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It was never supposed to be her fight to begin with, yet she felt the creeping sense that she’d be forced to participate. Take a side. Decide who was worth saving—and who she would sacrifice if it came down to it. It was a heavy fucking burden and she was never equipped to bear it. She should have been back home, married and unhappy, popping out children, too occupied to see what was happening here.
This would still take place without her involvement. She understood that. And she couldn’t be certain what part she would play in it but she was shacking up with the one person who might be capable of blowing the whole Aerinus apart.
She didn’t think she could be with him without taking a side.
The briefing came to a close. Other Ternetzi fighters had gathered to listen in, their attention pivoted to Caligher, as if his word was the driving force behind their survival. Light flickered in waves from alien to alien, starting at the center and traveling outward.
Ternetzis avoided the concept of hierarchy, but Lucca noticed them forming a pseudo-hierarchy with Caligher as their head. It seemed unintentional. No one noticed they were doing it except for her.
Everyone scattered off and they returned to socializing.
But she was at odds.
Whenever she thought she could sink into something familiar, she was jarred out of it by some reminder of where she was. Or she simply couldn’t keep up with basic conversation.
Her translator couldn’t make heads or tails of the way Caligher and Zoramia both spoke at once. They didn’t listen. They both inserted words in a constant stream. They were fast, loud talkers and they acted as if it was normal.
Occasionally she latched onto a sentence she could follow and she tried to engage with the group. But she disengaged just as fast, slowly growing disheartened. Even Morwong spoke that way.
When she couldn’t understand the things coming out of Caligher’s mouth, it altered her whole perception of him—like they could be unceremoniously cut off and never understand each other again.
That was a deeply unsettling revelation.
She snapped a picture of her drink. The pastel-colored blossoms and jewel-toned leaves looked too pretty to eat. Her camera would immortalize it. She tentatively chewed one of the little blue flowers. Bitter and floral. She found the crisp texture excellent. It was the same chompy sensation of iceberg lettuce. God, fuck, she missed the simplicity of Earth. Things had been so predictable. Here, her senses were always out of sorts with expectation. She could handle a little bit of it, for novelty, but she wanted somethingnormal.
She experimented with the drink and the other blossoms. At least it was pleasantly stimulating, but still exotic. A vacation that would never end—a sense that every bed would fit her wrong forever. The Ternetzis talked and talked and she nodded along with a smile.
Somewhere behind Morwong, she saw the interesting parts of the bar. There was a fighting pit where Ternetzis grappled to get their energy out. A band took the stage built into the rough inner wall. Most of the time their upbeat music blended seamlessly with the ambiance of the crowd. For the refrain, the music dipped into the uncanny valley and jarred the ever-living fuck out of her.
That wasn’t music.
That was rabid, bone-grating madness.
It reminded her harshly that she’d lost her way home and would never be warm again.
Studying the scene at length, she observed how the musicians responded to the surge of the crowd. They seemed in sync. Energy danced from person to person, linking them all in a sort of… electrical grid. She sensed it buzzing overhead like power lines, but she couldn’t tap into it like everyone else.
The spark eluded her.
She finished her drink and stared at Morwong desperately.
“Need more please,” she uttered, reduced to little phonetic grunts. He stood up at once.
She needed to be drunk enough to wipe this jolting divide out of her soul. Until she was one with them. Shewantedto be one with them and forget this chilling sense of isolation.
When she looked at them, she felt that they were too similar not to try. They could make it work, somehow. They had to—or they would all be doomed.
Or perhaps the Ternetzis would be just fine and the humans would bring on their own annihilation in a spectacularly human fashion. Maybe humans would simply skirt that knife’s edge between self-destruction and expansion like they always did. Despite their best efforts, they would survive forever like cockroaches.
She found human behavior—even her own behavior—fascinatingly grotesque. Like a pig that wanted to roll in its own mud, Lucca longed to be reunited with her species. The Ternetzis were far more elegant and far better at leaving their planets for the cosmos—but she was struck by the different language they spoke at every turn.
Only Caligher felt like home, and just barely, because he already sort of talked like her.
No one else in this place did.
Beyond the space where Morwong sat, she saw something truly sobering. A gaping hole in the floor dropped into outer space. Patrons sat around it and dangled their feet casually through—treating it like a hot tub.
It could kill her.
