Close Encounters 04: of the 7th Kind

Now, to finish the look...

I set the pointed tip of the massive knife against my left cheek and swipe it downwards, cutting my skin shallowly.

"Ree!" Rune exclaims, and I feel his gift press against my brain, ready to restrain me remotely even as he starts forward to physically do the same.

"No!" I bark at him, and at the pain that follows the searing, icy heat of the cut. Argh! Fuck, that hurts! I may have cut too deep but now is not the time to worry about it. "I will do this! I will!"

Hot blood drips down my cheek like tears, and yet I make another cut, diagonally this time so the two lines form a squat sort of St. Andrew's cross. Once it is done, I grab a square of cloth and press it against my newly mangled cheek -- which stings like a mother -- and then briefly catch a glimpse of my reflection in the knife's broad blade.

There. I look like newly minted property, a certified Tulun D'tel slave, collar and all (although the collar doesn't fit too well. I fashioned it from another belt). I drop the knife. It clangs onto the floor.

Rune nostrils flare. Dryth and blood have a very special relationship, I know.

"Why?" he asks, voice low and dark.

I scowl at him. "So I'll blend in at Tulun D'tel. All slaves look like this and no one ever looks at them, and it's not weird if they stick to their masters like they're glued to them. It's perfect as a disguise, to fly under the radar. No one fucks with a slave."

There are so many of them running around on those streets, slaves of every type and race of alien. If they have something like hair, one side is shaved off. If they have eyes, underneath at least one of them there's the X. Most also have very flashy facial piercings but I figure two out of three are sufficient.

His eyes go dark. "You are not leaving this ship, Ree."

Oh, for fuck's sake.

"That's right! I'm not leaving this ship," I snap, just shy of yelling at him. "You're leaving, and taking me with you. That's different."

He observes me silently and I see my words sinking in. I can feel his reluctance like a piercing, coppery stench in the air and I already know that he's about to contradict me and order me again to stay.

I don't know if I can take another order from him, though.

"Bane is in trouble," I insist, looking Rune dead in the eyes. "I know it. I feel it in my heart and my gut. He isn't coming back on his own. We need to go get him."

Rune's eyes cloud over. He's angry. Maybe at me, for contradicting his royal ass.

Good. So am I. At him, at myself, at Bane, at the universe.

"We can't go on without him anyway. We need the supplies he went out to get. The filters, at the least." I figure if my tender feelings aren't enough to sway him, an appeal to his pragmatic side should do it.

There is a source of food and fuel on board, I reason -- the forest. But the filters need to be brought in. Without them, the journey can't go on. Or rather, it can, until it quietly, slowly, can't any more. I really don't fancy dying of carbon monoxide poisoning or some mundane shit like that.

(I mean, I don't fancy dying at all, but I'm in bloody space. If I die, let me fall into a supernova or something. Make it look awesome in an obituary. "Valerie Greene died fighting valiantly with rabid, eight-armed space monkeys, saving the life one of her alien lovers, and tragically fell into a sarlacc pit in the process." Minimum.)

"I shall-" Rune starts to speak.

"No," I interrupt immediately, knowing exactly what he's bound to suggest. "I'm not letting both of you out of my sight." The thought alone makes me go cold from the very core of my soul outward. "I won't stay behind. Over my dead body. If you leave, I swear I will find a way to creep after you." And then probably die out on the blue moss plains before I reached the city, but that goes without saying.

I cannot, I will not sit here and wait for both of them. I'd rather fight the space monkeys with the eight arms and foam around the mouth, and then dive bomb into the toothy abyss. I'd rather fellate every Krgotu on this godforsaken planet and then fly back to Earth in the same box and clothes that I left in. I'm seriously serious.

Somehow I know that if Rune leaves, he too will not come back to me. It'd be a slow, slow death on this too-big, empty ship. I am trembling from my heart to my toes at the mere prospect of it.

"Why?" Rune asks again, and I almost want to laugh. Of course he chooses this moment to be Curious George and ask existential questions.

"Because I fucking love you. Both of you," I tell him, my words clear and loud even though my voice is cracking under the weight of the situation, and then quickly add, "and I know that your language probably doesn't have that word. In my language, it... it means that..." I search for adequate words.

What does 'love' mean, to me, right now? After all that has happened to me, and all that has been happening these past couple of weeks? Months? Years?

"It means..." I sigh, gulp some air. "I means that, regardless of... how...useless I am, I want to be by your side. Always. Dammit. I want to help, somehow. I want to be there for... I want to..."

Those last words squeeze out through a tightening throat. I take a deep breath and struggle to hold eye contact even as my vision blurs a little and the backs of my eyeballs start to prick. Nonono. No woman, no cry. No time for woman crying right now. I visualize swallowing down the tears.

"Let us go to Bane's side now, please," I say, and then beg from the bottom of my heart, wishing for my words to have only a fraction of that power that his had in my head. "Please, Rune."

From the bottom of my heart.

"Please."

***

My cheek throbs and my feet, wrapped in sturdy cloth due to lack of shoes, are sore. I'm sweating rivers and feeling dizzy, both because of the heat and because the air is thin and full of some chemical my body isn't used to -- or maybe it's just the armpit stench of the city that's getting to my head. The back of my neck is raw from where the belt-collar is biting into and chafing my skin with every step. I have (very meekly) asked Rune to stop yanking my chain so much, but he just glared at me, shortened my leash even more and insisted on me walking so close to him that I physically keep bumping into his side (which is much like bumping into a brick wall. Over and over again. I feel like a squash ball.).

I'd complain more loudly but to be honest, I'd crawl up his bum if I could right now. The Tulun D'tel crowd frightens the living daylights out of me. Everyone is a head or more taller than me so that I have no way of knowing which direction I'm even going in -- all I see above are unfriendly, strange alien faces whipping by me, the tops of absolutely identical-looking skyscrapers, and a small patch of sky between which is entirely starless and has a sickly greenish hue due to the smog and the light pollution.

If Rune ever lets me go, he'll be lost in the crowd within a split second, and I'll be swallowed and trampled and nobody will even notice. Being invisible -- if not by the virtue of my diminutive body size then by designation through my half-naked head and the oozing, throbbing X on my cheek -- has its downsides.

Combine all that with the knowledge that there are Krgotu scattered about somewhere beyond my line of sight and it's a new and exciting type of utter nightmare.

I grit my teeth against all those various aches and pains and force myself to focus.

Bane.

Ever since we entered the city perimeter -- after Rune ran across the moss desert with me perched on his back, getting us from the ship to the city within half an hour or so -- I've actually felt closer to the General. I know it's just gut feeling, but I could swear there's more to it. Like I have an actual link to him, an invisible thread that's connected to him, tied around my right pinky toe.

Bane. Need to find Bane. Need to help Bane. Need to be with Bane.

Scratch that.

Will find Bane. Will help Bane. Will be with Bane.

Better.

And when we get out of this, we're going to start shopping online.

I grimly try to hold on to that word 'when'.

***

A food market. Every city on every planet has at least one of those. Vurn X'lora 15 had one, too -- in fact, the brothel I worked at was right at the edge of it.

The word 'food' is a much broader term in space, you see. Anything and anyone can be food. In fact, everyone is food for someone else. Sometimes people just don't know their predator yet. It's the ciiircle of liiife.

This place -- think of it as a China Town that looks like a boutique street but doubles as an abattoir that's located in the middle the most disreputable, off-limits, high-end red light district --is where Rune's gift and my intuition and our combined eavesdropping skills lead us. I look around, seeing the buildings loom over me in this tiny alley like they are about to collapse on us any second now, then seeing the dour-looking aliens eyeballing us both (but mostly my companion, on account of him being an impressive and scary yet solitary Space Mongol, and me being a non-entity slave), and press even closer to Rune, holding on to his wrist with every ounce of strength I have left.

After a couple of hours of walking through the city, my unwilling slave master has dragged me off the arterial roads and to the side streets where the press of the people isn't so terrible. The streets are lined with little shops and flea market vendors who observed their potential customers quite closely. Much too closely for my comfort.

As soon as they laid eyes on Rune, people's mouths (and brains, according to Rune) were murmuring something about "Dryth" and something about a "food auction".

I thought I had heard wrong on the last bits, but a "food auction" turned out to be exactly what it says: Pieces of meat being auctioned off at eye-popping prices, the whole process subject to the type of safety precautions that would be reserved for priceless artifacts and nuclear warheads Earth. Not only because of the monetary value of the merchandise, but also because food is such a stressor for just about every alien race.

As we pass by some of the open-fronted auction houses, I see that some of that auctioned meat is still alive and rattling its cages, heckling and howling at the passersby. I shudder.

Why is Bane here? If he is here, that is...

But I somehow know that he is, even before Rune's head suddenly swivels into the same direction that I've wanted to go in as we hit a crossroad, like he's a bloodhound that has caught a whiff of his prey.

Now it's just a matter of keeping up with Rune as he starts forward, marching like a living missile down an alley, then another, past and through vendor's stands, up some stairs and into an abandoned-looking, vine-crawling, half-dilapidated building.

As soon as we are inside the 'lobby area', the temperature drops fifteen degrees at least even though there are no walls or doors, just columns. It smells of mold and briny water and echoes with the rasp of the links of the slim but sturdy chain that connects to my collar, and the howl of the wind. My feet (which, by the way, are absolutely filthy, oh god, so much gutter oil) slip around on the floor. I struggle to stay upright.

He's here. I can feel it like I can feel my own heartbeat in my throat.

We cross the gloomy front hall and walk out into an open-air atrium type of place, a slightly sunken area with broken tiles for a floor and a (probably not entirely intentional) hole in the ceiling through which unidentified liquid drips at irregular intervals. Some artificial light also streams in from above, from façade illumination and windows at higher levels of the surrounding buildings, throwing just enough light on the scene.

Rune comes to a halt before I do and my collar chokes me painfully for a second, also cutting off the desperate yell that wanted to spill out, but I don't care.

BANE!!!

He's lying prostrate on the floor.

And there's a...

Uhm, why is there a naked woman on top of him?

****TBC soon***