Page 16 of Fighting Gravity
“Rhone.”
“Hmm,” I shrugged.
6: Quinn
After an excruciating amount of time spent in that med bay, I was offered my old clothes back, which had clearly been cleaned. They smelled overly fresh like they’d been through some kind of decontamination. But I didn’t care what they did to them. I was just happy not to be in that tiny slip of a shirt-dress anymore.
Normantook it upon himself to escort me to my “quarters.” I didn’t believe him for a second. I was a prisoner and wouldn’t have been surprised to be tossed right back to where I came from in that tiny, stinky cell.
As we walked, I studied the ship’s layout. The ceilings were high, likely because the aliens were taller. The walls were sleek metal with tiny seams in them here and there that I eventually deduced were doors. The panels to control the doors appeared when someone touched the wall in the right place and commands began to glow within the metal. I didn’t know what the symbols on the control panels meant, though.
During our long walk, I was continually getting looks from the other gek. I couldn’t really understand how to read alien expressions, but if I were going off humans at all… they all wanted to eat me. They all ranged in shades of green. Some were more yellow. Others had more red or purple undertones. One was even a bit neon, but they were all green with similar but different markings on their faces. They all walked with a heavy step and squared shoulders as if they were itching for a fight. And then there was me. I was scrawny compared to the gek and I was alone.
I wanted so badly to curl my arms around myself and hide in a corner like a little child, but I learned pretty early on that that doesn’t deter demons. It just makes them hungry. So I held my chin up, returned every glare, kept my fists balled at my sides, and kept walking.
And just when I was actually beginning to believe I was a badass, Norman slapped a hand on my shoulder to stop me. I yelped, nearly jumping out of my skin when he turned me toward the wall.
“Jesus,” I said, shrugging him off of me.
Touching the wall, he brought up a control panel and slid his fingers in a pattern that I couldn’t even begin to memorize. The wall parted and slid open revealing a small chamber the size of my dorm on the Nexus. There was a bed (at least, I thought it was a bed) with a bluish, gel-like mattress over the top. There was a separate chamber with a round, sliding door dividing it and I wanted to assume that was the bathroom, but when I walked toward it, all I saw was a hole in the ground just like the one in my cell.
Which I guesswasactually the bathroom.
“No baths, huh?” I said.
“Bathing quarters are communal and baths are every Kroanak’ke.”
“The fuck does that mean?”
“It means bathing is not done freely on a gek vessel. Water is precious off planet and is reserved for prayer days.”
He leaned on the doorframe, watching me explore the simple space. There wasn’t much to it. When I approached what I thought was the bed, I poked the gel surface to find my finger sunk right in. I pulled back, wiping my finger on my jumpsuit, despite there not being anything to clean off.
“What the hell is that?”
“A bed.”
I rolled my eyes at Norman. “Right. But what’s on it?”
“The gel regulates temperature and keeps the skin from drying out.”
I looked him up and down realizing he seemed a bit amphibious and put the pieces together.
“So, your planet is humid? Or watery?”
He didn’t answer. He just kept staring at me.
“Look, I don’t think knowing whether or not your planet is humid is going to give my people any advantage over you if we go to war.”
“What makes you think we’re going to war?”
“Um… you destroyed a human freighter full of innocent people?”
“A freighter aiding our enemies. Our quarrel isn’t with humans.”
“Yeah, that’s not how war works. Youmadeit with humans when you killed all those people.”
His lips curved up into a slight smirk and for some reason, that irked the hell out of me. His thumbs hung on his belt like he had no concerns at all.
