Chapter 6: Aftercare

“Oh, that feels nice,” Kozi sighed, tilting her head as Ramos ran his soapy fingers through her blonde hair. He rubbed one of her furry ears between his thumb and forefinger, and she leaned into him, an appreciative shiver rolling over her. “These humans have more than one use, it seems.”

Ramos was sitting on the edge of a stone basin that had been carved out of the floor in the pack’s bathroom, large enough to accommodate five or six Rask at the same time. They seemed to bathe communally just as they slept. It was practically a swimming pool by his standards, deep enough that he could immerse himself up to the neck, plumes of steam rising from the water’s calm surface as the three aliens relaxed.

Memories of their night together were still fresh – as were his new bruises – and washing off their scent was one of many potential excuses to share a little more quality time. The pack were treating it like a spa day, lounging in the water, letting it wash away all of the sweat from the prior evening.

Grooming was also something to be shared between packmates, and the trio had quickly discovered that his clawless fingers made him well-suited to the task. Finally figuring out where their floral perfume had come from, Ramos spread the foamy lather down Kozi’s neck, rubbing her muscular shoulders through the slippery suds. She let slip an enamored moan, hanging her head, Ramos chuckling at her reaction as she swayed slowly.

“You two must try this,” she sighed, shuddering as Ramos worked out a stubborn knot with his thumb. “Rashka, this will change your world...”

“It’s just a back rub,” he said, watching as Zhura used a metal ladle to scoop up some of the warm water and pour it over her head.

“If I were to do the same to you, my claws would be scraping bone,” she replied as she leaned back a little to give him more reach. “You know, I think I have another task for those fingers of yours,” she added as she turned her head to give him a sultry look. “We have time before work...”

“No we do not,” Rashka replied, opening one eye to peer at her packmate as she reclined in the water. Her arms were resting on the polished stone edge of the bath, her breasts dipping just beneath its surface, like two caramel-colored islands rising from the ocean. “Duty first, Kozi.”

Ramos couldn’t help but smile as he watched her sink deeper into the pool. Kozi hadn’t been exaggerating – Rashka really had been wound up like a spring. He had only ever known the Alpha as being stoic and uptight, but now that he had served as her human stress ball, she was downright mellow. Even though he hadn’t known the pack for more than a few days, he could sense that a kind of equilibrium had been restored. Even Zhura seemed to be showing him more consideration, perhaps after their places in the hierarchy had been cemented the night before.

“Come!” Kozi laughed, swinging an arm around to sweep him into the water beside her. She pulled him close, his head bumping against one of her pillowy breasts, the warmth of her body palpable even through the balmy water. “We must bathe you before we leave. I do not want to be answering Orzi’s questions once you return to your tiny dwelling.”

“Is it that big of a deal?” he asked, glancing up at her. “After all, the whole thing was kind of my idea.”

“Considering that you are relatively intact, she may well believe it,” Kozi replied. “You are walking funny, though.”

“Of course I am,” he grumbled. “It’s a miracle my pelvis is still in one piece.”

“Like the heat and the gravity, it is something that you will grow accustomed to with an abundance of diligent practice,” she purred as he felt the damp fur of her hand brush his thigh.

“Kozi,” Rashka sighed, deigning to open one eye again.

“Fine, fine,” Kozi grumbled as she withdrew. She placed her hand on his head, easing him beneath the water. “Down you go, runt. You still smell of Rashka.”

After stopping briefly at the colony so that Ramos could change into his work clothes, the pack headed out to the site in their APC, parking it beneath the shadow of the crawler. As Ramos hopped out, he saw that Orzi was standing near one of the tents, her environment suit and generous figure making her hard to miss. She was chatting with a flock of Valabarans who were showing her something on a tablet computer, a couple of Jarilan Workers wearing high-vis vests chiming in. When she saw the pack, she politely ended her conversation, making her way over to meet them.

“Rashka,” she began, giving the Alpha a warm smile through her visor. “I trust that your training has been going well?”

“Orzi,” Rashka replied, giving her a nod of respect. “We are making good progress. The first of the new seeds have been sown.”

“I wondered if I might pull your tutor aside for a moment,” the Polar continued as she glanced down at Ramos. “We have not had time to catch up, and I would like to hear his thoughts on your progress.”

“Certainly,” Rashka replied. “We shall wait for him by the tractors.”

The three Rask headed in the direction of the parked vehicles while Orzi led Ramos into one of the tents, flipping open her visor after checking that they were alone.

“So,” she began, sitting down on one of the Borealan-sized chairs. “We have not had a chance to speak since I last visited you at your prefab. It is my job to look after the aliens, so I wanted to check in and make sure that everything is going smoothly. How has the pack been performing?”

“Very well,” he replied, leaning on the chest-high table rather than trying to clamber up onto one of the tall seats. “The Rask are learning quickly, they’re attentive, and they seem motivated. Rashka especially seems to put a lot of stock in her work.”

“What of the interpersonal difficulties you mentioned?” Orzi pressed, her pink nose twitching as she scrutinized him with her ice-blue eyes.

“I think we’ve been able to find a kind of ... equilibrium,” he replied. “We’re getting along now – I don’t imagine we’ll be having any problems in the future.”

“Equilibrium, you say,” she mused as she gave him a quizzical tilt of her head. “I noticed that you did not return to the colony last night.”

“Oh, I didn’t realize that was a requirement,” he began as his cheeks started to warm. “I was out with the pack. They took me to a bar.”

“There are no such requirements,” she clarified with a dismissive wave of her gloved hand. “It is simply my job to keep track of my wards. We cannot have you wandering off into the desert and being eaten by a pack of wild razorbacks, can we?”

“It would have been a bit of a drive back to the colony, so Rashka let me take her couch for the night,” Ramos explained. “Just some ... bonding with work friends. Helps grease the gears, so to speak.”

“You smell very strongly of soaps and perfumes favored by the Rask,” the Polar continued suspiciously. “Almost as though there was an attempt to conceal other, more telling scents. You are not in trouble,” she added, preempting him as he opened his mouth to speak. “Far be it from me to dictate who you can and cannot sleep with. I only wish to make sure that you were not coerced or pressured into it. The Rask are under a strict code of conduct imposed by the Matriarch.”

“Okay, I spent the night with the pack,” he conceded as he spread his arms. “I admit it. We got to talking at the bar, and one thing led to another. Nobody was excessively drunk, and I was the one who took the initiative and propositioned Rashka. It was entirely my idea, so don’t go kicking her out of the program or anything. They didn’t do anything they weren’t supposed to – hell, I had to convince them.”

“May I ask why you chose to spend the night with them?” Orzi asked, leaning a little closer to him across the table. Her tone was more curious than formal now, like she wanted him to dish out some juicy gossip.

“Besides the obvious?” he scoffed. “They needed it a lot more than I did. After spending some time with the pack and getting to know them better, it’s obvious that they’re in a tough spot. Near half of their pack split off, they’re stuck doing work that I know Zhura’s heart isn’t in, and Rashka has been operating as though she can just ignore all of her impulses and emotions by bottling them up. Rashka needed a safe way to let off steam, while Kozi was just lonely and bored, I think. She wanted to expand the pack again, but Rashka was still kind of hung up on Nozak and Murzi.”

“And you thought that you could offer a solution to all of these problems?” Orzi prompted, flipping her visor closed again as the heat started to bother her.

“Well, one of the problems was kind of my fault,” he muttered. “Just having me here was pushing Rashka’s buttons.”

“A burden that she took on willingly when she joined the program.”

“She may very well have been able to handle it, but she was miserable doing it,” he replied. “After last night, she’s happy, she’s mellow, and she can focus on her work rather than pulling her hair out because I spoke out of turn or looked at her too long.”

“You have not even been here a week, yet I feel that you have already developed a better understanding of the Rask than some who have lived here for months,” Orzi said as she leaned back in her chair. She seemed to be appraising him in a new light, looking him up and down with approval. “You are attentive to the needs of your students, also.”

“I just didn’t want to see them get kicked out of the program,” he said with a shrug. “This is really important to them. Rashka took a huge chance on this that cost her dearly, and it’s not fair for her to be punished for choosing to be a farmer rather than a warrior. If we don’t show the Rask that they can be successful as anything other than pirates, why should they strive to be anything else?”

“A lot of the humans who come here expect other species to bend over backwards to accommodate them,” Orzi continued. “They see aliens who live in packs or flocks, or who go about social interaction very differently, and expect them to just ... stop. It is as though they see their own behavior as the baseline by which others should be measured. You, on the other hand, immediately met your pack halfway. You understood that they were making sacrifices, and you made some of your own.”

“I mean, it wasn’t that big of a sacrifice,” he said as he raised his hands in mock fear. “Oh no, don’t make me sleep with three beautiful women to improve morale and productivity. Woe is me. Send me home on the next shuttle!”

“Believe it or not, you would not be the first,” Orzi chuckled. “Not everyone is so accommodating of Rask behavior. The HR complaints tend to stack up. Well,” she continued, rising from her seat. “If what is happening is consensual, and everyone is happy with the arrangement, I see no reason to intervene. You know where to find me if you need anything.”

“Thanks,” he added as she passed him on her way out of the tent. “For looking out for me, I mean. Just because I don’t need the help right now doesn’t mean it isn’t appreciated.”

“I had a feeling that you would be a good fit for their pack,” she said, pausing by the flap to glance back at him. “It seems that I made the right decision.”

“What did Orzi want of you?” Rashka asked. They were sitting in the tractor’s cab, Zhura and Kozi hanging onto the outside of the hull, the climate control staving off the desert’s dry heat. The Alpha was clearly concerned, but she was trying not to show it, keeping her eyes fixed on the dunes ahead.

“She figured out what had happened basically immediately,” he replied, watching Rashka’s ears flatten against her head. “Covering me in Rask branded soap was basically just advertising that we had something to hide.”

“Nothing gets past that Polar’s nose,” she grumbled. “And ... what was her reaction?”

“You have nothing to fear,” he replied. “I explained the situation – told her that everything was above board and that it was all my idea, and she said she has no reason to intervene. We can keep doing what we’re doing.”

“Thank you,” Rashka said with a sigh of relief, her ears returning to their usual upright position. “Perhaps you and Kozi were right to insist that there was nothing to fear, but I still worried that Orzi might interpret what we had done as a breach of the decree.”

“You’re free and clear,” he said, waving his hand at the desert ahead of them. “Any time work starts to get too much for you again, and ... y’know,” he mumbled as his heart began to pump a little faster. “Any time you ... uh ... need to unwind or do a little de-stressing, I can help out.”

“I will hold you to your word,” she replied, turning to peer down at him with those golden eyes. After what had happened the prior night, it took all of his willpower not to melt into a puddle right there on the seat – just a glance from her enough to bring back memories of those same eyes watching him as she pinned him beneath her.

He was distracted as someone tapped on the window beside him, and he turned his head to see Kozi peering in at him. She pressed her lips against the glass, then exhaled, puffing out her cheeks. He gave the window a slap, and she withdrew, her laughter drowned out by the sound of the engine.

“Kozi seems to be in high spirits, at least.”

“I believe that we are all feeling more at ease after your stay at our dwelling,” Rashka replied, bouncing in her seat as they navigated a dune. “I will concede that I do not know much about human behavior, but I sense that what you did last night was a service to us. I must thank you for that.”

“Happy to help,” he replied. “Just ... go a little easier on the hips next time. It hurts when I walk.”

They pulled up near the work site, Ramos hopping out of the tractor to appraise the rows of white shade cloths. He noted that the windbreak fence in the distance had expanded since his last visit, the teams of Workers making inhumanly fast progress. Perhaps this whole venture might not take as long as he had originally thought.

He made his way over to the nearest cloth, kneeling in the sand to check beneath it.

“Hey!” he called out, waving the pack over. “Come see this!”

The three Rask walked over to join him, crouching low as he lifted the porous fabric to show them what lay beneath. Growing from the dark, moist soil was a single green sprout, a small leaf already starting to unfurl.

“I’ll be damned,” Ramos chuckled. “Those genetically modified seeds the Jarilans gave us sure are something.”

“Life in the desert,” Zhura marveled, peering down at the tiny stalk.

“How does it feel seeing the fruits of your labor?” Ramos asked. “Is it hitting you now that this is something we can really accomplish?”

“This tiny plant is the first of a new jungle that will span the East Gate,” Rashka said, rising to her feet to look across the breach. Ramos followed suit, seeing the hazy crawler towering in the distance beyond the windbreak, the green tint of the forest barely visible on the far side of the dunes. “We can heal these scars.”

“It’s going to take a lot of work,” Ramos added, brushing some sand off his coveralls as he stood up. “But, like grains of sand in an hourglass, all of those little steps build up over time. We go grid square by grid square, and we teach others to do the same. Piece by piece, we conquer this desert.”

Zhura nodded, seeming to appreciate the metaphor of conquest. Perhaps seeing a plant growing here with her own eyes had galvanized her.

“Then, we should get to work!” Kozi chimed as she placed a heavy hand on Ramos’ shoulder. “There is much to do.”

The suns were high in the cloudless sky, indicating that it was about midday. They had been working all morning setting up the next grid square, and after it had been plowed flat by the drone bulldozers, the pack had set about their task. They learned quickly, and everyone seemed a lot calmer and more cooperative after the night they had spent together, making everything run more smoothly. Greasing the gears, as he had told Orzi.