Owning His Pet

Chapter 1

Mara

“You’re human. You’re small. You’re weak. You’re wet. And you’re a very long way from home. You will serve me as my pet, and I will look after you as your master.”

The creature saying this to me is right about a lot of things.

Compared to his towering alien frame, I am small.

Given his massive muscular strength and the fact that he can easily hold me up scruffed with one hand, he is stronger than me too.

I am wet because I almost drowned. It is also true that I am a lightyear away from where I started.

But I am not going to be his pet.

I could tell him that, but pictures are worth a thousand words, and actions are worth, like, a million.

I snap my teeth at his wrist. I catch blue scales and thick hide in my mouth. Neither one feels particularly bad, but they don’t yield beneath my bite. It’s like trying to chew through animal hide.

“One hundred percent attack, zero damage,” he laughs at me. “This is how you repay me for my kindness?”

“It’s not kindness if you’re trying to steal me from myself,” I argue.

Other aliens laugh on their way past. To them, I am already an alien’s pet.

They come in a variety of shapes, sizes, and general limb and sensory configurations.

There is an alien with its eyes on the outsides of its t-shaped head like a shark, and there is a sentient purple ball rolling around on its billion tentacles.

Neither one of those could ever be considered pets.

But as a human, I am free game in this part of the universe.

Nothing has gone right since I landed on this gods-forsaken station.

* * *

An hour ago…

My ship is sinking. This shouldn’t be happening because it’s a spaceship and I am docked on a remote station, but somehow I’m going to die like an old-timey pirate, except I’m being flooded by my own ship rather than by the ocean.

Water is flooding in through the lower compartment, which is particularly bad because the lower compartment is where the exit is, and the exit won’t open because it doesn’t like being underwater.

My father used to tell me if I tried to become a pirate I’d get scurvy, or end up with a parrot, both of which seemed like terrible fates to him. Even his paternal panic could never have conjured this.

“I’m not interested in being rescued,” I tell myself over and over. “I don’t need to be saved. I can do this myself. I can get out of it myself. I’m the rescuer. I don’t need help.”

Fuck me. I am going to die trapped in my own ship because of a series of design errors, which just feels like a real kick in the metaphorical testicles. I thought I’d die doing something cool, not becoming the victim of my own vessel.

“Clive!” I shout out to the ship’s automated brain. “Let me out!”

“Where would you like to go?”

“Anywhere there’s oxygen and not water.”

Clive hums to himself for a moment. I used to find that sound endearing.

It was installed because otherwise he’d just go silent and I wouldn’t know if he was still online and calculating things, or if he’d stopped processing things entirely and just turned himself off.

The latter happened at least a dozen times before I downloaded the humming DLC.

“Clive, I’ve got about five minutes before I drown,” I say desperately.

“Oh, no,” Clive says. “That is not accurate at all.”

“No?”

“You have three minutes and twenty-three seconds before you drown.”

“Okay. I need you to open the door at the bottom of the hull so that the water drains out.”

“I can’t do that. It’s sealed.”

“I know, but can’t you find some way around it?”

“It’s sealed,” Clive repeats.

“Fine. Then open the emergency hatch. Open anything that will get me out, or help the water to drain. I’m going to fucking die if you don’t!”

“There once was a ship who put to sea, and the name of the ship was a Billy of Tea…” Clive hums as he goes about pretending to try to help me.

This is it.

My last experience in this life is going to be arguing with a disinterested robot.

I didn’t get to do anything I wanted to do.

I didn’t get to steal a policeman’s hat.

I didn’t get to see the library in the Horsehead Nebula.

I never attended a single brawl-for-all-fight club for aliens who punch good, or drank absinthe, or even had a cigarette.

To be fair, I never wanted a cigarette, but the fact I’ve never had one is suddenly very important for reasons psychologists might one day be able to explain to me.

I guess it just seems messed up that I haven’t had the chance to ruin my health myself, the traditional human way, and it looks like I’ll never get the chance to.

The water is now up around my waist. I am doing my very best not to freak out. You have to stay calm in situations like these. Maybe I can patch the leak with chewing gum or something. I think the gum is submerged too.

“Activate SOS, Clive! Call for help!”

“I’m wet,” he says. “Water detected in sixty percent of cells and electrics. Please initiate drying protocol.”

“Activate SOS!”

“I would, but my SOS parts are damp,” Clive says. “Wait thirty minutes for them to dry out.”

“In thirty minutes, they will still be wet, and I will have been dead for at least twenty minutes,” I tell him. “You’re supposed to facilitate my survival at all costs.”

I hear a loud thud as something hits the side of my ship.

“What’s that?” I ask Clive the question.

I don’t know why. He hasn’t been useful since water started pouring into the ship’s electronics.

Arguably, he wasn’t useful before that either.

I was the one who input the coordinates and flew the ship.

I was even the one who docked, which might have been a mistake.

I am guessing that I must have knocked something wrong, pierced a tank, initiated unmitigated water production.

Could be the dihydrogen unit over-functioning due to a short somewhere…

“And the name of the ship was a Billy of Tea…” Clive hums.

There is a sound of rending, twisting, shearing metal. I close my eyes for a moment, thinking my world is about to implode because surely nothing good comes from a sound like that.

I open them again to see a large set of claws coming through the wall of the ship.

They are long and translucent, with a blue hue to them.

They move around, gripping bits of the ship and yanking them out into a world I thought I’d never get to see.

Whatever beast is outside is tearing into my spaceship as if the whole thing is made of cardboard.

Underneath their vicious ministrations, the ship’s front is falling off, and that is deeply unusual. I watch, stunned and amazed by this turn of events, not sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing. Am I being saved, or am I being peeled out of my flooding vessel like a sardine soaked in brine?

“Stay back! I’m coming in!”

Someone says those words in perfect, unaccented human galactic, which is strange as hell because this is clearly not a human. But it is something that can speak human.

Clive has started to scream, throwing error codes I don’t think anybody has heard in millennia. “Are you writing a letter? I can help with that! Unapproved item in the bagging area!”

It’s a relief when the claws slash through the wiring to his mic.

A hole big enough for the water to drain through is made, and through that hole steps a big, blue male alien. He is absolutely covered in scales, spikes, and scars, and he is only wearing a very tight pair of black shiny alien underwear.

He looks at me with golden eyes, glances at the state of my flooded ship, then one of his massive hands shoots out and grabs me.

“Come on,” he says. “We gotta go.”

I do not object. And as it happens, it wouldn’t matter if I had.

He slings me upon his shoulder, hauls us both out of the hole he made, and keeps running. I have to cling onto him not to fall hundreds of yards to what would most likely be my death.

The shipyards flash by in a matter of minutes. He is running and throwing himself around like a primate. His big, clawed hands grip metal bars and scaffolding set up to facilitate the handling of large cargo and other such structures.

The station is the size of a very large city, or a very small island. The population is around three million, so we are flecks against a cosmic skyline.

When he finally reaches the ground, we are in what the station would call civilization. There are bars, food places, stores, mechanics. There’s a big round bar that is selling noodles with fried meats and bits of vegetables. It smells so good.

I really never thought I would live to smell food this good again. I feel absolutely elated, like I just won every prize in every competition that ever existed.

“Thank you!” I say as he sets me down. “Thank you so much, I swear to god I was about to die. That ship was…”

“I heard you screaming on the way past,” he says.

“I was screaming? I don’t remember screaming,” I say. “I thought I was staying very calm.”

“You were calm enough,” he says. I know he’s indulging me, but I let him.

“You were amazing. Let me buy you lunch,” I say.

Thank god all my banking information is engraved on my retina caps. It would be the worst if I relied on anything that had to be physically stored.

I am wearing a neck-to-toe pink jumpsuit with pockets at the hips, thighs, knees, and ankles. I am still dripping wet from the knees down, but the fabric is designed to repel biological material and it doesn’t get much more biological than water, so I think I’ll be dry soon.

“I am hungry,” he says.

I don’t know if I am hungry too, but it doesn’t much matter.

He picks me up and uses me to scan my face to pay for both a big bowl of noodles and two burgers replete with fries. Ancient human food. The best of the best. These recipes have been handed down for generations, and have become so popular you can get them almost anywhere.