They defer to the alien I have known as Freak, but hearing him referred to as Captain Tasin makes me start to think of him that way as well. The other soldiers are also in their underwear for a bit, but after the first few hours of flying about in space, they all put on uniforms. Black boots to the knees, black jumpsuits everywhere else. Shiny. Tight.
Freak looks hot. He was already wildly attractive, but seeing him in charge adds a little extra zing to the whole affair.
They really are at war, I realize.
I overhear tactical discussions about things I don’t understand, and I am sure I am only getting half of the information because they’re probably just thinking the worst parts to each other.
I watch them walk around the ship in their shiny, shiny uniforms and sometimes they’re so shiny and so muscly that I forget I’m traumatized and have been abducted. It’s like being on tour with a bunch of alien strippers.
I was supposed to be doing something, though. Getting water. Finding my dad.
Finding my dad.
I haven’t even let myself think that as a possibility since he went missing. When he first failed to return, I did try to go after him. I asked where his mission had taken him. I asked to be able to purchase a ship. He’d taken ours, but I could sell the assets accumulated over the years, the house, the stock, and go after him.
I asked, and then I asked again. I sold what was left to be sold, then I had no goods left and the question of how I was going to feed myself started to become an issue. Then, of course, they suggested marriage. Because selling my body to a man for his use forever was what they considered to be a happy ending for me.
No matter how many times I requested it, the elders wouldn’t let me go off planet on my own. Well, not until I agreed to fly directly into the sun, anyway, and I am pretty sure my dad is not there.
The memories have an odd sensation to them, because I’d already started to forget the part where I tried to find him and they stopped me. They broke me of my desire to find him by refusing to honor my wishes. They grounded me, effectively.
It was a matter of months, and each of those days in those months represented another little chink taken out of my armor.At first I tried not to panic. Then I did panic. Then I tried to do something, and then I couldn’t, and it broke me. It broke me so surely that when they offered me the chance to fly into the sun, they believed me when I agreed.
The fact that my father left me behind when he always took me on trading missions was what cracked me in the first place. Now that I think back to it, I have to assume he knew there was danger. I wish he’d taken me into it. I’d rather be in danger than be left behind.
“Pet.” Freak puts his head around the door of the little space room we share.
“Hm?”
“It’s time to eat. We have burgers.”
I sit on Freak’s knee at a table that would otherwise be ridiculously oversized for me, and I eat burgers that are ridiculously oversized for me, and I feel a kind of contentment and peace that I haven’t felt in a long time.
The aliens are talking among themselves, mostly out loud, so I am not left out. I am sure they are having their secret discussions as well, but I don’t need to be part of those. I like just being here, being held, feeling as though I have escaped misery and tragedy one after the other.
“Alright, pet,” he says, patting my ass. “I have something special in mind for you tonight.”
“Oh?”
“Training. You have to learn to discipline your thoughts.”
“Why?”
“Because I cannot take you around telepaths if you are constantly mentally screaming about which one of them is hot, or which one you’d like to push off a bridge.”
I give him an innocent look. “I thought those things?”
“Yes, pet,” he smirks. “You did.”
“Tonight?”
“Tonight, and before tonight, and…”
“I don’t think humans can control their thoughts,” I interrupt him. “I think we just have them. If you don’t want people hearing them, put a tinfoil hat or something on me.”
“There’s a difference between the stream of consciousness you experience, and thoughts that are more projected,” he says. “The ones that are loud in your head may as well have been spoken out loud in reality.”
“Really?” I grin.
