Page 20 of Devin
"That was nice."
"Oh it was, but what he failed to consider is that Wendy was seventeen, which meant she'd be up for the lottery on her next birthday without any chance of falling in love with an Earth guy. He doesn't always think things through. But I forgave him, mainly because it was the only way to get my father here and under Mahdfel medical care. He had blue lung."
Blue lung was a nasty disease. The Suhlik, when they'd invaded Earth, had not been shy about wiping out the population with chemical weapons. Most people that got even a whiff of the immense cloud were suffocated on the spot. Blue lung sufferers were survivors, but they became former shadows of themselves, forever having to drag around a can of oxygen.Many just died slow, agonizing deaths, unable to purchase more oxygen, or slowly drowning from the corruption of their lungs.
"Had?"
"The medical abilities here are practically magic compared to ours. And free. We could never have afforded treatment on Earth. I gotta pee. I have the bladder of a peanut with this big guy pressing on it."
Val ate the rest of her breakfast while Humility excused herself to use the bathroom.
When Humility returned, she waddled out of the bathroom and to the door to the quarters. She waved for Val to follow her.
"So, you got any hobbies?" Humility inquired.
"Not really." Honestly, Val'd always been too busy just working and trying to make money to really have much free time.
They stepped out into the jungle and Val was still surprised by the amount of humidity and jungle sounds that were kept out by the nearly invisible cube walls.
"You’ve got some options to keep yourself busy. If you like to read, we pretty much have everything. Meadow was a librarian in her former life, so she's full of recommendations. Vids? Those too. If you want to learn how to crochet, I can teach you that. You want self defense, Jane has taken down several Suhlik and is our own kickass instructor. Don't let that belly fool you. She's also pretty good with a force rifle, but the guys really frown on that. Goru is our local cook, Kave pretends to run things, Zenik is our pilot, and Brale is our chief engineer. Haxit does the odd jobs. There will be more as stuff arrives. Apparently, there's supposed to be a huge drop in about a month or so." It was a lot of information to take in at once, especially when Val had little to no idea what to do with herself.
“So just to be clear, I don’t actually have anything specific to do here,” Val asked.
“Be receptive to your new husband, but other than that, you can sit on your ass the whole day and no one will mind. Feel free to look around. There’s a force fence that you don’t want to bump into. It keeps out all the nasties. Most of them anyway. Apparently, once in a while these land squids fall from the sky. If you see them, run. They’ve got a nasty bite. They’re pretty tasty though.”
Squids fall from the sky? Her confusion must have registered all over her face. Humility laughed.
“Don’t worry. I hear it’s seasonal.” Humility yawned and her hand went to her belly. “I think it’s naptime. This big boy takes a lot of energy to grow.”
Humility smiled at her and headed over to her cubicle, leaving Val to explore the rest of the camp on her own. Jane and Meadow were nowhere to be seen, so she just started a stroll until she came to a buzzing wall of energy. It was the force fence that kept out the creatures. She was glad for that. She had already had enough aliens for the week, she didn’t need to find out where she fell on the food chain of her new planet just yet.
Her new planet. It would have new stars and new hours; she still had forgotten to ask about those basics. She’d have to make a list of all the questions she thought up as she went along. For example, did this planet have paper and pens or was everything digital?
Val saw a woman sitting off by herself with a tablet in her hand. She was thin, and despite the blond locks of hair, kind of reminded Val of Maryland. There was a twinge of guilt at what might befall Maryland now, although the lockdown had not been Val's fault. In fact, she'd done all she could to help Maryland by scanning for her time and again, praying each time would send her off and out of that locked up life instead of thrusting Maryland onto a much-too-large alien.
Val approached the woman, and when she got close enough, the woman’s head popped up with a curious look on her face.
"Hello. You must be the unfortunate soul that everyone’s been talking about," she said.
"I guess so?"
"My name is Charlette. It's French." She placed the emphasis on the last part of the word. "The greenies still can't say it right."
“I'm Val. It's pretty easy to get right in any language."
Charlette laughed. "I can't believe what that incompetent idiot has done to you. And the rest of them, they just excuse him. I mean, I can't blame Humility because she has to fuck him, but the rest? Do you know how he solves his problems? He beats the shit out of people. I saw it. Last night, he beat Devin to a pulp, just because he didn't want a relationship right now. I mean, can you blame him? He's got all of these responsibilities, and Kave wants to add building a meaningful relationship to the mix. It's not easy, let me tell you."
Val tried to parse all that information at once. It didn't exactly jive with what the rest of the group had said, but she'd only known them for a day. This Charlette at least seemed to be reasonable with her comments. Kave did seem to be a-fly-by-the-seat-of-his-pants boss to the rest of the group, and everyone had also hesitated about his plan to request a mate for Devin when he didn't want one. But she'd probably draw the line short of calling him an incompetent idiot, at least until she had adequate time to observe him.
"He looked fine to me," Val stated. She'd seen Devin walk across the quad. He didn't have a scratch on him.
"Oh, that's the beauty of these monsters. They've got like mad healing skills. You could slice them up and whack them super hard and then the next day, they’d be back to perfect health. They are genetic super soldiers, after all. Let me tell you, it was quite the beat down."
Val definitely didn't want Devin beaten into submission in order to marry her. No. A broken husband was no good.
"And trust me, don't even try to contradict any of that little clique. They are thick as thieves, covering for each other. If I were you, and still free," Charlette said as it as if she were a prisoner here, in a hushed and wistful voice, "I'd not do anything more than I had to to get Devin's attention. They'll have to ship you back before long, especially when Athen finds out what Kave did. He's the one who's really in charge."
"I don't want to go back. I've got nothing to go back to."
