Max stared, not sure what Rick was asking. “I need more words.” When Rick let the silence continue, Max added, “Translation matrix failure.”
Rick rotated the other way. “Human Max military.”
“Yes. I’m an Air Force captain. I fly ships,” Max agreed. If this was a job interview, he wasn’t sure what sort of answer this guy wanted. Maybe he was afraid Max would lose his mind and chop his children into pieces. Who knew what sort of military personnel he knew.
“Query. Fight.”
Max needed to minimize the chance he would lose the only high-paying job he had been offered. “I tried to fight Nish. I didn’t do well. No good fighting.”
Rick stretched upward so several of his largest eyes were on level with Max’s. It meant his huge head and weird hat were pressed against the low ceiling. He must not have had an internal skeleton because his head flattened out. “Translation matrix fail.”
Max sighed. “I feel like I’m going to hear that phrase a lot. Deep conversations are not in our future.”
“Translation matrix fail.”
“Yeah. I got that. It’s a good thing I can amuse myself. On the bright side, you’ve never heard any of theStar Warsstories, so I can tell that story and you’ll think I’m brilliant. At least until I get to the first trilogy, but I’ll change it up. My personal theory is that Jar Jar Binks is a Sith. I’ll tell you that version.”
“Query. Trilogy.”
To hell with shooting someone else. Max might shoot himself. “Query. Offspring.” Maybe if he met the kids and figured out what he was supposed to do to keep them out of trouble, he could get his mind off his troubles. With any luck, the kids would be too young to speak and then the language barrier wouldn’t even matter. Max would need to figure out how to change alien diapers.
Max frowned and studied Rick’s body shape. Unlike most aliens, he didn’t wear clothes—only a saddle-like hat that carried tools. That was pressed up against the ceiling right now. However, Max had no idea how Rick or his kids would eat or where the diaper would go. Maybe underneath where the central leg tentacle came out of the center mass? Max forced his mind away from alien poop and looked Rick in the eye... well, the eye that was pointed toward Max.
Rick said, “Query. Health.”
“Answer. Healthy.”
Rick slid a few inches closer. “Query. Health.”
“You want to check my health, don’t you? Oh, there are so manyX-Filesepisodes I’m flashing back to right now. I truly regret my addiction to television. Deeply regret.” Max knew he was being stupid, but his heart rate was still doing a jittery dance.
Rick said in a voice loud enough that it would have rattled windows if any had been around, “Query. Health. Query. Offspring.” He followed this with a huge blast of untranslated bugle sounds. That was cursing. Weird, but cursing sounded like cursing in every language, apparently even alien ones.
Max nodded. “Yeah, you’re a nervous father. I get it. You don’t want me to give the kiddos smallpox. That’s reasonable.”
One of Rick’s large tentacles shot out and wrapped around Max’s wrist. “Translation matrix fubar!” he shouted, and Max might have agreed—enthusiastically agreed, even—only he had to focus on keeping his feet under him as Rick dragged him through a maze of corridors. For a creature with one tentacle leg, Rick was graceful and fast.
“Hey! Wait. Slow down,” Max gasped out when they stopped in some sort of transport. His stomach lurched when the diagonal movement didn’t match any direction he had anticipated. Rick braced his tentacles against the transport walls, and the space was so small that Max ended up pinned into a corner by two of them. The transport jerked to a halt and the door slid up.
“Can we talk—?” Max ended with a squawk when Rick rushed him down another claustrophobic corridor. They stopped next to a door, and Rick let Max go. For a half second, Max contemplated running, but first, he needed the job. Second, he didn’t know how to get out, and third, he sympathized with Rick’s frustration at their lack of communication. He didn’t approve of the grabbing and dragging, but he’d been known to do something similar with his brother when the twerp frustrated him.
Max felt a needle-prick to his heart at the thought of Petey. He’d be at least twenty before Max would be able to get home again. Assuming Max could get home.
“Let’s talk. Communicate,” Max said hopefully. The door folded in on itself like an accordion, with the folds disappearing into the top of the doorway. Inside was a space just as tight the others he’d seen on this ship, but this one had a tilted table in the middle. Max’s imagination went into overdrive.
Rick blurted a huge burped conversation, but the translator only caught three words: confirm, health, and firewalled. Rick’s computer translator appeared to have picked up a different set of words than the translators on the first ship, and Max wasn’t impressed with how it used them.
“Right. So, I guess this is where we do the whole checkup. You’d better keep your tentacles to yourself.” Max eased into the room. Since Rick was ninety percent tentacle and had no other way to use instruments, Max figured he didn’t have good odds on that, but a man could hope.
