Page 42 of Infala: Bonded to the Enemy
Shalia breathed a little sigh of relief once she was finally alone. “Thank God. That could’ve gone really bad.”
She gathered up the dirty plates and wiped the mess hall down. The cleanup went fast tonight. With so many more added to the list of the dead, she had even fewer to mop up after. But that was a double-edged sword. She had no desire to be anywhere near them while they wound down for the night. She looked around the kitchen area, an idea forming.
“I suppose I might as well,” she said with a sigh.
She set to work on her self-imposed task, putting her mind to the new challenge she’d given herself. It wasn’t until several hours later that she finally stepped out of the facility, giving it asatisfied once over before heading to have a quick rinse before bed.
As she’d hoped, the men had all bathed and cleared out of the shower area by the time she arrived and were talking loudly amongst themselves in their barracks. Hopefully their discussion would keep them occupied.
Hopefully.
Knowing this lot, anything was possible, and she wasn’t taking any chances. It wasn’t a satisfying scrub, but Shalia rinsed and exited the shower in under a minute, skipping her hair entirely and making it back to her quarters before the others could even formulate some new torment for their human prisoner.
She hit her bed hard, exhausted and wondering what the new day might entail.
Morning was surprisingly calm. It felt as though the crew was still processing their situation now that they had no way off this station until the next ship arrived. It was one thing always knowing you had a way out, but they were truly stuck, and that sort of thing could play havoc with your mind.
They ate their breakfast in relative silence, the usual gregarious chatter toned down by at least half, and not just because of the decreased number of voices present. The mood was more somber this morning; friends and comrades had been lost. The men sullenly headed off to their posts, mentally preparing themselves to pick up the slack their increasingly diminished ranks would now require of them.
Shalia stayed tucked away out of sight until they’d all left. Even the dirty plates and scraps on the floor and tables left in their wake were reduced, further reinforcing her assumption they had been making an extra mess just for her benefit.
“Assholes,” she muttered as she cleaned up before setting off to her manual labor task. When she returned to the kitchen to prepare lunch, she found a Dohrag in the workspace, furiously digging through the shelves and storage compartments.
“What did you do?” he demanded. “What in the hell did youdo?” He called out to another crewmember passing by. “Get the commander. He needs to come down here.”
“Why?” the man asked.
“Just do it. This female has gone and ruined things.”
The man shrugged and hurried off down the corridor, leaving a very perplexed Shalia in his wake.
“What do you mean, ruined things?”
“This!” he all but shrieked, gesturing to the neatly organized ingredients she’d spent hours putting in place the prior night. “What have you done?”
“I don’t understand. I just organized is all.”
The man was almost shaking with anger. “You fucked up. You fucked up bad! You donotchange things like this. We’ve been up here a lot longer than you, and we have a system.”
“Well, your system is terrible.”
“You’re just a female. What could you possibly understand about the system our finest men put in place?”
“Finest men? If this is the best they can do, I’d hate to see what your worst are capable of. I mean, this place looked like it was run by a bunch of frat boys who couldn’t boil pasta without a recipe, and even then they’d mess it up.”
Shalia was getting heated in spite of herself. She’d been harassed, groped, and talked down to, and that wasn’t even touching the whole abduction and slave labor thing. And with just one Dohrag in her face, she didn’t feel quite as threatened. Sure, he was big, but a good kick square in the nuts would slow him down, and there were knives in the kitchen. If it came down to it, she could?—
“What the hell is going on in here!” Commander Valin’s booming voice demanded.
They both turned. He was breathing hard. Apparently, he’d run when the crewman had summoned him, and the look in his eye was one ofextremedispleasure.
“She did this!” the Dohrag crewman said. “Just look, Commander! Look what she did to our supplies.”
Valin spun, quickly taking in the open compartments, the containers, all the ingredients and produce rearranged and out of place. He moved impossibly fast, closing the distance and looming over Shalia in a flash.
“You did this to my mess hall?” he roared.
Shalia felt her adrenaline surge, her fight-or-flight response conflicted where she’d been ready for a brawl just a moment ago.
