War Games (Alien Instincts)

by Cynthia Lore

  Rae nodded. “Yes, I believe we should follow through with our interview.” Sticking out her hand, she said “It’s Rae. Rae Montgomery.” The alien stared blankly at her hand for a while before Rae drew it back self-consciously. His eyes followed her movement. “Well… how would you like to get this started? I’m afraid my notes seem to be back on Earth.”

  Intercourse

  Rae followed Markar to a small room with what appeared to be couches set up. Sitting across from him, she wished terribly she had some sort of note pad to record her findings in. Unfortunately, it seemed she would have to rely on her own memory.

  Markar was staring unblinkingly at her again. He seemed to be watching every slight movement she made. Rae realized he was an alien being and that accounted for some of his strangeness, but she was still unnerved to find out that one of the reasons Markar’s stare was so unsettling was because it reminded her of a predator. Of course, it could have something to do with his strange eye color as well. The golden glow that they produced made him seem like a wolf.

  It made her feel ridiculously self-conscious to have so much attention directed towards her, even though Rae supposed she should have expected it. But she knew she wasn’t the first human Markar had met, not by a long shot if the reports she had read had indicated anything. The only reason she had been allowed to do the interview in the first place was because Markar was supposed to be, if not exactly a docile creature, surely a civilized one.

  In all of the other accounts there had been no problems. He had been cooperative, polite, and helpful. But that was all on the surface. Her reports speculated that he was not being entirely open with them, and he wasn’t to be completely trusted yet. Well, one way or another, Rae would find out if she could trust him, because for now, she had to.

  Bracing herself, Rae began. “How would you like to start this? It’s Markar, right?”

  Markar felt an odd sort of pleasure hearing Rae pronounce his name. Surprised by that, he delved deeper into the feeling and came to the conclusion that he was feeling strangely possessive of the human. He had never felt possessive of another creature before and didn’t know why he should start now. “Yes. I would like to ask you some questions first if you don’t mind.” he responded.

  Rae nodded. “Go right ahead.”

  “You are much smaller than the other humans I have seen, why is that?”

  Rae bristled at the questions, becoming offended at first. She was not that short! “I’m actually of average height.” She responded coolly.

  Markar stared at Rae suspiciously. Every single other human he had seen had been significantly larger than Rae. “Are many humans your size then?”

  “A lot are much shorter than me.” Rae said, frowning. Why was he so focused on her height?

  Markar looked the human across from him up and down. “I don’t just mean height, but overall your body is proportionately smaller than any other human I have seen. Does it have to do with how little testosterone your body produces?” He cocked his head at that, patiently waiting for her answer.

  Rae frowned again at his line of questioning. “I’m a woman. I’m not supposed to have as much testosterone as a man.” she finally responded.

  “Is that another species of human?” Markar asked. Rae lifted one eyebrow at that. “No. I’m female. Still human. I guess you’ve seen mostly the males of our species. Well, I’m of the female gender. We are usually smaller, produce more estrogen than testosterone, and are able to bear young.”

  At that last statement, Markar seemed to be put in a state of frozen animation. Rae stared at him, waiting for some response, and began to feel uneasy as the seconds ticked by and it looked as if he had died sitting up. “Um… well… yes. The female species of most animals on earth usually bear the young. Humans are no exception.”

  Markar’s face paled as he transitioned out of his state of suspended animation. “Are you carrying young right now?” he blurted.

  “No!” Rae said in instant denial. “I don’t seem to have any young on me at the moment.” she added sarcastically. Her tone seemed to go over his head.

  “Human females can create clones inside of themselves?” Markar looked off into the distance. He seemed to be handling this news rather not well.

  “Something like that.” Rae muttered. She watched as Markar tried to fit this information into his own mind, and could tell he was having a hard time of it. Rae waited patiently for his mind to process. Apparently, out of all the interviews before hers, human reproduction was a topic they had skipped over. Rae’s ire rose as she began to see a pattern. There was a reason her superiors sent in a lone woman: to gauge Markar’s reaction. Rae imagined all parties involved got a little more than they bargained for.

  Markar finally looked back towards her. “How can your tiny body possibly produce clones?”

  Rae rolled her eyes. She could always stand to lose a few pounds, but found it hard to do if she wanted to keep up her strength training. She had long ago decided to stop worrying about fat, and focus on muscle for her career. “First of all, it is not that tiny, second, it is a long complicated process that takes roughly nine months and about as long to explain it.” Rae really didn’t want to get into this with an alien. She was not qualified for this.

  The look Markar gave her proved her attempt at being evasive did not work. “We have time.” he said coldly. It was the first hint of a threat she had gotten from him, and it made Rae uneasy.

  “Look, to be honest I’ve never had a child, and really, I don’t know much about the whole process, either! You should probably talk to someone else about this.” Rae was not lying. She had never even had a long-term relationship where she would have thought children were a possibility. She hadn’t ever spent more than five minutes with a kid in her whole life. Rae fidgeted. If there was only one conversation with an alien that she was not prepared for, this was it. Damn her luck!

  “Why don’t you start from the beginning.” Markar offered. “You may take your time.”

  How generous of him! “Well, when a man and a woman love each other… I’m hungry.” Rae blurted. Markar frowned at her before he got up and stomped angrily to another room in the large spacecraft. Rae was left alone to wonder how the hell she was going to explain the intricacies of human intercourse.

  When Markar returned a while later, he slammed a plate of food onto the small table in front of Rae. She looked at it suspiciously. “What is that?”

  Markar leaned down to get in Rae’s face. “Look, woman, I will get all the information I want out of you, even if I have to keep you with me for the rest of your days. So evade the questions for as long as you like, but the longer you take, the further from your planet we travel.” Even as he spoke the words, Markar wished he could take them back. In the first place, he did hope that she would take her entire life to explain, so that he would have no reason to ever let her go. Secondly, he did not like fostering fear and distrust in her. Moving away from her, he resumed his seat.

  “Jeez! All I wanted to know was what the hell this green shit is.” Rae poked the food in question.

  “It is good. You will like it. Now eat.” Markar was starting to get bossy. Rae was sure she didn’t like that. Angrily scooping some of the food, she shoved it into her mouth. Finding that she did in fact like the green shit, and it only served to make her angrier.

  Dreading the conversation ahead, she ate slowly while she thought of how the hell she was going to explain human mating practices. She finally decided there was no tactful way she could explain it. Slowly putting her eating utensil down, she looked up at Markar to see that he was still watching her. “I’m going to need to draw some diagrams.”

  Markar scowled at her, but he eventually did get up and grab a large marker. Placing it down on the table, he grabbed her dishes and left her alone again. Returning to his chair a while later he explained that the table itself could be written on. Rae sighed. Time to just jump into it.

  “Ok. So like I was sayin
g. When a woman and man fall in love, they get these feelings for one another and they get urges to have sex.” Rae paused to frown at Markar, the man making her give him the birds-and-the-bees story. “When they decide to finally seal the deal, so to speak, if their attraction is strong enough, the man’s… uh… penis becomes hard, because it’s erectile tissue, and he inserts it into the woman’s vagina, assuming she is well lubricated.” At that she uncapped the large marker and began to draw something, anything, to get Markar’s attention off of her. “After some sporadic pumping, the man ejaculates sperm into the female’s vagina,”

  “STOP!”

  Rae looked up at the outburst. Markar was gripping the edge of his seat. His knuckles were white, but the rest of him was all flushed. He was shaking- his whole body was shaking. Looking wildly around like a scared rabbit, he suddenly got up and left the room. Rae was left, holding the still unused marker in her hand.

  “He must have a headache.” she murmured sarcastically.

  -

  Markar retreated to his own bedroom. He was still breathing heavily and he felt as if something was wrong with him. What Rae had said kept playing over and over in his mind: When a woman and man fall in love. Panicking, he sat down on his bed and tried to slow his heart rate. What had him absolutely terrified was that her words seemed to have cursed him as she spoke them. But yet again, maybe he was cursed the first time he saw her. Looking down at himself, he saw that his dick was in fact hard, as Rae had explained it would be.

  His people had no females. They reproduced using technology- cloning themselves. He had never felt sexual attraction for another being before, and the effects were driving him crazy. Markar ran his hands through his hair as he hung his head in confusion. Some of his people felt attraction for one another, and formed close bonds, but that had never appealed to Markar. But the thought of forming that kind of a bond with Rae practically made him drool.

  He was right to cease the diplomatic mission and take Rae in to investigate. If many of his people, the Morian race, were like him, the effects of the human female population would be profound. Markar had thought the humans had no threat to offer them. From just the way he was reacting, he had a feeling that females would be the biggest threat to the Morian society they had ever seen.

  A Dangerous Mission

  Markar didn’t return. It had been hours since Rae was abducted from Earth, and the exhaustion from her ordeal was starting to catch up to her. Having no idea where else to go, she curled up on a couch in the room she was in and tried to get some sleep. But her army training was against her, and she found it hard to relax in “enemy” territory- or, at least, the territory of the alien that had kidnapped and held her hostage for information. Instead, she catalogued everything in the room, taking careful inventory of her surroundings.

  The room they had been talking in was surprisingly homey. The walls were a strange material that gave off a soft white glow, and the furniture in the room was plush and large. There were even carpets scattered across the floor. In fact, from what Rae had seen so far, Markar’s whole ship was not what she had expected. It seemed awfully large, and, dare she think it- humanized. It was in the small touches of comfort throughout the rooms.

  It was on that thought that she started to doze off, and as she did, the white glow from the walls dimmed.

  -

  Rae awoke feeling surprisingly rested for being in outer space. Stretching, she refused to get up, and instead thought about Markar’s strange reaction yesterday. Rae didn’t know quite what to make of it. That was the problem: they knew so little about Markar and his race, and everyone had so much trouble prying the information out of him. He looked so human, that it was hard to imagine his species being much different, but apparently, they must be.

  He had thought she was a man! Rae became indignant at that. She worked hard to be the equal to any man, but she didn’t want to be seen as one. Frowning, she realized it bothered her especially because it was Markar specifically who had thought that. He was so very male, himself, that it had made her very aware of her femininity when she was around him. She couldn’t deny that he was very attractive, in an alien sort of way.

  He was obviously disgusted with the idea of sex. He could hardly even stand to hear Rae’s explanation of it, although, she probably didn’t explain it that well. He was the one who demanded she continue with that awkward topic in the first place!

  Well, Rae had some topics of her own she wanted to go over with him, and just because he was too disgusted to even look at her, didn’t mean he was getting out of it. She had some reconnaissance to do.

  Getting up out of her makeshift bed, she did some further stretching to wake up her stiff muscles. Walking towards the exit of the room, Rae peered both ways down the hallway suspiciously. Even if she couldn’t find the man himself, she could still do some investigation into his spacecraft. Markar hadn’t said she wasn’t free to roam, and she wasn’t above taking advantage of his omission.

  She knew the med bay, where she had woken up, was down the hallway on the right. To the left, there were a series of closed doors, and one room that the hallway seemed to lead to without a door. As she walked decisively down the hall, she tested each door on her way, but each one didn’t have any way to open it that she could find. Walking into the only room that didn’t have a door, she found that it was obviously the kitchen.

  Rae searched through the cabinets, taking out anything that looked like it might be edible. As she was putting another item in her growing pile of possible food, Markar walked through the doorway. At the sight of Rae, he stopped dead in his tracks.

  Rae looked at her large pile guiltily. “I was hungry.”

  Markar glanced at her suspiciously as he side stepped around her to get to the food. Still obvious in his attempt to avoid getting anywhere near her, Markar picked up two of the packets and placed them in a box high up on the wall that resembled a microwave. As he waited for the box to complete whatever it was doing, he tried to subtly glance at Rae out of the corner of his eye.

  When the food was done, he set both meals on the table and sat down. Rae uncertainly sat across from him. She watched as Markar began to silently eat, pretending she didn’t exist. This wasn’t like their time together yesterday at all. This time Markar seemed almost afraid of her. No doubt he was still disgusted by her explanation of how humans reproduced.

  Well that was too bad! He was the one that dragged her ass onto his spaceship, and he could live with the consequences. But if he thought he was going to be the only one getting any Intel from this situation, he couldn’t be more wrong! Rae stirred the meal in front of her absentmindedly, as she thought of which topic she should bring up first. It was as she was staring at Markar, thinking up possible conversations, that she finally noticed he didn’t look too well. He had dark circles under his eyes, and he was a little flushed.

  “Are you ok, Markar? You don’t look so good.” she asked warily.

  He grunted noncommittally in response and continued to eat his food, never even looking at Rae. “I’ll take that as a yes. In that case, since we talked about me yesterday, I think we should talk about you today.” she said brightly. That got his attention. Markar glowered at her over his food.

  The question uppermost in Rae’s mind was Morian mating and reproduction practices, but she had a feeling that would be a bad subject to touch on. “Let’s start with an easy one. Are you the only one piloting this ship? Don’t you need a crew?”

  “I do not need a crew.”

  Rae waited for him to explain. He didn’t. Narrowing her eyes at him in frustration, she asked “What if you get injured?”

  “I will not get injured.”

  She once again waited patiently for Markar to continue with his statement. Nothing came. “What if?” she provoked.

  “I would heal.”

  This was really getting frustrating. But if there was one thing Rae was good at it was badgering people. “How would you heel?”


  “With time.”

  “Look, Markar, like you said yesterday, we only seem to have time on our hands. I can be one annoying woman when I want to be, so don’t you dare expect me to back down. This interview goes both ways.” When she finished her tirade, Markar stared directly at her for the first time that morning, and the look in his golden eyes seared Rae to her core.

  She froze as her eyes widened in fear at the look of barely leashed intent she saw in him. If she wouldn’t of known better, she would have said there was so much sexual tension in that gaze it could have flat lined her. But that couldn’t be right, could it?

  “I guess you’re not a morning person.” Rae said awkwardly as she got up and left him. She could feel his unwavering attention long after she left the kitchen.

  Once she retreated to her familiar couch, she sat down in shock. She had no idea how to react to what had just happened. Markar had looked as if every muscle of his body was strained, like a predator poised on the fine line of inaction and the kill. From the first moment she had truly seen Markar when she awoke in the med bay, she had instinctually assumed she had nothing to fear from him.

  Could he be less civilized than all the reports had claimed? Did Rae actually have something to fear? For the first time on Markar’s ship, the whole experience felt less like an extension of her main mission of intelligence gathering, to a hostage situation in the heart of enemy territory.

  The First Directive

  It was the day after that horrible encounter with Rae in the galley, and Markar was feeling a million times better. He had finally mastered the blundering art of masturbation. It had taken him a while to firstly, figure out exactly what he wanted, and secondly, to accomplish the goal. The first night after Rae informed him of how humans reproduced was one of the worst nights in his life, and that was counting all the wars and vicious fights he had managed to live through. Markar had spent fruitless hours in agony not even knowing what he was yearning for, yet after he had finally figured out what his body was craving, it had taken him another couple hours to finally satiate the hunger.