Page 13 of My Alien Bughead (Supernova Casanovas #4)
Chapter 13
D’Aakh
They’re taking too long. I know it’s only been a few minutes since Astra and Lucía entered the cave but it’s already been too long. What the fuck was Zarkan thinking, letting two unarmed and untrained civilians enter a potentially dangerous territory alone? And Tareq? I would have thought he cares more for his precious mate.
“Fuck it,” I mutter to myself as I tighten my grip on the rifle. Only Zarkan’s threat of kicking me out of here prevents me from aiming the weapon directly at the Serramorphs and demanding they get out of my way so I can follow my… Tareq’s mate. Tareq’s mate and the other annoying human. Neither of them being “my” anything.
Tareq looks nervous, and so do the Serramorphs. Only Zarkan is sitting on the soft grass, seemingly relaxed and without a care in the world. I know him well enough to know he’s ready to jump up and unleash carnage at the slightest sign of danger but even his pretend calm still irks me.
My hand steals toward the pocket hiding my stimsticks. I barely catch myself before pulling one out in front of everyone. I can’t use the stims in front of Tareq and Zarkan. Especially not Zarkan. He wouldn’t understand. None of them would.
Yet, the fact that I almost did it without even realizing, is…disturbing. Even worse is the itch to take the stim anyway, consequences be damned. My body craves the rush of artificial stimulants, the tingles that race down my nervous system whenever I breathe in that sour-tasting mist.
The worst part, however, is that I don’t care. I know I’m displaying several signs of addiction to a very dangerous substance and yet, I don’t give the slightest fucking damn. I’ll do what I have to do to keep me moving, to keep others alive, no matter the cost.
“This is ridiculous,” I say, unable to keep my mouth shut anymore. “We should—”
“No,” Zarkan replies, shooting me a warning glare.
Tareq’s tail swishes from side to side as he shifts his weight. “He’s right,” he says. “Astra… Astra!” His eyes widen as he watches his mate emerge from the cave, his hand on his pistol in the blink of an eye. “Is everything alright? Astra? Where’s Lucía?”
Astra hurries over. “She’s fine, everything is fine, nobody’s hurt,” she blurts out, seeing that both Tareq and I are ready to start shooting. Frowning, she points to our weapons. “We’re all friends here, so put those blasted things away. The Serramorphs don’t want to hurt us. All they care about is keeping their baby alive. That’s ‘the Heart’ they’ve been talking about. They have a creepy egg in some sort of a heating box. But the box is broken. Lucía is fixing it but she needs a little help. She said…” Astra’s brows draw together as she pauses for several seconds before looking at me. “She said she needs you to, um, reroute auxiliary power into…secondary something? Dammit!” She rubs her face. “She said something about damaged relays and rerouting and secondary…”
“Conduits?” I offer.
“Yes! Secondary conduits! That was the word. Thank you. Look…” She gives me a wary look. “I know you don’t like the Serramorphs, but could you help, please? Lucía said that if we don’t get the box operational again, the egg will not survive. And it’s just an innocent baby. Please?”
I stare at the tears brimming in her eyes, incapable of speech. She’s begging me as if she thinks I’m going to say no. She truly believes I’d let a youngling die? Just because I want to throw its parents off our ship?
Would I?
The question chills me to the bone. I want to say no, but that molten ball of rage inside of me just keeps screaming “whatever it takes” at me and the rest of my mind seems occupied by the urge to use a stimstick.
Fuck. I knew I was messed up but this is a whole new level of messed up.
Forcing my mind to focus, I look into Astra’s desperate eyes. “Of course I’ll help,” I say, my anger flaring. Astra winces, probably convinced I’m angry at her, when in fact, I’m mad at myself. I don’t even know what I want anymore. Except a stimstick. “Just get out of my way,” I snarl at the Serramorphs who skitter away as I head for the spot where a tangle of cables runs through a hole in the paneling.
Removing the panel, I take stock of the mess behind it. “Fucking stupid insects. Stupid fucking bugs,” I curse over and over. The whole panel has been rewired in the crudest way possible. It’s a miracle it hasn’t short-circuited already. Or burned out completely.
A Serramorph peeks around me, chirping and screeching. It points at this wire and that wire, then at some of the relays and circuits, talking and gesticulating wildly the entire time.
“I don’t care,” I snap at him. “Even if I could understand you, there’s nothing you can tell me that would help, so kindly fuck off. Shoo.” I wave my hands. “Go. I work alone. You’ve fucked this place up badly enough already.”
Finally, he takes the hint and skitters away, still making annoying sounds. Stupid fucking bug.
A stimstick is in my hand before I even realize what I’m doing. Casting a cautionary glance over my shoulder, I see that everyone seems to be far enough away to not see anything. Just to be sure, I inch closer to the open panel, pretending to look at the mess inside. Then pressing on the top of the inhaler, I suck in a deep breath. An audible groan leaves me as the stimulant kicks in, my brain kicking back into higher gear.
“That’s better,” I murmur to myself. Now, I can focus.
My hand still trembles slightly as I reach for my tools, but I chalk it up to the adrenaline rush. After all, we’re still surrounded by potentially dangerous creatures and the clock is ticking on a youngling dying. That would make anyone’s hands shake, wouldn’t it?
Not yours, not a few weeks ago, a tiny voice in the back of my mind tells me but I pointedly ignore it.
It doesn’t take long to locate the incubator issue and even less time to fix it. I spend a few minutes contemplating different options so I wouldn’t have to do what Lucía suggested but her solution is the most sensible.Begrudgingly, I follow her command and reroute the power to the secondary conduits.
A few sparks fly when I bring the new circuit online. The lights in the room blink. The waterfall sputters and dies. The smell of something burning reaches my nostrils but it’s weak and dissipates quickly.
Without the sound of the water crashing down over the rocks, the room grows deathly quiet.
“What did you do?!” Astra scowls at me. “You were supposed to help them, not break their stuff. Seriously, D’Aakh, can’t you be nice for even a few minutes? It really would be a welcome change from the asshole you’re being right now!”
Muttering expletives, she storms into the cave, not giving me a chance to explain that with the reactor down, there’s just no way to operate both the waterfall and the egg incubator. I took the liberty of assuming the stupid bugs would prefer their offspring staying alive to running a fucking waterfall inside a fucking spaceship.
Putting the wall panel back in place so that no one accidentally electrocutes themselves when they go around touching stuff, I huff out another of my disgruntled snorts. Seriously, how could Astra think it was a good idea to stick her hand into the water without checking it was safe first? It could have been acid, for fuck’s sake! And Lucía didn’t even stop her. Humans. They should never have survived evolution.
Ignoring the angry chirping, I enter the cave. “You want help?” I ask the agitated Serramorphs. “Then you’ll have to suffer a male entering your precious sanctuary because no one else here is qualified to help you.”
Least of all, Lucía. She’s probably struggling right now, having no idea what to do. I’ll rub her face in it before sending her away to make sure she won’t be coming back.
As I weave my way between the machinery in the improvised cave, I take another breath from my stimstick. Then another one. I need all of the brain power I have spare to fix that damn incubator because there’s no way Lucía—
“It should hold now,” I hear her say. “With the stable power input and these few little changes we just made, the temperature shouldn’t fluctuate anymore. The humidity seems to be holding as well. The air pressure regulator will need some more tweaking and we’ll have to bypass the malfunctioning relays but I’m expecting it to be an easy fix.”
There’s some chirping and screeching, then Cai translates, “Thank you. You save the Heart. Gratitude.”
She saved their precious egg?! Seriously? I’m about to storm over there and remind them I did most of the work on the panel outside, but to my surprise, Lucía beats me to it. “You should thank D’Aakh. He was the one who rerouted the power… And I mean, you really should thank him. He seems like the vain type of bastard who gets angry about not getting most of the credit.”
That stops me in my tracks. I’m not vain! And…well, I might have gotten a tiny bit angry about not being given credit for my work but who wouldn’t? How dare she talk about me like that?
“He’s angry at you already,” Lucía continues as Cai translates her words into the incomprehensible Serramorph language. “And I have to say, he has a good reason. I know you were careful not to take certain things when building this place, but your actions still made the ship malfunction and put the crew in danger.”
“No core systems,” Tink argues. “Careful. Not take important. Only redundant and secondary.”
Lucía barks out a humorless laugh. “Yeah, sorry, girl. That didn’t work out. I know you tried your best but you caused a lot of damage.”
The Serramorph leader is quiet for long seconds. “Leader angry?” she asks eventually. “Kill Serramorphs? Kill the Heart?”
“What? No! Of course not. Zarkan came here to strike a deal with you guys, not to kill anyone. Least of all a helpless youngling. No one is going to hurt your Heart, I promise. Besides, I know exactly how you are going to make it up to the crew.”
“Apologize? Didn’t want damage. Didn’t want harm or danger.”
“Yes, an apology is a good start. However, you’re also going to help us fix the ship and then train up to help out as the maintenance crew.”
I blink, stunned by her words. Rage flares within me. Who the fuck does this female think she is?! As if it’s not bad enough that I have to deal with one primitive lifeform messing with my work, now she wants to add the bugs to it too?
Over my dead body.
Before I know it, I’m striding into the long-abandoned workshop the Serramorphs have taken over. I grab Lucía’s arms and snarl right into her face. “What the fuck did you just say?!”