by Elin Wyn
“Here we are,” Kogav finally stopped with a huff, and Jeline escaped his bulging arms the moment she felt ground beneath her feet. Of course, it was metal ground built about thirty feet up in the air, but still.
“Jesus,” Jeline breathed.
“Didn’t I tell you? Safe and sound,” Kogav grinned, dusting off his arms.
“R-right,” Jeline nodded, her eyes on her hands as she swallowed a gulp and tried to look anywhere but down. “Um, my pod is this way,” she pointed, her hand trembling a little as she moved to lead the way and the ground creaked underneath her feet.
“You can tell?” Kogav asked as he slid up beside her. Jeline almost shouted at him to get back, that there wasn’t enough room – but then she felt his hand on her arm, steadying her.
“Yes,” she sighed, more than a little relieved. “It’s right down here.”
Technically, the pods were all identical, but Jeline remembered that hers was the second to last on the end. Or, as she’d realized it, the second to last pod on the edge of a very painful, possibly fatal drop.
And that was when she hadn’t even realized how high up they were.
“Captain said I was asleep for two days,” Jeline said through clenched teeth, trying to distract herself as she kept her eyes dead ahead.
“Yeah, I heard that too,” Kogav nodded.
“I figure,” she swallowed, “That I should take the pod I was stuck in for that time. To be polite, I mean.”
“Okay, yeah,” Kogav shrugged. “Manners, I get that. They just all look the same to me.”
“They do,” Jeline smiled nervously. “But this one,” she stopped, resting a hand on the open pod, “Is mine.”
“Oh,” Kogav raised his eyebrows.
“What?” Jeline frowned, looking up at him.
“Um,” he scowled, scratching the back of his head. “It’s, uh… It’s small.”
Kogav
Humans sure blushed a lot. At least, Kogav hoped that’s what Jeline was doing – it was cute, in an innocent sort of way, and definitely better than a crewmember coming down with a fever or something. It’d happened to Zaddik once; the old man’s nose had swelled up bigger than an Eitzar moonfruit, and the captain had quarantined him to the ship ‘till his face had reverted back to something less colorful. So yeah, it could happen. He just didn’t think it was happening to Jeline.
“You really slept in this crawl space for two days?” he asked, glancing at the inside of the pod. He’d hoped that it would be bigger, but no such luck. It was still just as tiny on the inside as it was on the outside.
“It was torpor sleep,” Jeline replied absently, her attention on the doorway as she ran her fingers over a burn mark.
Kogav frowned, and wondered if he should be worried about the pod’s internal heat resistance.
“I wasn’t aware of anything after it knocked me out.”
“So you’re telling me,” Kogav drawled, crossing his arms as he leaned against the pod. “That you didn’t wake up with pins and needles from being squished into one position for that long?”
“I don’t think I was asleep for a full forty-eight,” she muttered.
Still.
“Well, at least we’re only flying it over to where I parked my pod.” His comfortable, spacious pod. “So, uh,” he said, giving the single seat a sideways look. “You got an extra place for me to sit, or…?”
“What? Oh,” she said, her red hair swirling around her shoulders as she shook her head slightly. “Well, we have a bench,” she said simply.
It certainly didn’t look like any bench that Kogav had ever seen. “That two people can sit on?” he asked, cocking an eyebrow.
“I-I mean,” Jeline frowned, looking down. Ah, she was blushing again. Maybe it was an earth moon-people thing?
“Look,” he said, pushing off of the pod to stand up properly. “Don’t worry about it. We can make it work.” Work very, very poorly, and – even then, badly – but work nonetheless. “You want to go in first, or should I?” He asked, jerking a thumb at the short entrance.
Jeline didn’t have to be told twice; in fact, standing on top of the Eiztar sled seemed to make her uncomfortable, and Kogav could only raise an eyebrow as she practically jumped into the safety of her pod. Her tiny, tiny questionably safe pod.
“Okay,” he mumbled to himself, bending to fit through the doorway after her. Jeline was already sitting on the bench by the time he fit himself inside, her legs pressed firmly together as she tried to make room for him by sliding to one end.
“Yeah, that’s not gonna work,” he sighed. “Here, get up, and let me sit down first.”
“But I have to be near the controls,” she said quickly. Kogav didn’t miss the glance that she sent at the screen in front of her.
“Jeline,” he said, pausing as he savored the way it rolled on his tongue. He’d noticed that before, too; how natural it felt to say it. Not at all like the other Earth names: odd monikers like ‘Taryn,’ or ‘Willovitch.’ Even Jeline’s eyes, a lush green, seemed to outshine her crewmates’.
“I know there isn’t much leg room,” she sighed. “But they are built for only one person, after all.”
If that. “Look—”
“Ah, I see you two are settling in.”
Kogav glanced up at the familiar voice. Sure enough, the captain was standing just outside the pod with his head poking inside.
“Captain, you have to be kidding,” he growled, gesturing to the inside of the pod angrily. “This thing is tiny!”
“Hey,” Jeline frowned.
“Just be glad you don’t have to walk back to your pods,” Kanthi shrugged. “Taryn didn’t man a pod, so we don’t exactly have anything to fly,” he said, pointing over his shoulder.
Kogav didn’t have to look to know that he was referring to the pile of warped metal just a few feet away. There was no way they could repair it now, not after the Thagzars had torn it apart and burned the scraps. “She and I are walking back.”
Something tells me avoiding one of these is getting off easy, Kogav signed, careful to keep his back to Jeline. He wasn’t about to assume that she could understand him, but he didn’t have to be an interplanetary negotiator to see that it’d made her uncomfortable when he’d used it before.
The captain only laughed. “Get ready to head out,” he wiped his eyes, patting Kogav on the back.
“Easy for you to say,” Kogav grumbled. Kanthi didn’t bother responding with anything more than a backwards wave, and moved on to the next pod. Resigned to his fate, Kogav turned back to Jeline. “So,” he said. “Any idea how we can make this work?”
Biting her lip, Jeline seemed to deflate with a drop of her shoulders and finally moved to stand up. “Only one,” she admitted. “Here, take a seat,” she said, stepping toward the controls and away from the empty bench. With a shrug, Kogav moved the half-step toward the flat seat and dropped into it.
He stiffed when Jeline took that opportunity to take her own seat on his lap.
“Uh,” he said, dumbfounded. With her back to his chest and her thighs closed together over his crotch, he gulped, and tried to ignore the way that his heart sped up a little.
Straightening, he made an attempt to afford Jeline some personal space and flattened himself against the back wall, fixing his eyes on a floor stain to distract himself. And yet, a smell in her hair gave him pause. It was familiar, though not at all strong; more of a barely-there scent that had him easing closer.
“It isn’t too far to your pod, right?” Jeline asked, and though he could still see the blush spotlighting her cheeks, her confident tone implied that she was doing anything but.
“Mhm,” he said, and blushed himself as he stopped to clear his throat. “Yeah, not far at all.” Which, with the way she was grinding against him just to reach the controls, was probably for the best.
As Jeline’s hand flew over the panel and activated the pod, Kogav resisted the urge to place his hands on Jeline’s round hips and
turned his head to watch the ship’s door close instead. It was only when it had sealed in place that he realized just how suffocating the pod really was.
“Draegon Teeth…?” he breathed, his nostrils flaring as he tried to catch the scent. He hadn’t smelled it in so long; not since he’d left his planet and joined Kanthi’s crew.
But there – just there – he could smell it. Hell, he could practically feel the velvet herb in his hand, and the hard buds that bloomed up along the plant’s flat spine.
“Hmm?” Jeline asked, and she turned her head slightly to glance over her shoulder at Kogav. It was only when she moved that he caught a strong whiff of the herb again and realized.
The smell was coming from her.
“You’re from where? ‘Moon,’ you called it?” he asked, distracted.
“Oh, yeah,” she said. “The Earth’s moon, actually. But don’t worry – it was a planet without any previous life. And from what I’ve read, it was originally filled with only craters and dust anyway. Not that you could tell by looking at it now,” she added, turning back to her controls.
But Kogav wasn’t listening. His mind was spinning, trying to understand how a star system that lived galaxies away could have gotten their hands on Draegon Teeth.
“Kogav?” Jeline asked, and he blinked, shaking his head as he answered.
“Sorry,” he muttered.
“No problem,” Jeline shrugged with a smile. “But I’m ready to take off. Just, um, could you tell me which way…?” she asked shyly, motioning to the coordinates on her screen.
“Oh, right,” Kogav said, and he reached an arm out past her to type in his pod’s location. He tried not to draw her attention, and he used the motion to sniff the back of her neck. Luckily, Jeline didn’t seem to notice one way or another.
“Thanks,” she grinned, leaning forward to read the coordinates he’d just plugged in.
“Don’t mention it,” he groaned, closing his eyes as he rested his head against the back wall. The smell of Draegon Teeth was making his mind wander, and with the only other alternative being to focus on the lovely Jeline in his lap, he let himself daydream without another thought.
He could remember when he’d first found the herb in his mother’s garden. She had been a tough old woman, but also secretly much softer than most, and in her infinite patience she’d explained that Draegon Teeth was a medicinal herb dating back to their ancestors.
Kogav hadn’t cared; he’d just liked how it had felt against his fingertips, and from that point on it’d become a plant that he had commonly tucked behind his ear when playing outside.
Too bad he’d never really learned how to use it for anything more than decoration.
“Wow, that was quick.”
Kogav blinked his eyes open at the sound of Jeline’s voice and looked to the screen. Two dark blips on the dash were pointing out what her computer had only classified as ‘unknown foreign technology.’
Kogav grinned – he knew exactly what those blips represented.
Two of his crew members had already made it to their pods and jetted off-planet.
A sudden bang from the pod and a growl from Jeline as she clenched her jaw wiped the smirk off Kogav’s face, and he grabbed for the ends of the bench as she prepped the ship for landing.
“Easy, easy,” she chanted to herself. Kogav could only guess that either the Thagzars rough handling or the humans initial landing on Peshdushdar had messed up the pod. Well, that, or it was always defective.
With a final shake of the ship, Jeline shut it down and took her hands off the controls. “Ready?” she asked, though she was already pushing a final switch that caused the door to open before he’d even had a chance to reply.
“After you,” he grinned, relieved (though also a little disappointed) as she hopped off of his lap.
“So,” she said as she stepped through the pod doorway. “What do your pods look—oh.”
‘Oh’ was right. Unlike the trash cans that the humans were apparently flying around in, Eiztar pod ships were built for quick getaways and long-term space travel.
And seeing as the original designs had been outfitted for bulky Thagzars, the pods that the Eiztar Alliance had modified a generation later were still more than big enough for two.
“Yep,” Kogav grinned as he crawled out behind her. Pausing in the doorway at her shoulder, he glanced at the two giant black spheres dotting the desert landscape before them, and tried to imagine what they had to look like to Jeline. To him, they were the pods that he’d fixed and upgraded so many times, he’d lost count. “We make ‘em right,” he boasted.
For a moment, Jeline didn’t say anything, and Kogav gave the human a tentative glance. He couldn’t be sure how sensitive of a species they were, though their captain was certainly rational enough. Still, he didn’t want to offend. He opened his mouth to apologize, but then Jeline turned to him, and said, rather condescendingly, “You think you can fly that?”
Okay, now he was offended.
“Oh, and you can, Miss Moon Princess?” he mocked, climbing out past her.
“Well, I’d like to try.” And just like that, the belittling tone was gone, and she was blushing all over again. Kogav scowled at his boots. He really couldn’t get a read on this woman.
“Come on,” he called after a moment’s hesitation. “Let me show you the controls, then.”
Jeline
Jeline had never seen a pod like the one sitting in the sand before them. “Is that really just a pod ship?” she asked, her eyes wide as she tried to take in the size of it. Unlike a standard issue pod from Earth, the Eiztar pods were giant; glistening like polished moon boulders under the Peshdushdar sun.
Kogav only chuckled at her question and marched right up to the first massive pod. The closer they got, the bigger the pod seemed, and Jeline was certain that the ship was at least twice the size of any pod she’d ever been in. And yet, the odd spherical design made her frown. She couldn’t see a door, let alone a ladder. “How does it open?” she asked, but Kogav was way ahead of her.
Stepping under the shadow of the ship, he pressed his palm flat against the side of the pod, and grinned when a mechanical hiss seemed to sigh from it. Before Kogav could even remove his hand, the pod began to vibrate, and Jeline watched as a metal bridge unfolded to drop into the sand before her.
Jeline almost bent to inspect it, but then the ship was hissing again, and a circle of metal at the top of the bridge dropped away to reveal a doorway.
“Wow,” she said, more than impressed with the Eiztar technology. “Your people created this?” It wasn’t that she doubted they could, or even that she knew enough about them to make a proper assumption, but as a planet that had only recently rebelled against an invader species, she didn’t understand how the Eiztar Alliance could be so far beyond Earth’s own technology.
“Ah, well,” Kogav laughed, shrugging his shoulders as he stepped onto the bridge. “Let’s just say we took more than our freedom from the Thagzars.”
“Oh,” Jeline blurted, and brought a hand up to her mouth, feeling stupid. Of course they’d stolen the Thagzars’ superior technology – would’ve had to, to defeat them.
“Yeah,” Kogav motioned for her to follow him up to the entrance. “You should’ve seen them scramble when they launched their first counter-attack, and we hit ‘em with one of their own weapons.”
“You remember that?” Jeline asked, surprised. “I thought…”
“What?” Kogav paused, raising an eyebrow over his shoulder at her.
“W-well,” Jeline stammered. “If Zaddik was ‘fighting the good fight since before you were born,’ then wouldn’t you—”
“Oh, that’s what you’re hung up on,” Kogav laughed. Stepping through the doorway, his voice seemed to echo as he continued talking from inside the pod. “Zaddik is the veteran, no question about that; or at least he would be, if the guy ever decided to retire. But he’s from Eldiriak, one of the first planets that successfully ch
ased the Thagzars out. It was easier, for them.”
Easier?
Jeline could only imagine that the first rebels would’ve faced a harder fight than the rest just to get everyone on the same page and launch an attack. Perhaps they’d had a tactical advantage? “Um, because their civilization is based in the trees?” Jeline asked, following him inside. Placing her hand on the doorway for balance, she nearly jumped at the cool touch of the metal and ripped her hand away, drawing Kogav’s eye.
“Oh, sorry,” he grinned sympathetically. “It’s a security protocol – the Thagzars don’t like it cold,” he winked.
“Ah,” Jeline nodded, confused but curious as she looked around the pod’s interior. There was a curved screen spanning the left wall, and she could already tell by the controls underneath it that the panel had both two-dimensional and in-depth holographic displays.
It was impressive, especially by the Earth’s academy standards, but what really caught her attention was the two seats set up on the opposite wall.
“Your pod is equipped for two people?” she asked, surprised.
“Of course,” Kogav scoffed. “We use our pods for quick scout missions and stealth landings. The Thagzars don’t bother when anything smaller than an arms ship trips their radar, so it’s perfect for sneaking around.”
Pausing as he popped open a console tucked between the chairs, he pulled out a brown bag and held it out to her. “Here,” he said, an excited gleam in his purple eyes.
“Thanks?” Jeline said it like a question, but reached for the bag anyway. She almost dropped it when he placed it in her palm and it sagged against her fingers.
“Let’s do a quick toast, then,” Kogav grinned as he fished out another bag. “To making it out of this alive,” he raised it toward her. Using his other hand to unlace the frayed knots at the top of the bag, he put it to his lips and tipped it back.