Chapter one: Tch’ri
Tch’ri stood in the dimly lit hallway, watching as the Terran, Geoff, kneeled down on the metallic floor in front of a small furry creature. He was making high-pitched clicking and tutting noises that the translators were unable to decipher. Tch’ri had difficulty grasping this strange behaviour of Geoff. It has been over two decades since First Contact was established with the Terrans, and quite a few years since they’ve been members of The Alliance, yet even to this day, the Terrans remain a strange lot.
Sure, Tch’ri thought to Xemself, the Korlags had their quirks, like them drinking their own – only sometimes modified – vital fluids during ceremonies, and the Rleps tended to occasionally get so stressed at something that they would literally fall to pieces. Burst, even. Don’t even start about the Lindarrans, who had a spiritual holiday where they would suffocate themselves up to the point of needing to be resuscitated, in order to prove how strong the regeneration of their bloodline was, while considering those who didn’t make it to be weak and irrelevant. But the Terrans? Terrans were just plain weird.
This Terran, Geoff, was now trying to coax the furry creature into following him into his quarters, possibly to feed it. Tch’ri didn’t want to stick around any longer, as the smell of the almost-rotten flesh fed to that .. that ‘thing’ made Xem noxious.
Tch’ri headed towards the mess hall, hoping to catch something to eat that wouldn’t be reminiscent of what that furry creature ate.
Once, to try and be friendly, Tch’ri had sat down and tried to communicate with the small animal, using Xem latent telepathy to try and form some sort of connection. The vile thing had made a loud hissing noise, its face contorting in a predatorial shape, and it had lashed out at Tch’ri. If it weren’t for the carapace that covered Xem, Tch’ri might have been severely harmed, as some of the other crew members had already experienced themselves.
The ship’s doctor had gotten used to treating what Geoff called ‘playful nibbles and scratches’. Even after several of these vicious attacks, Geoff was convinced his “cat” or so he called it, was completely harmless and benign. Tch’ri wasn’t so sure about that.
Tch’ri stepped into the mess hall. On the far end of the room, a row of dark-coloured panes were embedded along the wall, where one could order a variety of food from the protein-sequencers.
On the adjacent wall, there was the most recent addition to the mess hall, a desk-like cubicle where a Terran called Matthew was doing something with foodstuffs and heat. The Terrans called it a ‘kitchen’, but most Alliance species looked upon it with distrust, as the ancient way of using heat to alter proteins was an unreliable and outdated way of preparing sustenance.
The Terrans, however, were often lining up for quite some time to be on the receiving end of this primitive form of food preparation. They said it had a more ‘realistic’ taste and a ‘homely’ feel to it, whatever that might mean.
As Tch’ri headed to one of the few empty tables that lined the mess hall, a familiar voice called out.
“Tch’ri! Come sit with us!”
A tall Rlep by the name of Lirrip stood up from his chair and waved his arms.
“The protein-sequencers have been upgraded, and what they make is now finally almost edible!” he exclaimed happily.
It is always a good idea to keep a Rlep happy. Too stressed or frustrated, and it was an incredibly icky clean-up. They tended to burst, sometimes violently, when overstressed. It was one of those ancient survival mechanisms that had stuck around, albeit in a less extreme version compared to the old days. Nothing wanted to try and catch prey that exploded when you were about to eat it.
Luckily, nowadays the explosion was most often low-yield and rarely hurt anyone aside themselves, and they managed to regenerate in roughly four to five cycles, but it was messy nonetheless. However, most Rleps were fairly happy-go-lucky beings these days, as the ones prone to stress, frustration, or emotional instability had been taken out of the genepool by evolution long ago. Passing on one’s genes was, after all, a lot easier to do when one wasn’t spread across the immediate vicinity at the snap of a twig or a misinterpreted shadow.
“Did you hear about ensign Mary?” Lirrip asked, almost vibrating with excitement.
This got Tch’ri curious. Lirrip seemed to always be the first to get his hands on good gossip. Nobody knew exactly how he managed that, but it probably had something to do with him being able to get on with everybody, no matter the size, rank, species, shape, clan, or age. It wasn’t as much that he didn’t care about those things, he was simply always happy to meet a new face. Or faces, at times.
“It was insane! Ensign Mary received a package from Terra with something called ‘chilis’. Apparently it’s one of the toxic plants from Terra, which they actually eat there!”
Tch’ri stared wide-eyed at him. “They eat toxic plants? You’re joking! Why would they do th- ..”
Tch’ri reconsidered that question, swiftly consulted Xemhive and instead asked “What’s the effect of eating these ‘chilis’, exactly?”
“Ensign Mary started sweating all over after taking a small bite, her eyes started watering and her pigments turned red!” Lirrip said. “I thought she was about to explode!”
Coming from a Rlep, this wasn’t exactly farfetched, as they were pretty much the experts on it.
“But!” Lirrip continued, “As we backed away, some of us hiding behind tables and bulkheads, she took. Another. BITE!”
Tch’ri blanched. “So, ensign Mary is dead, then? As far as I know, Terrans don’t regenerate after exploding. It’s one of the few things that actually seems to kill them.”
Lirrip beamed. “That’s the best bit! She coughed a few times which, honestly, scared the living lights out of us, but then she smiled and said how much she missed this! I swear, those Terrans are crazy! So, most of us climbed out from behind our respective hiding spots to see how she was faring, and then she offered us a bite as well!”
Tch’ri’s mandibles twitched with displeasure at this. “She actively tried to poison you? That’s tantamount to treason!”
“Well, no, I mean, she did eat it herself. It’s apparently a delicacy on Terra. Not fatal at all. Usually.”
Tch’ri sighed, shaking Xem head. Poison as a delicacy. Hostile creatures kept as pets. What a race.
“Well, poison is all fine and well, you can build resistances to that,” Dugllg said, a Korlag of quite above average height and bulk. “Especially if you ingest your own toxified fluids, you can actually get by very decently on poisonous plants eventually.”
“Yes, Dugllg,” Lirrip sighed, “But only for you Korlags. For the rest of us, drinking one’s own vital fluids isn’t exactly healthy for us, and when they’ve become toxic we’ve got much bigger issues to worry about. That even goes for Terrans, at least, I think it does.”
Dugllg shrugged at this. “Probably true. But, as we are talking about Terrans being weird, have you heard what happened to the team at Dennan four?”
Lirrip shivered, and eyed Tch’ri, his discomfort clearly showing. “Tch’ri, you don’t want to hear this and neither do I, not again, please make him stop.”
Dugllg grinned, revealing multiple rows of needle-like protrusions in his mouth, and a glint in his eyes.
“A few dozen cycles ago, I was in a surveillance team at Dennan four, you know, Dennan’s unnamed moon, where some ancient ruins were discovered fairly recently. We were heading there to check out the ruins, just a few scientists, archaeologists and xeno-anthropologists, a Terran engineer – Brian I believe he was called – who was brought along to check for potential dusty old traps as that was his specialty, and my squad as additional security, in case the ruins weren’t as abandoned as expected.
During a patrol by my squad, one of my men managed to mess up big time. He neglected the Terran’s warnings, didn’t closely watch where he was walking and triggered a hidden mechanism.
Half the ceiling came down on us. Me and most of my team were the lucky ones, but the scientists and the idiot who triggered the cave-in were buried under the rubble.
I thought we were going to have to blast the ruins open with low-yield explosives just to retrieve the corpses.
But then, rocks started shifting, and Brian managed to raise himself out of the wreckage.
He had fluids leaking from him all over, a lot of his clothing was shredded or torn, and one of his arms seemed to be mangled in some way.”
This is where Tch’ri and Lirrip had to look away, as even the mental image of it was horrible. Leaking fluids never bode well, and Tch’ri had only known a handful of Xem to survive a ruined appendage. Most of those were never the same afterwards, their gaze distant, and their behaviour jumpy.
“The sickest bit,” Dugllg continued, smiling even wider now, “was that the Terran shook his head, looked at his arm, frowned, cursed loudly and then pulled hard on it, followed by slamming his wounded arm against the nearest wall!”
Tch’ri nodded solemnly. It was something not completely unknown to Xem, for an individual to crack open the injury to a fatal level, inviting the end before the pain would drive them completely insane. It happened occasionally to those who survived grievous injuries as well, when it all became too much to bear.
“And with a loud popping, cracking sound, Brian seemed to have fixed his arm, after screaming a bit to himself and hopping around, holding his shoulder. That crazy Terran even ended up helping dig out the scientists. He did curse a lot doing so, and I’ve learnt some interesting new phrases, but he only flinched a little while helping us out!”
Dugllg couldn’t stop laughing at this.
“They are so incredibly hard to kill! A cracked arm, set with nothing but brute force and spirit, come on! I’d love to have a few of those on my team! And this was an engineer, not even a trained soldier!”
Tch’ri stood up, feeling sick in both stomachs.
“Thank you for those .. revolting tales. Glad I haven’t eaten yet, and don’t think I will. See you next break.”
With these words, and a mild feeling of rising bile, Tch’ri headed back to Xem quarters. Enough Terran horror stories for one day.
Nearing the sleeping quarters, Tch’ri saw Geoff heading out of his own quarters, with the ‘cat’ sitting on his shoulders. The beast seemed to be looking mildly smug at Tch’ri, curling its tail possessively around Geoff’s neck.
“Geoff?” Tch’ri asked, “Mind if I ask you something? It’s about Terrans. And it’s not just me asking, if you don’t mind, it’s for Xemhive. We’re still very curious. And me, well, I’m confused.”
He smiled. “Guess you’re still learning as much about us as we are about you, eh? Fire away!”
This momentarily puzzled Tch’ri, that weird Terran urge to use phrases that said one thing, but meant something completely different.
“Well, I just heard about a Terran who broke his arm, and then slammed it into a wall to heal it. Surely this can’t be true?”
Geoff thought for a few seconds before he answered.
“I might be mistaken, but that sounds like a dislocated shoulder, not a broken arm. See, when a shoulder dislocates, you can occasionally pop it back into the socket. It hurts like the Dickens, but it’s not a very serious injury.”
Tch’ri flinched. “Can you actually heal yourself from such injuries? Just like that?”
Geoff shook his head, “It’s far from actually healing, it’s only a quick temporary fix. The shoulder will still need to heal for some time, and the muscles around the area will be sore and weak for quite a bit and will most likely need therapy. It’s just, well, enough to make sure you can keep moving around and such.”
“I think I get it,” Tch’ri said “but if I may ask, have you ever had an injury like that?”
“No, not exactly a dislocated shoulder,” Geoff responded, “But I have broken my arms several times in unfortunate sporting accidents, cracked a few ribs and my skull during Basic Flight when our shuttle crashed, and I’ve lost a toe back when I was young and stupid. But nothing serious, no.”
This was almost too much for Tch’ri to handle. Terrans were known to be sturdy, sure. But several broken limbs? Cracked ribs? Skull fracture? Loss of minor extremities? For most, if not all species Tch’ri knew off, this would be fatal, yet Geoff brushed this off as nothing serious.
“And,” Tch’ri asked, “You don’t suffer any side-effects from all those injuries?”
“Nah,” Geoff replied, “Although when I’m back on Terra, I can tell from the scar on my skull when there’s going to be a storm. Everything else healed just fine. Aside from the lost toe, obviously. Anyway, I’d love to chat more, but I’m about to be late for my shift. See you around!”
With that, he left the flabbergasted Tch’ri behind. Life-threatening injuries healed without a problem, and he actually gained an ability that most Terrans didn’t have?
How does a species invent sports rough enough to break limbs as if it’s nothing?
Why do they actively seek out to eat sustenance poisonous to them, and like it?
And they let wild, dangerously clawed animals live with them without domesticating them?
Tch’ri shivered, as she entered her new knowledge into Xemhive. Terrans were truly a terrifying species. Good thing they were part of The Alliance, as having these brutes for an enemy would truly be a terrifying prospect.