“I accepted compensation to surrogate. I love Kohei and James and Xander.”
“Query. Clarify love.”
This was territory Max didn’t know how to navigate. He wanted the children healthy and successful. He felt pride when they handled a situation with cool efficiency, and Max didn’t normally internalize others’ performance. He felt all that and more for Rick. The children were... well... children. But Rick was sweet and caring and not a child. And Max had no idea how to explain any of the various forms of love he felt for the family. He said something that Rick would understand. “I would kill for them.”
Rick trumpeted again. It was a noise Max hadn’t heard often. Rick then added, “You did kill for them.”
“Yep. Hopefully the pirates won’t come back.”
“Unintelligent energy shapes,” Rick said with an unhappy belch.
“Energy shape? Clarify.” The translator had missed that one.
Rick touched the computer and a screen appeared. The general display switched to the curved and expanded alien version of a periodic table. Rick chose an element on the lower right side and selected it. A structure with dozens of electrons zipping around the central nucleus appeared and then a yellowish brown rock appeared, and then an image of the refined metal. It had crystalized into squares that dully reflected the light. Luckily chemistry had always been Max’s favorite class.
“Polonium. They’re stupid polonium-headed pirates,” Max translated. He would have gone for poopy heads. He would not associate the pirates with something as deadly as polonium, not when an unarmed prisoner could take out their entire boarding party. But insults didn’t seem to translate well.
“Stupid polonium-headed pirates,” Rick echoed. “Query. You are warrior and you accepted compensation for surrogacy.”
Max assumed that Rick wanted to know why. “Can we have this discussion after I pee?” he asked. He hoped that would send Rick running. He avoided bodily fluids as a general rule. However, Rick simply watched. Silently. Slightly creepily.
With a sigh, Max headed for the recycling unit. He pulled out the low drawer-like trough and peed. The pain made him hiss and he had a touch of pink in with the yellow. He had taken a body blow, but if something important had ruptured or cracked, he would have felt worse.
“Query. Have you cleaned up the bodies?” Max asked.
“I discarded without cleaning. Query. Do humans have rituals for cleaning dead before removal?”
Max huffed. “Yeah, we do.”
“Regrets. I did not clean first,” Rick said. “Apologies.”
“Clarify. We clean our dead. We discard the dead of enemies. I was asking if the ship was clean.”
“The ship is clean. I removed personal shielding and weapons. I can bring you items salvaged from enemy you killed.”
Max nodded. He assumed that was a peace offering, but there was something he wanted more—a subject he was stuck on as firmly as Rick seemed stuck on the idea that Max was a warrior. Once he finished peeing and breathing through the pain, Max folded the piss trough back into the wall and opened the hatch to the sink. “Query. Why were the invaders here?”
“To invade.”
Max imagined the “no-duh” tone Rick was probably using in his own language. After he finished washing his hands, Max pushed the sink back into the wall and headed for the door. This shirt had alien blood and viscera or something on it, and it was torn in several places. He’d talked the computer into producing one spare and now he hoped he could convince the computer to fabricate another one because he’d gotten used to having a spare on washing day. “I need to change shirts,” Max said as he passed Rick.
Part of him expected Rick to leave and go back to his control room. He wasn’t willing to talk to Max about the invaders, and Max wasn’t sure what he wanted to know about Max’s past as a service member. Instead, Rick followed him down the corridor. However, he kept a far greater distance than Max was used to.
Rick was a pretty touchy-feely alien. Even after the offspring had been born, he’d tended to swim or walk within tentacle reach. More than once, he’d rested one of his light green tentacles on Max’s shoulder, allowing the red tip to dangle. Rick had explained that thousands of years ago, his people had used the red color to attract prey, but now it was decorative. He’d explained that he was quite proud of how much red he had on his tentacles. Apparently, Rick was a real looker.
Once in his quarters, Max left the door open as an invitation. Instead of coming all the way into the small room, Rick hovered near the door. The change in Rick’s behavior bothered Max more than he would have expected. He hoped that he hadn’t ended their easy friendship by showing how willing he was to kill. Max didn’t regret what he had done; he’d saved the children. But he did wish he could have found another method.
“Query. You are a warrior and you accepted compensation for surrogate.”
Max sighed. Rick was going to stay stuck on that point until they had this discussion. Rick had a quick fantasy of siccing Major Jones on him. When some idiot airman had commented on her being a kickass pilot yet taking time off for her kid’s birthday party, she had verbally striped the skin from his hide. That woman had been five-foot-three of muscle and attitude. “I am a warrior. I am surrogate father for your offspring. I am both.”
Rick blurbled. That was a new noise and Max tentatively labelled it confusion. The other alternatives were distress or fear, but Max never wanted Rick to feel that around him. However, the sudden distance between them suggested Rick’s comfort level had dropped.
Max pulled the edge of the bunk down and sat on it. The bunks were mere inches off the floor, so the position required Max to look up at Rick. “I am far from my people. I don’t know the strengths or weaknesses of any race. I do not know weapons or security systems. I cannot hire myself out as a warrior. The two offers for compensation were surrogate or translation. You compensated more.”
“Impossible. Fee for translation of warrior species is valuable.”
“Yeah, apparently not,” Max said with a shrug. And ironically, he had ended up doing the translation work anyway, at least on Rick’s computer. “I would have needed to work for centuries to earn enough money to get back to my planet of birth.”
Rick whistled. “They offer you compensation for child’s language.”
“I think the translation matrix failed. I am not a child.”
Rick whistled and settled down farther so he was eye to eye with Max, although he stayed well out of tentacle reach. “Our offspring are not children. They lack experience, but they have cognitive ability.”
“Query. Clarify. Are you using child to mean lacking in cognitive ability?”
Rick rotated his body to consider Max out of a new set of eyes. “Yes.”
That did explain why Rick would get so twitchy when Max called the offspring children. “Clarify. Child means offspring when they are small.”
“Clarify. Child means offspring who lack cognitive ability or species who lacks cognitive ability.”
Max rubbed a hand over his face. He had screwed up that bit of translation. “Clarify. Child is only for offspring.”
“Query. The word for those who lack cognitive ability.”