“Captain Cota is under a lot of strain,” Regi explained.
“He’s an asshole.”
Dante preferred unusual anatomical references in his speech. If Dante and Ter were ever to spend a significant amount of time together, they would corrupt each other's language to the point that neither would be fit for company. Regi made a mental note to keep them as far apart as possible.
“I apologize for his behavior. Had he known the truth, he never would have spoken to you like that. Diplomacy and an ability to forgive the short tempers of the crew are his greatest gifts.”
“Don’t apologize for him. He's an incompetent asshole. I probably would have explained this earlier, except I thought you were another ship of slavers. The things he said...”
Regi flinched, but before he could apologize again, Dante continued. “Sometimes the slavers got angry at the stupidest shit. “I would say something necessary like, ‘Hey that leash is going to strangle me,’ and they would still punish me for talking. You get used to not saying anything at all.”
Regi needed to talk to the captain about staying out of security issues. No doubt he’d felt a need to get involved since Regi had been incapacitated, and if Dante had been a pirate, Cota’s response would have been appropriate. However, Cota lacked the experience to distinguish a victim from a perpetrator. “In the captain's defense, most of the time he has to battle crew negligence and boredom, not pirates.”
Dante’s brow undertook a complicated set of maneuvers. “I still think he’s an asshole.”
“You are well within your rights to believe as much.” Regi wondered if he should explain that Dante could file a harassment charge. As the victim of a crime, he had a legal right to respect and protection. Since he’d been held in a cell where all conversations were recorded, evidence existed that he had been given neither. Regi decided that might be a discussion left for another day. Dante appeared to sag more than a vertebrate-based lifeform should. That appeared to be a universal sign of exhaustion.
“Is there any chance I could get a bath?” Dante’s face twisted into yet another unique shape.
“You do smell strongly,” Regi said, which was the most polite description he could manage on short notice.
Dante's breathing grew ragged and quick as he made his disturbing noise again.
“I apologize. Have I distressed you?”
“No, of course not.” Dante released Regi’s hand, leaving an island of warm fur in its wake. “In fact, you're being very polite in avoiding the truth. I stink.”
Regi smiled. He liked Dante’s blunt honesty and the fact that he could face the truth, even when he had been so poorly used. “Then is that noise one of amusement?”
“I'm laughing. It's a sound huumans make when we are amused.”
Regi made a mental note to research whether any of the exploratory crews had ever run across huumans.
“Don't your people laugh?” Dante asked.
“We do,” Regi said. “However, the sound is more explosive. Your laughter sounds like you are struggling to breathe.”
Dante raised a shoulder. “If we laugh hard enough, sometimes we do.”
That would definitely make them a medically fragile species. Regi was a little surprised, given the physical conformation of the alien. His digits were nicely proportioned with solid joints. His arms and legs had visible muscle that suggested a facility with strenuous labor, and he was taller than average. His eyes were even positioned toward the front as though evolved from predators. None of that suggested fragility. However, an inability to breathe well could undermine all other physical gifts.
Since huumans were delicate, Regi had to thank the gods they were not vernal or else the Coalition magistrates would never forgive the crew for mishandling him.
If that happened, Regi would most likely be exiled back to the Empire. Regi did not want to consider the indulgent condescension his mother would subject him to. On the other hand, if Regi were inside the Empire, a cold season temple would be able to tell him if he had attracted Poque’s attention or if he had simply suffered a series of misfortunes that defied belief. And if Poque had touched him, they would provide resources to help him decipher the goddess’s intentions and survive her patronage.
As much as Regi had never wanted to spend an inordinate amount of time in the presence of an exalted, right now he would have welcomed the support and advice. Without a temple, he could not even determine if he suffered from an excess of bad luck, the touch of his goddess, or—by the forbidden names of all the abandoned hells—the full attention of a cold-season goddess. Regi had never wished to be exalted above other Kowri through a relationship with one of the great beings who watched over them, but this series of events began to resemble certain historical dramas.
“Let me show you the bathing facilities.” Regi explained how to use the dimly lit inset strips to identify the room’s hidden features. He thought about showing Dante to a more appropriate room, but he appeared comfortable with the space and exhibited such delight at the appearance of not only a shower but also soap that Regi decided to leave him to explore the room. After extracting a promise that Dante would not wander the ship if Regi left the door unsecured, Regi set an alarm and then left Dante to his own pleasures. Hopefully he was not only excited by the idea of bathing but willing to spend considerable time standing under running water. Nothing less would remove the prodigious stench.
Then again, maybe huumans were like vajroon, which used the smell of bacteria colonies under their skin folds to drive away all but the most determined predators. If so, Dante could stand under water for a year and still smell like walking death. Since the huuman required time to bathe, Regi decided to check on the progress Ter had made toward gaining control over the pirate computers. While his role as security chief was of secondary concern at this point, he did wonder why pirates had chosen to leave the ship in such a precarious situation. Space was not static, and even an engineer as talented as Ter would hesitate to remain so near a black hole. Professional curiosity made Regi wonder what these pirates hoped to gain.
When Regi walked into the pirate’s control room, he nearly made the fatal mistake of asking how Ter was progressing. Given the way Ter’s tail twitched, the answer was obvious, and Ter never appreciated obvious questions. Instead, Regi went straight to providing relevant information.
Regi stopped near the terminal Ter was using and announced, “The second pirate was not a pirate. He was a victim who had been removed from his planet to be used as a slave on the ship.”
That caught Ter’s attention. “Slavery? I haven't heard of a ship using slaves for close to three hundred years. The cost of smuggling them and hiding them, feeding them and training them is generally so great that it would be cheaper to just hire someone. And then there's the issue of the slaves escaping and implicating you in a crime. Generally it's not worth it. Are you sure the prisoner isn’t lying?”
Regi resisted taking offense. He trusted his instinct on the matter, but more to the point, none of the huuman’s behaviors on the security tape matched those of a perpetrator. His childlike fear of Cota supported the claim he was a victim. However, Ter appreciated facts more than interpretations. “His species is too young to know other sapient species. I checked the database for species with odd numbers of digits, breathing problems or that used the name huuman. It found nothing.” What sort of security chief would Regi be if he hadn’t at least considered the possibility?
