Chapter 8: Truce

Nazka emerged from her shuttle, trotting down the landing ramp with her leather clothes draped over her arm, clad only in her panties and a tank top. Her dark skin was shining with sweat. Moving around in those suits wasn’t as easy as it looked, and in space, it was surprisingly easy to overexert yourself without really being aware of it. Eriksen waited for her at the bottom of the ramp, wearing his yellow pressure suit, the hood removed and hanging down his back.

“Think I pulled some muscles,” she said, rolling her arm and wincing.

“Well, you did tear a piece of industrial machinery apart with your bare hands.”

“You know, another shower would be nice. Will you join me if I declare a temporary truce and promise not to overstep your human boundaries?”

Eriksen considered for a moment, eyeing her suspiciously.

“Yeah, alright. I figure you’ve earned a favor. You did help to save the ship,” after first endangering it, he thought to himself. “You did pretty well on your first EVA, all things considered. I’ll put my human fingers to work and see if I can’t ease some of that muscle pain.”

She had deferred to him while they were out on the hull, and now she was asking permission rather than simply twisting his arm until he did what she wanted. Had she come to some realization out there? Borealan social dynamics were strange, at once highly evolved yet primitive, efficient but stifling. She exerted complete control over her pack members, but they couldn’t take initiative. Had she finally seen the practical benefits of working together as equals?

He followed her through the hangar and into the hab module. They entered the bathroom, Nazka discarding her clothes on a nearby rack. She slipped out of her underwear, Eriksen trying to keep his eyes off her enticing body as he unzipped his suit, stripping down to his shorts before joining her. She turned on the shower and fiddled with the temperature dial, steam beginning to fill the room as Eriksen stepped into the cubicle with her. She really liked the water scalding hot.

“What’s with the shorts?” she asked, closing her eyes as she let the water run over her face. “I’ve seen you nude before, you have nothing to hide.”

“Humans don’t generally get naked around their acquaintances, even two friends of the same gender aren’t commonly comfortable with that.”

“I’ve already seen your junk, what does it matter?”

“It matters because I feel more comfortable this way. Now do you want a massage or not?”

She relented and sat heavily on the tiles, Eriksen upending a bottle of shower gel onto her shoulders, feeling her shiver appreciatively as he spread the liquid across her smooth skin.

“My left shoulder ... down a little ... yeah right there. That feels good...”

He sank his fingers into her soft flesh, feeling the muscle below the surface, firm and rubbery. Nazka slowly became more relaxed as he kneaded, her taut body deflating like a balloon. Perhaps when he got back to civilization, he’d learn how to give a real massage. If his future partners responded half as well as this alien did, then he’d be in business.

He moved down her arm, feeling the bulge of her bicep, stopping short of her furry forearm and then moving back up to her shoulder. He ran his fingers down her spine and dug deep wherever he thought she might have strained herself lifting the mechanical arm, easing the ache in her muscles, Nazka swaying drunkenly and crooning as he went. He almost seemed to be putting her in a trance, like rubbing a crocodile’s belly to placate it.

Things felt somehow different now, more calm, as if all of the tension had been drained from the atmosphere. Could he dare to hope that Nazka might have changed her attitude towards him after their EVA on the hull? He had saved her life after all. Although considering how many times he had tried to kill her up to now, his balance was still in the red.

“So ... what happens now?” Eriksen asked, slipping his hands beneath Nazka’s damp hair to rub her neck.

“It’s as you said, I can’t go home empty-handed.”

“I thought maybe you’d have come around after what happened out on the hull.”

“I guess I understand you a little better maybe, but that doesn’t change the facts. You saved me, I saved the ship. We’re even as far as I’m concerned, and I still need to get paid.”

“Nazka ... you know how this is going to end as well as I do. One of us is going to be forced to kill the other, but that’s not the way that things have to go. You can still stop this, it doesn’t have to come to that if you’d just be reasonable. You can write this one off as a loss and just leave, I’ll even resupply you with food and oxygen if you need it. We’ll go our separate ways, and nobody else will have to get hurt.”

“You have your ways, I have mine. I can’t can’t return home without enough loot to cover the costs of the venture, and you can’t dock at your destination with no cargo. Only one of us is going to come out of this situation on top, and I intend for that person to be me.” He felt her tail coil around his waist, her damp fur tickling his skin. “You can stop this too. Join my crew and come live with me, before your stubbornness gets you killed.”

“I can’t do that,” he sighed, pulling her sinuous tail away. “I guess we’ll have to let fate decide which of us lives and which of us dies, then. You’re a grade-A bitch, but I don’t want to kill you Nazka, I never wanted to kill anybody. I’m a fucking freighter pilot, I’m not some gung-ho Marine dropping in behind enemy lines. I don’t know how I’m going to feel when I have time to think it all through. I can’t afford to see a shrink on my salary.”

“Well, you were defending yourself,” she said. “We put ourselves in danger when we attack freighters, the risk comes with the job, though you took me by surprise. I’ve gotten into a few firefights and chases before, I’ve lost a few crew members, but I’ve never had my whole crew spaced at once. You’ve got a warrior’s heart, Eriksen.”

“Why do you do this? Piracy, I mean. Why take such extreme risks when there are a hundred other jobs that you could be doing that won’t get you, or anyone else killed?”

“Because I’m a Borealan,” she replied firmly, as if that should answer his question.

“So? There are Borealans all over the place. They’re not all pirates, and they can’t possibly all be soldiers, you must have farmers and engineers. You could be a doctor or a pilot, you could open a store and sell your ridiculous jackets, you could go back to the UNN and finish your integration training.”

“No, you don’t understand,” she said with a hint of frustration in her tone. “I’m a Borealan. I have this fire in my belly, I need to fight like I need to eat and sleep. So many of us deny our true nature, they let themselves be seduced by promises of prosperity and cooperation, they become clawless. Aliens come to our homeland and tell us that if we just stop doing all of the things that make us who we are, if we stop being Borealans, then we’ll go far. We’ll have technology and riches, a respected position in the Galactic community, but they strip us of our identity.”

It was an oddly heartfelt outburst, and Eriksen stopped his massage, keeping quiet for fear of interrupting her as she continued.

“When I was training with the UNN in their integration program, they tried to reprogram me. They wanted to break down my personality and my behavior in order to rebuild it in a way that suited their needs, as if my whole being was just some condemned building that needed to be demolished so that they could build a safer property on the foundations. Humans want to wield our strength like a weapon, but they don’t understand that the strength they see is a product of our culture and our society. If they make us live and behave as they do, adopt their values and culture, then in a few generations we’ll lose what makes us Borealans and that strength along with it.”

Her tail began to flick back and forth, knocking against Eriksen’s knees as he knelt behind her, but it seemed to be some reflex that she wasn’t consciously aware of. Some sign of frustration or anger perhaps, an involuntary emotional display akin to blushing or weeping.

“It’s the same on the homeworld. Elysia is scrambling to modernize,” she said disdainfully. “They send all of their soldiers off to the UNN for training and their Patriarch is obsessed with ships and machines. It’s like he can’t wait to sell his people out for power, yet any fool can see that his power is a farce. The humans wouldn’t make him so strong that he could challenge them, they see us as primitives, kittens distracted by shiny objects while the adults tend to business. He’s a big fish in a small pond, but the Coalition is an ocean full of sharks. He’ll never be independent, and they’ll never let him out from under their thumb.”