Page 62 of Alien's Challenge
“Is Earth an agricultural planet? I was reared in the city.”
She stared at him.
His tail twitched.
“Oh, you fucker. You know what a fish is,” she said, then kicked his foot with her tiny foot.
He returned the gesture. “You are my friend, Alice Serrano.”
Her lips pulled back in that odd human expression of happiness. He did not understand how baring one’s teeth was considered a friendly gesture. Humans were so weird.
“Do not be flattered,” he cautioned. “It is known that my taste is questionable.”
“Super dubious,” she agreed.
Static broke over the commlink, followed by Faris’ voice. “I found something.”
Alice
She circled the stasis pod. It was battered and dented. Soot covered it in a thick layer. Amber lights flickered dimly under the grime, the only sign it was still operational.
The pod had been through hell. It was amazing it still worked, honestly. From all that she’d learned in the last year, stasis pods were notoriously unreliable.
The last year had been…interesting. She was hard -pressed to put it in other terms. On one hand, she missed her mother and Sunday brunch with homemade donuts coated in sugar. She also missed being able to search all of human knowledge from her phone, even if the internet was mostly cat videos and people being assholes.
Being with Faris offered an entire galaxy of new books to read, history to learn, and so much stuff to discover. Just so much. The know-it-all in her had died from happiness, resurrected, and now haunted markets trying to scoop up as many books and data cubes as possible. Every day she learned of a new planet, new culture, and new people. Interestingly, the universe seemed to favor bipedal lifeforms. People came with multiple limbs, even some tentacles, tails, wings, claws, fangs, fur, scales, horns, feathers, and in a variety of hues. Different but still humanoid, although Faris assured her there were far more interesting people in the universe, just not in that quadrant.
And Faris. He was his own category of goodness. There weren’t enough words to say how utterly happy she felt with him. From the moment he burst onto that train to rob Rand, she had him pegged as a good guy and he hadn’t disappointed her.
The good stuff outweighed the bad. Hands down.
They delivered Rand to the warlord with a grudge, Davith. Having a rival in a stasis pod went a long way to resolving the grudge between him and Faris. They stayed in the trading post for a few weeks but Alice didn’t trust the guy, so they moved on.
Jasmina proved true to her word and got Alice in contact with a human-sympathetic settlement in the mountains. The settlement was barely a village with a handful of liberated human women and established mated couples. Even a harem or two. The village lacked reliable power and network connections but no one would snatch Alice and try to sell her. She never appreciated the ability to come and go as she pleased until it was taken away. Despite the safety of the village, Faris and even Perrigaul trailed after her, looking appropriately threatening.
Perrigaul had even become a friend. He periodically scrounged up data cubes with Nakkoni dramas which they watched together. She didn’t really understand the dramas because the actors displayed little in the way of facial expressions. So much was unspoken and conveyed through body language: happy tail, danger tail, questioning quills, and amused frills. Perri loved to explain the subtle meaning in enormous detail; most of it was bull but she enjoyed playing along with his games.
It had been a good year. Alice would never have guessed the turn her life would take when she went camping, but she couldn’t imagine plodding through her days without Faris. Her days had been filled with work, self-doubt, and little else. Sure she always had electricity, stores filled with shoes that fit her feet, and pizza delivered to her house, but her life had been empty. Now she had an entire galaxy to explore and absolutely the best partner to explore it with.
Alice gave Faris’ arm a gentle stroke. He tilted his head, his quills flexing in an unspoken question. Her future was with him and nothing was better than falling asleep listening to the twin beats of his hearts.
Well, playing with his petals was pretty great.
His tail twitched playfully, as if he could sense the turn of her thoughts.
“Later.” She blushed and tried to get the conversation on the right track. “I don’t like you going out there by yourself.”
“I had the situation under control,” he said.
“We need another suit.” If anything had happened, he’d be stuck outside in the black of space. The ship did not have a second suit. Perrigaul and Alice would have to wrangle the ship close enough to grab Faris with a scoop or net, which was too slow if he had a leaking air canister. “Two suits,” she said.
He nodded, a human trait he picked up.
Alice scrubbed the front panel with her sleeve. Frost coated the glass, which was probably not glass but some high-tech polymer. She could barely make out a face on the other side.
A human face.
Miriam.
