The Starfarer Read online

  Closing his eyes, he concentrated on reaching across to her mind in a bid to shore up her mental barriers, segment by segment. He had never done this for anyone before and it felt alien to him. She murmured softly as she felt his mind gently but surely invade hers.

  “Can you hear me, Terran?” he asked out aloud. “If you can, hold on. Water and sustenance are on their way.”

  Check the hantu trees ….

  “First Commander” greeted a voice from the entrance to the cell.

  Zh’hir gestured the young warrior into the cell. Enlist Mh’hir strode in briskly to the First Commander who knelt by the girl. The young Ur’quay stared down at the alien female in curiosity and surprise.

  “The female is small. She is too weak to survive for long” the young Enlist concluded.

  The First Commander held out a hand for the liquid-packs before dismissing the Enlist. The warrior was young and had much to learn. If the Ur’quay were to break free of their isolation, they would have to learn to appreciate the uniqueness of other species and their differences with them. Prying open the Terran’s mouth carefully, he placed a few drops of water on her tongue. Then, he alternated water with a few drops of liquid nutrition, making sure to give her body the time to swallow and not choke on the liquid. It took about ten persistent tries before she twitched weakly. Her eyes blinked open slowly to gaze cloudily at the harsh lights over her.

  Big alien … come to kill me … too bright here … feeling sick.

  He managed to understand the gist of her thoughts, though he wished fervently again for a translator implant to comprehend her language better. Zh’hir glanced around the austere holding cell in vain for something to make her more comfortable. Noting nothing that fell remotely in that category, the First Commander found himself making yet another impulsive decision. The alien female would be more comfortable in one of the rest-chambers aboard the ship.

  Like most Ur’quay starships, the Henia had been constructed with a limited number of rest-chambers — considered a luxury and provided only to the senior officers. The rest of the warriors shared a set of large dormitories. Rest-chambers for senior officers also came equipped with shields that could be enabled to prevent the inhabitants’ thoughts from seeping through the walls — a privilege accorded to warriors who wished to rest without expanding the energy required to shore up their mental shields. Most Ur’quay never enabled the feature, except during an illness. This female though, could definitely use a shielded rest-chamber. She would have to share his chamber, he decided. He was barely there anyway with the extra shifts they were all pulling to complete their mission in the time allocated to them.

  He glanced at her again where she lay on the hard floor, her eyes squinting against the harsh lights while her arms hugged her body defensively. Little shivers wracked her body and Zh’hir realized that her species was probably used to a warmer environment. Ur’quay starships always maintained near-freezing temperatures since the warriors were attired in armor at all times.

  Freezing … tired.

  Her work-suit covered most of her, leaving only her face and palms exposed. He reached for the exposed skin of her hand to tentatively skim two fingers in a gentle caress. His intention had been to reassure her, but he seemed to realize that her skin felt both dehydrated and fragile. He worried that she would bruise if he carried her close to his armored body. Zh’hir reached out again to reassure her, this time using his mind, unconsciously projecting his thoughts to her, instead of communicating out loud.

  Sseela … carry you … better place … be fine.

  Sick … cold … tired.

  He maneuvered the slight body into his arms with one arm under her knees and the other behind her shoulders, taking care to not graze any part of her body against the rough texture of his upper body armor.

  TWO

  Sila came to in a dimly lit room, warm and cozy under the thick blanket tucked around her. The surface she lay on was softer than the hard cell floor she recalled from before. Sila sat up cautiously to glance around at the unfamiliar surroundings. Diffused light permeated the room from a wide archway to one side. She estimated the room to be a third the size of the cell she’d been held in before. Unlike her previous cell though, this room was furnished, albeit in austere fashion. She could make out the outlines of a table and a chest. There was also the massive bed she sat on — all the furniture attached to the walls without any visible support to the floor. The top of the chest was bare but the table held what looked like a couple of containers and a medium-sized console. After a second careful perusal of the room, she was able to locate the vague outline of a door.

  Gathering her rested body off the cozy bed, Sila sped forth to test the door. As she’d suspected, the door remained stubbornly shut. She surmised it to mean that she was still a prisoner. Except, for some reason, she’d been upgraded to a more comfortable cell. The containers on the table held water and some gooey purplish cubes she assumed to be food. She attempted an experimental bite of one purple blob — not bad, but fairly bland. But Sila was hungry enough to tuck into some of the bland purple food. Having satisfied her hunger and refreshed herself with some water from the container beside it, she turned her attention to the archway from whence the only light in the room came through. Behind it was an enclosure with a sink, a shower and a strange-looking toilet, like the one in her previous cell. While the rest was tucked inside the archway, the shower was partly exposed to the room, from behind an opaque divider. The enclosure was well lit with soft lighting that seeped through the wide opening. If her experience was any indication, no one would check on her for long swathes of time. Sila elected to take a quick shower before her captors decided to downgrade her again to the previous cell that had included a tiny private toilet but no shower.

  Showered and refreshed, Sila made her way back to the comfortable bed with a sigh. It had been a struggle to decipher all the strange controls on the shower panel. In the end, she’d managed a spray of warmish water. A thick strip of cloth hanging by the shower had been pressed into service as a towel, though her quest for soap had been unsuccessful. Sila had even rinsed out her grimy work-suit and laid it out to dry.

  For the first time, she wondered why the Ur’quay had captured her. Sector Araloka was consumed by a civil war between a greedy, colonizing Empire with delusions of grandeur and a coalition of powers determined to stop it. In this treacherous maze of dangerous power-plays and grand ambitions, the Terrans held no value. Her people were farmers, the hardy planet they called home a rustic one with few luxuries. Why then had anyone gone to the trouble to abduct her, she wondered bemusedly. Only to ignore her! She had lost any sense of time in that frigid and bare cell, but Sila sensed that she had been held for a long time, with only one short visit from her captor until she had succumbed to hunger and cold.

  Under normal circumstances, an encounter with a real, breathing Ur’quay would have excited her. The songs in ode to the legendary warriors still rung in her ears, as they had for most of her life. The paeans made it clear that the Ur’quay had been explorers and warriors in equal measure, but more importantly, they had been adventurers. Sila had hankered for a different life for most of her adulthood, even as she dutifully went about her gathering duties. But the war had put paid to any ideas of adventuring for her. While news of the war’s progress, and rumors of the Imperial Forces’ next targets was commonplace, even on her agrarian planet, it had seemed far away to Sila. Like she had told her captor — they had nothing for the conquering Empire to covet. But outside the confines of sleepy Terra Agri, she knew that the threat of subjugation by the Ketaari was very real.

  The Ur’quay, on the other hand, were a different beast altogether. They had been many things; feared, admired and respected in equal measure in Sector Araloka, but no one had ever accused them of imperialism or a desire to subjugate races or dominate space. If they had, the legends sung today about their exploits would be very different. Whispers of the mighty Ur’quay still ra
n rampant on her rural planet. They were reputed to be a fierce and technologically advanced warrior race who had stalked this sector centuries ago, bartering and fighting for resources. Not much was known about their home world or them, except for their inordinate emphasis on fighting skills and some vague rumors of powerful abilities. They were known to be reclusive, allowing only the explorers on their starships to interact with other species. Then, they had disappeared altogether. For hundreds of years, there had been no sightings of their starships or warriors. Many believed them to be extinct. Others thought that the stories about the Ur’quay had been exaggerated. Or perhaps that they’d only ever existed in popular mythology. Sila wondered why they had returned to her corner of space. And what they intended to do with her.

  Lost in her thoughts, she was interrupted by a sharp buzzing noise at the door to her new cell. Sila dived hastily into the bed, to pull the blanket over her. All she had on was the makeshift towel wrapped around her. Moreover, she wasn’t ready to be taken back to the less comfortable cell yet. In her headlong dive, Sila landed in the bed on her stomach, her face turned towards the door. All she had time for was to fling one bare arm over her eyes while checking to make sure the rest of her was well concealed under the voluminous blanket. The door swished open and one of the massive aliens strode in. The hand by her side clenched tightly under the blanket. Sila wished fervently that she’d not succumbed to the desire to wash her work-suit. Clean clothes were a luxury she could ill afford in her present circumstances. Now, she was left with no alternative but to cower naked under a blanket while a large stranger invaded her cell.

  The alien walked to the bed with slow, measured strides. The light from the open archway brought his face into focus for the girl peeking from behind the hand she had strategically placed over her face. Sila almost gasped aloud as she recognized the First Commander. He came to a stop beside the bed to gaze down at her silently, his head cocked at an angle. Sila concentrated on taking steady breaths, willing her body to lie absolutely still under his silent regard. After a long moment, the First Commander strode away to the table. She watched him check on the contents of the containers of food and water. He fiddled with a hidden control and a medium-sized tray swung out of the wall. The First Commander divested himself of the plasma weapon she’d noted on his person, to place it on the tray. He leaned down into his tall boots to pluck out a wicked-looking dagger with a curved blade. Sila watched with a mix of fascination, amazement and fear, as various weapons artfully concealed all over his person were plucked out carefully to be deposited on the tray. When he was done, he slapped his palm on the wall and the tray slid back silently into its hiding place. Leaning down fluidly, he touched his feet before straightening up to his full height to step out of his boots.

  O Goddess, is he …? Why’s he disrobing … in my cell?

  Her heart in her eyes, Sila watched him reach for his arm-band. She heard the clinks as it and the band around his left wrist hit the table. Then, the First Commander did something that momentarily accomplished the impossible — made Sila forget her panic-stricken consternation. He shed his skin. Well, Sila corrected herself in something of a daze, he shed part of his skin. The part that covered his upper body. The rust-colored skin that matched the color of his hair and was a different shade from the bronze of his face and palms, with scales that seemed to ripple subtly with every movement of his big body.

  Her eyes wide, she watched as he peeled it off him with practiced ease. First, the skin came off each arm, followed by the front and back sections separately to reveal his upper body. Had the red scales been his clothes, she wondered bemusedly. If so, it was like no attire she had ever seen and seemed to mold tightly to the contours of his massive body. In the soft light from the archway, the skin under the shimmering scales appeared the same deep bronze of his face, marked by identical pale vertical stripes. She could make out the outlines of broad shoulders, massive arms, a deep chest and muscled ridges on his stomach.

  His body was curiously hairless under the red scales, given the thick, rust-colored pelt of hair braided into a long rope and swept back from the broad forehead to hang down his back. His hair is as long as mine, she noted with wonder. He pulled the tie off the end of his braid to shake his head in a curiously graceful motion. It freed up his thick mane from the confines of the braid. The alien ran his webbed hands through the hair from his scalp to the ends with unconscious grace, observed by the unmoving figure on the bed.

  When he was done, his hair swung down his body, straight and thick. He remained poised for a moment, before reaching for the scaly skin on his lower body. Sila closed her eyes hastily, her hand clenching under the blanket. When she dared to peek a few seconds later, he’d paused with his hands on his hips and seemed to be glancing at where she lay on the bed. Sila focused on lying still while her heart pounded in her chest. Soon, he was striding away towards the archway. Sila heaved a sigh of relief as she heard the shower start.

  Heart beating wildly, Sila glanced around desperately, her mind furiously pondering the fix she found herself in — locked in with a mostly naked male who claimed to be from a legendary race of fierce warriors. In a futile attempt to calm her fears, she reminded herself that he’d been brusque but non-threatening during their only interaction. He’d given her the translation device to help her communicate with him and assured her that she wasn’t meant to be food, as if mightily insulted by the thought. She also had a hazy dream-like memory of him trying to get water down her throat and attempting to keep her warm when the shivers had hit her in the cold cell. Was he responsible for transferring her to this more luxurious jail?

  Despite whatever assistance he had rendered her, Sila could not forget that his people had treated her abominably by kidnapping her unceremoniously from her world, imprisoning her in a freezing cell and starving her. She’d never even been off planet before, despite the hankering for adventure, and had only ever seen a handful of aliens on the one occasion when Alliance personnel had come to her world to claim it. Sila tried to frantically recollect if she’d ever heard any odes about the Ur’quay’s treatment of prisoners, only to come up blank.

  The sound of the shower ceased abruptly, prompting Sila to dive back into the bed. The Ur’quay male strode out, his upper body bare and his hair slicked back damply from his forehead. Retrieving a bundle from another of the hidden receptacles built into the wall, he proceeded to unroll it on the floor between the bed and the door. Sila closed her eyes nervously. When she opened them again, she could see his silhouette on the unrolled bundle. He lay on his back with his head pillowed on one out-flung arm with the other palm flat on the ground by his side and one leg bent at the knee in a relaxed pose. Sila studied him as closely as she dared. He lay unmoving, his chest rising periodically with even and rhythmic breaths. She forced herself to wait patiently, counting the seconds in her mind. She must allow sufficient time to elapse before she made her move. Clearly, she was locked in here with her captor, but Sila intended to be dressed when she faced the alien again.

  After what seemed an agonizingly long wait, Sila sat up cautiously, her wary eyes on the prone male lying a few feet away on the ground. She watched him silently, only moving when his breaths appeared unchanged to her untrained eyes. Clasping the blanket more securely around her, she turned towards the shower enclosure. In the end, she could manage only a few steps from the bed before a calloused palm encircled her ankle. Sila glanced back with a frightened gasp. The male lay in the same posture as before but now his strange gold eyes were open and staring up at her, their glitter pronounced despite the diffused light. The hand she had noted relaxing by his side now held her by the ankle in an implacable, but not ungentle, grip. She tugged her captured foot experimentally; his response was to squeeze it gently without letting go. He said something undecipherable to her in his deep, growly voice with the guttural notes. But with her translation device pinned to her drying work-suit, Sila could not comprehend him. Ensnared by the strange unblinki
ng eyes, she shook her head frantically to convey that she did not understand him. Letting go off her ankle, he propelled himself fluidly off the floor in a move that had Sila taking a wary step away from him. He made no move to come closer, staring down at her from his greater height.

  “Sit” he growled in Alliance Standard, pointing at the bed and Sila found herself perching nervously on it.

  He shot her a last look before striding away to the enclosure. Before Sila could contemplate making a move, he strode back to hold his hand out to her. The open palm with the web-like spikes between the fingers held the translation device. He had retrieved it from her work-suit, Sila surmised. This time, she knew why he offered her the device. Retrieving it gingerly off his palm to hold it loosely in her fist, she pondered where to pin it on the blanket she wore in lieu of clothes.

  “Going somewhere?” the Ur’quay male inquired.

  At his words, she turned her attention back to him. The device, Sila realized, seemed to work just fine in her fist.

  He stepped back from her to meet her eyes. “Before, when I stopped you” he clarified patiently. “Where were you going?”

  “Umm … just to the”, she gestured towards the shower enclosure, “to get my clothes.”

  He cocked his head, the mysterious unblinking eyes studying her. “It is not dry yet. Use the blanket for now.”