Book 6: Chapter 8: Sharkira |
They knew it would happen eventually. Here and there was a hardcase refusing to speak to their beautiful captors, or holding onto their convictions. But there’s only so long you can spend ignoring that the aliens who have abducted them are pint-sized, thick-thighed technicolor supermodels. It’s been the subject of whispered conversation: have you thought about it? Would you get with one? Who’s gonna be the first?
So it’s no surprise when, nine days into Dylan’s stay on the Imperial research station, someone bangs an alien. And it’s no surprise that it’s Santi from Miami, who’s a self-described picaflor, meaning man-whore, amigo, he proudly told Dylan.
The surprise is this: when Dylan steps into his silk slip-ons and eases open his cabin door to the soft artificial dawn that shines through the guest wing, the alien leaving Santi’s cabin, with a satisfied sway in her hips and a gloating grin on her face, is six-foot-three and has a big fat shark tail.
“We’ve been dumbasses,” Santi says over breakfast, as the English speakers gather at a long table seemingly carved from a single sturdy piece of crimson-stained wood. “It’s Eqtorans, bro. You gotta fuck an Eqtoran.”
“You are being so loud right now,” Dylan says. “Look at the translator, dude.”
The cylindrical translator panel in the center of the room, which is tuned to pick up anyone who raises their voice loud enough to address the room, has gotta fuck displayed on it in English, Spanish, Mandarin, Taiikari, and Eqtoran, from the force of Santiago’s loud insistence. The Spanish table nudge each other and point laughingly at it. “Cuéntanos más, zalamero,” a woman calls. Tell us more, smooth-talker, the panel displays.
“Cállate la boca, Ines.” Santiago cheerfully flips her off. He’s a bit of a gadfly when it comes to who he sits with at breakfast, but he’s been hanging with the anglophones lately after some kind of vicious sports-related argument with a glowering guy from Madrid. “When I tell you she fucked me into the ground. I mean, like, there’s a Santi-shaped fucking dent in my bed like I’m fuckin’ Wile E. Coyote. She—oh, shit.”
A shadow falls across the table. An Eqtoran woman, her amber eyes crinkled with amusement. “Santi.”
Santi puts on an innocent face. “Si, mami?”
Jason drops to a confederate whisper. “Is that her?”
“Yeah, amigo. No need to whisper. She don’t speak English.”
Dylan only got a glance this morning. Now that he’s getting a better look at her, he kinda gets it. Compared to the Taiikari, she is manifestly inhuman. But it’s impossible not to notice how shapely she is. Even if the shape involves a snout and a dorsal fin. She points at a spot on the bench. “Sit?”
Everyone nods.
Dylan feels the bench shift as the broad, muscular shark woman lowers herself onto it. She wraps an enormous arm around Santi and lifts him onto her lap.
“So this is Viaq,” Santi says. “But I call her Sharkira cause the hips don’t lie.”
Viaq points at herself. “Sharkira,” she repeats. She pats Santi’s head. “Santiago abqa Sakqene, niqmva rmvik kqen.”
“Say it like Santi, baby.”
“Santi,” she echoes, lisping the S in a passable impression of his Latin Lover affect. He laughs and kisses her bicep.
“Yeah, man,” he says, as Viaq reaches past him to tuck a piece of toast into her mouth. “Forget the Taiikari. The Santi needs a woman with some downward force, know what I mean? Some fuckin’ meat on her. Viaq’s got that omega-3.”
Stephanie, a zaftig bank teller from Manitoba, chuckles. “You’re such a weirdo, Santiago.”
Santi crosses his arms and cozies into the lap of his piscine paramour. “I’m ahead of my time.”
Dylan feels a scopaesthetic tingle on his neck and turns. At the edge of the room, Xamika is standing on the periphery, as the liaisons patiently do at every meal. She is watching him.
She’s gone with a complex updo today, a plaited work of art that rises from her crown and terminates between her shoulder blades. She gives him a smile when their eyes meet. Her face is so round and soft in contrast to the whipcord muscle the rest of her is made up of.
There’s a fabric badge at her shoulder, a kind of short capelet thing, that none of the other liaisons have. Dylan’s overdue on asking her about that.
Good morning, she mouths across the room, and waves from the waist. He waves back.
A young guy at the Mandarin table scoots over to let a Taiikari woman sit next to him—an adorable pink chick with a maroon bob and a clattering display of dangly earrings. That’s his liaison; Dylan’s pretty sure he’s seen them walking and talking along the humid greenway that wraps around the station. Nobody at the English-speaking table has brought up the possibility of inviting a liaison to eat—but, well, Viaq’s here now. An Eqtoran here, a Taiikari there. The Empire is worming its way in.
Ding-ding.
“Your attention please, honored guests of the Empire.” Researcher Jainema, a middle-aged woman with laugh lines on her ocean blue skin, is standing on a stool in the center of the room. Her tail has some sort of chime in it; it dings twice more, and then her tail wraps round her side and slips the bell into a baggy pocket on her topcoat.
Conversation murmurs to a halt and heads turn. Jainema, despite her elevated spot on the stool, is still a head shorter than the burly Eqtoran man standing behind her. He’s clad in a black-and-crimson uniform that reminds Dylan vaguely of an age-of-sail longcoat, sans sleeves.
“Good morning, everyone,” Jainema says. “I hope you slept well. We have something of a treat for everyone today.” Her tail beckons and the Eqtoran man steps forward. “This is Captain Tennek-nuq-Luavuquni, of the ZKV Qena-Qel. He holds the distinct honor of captaining the first Eqtoran capital ship of the Taiikari Imperial fleet.”
Captain Tennek gives a curt nod and rumbles a brief flow of Taiikari that the translator panel marks as “Morning, all.”
“The Captain has generously granted us room aboard his vessel,” Jainema says. “We’ll be accompanying him and his crew to the Paas system, the home of the Eqtorans, as he escorts an energy transport along the Imperial sweep lane. The Eqtorans are a recent addition to the Empire, having formally joined approximately one Earth year ago. You are invited to ask questions to him and his crew.”
“Ki, fe’tuthe,” Tennek adds. “Manvai’nve’kami nikzamek.” Yeah, sure. When they’re not on duty.
“Yes, right. Thank you, Captain.” Jainema loosens the high stand collar around her neck. “I also want to touch on the offer for implantation, which remains open. We understand the difficulty of losing access to your birth language. But you’ll be able to associate with your fellow humans with earplugs in, and after the prerequisite month of isolation from your mother tongue, our linguists will happily work with you to relearn it.”
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They’ve offered this before. Silence greeted it then, and silence greets it now.
“As a reminder,” Jainema continues, with the automatic cheer of a voicemail. “By volunteering for the implant you will be responsible for representing your species and world to visiting dignitaries, members of the peerage, and xenocultural researchers. The recompense we are offering has increased. Now, in addition to doubling your stipend, we are prepared to present you with the noble title of Lady or Lord. You will be the first noble of your species in the Taiikari peerage.”
This stirs some whispers into the room.
The little researcher’s tail swishes with cautious excitement at their response. “A ladyship will give you a number of privileges and advantages within the wider galaxy, and is especially valuable should you be considering a future outside of your homeworld. To learn more about these, or if you have any other questions about the implantation process, you are invited to speak with your liaison. Unless there is a volunteer right now..?”
Nobody speaks.
Jainema suppresses her sigh. “All right. Well, enjoy the unstructured morning, and at thirteen hundred hours we’ll gather and begin our journey to Taiqan. Thank you for your attention, honored guests.”
She hops from the stool and bows out of the hall.
“What’s that even mean, being a lord?” Jason asks. He’s a supply chain guy from Tucson. He’s easy to talk to.
“Dunno,” Dylan says. “Question for the liaison, I guess.”
“Five hundred million and a royal title,” Stephanie says. “Sheesh. They’re really pushing this on us. Wonder why nobody’s taken them up on it.”
“Well,” Edward says. “Why haven’t you?”
“I can’t just push English out of my brain, dude. How am I supposed to go home talking like gleebazadinai beep beep zingai?”
An amused undercurrent rounds the table at this subpar imitation of Taiikari. Viaq’s laugh is like a feminine thunderstorm.
“Steph. Honey.” Amanda lowers her spoon. “I don’t think there’s any going home.”
The upbeat mood at the table flickers like a candle passed over by the breath of the world.
“You think they’re lying?” Stephanie asks. “They’re gonna blow Earth up?”
Dylan gives up on pushing the last bite of egg and lets his fork clatter to his plate. “She meant metaphorically, I think.”
“I mean, shit,” Jason says. “Give me 250 mill, I’m not going home. I lived in a fuckin’ studio. It’s brownstone time.”
“So is anyone thinking about it?” Edward asks. “Santi?”
“Why me?”
“You’re already going native.”
Dylan ate faster than everyone else, as he usually does. He eases off the bench and looks to the corner where Xamika had been standing—she’s not there anymore.
With a nod and a farewell to his fellow humans he busses his plate and steps from the covered dining hall—more like a dining tent, in the verdant landscape they’ve made of the station’s main body—and looks for his liaison.
He finds her at the outer edge of the station’s torus, in a glass-walled office, leaning over a video screen upon which a teal creature smirks. A second glance tells him this thing isn’t Taiikari—more like an axolotl, sort of, with needle teeth and a waving mane of tentacles.
“Xam?” He taps the glass, trying to sound gentle and not strident. She looks up; her tail lances out at a straight diagonal momentarily; she waves and holds up a finger. Dylan steps away from the door, abashed—you can’t expect her to babysit you all day. The axolotl thing says something that makes her frown, then open the door.
“Sorry,” he says. “Didn’t mean to intrude.”
“It’s all right.” Xamika sighs and ushers him into the office. “This is Lady Lywa Three-Monsoon of the Shumia Lazamak sector. She’s requested to speak to you briefly. I was about to refuse for you, but I suppose there’s no harm. Just—”
She beckons to him, and he crouches.
“Just don’t tell her anything about yourself,” she whispers. “Or about humans. You’re still a mystery to the galaxy. The, uh—the things that make you special. We’d like to keep it that way.”
Her breath smells like honey.
“Sure,” he says, and Xamika gives him an encouraging tap on the arm as he stands back up. Her tail winds onto the screen’s controls and punches a few buttons sized for the appendage. She speaks in Taiikari, and subtitles appear on the bottom half of the screen. You are being translated, Citizen Three-Monsoon.
Wandering Dylan. Lywa’s strange smile grows. She’s certainly not Taiikari, but she speaks the language. This one’s honor is to be named Lywa Three-Monsoon. It is a wide delight to meet you.
Wide, huh? “Yeah, you too.”
A shame indeed that it must be at the conclusion of this busy Lywa’s visit, Lywa says. The alien language sounds odd coming from her—a curious up-down lilt between consonants like a computer synthesizing speech. As dutiful Xamika is surely poised to say, I was just leaving.
“Well, it was good to meet you anyway,” Dylan says. “I’m still getting a grip on how many species the Empire has.”
Lywa’s big scintillating eyes shift colors, from seafoam to a deeper, clearer blue. This humble Lywa’s people are called the Lusorians, she says. And there is perhaps a diverting tale of the Lusorians.
“Oh?”
Before we were graced by the Taiikari, our lives concluded at conception. We would lie with one another and the biological clock would tick its last tock. And we would diminish in one another’s arms, and be gone by morning, and the clans would raise the clutch of eggs left by our bodies. To fall in love was to murder and be murdered in return. Beauty and destruction; love and death. Our entire culture revolved around this sacred and sacrificial tragedy.
Lywa Three-Monsoon makes an aquatic hekikiki sound that the translation overlay displays as [laughs.]
And the Taiikari fixed it, she says. They identified the switch and gave medicines that kept it from being thrown. And now we can fuck all we like. And we read about the old courtship eulogies in our schools, that were once thought the height of beauty, of Lusorian poesis, and they are just so silly. Made for a world that is gone. And good riddance, you would surely, surely say.
This concludes our business, Lywa. Xamika’s sentences flow with such mellifluence in comparison—but her tongue was born for the language, after all. I will be forwarding the recording of this conversation to my Princess.
Certainly. Lywa simpers, an odd affect paired with her needle-filled maw. Certainly, you must. This thankful Lywa will do the same for her own Majesty.
“Right.” Xamika terminates the call and sighs thunderously. “Xiyavak throokva Mayi’Narika,” she mutters, and slaps her gracious smile back on before turning to Dylan. “Please pardon me for slipping out like that. I promise I’m yours for the rest of the day.”
“No problem,” Dylan says. “They have you pulling double duty or something?”
“Currently I’m the seniormost Naval officer assigned to this station, so I sometimes get roped into security matters.”
Dylan’s brows raise. “You’re the one in charge of the station?”
“That’d be Jainema. I just happen to be a useful representative of the Navy now and then. That’s what this means, if you’re wondering.” Xamika gestures to the fabric hanging off her shoulder. “I’m a Lieutenant in the Navy, on loan from the Qena-Qel. This little chat was just a technicality, I promise.”
“Why’s that?”
“They need someone to look grouchy and I’m well-trained. I’m here for you, not for the Lywa Three-Monsoons of the galaxy.”
“I mean why are you the only liaison here from the Navy?”
“Well, it’s like I told you,” Xamika says. “I was only supposed to bring you in and hand you off to the station. But I requested you.”
“How’s it compare? Babysitting a human versus being a badass marine?”
“Badass.” She laughs at his English construction. “I’m more useful here. Besides, if I’m going to pluck you off your planet, it’s only fair to let you pluck me in return.”
They pass the dining hall, which is clearing out now as the station’s human guests break off on their own or in small, cautious groups. “How was breakfast?” Xamika asks.
“Good,” Dylan says, and admits: “Really good, actually. That cream cheesy type stuff was amazing.”
“The stekkai? I thought you might like it. They announced the trip, right?”
“They did. And then the thing about the implant.”
When Xamika’s confused or interested in something, the bridge of her nose gets this cute little wrinkle in it as her eyebrows go up. Dylan’s taken to telling her as many weird facts about Earth as he can, to try and get it to show up, as it does now. “The thing?”
“The lordship,” he clarifies.
“Ahh. Still no takers, then. This is the maximum they’ll offer. If you’re wondering, or, uh.” She purses her lips. “If you’re considering it.”
Her words make him realize that he is. That he has been for days, now, actually, and now he’s considering it harder. “If I—if it was me,” he says. “I mean, there’d be no going home, right?”
“You would be a lord, with a lot of wealth. You could go wherever you wanted.”
“I guess so. I guess…” He looks out into the brilliant bruise of the milky way outside the station’s window. “What’s it like out there?”
“It’s glorious.” She pauses with him on the promenade. “And gorgeous. There are so many places I want to show you. Or recommend you visit, I mean.”
“And I’d be a lord.”
“You would.”
“Not that I know what a lord is.”
“Mostly it just means less asking for permission. Without a title you need a writ from a baroness for some things. Owning properties you don’t live in, or vessels fitted for sweep. And you’d outrank me, you know.” She pantomimes a shallow bow. “We’d all have to start bowing to you. Milord.”
“Might be nice,” he says. “Ordering you all around.”
She giggles, and Dylan was joking, of course. He doesn’t know what kind of orders he’d give to anyone on this station.
Except Xamika, a curled-up, leering bit of his brain whispers. You have a few ideas for what you want Xamika to do, don’t you, Lord Dylan?
