Collision Course (Class 5, #6)

Chapter 4

CHAPTER 4

Rose had a good idea of who she would see when she opened the door to the small explorer.

As she guessed, she had been pulled inside a launch bay, and arrayed in front of her, at the bottom of the ramp, were five people around the same height as herself. She already knew their thumbs were long and their fingers were short.

She drew comfort from the fact that she knew way more about them than they knew about her.

The thought steadied her. She fingered her necklace, so relieved that she had it on when she was taken. It took the atmosphere and altered it in a halo around her head to make sure she always had the correct air mix. Whatever the air was outside, she could still breathe safely, and that was vital. Especially now. She brushed her fingers over her bump.

She took a single step down the ramp and then stopped to take in her surroundings.

The area was circular, which was how Irini’s ship was built, as well. A long tube, just like a rocket ship from Earth, although this ship was much bigger than Irini.

The faces that looked up at her were nothing like she’d seen before. The Grih were so similar to her, the only visible differences were in ear shape and height. The Garmann and Bukhari were closer to her in height, but visibly different in more ways than the Grih, and the Fitali and Tecran were clearly completely different.

Irini’s grynicha fell into the same category.

They may have had the same height and number of fingers as Rose, but their faces were flat, with very little relief in terms of lips, nose or eyes. Their noses were more like slits in the skin, their mouths lipless, and their eyes were big in their face, and with no clear eyelids.

She blinked her own a few times, nervously.

If only she’d known she was going to meet up with them today, she’d have brought along the slim black translator Sazo and Irini had come up with. Irini had given Sazo the full language of her grynicha , and Sazo had matched it as much as possible to both Grihan and English. But it was sitting in the lounge in Sazo’s Class 5, alas.

“I’m afraid I don’t speak your language,” she said.

There was a moment of silence, and then two of them looked quickly at each other.

“What are you saying?” one of them asked her, in Tecran.

She blinked again. Tecran was a language she had been able to speak fluently a year ago, but she hadn’t spoken it at all since she and Sazo had escaped Tecran control.

“I said that I don’t speak your language.” She stumbled a little over the words.

“You are not a native speaker of the language we are using?” another asked her.

“I am not.”

If they had listened in on the Tecran for communication purposes more than a year ago when the Tecran had come like raiders into their system, stole their ship and the people in it, and then left, they must surely know she was not Tecran.

Unless they hadn’t gotten a look at the Tecran. Which was possible.

“There are more types than just the ones who came before?” a third person asked.

“Yes. But it’s complicated.” She had to think a bit before she came up with the word ‘complicated’.

“How many of you are there?”

“I am one of five people stolen by the people who speak the language we are speaking now.” She felt frustration rise within her, and tried to tamp it down. “Now I live with others who are not friends with those people.”

There was a startled silence.

They spoke amongst themselves in a quick, choppy language, and then looked back at her.

“Come down here.”

She didn’t want to, but what was she going to do? Refuse?

She began to walk slowly down the ramp, her center of balance a little off because of her bump.

“Are you armed?” One of them asked sharply as she got nearer the bottom, the Tecran words triggering a quick spike of panic in her.

She shook her head, held out her hands. “No.” She frowned. “You took me, remember? I was just on my way home, minding my own business.”

Her response seemed to startle them.

Perhaps they expected her to be more afraid of them. More submissive.

“Why did you take me?” she asked.

“We want to swap you for the crew that went missing a year ago.”

Rose stared at them, her heart sinking. Because that crew was dead. They chose to kill themselves, rather than be taken prisoner by the Tecran.

There was no one alive to swap her with .