The temperature was on the warm side but not suffocating. She’d be wearing short sleeves and no layers.
A brief expedition down the corridor led her to the cleansing room. The shower stall was massive, large enough for three people, and spotless. She wasn’t sure what she had been expecting. With two bachelors on the ship, something horrific that had never been cleaned. Nope. Wear on the fixtures spoke to the ship’s age—ancient—but the scent of disinfectant hung in the air. Her alien shipmates took care of their ship.
In the shower stall, Thalia leaned in close to examine the control panel. There was no helpful symbol of squiggly lines for water.
“You have been in the shower stall for one minute without activating a cleaning cycle,” a mechanical voice said. “Do you require assistance?”
“Yes, computer. How do I activate a cycle?”
A button lit up on the panel. “Press to activate. Additional selections will customize your cleaning experience.”
“Just a basic shower.”
A basic shower was twenty seconds of a cold mist, followed by the computer ordering her to lather up with soap, followed by another mist and a command to wash her hair. The shower dumped what felt like a bucket of cold water on her, rinsing off the shampoo. At the end, another fine mist surrounded her, this one floral and thick, leaving a layer on her skin and hair like lotion. The entire process took less than five minutes and left her feeling a bit manhandled.
At the sink, she brushed her teeth. The weird lotion made her face feel oily and gross, so she washed it off and applied her own face cream.
Under the harsh lighting, she peered closely at her reflection. She was technically twenty-six years old. So weird. She went into the stasis chamber at twenty-three, and her body was still mostly twenty-three. Her hair had grown out, but the dye job hadn’t faded. She was ghostly pale too. The doctors on the other ship had checked her vitamin levels, so she knew it wasn’t a vitamin D deficiency. She just missed the sun. Three years was a hell of a long time to be stuck inside a box.
On the bright side, she had three new seasons of Galactic Queen to binge. Plus, three years’ worth of new-to-her books from her favorite authors.
Back in the corridor, a monster scurried up to her and reared up on its two hind legs. The front four legs waved in the air. A bright cherry red, it watched her with intelligent eyes. Mandibles opened and closed. The segmented tail curled and flexed.
The monster moved forward.
Thalia screamed, rushing back into the cleansing room, and locking the door.
Holy fuck. What was that thing?
Within moments, someone knocked on the door. “Female, it is safe to come out,” Havik said.
“No way. You want to feed me to that…that thing.” Her teasing went too far, and he released the monster to feast on her bones.
“It is a kumakre, a juvenile one. It is too small to consume you.”
She opened the door. Havik held the creature in his folded arms, belly up, and his free hand rubbed the pale pink abdomen. The tail vibrated, creating a rattling sound, and the six legs slowly waved in the air.
“That’s a child?”
“I have raised it from an egg.”
“You’re telling me that’s harmless?” She eyed the stinger at the end of the tail. No longer panicking, she appreciated how the creature looked like a scorpion but not. The proportions were wrong, like the legs were too long and the head too wide, not that she was an arachnid expert. Besides, scorpions had eight legs, and the thing Havik cuddled had six. Six long, thin legs with splayed paws at the end.
“Oh no. It is a wild creature. I retrieved its egg from a poacher and kept it warm until it hatched. It believes I am its mother and will not harm me. When it is large enough, I will release it back to its natural habitat.”
She was wrong about the decorative murder plant being the most Mahdfel thing ever. Cuddling wild baby scorpion monsters won.
“You have a wild animal as a pet,” she said.
“The kumakre is not a pet. They are endangered. It would have perished in the egg without my intervention.” The not-a-pet happily rattled in Havik’s arms while its paws batted at the tip of his braid.
It was cute, in a horrifying way.
Thalia felt certain there had to be a wildlife rescue organization that could have hatched Havik’s egg, but she kept that thought to herself. “Does it have a name?”
“No. It is a wild creature.”
Right. The kama-whatever’s spirit was indomitable and above such petty things as names.
“Wait,” she said. “What do you mean it’s too small to consume me?” Havik’s little pet would totally eat her if it could.
With a twinkle in his eye, he strolled away, not answering her question at all. The jerk.
By the time she crawled into the massive bed, exhaustion made her limbs heavy. She tossed and turned to get comfortable at the end of such a long day, but sleep remained elusive.
Too much had happened.
The day started with her desperate not to be sent back to Earth, and now she had a job of sorts, to hunt down the human traffickers. She was glad to be part of the mission, even if her role was bait. On top of all that, she was on a rickety old ship with two strangers. Anything could happen. What if they weren’t the good guys the warlord thought they were? Hell, how could she trust the warlord? The alien’s crew had rescued her from being a permanent icicle but…
No buts. The Mahdfel’s reputation preceded them. When they gave their word, they meant it. Shit got done. Even if they were a little too rule-abiding for
