Page 9 of Fighting Gravity
By the female’s tone, she had been the one on the coms earlier. The feisty female with the ferocious voice.
Good. Taming her would be enjoyable at the very least.
I tossed my human into a holding cell, taking her wrist device before I locked her up. I knew all humans from the Nexus had one and she could potentially call for help with it. I couldn’t have that.
My crew and I cleaned up the mess left behind after we jumped. The valerians would not be able to follow us. They built their own highways to leap from system to system and we built ours. Neither of us had clearance to use each other’s relays. I’d been after valerian clearance codes for ages and had never been able to hack their security walls. And they’d never penetrated ours. It was a fruitless dance that we were both unwilling to abandon.
Once the cargo bay was quarantined, nano-bots began rebuilding the xeron walls, cloning parts that were intact to heal the parts that weren’t. It took time and sometimes it didn’t always go as planned, but it was something. We’d need a station soon to patch up what the nano-bots couldn’t.
In that time, I had Veron input a basic human nutrient plan into the ship’s printer so the woman could be sent the appropriate items to keep her alive. Since her vitals stayed level after the initial shock of taking her from her shuttle, I assumed the plan was working, so I refrained from checking on her until the work was done and we were on the other side of the quadrant.
While I waited for things to calm down, I studied the human’s wrist device. I took in her language. Her history. Her personal information. Her name was Quinn, from what I could tell. Perhaps that would come in handy.
The human language had plenty of pointless words, but it was fairly easy to pick up. There were plenty of educational vids stored in the device to draw from.
For days, I absorbed everything on the cuff, finding much of it to be primitive and simplistic. It made sense. Humans were new to space. They had a long way to go and at the moment, they were out of their league.
While I learned about Quinn, I let her stew in her solitude. I let her squirm a little just to test the strength of her mind. They were a social species. They ran in large packs and had strong family ties. Being alone on a strange ship might break her down before I needed to really do anything. That was the hope, at least.
Five rotations later, I finally decided to visit my prisoner and was pleased to see how deflated she’d become. She smelled of bodily filth and stress. She was pale. Black strands cascaded over her head like mane and it was all matted and unkempt. Dark shadows tugged beneath her eyes and in the light, I could make out cracks on her ashen lips. She was dehydrated. I didn’t have to be a doctor to know it.
It was the perfect time to question her.
“You stay the fuck away from me, you green fuck,” she warned.
When I understood her words, I was pleased to know my studying had paid off.
I stepped closer to her and she did everything she could to keep her distance.
“I said, stay away from me!”
She rushed for the open door, running right into it when it closed in front of her. I smelled blood almost immediately.
So fragile…
“Fuck!” she barked.
I didn’t know what “fuck” was, but judging by the way she used it, it was some kind of curse.
She turned to look at me and I couldn’t help feeling amused by her pointless efforts.
“Don’t suppose you speak English, you puddle of puke,” she said. “What?” she continued. “What?” She threw her arms up in complaint. “What!? Why the hell are you here? What do you want?”
Enough of this.
I reached around to the back of my belt where a magnetic restraint was always coiled up and ready to use. When I pulled it out, the woman shook her head and backed up.
“Nah, screw that. You’re not touching me.”
She tried to maneuver past me. Where she thought she was going to go was a mystery to me. I reached out and grabbed the back of her strange bodysuit and tugged her back, wrapping her wrists in the restraint. The walls were already magnetic and with a little shove, I lifted the woman’s hands over her head and secured them. She flailed and kicked and barked out complaints, but not even a gek could squirm out of the restraints so I highly doubted she could.
“Fuck you!” she screamed.
It was definitely a curse.
She extended her leg toward my stomach and with a swipe of my hand, I swatted it out of the way, reacting without thought and swinging my other hand across her face. I didn’t use my full strength, but she made it seem like I did.
When she recovered, she spit a mouthful of blood on the ground and glared right back up at me with defiance.
