by Elin Wyn
Sherre watched the Eiztar walk away, wondering, idly, if bowing was a custom from Zaddik’s planet or from Kanthi’s. She got her answer as the Eiztar moved over to Willovitch and a tall blonde alien, and he didn’t even make a move to bend his head. Glancing back at Zaddik, Sherre bit the inside of her cheek, frowning as she wondered if she’d insulted him by not bowing earlier. Then again, he hadn’t bowed to her—
“Sherre,” Captain Taryn said, placing a heavy hand on her shoulder. Sherre visibly jumped, and looked up at her captain nervously. “I know this is your first tour,” she said calmly, glancing at Zaddik as he laughed with another alien only a few feet away. “But you can trust these men. And the alien that you’re pairing with, Zade, or something—”
“Zaddik,” Sherre corrected her sheepishly.
“Whatever,” Taryn mumbled under her breath. Then, speaking loud, she said, “He seems like a seasoned veteran. I mean,” she paused, grinning, “Maybe I’m just speaking for Earth here, but you don’t get to be his age in the kind of a crew that Kanthi’s running and still keep your life unless you are incredibly skilled.”
When Sherre just nodded along and shrugged her shoulders, Taryn sighed. “Sherre, I’m saying that you’re in good hands.”
“I know,” she said easily, looking up as Zaddik walked back over. “He’s nice.”
“Nice won’t keep you alive,” Taryn muttered. Patting Sherre’s shoulder, she let go, stepping back. “I’m entrusting her to you,” she told Zaddik sternly.
He only grinned, “Oh, I’m sure she can take care of herself.”
“Get to your pod ship,” Taryn huffed, ignoring him. “We leave in five.”
Zaddik
Zaddik Wangari had never seen so small a warrior with such large braids before. His own were thin, though well decorated and numerous across the sides of his head. Yet this girl had two thick braids resting heavily on her shoulders, blessed in the shade of a honeyed teru fruit. She sort of smelled similar to one as well, now that he thought about it. Like a basket of teru fruits and berries splashed in the fresh rain of an Eldiriak spring.
She smelled like home.
“So, we’re taking your pod? Cause,” she laughed, shrugging, “Ours are kind of small.”
“I believe we are simply taking yours to where ours are parked,” Zaddik replied. The women that Captain Kanthi had introduced from the planet called ‘Earth’ were only slightly smaller than them, though none nearly so much as Sherre. But Zaddik had a sneaking suspicion that her short height and slight build was mostly due to her youth. “Ours have warp drive,” he added, something that he’d overheard Kanthi and the woman, Taryn, discussing earlier. “Whereas yours do not.”
“You have warp in your pods?” Sherre asked, obviously surprised. In fact, the news seemed to excite her.
“Well, yes,” he nodded, a little confused at her reaction. “How else would we travel?”
“Oh,” she said, glancing at her captain across the crowd. “We have warp, but just on the main ship. The pods don’t really have much – I mean, we use them for quick landings or backup plans, but that’s about it.”
“Ah,” Zaddik said, considering her words. He could understand her planet’s use of pods and why they wouldn’t care to outfit them with what the Eiztar considered necessary, especially since it sounded like Earth utilized their pods for so much less. Why, if the situation arose, Zaddik knew that he could jump in one of his ship’s pods and live in it for a week. Had done so, actually, on multiple occasions.
“Um, they’re over here,” Sherre said, pointing as the rest of the crew began moving towards the four pods still mounted up on top of a Thagzar sled. She needn’t have.
Zaddik knew the way. He’d helped fight the Thagzars stealing the pods, a crazy bloodthirsty band of snakes who had realized that there were people inside. Hell, Zaddik bet that the Thagzars hadn’t even realized that the women were aliens, but had probably just assumed that the crew from Earth were a part of the Eiztar alliance. They did share a large amount of traits, after all.
“All right, men!” Kanthi shouted from farther up ahead, and Zaddik motioned for Sherre to follow as he picked up the pace, stepping past her to take the lead. “You have the toxin! Now let’s see to getting it into the hands of our people!”
Zaddik joined in with the roar of his crewmates, letting out a heap of frustration and relief as he stomped his feet and thumped his fist against his chest. Most of the women seemed a bit startled by their display, but Sherre just clapped her hands in time, smiling up at him as he glanced down at her.
She was going to be a strong crewmate on the journey ahead, he could tell.
“Here,” he said, offering a hand to Sherre as his crew quieted and started climbing up onto the sled of pods. “Let me give you a boost.”
“Thanks,” Sherre smiled, but he frowned when she hesitated in taking his hand. “But,” she said, looking up at the tall top of the sled. It was only slightly taller than Sherre herself was, but not at all an impossible height. Still, she asked, “How will you get up there if I’m not here to give you a boost?”
“Oh, don’t worry.”
Zaddik raised an eyebrow over at Kogav, his purple-eyed crewmate. There was a redheaded woman standing next to him, her straight hair empty of twists or braids. He gave Kogav a pointed look for his choice.
“Zaddik is from a planet where the nearest ship is about a mile above ground,” Kogav laughed, bowing low to him and Sherre as he spoke. “I’m saying that he’s used to reaching high places,” he winked.
Sherre turned to look at Zaddik with renewed interest. “Really?” she asked, and Zaddik couldn’t help but preen under her gaze. He was a powerful warrior, even at thirty-six, and though he would’ve usually brushed Kogav’s antics off, he found himself flexing his calf muscles under Sherre’s stare. It wasn’t until Kogav whistled lowly in mock-appreciation that Zaddik realized how obvious he was being.
Clearing his throat, Zaddik muttered, “Eldiriak is a planet with many large forests and tall vegetation.” Glaring at Kogav, he pressed a hand to the small of Sherre’s back and urged her forward, away from his grinning crewmate. “We adapted.”
“That’s amazing,” Sherre exclaimed, her eyes wide as she started babbling about her own planet and the alarming rate at which her own people had enjoyed chopping down a tree rather than climbing up it. Zaddik was only half-listening; his eyes were on Kogav as the man wiggled his fingers and signed to him silently.
You picked a young one, his fingers spelled.
Zaddik scowled and subtly signed at his hip, You’re one to talk, rookie.
Turning away, he sighed to himself. He knew that he wasn’t young – hell, he was the oldest in his crew by a decade, and the last of his friends to still actively be taking missions. Everyone else that he’d started out with had either died or retired, but Zaddik just hadn’t been able to give it up. Not while the Thagzar bioweapon was still affecting his people and making every baby conceived under the poison stillborn, leaving failed mothers suicidal and barren.
Not while the youngest person alive on Eldiriak was fourteen years old.
“Here,” Zaddik said, stopping Sherre as he bent down and threaded his hands together, holding them out to her. “Place your foot in the middle,” he said.
Sherre seemed hesitant, but she did it anyway, lightly placing her booted leg into his open palms. “Okay,” she said awkwardly, steadying herself with a hand to his shoulder.
“Good,” he said, moving his hands up an inch to put some real pressure under her combat boot. “Now, step into it.”
Nodding, Sherre put all of her weight on that leg, and she kicked off to rest slightly above the ground as she balanced herself in his hands. “Okay?” she said again, though this time he could hear the question in her tone.
“Okay,” he said in agreement. “Now, I’m going to throw you up there. Got it?” Sherre gave him a sharp, confident nod, and he jumped up from his crouched position like a
springboard, throwing her into the air.
She ended up on top of the sleigh, catching herself on the side in the fall back down towards the cracked desert ground. Zaddik knew that she could do it, what with braids like that. Pulling herself up onto the sled properly, she dropped to her stomach and turned around so that she could look at him over the edge.
“Here,” she called, reaching out a hand. “I’ll help you up!”
To his left, Zaddik could hear Kogav laughing again. As an alien from Zurole, the man had never seen Zaddik’s planet firsthand, though the young warrior had certainly heard a tale or two about the Eldiriak treetops. It was why Kogav was laughing – he understood that Zaddik didn’t require any help.
Shaking his head at Sherre, he said, “Back up! I can make the jump.”
As he bent his knees and balled his fists, he just barely heard Sherre repeat, “Jump?” before he moved. Keeping his strength under control, Zaddik soared just over the sled’s side before he dropped heavily onto it, the metal under his feet shuddering from his landing.
“Whoa,” Sherre said, and Zaddik looked down to see her blinking up at him from where she was still half lying down on her stomach, pushing up slightly on her arms.
She looked good, like that. Her tight suit clung to her breasts as they heaved on top of her chest, and her sprawled legs looked so easy to maneuver. But the best part was her breathless smile, lighting up her eyes as she looked up at him.
“That was amazing,” she beamed up at him, pulling him from his thoughts.
“On my planet it is common,” he shrugged, reaching out a hand to help her up. She took it happily, her gentle grasp a surprise to Zaddik’s own rough grip. He loosened it immediately, but she didn’t seem to have noticed and continued smiling up at him in her apparent amazement.
“Well, not on my planet,” she winked, turning around to one of her crewmates. Zaddik watched her go as she ran off, yelling, “Jeline! Did you see that?” Seeing her so excited over his ability to jump made him oddly happy, though a sudden rush of warmth around his ears made him cough and flip up his shirt collar. A red flush was creeping up his neck, he could feel it, and he’d be damned if he let Kogav see it.
Sherre
Sherre still wasn’t sure how she’d gotten lucky enough to pair up with the Eiztar’s pilot, but she couldn’t have been more grateful. As a ship navigator, piloting should’ve been second nature to her, but a failed training course at the academy and then a botched shift at the start of her tour under Captain Taryn had more than proven that it was most definitely not her forte. Luckily, Zaddik didn’t seem to have a problem trying his hand at flying an Earth pod ship.
“Oh, yeah,” he grinned, bending low to fit in through the circular doorway.
“Can you pilot it?” Sherre asked tentatively. She would definitely do it if he couldn’t, but the last thing that she wanted to do was make a fool of herself in front of him. Or, if things went really wrong, kill them both in a fiery crash.
“Absolutely,” he said, grunting as he sat down on the small bench. “Little tight, though.”
“Yeah,” she shrugged from the pod’s doorway, more than used to it. “It was only built to man one person. But I could stand,” she suggested brightly, glancing at the handhold on the top left wall. “We’re only going to your pod, right?” It’d be a little rocky, but so long as they didn’t leave the planet, she’d be fine on her feet.
“Don’t be silly,” Zaddik scowled, and she had to keep her face carefully blank to stop herself from laughing as he made a big show of squeezing his thighs together and shuffling to the very end of the bench. “There’s room.”
“Um,” she said, biting the inside of her cheek to keep from cracking. “But the controls are right there,” she said, pointing to the pilot computer situated across from the middle of the bench. It would be more than awkward for Zaddik to reach for them from where he was seated at the edge, and even more so if Sherre tried to sit next to him.
“It’s locked in place? Damn,” he muttered, crossing his arms irritably.
Sherre tried to speak up again, “I—”
“I don’t want you standing,” Zaddik shook his head. “It isn’t safe.”
“Well, no,” Sherre said, shrugging. “I appreciate that, but there’s no other way that we’ll both fit—”
“What’s the hold up, Balinko?”
Sherre jumped at the sound of Taryn’s voice, and quickly turned around to address her captain properly. “We can’t fit,” she admitted sheepishly.
Captain Taryn gave her the same look that she always did when Sherre said something especially stupid, and huffed, “Jesus Christ, just sit on the man’s lap.”
Sherre blushed at the suggestion, and she glanced at Zaddik to see what he thought of the idea. He wasn’t going red in the face like she was, but he did turn his face away from hers when their eyes met.
“I would not think to pressure someone like you into that,” he muttered, and she could have sworn that she saw him steal a glance at her braids when he said it.
“Someone like me?” Sherre repeated, frowning. She might have been young, but she wasn’t a prude. “I’m fine with it! In fact,” she said, squeezing over beside Zaddik to wave him towards the middle. He slid over reluctantly, and she nudged his knees open with her legs, forcing him to spread them as she planted herself on the tiny bit of bench available between his thighs.
“There,” Sherre said, using the heels of her boots to push herself back against him. “Comfy?”
Before Zaddik could respond, the captain laughed and said, “Oh yeah, he’s comfortable.” Knocking lightly on the door of the pod, she ordered, “Suit up and ship out. Your pilot has the coordinates,” she nodded at Zaddik.
“Be safe, captain!” Sherre called. Captain Taryn just waved her off as she left, disappearing down the sled to no doubt check in on the other pods.
“Sorry,” Zaddik said, lifting up his hands to grasp the controls.
“Oh, no problem. Let me know if I’m in the way,” Sherre said, patting his knee. Still, having his arms on either side of her head and his legs squeezed up against her hips left her feeling more than a little trapped. She shifted slightly, hoping to edge away from him, but it only ended up making him tense up around her more, his muscles bulging.
“…Are you uncomfortable?” he asked, and she could’ve sworn that there was a certain strain to his voice. Then again, maybe it was the comm.
“It’s a tight space,” she laughed by way of explanation. “Sorry, I’ll stop distracting you.”
“Mhm,” he agreed, clicking away at the computer. With a particularly hard jab to the blue switch, the pod door closed, automatically turning the emergency lights on overhead. The screen itself brightened up, and Zaddik paused as it filled up with text. “Do you have a code?” he asked.
“Oh,” Sherre said. She hadn’t been made to take over as a pilot in so long, she’d forgotten all the sign in procedure. “Mine’s X-6-6-N,” she rattled off easily. It was a code that she’d been given back at the academy, and, thinking on it, she half-turned in to ask Zaddik if Eiztar pilots were assigned individual codes.
The determined set of his jaw and the concentration furrowing his brow gave her pause, but not nearly so much as the flush of his neck. He seemed to be sweating, and she wondered if the small pod space was getting to him.
“There we go,” he grinned, and suddenly the morose energy disappeared to reveal the smiling man who’d tapped her on the shoulder out of appreciation for her braids. “God, listen to it,” he muttered, his breath hot on the back of Sherre’s bare neck as the three engines roared to life beneath their feet. And yet, as he chuckled to himself and planted his feet, she couldn’t help but notice that the discoloration on his neck hadn’t disappeared.
Sherre turned back to the front and tried not to think about it. After all, it could’ve just been a trait of his species – and if it wasn’t, then that was all the more reason not to bring it up. Captain Ta
ryn had said that she was in good hands, and the little that Sherre had seen of Zaddik did nothing to make her think otherwise. In fact, he seemed like the sort of person to say something, rather than put another party in danger out of pride. She was sure that if he really hadn’t felt up to taking command of the controls, then he would’ve said something.
“All right,” Zaddik said, muttering to himself. “All clear for takeoff.” He didn’t seem unfamiliar with Earth’s hands-free technology, and the moment that the screen before them cleared to reveal a hologram of their surroundings, Zaddik raised his hand and led the ship into the air.
“Whoa!” Sherre yelped, scrambling to grab onto Zaddik as she flew forward. But instead of falling into the controls, something wrapped around her stomach, yanking her back down.
“Careful,” Zaddik said, and she realized all too late that it was his arm that had caught her.
“T-thanks!” Sherre breathed, feeling stupid. She should’ve been paying more attention, but she had assumed that Zaddik was going to take off like every other pilot from Earth would’ve done. Only, Zaddik wasn’t from Earth – hadn’t even handled an Earth spaceship before.
“Sorry,” she said, her face hot. “Um, you can let me go.” Fisting a hand in the mesh material of his pants, she said, “I’m good.”
His arm flexed around her like he was going to, but then he just tightened his grip. “It’s a short ride,” he said gruffly. “I can one-hand it.”
He meant the controls, of course, but it still made Sherre’s cheeks burn. She wanted to disagree, to shake his hot hold on her, but she wasn’t about to open her mouth and argue with him. At least, not while they were still trying to take off and avoid collision with the other pods.
Watching the hologram, Sherre was not surprised to see Willovitch take off in her pod first. She was one of the best pilots on their crew according to Jeline, and though Sherre had never had a chance to see her in action before, she knew that it must’ve been true by the way that Willovitch sped ahead.