Chapter 32
Guided Tour
Her scent still clung to their bed when he awoke.
Even waking up without Fia there, he was engulfed in heady, heart-fluttering closeness.
He sat upright and could see in the reflection of his screen a gift from the night before: a tiny, reddened love bite on his chest that he was seriously considering getting tattooed in his groggy, foggy, happy haze.
“Dav, Fia, we’re docking in five.”
He begrudgingly pulled a clean shirt over the mark of affection as he finished getting dressed.
Theos had kindly gotten him a few things to wear, but what would even be appropriate for meeting an extraterrestrial demigod?
Fia had insisted there was no divinity at play, but the Sovereign was presumed dead for hundreds of years, was key to the Icthians’ survival in some ambiguous way she never really elaborated on, and had inexplicably been alive for almost a millennium.
That fit the criteria of at least semi-godhood to him.
So, he would meet this god wearing a black slim-fitting button-down shirt and trousers that tucked nicely into the only pair of non-workboots he owned.
It was an outfit he wished he had back at their first attempt at a date.
It was far more dashing than his usual attire of rumpled jumpsuits and tank tops. Though, admittedly, that bar was low.
Perhaps after this, he would have more excuses to dress sharp. Take her out on the town, indulge in proper wining and dining. Once all of this was over.
The opportunity to woo her will vanish if you don’t get your ass moving to meet her Demigod queen-bee Boss-Thing. Holy shit. Wake up and get going.
The rest of the crew seemed to have taken a similar approach.
Carissa was dressed in a flowy green dress with glittery, subtle heels.
The sight was alarming, as he could count on one hand the number of times he had seen her wearing anything other than combat boots.
Her outfit showed off her little baby bump proudly, and Davik caught the tail end of Theos’ scolding her for wearing heels in her state.
Despite having only been aboard for a few weeks, the two had become fast friends. The Icthian medic was constantly waiting on Carissa, or cooing with a hand on her stomach as they chatted away. And again, there was that whole bit where he gifted her a gun. So they had become inseparable.
Theos had dressed about as sharply as Davik had: passably professional.
But clearly, the medic had not expected to meet royalty when he packed for this trip.
Both of them were wearing clothes that had been bought in a hurry at the last station they had stopped at, and Theos’ colossal frame looked to have been much harder to shop for.
The poor guy was in a turtleneck, which he assumed did not feel great on the gills.
Fia, meanwhile, was in the sleek flight suit that hugged her ass spectacularly. In fact, unless his eyesight was truly gone, he could swear this was the one she was wearing when she arrived in the cryo pod all those months ago.
There was a stark difference in how she looked in it now. How sure and tall she stood. The vibrancy and ferocity in her gaze. How perfectly her hips bowed out to fill in the fabric with her plump, biteable, grabbable thighs.
These pants are very thin. Don’t be a dumbass.
Down, boy. Think of something else. Think of how you almost got your face ripped off.
Shit, no. Because then you’ll just remember seeing her all violent and primal, and we really do not have time to process why that also makes your dick throb.
Think of the sludge that pools at the bottom of the coolant system, maybe? Ugh. Gross. Okay, there we go.
With the crisis averted, he walked beside Fia and slid his hand next to hers.
She had been intently staring at something in the distance, but the touch brought her focus squarely on him, and he felt a giddy thrill when she took a very slow, sweeping glance at him.
From tip to toe, and back again. Her tongue flicked across her lips, and a flare of color surged from her cheeks and down her tendrils.
“You look delicious,” she said in a low whisper, her voice carrying an edge of a growl that made his heart thud.
We just went over this. Bad pants for this situation. Think of the sludge.
“And you look spectacular in skin-tight suits. Did you know that? You know that. We really should give you an excuse to wear them more often. Or, nothing. Nothing is also a fantastic outfit choice for you,” he whispered in reply, doing his best to keep his words from traveling far as they waited for the bay doors to open.
And then the sharp hiss of air escaping between the locks interrupted that delightful thought of her in something slinky and clingy on a date night.
Greeting them were four Icthians and two humans, all dressed in a mix of flight suits not unlike the one that Fia wore, and others in sheer veils and robes that covered them from head to toe, made of ethereal shimmering glowsilk.
She gripped his hand as they all followed behind Vek.
They both exchanged a few words with the greeting party in rapid, excited Teelish.
He had been doing his best to pick up some here and there, and Fia was delighted to teach him words like “More” and “Yes” and “Close”, but nothing really useful in polite diplomatic conversation.
Well, it might work for a very specific kind of horizontal diplomacy, but despite the prevalence of porn that featured dick-driven interspecies de-escalation of tensions, that was not truly how it worked here in the settled systems. Maybe on the Rim, but that was a wild place if even half the stories were to be believed.
They were all led within the ship, and as soon as they crossed the threshold, the absolute enormity of the vessel came into focus.
He had seen on the readouts that this ship was the size of a somewhat small space station, but that didn’t quite capture how it would feel boarding the beast. The docking bay was a wide, curving mouth with sweeping lines and small pods that he assumed were Icthian-made.
It was a jarring thing to see designs and structures from ancient history. Not only was he seeing it crisp and clear in-person, but it was still being used. It was astonishing.
Historical reels usually depicted Sovereign ships as bleak, soulless vessels.
Gray destroyers fighting against the glorious golden and bronze ships of the Federation.
In reality, their crafts were a blend of organic stone and metallic textures, all of which had a soft opalescent sheen to them.
It made them seem ethereal, light reflecting off surfaces with dazzling prismatic tones.
Reactive panels underfoot illuminated their path as they walked, and he noticed their steps were lighter. The gravity here was a notch or two less intense than the Earth-standard force that he was accustomed to.
The gently pulsating light in the corridor matched the hum of the ship, brightening the semi-translucent pathways they were being led down.
Everything here seemed to have a heartbeat.
The cadence everyone walked in matched the slow swell and fade of the lights.
The pattern of speech as they passed open rooms with people chattering also moved in time with that same beat.
Even his own breathing fell into the same pattern.
He couldn’t tell if he had done that intentionally.
Perhaps it was just a natural progression when you are matching the pace of the group.
He couldn’t decide if this was a welcome sensation of oneness or a terrifying invasion of autonomy. Maybe both.
Fia’s pulse in his hand matched the beat of the lights pulsing on the ship.
The soft thump of her wrist under his fingertips left him awestruck.
It was the most alien feeling he had experienced with her.
Not her electrical touch, her slitted eyes, her scales, her gills, or her inability to use contractions.
This was true strangeness. Recognizing that she was part of something beyond his comprehension.
It was dawning on him why relations with the Icthians back in the day did not go smoothly. Humans loved boundaries, edges, and privacy. Even if they also lamented loneliness and struggled with respecting boundaries themselves. Meanwhile, the Icthians didn’t even have proper walls on their ships.
Thin, translucent membranes served as dividers between segments, instead of something opaque. Rather than proper doors, glowsilk strands draped the entryways, and they did little to obscure the activity within the rooms.
The people milling about, Icthian or Human alike, were often wearing similarly sheer or revealing clothing, if any at all.
It wasn’t a display that struck him as charged and sexual.
And in this setting, it seemed incredibly practical.
The ship was hot, humid, and he was already regretting his clothing choices.
Maybe we could have skipped the war if the negotiation sessions had a dress code, or lack thereof, on both sides. Having your balls out while debating territory is probably humbling.
Fia was still clutching his hand tightly throughout his wide-eyed musings, but he noticed she was not nearly as charmed by everything around him.
It took him a moment to realize this was not a dusty vision from the past. She had been on a ship like this, maybe even this same ship, only months ago in her relative experience.
That didn’t explain why she looked so grim, though.
“Hey, Fi?” he whispered, giving her hand a gentle squeeze. “Are you okay?”
She took a sharp breath and nodded. “I will be. It is … loud here, in the Chorus. I am adapting. And meeting the Sovereign is a rare occurrence. It is intimidating.”
“Kinda like being summoned to the principal’s unit?” Davik asked with a snort.