interlocutor, his tail whipping inches from my face as he does.

Adaine, as it turns out, is a very tall saurian female dressed in the coolest jacket I have ever seen in my entire life. It's hard for saurians to look cooler in clothes than they do in their incredible skins, and most of the males only seem to wear pants as a result, but this golden hued female is billowing across the marshy ground with a determined gleam in her green eye, wearing a black tanned coat that looks like it was taken off a dragon. I instantly want to be her, though I know that will never happen because she is a seven-foot-tall saurian and I am a five-foot whatever human.

Both of my tormentors suddenly look very sheepish, and much less generally murderous.

"Now you listen to me," she lectures them. "You're out of the nursery now. You're grown men. And that means you work. You do not leave the factory in the middle of the day to go and poke animals with sticks."

"But it's a weird fleshy one."

"It's probably sick. Scale disease can cause loss of scaling. You'll catch it if you mess with it. Is that what you want? To lose your scales?"

"No, Madame Adaine."

"Back to work. Now."

They rush away without so much as a word of argument or complaint, seeming relieved that all they got was a tongue lashing.

"You," she says.

"Me?" I point at myself, bedraggled and half-drowned and barely clad in the remnants of the suit that has come away from me in all sorts of strategic places.

"You are one of the human females, aren't you."

"Yes," I say, not really seeing the point of lying about it. I don't have the energy to attempt to run away, and much like the young saurian males who withered under her stare, I feel some of my very essence draining away under her gaze.

"I don't want to be here," I add quickly. "I was dropped down here. I don't want to cause trouble. I don't want to get captured and turned into a…" I trail off, not knowing how to express the many things I don't want in a way that won't be offensive. Maybe she thinks being a mate is the height of all honors or something like that — though I doubt it. Nobody who wears a coat that cool belongs to a male of any kind.

She looks at me, and I see an expression on her saurian face that I've seen on human faces before. It's a sort of long-suffering resignation as someone realizes they're going to have to deal with me even though they have next to no interest in doing so.

"It's okay, you can walk away like the others did. I'll find somewhere to hide. I won't tell anyone you saw me."

"Stop babbling, child," she says, her voice rasping with impatience.

"I'm not a child. I'm twenty-four…"

She gives me a look that makes me stop telling her my age. I think I could tell her I was eighty-four and she would still call me a child.

"Get up," she says.

When I do not move immediately, she reaches down, picks me up as if I weigh nothing, and hides me under her cloak.

I think I'm being abducted. I should probably do something about this. Fight, maybe, or at the very least, complain. I do none of those things.

She hustles me through the park and up the street. For a second time today, a more forceful female has decided what is to be done with me. It doesn't feel good. It feels like I am a puppet to whoever gets a hold of me. Those young ones weren't any better either. I might as well not even be a person at this point. I might as well just be an ambulatory toy to be pushed around and used.

I can't really see where we are going because she is holding me, and I guess it doesn't matter, because it isn't as though I have any say in it anyway.

I hear a door creak open, then close heavily behind me. The quality of the light changes from the brightness of the sun to a more fire-like internal warmth. I can smell metal in the air, and in the mid-distance there are sounds of clanging and banging and the occasional hiss.

"Vulcan! Vendis!" She calls two names out as she opens her coat and nudges me out of the protective interior. I stumble out a few steps, only to find myself faced by two massive male saurians. They are both golden scaled and green eyed and look like her. They could be her sons maybe, or brothers, or her mates. I don't know because nobody has bothered to introduce me.

"I found this," she says, talking about me like the object I am. "They're valuable. Thorn and Wrath are both bidding for them, and I don't think there's many left, so don't let her get away."

Before anybody can say anything about anything, she continues bustling about.

"I have to ensure that those whelplings are actually working," she says. "They were down at the lake again. The factory isn't going to be able to run at all if every time we take on apprentices they leave the moment they are unsupervised."

The two males chuckle, as if this is not the first time such a thing has happened and will likely not be the last.

Adaine rushes away, leaving me in the custody of these two. They look at me, and then at one another, and then back at me.

"What are you doing here?" I don't know who says it, because they haven't differentiated themselves. One is wearing leather-ish pants and a harness, and one is just wearing leather-ish pants. They have thick hair in plaits, and good natured yet fierce faces. I thought I would freak the hell out if I ever came face to face with saurians, but so far I am finding them much more pleasant than a lot of other aliens and people I've encountered. Even the ones who wanted to stab me with a stick saved me from drowning first.

"Not caring very much about what happens," I say, honestly.

"Not caring very much about what happens? Is this some kind of human trick?"

"No? Maybe? I'm not sure."

"What's your name?" the one wearing the harness says. "I'm Vulcan, and this is my brother, Vendis."

"Who is Adaine?"

"Our sister. And you are?"

"Allie," I say. "Allie Katt."

"Nice to meet you, Allie," Vulcan says. "You look like you've been through a lot."

"I didn't come here to make trouble. I didn't want to come down here at all. They forced me down here. And now…" My words get caught up as my breath hitches. "Now I'm going to be made to lay eggs."

There's a snort from Vendis.

"You're not going to be made to lay eggs, Allie Katt," Vulcan says. "Where did you hear that?"

"One of my crew, well, she was crew, and now she's the third captain we've had in a year, she came down here and they made her lay eggs. Now there's a baby saurian human."

"How would that even work?" Vendis questions his brother. "Look at the size of her."

"There's perversions at all levels," Vulcan replies. "From the lowest of the low to the highest of the high. These humans are…" He looks at me and closes his mouth.

"We're breedable," I say, and then wish I hadn't. What the hell is coming out of my mouth?

"Is that so?"

"Well, not me. But she obviously was. She had an egg and then the egg hatched, and…" I'm babbling. I'm babbling and I hate it, but I'm really not used to being the center of attention. I am used to letting everybody else take center stage and have adventures and be the brave ones. I'm the one who makes sure the dishes are done and the toilets are sparkling and the ship doesn't decay completely under an ever-growing biofilm.

"I'm just a cleaner," I say.

"Just a cleaner," Vulcan repeats. "So you are a worker."

"Yes."

"She needs a bath and some clothing." Adaine has come hustling back. I can see a short switch in her hand, a sort of leather thing that looks like it has been used to threaten someone or maybe worse. I've heard stories about saurian discipline. It's very hands on. Very rough, sometimes. "And she needs a meal. She can pay her way by helping out."

"What about Wrath?"

"What about him?"

"He's sent out word that all humans found should be brought to him."

"Yes, and Thorn's done the same, and as far as we know they both want nothing more than to violate alien flesh. It's scandalous, and it's wrong, and I don't care what anybody says, these things are too soft, too stupid, and too vulnerable to give proper mating consent. Anybody I hear of so much as looking at this one better be ready to face the drakken cane."

I seem to have fallen on my feet here, among an apparently wholesome family of metalworkers.

"Keep her back in the family quarters. I don't want her being seen by any of the workers. They'll talk. That's how rumors spread."

"Thank you for helping me," I say sheepishly when she takes a bit of a breath.

"This city has enough trouble as it is without adding more little human minxes to the mix," she says in that severe way she has. She looks at me again, and I see that expression once more.

If I listen to her words, she doesn't care about me, or the fate of me at all. If I listen to the feeling I get when she talks, I get the sense she wouldn't let anything happen to me, because she's the sort of woman who never lets anything happen to those she considers under her care. I used to trust Captain Sullivan this way. It's a relief to feel it again.

"Alright," Vulcan says. "Follow me, kitten."

I don't correct him because that name feels cute and sweet. There's just something about being around an actual family that's like nothing else. It's comforting.

After the betrayal and cruelty laced day I've had, this is pure relief.

"We don't have anything small enough to fit her," Vendis says. "Even the youngest workers are bigger than she is."

"Bring the smallest work attire we have. It will have to do."

"You're being so nice. Thank you," I say, feeling truly grateful.

"Adaine wouldn't have it any other way. When she decides she wants something, she gets it."

"It must be nice to be that kind of person. When I decide I want something… well, I don't decide I want something. I just… I mean, I never get…" I trail off, knowing that I'm making a mess of what I'm trying to say, and they probably don't care anyway.

"What?"

"What, what?"

"What do you never get?" Vulcan is looking at me with an inquiring brow raised. Is he actually interested? On the Mare, people usually talked over me if I tried to talk. I sort of got used to only half finishing sentences.

"Er, well, my way, I guess. I don't usually even think about what I would want because I know I won't get it. I'm lucky to survive, generally speaking. Like today. I was lucky to survive today. Wanting anything more than that really seems like a lot."

Vulcan smiles at me. "You're a sweet thing. I never met a human before. There are so many rumors about your kind in the streets. Most of them imply that you are desperate to be mated."

Of course. We've been repeatedly taken as sex slaves, basically, and now everybody thinks we're all into it. That's how this always works. People want to fuck women, therefore women must be sluts. Logic.

"I am not desperate to be mated. I don't want to be mated at all."

"Don't worry about that. You won't be interfered with here," Vulcan says. "Adaine would have the appendage of any male who tried to touch a female against her will."

"Is Adaine your older sister? You seem to respect her a lot."

"Adaine is much older than either Vendis or me, by more than a decade. She was taught the secrets of the forge by our father. There are some things only she knows. Nobody would dare cross Adaine. Not Alpha Thorn, not Wrath. Not anybody. Some would say she's the real alpha of the city. She controls the steel. She says who is able to undertake construction, and who is not. You won't see her flashing her power about, but she has a great deal of it."

Vulcan speaks with obvious pride as he describes his sister's position in saurian society.

I am impressed, both with Adaine's status, but also with the fact that I seem to have gathered some information nobody else has ever managed to gain. We've been thinking it is all about the males of this society. The alphas. The dominants. The ones with the dicks. We've ignored the women entirely. We've acted as if they don't exist. But not only do they very much exist, they might even hold the key to getting us the hell out of here.

I am taken into an old kitchen made of hand-hewn stone, and I am fed.

"I hope you like meat," Vulcan says. "We've a lot of it."

"Yes, thank you."

I don't like meat at all, but I am a beggar and we do not choose. I would never have the nerve to turn down food or ask for something other than what is being offered. It would seem rude and presumptuous.

"Good," he says, ladling what looks like stew into a bowl.

He gives me a portion so large there is no way I could ever eat it. The bowl is as big as my head and filled to the brim with this rich smelling concoction. He then hands me an equally outsized spoon, which I can only grasp by fisting.

"Mmm," I say as I stir the broth with the large chunks of whatever animal the meat came from. "This looks delicious. Thank you so much."

Vulcan watches me pick through the pieces of well-cooked meat, pulling out the occasional bit of vegetable that sneaked into the stew.

"You don't like meat," he concludes, less than a minute after I started pretending to eat.

"I love meat," I say. "I'm sorry. I don't. It's just…"

"It's okay if you do not want meat," he says, slightly perplexed. "I do not want to feed you something that will not agree with you."

He takes the bowl back and proceeds to make me a salad, using a very large, very sharp knife that turns all manner of local plant matter into a highly chopped dish topped with a light sauce.

This, I eat with real enjoyment.

"You are spoiling me," I say. "I appreciate this so much, I cannot tell you. It has been such a long time since I was fed by anybody."

"No? Why is that?"

"I cooked for myself on the ship. And for everybody else, I suppose."

"So you were the ship's chef?"

"I was the cleaner and the cook and whatever else they needed. I did the laundry, and I made sure Captain Sullivan's boots were shined, and I cleaned Raine's weaponry. I did everything they needed me to do."

"Interesting," Vulcan comments. "So you were a servant?"

"Not technically. I was crew, but not the kind of crew that does crime or gets respect, I guess. I had to pay my way one way or another. I didn't mind. I was good at it. I was better at cooking and cleaning than I was at piracy anyway."

"Did you try piracy?"

"No."

Vulcan snorts with laughter. "You are quite an adorable creature," he says. "I think you will fit in well here. My sister will have plenty of uses for you. You will not find it hard to find things to do."

Vendis appears with a set of small black robes. "This is the best I could find," he says. "It's too small for most of the workers, so it's not been worn, but I don't know if it will work on the human's body."

I take it from him with another murmur of thanks and practically dive into the oversize garment. I have wanted nothing more than to cover my body since I was forced to wear that crazy spandex outfit.

"Thank you so much. This is so much better," I say, wrapping it tightly around my body. I am now covered in fabric from the bottom of my chin to past my toes. It is the best, coziest, snuggliest feeling in this world, or any other.

This is the best outcome I could have hoped for. Somehow, I've fallen on my feet, and I am being offered protection, food, and shelter.

It almost feels too good to be true.