Chapter 6
Na’Ren
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“I’ve always heard rumors,” Ja’Lin says, gazing down at the condenser device between us.
For now, his anger at me has been pushed aside. It has not subsided. I have been his friend for long enough to know that he is saving it for later, after we have both done our duty to the mission. Once we have finished our conference, he will tell me exactly what he thinks of my failures. Most likely, he will want to retire to my quarters, so that he may leave after he has finished dressing me down. He has always liked having the last word.
Still, I suspect his reserve is caused by more than his sense of duty. My friend has seemed off—quiet and strained—since landing.
“Rumors?”
He shrugs and pushes the rusted device back toward me. “An ancient Andromedan expedition. Unexpected engine failure somewhere in this sector of the universe. A cessation of mission logs. Never heard from again.” He leans back in his chair and holds my gaze. “Perhaps they landed here.”
I look at my friend. “If so, then where are they?”
He frowns. “Dead, I suspect. Likely after being slaughtered by the Terrans and their growling beasts.”
I groan and run a palm over my face. “But the beacon brought us here, Ja’Lin.”
“Yes, and do you not find it strange that we have not yet been approached by another Andromedan? They would not draw us here and then remain hidden.”
“So we must then assume they were the victims of a violent war?”
Ja’Lin holds up his hands. “What other explanation makes sense?”
I release a long, slow breath. “Perhaps this was intended as an outpost, a tactical, long-term encampment, and our people eventually fell, weakened by the atmospheric composition. Perhaps this is nothing more than a tragedy.”
“And perhaps it is not.” Ja’Lin rises angrily from the table. He paces the room, his long, black braid swaying against his back. “If I must choose to believe that this place is either a distant Andromedan outpost or—or a battleground where our comrades were slaughtered by enemy forces, you must know what I am prone to believe.”
I rest my face in my hands, suddenly very tired.
I want to have this conversation over a glass of gan’me rather than a tactical map. In the past day, I have stranded my crew on an alien planet with a hostile atmosphere. I have felt my Andromedan mating instincts awaken and aim me like an arrow toward a Terran . I have discovered evidence of previous Andromedan presence on said alien planet. It is all too much.
Thus, I do not want to discuss the mission. I want to have a drink with my friend.
“Ja’Lin, sit down. Please.”
His dark eyes narrow, but he rejoins me at the table.
I have felt his evaluating gaze on me for my entire life. Even back when we were very small, he assessed me for many days before he judged me worthy of being his friend. And in all our time together, he has never allowed me to betray that trust. When I have needed to be better, Ja’Lin has not missed a chance to tell me so.
That appraising look is back in his eye.
“Tell me about the Terran who has you so captivated,” he says, and I flinch in my seat.
“I would not say captivated ,” I retort weakly.
“No? Well, I would .” Ja’Lin retrieves a beaker of gan’me from its hiding place behind a navigational screen. He pours two glasses and slides one toward me. “Tell me about it so we might rectify your distracted attention and return to the mission.”
I drop my head back and stare at the ceiling. “I am afraid our mission has reached its terminus, my friend.”
Ja’Lin scoffs. “We were never returning home, Na’Ren. That is the mission we signed up for, and that mission has not changed just because we have landed on this wretched planet.” Then he reaches out one long leg and kicks my shin.
I grunt in pain. “Utter insubordination.”
He grins. “And you are changing the subject. The Terran. Tell me.”
I stall, rubbing my shin. I am not naive. I know that I am inexperienced. I know that my comrades spent their adolescence absconding from the hive to do what adolescents do with each other. I know I did not join them.
But, despite my inexperience, I am absolutely certain that my body should not respond this way to a non-Andromedan.
I let out a breath. “I do not know what this is.”
“Yes, you do.”
“But it is not possible ,” I hiss. “I am the captain.”
Ja’Lin lifts his glass of gan’me , the pale purple liquid cloudy but translucent in the ship’s light. Its perfume drifts out, soothing. He takes a long slow sip as he thinks.
The glass raps against the table.
“You are a captain,” Ja’Lin agrees solemnly. Then he clears his throat and adds, “You are also an animal.”
I rear back from my first officer, from my friend. But he holds up his hands placatingly. I hate that it works.
“You are a biological creature,” he continues, “and he is a biological creature. There are some things which come naturally. Our people call it mating . His, I believe, call it making love . The context, of course, differs—”
“Mind your words,” I cut him off in my firmest captains’ voice. “I may be a biological creature, but I am not a servant to my biology.”
Ja’Lin only huffs a laugh. “Ren, I have known you my entire life. We slept and rose and washed in the same pod. I am your first officer, and I am your friend. Please, allow me to speak as your friend.”
I watch him, the swirl of emotions unbearable and disorienting. Because even now, only half of my attention is on Ja’Lin. Only half of my body is in this room. The rest of me is across the field, sitting in the house with Robin standing between my legs. His fingers warm against my skin. His breath the faintest breeze over my clavicle.
Reluctantly, I nod.
Ja’Lin continues. “We are all servants to our biology when it is right . Ren, you have heard approximately half the words I have said since the Terran first approached our ship last night. Have you forgotten that your thoughts are not private? And, Ren , he is speaking to you in your own language . You know what that suggests.”
My pulse speeds up, a rapid flutter in my throat. I resist, but I cannot deny the symptoms. I can still fell Robin’s presence tangling in my head, twisting its vines around my own thoughts. I can smell him.
Lightning licks up my spine.
“Ren,” Ja’Lin presses, “I want to hear you say what you know is true.”
I drag my tongue over my bottom lip. “And what is that?”
“The Terran is your mate.”
My breath seizes inside my chest. Mate. How absurd. How impossible. It does not matter how my blood responded to him last night. It does not matter how his voice slipped into my head like smoke, like pollen carried on the wind. The biological improbability...
“He is not an Andromedan,” I insist.
“And why should that matter? Why should our decorum outrank our biological nature?”
“It is not simply decorum,” I snarl, bristling, “Andromedans mate with each other.”
Ja’Lin outright laughs this time. It transforms his dulled complexion, brightens it.
“Since when ?” he asks. “My friend, I know you were intently focused on your studies while we were all sneaking out and—”
“Enough.”
“—and learning what our bodies can do with each other—”
“ Enough !”
Ja’Lin closes his mouth. Somehow, even in reprimand, he manages more dignity and composure than I do as his commander.
“My friend, you know that most of our kind pair off as soon as they leave the hive. Those of us who haven’t may choose missions such as these. Do you understand the rare opportunity that has found its way into your hands?”
He is not wrong. I understand the mating habits of our people. I understand the family structures, the solitude we choose by dedicating our lives to research.
And just as well, I understand what he is saying. What I stand to gain or lose in following the biological imperative. In following Robin, a man I have only just met on a land that is not my own.
Suddenly, the universe feels so small, and my heart is too large to fit inside of it.
“What if I am wrong?” I ask. My voice is small and thin in this metal box of a room. It echoes as Ja’Lin watches on.
After a long moment, my friend asks, “And what if you are right?”
I do not have an answer.
Ja’Lin smiles, and for once it is not the gentle mockery of my childhood friend. It is the reassuring confidence of the first officer who I would trust with my life.
“I will take my absence now,” he says, swiping the rusting relic off the table. “The crew has maintained occupancy of the barn. I will confer with our experts, and we will likely be in conversation for some time. If you were to, say, slip out, I am sure no one would mind.”
“Coyness does not suit you,” I tell Ja’Lin, and do my best to ignore his laughter as I make my way past him and down the hall.
My blood thrums as I disembark the ship. My heart thuds as I cross over the dry grass of the field. My mind replays the image of Robin falling, the sensation of Robin in my arms, the solidity of him standing between my legs as he tended to my wound.
Mate .
Companion. Compatriot. Beloved.
Half of myself in another being. On Gamma Andromedae, mate-binding is a sacred ritual, and I do not know the Terran equivalent. I do not know if Terrans feel the same biological pull that we do. If Robin recognizes our connection as anything significant at all.
And what if you are right?
I trail that connection across the terrain. Robin is not in the house. I feel only the absence of him there.
Instead, the pull leads me to a small shack to the north. I can feel him inside the building. I can hear the thud of his heart. My crew did not investigate this structure on our earlier expedition.
I need to steady myself, so I pause outside the door. I breathe. Without the respirator, the Earth atmosphere stings the inside of my lungs, but already the effect is dulled. The air feels kinder than it had the night before. Perhaps we adapt more quickly than expected.
Clearheaded, I push open the door.
Robin looks up, startled and then— affectionate .
Another Terran man stands beside him. Close to him. Their bodies lean toward each other, intimate, familiar, and jealousy surges up inside me, hot and sharp.
Before I know it, I am baring my teeth.
“Uh,” the other man says, “hey, man. I’m Healy. Welcome to Earth?”