4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Nikolai

It’s been a whole day since I saw the stowaway and I still haven’t told anyone about them. About her. At least I think that the figure I saw was female. She was wearing dirty, oversized coveralls, every inch of her body either wrapped in rags or covered in filth as if she’d intentionally rolled in it, but that singular, broken whimper I’d heard had sounded distinctly feminine. That sound is also the reason I haven’t told the crew about her.

They’re good people. Good aliens. In fact, they’re one of the most fair-minded people in the galaxy. The former Nova squad. An elite law enforcement team working for the United Galactic Council who found themselves on the opposite side of the law after disobeying an order to abandon two dozen innocent alien beings to their death.

The Nova squad had refused to follow that order, flying into a forbidden zone and rescuing everyone. I might be totally biased since I was one of those beings left to die but I still think they did the right thing. Even if their actions have now made them fugitives.

No longer bound by UGC orders or regulations, they could have done anything with their lives. Started their own security company, become elite mercenaries or even space pirates. Yet, they’ve chosen to continue their work and are set on eradicating slavery from the entire galaxy. A daunting task but if anyone has the skills to do it, it’s them.

I know they wouldn’t hurt the stowaway. On the contrary, they’d do everything in their power to help her. I’m not worried about what they’d do. I just don’t like the thought of how they’d do it.

The second I tell someone about her, they’ll insist on immediately finding her. To provide her with necessary care, of course. But they’ll sweep the entire ship room by room, hatch by hatch, effectively hunting her down until they find her. They won’t see it that way, but I know she will.

Her presence on the ship isn’t really a mystery.

We were recently docked at the Arcade, a refurbished battleship now serving as a floating marketplace for anything and everything illegal, including slaves. We went there to save one of our crew members and a little girl he was looking for and ended up inciting a slave uprising. Many slaves left the Arcade on ships stolen from dead slavers that day. Our stowaway must have snuck aboard the Supernova during the chaos.

I’m glad she did. It’s one more soul we’ve saved, at least.

I wanted to bring several escaped slaves on board, but I was outvoted. Not all of the escaped slaves were broken, traumatized people, grateful for help. Some were just as vicious as their former masters, if not moreso. The crew rightfully argued that letting them on board would put all of us at risk of being overrun and killed. Still, it didn’t sit well with me to leave so many people behind. Maybe that’s why I’m so hellbent on protecting the stowaway.

I spent most of today in storage room 18-C, the place where I first saw her. Days ago, before I’d even known we had a stowaway, I’d made this room into my private hideaway. I’d stashed some basic supplies here and set up a hammock to both study and sleep in. I do have my own room, but it’s not exactly usable for sleeping at the moment.

Tareq, one of the first members of the crew I’d met, found himself mated to a human woman named Astra. She’d been kidnapped at the same time I was and she and Tareq fell in love during our subsequent escape and rescue by his team.

They fuck. A lot. Honestly, it feels like they fuck all of the time and they aren’t shy about us hearing it. I grew tired of listening to them go at it all day and then again all night long, so my friend Faelin and I relocated our bedrooms to the other end of the corridor. But now, Faelin has found himself a mate too. They don’t fuck as much as Tareq and Astra, mainly because Nala’s four-year-old daughter sleeps in the room with them, but whenever someone babysits the little girl, they go at it like rabbits.

Once again, my room is not as quiet as I would like it to be.

I don’t sleep much as it is, since I don’t really have a lot of time for it. Therefore, I pretty much moved into this storage room to get away from the noise and take full advantage of the few times when I do actually have to sleep.

I’m tired. All of the time.

I know I should slow down and rest more but there’s this constantly nagging worry that won’t let me close my eyes. It’s a worry that’s always been there, an innate feeling of not being good enough. My father fed it over and over during my formative years and my inability to stand up to him allowed it to grow into monstrous proportions.

One would think that getting kidnapped by aliens and starting a new life in space would help me get rid of this deep seated feeling of inadequacy, but it’s only gotten worse.

Because out here, I don’t just feel like I’m not good enough. I know it.

How could I be? The crew of the Supernova is filled with former elite soldiers with specialist training. Each and every one of them could snap my neck without breaking a sweat, that’s including the female member of the crew, Lyriana. She actually threatened me with that very thing not so long ago. I’m fairly certain it was an empty threat but with the way she seems to hate everyone, I can’t be a hundred percent sure.

I’m not a fighter. I can fight if necessary, considering the amount of combat training my father forced me to endure, but I hate it.

I detest violence. It’s the reason I wanted to become a doctor. To heal people instead of hurting them. I even studied medicine for three years. In secret, of course. If my father had found out about it he would have had me whipped. Literally. Yeah, that’s how fucked up my life was before the freaking aliens kidnapped me.

When the Nova squad rescued me, they said I could go back home to Earth. Every rescued slave accepted, although in the case of the giant panda bear, its consent was debatable. Everyone wanted to return home. Everyone except for Astra, who was already in love with Tareq by then, and me. I was in love with the idea of finally being free. Free from my father’s influence, from the destiny that was determined for me before I was even born, free to do whatever I wanted.

Stupid, na?ve me hoped that this debilitating feeling of inadequacy would disappear when, in reality, it’s only grown stronger. I don’t measure up to anyone on the ship, except maybe Astra and Nala, but they both have life partners among the crew. Nobody’s going to kick them off the ship.

Captain Zarkan has repeatedly assured me that nobody’s going to kick me off the ship either, but that doesn’t really help my confidence when there’s nothing I can contribute. The three years I spent studying medicine? They’re practically useless now that there are dozens, maybe hundreds of alien species with different biologies to contend with. Not to mention all of the super advanced medical technology I know nothing about.

I’ve proclaimed myself the ship’s medic, thinking I’d be cool like Bones from Star Trek, but every time I enter the infirmary I feel like the biggest fraud in the galaxy. Like a caveman trying to run a particle accelerator. I live in constant fear that someone will get hurt and I won’t know how to help them.

Zarkan tried to tell me that they’ve been without a medic for a long while and have managed just fine, but that doesn’t bring me any peace. If something happens to one of the crew, something I could have prevented if I’d just studied a little harder, I’ll never be able to live with myself. That’s why I spend every waking second learning about this new world I’ve been thrown into.

I study alien biology, technology, and of course, Omnispeak, because while I can understand what aliens are telling me, nobody’s going to understand me when I start speaking Russian. Hell, even Astra couldn’t understand me when we first met, and she’s from the same planet!

As much as I’d love to speak to the stowaway directly, my rudimentary Omnispeak vocabulary won’t allow me to say much more than “hello” and “how are you?”. I’ve had the implant installed, so I can understand what’s being said by others but it only translates what I hear, not what I say. The other person would need to have the Earth language pack installed and almost nobody in the galaxy bothers, hence me, learning Omnispeak.

Cai, the ship’s quirky AI, has created a language course tailored to my needs so I could skip the usual “the weather is nice today” phrases and go straight to the “where does it hurt?” and “stay calm, I’m a doctor”, but it still won’t be enough to have a conversation.

Because I’m determined to talk to this mysterious female before telling the crew about her, I set up my datapad to interpret for me. I keep it on hand while I wait for her to reappear.

I’m certain she will. By my count, she only took two or three bottles of water. She’ll need more soon.

I set up a package for her and placed it not far from the hatch she used to access the storage room. I’m sure it will look like a trap to her, mainly because it is a trap, but I’m betting on the fact that she won’t be able to resist.

Aside from water, I also added some fresh pastries straight from the ship’s automated cooking gizmo. It has some fancy technical name I haven’t memorized yet, but it’s really just a very smart cooking robot that takes ingredients and turns them into food based on its programming. Astra has been experimenting, trying to get it to make pancakes or pizza, but the results were so awful we had to throw them out.

The seka rolls, however, are a common breakfast food all over the galaxy and the machine excels at preparing them. Right now, their sweet scent permeates the room, making my mouth water.

I stay still like a statue. Hidden in shadows near the hatch, I’m waiting for the stowaway to come into the room so I can cut off her escape route. It makes me feel like the worst villain of all time, tricking her like this but I need her to listen to me, if only for a minute.

I must have dozed off, because the quiet sound of bare feet pulls me out of a dream. Holding my breath, I watch as the stowaway tiptoes past me, drawn to the supplies like a moth to a flame.

She’s short. The top of her head would barely reach my shoulders if we were standing next to each other. Despite the baggy clothes she’s wearing, I can see she’s alarmingly thin, probably malnourished. She’s trembling, her breaths coming in sharp, shallow pants as if she’s on the verge of a panic attack but she bravely keeps moving forward. I have nothing but admiration for her and I feel like an utter bastard for what I’m about to do.

Silently, I stand up from my hiding spot, but she senses me anyway. Her entire body goes rigid as if she’s turned into stone. I think she’s stopped breathing, too.

It’s breaking my heart to see her this frightened. “It’s alright. I’m not going to hurt you,” I tell her in my broken Omnispeak. I’ve repeated these two sentences to myself over and over for the past few hours because I wanted her to hear it from me, not from the robotic voice of the automated translator.

She turns to face me, shaking to the point her entire body seems to vibrate. I can’t see much of her expression because there’s a scarf over her mouth and nose, and the little skin that isn’t covered by fabric is smeared with some dark sludge, but I do see her eyes. Her huge, beautiful purple eyes and the pure terror in them.

A single tear forms up in the corner of her eye and drops down. I hear a soft clink as it hits the floor as if a shard of glass just fell. Under different circumstances, I’d be intrigued, but right now, it’s unimportant. The only important thing is the all-consuming fear I see in her eyes.

I recognize that fear. That’s how people looked at my father, knowing he was about to kill them and their families.

My stomach churns when I realize I have, unintentionally, caused the same emotion in an innocent being. “ Oh, blin (Oh, damn),” I curse to myself, cringing when I hear the stupid datapad translate it.

The female still stares at me, unblinking, barely even breathing. Aside from turning to face me, she hasn’t moved an inch, her hand still stretched out from when she was reaching for the water. She’s truly and completely frozen in terror. Because of me.

The thought makes me move. I step as far away from the maintenance hatch as the cargo containers surrounding us allow, while still keeping my distance from her. “I’m sorry for scaring you,” I say, hating the flat tone in which the datapad delivers my heartfelt apology. “I didn’t mean to. I just want to talk to you but if you’re not ready, you can go.”

She blinks, her eyes darting between me and the hatch. I can see she’s comparing her and my distance to it and coming up short.

With a sigh, I turn away from her and sit on the floor, cross-legged. A position that would give her a precious second or two if I decided to chase her. “I won’t come after you,” I say. “You’re free to go wherever you want. You’re safe.”

I strain my ears, listening for quiet footsteps. Has she moved? Is she about to smash me over my stupid head? I’d deserve it. “It’s okay. You can go. Nobody on this ship is going to hurt you, I promise.”

I hear her move and force myself to stay absolutely still as she races past me. “Take the water, at least!” I call, but the only response is the loud slamming of the hatch.

Another sigh escapes me. I’ve really fucked this up.