Earth Fathers, chapter 12 (Patreon)

Max touched the pedestal in front of Carrington’s tall, black ship. The yellow glow shifted to a darker orange, and Max went to parade rest as he waited for someone to answer his call. Xander stopped just behind him, and Max hoped Xander would remain silent. Max needed to concentrate on the enemy in front of him, not on his own personal dramas. It was a rule in the air that you forgot any conflicts and focused on the plane, the instruments, the act of flying itself. If your wife just left you or your kid was in the hospital, you drank and complained and emotionally fell apart on the ground—not in the air. Never in the air.

The door opened and one of the Tribes aliens stood in the opening. It was so much smaller than the other two Max had seen that Max wondered if it was fully grown. The creature raised its four-fingered hands in a strange yoga-looking pose before coming down the ramp.

“Leader of ship Tribe within,” it said.

Max glanced at Xander, but he didn’t appear alarmed at anything the alien said. When Max had to rely on a child a few months old for intelligence, he clearly hadn’t prepared well for the mission. But in his defense, human-to-anything except Hidden language pretty much sucked without one of the fancy business translators.

“Lead away,” Max said. Oversized eyes blinked at him, and the neck gill flaps fluttered before the alien turned and headed into the ship.

“Max Father weird,” Xander said softly.

“You don’t know the half of it,” Max muttered before he followed the Tribes alien into his ship. Max was halfway up the ramp when the wall of humidity from the ship hit him. He felt like he’d been dropped in the Deep South in the middle of summer, and not the literary version of the South with magnolia trees and wide verandas, but the real one with sweat stinging your eyes and doorknobs that burned off a person’s fingerprints. A bead of sweat rolled down Max’s spine and he reached around to scratch it. “Are you okay?” Max asked Xander.

“Uncomfortable but healthy,” Xander said. With a nod, Max headed into the ship’s interior. The light was bluish and uneven and the air even more humid as he stopped in the central corridor. A familiar computer display blinked for attention, and Xander moved to the controls and hooked up one of their computers. The business translator flashed.

“Are we connected?” Max asked. He disliked giving Carrington access to the English database, but Bundy and Rick both insisted that the business translator’s internal security would prevent pirating. And since Max trusted one of the two, he had to take the chance.

“Done,” Xander said.

Max looked toward the end of the corridor, but his short guide had vanished. A Tribes alien stood at the end of the corridor near a door.  This one was closer in height to Carrington, but the wide-brimmed eighties hat was missing, which made it hard to tell. Without the hat, the illusion of gender vanished, and Max had to consciously avoid staring at the weirdly proportioned arms with their long forearm at the end of a very short humerus.

“Hello,” Max said as he started down the hall, his boots echoing against the metal decking. The plates were solid instead of the grating he had grown used to on their ship. “Are you the trader I met yesterday?”

Neck gills fluttered. “Would it be customary to offer welcome to my ship?” She crossed her freakish forearms across her chest.

“A greeting of some sort is usual for humans. Good morning.”

Carrington uncrossed her arms. “What an interesting expression.” The fact that her voice sounded curious meant she had the business translator on. Max wondered if she had it hooked to her ship’s main computer or if her wrist communicator had a connection. It would be awesome to have a system that always worked on their ship. Sometimes after sex Rick got very chatty, but if he didn’t remember to put his communicator back on, Max missed most of the words. After Max had bashed his wrist communicator against the headboard once, he’d banned his translator from bed. They couldn’t afford to replace it too often. Carrington continued. “If you do not like someone, do you recommend they have a less than good morning?” 

“Sometimes,” Max admitted. “Most of the time, we ignore them, or we say good morning anyway to avoid conflict.”

“Avoidance of conflict is a positive social trait. I am gratified to hear humans possess such a behavioral imperative.” She looked toward Xander, and Max’s temper frayed. Maybe she hadn’t meant to imply that his love for Xander was a less gratifying behavior imperative, but Max was a hair breadth away from unloading all his frustrations on her, and he had a lot since his conversation on the boardwalk.

“Humans also have a behavior imperative to protect their children,” Max warned.

She made a clicking noise. “I have no difficulty accepting your fondness for the asymmetrical ones.” 

That felt too similar to calling Rick’s people ugly, but at least it was a factual version of an insult. Max chose to ignore it and focus on the job. “So what concerns you about your defenses?”

“Many things,” she said vaguely. “What convinced you to work with Bundy? He is a questionable choice of partner to broker compensation for your efforts.”

“I thought you traded with him,” Max said. He had expected Carrington to fish for information, but naively he’d thought she would be more subtle. Instead she was approaching the topic of Max’s motives with all the grace of a drunk elephant.

“I trade. I do not trust,” Carrington said. She turned and headed farther into the ship. “Come. Leave the equipment here, and it will be left unmolested.”

That was an interesting verb. Max looked over, and Xander was already locking the wheels. Max waited so Xander could come with them. He wasn’t going to leave his son in the middle of hostile territory, that was for sure. Max only followed Carrington once he made sure Xander was coming alone. “I don’t trust either him or you.”

“A wise choice,” Carrington said without turning. The light was shifting toward more green tones and getting darker. “Do you avoid any answer to my question by intent or accident of verbal ordering?”

Truthfully, Max had wanted to avoid the question of his relationship with Bundy since it wasn’t exactly legitimate, but nothing looked guiltier than evasion. As someone who was guilty, Max would like to avoid the appearance of it. “I chose him because he had tried to get a license to trade on the Hidden World. He was turned down.”

“So his lack of trustworthiness from the perspective of the Ugly Ones led you to trust. An interesting logic.”

Max reined in his aggravation. “I assumed if he would trade with the Hidden People that he would trade with me. After all, I understand the government computers listed me as a moron.”

Carrington turned. “Humanity in general. No doubt they did not judge you personally.”

“Considering that the universe has almost no experience with humans, I assume that judgement is based largely on the observations of me when I was suffering from panic and confusion,” Max said. Thinking back to his time on the police ship, he was man enough to admit that he’d been a whiny, panicked, annoying baby. “My people assumed aliens existed somewhere, but I did not expect a ship of aliens to take me off my planet.”

Sure, there were people who assumed exactly that, but generally they didn’t pass the psych eval to become an Air Force pilot.

“So you trusted Bundy’s lack of judgment when seeking trading partners. That does have merit. I notice the translator has assigned the verbalism ‘Bundy’ to the trader, but the computer offers no translation of such mouth noises.”

Since Carrington hadn’t asked a question, Max ignored the comment. “When we were boarded by Hunters, the ship had no internal sensors to warn us. Do you have internal alarms?”

She turned so fast that Max nearly lost his balance trying to brake fast enough to avoid running into her back. “Why would we require internal alarms? Do not external alarms provide more effective defenses?”

“Assuming they work,” Max said. 

“Would not a captain immediate land a ship with defective proximity alarms?” Carrington asked, her voice higher and faster now. Tribes aliens were the only ones who had any passing resemblance to humans, so Max’s brain told him that meant she was panicking, but his common sense warned him to not apply human assumptions.

“If I were a Hunter,” Max said slowly, “I would do something to trigger your proximity alarms over and over, particularly at a time when you were not near a place to land.”

“And how would that provide you access to my ship?”

Max smiled. “I don’t know your people well, but is it possible that an individual might get so tired of having to check a seemingly faulty alarm that he might turn the alarm off?” Max didn’t know if that’s what the Hunters did to Rick or if Rick’s ship really had malfunctioned so the alarm sounded often enough to annoy Rick into deactivating it.

“An individual would have to suffer a lack of logic to make such a mistake,” Carrington said. 

Max didn’t say it, but internally, he agreed. Rick was brilliant, but not necessarily smart. “And would any of your crew be tempted to turn off an alarm if it annoyed them?”

Carrington didn’t answer for a long time. Eventually she turned her back on him and started walking. “Would the installation of internal alarms negate the danger?”

“Possibly,” Max said. “I would like to look at the ship’s schematics to consider weak points in your security. If I get a sense of where someone might want to breech your ship, we can work on sensors. And who would be responsible for security inside the ship? Do your people fight or hire fighters for your ship?”

“Your people think like Hunters,” Carrington said. 

“I’m not sure if I should be offended.”

She turned. “You should only take offense if I describe you inaccurately.”

“I am trained to hunt,” Max said, although that was a slight distortion of the idea of a military. He hunted targets in his jet, so close enough. “However, it is not in the nature of my people to steal. Many of my people will steal, but the rest of us consider that unacceptable behavior and we will punish it.”

She studied him. “The initial assessment of human nature was critically flawed.”

“Yes,” Max said. “It was. So, do you really want a security assessment of your ship, or did you invite me here because you hoped to do your own assessment of my nature?”

“I purchased your weapon design. Does that not imply my respect for judgment?”

“You haven’t answered my question about whether your ship has fighters on it,” Max said. “If you don’t give me information, I can’t assess your security.” Max looked at Xander. “I get the feeling she doesn’t trust us.”

Xander made a spitty sound, which usually meant amusement, but his tentacles were a little stiff and jerky. Max wasn’t sure how to read that.

“You ask for sensitive information,” Carrington said.

“You asked me to assess your security.”

Her neck gills fluttered.

“And this ship is not comfortable for me. It’s far too warm and there is too much humidity in the air, so it makes me cranky.”

“Cranky Max Father says things he regrets later,” Xander said.

Max laughed. “That I do, kiddo. So, what do you say?” he asked Carrington. “If you want me to assess your security, I can. If you wanted a chance to talk to me privately and see if I was as stupid as the government computer said, then I’m happy to leave. No charge.”

The silence went on so long that at least three sweat drops rolled down Max’s spine. “I will introduce you to Tribes fighter,” Carrington said. “You can talk to her about new weapon design and internal security.”

“That sounds like a deal,” Max said. Relief washed through him, but so did a sense of direction and purpose. Sure, Rick and the kids saw him as a warrior, but the rest of the universe had taken the darkest point of Max’s life and judged him on it. They’d labeled him an idiot because he’d had too many moments of flailing panic. 

He hated when others looked at him and decided they knew exactly who he was based on some piece of information. When his commander in Afghanistan had pulled him in to talk about the inappropriateness of Max flaunting his sexuality in the Middle East, Max had tried to defend himself, but Colonel Barrington had made up his mind. To that old dinosaur, openly gay meant flouncy and queeny and flamboyant, and he didn’t want to hear anything that might contradict his dumbass assumptions.

And that’s exactly what the universe had done. They had decided humans were odd, panicky, stupid creatures and nothing Max said convinced them otherwise. Until now. Now they were seeing the real him. Capable. A little dangerous. Still probably weird. Yeah, Max could own that one. He was definitely a little odd.