He placed his fingertips to the surface of the sand and smiled, sensing something there.
What was he looking at? I wondered. What could he sense that I couldn’t?
He pulled his body back.
I thought he was going to thrust his fist into the sand and snatch something from it.
Instead, he pulled his head back and snapped it forward.
His horns pierced the surface and buried themselves in halfway.
A high-pitched squeal erupted from a creature in the sand.
As Egara pulled his head back, a creature wriggled like a flailing fish on the end of a fisherman’s line.
One tip of Egara’s horns had skewered it.
Egara reached up and took the small creature from his horn and snapped the creature in half.
It hung limply in his hands.
“Sand Fish okay?” he said.
I just stared at the creature, my eyes bulging and wide.
I didn’t know.
Was Sand Fish okay?
The creature might have been odd in appearance but it tasted much like chicken back home.
I guess the rule that a lot of foreign food tasted like chicken also extended out here to the far reaches of the galaxy.
Egara built a small fire in a hole in the ground and cooked the creature inside it.
The moment the meal was done, he shoved a handful of sand over the flames, dousing it.
A shame, I thought, as I was beginning to enjoy the heat.
Egara must have noticed my expression because he dug the embers of fire up again.
They still glowed with heat as he placed them beside me.
I could still feel their heat.
I smiled at his thoughtfulness.
“Once the charcoal is dry, we can use it to catch larger prey,” he said.
Okay, so maybe not that thoughtful.
“Larger prey?” I said. “I thought we would be getting out of here soon?”
He nodded.
“We will, but only if things go to plan. And in my experience, few things go to plan.”
Egara slipped a black nail into the fish and slit it open.
He removed the bones and handed half the Sand Fish to me.
“I’m not sure I can eat all of it,” I said, remembering the earlier meal he only ate half of.
“Eat as much as you can. We’ll leave the rest out to dry and turn it into jerky for the journey tomorrow.”
I ended up consuming my half and eyed what remained of his meal with some jealousy.
Once again, he hadn’t eaten the entire meal.
“How can you get by on so little?” I said.
“Vulcarians have very slow metabolisms. We can go weeks without food, even when traipsing through a desert like this.”
Vulcarians were turning out to be very strange creatures indeed.
It was pitch dark in the desert at night and there was little light save that cast by a trio of small moons.
It was beautiful, I thought. Then again, everything was beautiful when you hadn’t seen anything but blank walls for so long.
I smiled and breathed in the chill night air.
I stretched, luxuriating in the freedom of space, and the fact there wasn’t another creature for miles around.
At least, not if we were lucky.
“Are you sure your friends will have left the shuttlecraft where they said they would?” I said.
“I’m sure,” Egara said. “They’re my crew, not my friends.”
“Can’t they be both?”
“Not if you are an effective captain. There must always be a line between captain and crew.”
“You’re their captain?” I said, surprised by this piece of information.
But I shouldn’t have been so surprised.
He was thoughtful, capable, and a great fighter.
Why shouldn’t he be the captain?
“They assured me they would drop off the shuttlecraft,” he said. “I don’t have faith in many things but I have faith in my men. If they said they are going to do something, I can assure you, they will do it.”
“Is your entire crew made up of Vulcarians?”
“Most, but not all. We have learned to distrust most other species. The only ones we trust are those that have also had their culture destroyed by our common enemy.”
“What will you do once you get away from here?”
“Return to my ship.”
He didn’t seem altogether pleased with that concept.
“Have you thought about trying something different?” I said.
“My crew is depending on me.”
“Someone else can’t be their captain?”
He cocked his head to one side.
“You don’t like that I’m a pirate?”
No, but I wasn’t about to tell him that.
“It seems to me that you’re better suited to… other things,” I said.
“Not all of us can be historians,” he said, smiling at me.
Boy, did I like that smile.
He looked like a boy, a dimple rising to one cheek.
The boyish quality clashed with his otherwise monstrous appearance—his sheer size, bulk, strength, and the twisted horns.
He was nothing like the monster I thought he was.
Except in bed.
The rumors, so often disappointing when it came to other prisoners, had certainly been true of this particular prisoner.
“How about you?” he said.
I wondered when he would ask me that.
“I’d like to return home,” I said.
“Then home you shall return.”
“You’ll let me go?” I said, surprised at this revelation.
“Of course. You have a home to return to. And no doubt, your family and friends will be missing you.”
Would they? I wondered.
I figured my landlord would be more concerned as I hadn’t paid my rent in a year.
The police would have gotten involved, trying to locate me.
They might even have fingered the wrong guy, thinking I had been kidnapped by a human.
“My family’s not close,” I said. “We’re a family of black sheep. When I moved away from home to study at college, I rarely contacted them. I let them know I was fine every now and then but they never worried about me.”
“It’s a terrible thing, not to feel like you belong,” Egara said.
I looked him over.
Was that how he felt?
With who? I wondered.
“I never felt that way,” I said. “The truth is, I never really belonged in my hometown. It was so small, so parochial. A great place to retire, but not the kind of place I wanted to spend my life. I became fascinated with history, with the pursuits and efforts of greater
