War’s Oversight

All rights reserved

Copyright © 2019 by Shiantar

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed herein are fictional, and any resemblance to real people, whether living or dead, or to real events, is purely coincidental.

Chapter 12

There was a long, long moment where neither of them moved. She knelt, with her weight rocked backward onto her heels and with her hand on the butt of her pistol, watching him closely. He, in turn, was half-raised from lying on his back, with his supporting arm trembling and great rippling twitches running through the muscles of his abdomen. She could see them under his skin, racing back and forth and up and around.

At length, he blinked a few times, then closed his eyes and lowered himself back down onto the floor with a stifled grunt.

Her left hand, fingers splayed to steady her against the floor, was smarting with the cold. She withdrew her hand and clenched her fingers into a fist to warm them. 

There were a thousand or more thoughts running through her head, all at once, but it seemed the first thing she ought to do was to try to take charge of the situation. This guy only has the one good hand, and the one good foot, right? she thought. I’ve got the pistol.

She stood, and gently slipped her pistol from its holster -- not to point at him, but to point somewhere off to the side, away from either of them, and she cleared her throat, preparatory to putting some bass into her voice.

“Look …” she began. “I don’t know why you’re here, I don’t know how you can even understand what I’m saying … and I don’t care.” She squeezed the grip of her pistol, keeping her finger away from safety or trigger, and hefted it up by a few degrees. “This is our planet. You’re under arrest.”

Evidently, the Chakri felt this was as feeble a statement as she did, as he faintly cracked an eyelid to look at her for a fraction of a second before he coughed slightly and gave what she figured for a snort.

“I …” he rumbled, sounding both exhausted and breathless, but able to put more bass into his voice than she was, “... am not … a -”

He paused for so long that she scowled faintly. “... A - … A what?”

“A -” he continued. “ --rr .. es-ted.”

She was speechless.

“You’re not arrested?” she said, sounding incredulous. “Yes, yes you are. You’re under arrest.” She paused. “You’re … uh, ‘arrested.’ Yes.”

“This …” he began. What sibilants there were in his speech were harsh. He seemed to pause to think, for a moment, gazing up at the ceiling as he was, the yellow glow of the overhead lamp picking out the moisture glazing his eyes.  He faintly slapped his left palm against the floor twice, for what purpose she couldn’t place. Instead of a slap! there was a dull pat on the border of her hearing. “... place … this … world -” he suddenly latched onto the meaning he sought. “This world is …” His head rotated slightly, so that he was looking directly up at her, and parted black lips to moisten them. “Dis-pu-ted.”

“In dispute,” she corrected.

After a brief pause to gather more breath, he continued. His left hand bent upward, and his left forefinger extended a curved, black claw to point at the ceiling, trembling slightly as it did so. “This world … is … in space,” he asserted.

After a moment, he coughed, and appeared to swallow hard. “May I …” he began. “May I have some water?” 

Bingo, she thought. Trying to maintain her poise, she shrugged carelessly. “Sure,” she replied. “Where do you keep your water?”

He twisted his head with a slow, painful effort, to look toward the passageway to the other room. “There is … a … er,” he paused, grasping after the words he sought. “Valve,” he continued. “A valve in red. There is a … a bowl on top of the case.”

She had no idea what he was talking about, but it seemed profitable to go along with what he was proposing. She moved slowly, with deliberate ease and no hurry to her steps, keeping an eye on him as he lay and watched her.

Beyond the other passageway, there was still what she had taken for a large, blocky container of some kind, into which was plugged the wiring providing lighting for both rooms. On closer inspection, it had a valve and a spout in some kind of red plastic. On top of the container, itself also made of plastic, but dark grey and of thicker construction, there was a simple plastic bowl, something of the size that she might’ve eaten soup out of. She could hold it stably in one hand, and when she held it under the valve spout and turned the handle, a thin hissss! was accompanied by the slow trickle of water into the bowl. It was lukewarm, and had a faint smell of some kind of disinfectant or chlorine, when she held it under her nose.

Returning to where he lay on the floor, she made a wide circle around him to place the bowl on the floor, near his left hand, and withdrew again.

With effort, he craned his neck so that his head was elevated, and made to lift the bowl to his lips. As he did so, he slid an unreadable glance in her direction -- possibly disdain at only getting less than half a cupful of water for his thirst -- and then looked away again. His left hand and arm shook so badly that he spilled a fair portion on his chin before he was done. The bowl being empty, he let it slip to one side and clatter quietly to rest near him, as he sank his head back to the floor.

“Listen,” she said, “I want to ask you something.”

If he was listening, he made no sign except for a gentle moistening of his lips, as his eyes remained closed.

“How much water do you have here?” she asked.

There was a pause, as he took in a long breath. “More --” he breathed, “more than I will use.”

She frowned. “What?”

He lifted his left hand up, with effort, and set his palm just in front of his face, observing the pieces of glass embedded and the blood smearing the whole lot. He muttered something she couldn’t understand, and let his hand fall.

“What?” she repeated, with emphasis.

“I failed,” he said, almost spitting the words. 

She missed his meaning. After a pause, she cocked her head to one side and regarded him curiously. “How did you …” she chewed the inside of her lip between two canines and considered the best way to pose the question. “How did you learn to speak English?”

He regarded her without a word, but -- almost casually -- rotated an ear within his tangled, blood-clotted mane to face backward, then forward, then backward again.

“You’ve been …” she mused. “What, listening to us?”

He coughed with a sudden violence, and then dissolved into what she might’ve mistaken for a rueful chuckle. “No,” he began. “No, of course not.” His gaze became almost apologetic. “We listen to your music, your speech.”

She was stunned. All this time … she thought. “Is … is that what you’re doing here? Listening to us?”

“No,” he replied simply.

“What do you mean, ‘no’?”

“May I ask your help?” he asked, still looking at her apologetically. He raised up his left hand.

The sound of polite, conciliatory words, coming as they were from an alien smeared head-to-foot with blood, dust, and surgical glue, were incongruous with the notion that he was a hostile soldier on home territory. “Help?” she asked. “Help with what?”

He raised his right arm slightly, which was now both misshapen and swollen in places. “If I am to lie here,” he explained, enunciating carefully, “and if I am to die here, in this place, I would have these fragments out of my skin.” He lightly wiggled his fingers.

“Alright …” she replied, slowly. “I tell you what:” She pointed at the floor with her left hand for emphasis. “I have no intention of dying here. You understand me? I’m getting the hell out of here.” She gestured at the passageway to the other room. “You’ve got water. You’ve got other supplies, right?”

He stared at her with apparent unconcern, but intently, not so much to deny what she was saying, but to wait for her to continue.

“I’ll help you, if -” She paused. “If you tell me what I want to know. If I get water to get me through the hottest part of tomorrow. If I get supplies so that I don’t freeze trying to get out of here in the morning.”

He said nothing, but gave a slow nod. His eyes, fixed on hers, were cautious, but otherwise unreadable. There was something she disliked about them, particularly how they were the eyes of a predator. She couldn’t read his thoughts or his intentions, and the alien way his features looked gave her no clues.

She knelt, picked up the forceps she had laid down earlier, and stood. She circled around to stand at his left, but firmly out of his reach, before she knelt again. She laid her hand on the butt of her pistol, making sure he saw what she was up to. “Don’t get any ideas,” she warned.

He gave her a slow blink, not seeming concerned. “Do you feel that you might shoot me?” he asked.

“Maybe,” she responded, immediately. “Are you going to give me an excuse?”

He looked away. “I doubt,” he said, slowly, “that you will shoot me, but I will not give you a reason.” He made a peculiar, alien scowling of his features. “It seems,” he continued, in a reasonable tone, although perhaps with an edge of bitterness, “that you saved my life.”

“I saved my life,” she corrected. “I needed you to find shelter for the night.” Realizing how her fingertips were numb, but the bones of her hands were aching fiercely, she rubbed her hands together to get her circulation flowing. “Jesus, it’s freezing in here.” She picked up the forceps and studied his left hand, open and motionless on the floor. “Don’t you have a heater or something?”

“No,” he replied.

She reached out with the forceps, grabbed a particularly large fragment of glass embedded in his palm, and jerked it free, only very faintly glowering at him as she did so. “Why not?” she asked, her voice low.

Only the slightest twitch of the muscles in his left arm betrayed if he felt any discomfort. 

(To be continued)