_ _ _ Hiiro

  'Ten days of civil company' became something of a mantra on the ship. That single line denoted the mood and opinion of the speaker more concisely than any other indicator.

  Those who simply wanted the outfit's unwelcome guests off the ship said the words with a dour acceptance; the job was an unpleasant one but it was a job none the less, something to be muddled through with above-average grumbling and a steady work ethic.

  Leeroy's supporters—an odd mix of those loyal to a fault, morbidly taciturn, unsettlingly enthused, and spitefully indignant—used the mantra as a watchword. Ten days of civil company wasn't an ideal, it was a law to be enforced with browbeating, uttered threats and in some few instances, bribery. Unsurprisingly, the promise of a larger share of the job's pay won many hired guns from the indifferent majority to Leeroy's side.

  Lastly, there were those who growled the statement like an untimely armistice— a ten day ceasefire while the enemy walked in their midst. More often than not, I found these mercenaries in the armory tooling over their equipment in preparation of what they thought would inevitably come next. Explosives were prepackaged into discrete portions, firearms of all makes and calibers were cleaned and calibrated to exacting standards, bodies and minds were fortified for the battle ahead.

  For his part, Treu seemed to share the sentiment. Once his charge had been loaned a cabin in the crew quarters and thrown inside, he claimed a portion of the hanger and partitioned it off with tarps and netting. I didn't hear a single person complain about not having him sleep next door. The informal cordon that appeared shorty after was mostly loyalists ensuring the big man had the privacy he obviously wanted, though a few dissenting voices joined the guard with less altruistic intentions. If the big man did try anything, I doubted a few rifles would stop him. Still, I couldn't help but respect the balls on every merc who manned the cordon with a weapon pointing in instead of out.

  It was the third day back under thrust when I finally worked up the nerve to do more than just think about the devil woman calling herself Bim. I couldn't place it but there was something naggingly reminiscent about her. It made no sense, there wasn't anything that physically reminded me of anyone I knew and she'd barely spoken to anyone since coming aboard. So why did it feel like I should know who she was? I arrived at the cabin she'd been loaned and knocked on the door.

  "Um, hello? Are you in there?" I asked.

  "Yes."

  I waited for her to open the door, to ask what I wanted or tell me to go away, but nothing happened. I listened in, thinking I might have caught her sleeping or that she was getting dressed but I couldn't hear any movement on the other side of the door. I couldn't tell if she was ignoring me and hoping I went away or just preoccupied, so I knocked again.

  "Are you going to open the door?" I asked. "I'd like to talk to you."

  After another lengthy pause, she did. At the sight of her another wave of misplaced nostalgia washed over me. The room she'd spent the past three days in was completely bare. There was no trapped heat, no scent of an unwashed body, hardly any evidence that she'd been inside at all. The only thing that betrayed her occupation was a single black book sitting closed on a shelf next to the bed. The sight of it tightened my throat and made my shoulder ache.

  "You are the first human to initiate conversation with me." She vacantly stated. Her entire manner was aloof and slightly on the slow side, not quite like a person half-drunk on sleep but similar.

  "Ah, sorry." I said. "I don't think anyone around here really knows how to deal with you."

  "I was under the impression the native contractors were all quite skilled at lawyering deals. Is that not the case?"

  I blinked at her words, feeling as if in a single sentence we'd both gotten lost on different pages. I wasn't sure what exactly she was asking me. How the hell did she pull lawyers into this? What kind of a backhanded complement did I just get? I put the eccentricity aside for the moment and tried to catch up to her conversation.

  "I can't really say. I'm a recent addition to the crew." I said.

  "That is a trait you and I share." She stated vacantly.

  "I don't think you count." She stared at me in silence. "Because you're a client, so you're not really part of the crew."

  She continues to stare at me, amber eyes fixated on my own.

  "Did you need anything?" I asked. "Your room doesn't look very comfortable."

  "It is not." She stated bluntly.

  I waited for her to elaborate, but she didn't. I couldn't tell if she was just being polite and waiting for me to take the hint or if her stoicism was a deliberate ploy to get me to leave her alone. This devil woman took a poker face to a whole new level, she'd have been more expressive if she was wearing a stone mask. I was almost ready to admit defeat and depart when she finally spoke.

  "What nature of exchange are you proposing?" She asked.

  "I don't really know. I just thought you could use a friend."

  "And what is it you desire in return?"

  "What? No, this isn't an 'exchange.' I just wanted to help you."

  "Why?" The way she asked made me think we were on different pages again. I pressed on regardless.

  "I thought you could use it. I know how hard it is to get settled in a new place when you don't know anybody." I said, offering the half-truth with full sincerity.

  "…It could be of use. Why are you willing to offer something in exchange for nothing? You will depart this transaction expending more energy than you stand to gain in value. Is it your intention to place me in your debt?"

  She hadn't struck me as the paranoid type, though she did fit the bill in retrospect. There had been a meeting to decide if she lived or died at their hands— our hands, though I didn't really consider myself one of them. She hadn't been on this ship for a full minute before being shot at and ever since there were armed soldiers of fortune just waiting for an excuse to kill her and her absent bodyguard. Who wouldn't be paranoid in that situation? Who wouldn't lock themselves their room and be skeptical of whoever came knocking?

  Now that I'd actually thought about it, instead of just wondering why I was compulsively drawn to her, it was a stark parallel to what might happen to me if my own situation came to light. Was that why I was here at her door? The killing heat inside me gave no reply.

  "Are you really a devil?" I asked.

  "Do not deviate from my question." She said brusquely.

  "No, I'm not trying to indebt you to me. I'm trying to be a decent human being and offer some generosity to a person in need."

  "Why?" She repeated.

  "Because I want to. Why can't you just take my word? It's not like I'm trying to marry you."

  She gave another of her pauses and this time I realized she was weighing my words. That had probably been what she was doing all along. What had struck me as her being slow was actually deliberate and calculating. She was a woman trying to avoid the witch-hunters all around her with nothing but cold, inhuman logic. It was so obvious I couldn't believe I'd missed it earlier. Her next words all but confirmed my suspicions.

  "I have learned to be suitably wary of humans who approach me with generous intentions as they often have malicious motivations. That is why I cannot take your word, Human."

  "I'm sorry-"

  "Why?" She interrupted, her languid air momentarily abandoned as she jumped into the present.

  "I know what it's like to get stabbed in the back after holding up your end of the deal. I'd rather not get into it, no point bringing up old hurts."

  "I see… Then that is annother experience we share, Human." Her alacrity faded, the prior aloof, measured nature returning to the fore. "I cannot say whether I am a devil or not. I do not know what they are. The explanation you were provided by my Tormentor accurately encapsulates my being."

  "Your tormentor? You mean the big guy, Treu?"

  "Yes."

  That gave me some food for thought. Tormentor was about as far from a term of endearment as they came and the way she said it, the certainty she placed in the word, left nothing good to the imagination. Considering that he was supposed to protect her through whatever convoluted hate-hate relationship they had and how he'd explained his mission, I was surprised she was talking to me— to any one for that matter.

  "What did he do to-" I started, but she cut me off before I could make an even bigger ass of myself.

  "I'd rather not discuss it, ever."

  "Ah, sorry. Just so you know, not everyone is like him." I said. "In fact I get the feeling he's one of kind, so try not to base too many assumptions off of him. Okay?"

  "My opinion of your species is still nascent and unsolidified, Human." She gave me another of her weighty pauses and I almost thought she was done with me before I heard her draw a breath to continue. "Why is it that you were the first of this ship's company to approach me? Are you too a deviant from the human norm?"

  I was about to dismiss the question out of hand, but the unnatural warmth inside of me begged to differ. If she'd asked me a month ago, I'd have protested regardless; much like I had when I woke up in the Shadow's medbay strapped to a table looking into Princess's alien eyes for the first time. It was odd, the alien woman standing in front of me looked more normal, more human, than Princess did. Bim's amber eyes flecked with gold had an inquisitive almost playful curiosity to them, but they lacked the piercing inhumanity of Princess's overlarge swirling purple counterparts. It felt like Bim was seeing me and wondering, instead of looking through me and knowing.

  She was an alien, maybe even a devil, but at the same time she was so familiar it itched. Why couldn't I nail down this misplaced reminiscence? I was like a compass needle, always drifting south without knowing why. Deviating from the norm, it made me sound like a freak. I just wanted answers. Answers I couldn't get through the ordinary means of investigation.

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  "I wouldn't word it like that…" I said noncommittally.

  "Though you do not disagree with the sentiment of my question?" She asked intently.

  "I don't really know. I don't think I'm so different and certainly not a deviant or anything. It's more like I haven't found where I belong yet. I'm still looking for the man I want to become one day." It felt stupid to admit but she stood there staring at me locked in her aloof composure. "I get that's not really a helpful answer-"

  "That answer is incredibly helpful." She interrupted. "I still find the concept of growth beyond the accumulation of knowledge and power rather foreign. To hear the idea of being incomplete despite physical existence in the present moment of linear time is very helpful to me. The unfounded self doubt is also useful, though I fail to empathize with your rationale. I have learned more in the past ten minutes of conversation with you than I did in one-hundred and forty-three hours of introspection in the company of my tormentor."

  "Um, thank you?"

  "Why? I have only stated my observations of objective truths." Bim said.

  "Sometimes people need to hear the truth."

  "Such conditional would be unnecessary if they did not live mired in falsehoods." For the first time since we started talking, she moved. It was a tiny gesture, the slightest tilt of her head made all the more weighty given her unshakably regal demeanor. "Are you such a person?"

  Again, I wanted to refute her question out of hand but I couldn't. I'd been honest enough in my pioneering days, but in my life of criminal activities afterwards, I'd discovered I could lie as easily as I drew breath. I was a social chameleon, wearing whatever false identity I needed to finish my job. But there were some moments of unparalleled truth buried in that swamp of deception. I'd heard hundreds of final words and often in those last moments my own tailored persona would fall away as I became their executioner and their confessor. There was a dreadfully curious intimacy, a horrible honesty that came from staring your own death in the face in those precious moments before it took you.

  My final painting came to mind, the innocent woman I'd murdered on the orders of a tyrant. Her final words rung through my memory, 'No more owner, is happy dream, no?' Was that the sum of my life's accomplishments? A man who could only offer mercy down the length of a gun while so wrapped in lies he believed the ultimate self-delusion— that it would all be worth it in the end. No, I wouldn't be that man. I was disgusted with myself for pulling that trigger, and I was glad that I was.

  "I was." I admitted. "I think I might still, but I'm trying not to be. I've spent enough of my life with my head buried in the snow and mud. I don't want to spend the rest of it like that."

  "That is good. I would have ceased this conversation had you answered in the affirmative." She stated.

  "How do you know that wasn't a lie?" I teased, only for her to step back into her room and reach for the door controls. "Wait! Scat, sorry. That was a joke, a bad one."

  "How can I know that?" She protested, the faintest suggestion of hurt in her tone. "Perhaps that is another falsehood. Perhaps you have been lying this entire time and I was wrong to differentiate you from my Tormentor."

  "He wasn't lying to you." Gidget said from my right.

  The ginger-headed man had left his room further up the corridor and was headed down-ship towards the Crush, which put him on a collision course with our dying conversation. Gidget was broader and taller than me— which seemed to be another common trait among the mercs on the Shadow. His pale white skin was dotted with freckles, making it less harshly glaring than Princess's albino palette. His choice of casual wear was colorful, eclectic and utilitarian, making me think of a paint-splattered handyman more-so than a gun for hire.

  "Spoken like a collaborator." Bim stated dubiously.

  "It's a variant of the Liar's Paradox. It's an outdated method of testing the logical capacity of machines— and aliens. The proper paradox is 'this statement is false.'"

  "That… I do not understand." Bim admitted ruefully.

  "But most humans and modern machines would." Gidget said with a shrug. "Congratulations, you're dumber than the average toaster."

  "I am not dumb!" Bim fiercely decreed.

  "Oh wow, you're even worse at picking up sarcasm than I am." Gidget said.

  "Do they not have a sense humor where you come from?" I asked, eager to keep her talking.

  "No. My kind rarely make unnecessary interactions with each other; those that we do are often predatory in nature. I know of humor from my first teacher on humanity, though I do not understand its nature or implementation."

  "You'll pick up an ear for it eventually." Gidget said. "If you're socially blunt enough, people will assume you're autistic and stop bothering you with trivialities. That's what I recommend."

  With that, Gidget turned and went on his way, dropping out of the conversation as abruptly as he'd joined it. I couldn't imagine what kind of culture fostered such rudeness. Even my rural upbringing in the savage hitherlands of my homeworld had taught me basic manners.

  I also couldn't imagine what Bim had meant by her kind (devils or xenos that they may be) being solitary predators. On all of Intatenrup there was only a single animal like that, the Byakkai. They were great eight-legged demon tigers, the killer of all lesser beasts who staked out hundreds of square kilometers for their territory. When I compared those two, the feral beast was nothing like the lonely woman who'd locked herself in her room. After one of her long pauses she asked me another question.

  "Is a toaster's sole function to toast things? Such a machine does not sound very intelligent."

  "There's a few in the ship's mess. I could show you, if you wanted."

  "Your guidance would be appreciated, Human. What do you desire in return?"

  "This isn't a deal." I said, before deciding that it'd be easier to work with her quirks than against them. "Fine, if you want to put a price on it, stop calling me human. Use my name, Hiiro."

  She made another of her ever so slight gestures, the tiniest shifting of her weight away from her room's door towards me.

  "Very well. I will guard and honor your name with every utterance, Hiiro."

  "Uh, yeah. I'll try and do the same for yours, Bim."

  A shiver raced up my spine. It wasn't just that she'd said my name properly, which was a hit-or-miss event on the Shadow so far. There was something else entirely, something not quite electric or magnetic in the air between us when she spoke. That nagging familiarity reared it head once again and this time, it was accompanied by the supernatural warmth that flooded my body in an awakened surge of radiant, killing heat.

  I stepped back from her, tripping into the wall opposite her cabin in my haste to put a wider gap between us.

  I couldn't burn her. I had to control this! My searing nerves were alight with power than needed direction, it needed release but I had nowhere to send it. I wasn't just warm, I was hot; more than hot, I was burning up! I didn't know how to get rid of this heat. It was like I was drowning in a hot spring right in thin air; I could barely breathe, every shallow puff of my lungs threw a shimmering heat haze in front of my face.

  I pressed myself harder against the cool metal wall, the corridor's bulkhead feeling like packed snow against my feverish skin. I focused on the sensation, leaning every scrap of exposed, sweltering skin I could into the wall. The relief was neither explosive or combustive, but it was just enough that I could hold on. I could ride the razor's edge of this killing heat long enough to get it under control.

  For her part, Bim stood there unmoving and statuesque as she watched me.

  "Be wary, names have power beyond the finite constraints of language." She said at length. "Do not invoke even a false name unless you truly must."

  "So what am I supposed to call you?" I asked, barely succeeding in keeping the voice level around my panting breath.

  "You may use the name given, so long as you maintain a degree of impartiality. Speak it with nothing but the flesh or mind and never anything more unless you must."

  "I'll try to do that." I said. Not that I had any clue what that actually meant or how to go about that.

  After that, I became her unofficial chaperon.

  It was a bit like having a cat following me around, for the most part she'd just watch. Bim didn't find the same easy acceptance that I had on the Shadow, but after a day of following wherever I led her, the mercs stopped dropping every conversation when we entered a room. I tried to show her around and be a good host, but trying to explain anything to her just exposed how little I actually knew about, well… anything. I heard Leeroy mutter something along the lines of 'the blind leading the blind' but I didn't really get it until a few days after the fact.

  Everything had always come so naturally to me, I just operated on instinct most of the time. But nothing came naturally for Bim. She didn't pick up a hammer and know 'this is for hitting things.' She just stared at it the way she stared at everything. I tried showing her things but I don't know how much it took. I couldn't tell if she actually understood what I was trying to do— she certainly wasn't telling me one way or the other. She barely said a thing but that never stopped her from watching the world unfold around her. Somehow, even without words I could tell she so damned curious about everything all the time it practically burned in her eyes.

  Ten days of civil company turned out to be a generous estimate. We tumbled back into realspace during second shift of the seventh work cycle. The Trastorno solar system was binary, which meant it had two stars, and a single habitable planet— which was apparently far less common than I thought it would be. There was no layover on the float this time, every ship in our FTL convoy made comfortable braking speed for the system's hub planet. A general summary of the astrological details made the rounds and while Bim absorbed the information with zip, I was barely able to grasp the generalities. She even started asking the ship's ghost (whatever that was) about the math of it all and the two of them were still at it right where she'd ditched me hours later. She certainly wasn't dumb, but she wasn't smart in a very human way.

  What I understood was that Trastorno was a truck stop on the cosmic scale. Normally an IceBreaker might drag a cluster of ships to a border world once every fifteen years or more, but sometimes for systems lucky or important enough it could be as frequent as two or three times a year, and this place was one of the latter. The mercs seemed happy to be here at least— I wasn't sure if that was for better or worse or just due to the circumstances.

  I was trying (and largely failing) to explain what trees were and why humans liked them so much to Bim when Leeroy stomped up with a sour look on his face.

  "Our initial contract was to let you ride along with us on our next job," Leeroy said. "But that was before and this is now."

  "This is indeed the present moment." Bim confirmed, clearly missing his implication.

  "What I mean is, the situation has changed." Leeroy said grudgingly.

  "…You no longer wish to honor our contract." Bim realized. "Why?"

  "It's complicated."

  "Then should these matters not be lawyered with my Tormentor? He-"

  "He did." Treu said from right over my shoulder. I jumped so hard he and I were practically eye level for a second. No one that big should be able to move that silently. "They want to end our agreement early on mutual good terms. You are a burden on them, Creature. One they wish to be rid of."

  "…I do not understand." Bim said, this time looking to me for clarity. "Is my presence truly so cumbersome?"

  I was at a loss and suddenly had three sets of eyes focused on me. Treu looked down on me, a lazy disdain held in his posture if not his deliberately neutral expression. Leeroy wanted me to disarm this bomb for him, but he wouldn't step away and leave this solely on me. Whatever I chose, he'd be right there taking up the slack beside me. Then there was the woman, amber eyes faintly pleading for me not to abandon her. It reminded me of the girl in that impossible house, begging me for mercy. I looked at Bim, and I saw Shenhua imploring me to save her the only way I could.

  Leeroy must have spotted the change coming over me because he spoke before I could say something we'd all regret.

  "I won't renege on our contract, and I won't force you to leave but it'd make things a lot easier on all of us if you would go your own way once we make planetfall."

  "Unacceptable." Bim decried. "Perhaps instead of an escort, a compromise could be arranged. I might apprentice under your company's tutelage; in return I can offer the toil of this body and that of my protector." Bim turned her attention from Leeroy to Treu. "That is, unless you would deliberately impede my mandate, Tormentor."

  If looks could kill, I'm sure Treu would have murdered everyone and destroyed the Shadow for good measure. As it was, he smiled a cold predatory grin.

  "The details of my own secondment will need to be refined after your new agreement has been finalized. Otherwise, I have no objections, B???im????'k???el??a??i??dhz?????a."

  A wash of vertigo hammered me as he spat her name, but I kept my footing. Bim went to the ground as if she'd been clubbed over the head, mouth agap in a silent scream. Leeroy looked from the giant to the downed woman in confusion, then moved to help her as I did the same.

  "What'd you do to her?" Leeroy asked cautiously but without sounding alarmed. Treu only smiled while I fought off the vertigo and the killing heat thrashing inside of me.

  "I reminded it which of us holds power over the other. I will repeat that lesson as often as I must, Devil."

  "Damn you, Treu." Bim whispered.

  "I have long since been damned, Creature, but waste your breath anyways." Treu said as he turned to depart. "I'll leave you to finalize the details of your agreement without me. Your chittering minds are wearing my patience thin."