Page 25 of Her Alien Warrior
Renee
Thoughts of the stasis pod haunted me as I waited for word on how General Sou-el was doing. He didn't come to see me, and the medic assured me every warrior woke up after a few human hours from what he called Elder Sleep. The other medic that took care of my exam before had assured me that he would stay with Sou-el while I returned to my research group. But I'd spent the whole day worrying and feeling guilty about what I'd done.
I counted down the seconds in my head waiting for when I could meet up with Becky for our Thursday date night and confirm she had resumed herinternship with him. My testing group for attraction was half necia warriors and the other half were trill and unGor, with the exception of two humans, a male and a female.
William stopped punching the sandbag in the sparring area he'd been focusing on, to bee-line for me before I could make my way to grab a food packet. I didn't feel like eating the reconstituted bland chicken for ten minutes, instead of simply squeezing down a tube of the nutrients I needed to acclimate within a minute. He reached the dispensary first, and grabbed two, since he saw what I chose for breakfast and then shoved it at me more aggressively than necessary.
"Thanks?" I said instead of asking him what his problem with me was.
"I heard you talking with one of the necia about getting directions to staff rooms for your daughter," he blurted.
"She isn't part of my program, so she wouldn't know where I was and I have a new implant, so I don't have her contact information to message her. I don't really know how to use the implant that well even if I did," I explained, but I wasn't sure why I was telling him any of this. I guess not speaking with anyone for a day did that to a person. Humans were just programed to be social and blurt our personal information for connection, I guessed. Then I thought about Sou-el, he would probably know more about why we behaved that way, that was his job to research those things.
"Staffquarters are in a different part of the ship that we don't have access to, and they are at the center, so by extension we don't have access to the other half of the ship either."
"The ship is that huge..." I said in wonder. It was so big that I got lost in just the section I had access to.
"All of the necia in the program are considered part of the ship's crew, who are called to serve in rotations of moons or something. I overheard some of them talking about how this group is for humans that already mated before, and more would join them as they sorted through ones showing promise of reacting to mating hormones of another species."
He downed his food packet, and tossed it in the recycler as I stared at him. He was tall, muscled, and looked ready to punch more than the sandbag. "I knew what I signed up for," he finally said after a pause that was bordering on uncomfortable, but I didn't know what to say to him. "But that fucker doesn't get to run away from me after what he said."
I wasn't following.
"What who said?"
He groaned and waved it off. "It doesn't matter, what matters is they are going to give you access to see your daughter, and you're going to take me with you."
"You are not dragging my daughter into whatever this is," I said while giving him a pointed look to reflect on the way he was acting. He appeared unstable, agitated, and about to cause trouble. My mom senses were tingling, and I sighed to go at this a different way. "I'm notsaying I won't help you, but I need to know what you plan on doing."
"I came here to have a good time, no judgements," he began, and I nodded, my eyes softening. "I won't bore you with the details, but my preferences are not approved of in my circle of influence. I did what was expected of me, and this is my fucking time for what I want. When I return to Earth, that's it, all I will have are my memories here, and my family expects me to have this out of my system, and I'm…" he groaned again, like he was struggling with telling me what he needed to, "I'm attracted to one of them, and they transferred me here before I could do anything about it. I have to ask him if this was his way of rejecting me or not, because I wasn't even sure if my preferences were in my head or real until... you get the point, already. Are you going to help or not?"
He was already walking away from me, and I called after him, "Yes."
He stalled for a moment showing that he heard me, but continued walking and we didn't speak again until the warrior that agreed to take me approached.
"I have been studying human culture, and date nights are had during and after the third meal of a rotation. This is the Thursday date you were hoping for with your daughter, correct?" he said with a smile. His epul were large, and his hair burnished, reddish-brown that he had braided in a style that reminded me of Vikings from Earth history.
"Yes,thank you for agreeing to guide me," I said with a returned smile.
"You don't mind if I bring along a friend, do you? It is on the way to the lounge."
"Of course, I was going to ask you the same thing."
He raised a curious brow and William choose that moment to approach, probably eavesdropping as he was shown to make a habit of.
"Impressive epul span," William complimented the warrior.
"You are quite large for a human male, your tribe must be proud," the warrior returned the compliment. "Epul on our shoulders grow with battle and mating, drinking the blood of our victories both in duels and rakture feed their growth to full maturity, a sign of our readiness to lead and spawn."
My eyes grew wide and uneasy at the spawning remark, and he noticed. "You should not worry, none of the warriors in this study wish to have spawnlings, they seek only to relieve their glands from harming their hearts. And even if they wished to spawn, they are honorable, and would discuss the bonding process that is necessary to breed.
"The trill are such prudes that I doubt any of them will find attraction in the study, and the unGor... they want a human who is interested in taking on more than one mate and have been avoiding all the humans who have shown interest in a necia warrior. I've kept the estreld candidates in a separate studybecause they are actively trying to procreate with humans regardless of mating them or not."
He explained as we walked through the halls. Then added, "Because of this I must add tests within the study instead of letting you all mingle freely and see what happens. Don't get me wrong, I do have a control study in the works with simply having them cohabitate together and see what happens."
He spoke like he was running the whole program and he saw the understanding flicker in my eyes when he smiled at me and introduced himself, "General Tensel, director of the Human Attraction Research Team."
And future commander of this ship, according to Sou-el.
