Commander Ktak was pacing the observation deck. Ames was going to live, but his hospital stay would be quite long. Punctured lung, broken ribs, broken arm… Ship was in an uproar over what had happened. Understandable, really. Nothing is worse for morale than not being able to trust your crewmates enough to have dinner with one’s guard down and back turned. Specially since Mtak’s reason for the attack was so ludicrous and the trigger so inherently human. Ames had passed gas. A little bit. Quietly. Human bodies do this. Hers had done this at most inconvenient times. And not just that. But it had ticked off Mtak into a blind rage. This was unacceptable in the closed confines of a ship.

It also turned out Mtak had some loyal lackeys among the officers who weren’t happy he was now locked away in his compartment. There were attempts to incite the humans to riot as the cowards were unwilling to face her directly. The only reason why they were unsuccessful in these attempts was the fact that someone from monitoring, probably a human, had leaked the security camera footage of what happened and her mad dash for the med bay with Ames. Humans were… sentimental. It mattered that she had fought and cared for Ames. Tamare in general could not understand this. But the human part of her could and she was grateful to the humans who had told her of the incitement attempts. She was not sure what to do about the traitors though. The human factor was important.

But…

It was the human part of her that was making it so very difficult to perform her duties now. All she wanted to do was to go see Ames. She would need to soon anyway. She had forgotten her coat. Yeah… forgotten. She needed to talk to someone about this, and soon. Someone who would know about being human but would not report her “instability of mind” to the Space Command. In short – a human. Luckily, she knew just the human.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

Stella was a communications officer and the only human officer on the ship. The Tamare seldom allowed for other species to get high rank jobs on their ships, but Stella was an exception. She had started off as a stowaway in her early teens and jumped ships picking up languages and cultures and a few interesting diseases too. The way she lived was a testament to her diplomatic skill because the life she lived before crashing into a Tamare diplomat who saw her potential was not safe by any measure. Stella was old for a human, in her late sixties, but still full of fire. One of the reasons she worked for Tamare was the advanced gene therapies that Tamare had. They were able to keep her going for another century if she earned her keep.

She had kept an eye on the young Commander since she boarded. It was quite clear nobody had explained to her anything about her human part. Quite literally nothing. The existence of tampons and bras was among them. She was aware that most hybrids did not get a functioning reproductive system, but she had one and it was a disgrace they had neglected to educate her about it. She had in a motherly way filled the gap in her education and gained her trust in the process.

But she had been rather odd and secretive of late. Preoccupied. Disappearing on way too many ship inspections. Stella had a gut feeling that she would need to talk to the girl soon about the complicated bits of human existence. Feelings.

She had wondered who the lucky guy was and intended to ask, but when she got a call from med bay to do something about the Commander sleeping at Ames’s bedside, the question was answered without asking.

She went and ushered her, without ceremony, to her own bed and waited. She would want to talk to her soon enough. She was not wrong. Two cycles later she had an invitation to meet up in the hydroponics garden on her personal device. Ah, to be young and in love… She headed out chuckling. She was quite pleased with herself. Leaking that video of her rescue and mad dash had kept the ship population stable so now all she had to worry about was possibly rejected young Commander.