Waves of Doubt

The big insectoid alien across the table from me stared with unblinking, segmented eyes. I stared right back, waiting.

"Ready?" I asked him after a heartbeat.

His antennae twitched—yes, he was ready.

I took a breath. "|Okay| . . . Go!"

He scooped the plasma rifle up off the table and deftly dismantled it piece by piece, setting the parts down as he worked with his pair of long, curved limbs that functioned as a set of dexterous hands.

With four jointed digits at the end, they could use manipulate pretty much any tool or object with ease, as he was demonstrating with the plasma rifle.

Once it was completely apart, he picked all the parts up and put them back together, making it whole once more. Then, he dropped it down with a metallic clatter and threw his arms up to signify that he was done.

"Finish!" I yelped, hitting the stop timer button on my cell phone screen.

My eyes bulged at the display shown and I let out a dismayed cry, falling back in my chair. "|38 seconds!| You are much faster than me."

In fact, it had taken me over a minute to do it.

Critter (that was the name I gave him) rubbed the main joint of his clawed arms against his antennae in a pleased manner, creating a sort of shifting sound.

If I recalled correctly, it was a sound called "stridulation", which was something a lot of animals did, like crickets or rattlesnakes.

"Good work, |big guy|," I said, smiling at how happy Critter was from this small victory.

He was a serf that helped out around on the ship, and there was a second one lurking somewhere, too. I called that one Creature.

Neither of them had names when I met them, so of course, I had to give them their own. It was a lot easier than going around saying "hey you!" and hoping they knew who I was talking about.

Sure, Wolf did it just fine, but he was him and I was me. I liked names.

The two serfs had been nothing short of alarming to see the first time I'd finally come out of the drugged stupor the surgery had left me in.

To me, they had looked like giant, man-eating praying mantises. I had been convinced they were going to kill me and eat me—not necessarily in that order.

It turned out they were the help.

Their race, known as the in'qua, were strikingly insect in appearance, complete with a hard chitin exoskeleton, big compound eyes, and thin, fibrous wings. I didn't think they were used for flying, though, but I couldn't be sure since I'd never seen them in use.

Of course, their arms were the most dangerous-looking things about them. When a situation called for it, they could unfold their arms with a second joint that hid a set of long, sickle-like claws.

I'd only seen those once, though, and that was when Creature had cut through some sheet metal he was going to use for repairs like it was paper.

"Yes, yes, me good," Critter said, his pincers and the mandibles within working overtime to pronounce the Yaut'ja words.

His kind had even more trouble speaking the language than I did, but he and Creature were still a lot more fluent than I was.

"Let us go again," I said, resetting the timer on my phone. "I will beat you one of these times."

Though Critter seemed eager for another round, he quickly stood up and dipped his head, backing away from the table.

Well, he didn't stand up all the way . . . The in'qua were an incredibly tall race, standing at almost fourteen feet high from my guesstimating, so he had to stoop down on his fours most of the time.

There was only one reason why he would act like that. My heart jumped in my throat and I swallowed it back down. Turning around, I smiled.

"|Wolf, hi|!" I chirped.

He stood in the doorway, over eight feet of pure muscle, and my breath hitched just looking at him. The only thing he was wearing was his mask since the atmosphere was currently tailored to my needs.

I thought I'd gotten used to him wandering around naked, especially since he had no visible genitalia most of the time (they were very much reptilian in most aspects), but these days . . .

Things were complicated with us—or, well, with me anyway. Wolf acted like everything was normal. He acted like he didn't notice that I burned up whenever we met in the hallway, sat together, or trained. That his mere presence distracted me something fierce.

It was getting worse and worse as my frustrations grew. I didn't know what to do with this raw attraction I harbored for him, or how I should go about even beginning to try to explain.

The thought of rejection kept me frozen.

But my imagination was always running wild.

I imagined what it would be like to feel his hands all over me. Those strong, deadly hands, suddenly so soft; commanding but gentle. Our bodies pressed together . . .

"What are you doing?" he asked me, striding inside the room and jolting me out of my thoughts.

Quickly, I looked away from him to keep my mind from running off like that again. Like it had been doing for weeks—or, what I thought was weeks. Staving off these uncouth desires was becoming more and more difficult, and I knew he would notice eventually if he hadn't already.

"We are competing," I replied, putting extra effort into keeping my voice even.

Wolf came up behind my chair and leaned forward, his hand on my shoulder and back almost against me. It only made my heart race and I knew then he had to know.

That he was doing this on purpose because it amused him, even if he was playing it was cool.

"Competing in what?" he asked. Some of his dreadlocks fell over his shoulder and brushed against mine.

My mind was in a fog and I tried to answer straight. "|We're seeing who can dismantle and reassemble this uh, this gun the fastest. Critter always wins|." I had to switch back to English since I couldn't concentrate.

Wolf huffed and moved away, freeing me from my temporary spell.

"|You wanna see if you can beat his time|?" I wondered, motioning toward the gun. I still couldn't quite look at him.

"It is unlikely that I can do better than him."

"|C'mon, try it|," I urged, getting up so he could have my seat.

We were hanging out in a sitting room of sorts that just had a table and some chairs. It was probably supposed to be for meetings, but it was hardly ever used so I had appropriated it as a recreation room.

I often visited to listen to music or read the handful of books I had downloaded to my phone.

That was one of the many things the serfs were good at—Critter had been able to retrofit my phone charger to the consoles on the bridge, making it possible for me to charge my phone.

Even though I didn't have access to the internet or any signals, anything I had downloaded prior to being catapulted into space was fully functional. Including a good chunk of games I had and my stash of music.

Anything that didn't require data usage was fair game and I couldn't have been happier.

Though Wolf hesitated at first, he eventually relented and sat down. "Fine. I will compete, as well."

I grinned, glad for the distraction, and picked up my phone. "|Okay, Critter's best time is 36 seconds. I know you don't know what that is but just do it as fast as you can and I'll tell you your time|," I said, talking a little faster than normal in my excitement.

It wasn't often that Wolf decided to humor me and my attempts to entertain myself.

At least he was wearing his mask, so he just had to wait for the translator to catch up to my babbling.

He was fluent enough to understand me without the mask in most cases, but we still hadn't quite surpassed the language barrier as of yet.

I was picking up Yaut'ja slowly but surely, at least, though I still struggled.

A good chunk of the language was none-verbal, but because I lacked the necessary mandibles to communicate with, some of it was just beyond me. I tried to make up for it with my habit of using my hands to talk and just . . . redirecting that energy into making it useful.

Most of the time it proved unsuccessful so I just lapsed back to English.

I didn't even know how long it had been since I'd started living with him. Months? A year or two? Everything just blended together out in space.

It didn't help that 'time' was not the same sort of linear concept that it was on Earth. It wasn't mapped or kept track of, it just happened organically without anyone needing to quantify it.

I didn't like it. But I worked with what I had.

My phone didn't even help. It was so far out of range that I didn't trust it to update properly when it died and I had to recharge it. It used my service provider to keep up to date, so it wasn't on an atomic timer or anything.

If the date was still updating normally, it had been a little over a year since the incident in Gunnison. It had to be more accurate than any guess I could muster.

"Are you ready?" I asked Wolf, my finger hovering over the button.

He sighed, then nodded.

"|Okay| . . . Go!" I started the timer.

At an incredibly slow pace, he took everything apart from the rifle and set it down, then picked it all up again and reassembled it. I watched the timer all the while, snickering to myself, but I didn't dare say anything until he was done.

When he set the completed rifle down, I stopped the timer.

"|It took you more than two minutes! You did it even slower than me|," I taunted him.

Critter skittered over to my side of the table and peeked at my screen. He didn't speak any English, so I was going to have to explain.

"You were much faster than him. By a great many," I told him.

At first, Critter was going to celebrate, but he quickly shrank away. However, Wolf congratulated him as well.

Sort of.

"He is of course going to be better than me. He does it more often. Even you do it more often now that you have made a game of it," Wolf said.

It was close enough.

"Good job, Critter," I cooed, patting his head. I had gotten used to the weird way his rough exoskeleton felt with its tiny hairs and bumpy texture.

As if that was enough permission, he did his happy face rub.

"If only I could . . ." I struggled to find the word and deferred to Wolf. "|Persuade|?"

"It is 'persuade'."

"|Yeah|. If only I could persuade Creature to try it, too. He says 'me have important tasks'," I mocked, doing my best impression of Creature's voice.

"Everyone has more important tasks they could be doing," said Wolf, giving Critter a pointed look.

The serf dipped his whole body in a low bow and skittered out of the room.

"Bye, Critter," I called with a wave.

When he was out of sight, Wolf gave me a withering look that I could see even with his mask on. He said, "You indulge him too much."

I scoffed. "|Recreation is important, too. It keeps morale high|."

"As you say." His tone had the same energy as an eye-roll.

"|Sorry. You probably came for a reason and I interrupted you with shenanigans. Did you need something|?" I asked him, turning my phone off for the time being.

I grabbed the extra chair and dragged it over to sit next to him at the table.

As much as I complained about where my mind went every time I was alone with him, I loved being close and having these little chats. Just spending time with him in general put me in a good mood.

He nodded. "There are matters that I must attend to, so our destination has been set."

"|How long will it take to get there|?" I asked, leaning on my elbows.

"I can open a portal nearby, so it will be before you need to sleep again."

Since I was so obsessed with wanting to know how much time stuff was going to take, Wolf had come up with the idea that using my sleeping schedule as a basis was good enough.

He also tended to use day and night cycles when we were on a planet, which I appreciated.

"Where will we go?" I asked.

I tried to use Yaut'ja as much as I could, but sometimes it was just so much easier conversing in English. Quicker, too, because I didn't have to pause and gather my thoughts as much.

"There is a clan that has called upon me. I owe them a favor and they wish to collect," he said. "It is good timing, really . . . We are running low on replacement parts and the ship needs to be refueled soon."

Curious, I asked, "What kind of favor?"

"I intend to drop off some of the meat you have been hunting for us, perhaps a little extra to pay for anything else we might need," he said thoughtfully, lounging in his seat.

Not unkindly, I said, "Ah, so you have been making me work to pay off a debt and have been calling it training!"

His mandibles clicked together in amusement and he patted my head, making me blush. "It has been both work and training. I also told them they could ask anything of me, so they want me to make good on that."

Smiling, I playfully batted his hand away and said, "Why do you owe them this?"

Wolf motioned vaguely at me. "They gave us quarter while you were injured and removed the parasites within you. This is the cost of that labor."

My stomach churned and my chest tightened. I put my hand against my sternum, pressing against the tunic I was wearing (I had lost my set of Earth clothes when they'd been cut off me for surgery prep, so I just wore a simple shift to cover up).

Even covered by loose fabric, I could feel the raised scar that bisected my entire abdomen.

It wasn't Wolf's fault, but I didn't like being reminded of that time in my life. It was the reason I still wore clothes instead of taking Wolf's more natural approach: I didn't want to keep looking at my scars.

Wolf's were tales of triumph and hardships won.

This one . . . It was just a reminder of my bitter defeat.

I'd been a husk during my recovery. I didn't even remember a lot of it, as I'd been so sick on their alien medicine and out of sorts. For the most part, I'd been an invalid and relied heavily on Wolf and his serfs to take care of me.

My anatomy had been foreign, so the surgery they used to take the xenomorph embryos out of me had been extremely invasive and damaging. Physical therapy had been even more grueling than it had been on Earth when I'd broken my legs.

That had been a while ago, though, maybe six months or so (if my phone's clock could be trusted). I was up, I was training, hunting, and I actually felt really good.

Almost good enough to do a real trophy hunt, not the easy meat hunts he had me doing.

They'd also kind of tried to fix my knee, but it was pretty much beyond saving even for them. Instead, Wolf had procured a brace for me to wear. It made it possible for me to move without a limp, to run and jump and fight better than ever.

Finally, when I'd finished wallowing in self-pity, I spoke. "|I'll find a way to thank them|."

"Unnecessary," Wolf assured me. "Paying them with the meat and completing the task they ask of me will suffice."

"|Still| . . ." Shaking my head, I decided to drop it. "|Did they tell you what they wanted|?"

He nodded. "They mentioned a warrant. Normally I would be paid, but I will do this for free."

I made a face. "You mean a warrant for your . . . arbitrator work?"

"That is correct."

An arbitrator was like being a space-cop for his people. Normally a clan had a few of their own to help enforce rules, but as a clanless, Wolf went out and chased down fugitives that had escaped and went on the run.

So, I guess he was closer to a bounty hunter than anything.

I stared at my hands for a moment before meeting his gaze again. "Will I come with you on their ship?"

"I was planning on taking you, yes. You should be able to interact with others besides me and the serfs," he said, matter-of-fact as always.

Nodding, I said, "But not by myself?"

Wolf made his amused sound and said, "No, I would not leave you unaccompanied with a clan that you are unfamiliar with."

"|Oh. Good|." I let out a breath of relief.

It sucked being left on the ship. The last time he'd met with another clan, I had still been in poor health and it had seemed like ages before he'd finally returned.

Having him around as moral support for my public debut as his companion was a relief. I was always comfortable around him, almost as if he was a security blanket for me.

It had always been like that, even when we'd first met. He just had that aura about him that helped me feel a little more at ease.

"I do not believe we will be there for long. Though, if I am lucky enough to draw the attention of even one female, we might end up staying longer," he said with blithe indifference and a wistful chuff.

Unbidden, my hackles raised and I squeezed my hands together.

After chewing on that, I said, "|When you say 'attention', do you mean| . . . ?"

Maybe I was misunderstanding the translation.

He gave me a long look, but I wouldn't return it and instead busied myself with packing up the rifle to put it away, since we weren't going to be playing the game anymore.

"Yes, attention as in their interest. As in mating and bearing a child."

I stood up faster than I meant to, making a big clatter as the rifle box smashed against the table. I swore under my breath and checked it, but it wasn't damaged.

Wolf didn't say anything.

I pushed stray hair out of my face and tried to appear blase as I said, "|Oh|."

"Have I offended you?" he asked me.

It took me a whole two seconds to respond while I tried to maintain my composure. "No . . . no. No, I am not offended. |I just . . . I gotta go|."

And like that, I ran the fuck away.

Jealousy wasn't entirely new to me, being that I had younger siblings. They took attention away from my parents and stuff like that—general petty child jealousies.

This though . . . it had me more fired up than I'd ever been before. Angry, embarrassed, full of shame . . .

Why had I thought that he'd be interested in me? And if he was, what made me think we would be exclusive? Especially when he had females of his own kind he could be with.

They would be more of a match for him than puny, weak, human me.

The crush that I'd originally developed for Wolf had only grown as he'd cared for me during my darkest time. Had I just been projecting my desire for any relationship onto him?

Did I imagine things that weren't there?

No, there had to be something there. If he didn't care even an ounce for me, he wouldn't have gone through all the trouble to bring me. To wrack up debt to save my life. There was something there, I'd just never bothered to talk to him about him because . . . because . . .

Because what? I was too shy? Nervous? Scared?

Never had I let that stop me before.

I made it to the armory and felt even more shrouded by a gloomy cloud. I put the rifle box back and then leaned against the counter, my head bowed.

All I wanted was HIM—and for him to want me, too.

Surely I was making a mountain out of a molehill. If I'd wanted something more, if I hadn't been sure about his intentions, I should have asked.

How could I have expected an alien to understand without communicating? It was already a bad idea to play coy with Earth men, so what was I doing not being forward with an extraterrestrial man?

Instead of coming clean when he'd asked me, I'd just run away. That wasn't the old Nichole, so why would the new Nichole do that?

The thought of rejection was hard to swallow, though.

If he did reject me, I was sure I'd get over it eventually. I hadn't just come here because I thought I'd get a boyfriend out of it. That had only been part of the reason why I'd called him, why I'd agreed to go with him.

How stupid would I have been to let this opportunity slip between my fingers? Even if he didn't see me as anything more than a protege, I still had so much to look forward to.

All I had to do was figure out where we stood and then go from there. We were both adults and would handle this situation as such.

More than anything, I knew that if I wanted something, I just had to go get it.