Page 45 of Monsters in Love: Lost in the Stars
Zil stared down in confusion at the small human crouched behind the command station console. He had never seen a human before. He might have if he had not overridden his programming and escaped the Daranthiki Twelfth Legion. No doubt by now he would have seen a number of humans for the short span it would have taken to slaughter them.
He had no interest in slaughtering anything, much less the human in front of him now.
He squinted at the alien and frowned.
It hardly seemed to be the sort of monster that the Daranthiki government claimed. In fact, it seemed rather diminutive and weak. It didn’t possess a tail or claws. Even its name didn’t suggest any sort of ferocity despite how peculiar it was. He would not have thought that even humans, who were generally known to be among the crudest and most savage of species in their shared galaxy, would have names that appeared to reference copulation. That was hardly befitting a being from a warlike species. Nor was its soft, pleasing voice. That voice did strange things to his systems, sending sparks through his awareness.
He shook it off.
It didn’t matter. He had business to attend to before the emergency beacon was discovered. It was fortunate that whoever had attacked the ship had scrambled the systems. It had allowed whoever it was to escape without having to worry about any hassle from Earth or the Intergalactic Overseers. He would have had similar luck in salvaging the parts he needed if the systems hadn’t suddenly come online. He suspected he had this human to thank for that.
“On your feet, Fuck,” he growled, gesturing with his amelka.
The human’s brows furrowed slightly, and its lips twitched only for a moment before it stumbled to its feet. Zil nodded his head with approval. At least it was obedient.
He needed a way to keep it in place and out of his way while he worked. His eyes scanned the command center, resting on the remains of what could only have been the captain. With a quick swipe of his tail, he knocked the corpse out of it and gestured to it.
“Sit.”
The human balked, its face paling. Green eyes flicked to the captain and then back to him. If he wasn’t mistaken, it looked vaguely sick.
“I can’t believe you just did that,” it muttered under its breath before it straightened and bravely met his eye. “If it’s all the same, I would prefer not to, thank you.”
His mouth twisted with displeasure. Its refusal didn’t make sense.
“Sit,” he repeated with a loud growl. “I will not harm you. I will only bind you to that chair. When a retrieval team comes, they will release you.”
Its mouth gaped open at him in shock.
It had an interesting mouth. Plump pink lips, a smooth tongue, and flat harmless teeth. He shook his head again in confusion. What sort of threat did this alien species possibly pose?
“Are you fucking serious?” it spat. “That chair has been holding human rotting goo for probably many months now and you want me to sit on it?”
He gave the chair another nonplused look. There was a puddle of decaying liquid matter that had seeped slowly from the captain’s body onto the chair. His lips tightened in disgust. Perhaps it was not the most ideal, but it was not like he was asking the human to eat off it. Just to sit meekly in place so that he could properly restrain it.
Letting out a low, guttural growl, he lowered his weapon and stalked forward, his hand closing around its small arm as he dragged it suddenly forward. He did not expect the human’s opposite arm to whip up and point a small human weapon directly at his head.
“Like I said,” it stated in a clipped tone, “I am not going to sit there. Now you are going to back up off me before we see what sort of wiring the Daranthiki used for your brain.”
He froze, narrowing his eyes on the alien.
Wiring? His brain did not have wires. There were sophisticated chips that connected to the synapse of his organic brain. Why would the human think he had wiring? Only the battle droids… Oh.
His tail curled thoughtfully behind him, the metal enhancements at its tip rasping slightly against the floor. His tongue flicked out again, catching another burst of flavor from the human on the sensitive cybernetically enhanced receptors. It was strange how sweet it tasted, but there was a note of sourness that he disliked, and it didn’t take him long to isolate the reason given his new information.
It was fear.
He grunted and holstered his weapon at his hip. If it were afraid of him, it stood to reason that the human would remain out of his way until he completed his task. He cricked deep in his throat and turned away, putting the creature from his mind. With a light slap of his tail, he forced the hovering salvage cart out of his path and headed toward the panel containing the operation systems to his left.
He promptly pulled it from the wall. Dropping the metal panel casually to the floor at his side, he ignored the prompts from the AI for his clearance identity as his eyes fell on the frequency components. Good fortune was with him—nothing appeared to be damaged. Pirates often did considerable damage to the command center in their attempt to overtake a ship. The gods were smiling on him indeed.
He slipped out a blocker from a compartment on his work belt and set it on the main panel. Flicking it on, he let out a relieved sigh when the AI’s voice went silent. Now it couldn’t annoy him or attempt to send a shock pulse through the ship’s systems at him. Its signal was blocked.
He smirked at the system processors. With skilled ease, he began to strip them deftly, leaving only the beacon intact. He would have pulled that one too, since the beacon was of a quality that would fetch a fair number of credits, but he wasn’t so heartless as to leave the human to die alone without any kind of assistance. When he came upon the disabled ship, he had planned on initiating the beacon once he was finished anyway.
Light, tentative steps scuffed the floor behind him. He turned an ear toward it, tracking the human’s movement, surprised that it was approaching, but otherwise didn’t pay it any mind. He doubted that it would come close enough to cause an inconvenience.
“Excuse me, what do you think you’re doing?” the human demanded, its soft voice taking on an almost shrill, panicked inflection.
He flicked his tail without concern as he moved on to another compartment in the navigation systems where he began to strip coils and processors. He would have to be more careful once he got to engineering to make sure he didn’t inactivate life support, but the command center was open for him to freely strip anything he needed outside of that lone beacon.
Pulling a tool from his belt, he effortlessly disconnected the weapons systems and hummed a deep, rhythmic sound of pleasure to himself. If he wasn’t mistaken, that was practically new Ashtan technology. The humans who owned this ship must have paid well for the firing systems. No doubt they equipped the ship with quality weapons to have invested so much into it. That would fetch a fine price.
His ear tipped as the ship AI sounded an alarm. It blared angrily at him, but he shook his head in response. Such security measures were often pointless. Even if there had been any surviving crewmembers on board to hear the alarm, it wouldn’t have done any good. He dug deeper to pry the pulsing orb from the center of the navigation systems. The AI made a sharp shrieking sound before abruptly cutting off once he severed its connection to its power source.
“Hey!” the human yelped. “You can’t take that! I need this ship to be functioning until help comes!”
He growled impatiently at the alien squawking. It was just as annoying to his ear as it was to his processors that dealt with the translations of its peculiar speech sounds. Maybe if he reassured it then it would silence itself.
“You will have life support and a beacon. That is all that is required,” he replied unnecessarily. “You will be retrieved in a matter of days.” He cocked his head thoughtfully. He didn’t know how close a human vessel might be. “If someone is close enough to retrieve you before you starve. I will leave you with what food there is, however,” he offered diplomatically, even though he grimaced at the loss of edibles that could have restocked his own supplies.
“That’s it? You’re going to strip the ship and leave me here alone with maybe enough food to survive?” it demanded in a scathing tone. “What a fucking prince.”
He grunted in reply, and a blessed silence fell. That was until he heard the soft, barely perceptible hum of a weapon powering on. Muscles tensing, he slowly stood and turned around. The human was pointing an absurdly small weapon at him, but its grip was impressively steady as it glared at him.
“I don’t fucking think so. In case your systems haven’t been updated, according to the Daranthaknar-Earth Treaty, you are obligated to extend help to any humans in border territories.”
He shifted his weight to one foot, narrowing his eyes at the human as he calculated the best method to disarm it. True enough, there was a treaty that ensured that he wouldn’t harm it, but…
“We are not in border territory space. These are the far reaches and I am not obligated to any treaties,” he retorted.
With an exacting snap of his tail, he whipped the weapon from the human’s hands, ignoring its surprised—and slightly pained—yelp as the tiny blaster flew in his direction. Snapping his hand up, he caught it and lowered it to get a good look at it. He snorted at the design. It barely would have enough power to do more than give him a superficial wound. It certainly would not be able to damage him enough before his nanos repaired the tissue and tech components.
Still… he didn’t want to be aggravated by it either.
Zil crushed the weapon in his hand, smiling grimly at the sound of collapsing metal before he opened his hand let the crumpled remains of the puny device hit the floor. Without another word, he stepped around the human and headed toward the corridor. The engine would require considerably more time due to the care he would need to take with it. The sooner he got started, the sooner he could be on his way.