One of their guides gestured to starboard, then led them down to ops. The rise between each step was half the height she’d consider comfortable, and she wondered how the towering aliens had the patience not to skip two or three steps at a time as they descended.
Beneath the landing on which they’d entered, the two staircases cradled an elaborate captain’s chair. Nestled into the hollow of the architecture, a wide, shallow bowl surrounded a high-backed seat. The console around the seat was host to a series of readout screens mirrored from several other stations.
Talis had assumed that the veiled individual she met the day before was the ship’s captain. But the regal alien that sat upon the command seat was a different creature. Its body carvings were not as delicate as the individual whose torso and sweeping head had been perforated so dangerously. This individual’s carvings looked more calculated, more efficient.
The Yu’Nyun captain wore no veil but was dressed to leave no doubt as to its superiority over the others that crewed the bridge, as if its posture did not do the job already. A rippling, shimmering blue fabric, tailored so as to appear dramatically opulent but not restrict the wearer’s movement, draped over its body and one arm. The material appeared opaque at first, but then Talis realized the outline of the alien’s torso could be seen when it moved. Its arms were banded in more blue, edged in silver. Silver-toned rings circled through matching eyelets in the trim. More fabric draped from the back of its head, from piercings in the sides of its exoskeleton. Talis saw others of the crew with such rings along the sides of their arching heads. Varied in number. A sign of rank? Of successful missions?
The majority of alien personnel wore blue loincloths and short waistcoats of the same color. The tops were solid only at the sides and connected in the front and back with silver leather bands, while similar straps loosely joined the sides of loincloths above the knees. Beneath those minimal pieces, they wore nothing else. On a Cutter, the clothing would have been scandalous, and definitely too cold for the chill in the air. Either their plated bodies prevented the Yu’Nyun from sensing the cold as she did, or they preferred a little bite to the air. Talis saw goosebumps on Sophie’s shoulders above the neckline of her top, and the girl’s exhalations swirled in the air. Her own, as well. But the aliens must have been as cold inside as their ship was, and no silver condensation appeared from their parted mouths.
Of course, Sophie’s goosebumps might have been from the thrill of getting her eyes on all this alien stuff. Her hands were curled into self-conscious fists at her sides, aching for an invitation to touch something. She turned her head every way, absorbed in the alien technological landscape. Talis could see the flame of her curiosity, rather than satisfied by the visit, had been fed enough tinder to burn wild.
“This, counterpart, ship master,” said the alien to their right, sweeping its arm to indicate the being in the command seat. It spoke something else, but the translator pad stayed silent.
Was that a name? Talis wasn’t sure she could ever mimic the simultaneous clicks and thumping throat noises, even with repeated practice.
Desperate to make a good impression despite her overwhelming desire to run from that place, she found herself unable to think of simple things like words and sentences. Assuming the translator pads were going to interpret them properly. Remembering the strange bow the aliens made when they parted ways the day before, she turned to the captain and touched the notch at the base of her throat and then her forehead.
The captain looked sharply to the alien with the tablet, who motioned for Talis to stop.
“That gesture: not greeting.”
“My apologies, I should not have presumed.”
She sincerely hoped she would not spend all her time aboard this unsettling ship being admonished for cultural missteps. At least her capacity to speak had returned.
“Do like,” it replied, and then crossed its hands at the wrists, folded its elbows in a way that Talis doubted her own joints could allow, and bowed its head.
Talis began to move, expecting to completely botch the unnatural gesture, but another rustling from the alien captain stopped her again. It unfolded its limbs and rose from its bowl to walk toward their group. It was taller than the others.
“Not that one, either,” it said.
In the Common Trade tongue.
The translator tablet spat it back out in the alien language. At a motion from their captain, the Yu’Nyun crew member holding the device silenced it and stepped away.
Talis’s heart was in her throat, but she swallowed it back where it lodged out of place along her gullet. She focused on trying to fight the muscles in her face, to keep the surprise from being so wretchedly obvious. The alien captain’s speech was accented with clicks, hisses, and other noises she didn’t have words for. But it was clear.
The alien stopped an arm’s length in front of them. The four aliens who had guided them through the ship stepped back as though repelled by an invisible force.
“Captain Talis,” the captain said, bowing its head in a sideways tilt. “Allow me to apologize for the confusion. The gesture you were about to perform was
