Page 6 of The Alien Warrior’s Valentine

Chapter 6

Jeltom

I’d slept no worse in Mariska’s barn than I would have in the shed behind the Laughing Nia. I’d received a call from my mother and one from my father, asking me if I wouldn’t be more comfortable at their homestead—nothing I couldn’t handle. Their home was much deeper into the mountains, and it was running in peak form; I’d be bored out of my mind in no time. I had taken the chance to ask my father for some advice on how to fix the wine that had gone sour.

The nights were growing colder again, and soon we’d be heading into winter. Mariska’s home would need a lot of work to be ready for the snowfall and possible meteor storms that would come. That kept me up more than the cold; I was used to dealing with cool nights on Llyhke. The generator for the shields had to be fixed today, and all the grapes had to be processed today too, or her harvest wouldn’t be any good.

I rolled up my bedroll and tucked it back into my bag so Mariska would not see it if she came to the barn, and then I got to work before dawn had even begun to lighten the skies. I was elbow-deep in the generator’s guts when I heard her stir inside the house. She’d been up late last night—I’d been able to see her through her window—and felt like a stalker, lurking outside to catch a glimpse of her. Uninvited, because I sure hadn’t asked her for permission to camp out in her barn. She’d say no, and that would leave her unprotected. That was unacceptable.

The shield generator was booting and running diagnostics after I’d fixed the most obvious issues, so that left my hands free to tackle something else, like the wood waiting to be split for firewood beside her porch. Likely, some well-meaning neighbor had brought it over, because I didn’t think Mariska had felled any trees on her land herself. The ax was rusty, but nothing a whetstone couldn’t quickly fix, and soon I was warming up my muscles on those logs and clearing my head of all distractions.

I had to create a list of tasks and tackle them one by one. Mariska might object, but what could she do? Perhaps the sheriff in town would come over if she called and tell me to move on—more likely, he’d tell her that I meant no harm and to accept my help. Truthfully, I might even look forward to seeing her face off with old Leantyl.

My skin had this weird ache to it, as if I were restless and sore, but I had no explanation for it. I just knew that I wanted to see Mariska again and assure her that I was going to stick around to fix all the things that needed fixing. There was this very powerful part of me that hoped I’d never run out of things to fix.

She came onto the front porch with a shawl wrapped around her shoulders and two cups of steaming tea in her hands. She waved and held one out to me, and I took the invitation with an eagerness that surprised me. Just yesterday, I’d been so ready to ignore her request, and then I’d seen her face… Putting down the ax, I went up her porch steps and took a seat on the small bench beside her to drink the tea. It was a sweet one, but I didn’t mind; the flavor reminded me of her scent.

“You’re back early,” she said. “I thought you’d be gone once the pressing machine was fixed.” She said it carefully, as if she were testing the waters and wondering what the blazing stars was going on. I didn’t know either, so I just shrugged. She looked tired, with shadows beneath her eyes and a paleness to her cheeks that seemed unnatural, even for a human. On a whim, I reached out to gently touch a finger to her hand. Tension eased in my flesh, and I could see her shoulders lower as if the same had happened to her. Interesting.

“There is more stuff that needs fixing,” I said, and I pointed at the shield generator in its casing that sat at the side of her home. “Especially that.” From the way her expression grew pinched, I could tell she knew the device was in a bad way, too. Stubborn female, too proud to ask for help. Damn the bureaucrat who had rubber-stamped assigning her to this homestead when it was in no shape to be a home to anyone.

“Well, thanks, but the farm is not exactly running a profit. I’ll pay you what I can, but… I’m not sure it’s enough to be worth your time.” She was clearly trying to be upfront, honest, so I could make an informed choice. I appreciated it, but she had no clue why I was really here, or that I’d do the work for free. I didn’t want her to pay me at all.

“That’s fine. I need to stay busy,” I told her, and I rose so I could get back to work. To prevent my shirt from getting soaked in sweat, I’d taken it off before I started chopping wood. Her eyes tracked my body as I went down the porch steps to get back to the generator. I’d like to think it was with a bit of appreciation, but her words sent ice water down my spine.

“What happened to your shoulder?” she asked, her hands on the railing, leaning out to keep eye contact. I discovered that I rather liked not dealing with an empath in this situation. She had no clue what kind of feelings went through me when I recalled the incident. Getting shot wasn’t the worst part—it was being unable to rescue my fellow scientists from the mercenaries who had taken us hostage. Hearing the others sob and seeing how Danitalin had worked herself to the bone trying to comply with their demands—that had been terrible, and it still filled my dreams at night.

“I got shot,” I said, and then I got back to work in a hurry. She seemed to get the message that it was a closed topic, but still, it didn’t feel right. I guess we were both holding our pasts a little too close to our chests. Her eyes were on me for sometime as I buried myself in the guts of the machine, but then she withdrew to get on with her own work.

I heard her in the barn for a long time, working with the pressing machine to get all her grapes processed. She was going to run into the problem that she did not have enough vats, and I’d have to get that sorted soon. There was a second barn behind the house, a bit more distant, and I had a feeling that one might have what we needed.

That barn was in such a sorry state that it would have to be taken down, but the barrels were still good. And an even better discovery: automated fence bots. They would solve a heap of issues if I could get them running. I was actually humming a tune under my breath, my mood improving. Hauling barrels from one barn to the next and hosing them down to clean had never been such a relaxing task before.

By that afternoon, Mariska and I had filled all the barrels and run her entire harvest through the newly fixed machine. Working side by side had been interesting, and kind of nice. She talked a lot, but at the same time, she didn’t say all that much. Her voice was lovely to listen to, and I liked how she could fill a silence with pleasantness. She never asked prying questions, and I returned the favor. My skittish human was not so skittish now, and I wanted to see where that was headed before I tried to find out more. And I wanted to find out more, so much more.

“Would you like to have lunch with me?” she asked at some point. It was phrased in such a way that it sounded almost ritualistic, like it meant more than just food. I gave her a nod, but I wasn’t certain where this was headed. If it was as good as what she’d served me last night, I couldn’t possibly decline, though. If she could make wine as well as she did pastry, she’d turn a profit on this farm in no time.

It was when we were sitting down with what she called “sandwiches” on her porch that she asked me something so baffling I could only stare. She’d been so bold, demanding I come fix her pressing machine even when I said no, but now she stumbled over her words. “Look, it’s going to be Valentine’s in a few days… I know it is because I checked, not because I trusted Jess to be right. She’s a total scatterbrain, so she could have been mistaken, but she’s not. Anyway, it’s going to be Valentine’s soon, and I was wondering if you wouldn’t, well… you know?”

I did not know. This was the strangest proposition I’d ever received, and I wasn’t even sure what it was she wanted of me. “I don’t know,” I said firmly. Valentine? This sounded like it could perhaps be a name, but if so, it was not an Aderian one. Perhaps it was a Xurtal name, but why would she talk of a Xurtal male and then ask me to do something she wouldn’t name? It had to be something human, a custom perhaps… but I was not familiar with any human customs.

Her face fell, and she rose jerkily from the bench next to me, her sandwich only half-eaten and left forgotten on the plate. I eyed it, wondering if she would consider it rude if I picked it up and finished it.

“Ah, I’m explaining this terribly…” she moaned. She paced away, then ducked into her home and disappeared. I thought perhaps she’d gone to fetch something, but when she didn’t come back out, I dug into what remained of her sandwich and got back to work. This had to be some human strangeness I was probably never going to understand. I just hoped she was okay and that I hadn’t offended her.

Five minutes into my second round of shield generator repairs, my skin ached again. I felt unsettled, like something was missing. I knew what it was: Mariska. It didn’t sit right with me that she’d walked off without explaining what she wanted. I found that I very much wanted to give her whatever she’d asked of me, but how could I, if I didn’t know what?

A thought occurred to me then—one that probably never would have if I hadn’t met Mariska. I could ask for help. There was one person who might have the answer at the ready, and a source available to her to find out more. Danitalin. After we’d been rescued from our hostage situation by mercenaries hired by the Aderian government, she had chosen to stay with them. She’d even mated with their Rummicaron Weaponmaster. Far more importantly, there were humans on that ship—females, mated to other crew members of the notorious mercenaries of the Varakartoom.

I eyed the small home to make sure that Mariska was still inside and couldn’t overhear me. Then I called Danitalin’s comm device and waited with bated breath to see if she’d answer. It had been several weeks since that situation, since I’d been dropped off on Llykhe to retire. I had lost the taste for adventure, but my friend had found hers.

“Jeltom,” she said when she answered my call, with a breathlessness I did not want to know the source of. “To what do I owe the pleasure, old friend?” It was a good thing she had not engaged the video settings, because I did not need her to see the confusion on my face. She was one of the most powerful Aderian empaths I knew, and I wondered if she could sense my feelings through a tenuous comm connection.

“I hope you’re still happy on that gloomy mercenary ship,” I said to her. It was black inside every hallway on the Varakartoom, each corridor designed to look exactly like the next, to confuse intruders. I had hated how dark it was on that ship, and I couldn’t fathom how Danitalin, of all people, didn’t mind. She laughed and wove aside my concern the same way she’d done ever since I’d woken in the Varakartoom’s medbay and discovered she had been rescued, too.

“Fine, I’ll cut to the chase. I need information on humans. You have humans on that ship, don’t you?” I already knew the answer, but I was relieved when Danitalin agreed readily anyway. She also did not ask me why I needed to know about humans, but I was certain that was going to come later. “I need to know what Valentine means. Can you find out for me? I was asked to do something for Valentine, and I don’t know what she means.”

“Aaaaah, are you playing house on Llykhe with a human, Jeltom?” Danitalin asked. She was laughing, but she wasn’t laughing at me, she was just happy. There was not a mean bone in Danitalin’s body. In the background, her mate was calling for her, asking who she was talking to. He called her Dani, shortening her name in a way Aderians would consider rude. A human custom too, I believed; to shorten a name was considered a sign of friendship. I was tempted to ask, but I could just as easily ask that particular question of Mariska.

“Valentine? Never heard of it,” Danitalin said. “But I’ll find out for you. I was supposed to meet with Harper to do an interview anyway. She’ll know.” I did not ask who Harper was or what kind of interview Danitalin was talking about. She was a brilliant doctor and scientist, and, recently, likely the inventor of a very important cure regarding Roka production pollution. If anyone would end up in the spotlight over such a thing, it was Danitalin.

It was eking toward evening, and I’d finally spotted Mariska slip out of the house to check on her recently pressed grapes. She’d been hiding in there all afternoon, and I was certain it was because I’d messed up terribly. Unfortunately, Danitalin hadn’t gotten back to me yet about this Valentine thing, and my mind was spinning in increasingly darker circles. What had I missed? How had I hurt her feelings? What could I do to fix it?

I hadn’t the slightest idea, so I focused on the things I could solve. That started with getting this ancient shield generator to run again. I was certain I would never be able to get it to run fully automated, those circuit boards were beyond fried. Even so, you could get localized meteor alerts on your comm well ahead of time. That should be enough for Mariska to get to the generator and turn it on manually. Or me, a voice whispered in the back of my mind. I could stay close, so I could make sure the generator was on when she needed it.

Rubbing at my arm, I wondered why my skin ached again. I felt a little more worn than I usually would from the work I’d been doing. Some would blame that on my recent injury, but I knew better. This was something else, something that stirred instincts deep in the back of my mind and pulled at my heart with a kind of optimistic hope.

Hypersensitive to her presence, I sensed when Mariska came back out of the barn behind me. I tried very hard not to turn to look, but tilted my head just enough to catch her from the corner of my eye. She was rubbing at her bare arms too, either she was cold in her lovely pale green dress or she was feeling the same thing I was. I hoped she was feeling what I was feeling, but I couldn’t possibly ask.

That’s when my comm buzzed with an incoming message. I glanced at it, noticed Danitalin’s name on the screen, and hurried to click it open. It read in big letters at the top: “Valentine is a human courtship ritual.” My heart sped up in my chest as I scanned the details of the tradition outlined below it, followed by very precise, step-by-step instructions of what I should do. I was silent after I’d finished reading, and very much lost in thought. This was what she wanted? For me to court her? My heart thrilled again in my chest.