And it wasn’t just fear for their jobs. It was fear for their lives. In the confusion before the official story had come out, the media had speculated about what had happened to the ship. They had suggested that, if it wasn’t the Rhacahr, was it a Teissian attack? Or maybe human?
Both groups had cause to object to the current alliance as it stood. Perhaps a radical group of humans had destroyed the Tiberius in protest of the Teissian immigration agreement, which they saw as an alien invasion of Earth, a disguised takeover, the beginnings of a competition for survival. Or maybe it was a Teissian protest of the Alliance’s policy of relocation, giving the planet Teiss up for lost, not worth fighting for, Earth lending no military support to the Rhacahr in their war against the Ypex who were enveloping the planet.
The President had explained that the Rhacahr had shot the Tiberius down because Ypex had got on board, but it was impossible to remove the idea of terrorism from people’s minds once it was in there. And if the Tiberius was a target, DETI could be too. It was perfectly logical. DETI was the face of Earth’s acceptance of refugees. If anyone had a problem with that, DETI would be where they went to do something about it. There were hundreds of DETI offices around the world, but people were still nervous. The USA took a huge number of refugees each year, and the San Diego office had been the last to close.
Security in the building was still high. The security teams had tripled the number of staff on every shift, rushing to vet new hires and outside contractors to give their current staff time to rest, but there was no end in sight. No one knew how long it would last; the pat-downs, and signing in and out, and out-of-hours restrictions. The giant TV screen in the lobby still ran the news, the same old story circling endlessly.
It made Maggie infinitely sad, but she was scared too. She was scared of being hurt, and of losing her job. No one knew what was going to happen next, and she wasn’t any different. She didn’t expect an attack on the DETI building, but no one had expected one of their transporter ships to be blown out of the sky either, and enough people were talking about it that she couldn’t seem to get five minutes to convince herself it wouldn’t happen to her. Her stomach was in knots all the time, and she slept uneasily. It felt callous to put her make up on in the morning and think about what to wear to work. How could she care about those things anymore? But she had to.
She had to keep going to work and doing the best she could to make sure DETI stayed strong, and offered the best service it could to the Teissians who had made it to Earth and needed their help.
She left the building and trotted down the steps and across the grand, expensively-architectured plaza with the big fountain. She knew behind the right side of the building were the Teissian dorms, tall towers arranged almost in a circle, with new ones being built all the time. If she turned right down the road and kept going, she would come to the beach. Maggie turned left, in the direction of downtown. She had no intention of going that far, not that she even could in an hour, but she liked to walk that way. There was a small deli across from a park that she could sit in and get a sandwich.
She thought about Ro as she walked, refreshing her memory on what she needed to teach him when she got back, and trying to think if they’d missed anything that morning. She hoped he and Kez navigated the staff canteen alright, if that was where they were going, but there would be plenty of other Teissians to help them out if they were more comfortable asking their own kind. After all, every Teissian in the building was an immigrant and could sympathise with how it felt much better than Maggie could.
She was encouraged that he seemed friendly and smart, and eager to learn. She had had to train people in the past who were clearly less than enthused to be there, and that had never been good. She got the feeling he would fit right in, and be good with the clients.
Her mind wandered to how nice his voice was. Anyone who got directed to his extension was lucky, she thought to herself. She remembered his strange black eyes with the brown sheen to them, and the bright pink shapes on his cheeks that moved with his expressions. She reminded herself again not to bring up the Balor, since he didn’t seem to like that, and wondered what it must be like to file down your finger bones for work. She shuddered. She didn’t see how it could be a pleasant experience, even if it didn’t hurt.
She hadn’t lived in California all her life, and still found time to appreciate how beautiful it could be when the sun was shining. She found the deli and pushed the door open, setting off a little bell. The inside was cold with air conditioning and the décor was pretty bare and minimalist, but it was quiet and they did good coffee. She approached the counter and ordered her usual sub before taking a seat at the bar in front of the window to watch the park across the road. The girl from the counter brought her meal to her in a basket when it was ready.
She got out her Gadgit and caught up on her social media accounts, idly scrolling through feeds and clearing notifications while she ate her sandwich. Sometimes she felt she should bring a book or something, make better use of the time, but it helped clear her mind to see what was going on elsewhere, what her friends were doing.
And these days it was important to stay on top of the news as more information came out every day. A location was being chosen for a memorial. Ships had been sent up to evacuate the transporters still in orbit that only held their human crews and no passengers. Then teams were going to go in to clear the ships of any threat, but landing an empty transporter was not a priority. Transporters that held passengers were being resupplied and refuelled, but procedures had not begun for getting them down safely.
Earth’s borders were still closed, and it looked like they would be for a while. Not every ship had made it back to Earth yet after being recalled. Maggie thought it must be getting quite crowded up there, which was probably why the United Nations of Earth were making the ships that hadn’t made it to Teiss yet a priority. Clearing them for landing was the safest, quickest, and most politically neutral way to just clear some space.
One article quoted a UNESS officer warning of the risk of a collision. Transporter ships were massive; bigger and more complex than any man-made structure on Earth. Most of their construction took place in space for precisely that reason, so the process of landing one was risky and complicated. There were only a handful of empty spaces on Earth that they could be parked in any kind of number as well, such as deserts and oceans, and that complicated things as well. The ships could dock to the construction stations orbiting Earth, but that would make the stations unwieldy and impossible to manoeuvre, almost guaranteeing a crash.
While the governments debated the best next step, at least the crews were slowly being brought home. Maggie didn’t like the thought of all those millions of Teissians and humans held at arm’s length from their safe haven, but she acknowledged that the fewer people stranded up there the better.
Other than the coverage of the transporter ships’ situation, one channel had got hold of a story that said the UNE were negotiating for a permanent Rhacahr envoy to Earth. It was unclear whether this had been a Rhacahr suggestion or a human one, but either way it raised a lot of questions. The Rhacahr were the most mysterious of the alien races, Maggie herself knew next to nothing about them. The general feeling was that they hated coming to Earth. Transporter ships crewed by Rhacahr had a tendency to dump their cargo and go, with no niceties involved, often disregarding timetables and making life harder than it had to be for DETI. But they were in the minority now, and so had less and less cause to ever approach Earth.
The reason that was given for the Rhacahr never exactly extending the hand of friendship despite being Earth’s allies was that they simply did not see the point in anything that took them away from their war against the Ypex. They didn’t want to be here, they wanted to be out there fighting. They were a strictly military society with an all-consuming cause. So it seemed unlikely that a permanent envoy would be a Rhacahr suggestion, but if it had been the UNE’s idea, it had the uncomfortable air of
hostage-taking in light of recent events. Whether the Rhacahr government agreed or not, the person chosen for the job would resent every second of it, if what people said about them was true.
A local politician by the name of Adam Wyatt, a man who had spent decades angling for the position of Governor without ever making it, was making a lot of noise now about the threat Teissian’s posed to humanity. His arguments were that they were unknown, strangers, and therefore not to be trusted. He insisted the UNE were lying about the cause of the Tiberius’ destruction, demanding independent investigations. His claims always seemed to come back to an idea that a planet could only support one sapient race, and that Earth belonged to humanity, and that if the Teissians were allowed to stay in any kind of numbers, they would eventually stage a coup for ownership of the planet. He said Earth didn’t have the resources, and equated immigration to invasion.
Maggie didn’t like him. It was obvious that he was capitalising on a tragedy to exploit people’s fears so he could grab for power. Everyone had learned in school about the energy crises of the early 21st century, and how population growth and industrial development had led to dangerous pollution levels. But people didn’t use fossil fuel anymore, everything was powered by clean, safe energies, and with the spread of birth control and gender equality, population numbers had become more stable and manageable. Innovations in pollution roll-back technologies had helped, and by the 22nd century, it seemed that humanity had been brought back from the brink.
Space exploration at the turn of that century led to not only the discovery of the first sapient race that humans had ever met, the Rhacahr, but also the colonisation of other planets capable of supporting human life. Now there had been almost a hundred years of humans moving off Earth to points further in the galaxy, so the planet had room to spare as far as Maggie was concerned.
Maggie saw the time and put her phone away, feeling more up to date but not better. The governments were still negotiating, people were still stuck in orbit with nowhere to go, the Ypex were still ravishing Teiss, and the public still didn’t trust the Rhacahr. No matter what the UNE or the President said, it was hard to forgive blasting a million people to death during a rescue mission. And people like Wyatt weren’t helping the situation.
Giving herself an emotional shake as she gathered up her things to walk back to the office, she thanked the servers at the counter and stepped back out into the street, the sun hitting her in the eyes and making her squint. Maggie turned her thoughts back to Ro’s training. She could only help the people who were here, she couldn’t do more than that. She sincerely wished the Teissians in orbit would be allowed to land soon, but if all she could do in the meantime was make Ro feel welcome and make sure he enjoyed his new job, she’d do it.
Chapter 4
Maggie had just made it back to her desk when she saw Ro and Kez come through and separate, Kez heading further down the floor to Requisitions while Ro turned off and headed over to the Incomings desks. Nina and Ben were still on their lunch, having gone later than Maggie, but Alex was back, and she had been able to fill Maggie in on how that morning had gone, confirming that it had been as busy as Maggie had worried it would be. Her desk lights were still flashing with missed messages and it made her anxious but she told herself there was nothing she could do.
“Did you have a nice lunch?” Maggie asked Ro when he reached her.
“I did, thank you,” he replied with a polite smile.
It seemed like an hour’s break was long enough for her to not be used to his voice anymore. Oof.
She smiled back. “Great, no problems in the canteen?”
“None. I met some Balin I have not seen in years. It was good to see them again.”
She bet it was. Maggie guessed that if they didn’t meet up with old friends or relatives on Earth, they’d never know if they were alive or dead.
“Ready to get back to your training?” she asked, trying to maintain an air of jollity and hoped he wasn’t getting tired.
“Absolutely.”
Maggie moved her chair next to his at his desk, and they got him logged on. She took him for a run-through of the software, and how to answer calls and mail. They figured out how to get his special earpiece tuned in to his extension, and she sent him all the mail templates he would need. When he was all set with everything he would need, she sent him a few test enquiries, and went through how to answer them with him.
Sitting next to him all afternoon was the closest she had ever got to a Teissian. She had stood behind them in queues at lunch, of course, and she knew several by name, well enough to exchange small talk with. Tol, the security officer, was nice. She often went over to the other teams in Enquiries to ask for favours or opinions on cases before she sent them on. And there were a few Teissians in other departments that always seemed to be the ones to pick up her referrals. She didn’t hang out with any socially though, and she wasn’t assuming Ro would change that, but she had to tuck her shoulder and knee in to avoid accidentally brushing against him, they were sat so close together. They had to be, if they both wanted to get their legs under the one-person desk.
It made her feel very unprofessional, to have to try not to stare at his scales, or his claws, or the pink patches on his cheeks. She wanted to know what they felt like. Were they warm? Dry? Soft or leathery? Would his claws hurt her if he touched her bare skin, or did he know how to avoid that? She wondered if his smell would cling to her somehow. And all the while, his voice trapped her like honey.
She knew he was a person and her colleague and it was his first day, and he probably wouldn’t appreciate her thinking about his body in such detail, but she couldn’t help it. She was kind of fascinated.
The last thing they had to practice was answering a call. It was getting to be near the end of the day, and she had tried to keep it simple and not overload him. She’d only showed him the bare bones of what they did so he would be able to cope with the common questions the next day and know where to find help if he got stuck. She rolled her chair away and back to her own desk, then she dialled his extension, listening to the tone in her earpiece. She watched him centre himself nervously, pressing open his script, and answer the call. Nobody liked roleplay.
“Good afternoon, DETI Enquiries, how may I help?” he flicked his eyes to her face, checking her reaction, and she grinned. His voice right in her ear gave her a shiver.
“Good afternoon. I’m worried about my work placement, it hasn’t come through yet,” Maggie said. She knew exactly what was in the script, and she watched him trace over it with a claw point, picking up the section on employment.
“What is your name please?” he replied, and he took it from there, taking all the right details, filling the case file form out as he went along, checking the database to see if there were any notes on the caller or any cases already open, which of course there weren’t. He did everything right, and Maggie kept it simple and clear, and they finished in a few minutes, and she knew he would get faster with practice.
“That was great, well done,” she said after they terminated the call, and he blew out a relieved sigh.
“Shouldn’t I do it in Balin?” he asked.
“Oh, good point. I wouldn’t be able to help you though. How do you feel about translating the script as you go along? Would it be difficult?”
“Perhaps we should practice it.”
“Okay, I’ll come around, and you point out what you’re saying and I’ll follow with an answer in English, just to see how it goes.”
She stood from her chair and went to lean over his shoulder, looking at his script. It was only once she had done it that she realised she probably shouldn’t have. She moved to kneel at his side instead, aware that she didn’t look very mature, but no one could accuse her of invading his personal space this way.
Ro stuck a claw point on the top of the script, the greeting, and looked at her to give him the go ahead. She nodded, and he cleared his throat and read from the page in a language s
he had never heard before. She knew what he must be saying, because it was right there in front of her, but she didn’t understand a single word. In his mother tongue, his voice sounded slightly different. He wasn’t being careful, he sounded more casual, and perhaps as a result of being more comfortable, his voice was a degree or two rougher, more masculine. She found herself wanting to hear more of it, even though he could have been cursing and insulting her ancestors as far as she knew.
She pointed to her reply and read it out in English, sensing that it was weird to be doing it this way, but they ran through a brief conversation and as far as she could tell, he hadn’t fluffed it. He had been smart about his translating, pausing to decide what the sentence was before he said it, so that he didn’t sound stilted or unsure, and his hesitation could be disguised as time taken to note down responses.
Maggie was glad to get off her knees when they were done and went back to her chair. It was twenty to five so she suggested they switch back to English for a few more practice calls until it was time to go home. She was tired too by the time they had finished, but she felt confident that she could let him take calls the next day. She didn’t exactly like it, normally she would run him through the less common scenarios as well, and not expect him to remember everything after hearing it once, but it was out of her hands.
She told him he could take the script home with him that night if he wanted to study it and work on his translations, but that he wasn’t obliged to. Outside of office hours, his time was his own, and she was in no position to give him homework. But he admitted it was a good idea and stuck the folder under his arm, saying that he had no other plans that night.
The New Guy (Office Aliens Book 2) Page 3