Outsider - Lewd Fanfiction (Part 2)

The smell of ozone permeated her senses as Beryl walked among the various bits of wreckage salvaged from the Human ship. The Tempest's main cargo hold stretched indeterminately around her; even with the lights at maximum

illumination, the ceiling and bulkheads of the cavernous room seemed to melt away in shadow. Beryl was alone, but while most Loroi would be disquieted by the relative isolation, the Listel found comfort in both the auditory and

telepathic silence.

Comfort, but also boredom. Identifying, analyzing, and cataloging the bits and pieces the Tenoin pilots had collected before the Umiak attack was anything but intellectually stimulating. The unknown plasma focus, combined with

Humaniti's comparative lack of structural shielding and EM hardening had rendered nearly all data stores unrecoverable. The remaining physical components were either heavily damaged or completely reduced to slag. The only

noteworthy conclusion she had been able to make was that while the alien tech was archaic by Loroi standards, it bore no hallmarks of Soia influence. Did Humaniti have no Soia artifacts or ruins on their worlds? How, then, did they

look so similar to Loroi? These were difficult questions.

For the thousandth time, Beryl wished she could talk to Captain Jardin. She was confident she could get more answers from him in five minutes than she could from looking at this wreckage for five hours. But the Torrai Lashret's

isolation order was absolute. As she and Fireblade had escorted Jardin from Tempest's command deck, Beryl had thought the order to be extreme and unreasonable, but in the intervening days, she started to understand Stillstorm's

reasoning.

Though only a small percentage of the Loroi crew had seen the Human during his brief excursion to the command deck, the image spread through sanzai like wildfire after the battle. A new alien species was cause enough for gossip,

but one so similar to the Loroi, and a male to boot? The fascination put a strain on even the Loroi's legendary discipline. Captain Jardin was not merely a topic of conversation on the Tempest, he was the only thing the crew

discussed off duty. Even the long running firefight that followed the battle at Naam did little to dampen the crew's enthusiasm for the subject. No one dared approach Fireblade directly, but everyone else who had dealt with the Human

found themselves at the receiving end of countless questions and requests to share memories.

'Are they some variant of us?//subtext intense curiosity,' from a fellow Listel, Beryl's counterpart on another duty shift.

'Will we get another ally in the war? How many ships do they have?//subtext cautious hope,' asked a Sorion trooper.

'I heard he's a fighter... is... is their race mostly male?//poorly concealed subtext desire,' from a young Doranzer, fresh out of training.

Because of her perfect recall, Beryl had been the primary target of the inquiries until Stillstorm had ordered her into the relative isolation of the cargo hold for this assignment. The cot and box of rations that showed up afterward

conveyed the rest of the commander's intent: stay here until this all blows over.

Except it hadn't blown over. Updates from the Listel authorized to assist her revealed that Fireblade had to be assigned to something as menial as guard duty to help poor Reed with all the off-duty crew who seemed to find

themselves passing through the corridor outside Jardin's cell. The fact that the Human did not possess sanzai didn't stop the rest of the crew from trying to contact him or scan his mind. Even Fireblade wasn't immune from all the

curiosity. Her sleep-sending was a well known trait, and many a crewmember seemed to linger outside her quarters during her off-shifts in an attempt to discover something new about the Human. It wasn't until after she bounced a

couple nosy Tenoin off a bulkhead that they finally stopped.

Yes, Beryl thought, the isolation was probably difficult for Captain Jardin, but it was better than the alternative... for both him and for the crew. They could not afford to give him the wrong impression of the Loroi.

Still, the Human would be immensely helpful in making sense of this wreckage. The Listel sighed as she peered around another cluster of debris.

Something caught her eye. A flash of bright color amid the gunmetal gray that comprised the majority of the Human ship's interior components. Heaving aside a deck plate, Beryl found a low, squat container. Much of the outside was

covered in scorch marks but bits of colorful... paper?... some kind of label?... clung to the outside. The terminal on top, like all the others, was dead, but unlike the rest of the wreckage, this one had markings that seemed to be

hand-carved into the case.

Personal belongings?

Beryl recognized the markings as the language Humaniti used; it mimicked what she saw on Captain Jardin's clothing. The Listel still couldn't decipher it, but she carefully memorized the characters for the day when she could.

The top line was machine stamped in the same manner as other components. Parts had been burned away, but she cataloged it in her memory all the same.

--ersonal Footlocker S/------

The bottom line was carved deeply into the metal; a quick swipe of her hand brought the characters into relief.

ELLEN KIRKLAND

The container's lock had been fused shut, but careful application of a plasma torch resolved that problem. With a careful breath, Beryl opened the lid...



Of course Beryl's findings on the wreck sparked a lot of discussion in what will come to be Alexander Jardin's closest travel companions, especially amongst Beryl herself, Tempo and Fireblade.

Amongst some items with no discernible use - maybe keepsakes - Beryl did find a device much akin to a datapad which, on pressing a button, showed a series of pictures. Some of them were garbled, and many times the devices

showed a line of text which must have been some sort of error message, but many of the pictures showed the same humaniti woman in in front of different backgrounds, sometimes alone, sometimes in company of others.

And Alexander himself featured in quite a number of them, too.

Naturally that sent the young Listel's mind into overdrive, as well as Tempo's, once she got wind of it. Alexander himself was maddeningly vague about humaniti mating rituals, hinting that long-term pair-bonding is the most common

way of life, but his words really left too many question unanswered, much to Fireblade's smug derision that spoken words are 'just a means to obfuscate the truth'.

Suffice to say that didn't go over too well with the others. Neither Fireblade's attitude nor Alexander's vagueness about a topic that could very much be the cornerstone of humaniti society and Loroi understanding thereof.

Surprisingly it was Beryl who called a stop to a discussion that could easily have been a source for a major disagreement. She did point out that in these pictures Alexander and the humaniti woman - which they assumed to be this

"Ellen Kirkland" - seem to be pretty familiar with each other. Laughing, joking, and on some of them engaged in activities that could easily be seen as initiating a mating amongst Loroi - if for example kissing would have the same

connotations amongst these aliens as it has for Loroi.

"I'd say they were indeed pair bonded and he is feeling her loss.", Beryl argued.

"Why would humaniti males would be so stricken over the deaths of their females? Simply head for another.", Fireblade... of course she would lean towards the more practical side.

Beryl might have a bubbly personality, but beneath that she does have a temper, which flared up that instant. "And what would you say if you lost your amplifier, which is very much part of you? Or didn't you feel the loss of your

sisters in your diral yourself?", the sharp undertone of Beryl's sanzai brought Fireblade and Tempo up short. Both were silent for a very long time, but then Tempo brought up a quite interesting question...

"I wonder how long it takes for a humaniti male to actually search/be interested in another female after the loss of the previous one...."

"TEMPO!", shock was bleeding through Beryl's sanzai, "You can't be seriously thinking about ... that!"

"Beryl, get real.", Tempo's cool, matter-of-fact voice laced through Beryl's and Fireblade's mindscape, "You and I know that many species - including us - tend to be evasive or rather noncommittingly if they're faced with questions

which are uncomfortable to them or considered a taboo in their society. If you have watched Alexander Jardin's reactions you surely have noticed that this is the case whenever the topic of discussion turns to humaniti biology,

especially reproduction."

"So?", Fireblade's short sending conveyed a lot of her disinterest in that subject.

"That means we cannot be quite sure about the veracity of his answers. If topics like these are considered taboo amongst humaniti, he might have glossed over some facts to avoid discussion. For example his statement that

'humaniti males can go for extended periods without mating' could be plainly wrong... or that he omitted the fact that they may be able to, but it would by no means be comfortable to them."

She has a point, Beryl thought to herself.

"Beryl, for the sake of good relations with humaniti, we need to make sure that Alexander Jardin will find no fault in our hospitality. If there are biological needs to be taken care of which he doesn't speak about, we still need to know.",

and we might get even more leverage on humaniti males, Tempo mused, "Thus, and I think you do have your own vested interest in this matter, I recommend you to continue this line of questioning. I did notice he reacts ... quite

favourably to your presence."