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“Unnecessary? Ha! If I hadn’t practiced my rusty first-aid knowledge on you, you would be dead right now!”
“Would I?”
“Of course you–”
What died were the words in her mouth. One look at the only unbandaged cut on his chest, and she saw it clearly.
The wound had gotten smaller.
“Holy Earth cow! You can regenerate!”
Therak released her wrist, his eye color returning to normal. “Like I said, no need for a medkit. My body will heal within an hour. But I do need sustenance. Regeneration burns all energy reserves.”
Relief at his fast recovery washed over Miya, making her ignore how he had diverted the conversation. Let him think he was keeping his emotions under wraps; Miya was onto the caring and protective assassin.
She smiled broadly. "Why, Therak, are you politely asking me to cook for you?”
A small smile split his lips, the tip of a fang showing. “You have my permission to use the food replicator. For meandyourself.”
“Sheesh, you’re so generous!” She mock-rolled her eyes as she got up from the lounge.
"Will you make me a burr-ito?... You appear to be good at it.”
Miya grinned. His cute way of saying, 'Thank you forunnecessarily bandaging me’ had just earned him as many burritos as he wanted.
19
I Don’t Bite
As Miya searched for a food replicator with a functioning, non-blood-splattered screen, she thought about how things had changed in the short time since she had released Therak from his cage.
She had gone from fearing and mistrusting the assassin to joking around with him and preparing him Earth food. Amid a gory hall where who knew how many people had been eaten. While the chance of the two of them getting eaten was pretty dang high.
Miya must have lost her mind somewhere along the way, but right now she just wanted to enjoy the peaceful moment and her potentially last meal.
“Once we eat,” she told Therak while his two burritos were being 3D-printed, “I want to go to the command room. The main computer there can give us more info on the planet and stuff.”
“When do both suns set.” It was not a question but a statement.
Apparently, they were thinking about the same thing. “Precisely. We need to know how much time we have until the megagull comes out to play.”
Therak pushed himself up into a sitting position, slowly but without signs of being in serious pain. “Is that how the creature is called?”
That answered the question Miya had wanted to ask him. Whatever this thing was, it was not an animal he had seen or heard of. It must be native to Xera, the most welcoming planet she had ever visited… not.
“No idea, Therak. Never seen the likes of it during my travels.”
Miya returned to him and handed him his plate and a bottle of water. “I made you two burritos with the available ingredients closest to the original ones. It’s not the same as an Earth burrito, but… If you end up liking the replicated version, I’ll make you more.”
He accepted the food with a nod and a look into her eyes, which made her warm all over. Who needed words of gratitude when Therak’s intense gaze said it all?
She smiled like a kid in an intergalactic candy store and hurried back to the food replicator.
The alien version of a sophisticated vending machine had several automated options available, where you got a specific extraterrestrial dish with the press of a single button. No need to select every single ingredient like with the burritos, which Miya had learned to replicate at the space station after lots of playing around with alien ingredients.
Starving, she now went for ameladazastew. As much as she liked her kind’s dishes, some species were more advanced than humans when it came not just to technology but also to cuisine. And some replicated meals tasted less like wet cardboard than others.
“I say we call the freaky-icky creature megagull,” Miya babbled while watching her food appear molecule by molecule on the recyclable plate. ”Since I generally like bats and bulldogs, while seagulls give me the creeps.” The way those birds gulped down whole chicks and kittens... That was one sight from Earth she didn’t miss. “Those are animals on my home planet the monster bears a resemblance to.”
