2. AHANE

The little Human had no fingernails.

And now that he looked more closely at her bare feet—she had no toenails either.

It was obvious from the shape of the Human’s fingers that she should have those useless little proto-claws he’d seen on Chess, but there were none, and the little slit at the bottom of the depression where her nails would rest was lined with deep purple blue that matched the swollen probe wounds.

The Greys had removed her nails. Why? The more he studied the tips of her fingers, the more obvious the layer upon layer of bruising was. The Greys had removed her nails more than once.

Now she stared at him with an inexplicable ferocity that defied description beyond it was too large for her small body.

And she spoke of his brother—the Greys had been expecting them. No surprise the Greys had been anticipating Keiron to give chase. But the Greys had wanted Keiron to come? And her reaction—gagging violently—disturbed him further. Why had the Greys wanted Keiron? And what had the Greys been doing to her? Why did she know the code to the bay? And why did she have a translator? The Greys were exclusively telepathic.

The Greys had translators to understand other species’ spoken or gesture language. To communicate they used Common Gesture, a non-psy go-between, or simple telepathy. It made no sense for a Human prisoner to have a translator.

From the obvious wounds on her body, and the less-obvious way she snapped and bit between fits of sinking into quiet, the more logical conclusion was she had been selected for intensive experimentation.

His blood curdled at the thought of what that might have entailed.

The Human’s brightness seemed to slide backwards once more. She released her grip on his arm and slid backwards to her place on the floor. She settled, head tilted back, chin up. Her bright gaze blank and unfocused, eyes trained on nothing, and just… still.

The wrongness of a Human being still gnawed under the scales at the back of his neck, and sent throbs through his tail.

Exhausted. She must have been exhausted. And the position of her head was to ease the pain in her neck. Her neck was far too little for those wounds—they matched the ones on her legs. Her neck had two, one for each of a visible large blood vessel that the repeated violations had caused to push against the surface of her skin.

Logically, surely, that’s what it had to be, but something gnawed against his mind that it wasn’t the pain that made her expose her throat that way, or sunk her brightness.

POP.

He jerked around at the sound of metal deforming. The Human did not move or react except to close her eyes.

Another POP and still no reaction from her. She stared at nothing.

He shoved out of the chair once again.

POP.

Didn’t sound like rivets popping. Sounded worse.

He went into the small cargo space. Three of the back panels, in succession, had deformations. Something had popped off behind the panel with enough force to damn near tear through the panel. There was a slight ssssssss and a faintly sweet scent that also stung the top of his sinus cavity.

Damnit. Coolant.

The ship had no fucking indicators or gauges beyond the absolute most basic ones that were so basic even children’s toys had better panels. But he didn’t need panels to discern those pops were happening along the coolant line and they were venting pressure into what space there was behind those panels. The coolant was corrosive and would start to eat through everything it touched, and there were probably a dozen pinhole leaks all through the ship he couldn’t see.

He’dsurvive a brief time if the coolant started to vent into the cabin, but the Human’s flesh would hang off her bones within seconds.

He shoved his way into the small hygiene facility room. It was just large enough if he turned sideways, and based on the pattern of the pops, the coolant line should run somewhere under the floor…

He stretched his tail to a panel behind the toilet. He shifted his tail into a flat blade and pried the panel up.

Perfect. Just what he was hoping to find under there. He tried to squish himself around, but there was no way to reach behind the toilet. “Human!”

No response.

He shoved himself back out the door. “Human! Is this how you want to die?”

His hearts beat one, two, three, four.

On the fifth beat, she appeared, her light still far away even if her body was right there.

No time to get distracted. “Your small stature and hands are required.”

Her expression didn’t change but somehow conveyed a curiosity that increased as she approached. She peered around his bulk, then jerked back. “Wipe your own ass.”

What? Horror washed his scales pale pink. She thought he wanted her to assist him with that? Did Humans do that? Was that an expectation between Humans? His mind spun a few times. “No, that. Behind the toilet.”

“You’re supposed to go in the toilet.”

He snarled. “There is an open floor panel back there. Not excrement.”

“Oh.” Her sparkle returned in a fierce burst that made bright spots dance in his brain. “Oh, oh! I—hah! Never mind. Okay, so what are we doing here?”

Her laughter matched the bright spots in his head. Half-blind from it, he waved his tail at the open panel. “Relieve pressure. It’s popping.”

She leaned back to take in the rear of the bay. “Oh, fuck. Those dents weren’t there before. That’s not good.”

“It’s very not good.” The smell was getting worse, although she seemed unaffected. Or oblivious.

“Okay.” She pushed her sleeves over her elbows. They promptly slid back down. She didn’t seem to notice. “What do I need to do?”

He couldn’t risk the translators not getting this right. “I’ll direct you.”

She disappeared behind him, then a soft hand touched the back of his knees. He nearly dropped to the ground. When had the back of his knees become so sensitive?

“Beep beep,” she said, “coming through.”

He shifted his legs to make room for her to crawl between them. She braced herself over the toilet and peered at the open panel. “In position.”

He pointed as best he could with his tail. “Turn that.”

She did.

He strained his hearing, using what little cosmic breath he had to sharpen his senses. No hissing from the panel. Now for the part he needed to do, but there was no physical way for him to do it. “Unfasten the hose. Be very careful, there will still be coolant in the line in front of the valve and it will be under pressure.”

“Check.” She deftly twisted the nut. Trapped coolant made a hisssss noise and a fine mist sprayed from the loosened nut, quickly turning into droplets that sizzled and burned as it condensed and dropped back into the compartment below. She turned her head. The tips of her hair made contact with some of the spray and burned. She gave the nut a final twist, dropped the hose and shot out backwards between his legs.

Hoses, wires, brackets, and bits sizzled, melted, corroded or otherwise dissolved before the last bit of searing-hot coolant chewed through them.

His hearts thudded. What had he been thinking? “Are you hurt?”

She was lying on her back. Her pants had been burned and melted. Her hair had been bleached a strange green color at the tips, and her otherwise bland skin had been burned and scalded over her forearm.

She was hurt. He had gotten her hurt. Those burns had to be painful, and they’d get infected. Horribly infected. What had he been thinking sending her in to even be near a coolant hose?

“What now?” she asked, not acknowledging her injury as she shed her pants. The top was long enough to cover to just about her mid-thigh, but not much more.

Did she not feel that burn? “It’s too dangerous for you. I will find a way.”

“Um, Red, we’re gonna die if I don’t do it, so there’s really no too dangerous. Damn, though, that stings.” She contemplated her scalded forearm. The burn spread up into the softness of her elbow and the underside. “Tell me what to do next.”

His scales flushed with shame. “Now you need to redirect the hose.”

She slid back towards the toilet. He directed her to take the hose out of its bracket and bend it down and back towards the conduit for the toilet’s plumbing. Her hands fit neatly into the confined space and she twisted the hose back around and tucked it into the conduit while singing a song to herself about something called a lamb. Which was apparently a small hooved furry Earth creature or a reference to an Earth deity. So maybe she was singing a hymn.

Singing a hymn seemed valid at this particular moment, and no less useless than anything else.

Now for the worst part. “Take my tail in your hand.”

That sounded so unbelievably filthy.

She grasped it in her burned hand. Looked at it. Gave his tail a little smoothing motion with her hand.

He tried to ignore it and ignore how she was bent over under him.

They were in a goddamn toilet closet and she was bent over a fucking smuggler’s shit can and had burned herself on coolant and he was getting horny?

His tail still burned and his scales tingled under her touch, and her fascination with his tail only eroded his focus further. She ran her thumb along one ridge. Were her pupils dilated?

Of course they were: it was dark behind the toilet and in his shadow.

“It’s soft.” She ran her thumb along it again and pressed down this time. “It feels like feathers and scales.”

He braced himself on the wall. He opened his mouth to speak, but the words that almost came out were do you like it? He choked, gulped, and ground out, “Place it by the valve.”

“Why?”

“So I can throw the valve.” He couldn’t reach the valve precisely from here, but if she hooked his tail around it, he’d be able to give it a tug. He forced his tail into the shape of a crude hook when all it wanted to be was a vaguely phallic bulb shape.

“Right.” She hooked his tail around the valve.

The translator informed him that right could mean a direction, an affirmation, an acknowledgement, or a legal protection. He growled in his own head. She must have meant it as an acknowledgment, but it didn’t matter since his tail was now hooked around the valve. “Get clear.”

She shot out between his legs.

He yanked his tail. The valve threw, and hisssss. A rush of mist exploded out of the pressurized coolant system. He turned his head and body as much as possible to block the doorway. The mist condensed and settled against his back, burning his scales like ash, and the floor and walls bubbled.

The hissing eased. He counted to twenty, then turned. No more mist, and as far as he could see from this awkward angle, the coolant was now leaking through the plumbing conduit. The slow coolant leak would be routed to the most exterior portions of the ship where it would cool.

It bought them time at the cost of time.

“You’re hurt.” Now to deal with the injury his thoughtlessness had caused. He picked up her hand and examined the white, rounded blister bubbling up on her forearm. It was hard to tell from her expression if she even understood she was wounded.

Her expression grew even more still, and the light turned inward. “Human brains don’t process pain very well during life-threatening situations. The Greys select for that survival adaptation.”

It stood to reason that a species that had no scales, hide, or plating, and simply had such soft, exposed flesh, would need to have an extremely good pain tolerance. He brushed his talon along the back of her wrist.

“I’m fine.” She pushed around him back into the small room to the little sink. She turned on the water and soaked the burn under the flow.

There was a limited amount of water on the ship, but it didn’t matter. They weren’t going to live long enough to die of dehydration.

He paced the cargo hold before spotting the panel he was looking for. He gave it a smack, and it obediently fell open, revealing an extremely well-appointed emergency medical kit. There were all sorts of items, including assorted med-gels, pain killers, and even a full range of last-resort neurotoxin injectables that confused brain signals into thinking the body was completely healthy. There were four: one for articulated species, one for taproot, one gel-form, and one universal. No serial numbers, no lot numbers, but authentic.

The Greys definitely wanted to make sure their pilots delivered the payload. The last-resort injectables were extremely dangerous but highly effective, and usually required immediate medical attention and a counter-agent after use. They were also outrageously expensive. Even one of them would have cost more than this entire ship. Grey avionics and modifications included.

The universal was especially impossible to get—meant for taproot, articulated, gel-form, or any of the other unique Gestalt species that didn’t fit into the three larger general categories.

There were, however, no infection-controlling or infection-treating agents, and only very basic sterilization supplies. Not that he would know what to use on a Human, or what a Human could tolerate.

He returned the injectables to their holsters and selected the small container of bio-foam, and another of bandages.

She was still running her arm under the water. The blistering had gotten worse.

“The ship has an emergency medical kit,” he said from the doorway. “Let me tend to your burn.”

“Yeah, I’m good.”

He reached a hand towards her. “There is nothing good about that.”

She recoiled. “No, I mean, I don’t need your help.”

“These supplies are safe for taproot species.”

“No.”

Her resistance was understandable given he was the reason for her injury. “I am competent in wound care.”

She stared at the supplies. “No.”

“Do you know how to use these? Are you familiar with them?”

She didn’t answer.

His temper snapped. He snatched for her arm, but she jerked away and backed farther into the narrow bathroom.

Her arm reminded him of the lesions on Ohade’s body that had emerged under his brother’s scales. Terrible open sores that had caused his brother excruciating pain from the lacerated hide, and the pressure pushing the scale root. Lancing them only relieved the pain for a few minutes while the initial gush of pus passed. Then the nerves had been exposed to air and the real agony had set in.

Ohade had fought all help too. He’d snapped, bit, lashed out, and fought with strength he didn’t have for reasons that had never made sense.

His brother’s exquisite High Musician’s voice desperately demanding leave me alone in High Dialect had given him nightmares.

Mostly because it was the last things Ahane had ever heard his brother say in that voice. The plague had taken it soon after that.

The Human squeezed herself out of reach but didn’t make a sound.

This wasn’t going to accomplish anything. It never accomplished anything.

Ahane backed out of the doorway. Then he backed up another step for good measure. She looked impossibly small pressed into the corner of the dark room. He extended his free hand and spoke in High Dialect. “Let me help you.”

Her fingers twitched against the wall and her shoulders shifted.

“Let me help.”

She slid along the wall, one step at a time, wary as a feral cat. Her fingers moved over the doorframe, but she didn’t step into the bay. “What language are you speaking?”

Her translator didn’t recognize 25XA High Dialect? Like many “high” languages in the Gestalt, translators struggled to adequately interpret 25XA High Dialect due to the “gloss” that came with whoever was saying the words. The same accent and inflections that betrayed him as high House 25XA were what gave the translators problems. There were crude codexes that could be purchased that offered basic, rudimentary functionality. But all translators generally could at least identify the high language being spoken.

“25XA High Dialect,” he told her.

Her eyes tightened very slightly at the corner, the lower lid shifting just a breath. If he hadn’t been watching, he’d have missed it. Then a tremor went across her chin and her lips seemed to clench, just before she pressed them together and the tip of her tongue swept between them before retreating back into her mouth. She took one step out of the room, then another, distrust and despair coursing off her in waves that he felt against his scales.

When she finally put her arm in his hand, she had her teeth set on her lower lip.

Applying the foam was quick and the soothing, cooling effects instant. She turned her head and closed her eyes and he realized that her wrist trembled in his grip. He checked his fingers to make sure he hadn’t scratched her with his claw tips (he hadn’t) or that he was holding her too tightly (he wasn’t).

He spoke quietly to her while he worked. “I used to do this for my brother. He would fight too. I don’t know why. He was too sick to ever explain it. He stopped fighting, and that was even worse than fighting with him.”

Her skin was soft and tender. Even the lightest scratch of his claws would have cut her. She also had a light coating of fine hair he hadn’t noticed before, and brushing his thumb against it sent soft sensations through his scales that reminded him of a musical scale.

He made himself let go of her wrist instead of stealing a final curious brush of the tiny hairs. “I’m done.”

She avoided his gaze, and turned her attention to her now-wrapped forearm. Her throat moved, but it took a few movements before she spoke. She very, very softly said, “That feels better.”

“The Greys wanted their pilots to live long enough to deliver their cargo.” He switched back to Utilitarian. “The medical kit is extremely well appointed.”

“Where did you learn this?” She tilted her arm.

“The military.” Caring for Ohade had been a nightmare. It still was a nightmare. But he wasn’t the one with the plague. Whatever nightmares he had, he got to have from the comfort of his own bed with his scales firmly attached.

He’d gone out to the training yard and had those violent conversations with the training dummies. Which was how (and why) he’d learned to repair them. Sometimes Taidc had joined him. Sometimes he’d found Taidc having a similar conversation.

He folded himself back into the flight deck and tried to once again bring up some parameters for the ship.

The Human followed and settled back into her spot on the floor.

“Thalia,” she said abruptly. The harsh first syllable hit his ears, breathy and prickly like rubbing a cat the wrong way, then the soft finish of the second soothed.

[NO TRANSLATION]

“Thalia.” The syllables created an interesting shape in his mouth. It reminded him of the High Dialect word for a now-extinct species of flower that pre-dated the founding of the Gestalt, and wars in the ancient Gestalt had been fought over.

Wars that had caused the loss of the flower itself.

“My name,” she added. “My name is Thalia.”

Warmth coursed through his tail to the very tip, smoothing the blade into a different, unfamiliar shape for a brief instant.

Was there a small tremor in her voice when she said the words? He drew what little cosmic gleam he had to heighten his perception.

Her presence intensified, and he saw what Keiron had described—her eyes making many tiny movements. So that was a feature all Humans shared. What were they taking in? What were their brains doing with all those useless scraps of data? It made sense that it might be happening on a planet or around a group of people, where there was a lot to process, but there wasn’t anything in this little ship except him and the interior she’d been staring at.

So what could she possibly be taking in from this? Or him?

A slight tremor and tightness went along her lower lip, and the flesh shifted very slightly so that it pouted a trivial amount. If he hadn’t been paying such sharp attention, he would have missed the tiny variation to her otherwise flat expression.

“Were you burned elsewhere?” His tail snaked towards her hemline. He caught himself and snapped it around the base of the pilot’s seat. But not before she tensed all over, froze, and what little color she had drained away from her face.

His scales flushed dark. Idiot.

He clenched his tail on itself and squeezed hard enough it burned and stung.

There was nothing at all colorful about her, but the intensity of her presence increased.

“Apologies.” He didn’t mean for it to sound so rough. “I won’t hurt you.”

“Yeah, my experience is that Human ideas on what hurts are pretty different from not-Humans.” Her tone bit into him. “But I guess when you’ve got hide and scales, you don’t feel much. And no, it was just my arm. Nothing else is going to kill me before this ship kills us, Prince Red.”

“I am not a Prince.” He enunciated the Human word carefully.

“Oh, no? What are you then?”

“Plain.”

She burst out laughing. “You? Plain?”

Her laughter was rough and throaty and oddly pleasurable. His scales bloomed with a sunset orange-red shade. “Yes. Plain.”

She made a tiny mmph noise which might have communicated her skepticism or disagreement or disgust.

He turned back to the navigation orb—such as it was. The ship did have telemetry and charts, because the orb clearly showed problem areas that the ship needed to avoid. Voids, nebulas, pulsars, neutron stars, wandering orphan planets, gravitational eddies, black stars, ripples. Being off-beacon didn’t mean uncharted space. It also didn’t mean the map he was looking at was up to date, complete, or authentic.

The orb might be useless (or beyond his ability to use), but there should be some more sophisticated long-range sensors. A ship like this needed to see far in the dark.

With some focused effort, Ahane found what he was looking for, and prompted the AI to engage a very impressive set of long-range sensors. Although the AI constantly encouraged him to trigger the “last resort” beacon.

While he was thinking, Thalia had moved to drape herself over the back of the chair, which was mostly her draped over his shoulder. She mushed negative for the fifth time. “I’ve got the feeling if we said sure, go ahead it wouldn’t trigger a beacon.”

He turned to face her, his face very close to hers, giving him a look of the many shades of amber in her irises. “What would it do?”

Her face flickered in something like a shrug. “I bet it would blow up the ship.”

As if trying to convince them it wasn’t trying to blow them up…

>> Recommend: Deploy Final Resort Distress Beacon

They exchanged looks. Then looked back at the screen.

“Hmmm.” Thalia paired this noise with both brows going upwards towards her hairline and her lips twisting into a semi-twirl.

“Excellent that we never seriously considered it,” Ahane said.

“Makes me squeamish we trusted it to get this far.”

“Our options were somewhat limited.”

“If I have a vote, I’d like to use the insta-death option rather than drifting in the dark like this. If it comes to that.”

“Present company not to your taste?” Ahane asked, then he mentally smacked himself. He had spent too much time on the farm with Taidc.

“You’re Gestalt.” Her voice trembled, her breath unsteady against his cheek, but it was hard to tell if it was from anger or fear. “I know how the Gestalt feels about Humans. I know how you feel.”

She was not a very good psy, then. He had many feelings about Humans, but one of those feelings was the Gestalt ban on them was barbaric. Perhaps she was lying to obfuscate her psy abilities?

He took in the bruises on her neck, the burn on her arm, and the probe wounds under her arms. She rested her elbows on his shoulder, which seemed uncomfortable for her, but leaning on the swollen wounds probably would hurt more.

She had no reason to believe he would not be the next to hurt her.

His hearts seethed with a core-deep anger.

>> Air Supply : Compromised. Recommend final beacon before time expires.

“Do we believe it?” Thalia asked him. “Because I don’t smell anything.”

“The coolant is highly corrosive and there are at least four leaks I know about. There is no reason to not believe it.” He continued to consult the telemetry array as it swept through the darkness.

A faint orange blip appeared on the edge of the navigation orb. It wasn’t fast, but it was moving, and the signature indicated it was likely a craft of some kind.

>> Recommend deploy final beacon

Thalia stretched across his shoulder. Her breasts rubbed against his scales. She smacked the negative option once more. “Follow that blip, you stupid bucket.”

The AI obediently pivoted the ship. It made groaning noises, and the assorted smells intensified. Ahane silently commiserated with the ship’s groans as Thalia pulled back from her stretch. Her breasts were so soft. Were his scales too rough? Were her breasts sensitive?

Had the Greys harmed her there too?

His tail clenched the chair so hard it actually jerked. She grabbed him and yelped, “What was that?”

“Just the ship.” And it had been just the ship… as in the chair not designed for a 25XA. He focused on the ship’s panels again. No warnings about the ship’s multitude of failures, no diagnostic data anywhere.

“So this ship flies itself, but it doesn’t fly itself. More Grey games.” She laid her head against his scales with a soul-deep sigh.

The translator supplied that a “game” in this context likely meant a toy. “The lack of any basic parameters and inconsistent flight controls leads me to believe that the AI is deliberately obfuscating the ship’s functions from us.”

“Why would anyone program an AI to do that?”

“So the pilot wouldn’t know the ship was in distress until it was too late. The Greys can’t risk this ship being salvaged or stolen, but they also can’t risk the pilot knowing the ship isn’t really theirs to command.”

She sighed, deep and soft. “Sounds like something they’d do.”

She slid off him and returned to the floor, curling on herself. She didn’t go still again, but the pensive softness worried him. She had slipped away like a stone slipping under water: unchanging, expressionless, but gone all the same.

Did she think he was going to abandon her? Or worse? How did she know about the Gestalt—what had the Greys told her, and why had they told her anything? Why did she have a translator? How had she known the code to the bay?

Stop.

His curiosity had no right to be satisfied. She had no reason to trust him. No reason to believe he would not violate her mind and body as the Greys had, or the Gestalt would. He would not stick his questions into her like probes shoved under her skin, extracting answers for questions no one had the right to ask.

His hearts twisted with fury, and his scales washed a smoldering ruby.

The Greys may come for her.

The Gestalt might find her.

Whatever waited on the other side of that blip might kill them.

No matter what, in the time that remained, he could give her peace.

No one would harm her.

No one would ever touch her again.