Trapped with the Alien Transporter (Ragrim Explorations #1)

Chapter 2

Hsinth tried to focus on getting the Engsth set up for takeoff. It wasn’t like he’d spent overlong on the planet’s surface and let the engines lock up, but he’d thought his next jaunt on Earth would at least give him some time to ply his trade since he’d offloaded the canisters of spiced fish on Merryn Station and Hasila’s distress call had come in before he could pick up anything there.

He hadn’t considered that grabbing Hasila’s fare would give him next to no time to poke around and buy something marketable at this next stop, and he just knew settlers on the little colony moon had to be dying for home goods from Earth. Especially now that Earth was doing far better than it once had.

And that alone raised questions about why the little human going over paperwork at the little table in the small ‘social’ area of the ship wanted to go there instead of staying here. Earth was where the majority of humans were; the moon where she was going was a comparatively backwoods place, even twenty years after being founded.

Though it had been primitive by Republic standards when humans had first joined the Republic of Free Planets, Earth’s infrastructure was rapidly catching up, and Hsinth was excited to see where it would go. He’d been on the far side of the galaxy when the Ragrim Conflict had occurred. He’d heard about it, of course. Who hadn’t? The struggle to free Earth from Lukrim’s overbearing oversight had taken years, and by the time he’d come back around, he’d realized that there was wealth to be made here if he was patient.

Even if that wealth meant transporting a single human from Earth to a colony. He’d get her there, see what exports the colony’s capital might have to sell, and bring them back to Earth. Then his plan could really take off, because he’d have contacts on both worlds.

The ship rose smoothly off the landing pad before arcing up through the atmosphere on a lazy course meant to give him plenty of notice if any upper atmosphere winds decided to act up. On a planet still under active re-surfacing from a thousand Republic technologies he couldn’t name, nature was known to act up. And with a passenger this uppity, he wanted the ride as easy as possible.

As soon as they were on the trajectory to get out into real space to the first marker, he headed back to the galley. Time to set up his first contact.

“What are you reading?” he asked, looking at the pair of datapads Ophelia had set up. Some indecipherable data scrolled slowly on one, and he couldn’t make heads or tails of it no matter how he squinted. Something with numbers, to be sure, and from the way her fingers were flying across the portable keyboard in front of her, she understood it just fine.

“Documents,” she said shortly.

“What kind of documents?”

He could keep an ear on the cockpit while making friends with his fare. He just had to figure out how . Humans liked to talk about themselves. Every species did, but humans were especially social. The few he’d had the pleasure of transporting before were always fascinated with everything around them, asked dozens of questions, and were generally easy to get along with.

He’d have called them his favorite kind of being to transport, but Ophelia was giving him second thoughts on the matter.

Her lips were pursed now, and one hand tapped impatiently on the pad with the moving numbers. “Why do you want to know?”

Oh wow , as the humans said. She really was testing his idea that humans were all friendly beings.

“Because I’m curious,” he offered. “You seem very fixated on it, and given that you were willing to pay extra for this transport now instead of waiting several months for the next commercial transport to the Ysenys system, I’m curious what made you that impatient.”

Ophelia sighed. “I’m just eager to get where I’m going,” she said. “The regular transports out that way from Earth are quarterly, and I didn’t feel like waiting four months. They wanted to hire me now, and I wanted to get there faster instead of letting them wait and change their minds and hire someone who was actually on-planet now.”

“What is it you’ll be doing there?”

“Exports,” she said quickly. “Boring things, not very interesting.”

Hsinth couldn’t stop the smile that took over his face. “Exports, you say?”

This little human was perfect , exactly what he needed.

“Yes,” she said uncomfortably. “With the colony coming up on its twentieth year, they’re really hitting their stride in what works as a popular export, at least to the Krengar worlds where the Ysenian wood has been popular. They want to see what Earth wants at this point, and I think I have some good ideas to bring to the table.”

Damn. Hsinth hadn’t even thought about lumber as an export. The two times he’d gone to the colony moon, he’d been more interested in seeing how the humans were coming along, and wood hadn’t seemed like a good option since anything they cut was being used to build with. He’d ended up leaving both times with a hold full of local furs and jerky made from the local mammalian pests, and while the Geshallans on Smokerise Station had loved them, it hadn’t been enough of a profit to convince him to go back for more.

“What are they looking at?” he asked, peering at the screen.

Ophelia flipped it face down, and the data disappeared. “Lots of stuff,” she said.

Hsinth thought mournfully of his empty cargo hold. If she wouldn’t talk about her job, there was more than one way to get information out of her.

“What are they looking for , then?” he pressed. “They have to miss things that only Earth has. Textiles, media, clothing, food, spices.”

The suggestions only made the corners of her mouth turn down.

“I’m there to wrangle exports, not imports,” Ophelia said.

“Human men?” he asked a little desperately, thinking of the half-Lukrimians that made up a good portion of the colony. When it had been founded, many of the human brides of Lukrim had left the planet and brought their halfling children with them, and many of those children were now of an age to find a spouse. Hsinth knew that if he’d been human, it would be hard to consider the offspring of liars as a suitable mate.

Ophelia gave him a disgusted look. “Why, because a lot of the people in the colony have Lukrimian heritage?”

“I– no,” he stuttered, trying to find a way around her accusation.

“Yeah, the Lukrimians lied forty years ago,” she admitted. “We’ve been free of their rule just as long as we were under it, and I’m not going to blame the kids for what their dads did. I’m pretty sure no one there is absolutely desperate for a purely human spouse. Enough migrate over on the quarterly transports from Earth that an anti-Lukrimian colonist has options if they really want them.”

“But they enslaved humans!” Hsinth exclaimed. “They told you the only way you’d get off Earth was in their mate-matching program and they hid you from the rest of the Republic! How can you—”

Ophelia’s eyes narrowed. “Because they changed! I get that you haven’t been on Earth much, but their queen has been pretty helpful with reparations. They keep to themselves on Lukrim, the only hard contact they have with humanity is through the colony, and they don’t seem to be as judgmental of other species as you are. To be honest, I find it refreshing!”

Hsinth’s hands clenched at his sides. “Me? Judgmental?”

He’d read up on humans until he fell asleep with their primers on his screens! He’d gone out of his way to train himself on being overt with physical gestures and contact because he’d read humans were an intimate people. The temperatures on his ship were adjusted down for human comfort instead of higher like Geshallans tended to prefer. There was a reason he was in long sleeves and pants instead of the traditional tucked lower-body wrap he preferred when alone and could turn the heat up!

And yet this human was looking at him like he was something she’d scraped off the bottom of her shoe, purely because he wanted to champion humans against their only real oppressors in the galaxy.

“Now if you’ll pardon me,” Ophelia said, nostrils flaring. “I’m going to go back to reviewing my documents because somehow, their files are more of a mess than this ship is. How, I have no idea, but at least their files are something I can fix.”

“Fine,” he shot back, trying to ignore the flush in her cheeks and the way her brown eyes were sparkling. Something about arguing with her had woken something in his gut, and Hsinth couldn’t quite define it.

He puzzled over it on his way back to the cockpit, considering and discarding shame, annoyance, disgust, and frustration before settling into the pilot’s chair, irritated with how the entire exchange had gone. He needed to make a bond with her if he was going to use their association to get in good with transporting goods between Earth and Ysenys and beyond!

That was why he was so frustrated, and not because she’d looked incredibly attractive when she’d been that angry.