Chapter 8
Zephrum
Zeph was sure he hadn’t heard Han correctly. “You want me to do what?”
“It’ll wear off after a few days,” she said. “I looked it up on the ship's limited UniBase, and it’s safe and effective.”
“I don’t want to be dyed red!” he argued. “I like the color of my plates as they are. Don’t you like how I look?”
Han let out a long breath. “Zeph, you know I like your color, but you’re wanted, remember?
The information sheet must have image captures of you.
Maybe even a vid or two. If you don’t match the color on the sheet, authorities will be less likely to give you a second look.
Unless you want to stay on the ship after we land. ”
“No!”
Zeph didn’t mean to shout, but he was desperate to get off the tiny ship.
It wasn’t that he felt crowded by Han and Tumoro, but the trip here had been pure torture.
He hadn’t slept more than a mark at a time because his mating shaft was constantly half full of blood and threatening to inappropriately burst out of his mating pouch.
It didn’t help that Han used every opportunity available to touch his scent glands. He adored that she loved the smell of his bonding oil, but it was pure torture to be touched so sensually but unable to do anything further.
They were only a few marks from landing, and Han was threatening to leave him behind if he didn’t disguise his color.
He pulled in a deep breath and moderated his tone. “I don’t want to stay on the ship.”
“I could stay with you,” Tumoro offered.
Left behind with the nice but chatty Tumoro while Han went out into possible danger without him? That was exactly what he didn’t want!
He sounded a negative rumble. “No one is staying behind. The only port on Misorm doesn't allow anyone to live on their ships while docked there.”
Han held up the packet of medication. It was meant to treat various common skin conditions for Ugarians, but Han was confident it would act as a dye on him.
“This won’t stand up to a bioscan or even a closer second look, but it’ll help the casual glance,” Han insisted. “Why are you so resistant?”
He was trained from a young age to keep his feelings to himself. Hurt, frustration, disappointment, and even too much exuberance could earn a child extra chores or the loss of their favorite activity. Courage, fortitude, and mild aggression were heavily rewarded.
All of that meant it was nearly impossible for him to even form the thought in his mind, let alone speak it out loud.
“Zeph, what’s going on?”
“I haven’t seen my sister since we left the cresh,” he said. “It’s been many solars.”
Han’s brows crinkled in confusion. “I still don’t understand.”
He looked away from Han’s inquisitive gaze. “I looked like this when she saw me last.”
She stepped closer and her soft human hands rested on his chest. “Are you worried she won’t recognize you?”
Hearing her say it made him feel foolish. His sister was the only reason he’d worked so hard to survive, at least until he met Han. Protecting Han gave more meaning to his life, but his sister was still the first person he’d ever cared about.
Outside of Han and Tumoro, his sister was the only person he cared about. Their constant correspondence gave him the image of a successful Talin. What if she found out what he’d done?
He wasn’t sure he could live with her disappointment.
The thought made his chest tighten. It was suddenly hard to breathe.
Han rubbed a hand over his heart. “She’s your sister. She’ll recognize you.”
He met her gaze. “How can you be so certain?”
She grinned up at him. “Because I am.”
Her nonsense was making his chest relax a little. “You have no evidence and all the confidence.”
She laughed. “It’s the human way. What we don’t have in size, we make up for in unearned chutzpah.”
He rumbled with amusement as his INT translated the term chutzpah as audacity. That fit Han perfectly. She was a human with the audacity to thrive in a universe with no mercy.
“Elder?” Tumoro said. Elder was the title usually reserved for the most senior male in a family. Although he’d asked the young Ugarian to stop calling him by the honorific, it seemed to be a habit.
“Yes?” he answered without bothering to correct Tumoro.
“Have you really not seen your sister since you were children?” he sounded devastated.
During their trip together, he’d gotten to know Ugarian culture in general and Tumoro specifically.
Among Ugarians, life began and ended with the family.
Because he didn’t have a family, Tumoro wasn’t sure he had the right to exist.
He wanted them to be his new family, and Zeph found he wasn’t opposed to it. As long as they all had their own rooms in the near future!
“Yes, it’s true,” he said. “But I’m learning that isn’t a good way to be a family.”
“The guilt is killing me!” Han burst out, startling him.
“Guilt?” both he and Tumoro said at the same time.
Han let out a little uncomfortable laugh. “I promised my mom I’d be home in time to celebrate this big holiday. With the two of you talking about the importance of family, I feel really guilty for missing it again.”
“Has it happened already?” Zeph asked.
“Not yet,” she said, then named the date of the celebration. Zeph unclipped his Ident and checked the dates. Even if they left tomorrow, they’d never make it back to Filsin Station in time, let alone Inneeko.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I'm keeping you from your pack during an important cultural time.”
“They’re my family, not pack. I feel guilty, but it’s not your fault. I knew what I was getting into. Maybe if I buy a lot of presents they won’t give me too much grief. Mom hinted that she wanted a fancy pack-organizer.” She gave him a big grin. “Besides, I’m eager to meet your sister!”
“You are? Why?”
Han was friendly with the Ugarians at the station, but he’d always thought it was because she needed to have plenty of friends to help her if she ran into trouble. He didn’t understand being interested in meeting someone you had no connection to or political affiliation with.
“If she’s important to you, then she’s important to me,” Han said.
He was humbled by her answer. He’d been blessed by the ancestors to have refueled at the same station that Han was visiting.
“I’ll make sure you get home to your pack, uh, family once we’re finished on Misorm. I swear to you,” he said.
She grinned up at him. “Only if you come with me.” Tossing the dye aside, she looked over to Tumoro.
“You’re going to have a really important job when we get planetside.
You’re almost as tall as Zeph, so you’re going to keep your body between him and every vid capture you see.
If we can keep the security system from fully seeing him, we might get lucky. ”
Zeph hadn’t thought about vid captures. “I’m being ridiculous. Changing my color is a good countermeasure to basic recognition systems.”
Without further discussion, he retrieved the dye pack and went to the small cleansing unit. The fear of drawing attention to Han in a situation where other Talins might try to take her captive was the motivation he needed to overcome his fear of Sandar not recognizing him.
After ordering one of the walls to turn reflective, he stared at himself for a moment.
“Someday we’ll all live in a place where we no longer need to fear capture," he whispered. “And I will learn what contentment feels like.”
Han
Even with the dye job, Han instructed Tumoro to act as a shield for Zeph. The change in color would only fool the system as long as it didn’t get a full-body image.
To a lesser extent, she did the same thing. The light, flowing fabric of the thinsill helped not only to hide her figure, but Zeph’s lower outline also.
“Do you carry a thinsill with you all the time?” Tumoro asked as they walked down the ship’s short ramp.
There was no port security here because why bother?
There were less than three thousand individuals on the entire planet and only this one small port that also served as the planet's single town.
There was nothing to steal or take over.
The planet also had notoriously dangerous wildlife, as evidenced by the tall zapper fence running the entire circumference of the port. Beyond the fence was a dense, green jungle that hid all kinds of deadly creatures.
She was really not looking forward to venturing out in that!
“Han?”
Zeph brought her focus back to her companions. “What?”
“Tumoro asked if you always carry around a thinsill with you,” Zeph said.
“Oh, yeah, I do,” she said. “It can be rolled up into a ball the size of my fist, so it’s easy to carry around. There’ve been a couple of times when being human was a disadvantage, so I pull this on and suddenly no one notices me anymore.”
She spoke a little louder than normal because the fabric was draped over her face.
The thinsill was used by Mishook when visiting places outside their comfort zone.
Coming from a planet with an atmosphere so thick it filtered out most UV, they’d developed the thinsill garment as a way to protect themselves when traveling.
They couldn’t even handle the artificial lights used on many stations, so it was rare to see a Mishook without a thinsill on.
Because the garment covered Han from head to toe, it acted as the perfect disguise.
To really pull it off, Han had learned to speak Universal with a Mishook accent.
The other nice thing about the thinsill was she could see out of the fabric with almost perfect clarity but it wasn’t sheer to the outside observer.
Zeph took a bit of the shiny gray material to rub between his fingers. “It’s a good way to hide yourself. You’re a little short for a Mishook, though. Aren’t they usually as tall as me?”