Page 8 of Warrior Enchanted

“Go to your quarters to rest, Akri. Want me to help you get there?” I said, palming the pain collar and tucking it behind some plants in the nearest pod; I’d come back for it later. Akri didn’t respond but when I reached out for his hand, he let me grab it and haul him to his feet. He was clumsy, more so than he’d been this morning in the mess hall, definitely tired. “When was the last time you slept?” I asked, worried that he wasn’t getting enough rest.

Akri shrugged, his tentacles flopping across my shoulder. I secured him against my side with two arms and gestured for the door. Akri tilted his head, the back of it hitting my shoulder, his dark eyes meeting mine. “I last slept twenty-nine hours ago. You might be correct. That is insufficient for this body.” I didn’t scoff out loud, but I wanted to. Damn right it wasn’t, silly male. Then again, Akri wasn’t used to the physical limitations of a body; he still had to get used to things.

“Let’s get you to bed then,” I told him, and then I talked him through how to move his legs until he managed a better walk than just a shuffle. We had given Akri a room in the hallway where most of us slept. Ziame had wanted to have him nearby in case he needed help. When we got there, I tucked the male into bed, and he had already succumbed to sleep before I’d even left the room.

Filled with purpose, I headed back to my green room and snatched up the hated collar that they had forced Meena to wear. Then I went to the engine room where there were plenty of tools available for me to demolish the thing. Da’vi watched from a nearby console but didn’t comment, just shrugged and went back to whatever minor repairs the ship still needed after our previous adventure.

When Arianna came in with a plate of food for her mate, I seized my opportunity. “Hey, Ari? Have a moment? I need advice on how to court a female.” The woman laughed, kissed Da’vi on the side of his cheek, and danced over to where I was standing at a workbench, hunched over the splintered remains of the pain collar.

“Sure, what do you want to know?” she said cheerfully.

*

Meena

I discovered that his name was Jakar. I hadn’t been able to stop myself from asking about him that first morning after I woke up in my room, safe, and somehow without having any dreams. A young Asian woman had come to my door and introduced herself as Hina. I hadn’t seen her before, but since she wore a white lab coat and a pair of purple moccasins, I had to assume she was one of the ship’s crew. So far, all the women had worn purple shoes of some kind and I was starting to wonder what the heck was up with that.

Hina had come down to invite me personally to the mess hall and give me a tour of the ship. Rested, I felt a lot more rational, and a lot less scared, so I’d accepted the invitation. By now, I had concluded that maybe I really had been so lucky as to blunder straight into a rescue mission by these kind folks.

We were slowly wandering through the ship on our way back from breakfast. She’d stuck to my side the entire ten minutes I’d managed to sit in the crowded room. “Yeah, Jakar is a Pretorian,” she explained. “They’re expert climbers. You know, because they have four arms.” I tried to imagine him up in a tree. He wouldn’t blend very well since he was red, but maybe the trees on his planet weren’t green. Or maybe his species was like birds, the males colorful to attract a mate while the females blended in.

I didn’t want to ask more questions in case she got the wrong idea, so I deflected by asking about the crew on the ship. There were apparently ten of them, males, and seven of them had a mate. Then she nudged my side with her elbow, a smile on her face, “But I bet that when Eoin and Tori meet up with us again on Rakex, they’re finally official.” I didn’t know who they were and while I used to love the office gossip, right now I couldn’t seem to make myself care.

“So, the only ones single, let me guess,” I heard myself say. I didn’t care, I really didn’t, but still, my mouth got away from me. “Jakar and Akri? Am I right?” I held my breath as I waited for the answer even though I had absolutely no vested interest in the answer. Jakar might have been kind enough to bring me dinner last night; he was still a sleazy creep. We’d just been rescued from a horrible place. The last thing he should be doing was flirt and ogle the women.

“Yup,” Hina responded. We’d reached the door to my room and I stopped walking, ready to retreat again. I felt the urge to just nap some more, to distance myself from the here and now. “No, let me show you the hydroponic room.” She took me by the arm and guided me to a door one over. It opened immediately and a blast of warm, moist air hit me in the face. I could already feel my hair start to get frizzy.

I peeked through the door and was awed by how green and beautiful it was inside. One wall was entirely covered in plants and most of the others were at least partially covered too. From many different metal pods, plants sprouted in various stages of growth. Before I knew it, I’d stepped inside, gazing at a pod with something that looked much like purple carrots. Those looked almost big enough to be ready for harvesting.

“Jakar takes care of this place most, but it’s kind of our joined project. I take care of the science. He takes care of the rest,” Hina said, a hint of pride in the tone of her voice. No wonder, it was gorgeous and awesome. I hadn’t expected so much greenery to be right next door. It surprised me that Jakar was responsible for this. In my experience, the flirty, playful type of male didn’t have the attention span required for this kind of thing.

Now that I knew this room was right next door, and it was a room that Jakar frequented, I was feeling even more confused. Did this make me feel more or less secure about my safe space? Did I want to spend more time in here, or did I want to run away so I couldn’t chance running into him?

Last night, about an hour after I’d eaten my dinner from the tray he brought, I thought I’d heard his voice. I couldn’t understand what he said but I could recognize the sound of that pleasant tenor. I’d heard the sounds of that awkward shuffle Akri had as well as they slowly passed by my door.

“Hey, I wanted to talk to you about something,” Hina said quietly. She’d been standing calmly at my side while I’d been lost in thought, skimming my hands gently along the leaves of the nearest plant. She waited until I was meeting her eyes before she continued, explaining about the translator tech they used. An implant that the Doc could painlessly and quickly install so that I could understand most of the alien languages spoken in this quadrant.

I didn’t like the idea of having something permanently stuck in my head, but honestly, it beat not having a clue what was being said, especially by the aliens that were so much bigger than me. I wanted to know what was going on around me, and I couldn’t count on anyone speaking English. I nodded, “Okay, let’s do it.”

“Woah, just like that?” Hina said, surprise making her almond-shaped eyes go wide. She touched her hand to the back of her own ear with a grin when I just shrugged and nodded. As she was leading me from the beautiful green room, she explained more, “Unlike you, and most of the humans on the ship, I already had my implants before I got here. I think you missed the talk about what happened to you, didn’t you? We had it in the mess hall last night.”

Oh boy, that didn’t sound good. What kind of talk? Was this where she was going to explain to me what I’d already suspected, that there was no way home? I had already deduced that. They would have said it if they could. It would have been the ultimate assurance.

We were almost back at the med bay area when she was done giving me the rundown, but the highlights were enough to make me sad and angry. So I’d not just gotten abducted and sold in a place so far from home I couldn’t get back. I’d been stuck in stasis for so long that the Earth I knew was no more. Now it was a part of the UAR, space-faring, and according to Hina, a total dictatorship.

Fine, that didn’t change anything, did it? Not really. It just meant I couldn’t comfort myself with the thought that my family was still on Earth, living their lives alongside mine. A pang of sharp, painful grief struck me anyway. I’d clashed heads with my mother and wished my brothers would grow the hell up more, but I’d loved all of them. Knowing they were nothing but dust now was more final, more confronting than just thinking I couldn’t see them anymore.

Hina didn’t say anything, just let me process what she’d told me during the last part of our walk. When we entered the med bay, it was just the anthracite-colored doctor sitting at a desk, poring over reading materials spread out around him. If not for the fact that he had several tablets spread out over his desk, not actual paper, it looked just like my brother’s desk when he was planning a difficult surgery and I dared to visit.

Pausing just inside the med bay, I could see the place in a different light this time. It was a white space, clean and streamlined. Screens hung from the walls, near the cots, and I could see one robotic arm tucked away next to a bed behind a glass panel. Despite the strong hospital meets science fiction appearance, there were personal touches too. A colorful art piece on one wall, and a pot with a plant blooming pink and red on the Doctor’s desk.

He looked up, our eyes meeting, and for the first time I got a good look at them. They were completely black, no eye white, no iris, nothing, just a big black void, mirroring my own reflection back at me. It was creepy; even weirder than Akri’s eyes, if I were being honest. There was just something gentle and kind about the Doc, something that made me feel comfortable, which was very different from all of the other aliens I’d met so far. That was a good thing, because he needed that kind of calming presence with eyes as freaky as his.

“We’re here to get Meena a translator implant, Luka,” Hina explained, and with a hand at the small of my back, she guided me further into the med bay. My feet dragged just a little bit. My brother was a surgeon, and I regularly dropped by the hospital to grab lunch with him. Hospitals still made me feel uncomfortable and I had just agreed to a medical procedure I knew nothing about.

The Doc didn’t answer in words, but he nodded, long sleek black hair sliding forward over his shoulder as he did so. Everything became a bit of a blur after that. I tried to stay vigilant as he worked first on the left, and then on the right side. With my fingers clutched around the knife in case he made any move I didn’t like. The Doc was quick and efficient, dabbing something behind each ear when I’d lain down. I didn’t think the entire procedure lasted more than two minutes, but I walked away from the med bay with a nasty headache.

“Take two of these,” the Doctor offered right before Hina and I crossed the threshold, “For the headache. It should subside in a few hours. If it doesn’t, please see me again.” I could understand each word he said; it sounded like he spoke English, though if I focused, I could tell he actually wasn’t. It impressed me. It had worked, and that was worth a little pain.