Page 37 of Stripped By the Alien

For a moment I simply stand there, staring at the place where she vanished. I have never thrown Sris, nor picked her up in anger. It has never been necessary.

My chest still feels strange beneath the carapace, as though the lightning left something behind. An irritation. A pressure. I don't know what to call it.

Nora stays pressed against the window. The little female watches me with wide eyes, one arm wrapped around herself where I grabbed her. The machine hovers nearby, wisely saying nothing.

I draw a long breath and force my thoughts into order. "This interrogation has become unproductive." The words sound reasonable enough.

Sris was rushing matters. Fear creates confusion. Pain creates lies. A Chief Harrower must know that valuable captives must be handled with care until their usefulness is fully understood. I haven’t always understood that, perhaps. But now I know that there’s no reason to damage a specimen before learning what it knows. No reason at all.

I walk to the resting platform and look down at the living star chart. The stars continue to glow and drift inside the bowl, patiently waiting for answers that are not coming.

"You’re lucky," I tell Nora without looking at her. "Sris is enthusiastic. She believes that all problems can be solved with sharp blades."

"I noticed." The Kast flower reproduces her voice perfectly.

The dry sarcasm catches me off guard. I glance toward her. She is frightened. That much is obvious. Her scent says so, her posture says so, and yet she still manages to sound annoyed. An absurd creature.

"I did not bring you aboard to be disassembled," I state.

"No?" she asks. "What exactly did you bring me aboard for?"

For the first time since entering the room, I find myself without an obvious answer. “You may assist in my efforts to serve my Queen. And you may be rewarded.”

“What kind of reward?”

There is in fact little chance Nora will be rewarded. Certainly the Queen will never reward an out-Brood female of another species. “Perhaps you will be allowed to return to your home world.”

“What would be the point? You’re planning to totally destroy it. And you just said you would take me there.”

For a few moments I study the star chart instead of answering. She’s remarkably hard to talk to, contradicting me and turning my own words around in a way that no underling would ever dare.

Why did I take her aboard? Now that I look back on it, it was quite irrational. I left the safety of my own ship and dived towards her broken and exploding ship in empty space, inside a mine field. It wasn’t something I’d do for anyone else. Even if the Queen herself had been in danger, I doubt I would have acted so dangerously. There can always be a new Queen.

The question should be simple: I rescued her because she might lead me to her world. Because her world might save my career, satisfy my Queen, and elevate my Brood. Every part of that is true.

Yet somehow the answer feels incomplete.

"You are an unusual discovery," I say at last. "Your kind travels through space without shields. You crossed a minefield that should have killed you. You escaped from my ship. Then you refused a command from a Chief Harrower."

Nora folds her thin arms over her packing material casing. "I’m not sure that answers the question."

The machine drifts closer to her shoulder.

I turn away from the bowl. "You interest me." The words come out before I can improve them.

Nora’s knits her curious and remarkably expressive eyebrows. "Interest you?"

I gesture toward her with one hand. "You are plainly prey. Yet you behave like a rival. You have no armor, no weapons, and no visible defenses. Yet you continue to challenge me. It is… contradictory. Dangerous, of course. Deadly. And yet I haven’t killed you."

Her alien expression becomes difficult to read. "On my planet," she says carefully, "most women would be nervous in my situation."

"Most females in your situation would be dead,” I point out. “The minefield would have killed them. And most males, too. Then the Beast should have killed you. Then Sris should have terrified you into obedience. Or worse. But you… you keep arguing."

To my surprise, one corner of her mouth twitches upward. The reaction is so unexpected that I find myself staring. The female is frightened, trapped, surrounded by enemies, and somehow still amused. The realization sends a strange warmth through me that has absolutely nothing to do with lightning. Or does it?

“You were about to have Sris hurt me,” she says. “Then you threw her out. Well, at the wall, but she got the message.”

“Now…” I begin, but I don’t know where I’m going with it. “Sris sometimes gets carried away.” I can hear how weak it sounds when her translation Kast repeats my words in her alien language.