Hangin' with Hoomiez - Wren

[Anonymous]

The distance between the terrestrial planets and Jupiter was vast indeed. A huge emptiness, emblazoned with stars and streaking asteroids. Aside from the few carefully charted shipping lanes, it was always quiet here. The perfect place for a pirate's ship to lay low. While the Fortune's Fool hung in this vast openness, Garshok hung in the hammock he had slung in the crawl space beneath the ship's galley. He stirred, grumbling and snorting in his half-sleep. He brought a claw up to shield his eyes from the harsh light filtering in from the deck grating above and drew himself closer to the heat coils of the galley's refrigeration unit.

Despite eons of evolution aboard deep space-going ships, Garshok's species were still mildly coldblooded. As a result, long voyages near the outer planets were always hard for him. Finally, the cold became unbearable. Garshok growled and hissed and fought his way out of the hammock, unintentionally tearing deep gouges into the canvas with his razor sharp class. He roared at the sight of the damage, stood up too quickly and bashed his head against the deck plates; he roared again, the sound echoed through the corridors and catwalks of the ship.

He slipped out from under the grating, pulled on his tattered flight-suit and marched off towards the engine-room, always the hottest part of the ship. The thrum of the magneto-drives grew steadily louder as he made his way aft. Being reptilian, Garshok had a special sensitivity for vibrations, and the rumble of the engines rolled over him in soothing waves. He ducked through the final open doorway, drawn in by the intoxicating heat, and smiled an incisor filled smile.

The new human was there, the one they had taken from the dockyards earlier that month. He was one of the few captives that Garshok hadn't asked for permission to eat. Scrawny and spindly, the Tharackin knew that it would be a nightmare to get meat off those bones. He was glad that they hadn't spaced the tiny human—he was proving very handy with a toolkit.

Garshok loped over to the massive engines, pressing himself up against them. He caressed them lovingly, soaking up their residual heat. Most people thought of Tharackin as being generally pea-brained, but Garshok had an affinity for machines that was almost supernatural. Instinctively, the Tharackin could feel the condition of generators, the steady rhythm of the drive-train; they were running more smoothly than he had ever known them to. He smiled appreciatively at the boy and gave him a careful pat on the head, claws pointed up—these humans were so fragile.

“Don worry, umm...” human names always puzzled Garshok, so he usually made up his own, “Lil' Hoomie,” as usual, Garshok struggled to sink his teeth into the strange human syllables and syntax. The words spilled out rapidly, a mixture of hisses, growls and roars, “Garshok not hungry, just cold” he punctuated his point by turning his mouth into a gaping maw, pointing at the bits of raw flesh still hanging from his third row of teeth. “You do good job on make-ship-go things,” he snuggled the generators, “they very warm now! Boss-captain right to not let me chomp you!” He stabbed a claw towards one of the tools hanging from Wren's belt. “Dis how you do it?”

[Anonymous]

Wren wiped the sweat beading on his forehead with the back of his hand, staring at the machine in front of him. For people who were dependent on a ship to make their living, they didn’t half neglect it. Well, at least to his trained eye. But he was glad they didn’t. It meant that he could escape to the usually empty engine room. To the familiar clammy heat that reminded him of the dockyards of home, that kept reminding him that he was a hostage. That he was going to get home. And that he really shouldn’t be doing maintenance on pirate craft but didn’t want to die. At least engine tuning was a distraction, a welcome one. If he didn’t have a job to do then he would have to wrestle with the fact that he was disposable while sitting around idle.

A month. The ransom hadn’t come in yet. He felt betrayed by that, but he still hoped that he’d go home. He hoped that they would pay up. He didn’t think about the possibility that he would be stuck here, he was still looking at home with certainty.  

Well, he’d managed to up the power quite a bit just improving the displacement. He laid his tools aside for a moment, having begun systematically increasing the diameter of the cylinders and pistons. He got a lot of satisfaction from repetitive jobs, he could sort of wander off on autopilot. He reached for the bottle of water and took a few large gulps before staring and analysing before him.

Heavy footfalls made him freeze. As was to be expected, he got a little twitchy when he was on his own. It made him very aware of his own vulnerability. There was little to protect him in this environment bar what the captain said … and that could be open to interpretation.

He sat very still as a survival instinct. He couldn’t offend or aggravate anyone if he just sat there, hopefully. Wide eyed, he watched the silhouette of the lizard man move into his field of vision and-

Hug the generators?

… well he supposed that made sense.

Something about the incongruity of the action and the reptilian put him more at ease. Made him less inclined to feel like he was going to get eaten. His hands wrung at his shirt anyway- while his fear had been abated, his shyness hadn’t. He couldn’t contend with the bigger more badass personalities surrounding him constantly. He always got drowned out.

He stayed still politely, trying his best not to flinch as the clawed hand patted his head. Looking into the rows of sharp teeth sparked his worries again, exacerbated by the meat still caught between them, despite what Garshok said. Though it was short lived. Again, incongruity threw him. Fearsome lizard space pirate with basic speech patterns and who made childish compromises on his vocabulary. It didn’t fit. Just like him.

And he wasn’t going to be turning down compliments on his handiwork either. Wren blushed, though it was hidden by the red face the heat had provoked. “Thanks,” he said quietly and timidly, barely over the noise of the room. He continued to watch the strange pirate love the machine, slowly become accustomed to the strangeness.

Though he jumped when those claws came his way with a small ‘eep’. He calmed down after the three seconds it took him to digest what Garshok intended. He looked down at his tool belt, hand brushing the precision plasma cutter tentatively. “Yeah, with these.” The curiosity was strangely endearing- Wren regarded the clawed hands and supposed it would be difficult for him to handle tools. It made him feel less frightened.

“I can show you, if you like?” he propositioned uncertainly. He moved from his sitting position back onto his knees and stuck his arms and head through the hatch again, re-starting his work anyway.

[Anonymous]

Garshok could tell that the human was afraid and confused. His forked tongue flicked out involuntarily and Garshok caught the tang of human pheromones, stark against the brutally scrubbed air of the ship. Yes, there was some fear there, as always when he spoke with the humans or made sudden movements around them, and the salty taste of sweat...and happiness?—a ridge of scales formed along Garshok's narrowed brow; human emotions were always difficult to place, always so much more complex than his own. This human seemed stranger than others, less afraid, like the Captain. Then again, most other humans got torn off limbs rather than pats on the head.    

“I can show you, if you like?”

The Tharackin hissed out an affirmative, bobbing his head happily. “Yes, show Garshok! Then we make galley 'fridge coils this warm too!” He laughed at his own cleverness, a long, warbling screech, layered with deep guttural coughs. Suddenly Garshok realized that the noise was terrifying the young technician. He cut himself short and smiled apologetically, “sorry, Garshok make bad joke.” Wren still looked a little apprehensive, so Garshok just  gestured at the tools again and waved him back to work.

Garshok hissed noisily as Wren disappeared back into the access hatch. He was beginning to like this human; he knew that the generators had coolant leaks every now and then and he didn't want his new friend to get a face full of superheated steam. “Careful of head, Lil' Hoomie.” He thrust his own into the hatch and nodded towards the lacerated hull plates surrounding the generator. “I touch very hot thing with head,” he pointed to a patch of smooth skin on his otherwise ridged, bumpy head, “then I tear things up a bit. Boss-captain not like that.”

But it seemed that already Wren knew all about safety protocols. Garshok gawked as the human's hands flew, first slicing with a plasma cutter, then filling with an adhesive tube. He stripped away the old carbon scoring, tightened everything that was loose and then got to work on the intricate valve system. Garshok warbled—the equivalent of a low whistle. He had always thought himself a machine man, but what natural skill he had paled in comparison to the ability of an Edani trained technician. “Marble-ooos.” It was one of Gorshak's biggest human words, he knew it to mean 'something very good', but the Captain always cracked up when he said it.