Ellie cleared her throat, looking down to break the spell he had on her. She took a deep breath to calm herself.
Why did I come here?
Her mind had completely blanked, forgetting that important detail, and embarrassment heated her cheeks. “Um…” It doesn’t matter. Just come up with something. “I… was just coming to check on you. I remembered you got shot, but I can see there’s no wound so…” She started to creep backward and looked up.
He was touching the spot where he’d been shot.
“Yeah, I got hit, but it’s healed.”
Ellie perked up, intrigued now. As a shifter, she could heal quickly, sometimes even instantly, but she’d never encountered another species with similar abilities. “Really?” Then she shook herself. “Do you need to eat? To recuperate? I can collect something from the galley?”
His face contorted. “Food? Why would I need food?”
“Well, when I have to heal a sizable wound, I’m usually hungry afterward. Takes a lot out of me.”
“Really? The nanites do all the work for me. They don’t need food.”
“So it’s not a native skill.” She crept forward, curious. It wasn’t a normal scar, not puckered or textured. It wasn’t angry red, either. Instead, it looked almost silver, a slightly different shade from his striations.
“No, all soldiers are injected with nanites during training.” He rubbed at the spot once more. “It’s saved my life more than a time or two.”
“Fascinating. How do they facilitate the repairs? What powers them?” She reached forward as if to touch him.
“I don’t know. I’m not a scientist.”
Realizing what she’d been doing, she pulled back, leaning against the wall near him. “So, they’re just for soldiers?”
“No, anyone in high risk positions, but they’re also used in medical facilities.”
Ellie nodded. It made sense.
“It repairs tissue when it can, replaces it when it must. Some of our most honored soldiers are more metal than man.” He stood taller, making her think that was a thing of pride, which she supposed it was. After all, the Purple Heart was a badge of honor back home. If you could wear your Purple Heart as if it were a blazing beacon of your bravery and selflessness…
She nodded. “My species can repair itself pretty quickly, even instantaneously at times, but there’s a cost. We need to replace the energy used to heal, meaning eat. I’m told if we don’t, we stop healing. We can die.”
“Species?”
She nodded again. “Yes, species.”
“What are you?” An emotion crossed his face. He seemed to grow smaller before her eyes, though not physically.
Was that embarrassment?
She shrugged. “Shape-shifter. We don’t have a proper name for our species, just descriptive. I was always told it was because we are not just one thing. We can be whatever we want, and our communities reflect that.” She crossed her arms, a cheeky smile on her face. Her mother had known nothing about shifters, but that hadn’t stopped Ellie and her friends from being curious. She had skipped more classes and gotten in more trouble following Cass on her journeys of self-discovery… Her smile grew, remembering the shifter community they’d stumbled on, returning to again and again as they grew older. “I know a guy who spends all his time as a bear.”
“What’s a bear?”
“It’s an animal on our planet. Big predator. One of the few creatures humans are afraid of. Humans are the dominant species on the planet.”
“You’re not the dominant species?” He stepped forward and leaned against the wall next to her.
“Nope. Shifters kept themselves hidden from humans until a few decades ago. Because of their skills, they could blend in with humans pretty easily. It was safer that way, and no one needed to know. Hell, my mom didn’t even know she was a shifter until after she met my dad.”
“She didn’t know? How is that possible?”
“I don’t know. She doesn’t like talking about being a shifter. I learned everything I needed to know from my friends, not my mom.” She shrugged, passing it off as if it didn’t matter.
Did it?
Chapter Eight
“Ahem, you two lovebirds,” Angus broke in over the intercom, jarring Zee out of the conversation.
“Love birds?” he mumbled. Must be a reference from her planet. It wasn’t in Usan, so he had no idea what that reference could be.
Next to him, Ellie’s face turned red. Was that her true face? She’d mentioned blending in with humans. Was her appearance an affectation she’d made to blend in or was this the real her? Then her face turned almost purple, her entire body turning rigid in anger. He always found it odd that no matter how different species were, some things were universal, like anger. He could always tell when a being was angry.
“I’ve made some progress on that language search. And because I’m so magnanimous, I also ran a search on the physical traits of the alien you killed outside the ship.”
“How did you get that?” Zee said, running through the circumstances in his head. They hadn’t brought the being on board and it had been under dense cover. He couldn’t fathom the AI being able to catch a description of it.
Angus scoffed. “Do you think I’m an amateur? Puh-lease. I collected communication samples from interior and exterior microphones and sent out my bot to scan the body.”
Ellie pushed off the wall, stomping from the room, her steps echoing off the floor panels. Zee followed, enjoying her attitude, though the question of her appearance continued to plague him. His mind ran over all the various species he’d met in his travels, wondering if she had traits in common. They were too numerous to count, too numerous to contemplate, so he returned to watching her as she stormed into the control room.
“What?” she barked at the ceiling. “What do you have?”
Why did they come to the control room? Couldn’t Angus have disclosed that information in the gym?
“I’ve identified the species,” Angus said proudly.
Zee tensed. “But we didn’t ask you to identify the species. I need to know what’s on that message.” It irked him that Angus hadn’t done what was asked. What did it matter what species had attacked them? He just needed to find his unit.
Angus harrumphed. “Well, I haven’t found any databases with those characters in them yet. Sadly, the chances of finding translative data are looking slim. I’ve already processed 4,286,000,000 databases without reference to these characters.”
A sinking feeling hit his gut. Could he find his unit without that intelligence? How big was this planet? Could the ship run scans? Try to locate life forms?
“I have started working from the opposite direction, though, searching for information on the species I identified.”
Zee sighed, admitting silently that it was a good approach. “What’s the species? What do you know about it?”
“Not much. The species name, as best I can determine, is called Thunnus, though I’m not sure if that is what they call themselves or what other species call them.
“There is very little information on them other than they seem to be some sort of pest based on the tone of records I’ve acquired. Sentient, at least it is believed they are, capable of interstellar travel, though they do not trade with any other species that I can find.”
“How much of a threat are they?” Zee thought back on the battle. They’d been ambushed, outnumbered. They would have all been wiped out quickly if they didn’t have the nanites keeping them going. That spoke to a species with significant military capabilities. His species was known far and wide for their military prowess, and yet the other group had held their own.
“Unclear.”
That wasn’t exactly helpful. Based on what he and his unit had already experienced, they were definitely a threat on some level, but they knew nothing else.
Ellie sighed, drawing his attention to her. “Great. Now what?”
She hugged her arms around her t
orso, reminding him of a species on his planet that would curl into a ball when feeling threatened. It made him want to draw her into his arms, soothe her with gentle touches as he would a child. He pushed the impulse away, not knowing what to do with it.
He cleared his throat and answered her question. “The only thing I can think to do… try to find them.”
She scoffed. “Try to find them? Where?” She waved her arms around. “They could be anywhere on this planet. Hell, they don’t even have to be on this planet. For all we know, they hightailed it out of here.”
“Hightailed?”
She sighed. “Leave at great speed.”
“I see. Continue.”
She glared at him.
When she didn’t continue, Zee said, “They are still on the planet.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Because I just killed one not that long ago. Why would they leave before that one returned? And if a ship had departed, we would have heard or seen it.”
“True. So, how did he get here?”
Zee leaned back, scratching his neck as he thought. They’d been outside long enough that they should have been able to hear an engine over the natural noises of the forest. “He had to have been on foot.” Zee had reached her ship on foot, so it seemed logical that another could have as well. If they weren’t as fast as his species, which was likely, it would explain the delay in arrival. Not many could match an Ateles soldier on all fours.
“The entire time?” Ellie looked him over. “We don’t know if he followed you or not. We don’t know if he was reacting to my ship landing. Considering the way he looked, I would bet he started out under power, then changed to on foot once he got close. You look like you could move a lot faster than he could. I bet even if he was following you, he wouldn’t be able to keep up.”
“You’re right. That makes a lot more sense. With how short and stout their species is, it must have either been much closer to your landing site than me or have used a vehicle. It’s the only thing that makes sense.”
Ellie bit her lip, worrying it. “He must have been a scout.”
“If so, there will be more.”
She nodded, he assumed in assent.
“We should run a life form scan to locate them,” he said.
She shook her head. “No, a life form scan won’t do you much good in this setting. There’re life forms all around us. If there are any comparably sized animals on this planet, it’ll be a needle in a haystack.”
He frowned. “A needle in a haystack?” What was a haystack?
She leaned forward. “Damn near impossible to find.”
“Ah.”
“Angus? Run a technology scan.”
“Aye, love.”
“I am not your love,” she barked back.
“Aye, love.”
Ellie growled and stormed off. Zee smiled and followed, enjoying the view. After stomping down the hall, seemingly aimlessly, she stopped, turning back to him. “Care for something to eat?” She lifted her arm toward the door next to her.
His stomach gurgled in answer. “Yes, thank you.” He smiled.
They entered the galley, and he gawked at the size. He’d already seen every room, but he hadn’t realized this was the galley. It was tiny. “Where do you eat?”
She looked around the room, probably really seeing it for the first time, then hunched her shoulders and gave him a self-deprecating grin. “Standing?” she said, shrugging.
He shook his head. “Is there somewhere we can sit and eat?”
Her gaze shifted to the ceiling as she chewed her lip, thinking. “My room has a sitting area,” she said as her gaze returned to him.
He nodded. “Sounds good.”
She nodded back. “So, what would you like?”
Zee stared at her. What would he like? How would he know? He highly doubted the ship carried anything he would recognize. “Meat?”
She smirked, shaking her head. “Leave it to a guy to want meat. I don’t have much meat. There’s a small hydroponics room, but that only produces vegetative matter.”
She moved to a display next to a glassed-in section with robotic arms inside. Her finger ran over the screen. “Let’s see…” She touched the screen several times, running through options. “Still have some chicken from my last trip to Earth.” She swiped right, then turned back to him. “Taste and texture. What do you like? Sweet, salty, savory, spicy, bitter, tart, smoky? Starchy, creamy, crumbly, greasy, gooey, moist, mushy, crispy, hard, chewy, crunchy?”
Zee’s eyes glazed over, forgetting most of the adjectives she just spouted out. What did he like? He’d never thought of his food that way. He ran over his favorite foods in his head, trying to categorize them. Zee preferred meats tender and spiced, breads crisp with a soft center and a dark, bold flavor, and chose starchy root vegetables more often than not.
He told her and she nodded, returning to the display to make selections. He leaned over her shoulder, surprised that she could make sense of his ramblings and pick food choices for him.
After she selected their meals, he leaned back, intrigued as the robotic arms got to work. They moved fluidly inside their self-contained cabinet, moving the food from refrigerated storage and cooking it on a stovetop. His jaw slacked, thinking back to the times he’d eaten out. He remembered going with his parents and marveling at the cooks as they prepared the meals, their hands moving in an intricate dance that left him awe inspired.
“This is remarkable.”
Ellie laughed. “It’s actually pretty old technology, but it’s stood the test of time. It’s pretty pricey, a luxury item, really, but super convenient when you man a ship on your own.”
“Why do you man the ship on your own? I would think you would have a crew.”
“I don’t need a crew,” she said, her lip curling as if he’d insulted her.
He backed off, but thought there was more to it than that. Why would she think he’d questioned her abilities? Who had? “How long does it take to cook?”
“Not long. Depends on the meal.” She leaned forward, checking the display again. “It’s estimating fifteen minutes.”
Zee frowned. He didn’t know that unit of measure. “How long is that?”
She turned to him, surprised, but then closed her eyes and shook her head. “Right, Earth measurement. I always have trouble with that.” She chewed on her lip, then laughed. “I don’t know how to describe it. Angus?”
“Fifteen minutes converts to almost eight diceros.”
“Thank you, Angus,” Zee said, surprised at the AI’s assistance. “We should have enough time to collect some drinks and utensils.”
“Yeah, sure.” Ellie crossed the room, disengaging latches and opening a drawer, then a cupboard above it, exposing utensils and cups. “What do you want to drink?”
“Water’s fine.” He rarely drank anything else. Often, even water could be hard to find on mission, and he honestly wouldn’t know what to pick from Ellie’s selection. What did shape-shifters drink? What drinks were popular on Earth? He wouldn’t have a clue.
They worked in companionable silence, gathering their tools and walking to her room. Ellie bumped the door open with her hip, then strode in, aiming at a table and chairs off to the side.
Zee slowed, taking in the room. Having lived so much of his life in the military, this place was a shock. It reminded him of home. Not the home he collapsed into when on leave, a hole in the wall that barely managed to meet his needs, but the home he’d known growing up. The room was simple, with little in the way of decoration, but it still held appeal.
To the left, a set of overstuffed chairs and a small table backed up to an edge-to-edge display, which currently gave the illusion of a window onto an alien landscape. Blue sky with fluffy white clouds stretched over green vegetation with brown stalks. In the background, a shadowed mountain with white peaks loomed. It was beautiful.
The wall to the right only held two sets of closed doors. Ellie leaned
over a table and chairs in the near corner where she was setting up for their meal.
The contents of the back wall, though, dominated the room. A large bed, big enough even for his tall frame, took up most of the far wall. A small table on each side and a desk in the far right corner finished the room.
But Zee’s gaze kept darting back to the bed. The sheets were half falling off, looking like someone had tossed and turned quite a bit, putting ideas into his head. And the color was bright red, the color of so many things that made a man come to life.
Including the color of Ellie’s cheeks at that moment.
He was curious, but didn’t say anything.
But she did. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t expecting company.” Her head pivoted, searching the near empty room, then she walked over to the bed, scooped up the sheets, and opened one of the doors, tossing the sheets inside.
Zee smiled, but didn’t want to embarrass her further. Obviously, that was what the red coloring on her cheeks meant. “Do you think the food is ready yet?” he said, hoping to distract her.
She looked up in surprise. “Oh, yes!” She slammed the door closed behind her, standing before it like a sentry. “Of course,” she said and dashed off, leaving him in the dust.
He laughed, shaking his head. She was adorable. Zee followed her from the room, but didn’t get very far. By the time he’d opened the door, Ellie was already leaving the galley with their food, so he held the bedroom door open to facilitate her passage.
“Thanks,” she said, smiling up at him.
Zee closed the door behind them and sat down at the table, feeling like a child in the small chair. He shifted in his seat, trying to get more comfortable, but his knees kept hitting the underside of the table.
Ellie sat down and dug in, sneaking peeks at him. He followed suit, smiling down at the cuisine, which was pretty good, certainly better than military fare. While everything was foreign, everything had the barest of familiarity to it, aided by the warm, spicy scent. He recognized the striations of the meat, the texture of the root vegetables. In his mouth, everything tasted both familiar and exotic. He flitted between the various offerings on his plate, trying to decide which he preferred, but he couldn’t make up his mind.
Shifting Cargo (A Shift in Space Book 1) Page 5