Juanita sat on the bench next to Angela, her hands clasped between her legs as she stared down at the deck. The rational part of her knew she should tell the others what she’d learned, the whole Gaia-and-seed-planets thing, and get their opinion on it. But the emotional part of her couldn’t stop thinking about the kiss.

Orion had flat out told her that he’d murdered an innocent man, and she’d seen him kill other men on that ship, taking some down with his bare hands. Somehow, when she’d been stuck in that corner and terrified of being caught by brutal slavers, she had thought it was all right. He had been on her side. Part of the reason he’d been killing them was to protect her. When it had all been good guys versus bad guys, it had seemed okay.

But to think that he’d killed some research scientist who’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time… That chilled her. She’d needed to have some time away from him to think about how she felt versus how she should feel. And to reconcile it all.

That was what she’d intended to do, but then he had touched her cheek, and she’d gone all tingly and putty-like and hadn’t been able to move at all. No, more than that, she had been drawn to him. Nobody like him had ever touched her. And nobody’s touch had ever been so electrifying.

When his lips had brushed hers, all her inhibitions had disappeared, along with all her thoughts of right and wrong. All she’d been able to think about had been how good that felt and how hot and achy her body had grown. She was still wet and throbbing and wishing she’d had time to explore lower than his chest, to tug his pants down and look at the big hard cock she’d felt thrusting into her stomach. No, to more than look at it. She’d wanted to sling her legs around him and thrust him into her over and over until they exploded with pleasure and collapsed in sweaty pools on the deck.

Juanita rubbed her face with shaking hands. What the hell was going on with her? She never got this obsessed over a man.

“Are you all right?” Angela asked.

“Yeah.” Juanita lowered her hands and took a breath, trying to cool her body and pull herself together. She wondered if that Ensign Bystrom had shown anyone where there was a cold shower.

“You look shaky. Like something happened. That man didn’t do anything to you, did he?”

“No,” Juanita said more vehemently than she intended. “No,” she added more softly when Angela raised her eyebrows.

Why hadn’t she made that clear when the captain had shown up?

All she’d been thinking about was herself, that he would believe she was some kind of slut for throwing herself at a man she barely knew while in the middle of a public corridor. It hadn’t been until she’d been back inside the rec room that she’d realized the rage in the captain’s eyes had been for Orion and that he must have misunderstood… everything.

Juanita rubbed her face again. She felt intimidated by Captain Sagitta, but she would have to find a way to talk to him, to inform him that Orion hadn’t done anything that she hadn’t wanted. Even if she shouldn’t have wanted it.

She cringed at the idea of confessing to wanting to be kissed by someone the captain had condemned as a murderer, but damn it, Orion had been trying to help. It was horrible that an innocent man had been killed, but it wasn’t Orion’s fault. If he hadn’t killed those people, he might not have gotten the shields down so the Star Guardian ship could rescue everyone. And if he hadn’t chanced across Juanita and Tala and protected them in engineering, they might have been rediscovered by the slavers and taken back to the cell for that asshole to maul.

“It’s not his fault,” Juanita muttered and stood up.

She couldn’t wait. She had to set the captain straight right away.

“Uh, what’s not?” Angela asked.

Tala looked at her with a concerned expression.

“I have to talk to the captain.”

“About the fact that we’re heading away from Earth instead of toward it?” Tala asked. “I’d like to have a discussion with him about that too. But he’s not here.”

Ensign Bystrom wasn’t there, either. He was presumably standing guard again from outside the door. Maybe the order had been given to provide the women with privacy.

“There’s got to be a comm thingie of some kind, right?” Juanita looked toward the walls and tables.

“Comm what?” Tala asked.

“Communications,” Angela said. “Even I know that.”

“I’m sorry I’m not a science fiction aficionado,” Tala said. “My mom didn’t have any of those kinds of books around the house when I was growing up, and my brother was into… other things. I do remember reading Darna comic books at my grandfather’s house.”

“Who’s Darna?” Angela asked.

“A Filipino comics superhero who could fly and had super strength, kind of like Wonder Woman,” Juanita answered, frowning when she didn’t see anything that looked like a comm unit or panel. Did they all just talk on their wristwatches?

“You’ve read about Darna?” Tala blinked. “Usually, nobody in the US has heard of those comics.”

“Please, I’ve read comics from all over the world. There were Darna TV shows, too, you know.”

“Just think if you’d put some of your energy into studying useful things,” Tala said dryly.

“God, you sound like my mom.” Juanita frowned at her. Tala barely knew her. What gave her the right to deliver lectures?

“The wisdom of elders.”

“Maybe if you’d spent less time studying useful things, you’d be enjoying the vocation you’d chosen instead of retired from doctoring at thirty-five and trying to figure out what to do with yourself.”

Tala had never explained why she’d come up to Flagstaff to volunteer at the animal shelter, so Juanita was making some guesses, but from the startled, and then indignant expression that took over Tala’s face, she had a feeling she was close with her guess.

“The vocation wasn’t the problem,” Tala said coolly.

Juanita lifted her hands in apology. She didn’t want to fight with her only true allies here. She’d just been lashing out because Tala had… well, she’d started it.

“What was?” Angela asked.

“This isn’t the place to talk about it.”

“Oh? Where is the place?”

“Somewhere with alcohol.”

“Maybe we can put in a request,” Juanita said. “They can bring it whenever they get around to bringing our food.”

Angela moaned and grabbed her stomach. “Don’t remind me. We probably would have at least been fed on the other ship. You can’t sell scrawny, malnourished people into slavery, can you?”

The door slid open, and Juanita turned, hoping for the captain. Or Orion. She worried he had been punished or even put in a cell.

What entered startled her so much that she sat down on the bench. Hard.

Something that looked like a six-foot-tall pile of rocks walked—no, rolled—no, shuffled through the doorway, somehow squeezing its broad base together to fit. It didn’t have legs, at least not that were visible, but maybe they were underneath the boulder-like lower half of its body. A thin appendage somewhere between a tentacle and an arm extended from the side of its upper half and gripped what might have been a remote control, or maybe that was some kind of handheld tractor beam generator? Because a large tray with covered plates floated before the creature. Or was it a person? An alien? Or maybe it could be a strange-looking robot.

“Greetings, human women,” a rumbling voice came out of a speaker dangling on its… Juanita decided to call that a chest. Could a boulder stacked atop other boulders have a chest? The topmost boulder could be considered a head, and there were some orifices that might be the equivalent of ears, eyes, and a mouth, but they mostly looked like holes. “At the captain’s behest, I have prepared and brought meals for you. The ship is without a cook right now, but I am versed in dietary preferences and food preparation requirements for all manner of species.”

The slender whip-like arm twitched, one of four digits tapping a button on the handheld device. The tray lowered onto one of the tables.

“Are you an alien?” Angela blurted.

“An alien?” The creature’s voice sounded quite indignant. “I am Lieutenant Commander Craukakos Korta, an Alabaster. That being the name humans have given my species. Our name for ourselves is, computer, do not translate this.” Indecipherable syllables, if one could call them that, followed. It sounded like rocks grinding and banging together. “Resume translating. We, as you might imagine, consider humans to be aliens. Not much different from the Zi’i, in truth.”

“Are you… a servant?” Angela asked, walking toward the alien. Actually, she was walking around the alien and toward the stack of plates.

“A servant? I should say not!” The alien—Korta, Juanita reminded herself—rotated so that its side was toward them. A tattoo, just like those inked on the Star Guardians’ forearms, stamped its rocky skin, if skin was the right term. Hull? Outer layer? Crust? “I am the science and forensics officer on the ship, and I am seventh in command.”

“Out of how many?” Tala murmured.

Juanita smiled, though she knew there were more than seven people aboard. She’d seen more than that tramping around in combat armor on the slaver ship.

“Currently, there are forty-six crew members on the Falcon 8,” Korta said. “I am the only Alabaster on this ship. In fact, I may be the only Alabaster among the Star Guardian forces. Most of my people are homebodies and prefer to study science, mathematics, and music from the safety of our own world.”

“Music?” Juanita couldn’t imagine what kind of music ambulatory rock piles would make. Something involving a lot of percussion instruments.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to offend,” Angela said, now standing by the tray. “It just seemed kind of menial to have to feed us. Can we take these? Are they for us?”

A few more curious—and hungry—women were ambling toward the table.

“Menial, indeed,” Korta said, “but I am perceptive and read the captain’s face. He is concerned about libidinous overtures on the part of his men, and wishes not to tempt them. Humans are so strange with their mating urges and practices. As if mitosis isn’t the most logical way to procreate. There is no need for mating and the foolishness that comes with competing for mates. If you wish to vary the traits of your offspring, though there is little need when perfection has already been achieved, you can simply tinker with the genetic material.”

Angela looked blankly at Tala.

“Don’t look at me,” Tala said. “I’ve never heard of anything larger than a cell reproducing via mitosis.”

“How unsophisticated. Yes, human woman. That food is for you to eat.”

“Thank you, ah, Crau…Craw…”

“Korta is sufficient.” The boulder-creature moved toward the exit.

Juanita was tempted to drop to the deck to see how it moved—maybe, like a centipede, it had tons of tiny legs underneath its body. But she had more pressing matters on her mind. “Korta, I need to see the captain. Can you allow me to communicate with him?”

“He is very busy right now.”

“When won’t he be busy?”

“Judging by my observations, he is rarely busy during the five hours he sleeps on the night shift.”

Uh, she wasn’t going to knock on his door when he was sleeping. Especially if he only got five hours a night. “Then can you take me on a tour of the ship? Earlier, someone suggested that might be possible.”

“The ship is on lockdown at the moment. You must remain here.”

“But we were told we weren’t prisoners.”

“It is for your own safety,” Korta assured her.

“Can we at least see some video of the ship and where we’re going?”

Korta stopped in front of the door and turned back to face her. Another arm-tentacle had unfolded on the opposite side of its body, and it tapped its fingertips—tentacle tips?—together, making Juanita think of Burns from The Simpsons.

“Yes, I believe that would be acceptable. Come here, human woman, and I will show you how to work one of the monitors.” It rolled to one of the tables.

Juanita headed over to join it—should she think of Korta as a him? The voice coming from the speaker sounded somewhat masculine, but who knew if there was a feminine version of what sounded like rocks grinding together?

One of his tentacles tapped a blank tabletop. A red light flashed and projected a holographic sphere into the air above it.

A squawk of dismay from Angela distracted Juanita.

“This is our food?”

Tala joined her and looked down at the plate Angela had uncovered. An incredibly fatty steak lay on it, with drippings of something that looked like melted butter, but probably wasn’t, surrounding it. Tala and a couple of other women took the lids off other plates. The offerings were identical.

“It looks byproduct-free,” Tala observed.

“It’s raw meat, and that’s it.”

Tala poked the edge of one of the steaks. “Actually, I believe it’s rare. It’s at least been lightly seared.”

“Lightly seared? That means the rest is darkly raw.”

“That is how the captain and many of the crew prefer their meat. I have observed Lieutenant Treyjon and others from Osun consuming their fats and proteins raw.”

“I guess space E. coli isn’t a problem,” Juanita murmured.

“The steaks are scanned for undesirable bacteria before they’re frozen and placed into ship’s stores,” Korta said.

“Where are the fruits and vegetables?” Angela asked. “And like… bread. And potatoes. And quesadillas?”

“Quesadillas does not translate,” Korta said, sounding puzzled. “I believe you may find flour-based baked goods on most human planets, and certainly edible flora, but the Star Guardians consume few carbohydrates during space voyages, thus to encourage their bodies to burn ketones for energy. Since fats are calorically dense, they find this most efficient, requiring far fewer stores to be brought along on missions.”

“No fruits and vegetables at all?” Angela asked. “What about desserts?”

“Sweets are not consumed on the ship,” Korta said.

“Well, nobody’s going to go home fat,” Tala said, finding utensils and taking a plate back to the bench.

“Just nutritionally deficient. I can feel the scurvy coming on right now.”

“There are vitamin and electrolyte tablets in sickbay if you find yourself with deficiencies,” Korta said, “but the Star Guardian humans seem well adapted to this diet.”

“Any chance those tablets taste like Oreos?” Angela asked.

“Oreos does not translate.”

“That’s it. Outer space sucks.”

“If you do not find the food palatable, you may consider fasting,” Korta said. “This is what I do on missions since human food does not agree with me. We should make it back to Dethocoles, the seat of the human government, in less than six days.” Korta waved his tentacle through the holographic display, and a view of the space around them came into view.

“You want us to fast for a week?”

“Some of the Star Guardian humans do so, for religious purposes or simply to cleanse their digestive systems. I am certain this is not an unusual thing for your species.”

Juanita, mesmerized by a gray planet sailing past, forgot the food discussion. Another planet was ahead of them, presuming this display was showing the view to the front of the ship. It was lush and green, and she smiled, thinking of Return of the Jedi.

“Any chance that’s the forest moon of Endor?” she asked.

“That is J-45782.”

“Catchy.”

“How puzzling,” Korta said. “We should be flying past the planet, not toward it. There is no reason to stop in this system. My pardon, human woman. I must report to the bridge.”

Korta left without another word.

Much grumbling came from the women reluctantly taking their fatty steaks back to their groups. Juanita didn’t leave the holographic display. She was too fascinated by the green planet growing in size as they headed toward it. Deep blues broke up the green in places, more like lakes surrounded by green than oceans.

“I wonder if we’re going to land?”

She touched her phone. This would be worth recording. Assuming she could find a way off the ship to explore. And she intended to, one way or another. There was no way she was going to another solar system and not bringing home selfies.