Seedrah once again came at a trot, bringing my exosuit. We made
our way slowly to the hold, and I tried to memorize the symbols on the walls
for the journey. It might not be in aid of escape, but I needed to study these
aliens. Their culture was very similar to most bipedal races, their
interactions and basic mannerisms mostly within the norms.
They had fairly standard emotions and expressed them in ways
I could understand. Their culture was gregarious, and they worked as a
community. They clearly showed disfavor toward outsiders—or at least humans and
the races we knew, since none of them had told us about Four Arms—but they
weren’t xenophobic to the extreme. I wasn’t imprisoned, experimented on, or
killed.
Go me.
But they weren’t just going to let me go. I had to hope that
there was something I could do that would lead me to an answer that would
resolve my precarious situation. If only I could get used to their gravity… the
weight of it was exhausting, and just eating a meal and walking to the hold had
already exhausted me.
Hopefully my suit would protect my body some. At the hold, I
removed my foot coverings and placed the disk with my exosuit against my chest.
Depressing the command sequence, it expanded, first wrapping up and around my
shoulders and ribs before it began to slide the plated shielding around my
exposed limbs.
Garjah didn’t look happy as he let me into the new cage
where they’d moved Bouncer. It was bigger, so I could stand in it, which I
appreciated for him. They weren’t going to keep him in the tiny one that was
barely bigger than his body. Timok stood with a fairly standard injector, which
he passed over before Seedrah secured the barred door behind me.
“Press it to the shoulder, close to the cerop’s spine.”
Bouncer’s feet flexed as I crouched next to him.
“Did you see that?” Seedrah asked. “He moved! He shouldn’t
be able to do that.”
“I told you,” Timok said. Their voices faded into the background
as I focused on Bouncer. His color had faded, and I didn’t like it. I rubbed
the pebbled skin of his chest, unable to feel it through my gloves but the rise
and fall of his ribs was reassuring.
“You’ll be okay.” I studied the injector, which was really
just a tube with a hole on one side with a button, putting it to Bouncer’s shoulder
and pressing the button. There was a hiss and soft thud I could feel through my
glove. Idiot-proof. Or human-proof. Maybe the same thing to them until I proved
otherwise, though Garjah did call me wily. I still felt a strange sense of
pride in that.
Almost immediately Bouncer’s breathing increased. I dropped
the injector out of the cage, then looked around. No food, no water. Saint’s
balls, I was an idiot. They’d had him in stasis, but I knew how voracious he
was.
I turned to face the bars. “I need food. A lot of it.
Meat, preferably alive if possible. He likes grubs.”
“Cerops will eat anything moving,” Garjah said.
“Would you stop being so biased and get me what I asked for?”
I snapped.
Pressure snapped around my foot, and I was pulled backward.
I landed with an oomph, then fell onto my belly. I rolled, and Bouncer pounced
as he’d done so many times in the short time we’d been together I’d actually
lost count.
“Essell!” Garjah bellowed.
“I’m fine.” My voice was breathless, more from the shock
than anything else. Bouncer was awake, crouched over me, and nuzzling my belly.
I’d postulated it was a move young did to induce milk production in the parent,
or a scent-marking on a vulnerable portion of anatomy only a packmate would
allow.
The whine of a weapon broke up our reunion. Bouncer’s head
came up, and he fixed all his eyes on Garjah, snarling with his sharp teeth on
threatening display. “You’re not fine.”
“He wants to hurt you, not me. He doesn’t even have his
claws out. Wasn’t that what you were worried about?”
Garjah’s hand didn’t move an inch, and Bouncer wasn’t moving
either. I couldn’t get up, just crane my head awkwardly to look sideways out
the bars. Thankfully, Seedrah came trotting up with a bin.
“Oh good, food.” Bouncer’s nose twitched, and his gaze moved
from Garjah to Seedrah. That, if nothing else, proved how young he was. An
adult would not waver from the biggest threat in the space, even if starving.
But Bouncer’s stomach ruled him, which made me safe. Ish. Safeish.
I still kept my suit and gloves on, after all. Seedrah slid
the container through the bars, and I stretched one arm up and snagged it with
my fingertips. As soon as I had food in my hands, Bouncer backed off, yipping.
He assumed the position, front legs trembling as he laser focused on the food.
He was probably starving after being in stasis for so long.
Sliding the lid off, I smiled at the grubs whose mandibles
were gone but they were still alive. Perfect. Picking up one of the ugly purple
grubs, I didn’t need to worry about my fingers. I avoided the pink slime from
the wounded head, tossing it in the air to Bouncer. He lived up to his name,
hopping into the air and catching it neatly.
He crunched down, snapping his jaws shut and chewing
rapidly. When he sat again, pink oozed from his lips. He wiggled on his
forelegs, glittering eyes focused on me, big ears up, ready for another toss. I
didn’t make him wait, sending another juicy bug his way. This time I made him
leap to the left. Then the right. He didn’t miss a single bug. The final one I
let him take from my hand. He licked his lips, then butted my stomach.
“Yeah, you’re welcome, buddy.”
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