Somehow I doubt that. But I hold her close and stroke her as she settles in to sleep. I tell myself that a planet with someone like Farli on it can’t be that bad…but then I keep thinking of the bitter blast of the wind striking my face the moment I opened the door. The desolate, white landscape that seemed to be nothing but shrubs and rocks and snow.
A planet I can never leave again. And I’ve been restless ever since I left the military. Traveling to new worlds and systems sometimes quiets my head. Sometimes. With a jobas a mechanic on a long-haul space-freighter, I’ve seen a lot of places. Nothing has felt even close to home…not even the ship I’m on now. Sometimes I don’t feel as if I have a place anywhere.
One thing’s for sure, though—if I had to pick a new homeworld, this sure as shit wouldn’t be it.
Farli snuggles closer to me, tucking her head against my neck and sighing happily. And I feel like an ass for my dark thoughts.
“You needto get this thing out of my med bay,” Niri says, her voice pleasant despite her words. “It shit all over the floor twice this morning.” She’s speaking our native language so Farli can’t understand her, pretending to be busy on her med pad. “Not sure why you tried to save it anyhow. Do you know how much I spent on clinic supplies for this thing overnight?”
“Don’t care. Take it out of my check. And speak Farli’s language so she can understand us.” I keep my arms crossed over my chest, trying to look as menacing as possible to shut her up. It’s not that I dislike Niri—she’s the closest thing I have to a friend onThe Tranquil Lady. But I remember dinner yesterday vividly, and while she didn’t exactly mock Farli…she didn’t defend her, either.
Farli. I look over at her. She’s wearing Niri’s jumper again today, her own furry boots covering her feet. Her hair is loose around her shoulders, and her face is wreathed in smiles as her ugly, smelly pet licks her face happily. She’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen, and as I watch her hungrily, she glances over at me. Most women would blush or play coy. Farli simply gives me an equally heated look that tells me she’s still thinking about last night.
And I’m the one that blushes, my ears growing hot.
“You’re grumpy this morning,” Niri comments. It’s inFarli’s language, so at least I don’t have to growl at her over that. “Not sleep well?”
“Slept fine.”
“Then it must be something else.” She gives me a meaningful look and then turns her head, exaggeratingly peering over at Farli. “Something like that?”
“Leave it alone, Niri.” The old woman doesn’t have family to fuss over, so I’m her project. Usually I don’t mind, but today it irks me. Maybe because I’m still thinking about last night and the conversation about khuis and mating and being stuck here on this planet forever. I can’t imagine. Every time my brain starts to go in that direction, I think of the ship taking off and leaving me behind on the surface…and my brain goes to another time, on a jungle planet, when I was left behind with my unit in hostile territory… I shudder, then fling myself off the wall, trying to shake off the memories.
Farli turns back to her pet and leans in, hugging his neck. “Are you hungry, Chahm-pee?” She pulls a root out of her bag and waves it under his nose. “I saved this for you.”
The thing takes a shit even as its little tail flips back and forth happily, and Niri makes a strangled noise.
“Can’t do anything about it,” I tell Niri, biting back the laugh that rises in my throat. “Captain wants Farli to stick around until he has time to chat with her. That means her pet stays, too.” I woke up to a message on my com from the captain, and I’d expected it to be an ass-reaming about fraternization. It wasn’t, though—just a command not to let our ‘guest’ go until he’d had a chance to quiz her further.
I should be annoyed that he thinks I’m her keeper—I’m not one for being social, after all. But it seems right that I be the one to stay at Farli’s side. I sure don’t want Trakan hovering around her, and it’s clear that Niri’s short allotment of patience has already been exhausted. And…Farli’smine. Thethought of anyone else even touching a hair on her head fills me with wordless rage.
I didn’t resonate to you.
Not yet.
I watch Farli and her pet for a moment, thinking. “The creature’s healthy?” I ask Niri.
“As if he’d never been wounded,” she says grumpily. “Minus some singed hair on his flank and a stink that’s going to take forever to get out of med bay.”
“What about his…symbiont? His parasite?” I tap my chest, indicating my heart. “You left it in?”
Niri’s thick brows draw together. “At her request, yes. Why?”
“What can you tell me about it?”
She shrugs. “I didn’t really pay too much attention to it. You know, I was busy with, oh, saving my four-legged patient.”
“Can you do some analyzing on it this morning? Now?”
She tucks away her stylus on her med pad and then moves toward me. “What are you getting at?” She keeps her voice low.
I want to know about resonance. I want to know if a khui can be removed. But Niri’s not stupid. She’ll want to know why I’m asking these things. So I shrug. “Just curious about how the biology works, that’s all.”
“Mmhmm. Since you’re such a big biology fan,” she says, sarcasm lacing her voice. “But tell you what. How about I do a medical check-up on her just to make sure everything’s in working order?”
“That’d be great.”
When I don’t offer more than that, she shrugs and heads toward Farli. “Hey there. Mind if I run a few tests on you just to compare how your symbiont has affected your body processes compared to ours? It’s for my records.”
