“Kade,” I replied. “I have an operations manual, if you’d like to see it?”
He looked momentarily taken aback. “Yeah, that would be great.”
I pulled the small, electronic device out of the front pocket of my backpack, handing it to him. “You can transfer it onto your comm, if that’s more convenient.”
He nodded, but merely pocketed the device. “I’m not ignoring you,” he said, a moment later. “We’ve just got bigger problems to deal with right now.” He looked me up and down… and once again, his earlier comments suddenly made more sense. He’d asked me if I was Vangravian... and I’d been too distracted by his arrival to have considered the fact that I was standing in a dim box, and he’d been out in the bright sunlight. Of course he wouldn’t have been able to see me.
But his perusal made me suddenly aware of the differences between us. His skin was brown, while my colouring was bright blue. “My apologies,” I said hastily, aware that I was being rude. A moment of concentration was all it took to change the pigment, and my scales darkened, then reddened, untilmy colour was a fairly close match to his. A shade or two darker, perhaps, but not far off. Unfortunately, there was a limit as to how far I could push the pigments, so that restricted exactly which colours I could match.
My master’s eyes opened wide. “Wow,” he said, his eyes doing another slow sweep of my body. “That’s quite a trick you’ve got there. How do you do that?”
“My scales contain a variety of pigment nodules. I can contract different ones to display different colour combinations.”
“Scales?” He took a closer look at me. I held out my arm, attempting to be helpful. He stepped towards me, and now, I could smell him. He smelled divine, of masculine sweat and something earthy, like tree bark, perhaps? The scent wormed its way through my neurones, adding to the imprint.
Then he lifted his hand, running one finger very lightly over my scales. They were tiny, only about two millimetres wide each, and under dim light, they looked like one smooth layer, much like my master’s skin. In bright light, though, or when I was displaying vivid colours, the individual scales could be seen.
He looked me over once again. My clothing was grey and my backpack was black. “Probably best you stick with the brown for now, given that something’s chasing us. On a normal day, I wouldn’t mind if you wanted to be blue instead. Whatever’s more comfortable for you.”
The statement baffled me. “I am here to serve your desires,” I replied. “I will be whatever colour you prefer.”
He nodded. “Like I said; for now, let’s stick with brown. We need to go this way,” he said, pointing to the north-west. Then he paused, glancing back at the container. “Is there anything else you need to bring with you?”
“There’s some food in a canister in the container,” I informed him. “Are we likely to need it?” I had no clue what this mission he was on was about, but trekking through the jungle would take a fair amount of energy.
“That’s actually a really good idea,” he said. I hastily ducked back into the container, carrying the sizable canister outside into the daylight. I released the seal and stepped back, allowing him to peruse the contents. “Protein bars,” he said, prodding the carefully wrapped packages inside. “Should have known. Still, it’s better than nothing.” He grabbed a handful and shoved them into his pack, then gestured for me to do the same. “We’ve got a three day walk out of here, so bring whatever you can carry.” His eyes did one more sweep of my body. “I take it you are capable of walking a good distance?”
“Yes, Master,” I replied, quickly but neatly packing as many of the bars as would fit into my backpack. Then I ducked back inside the container to grab the thin bedroll I’d been using, and strapped it to the bottom of my pack. I hadn’t anticipated needing it again, but with a three day walk, I was making the bold assumption that we’d be sleeping out in the jungle.
“All set?” he asked, once I was done.
“Yes, Master.”
That earned me a sigh and the slump of his shoulders. “Could you call me Aiden?”
Could I what? I froze, fear and confusion warring in my head. Two decades of training was loudly and insistently proclaiming that calling my master by his given name was deeply inappropriate. And yet, that same master had given me an order to do exactly that. I made a helpless sort of noise, feeling like my brain was glitching. We stared at each other for a long moment, until he finally shook his head. “You know what? Never mind. Master is fine.”
“Yes, Master,” I replied meekly, knowing I was displeasing him. But nothing in my training had prepared me for what to do if presented with an order like that one.
“We’re heading for a crashed ship about three hours in this direction,” my master said, heading off into the jungle. I fell in behind him, keeping our tracks to a minimum, and maintaining a sharp eye and ear on the vegetation around us. “We originally thought it belonged to the Eumadians, but apparently a Culrad ship has landed somewhere nearby and they’re going after the cargo, so I’m not entirely sure what’s going on anymore. There’s another Alliance team heading for the crashed ship, and we’ll meet up with them when we get there.” He stopped suddenly, turning back to peer quizzically at me. “Do you know where you are?”
“No, Master,” I replied. I didn’t, but that detail honestly wasn’t concerning me a whole lot at the moment. I had a master, we had a mission, and he was currently not entirely displeased with me. Any other details could wait until he deigned to tell me.
“Okay, fine.” He turned around and started walking again. “This planet is called Rendol 4. Have you heard of it?”
“No, Master.”
“Have you heard of the Denzogal Alliance?”
“Yes, Master,” I said, more pleased that I knew the answer to this one. “It’s a political alliance between six species and they have jointly colonised an area of space roughly fifty light years in diameter and consisting of approximately three hundred stars. Colonised planets on the outer edges of the region are more prone to attack from opportunistic species or pirates.”
“Exactly,” he agreed. “And Rendol is one of the solar systems in that fringe region. Which is why we’re constantly getting Culrads, Eumadians, and god knows who else knocking at our door. So this is just another day for us. Do you know what I am?” he asked next, swiftly changing topic.
“No, Master,” I said, feeling slightly ashamed of the fact – even though there was nothing I could have done about it. If my trainers had not taught me about my master’s species, I had no way to learn it.
“I’m a human,” my master said. “We originated in the Sol solar system, which is about four hundred light years away. Populations of humans splintered away from Earth – that’s our home planet – about three hundred years ago. We’ve had a fairly stable population living on Rendol 4 for about a hundred years, along with populations of all the other Alliance species. We’re slowly terraforming the planet to make it more habitable. Back on Earth, my ancestors apparently came from a region called Mexico. A lot of the humans on Rendol 4 did, actually. I don’t know much about Mexico, except that it was hot. A lot hotter than this place. Summer’s nice, but winter’s fucking freezing.”
He fell silent, and we continued walking. I pondered what he’d said. Given the volatile nature of space in the fringes between territories, it made sense for him to have bought me. The skills I’d been taught would be an asset to him, if battles like the one earlier were a regular occurrence here. I didn’t know much about terraforming, though. I’d been raised on Eumad, and as a class one planet with an intact native population, agriculture and fishing were about as far as anyone dabbled into biosphere science.
