"That is very generous of you," the alien elf woman replied. "And exciting. However, I'm not sure that we will be up to the task. This is all very strange to us."
"We know that," I said. "You can start with simple tasks. And there is plenty of training courses through the tablet that I showed you. I'm sure that you'll learn fast."
"It seems to me," Aeren said hesitantly. "The first thing that we'll need to learn is all these little symbols that you use. There are so many of them."
Strawberry and I stared at each other in disbelief. I declared that these were both intelligent women, just from another culture. Their manner of speech supported my claim.
"Are you telling me that you can't read English? I mean Galactic Standard?"
Strawberry was as shocked as me. "You speak it so well. But no worries. We'll just feed your written language into the computer and it will translate for you. It will slow the process down, but not prevent it."
Aeren and Mixi stared at each other for a moment. Then with embarrassment prevalent in their body language, Aeren revealed, "We do not have a written language."
CHAPTER THREE:
After both Aeren and Mixi moved into their newly assigned quarters Cinnamon provided them with their first assignment. She insisted that they be clothed while roaming the ship from here on. Between spare uniforms left in Coffee's and Sage's rooms they had plenty of material to work with. The girls would just need to cut and restitch the material to fit their smaller and ultra slim bodies. Though they had never made clothing before, the technique was similar to several things that they were used to making in their cavernous city.
Strawberry changed the code on the lock that held Sage in her cage. She also upped the security measure by requiring a retinal scan from either me or herself in combination with the new code. That should prevent our former leader from hacking her way out or convincing another person onboard to release her.
Teddy was unusually delighted when he received news that he could now sleep in Sage's old room. Nearly as well received was notification that Aeren was going to make a new set of clothes for him. The makeshift duds that he had been wearing daily were not all that well fitting. The new girls promised that the uniform they would have for him soon would not only match everyone else but also fit snugly to the unique shape of his small teddy bear build.
I was in the process of getting my little friend familiar with how to manipulate his personal tablet computer when Strawberry called me to the control room. She sounded as if it were of urgent concern.
"What's up?" I asked as I hurriedly stepped up beside her. She was in the captain's chair once again with an image taking up the majority of her screen. Down the right side and along the bottom was a lot of detailed information, some of which I actually understood.
The image was of a spaceship. And it wasn’t ours.
Though it was difficult to judge scale the craft was similar in shape to our own ship. Extended out each side of the hull were devices that I was not familiar with yet. They almost looked like thrusters for going backwards.
"Where is it?" was my first question.
"It is still millions of kilometers away," Strawberry informed me. "It just reentered our space from rip-jump. They probably haven't spotted us yet since our engines are powered down."
"Who are they?"
"That's a good question, Kash. I can't say for sure, but I'm assuming they are with whatever company wants this planet hidden from the maps. Did anyone tell you the situation with this star system?"
"Yes," I answered. "It was categorized as having no planets of value mistakenly. Sage believed a company was trying to hide it from competitors. I remember the girls saying that one of these ships coming by would be our best chance of rescue."
"Maybe, maybe not," Strawberry replied. "But that doesn't matter anymore. We don't need rescued."
I watched as the numbers continued to stream across the lower section of her screen. Triangulation data. Our computer was tracking the ship's movement. When an alert came up, Strawberry tapped a virtual button on the screen to change the main view window. The image of the ship disappeared and was replaced with a map of the star system. A pulsing line showed the trajectory of the incoming spacecraft. It was headed right for us.
"What should we do?" I asked, unable to conceal my concern. I immediately regretted it. So far I only had questions and Strawberry had the answers. That could give her the upper hand in this partnership. If at all possible it was my goal to never let her be the heroine again. I was eternally grateful for her role in rescuing me and Honey from the cave women. Now freed I was determined to be the only hero that these lovely women would ever need.
"It depends on if they are hostile," she replied. The apprehension never left her voice. It was more than just her normal professionalism. She was legitimately worried. I needed to exude confidence for the sake of the crew, and to maintain an upper hand. Unfortunately, I knew too little to be able to do that at the moment.
"If they find us here," I said as I straightened my back. Strawberry looked up to me as she listened to what I had to say. Honey turned from her position to face me as well. This is exactly what I wanted. "And they are with a devious company, they will be upset that we discovered their hidden gem. Us revealing their deception could cost them a lot of
