by James Darcey
"If you were really a captive, then how'd you get out? Someone slipped you a weapon? There's no way someone your size could've handled one, let alone two of those overbearing lizards bare-handed. He has them travel in threes for just that reason. That little stunner you hit me with wouldn't even tickle one of them. Whoever got you out won't be in any position to help you anymore. The Teyrn will see to that."
"You're right in that he has them travel in threes. One of them grew careless when they came with my food. I left at least two dead, and the third one most likely dead; I just didn't bother to check as I ran. Nobody brought me any weapon."
The discussion was starting to calm me down enough that I wasn't on the verge of frying him. It also let my mind sift through the stuff I'd read in xenobiology. Maybe all that stuff that Teyrn had set up for me to read wasn't so useless. There was a good bit of information about Cardovans, specifically about them being matriarchal hive dwellers. According to the texts the males would naturally defer to a female, but only as long as the female exhibited a stance of power. If the female attempted dominance and was found lacking, the males would often consume her. I could not let him see any weakness. Squaring my shoulders, I added a harsh tone to my words.
"You got us free and on our way. For that you may live. I will be in my cabin."
With those words I turned abruptly and exited the cockpit. I didn't dare breathe until the cabin door slid shut behind me. If I had breathed he might have picked up on a flutter of breath, or some other clue that could divulge the inner nervousness I was still feeling. I couldn't believe just how much I was sweating when I hadn't been exercising. Some of the xenobiology texts had mentioned that. Many species would sweat more in times of stress. Oh no! Had I just blown it by sweating? I stood in the cleanser for a good fifteen minutes, just letting the water pound into me. I could lean into some of the nozzles and the jet of water would relax my muscles a bit. The water still felt odd.
One thing that would have helped ease my tension even more was my exercise machine, but there was no way I could have brought it with me, even if I had found a way to un-bond it from the floor and ceiling. It was too big to fit anywhere except for the cargo bay. Why was I so nervous? I had escaped. The course was plotted for Terra, Sol. The ship was in high drive. The food was... I hadn't eaten in more than seventeen hours, and I had used my talents several times in the interim. Eating some food would probably clear my thinking and restore some of the energy I had used.
I shut off the dull water, and set the controls to dry. Those Selstlaks had been bringing me the day's first meal when I escaped. Escape had been so large in my mind that I had left the tray of breakfast wafers untouched as I ran. I re-braided my hair, and took a deep breath to ready myself for the next round of dealing with that insectoid. Just how much did I really need a pilot anyway? Perhaps the odds would have him returning to his cabin for some more time with that torque. Most likely I would open my door, springing a trap that he had plenty of time to set while I was enjoying the water.
The door slid open with nothing attacking me. For a moment I thought that he had sheltered in his cabin the way I had sheltered in this one. I had already called it mine too. There was a loud clacky chirp, shortly followed by a small thud coming from the common room. A few steps down the passageway brought me to a scene of mild chaos. The common room was in total disarray with food packages scattered everywhere. Traxel was picking through the stacks I had made, and resorting them into new piles. A few of the packages he simply tossed blindly over his shoulder. One such toss had been the soft thud that had drawn my attention.
"If you hadn't planned on me then why did you get my favorite worms? Of course, I don't know who you thought was going to eat z'kelk'ta. That stuff is poison to all but a few species. Perhaps you thought to torture me with it."
His head spun to look straight at me, though I know that he could already see me clearly. Cardovan eyes can see three hundred thirty degrees, with only a five degree per side peripheral distortion. The gesture had to be a purposeful gesture to gain my attention. If what he said was true, then I had unknowingly grabbed poison along with the rest of these packages. From the other things he said, it sounded like they were food after all. He had just proven another reason why I shouldn't turn him into an airlock bound cinder.
"Is any of this food?"
He paused in his sorting with one of the packages still in his hands. He sat there idly flipping it over a few times before tossing it back and forth. I'm sure that he was once again trying to evaluate me, and the best way to keep from being zapped again. This was much better than his stationary silent stares. I could see that he was thinking, just not what. Inwardly I grimaced at the lack of self-control that had me betraying my need for him.
"If you didn't know this was food then why get so much? Everybody knows food, try again."
"I found the food locker, but nothing in there was labeled food. I'd only seen what my food looked like when they brought it to me. Knowing it was a long trip, I grabbed what I could carry, and I..."
My stomach was cramping and I felt exhausted. I tried changing my tone in the hopes of eliciting some help. He knew which of these packages were food, and which were poison. I needed his help to find answers that I was getting desperate to obtain.
"Which of this is food that I can eat?"
Once again he rocked a little as he emitted that staccato chirp that I was fairly certain meant laughter. I had asserted dominance before, and now I was handing it back to him. I knew I could boil him inside that carapace if he tried consuming me, but it was annoying to be finding myself in this position.
"You hold my life hostage with a hidden weapon. I hold yours in a simple package. This is most funny."
He set the package that he had been tossing back and forth on the floor, and took another from the small stack as he stood up. His walk seemed casual as he made his way through the packages that were scattered on the floor from being tossed around in his search, ending at the bank of machines along the aft wall. He opened a small door and gently placed the package within before closing it once more. A few quick stabs of his finger to the controls, and a timer began counting down.
As he waited for the timer to complete its two minute cycle I could see his head bobbing slightly in rhythm to the nearly imperceptible clicking of his jaw. It seemed like a rhythm, but it kept varying pattern, sometimes going back to repeating segments. I was just starting to get the complex variances to the point that I could anticipate the next part when the timer reached its conclusion and chimed. The package that he pulled out of the little door had increased in size by about four times, and when he peeled back the top it released a cloud of aromatic steam that he let waft over his face. I could hear the deep breath he took of the steam.
"Ahh... Sissk'tal Bore Worms. It's been awhile since I could afford this. As a thanks; Here."
As he walked past me, he reached down to the large stack and handed one of them to me. He took a seat at the table and lifted a plump worm from the package. I had the impression that he was savoring a small victory, and likely one where I'd lost my position of power. A flick of his third hand pointed to the package I was clenching.
"I'm not sure what species you are, but that one is probably good for you."
I glanced down, having momentarily forgotten that I still held it. The label read Moatra Berries. On the side of the small package were simple instructions. Simple that is if you knew what it meant by ".5 min., hyd 2" I had to study the mechanism for a few moments to decipher the requested settings and select a hydration level of two. Less than a minute later I was peeling back the top to stare at some violet orbs approximately 2 cm in diameter.
They looked nothing like the greenish-brown wafer cakes that the Selstlaks had brought me twice daily for my entire existence. Three of the centimeter thick cakes stacked neatly on the small tray. Some of the times they would crush them before my eyes, and laugh as I had to lick the crumbs from the floor. Hesitantly I
tasted one of the berries. It had a very different taste than I was accustomed too. The flavor was strong and... different. Not unpleasant, just different.
I held each one in my mouth, letting my tongue slowly crush it. I had done it with the first one out of trepidation that it was somehow poisonous, but the flavor was so vivid that I wanted to make each one last as long as possible. After I had swallowed the last of them I asked my Cardovan shipmate about the little cakes they had brought me before. He cocked his head slightly to the side such that I didn't think he understood, so I went on to describe them. My somewhat simple description was interrupted by that staccato chirp of his.
"Those are emergency rations. They have those in survival packages. There's some in the escape pod of the ship if you really want them, but you should know that it's the type of thing they feed to prisoners in the worst prisons. Not what I'd call a delicacy."
The taste of the berries had awakened my stomach onto realizing that it wanted food. I was suddenly starving. I licked the last of the juice from the package before sliding it into the recycler, and picking the next package on top of the large stack. If it came to a choice between food that was here, and those greenish-brown wafers hidden away for emergencies, I was glad this was no emergency. This package read as Wendo Steak. The instructions were a little different, but then one of my talents is being a quick learner. The steak was as different from the berries, as the berries were to the survival rations. I decided I liked both of them. I looked up to find Traxel staring directly at me as I licked the remaining juices from my fingers.
"Seeing you take such delight in those common berries I am inclined to start believing your story. Just be careful. It took me a few minutes to figure out what you tried to do back in the cockpit. Dominance assertion only works if you're a Cardovan, and it always fails when you reek of fear. You managed to nearly trigger a response to kill you, which I'm sure would have ended badly as you have your hidden weapon."
With that he stood and walked past the preparation machines, where he tapped the controls for a small door that I hadn't seen before. Seeing it now I realized that it had been on the drawings, I just hadn't paid any attention to it. Traxel continued on without a backward glance as he made his way up the passageway to his cabin. The small door he'd opened had been listed as pantry, and inside I found shelves enough to hold all of the food packages. Many of the shelves were already full, but even with all the ones I'd brought there were still empty places. An entire section of shelves was even devoted to holding colored glass bottles of liquid on their side.
I kept the two stacks separated as I moved all of the packages into the pantry. When I got down to the packages that he'd tossed randomly around the common room, I tucked those into the bottom back corner. Z'kelk'ta was among those packages, and I was certain the rest were similarly poisonous to him, and probably me. If I got really hungry I might have to test my tolerance to them.
The common room looked much better without the scattered packages. Now I could take a look around at what there was to do in here. A holoviewer dominated one side of the room, where the chairs could be turned to face it. Between the counter, and the wall aft of it, there were enough machines to heat or chill most anything you could want. I couldn't find the actual chemicals for this laboratory setup, but I did find some things for entertaining.
One of the cabinets opened to a rack of small hand weapons that were simple charged pellet throwers, not nearly powerful enough to punch through hardened armor. The next cabinet held plates and dishes. I'd never had my wafers in a dish, and perhaps with these new forms of food that might work better. It might even be fun to pretend that I was royalty enough for dishes.
One of the other cabinets had several small boxes of... stuff. I was trying to think of a purpose for them when I recognized the name on one of them. Releso was one of the games I'd read about in many of the texts about court behavior. Perhaps I would find a chance to engage Traxel in game playing.
Game playing was not among the studies that I'd been taught. I once thought I'd found a game in the data banks of the terminal. The strategy of it seemed pretty complex. I had gotten to the point that I could keep the forces balanced quite well. I actually thought I was winning for two weeks. In the end it had turned out to be the remote access controls to the waste recycling unit.
With the long trip ahead I knew I was going to need something to occupy my time. That was something I'd not even considered when the whole plan consisted of getting to high drive with the bow pointed to Terra, Sol. I had left the elaborate exercise machine behind as well as the endless supply of information to read. There was a terminal on the counter that connected into the ship's main AI, but I doubted that it contained even a fraction of the information the orbital lab had housed.
My muscles ached to be flipping through the bars of the exerciser. Now that I had eaten I was faced with the choice of... sitting and doing nothing. That sounded great for all of two minutes. I needed something to do, and the first thing that popped into mind was satisfying my curiosity. There was a whole room full of boxes that were just begging for me to peek inside. I had never gotten the chance to just peek inside a box. I'm sure it would hold the same thrill as finding a new section of data to dive into, only this was something I could do with my hands.
One by one I started pulling some of the boxes out of the last cabin to stack them on the table where the food packages had been. Their contents proved to be an odd assortment that only deepened the mystery of why they weren't in the cargo bay. Small stone statuettes that weren't all that detailed, and carved wooden trinkets gave no clue as to value, but they looked extremely old. I was beginning to think that it was all just a pile of things that were thought worthless until I found the box of coins.
A few hundred kilos of gold coins were something I knew could be useful to trade if the need arose. I moved those and the phased pulse accelerator rifle into the Captain's cabin where I could get to them as needed. There were also a couple boxes full of jewelry that I wanted to try wearing. I had never had any jewelry, or any other form of personal decoration. I had never owned any of it.
Of course I never owned anything. Even the clothes I wore bore the stupid twisted helix symbol on them that everything on the lab bore. I guess that was Teyrn Elon's way of showing that he owned even the people there. Those Selstlak had worn jeweled armbands that I had always found intriguing; now I could wear something pretty as well. Freedom was going to be very nice indeed.
Among some of the boxes I found a large image that looked very much like how I imagined an ocean bottom would look. I couldn't say why, but I found it intriguing enough to affix it to the wall in my cabin. A tool box in engineering had a gadget that extruded micro bond putty. A dab of that stuff and the image stayed in place, only tilting about two degrees.
As I looked around the cabin I realized something. This, all of this, was Teyrn Elon. The Teyrn, as Traxel called him. I hadn't escaped him at all. There was no way that I could relax being surrounded by him with everything I looked at in here. I hoped Traxel was using that sleep inducer torque, because the scream I let out must have shaken the entire ship. Clothes started flying out the door as I started the purge with the wardrobe. Everything else that I could grab went out the door as well. I didn't care about breaking stuff, in fact a few things I purposely threw hard enough to hear a satisfying crash.
The lab was all machines and sterility. It was very utilitarian and strictly business. He had decorated this up far different than the lab, but it was still his choice on how this looked. This was his other side, the personal touches he liked to have around him. I stripped it all out of there. The decorations, the bedding, everything. I even tore the images off the wall. Every stupid little thing that he had liked well enough to have in his own little room made wonderful crashing, banging sounds as they landed in the passageway.
In short order I had stripped everything but the wardrobe and bed from the room. Those just happened to be mounted in p
lace well enough that they didn't budge when I tried. The box of coins, rifle, and image remained as well. I told myself that since I had moved them in here -- that made them my choice. I did sort of like the furniture; since I couldn't move them, I would have them as my choice rather than go to engineering and get tools to yank them out. I did strip all of the sheets off the bed too, and the mattress was leaning against Traxel's door at the moment.
Just to make it mine, I stripped off the shipsuit and hung it in the wardrobe. Too bad I had left its mate sitting on the orbital lab. Two clothings would look better than one in there. One shipsuit in there just looked out of place, but it made it mine! I closed the door of it, and caressed the wood paneling. I liked the feel. Yes, for my choice I would have the wood. I guess it's a good thing it was already here. Teyrn Elon must have had to endure it, because he didn't seem like the sort of person that would enjoy the subtle feel of wood. It was mine now. I liked the wood and it could stay.
Now came the second part of the fun as I shoved shirts and whatever that thing was before getting broken, into the recycler. The opening was small, and some of the stuff took a bit of effort before the waste tube finally swallowed it. By the third armload of junk I stepped on a broken bottle of something I didn't know. It smelled like insects I guess, though the only insect I'd ever met was comatose and hiding from the me, the mad woman. He didn't smell like that, so I don't know what it was. Ahh, there's the label; it smelled like a Gavadian no. 5. Never heard of a Gavadian. Into the recycler it went.