Chapter 8
EIGHT
ARTURE
Finally, finally, Nic-coal is eating. My scales settle with relief as she eagerly samples each of the little dishes I made, eating the seed cake with her fingers and slurping the broth from a bowl.
She watched intently at my side as I worked in the dark kitchen, the systems rerouted to provide power only for cooking and the medbay.
“Oh my goodness,” she groans, and something in the timbre of her voice, the throb of it, sends a spear of pure desire into my cock.
I want to know… what would her screams of real pleasure sound like, echoing throughout the chambers of the powered down spacecraft?
I move my leg, trying to hide my sudden arousal.
She sets the bowl down, wiping her chin with a smile on her face. “I don’t even like mushrooms all that much, but I love this stew.”
“Of course. My Magirustock brain knows all kinds of tricks to bring the flavor out of the fungi.” I let the form go, returning to my true shape.
Sitting in the dim and cold central room cross-legged on a cushion, I adjust my posture so the hardness in my loins isn't so obvious, and force myself to slurp up the rest of my bowl of stew. “I call it, Fantastic Fungi.”
“Good name for it. I’d rate it five stars on TripAdvisor.” Her eyes narrow slightly. “Maybe take off a star if you’re going to shove me in a room again, though.”
I put the bowl down slowly. “I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t thought about it but, your hidden sedative threats notwithstanding, you can’t get off this planet without me.
Outside is probably saturated with predators desperate to try some exotic human meat for the first time.
Those two factors together mean that, actually, you’ll be the one locking yourself in a room. ”
“Touché,” she says, lifting her bowl to salute me with it. Her eyes remain wary, as if she’ll bolt if I make a sudden move.
I lean back against the cushions. “It's understandable you're uncertain of your fate on Oloria, but I can assure you, females are treated with utmost respect.”
Nic-coal sets her bowl down, face calm. “That's easy enough to say, of course.”
Drok na, she's good at throwing my words back at me. “I did tell you that, yes, but this time it's genuine. Look at your friends, they all came back in one piece.”
“I'm sure it's a fabulously respectable place from your point of view, but you're still dragging me there without my permission.” Her eyes flash with a challenge.
“Again, true, but that'll be smoothed out. Whatever purpose I'm bringing you for, it won't be harmful to your health.”
Her brow furrows. “You don't even know why you're taking me to Oloria?”
I wince. “When you say it like that, it sounds bad. But I have orders. A mission.”
“A mission where you have no idea what the outcome is.”
The thrusts and jabs keep coming, but I don't have a defense. “Whatever it is, it won't hurt you.”
Drawing her knees up and curling her arms around them, she sighs. “I'm sure Greharm wasn't going to hurt me either. Not on purpose. But he also wasn't going to relent. He was going to force me to…” She turns her face away.
Cold creeps from my scales and into the pit of my stomach. “You won't be forced into anything on Oloria.”
“How is it any different?”
“You've seen what desperation does to a species, and I'm sorry for that. But it's not like that on Oloria. You'll be treated like a member of your royal family.”
She squints at me. “Scrutinized, criticized, and made into a national spectacle?”
I throw up my hands. “Fine, don't be reassured. But it doesn't change the fact that, once this ship is space-worthy again, you're coming with me to Oloria.”
She scowls. “What possible reason could you have to snatch a woman against her will? It's not exactly protocol for an invitation to afternoon tea and crumpets, is it?”
My mouth opens, then closes when I don't immediately have something to say. She's right, but questioning it sets up a burning sensation in the back of my head. An uncomfortable, nagging pain at the very idea of challenging orders.
I have to trust. Prif Samara wouldn't ever harm a woman, so Ni-coal will be fine.
“You'll be treated with utmost respect,” I reassure her again, and the pain eases.
She shakes her head, burying her face in her knees. It'll be hard for her to come to terms with, but the fact remains she'll be well cared for and returned unharmed.
Her voice is muffled against her knees as she speaks. “How'd you get those orders, anyway? I thought you were all exiled, cut off.” She turns her head to watch my reaction.
I fold my arms tight, picking at a loose scale on my left forearm with a prick of pain. “They were long buried in my psyche, reactivated when Dom spoke code words linked to my reawakening. Surgere ac excitare. Awaken and rise up.”
She lifts her head, her eyes red and puffy from exhaustion. “You're talking about a conditioned response to a spoken phrase?”
“Yes. It liberated me at last.”
The human looks away, biting her lip. “So you've been… trained.”
Memories of deep, lancing thunder echo faintly through my skull. I rub the back of my neck to ward off a headache. “I suppose. I prefer the term ‘perfected’.”
I expect derision or a quick comeback, but she stays silent. Her face when she looks at me contains pity, an expression I've seen before, but can't place where.
“How did you meet Ilia and the others? How come you ended up in their crew?” she asks quietly.
I shake my head.
Her eyes flash. “Why won't you tell me?”
“Because…” If I admit I can't remember, she could use the knowledge against me. “It's a boring story.”
“I've got nowhere else to be.” She's peering at me now, like she can see under my scales. “I think… I think you genuinely can't remember.”
How can she possibly know that? I snort. “Guess again.”
“No, you're lying, I can tell. I wonder… is most of your past a black hole?”
My stomach drops, throat tightening like I've been shoved out an airlock. How will she use this intel against me? She wants to escape and she's smart, so she'll use any weapon she can lay her hands on. I would.
Her arms tighten briefly around her knees. “Not remembering anything must be really disorientating.”
That feeling returns again. The sense someone's seen what's inside me and… pities me for it. She must be ‘playing the long game,’ as humans on the shortwave comms said.
I snort, rolling to my feet and collecting the used bowls. “Not really. Can't miss what you don't recall.”
“I'd hate it. Losing everything I am. Memories of my family, friends.”
“That's an easy one; I don't have either. I don’t need them.”
She gives me that look again. It's soft, gentle, compassionate, but it makes me want to run away. “Everyone needs friends. You had them, on Earth.”
I keep quiet, piling the bowls in the bashed and battered kitchen. Dents on the work surfaces mark where Greharm smashed me into paste against the counters. We should save what meager water we have for drinking, so I dry scrape the utensils.
She gets up, rubbing her upper arms to heat herself up.
Humans can't control their body temperatures very well, and a line of tiny bumps rises on her skin.
By contrast, the betrillium rings of my metal arm send pressure and temperature information.
Hm, it's cold in here. I heat my scales to combat the chill creeping into the pleasure craft.
Nicole’s face is intent. “Were you really pretending the whole time on Earth? When I'd visit, you were all like, well, scared sheep in a pen, but you seemed content when you were with the others.”
I don't want to think about my time as the Pranastock. Even trying to recall my time on Earth becomes overwhelming, memories of frantic repetitive calculation and the anxiety never easing making bile rise up my throat.
But I didn't hate it outside of the Pranastock form. Ilia never beat me, Gara always helped me, and Dom, Arik and Nevare never let me down.
So I don't have an answer for her, even if I’d wanted to give her one.
“Everyone needs a friend, Arture,” she says quietly into the silence.
“And, what, you're going to be that for me? My mate?” I slam the plates down. “I see what you're doing. You think you can get close to me, pry secrets from me. I'll die before I give up Samara's secrets.”
Her cheeks flush; I've hit on the truth. She's trying to manipulate me, and this at least I can understand.
I smirk. “Got you.”
“Well, yeah, but—”
“What do people need these friends for, hm? What do you get out of it?” It's my turn to fire questions at her.
“They help your mental balance, support you in tough times, help you see your strengths—”
I chuckle. “I can survive anything, and I know my own strengths. I don't need friends for that.”
She frowns like I'm a hard calculation she can't work out. Or maybe one of her animals that isn't responding to stimulus. “So, you were spying on them. What for?”
“What does it matter? My orders are to take you to Oloria, nothing to do with them.”
“But doesn't it bother you? What I mean is—” she says as I open my mouth to protest, “—what if you've only got half the story? Or, rather, half the mission?”
I slowly close my mouth. She's… right. And I'm pissed she's got into my head like this.
She presses her advantage. “What if you've messed up by rushing around without remembering the full picture?”
“It isn't going to change anything. You're coming back to Oloria,” I snap.
“When did you first see Ilia?” she retorts.
“I don't see how it's useful to you—”
“Or Gara? Did you get hurt one day, and he helped you? Or the triplets, they have psychic powers, right? Did you come into contact with them first?”
Balling my fists, I snarl, “I don't know why you—”
“What do you remember? There must be something.”
“I don't know, I don’t know—” I begin when a bolt like an electric shock races through me, fixing me in place and locking all my muscles in solid agony.
I remember—