The gruff alien was back in his bunk, staring up at nothing so far as she could tell.

“What’s the deal with that one?” she asked.

“Oh, him? He’s not exactly what you’d call much of a talker. In fact, today’s probably the most I’ve heard him say at one time. You clearly got his attention.”

“Gee, lucky me.”

“You are lucky. You got more information out of him than any of us have managed. Usually he just tattoos that weird translation thing behind the newcomer’s ear while they’re still unconscious then climbs back into his bunk. Not much for socializing.”

“What do you expect? He’s an alien.”

“We’re all aliens here,” Nyota pointed out.”

Darla digested that little factoid in a flash. She was surrounded by almost entirely humans, but this was an alien ship. An alien ship flying off to who knows where in deep space. For all she knew, they were the only humans on the entire ship, and that made them a minority.

Shit, she’s right, Darla grudgingly admitted. And I have questions.

She walked closer to the alien’s bunk but stopped well short of it. He may have been relatively civil, but he was still a beast of a man, and one she didn’t want to wind up on the bad side of.

“Hey, big dude,” she called out.

A long silence hung between them.

“I have a name,” he finally replied.

“Well, that’s what I’m here for. I figure Nyota’s right. We’re all aliens here, and I can’t very well keep calling you the alien or hey you.”

He leaned out from the shadows of his bunk, his gold-rimmed violet eyes sparkling with amusement. “My name is High Aldwin Heydaricus Afflantia Matzur.”

“All that, huh? Quite a mouthful, there.”

“You may call me Heydar.”

“Darla.”

“Yes, I heard,” he said, then slid back onto his bunk.

“Okay. Good talk, there,” she said, walking away.

Mei seemed to snap out of her daze when she witnessed the exchange, hurrying over to Darla with a fierce look in her eyes. For a damn near vegetative prisoner, she was certainly anything but that at the moment.

“What are you doing?” Mei hissed. “Do not converse with them.”

“By them, you mean aliens?”

“They are beasts, all of them.”

“I don’t know, he seems more or less all right to me. And besides, he’s locked in here just like we are.”

“And do you know why?” the woman growled.

“Uh, no. Just got here, remember? Probably his tattoo skills.”

“So he claims, but I heard the guards talking. He is some sort of great warrior. Now he’s going to be a trophy for their leaders when we arrive at our destination.”

“A trophy?”

“Yes. Quite a catch for the Raxxians. And the way they talk about him, even they appear scared of him.”

Darla glanced over at the man on his bunk, the gold in his eyes, glinting for just a moment as the light caught them just right. She felt a little rumble in her belly, and not the kind brought on by hunger. At least, not hunger for food. Mei saw the look and shook her head.

“Do not think it,” she snapped. “He may be pleasing to look at, but that is an alien species.”

“Relax, a girl can admire, can’t she?”

Mei shook her head in either frustration or disgust. Either way, she was not amused. “You are not the first to have such ideas, you know. But he is not interested in our kind. Something about the Infala deciding his fate, not the meat between his legs.”

“He said that?”

“Yes. He was very rude about it as well.”

“Wait, what’s an Infala, anyway?”

“I’m not entirely sure. All I can tell is that it seems to have something to do with his tattoos. You saw that he’s covered in them, right?”

“I noticed.”

“They all have different meanings, from what I’ve gleaned. The symbols and pigments create some kind of energy, and apparently that all has something to dictate important aspects of his life.”

“Like what?”

“Like who he can mate with. And as none of us are inked up like that, humans aren’t even a possibility in his mind. It’s why he pretty much treats us like we’re barely even here. We’re lesser beings so far as he’s concerned. Or, at least unimportant in his grand scheme of things.”

“What a dickish way to live. Letting some silly ink dictate who you can and cannot be with? It’s ridiculous.”

“And how his kind operate. As you say in your country, it is what it is.”

“I hate that expression.”

“So do I, but in this instance, it does seem to be rather appropriate given the situation.”

Darla allowed herself one more glance at Heydar’s muscular form reclining in his bunk, then returned to her own resting place. She may have recovered from whatever the Raxxians did when they’d abducted her, but she was still a bit low on energy.

She had been staring at the smooth curved metal forming the top of her bunk space, her eyes slowly becoming heavy with both exhaustion as well as boredom, when the secondary door to their holding chamber opened. A pair of Raxxians strode in and surveyed the lot of them. Darla felt her adrenaline surge, taken aback by their frightening appearance. At least she’d had an initial exposure to take the edge off of their dramatic entry.

Then she thought about what happened to that man. He was taken away, and it was her fault. And worst of all, he could have been their afternoon snack for all she knew, and the Raxxians might still be hungry.

“All of you, stand here,” the larger of the pair demanded.

It was just a guess, but she was pretty sure their ranking system was based as much on physical prowess as much as age superiority.

The humans all moved into a line, the sharp tang of nervous sweat tinging the air. Heydar, however, remained in his bunk. The aliens glanced at him but made no move to roust him. He was nearly as large as they were, for one, and if what Mei had said was true, provoking him could provide their captors with more of a problem than they wanted to deal with at the moment.

The Raxxians turned to the line of obedient livestock and stepped closer, walking slowly past each of the much smaller humans. Periodically they would stop and perform a closer examination, turning a person’s head side to side or feeling their body, likely gauging the meat on their bones. Looking at their frightening teeth, it seemed possible they ate the bones as well.

Victor stood firm, his jaw flexing with obvious hatred. The muscles under his shirt were tense, ready for a fight, but the alien captors were entirely uninterested in any sort of conflict with this puny human. He stood tall all the same, but the Raxxians merely glanced at him, sizing him up in an instant, then moved on to the next captive.

Then, as quickly as they had entered the chamber, the Raxxians departed. The humans let out a collective sigh of relief. It looked like they would all live to see another day. Heydar looked out at them all with an almost bored gaze, then returned to pondering the walls of his bunk, or meditating, or whatever it was he was doing.

As for Darla, her adrenaline dropping back to normal levels, she thought doing the same sounded pretty darn good right about now. Within just a few minutes nestled in her bunk, she drifted off into a restless sleep.

OceanofPDF.com

CHAPTER SIX

Darla was sleeping, but it was a shallow slumber. Barely napping, really, which, given the strange environment she had found herself in, made perfect sense. But nevertheless, she was more exhausted than she might have originally realized. So much so that the first rumble coursing through the ship failed to rouse her from her contemplations.

She was still in the zone, lingering in that in-between state where dream and reality’s edges began to blend together as her subconscious mind attempted to reconcile all the impossible events of the day, and it was quite possible she’d have stayed that way.