Trying to Get By

*****

This is one of the kind of chapter that I usually dread writing. You get a bunch of relative strangers together in something where there are things going on and you need to find a way to get things said and out of the way.

This time, I just gave in to the notion that things don't happen with any synchronicity between a lot of folks concurrently. There are gaps, different processing speeds between them and like that. That's life among the humans or whatever. Lots of them tend to have short attention spans, that's all, and some of these are worse. Can't even call them human.

So here, we have bipedal wolves, centaurs, two different kinds of fauns from other worlds, some cyborgs and one confused and mildly injured American Navy sailor who was abducted.

Add three Russian killers to the mix and shake gently.

Speaking of them, I wrote them as being educated and able to handle English fairly well, just not perfectly, since their line of work sort of cut down on some study time and all.

I think most of the names are straightforward, but the three ex-cosmonauts are:

Sveta = "Svetta"

Ksana = "Ksanna"

Nika = "Neeka"

Nika's lost daughter is Mila = "Meela"

Hope you like it.

0_o

************

Meanwhile, back at the forest clearing not far from a parked space-going vessel ...

While a relieved and cautiously optimistic group of individuals stood in a rough semicircle surrounding H'Yan-Ah and Irianni out in the clearing and as the trio of four-legged people some yards off were coming to slowly figure themselves out, there were two others lying unnoticed in the snow after the larger of the two vessels departed.

Since the events leading to their appearance outside of the vessel occurred some minutes apart from one another ... and since at the moment, neither of them was conscious, they knew nothing of each other.

Dana Rawlins was drifting in some surreal memories which began to slowly coalesce into a rough timeline of recollection as she slowly came to herself. It took a little time, but she came to understand that she was alive.

Once she had that pleasant idea down, she found that she wanted a little time to rest before one or another of the hulking alien whatever-the-fuck-they-were things came to beat the shit out of her again.

Pieces of her own private little Power-On, Self-Test routine came to her notice. She knew who she was, so that was something. Where she was now?

Not a fucking clue, but there were parts of her that hurt a fair bit and she could taste blood.

A brief scan of the memories of her life told her that there had more than likely been an ass-kicking involved somewhere in the very recent past and based on past history combined with the taste of the blood in her mouth; it couldn't necessarily be taken as an indication that she'd won.

Deciding to concentrate on more recent times, she ascertained and confirmed to herself that she'd joined the Navy after high school and worked her way over some years to a Master-at-Arms qualification. It had seemed to be a good path for pay grade increases and she'd thought that the job offered challenges.

Well it had and that was all fine, but she found not long into things at that level that oftentimes, she was more like the cop of the boat, where what she'd really have preferred was to be a little closer to a wet-to-the-thighs river sailor than a blue water sailor. Her lips began to curl into a rueful smile.

But that stopped as soon as she found that the expression would hurt right about now - more proof about her probable role as the recipient of the ass-kicking, really.

She remembered transferring to a brown-water role and liking it a hell of a lot more, though it had been a bitch of a thing to make happen. Attaining her E-7 rating for Chief Petty Officer, along with her weapons qualification had opened doors into the Expeditionary Combat community in a big way and that had led - after a shit-ton of more work - to her Enlisted Expeditionary Warfare Specialist rating.

Then more solid and recent memories came to her and she was in Iraq with Riverine Squadron 1 and loving it. With news of greater mission scope and newer, better boats, she'd been moved to Coastal Riverine Group 2, Delta Company, and life had been pretty much what she'd never known that she'd always wanted.

Then she remembered how it had all gone into the shitter one night.

An after-dark intel gathering mission had seen her quietly backing the Command Boat back out into the waterway after dropping off the team of SEALS. They'd planned to sit there in silence against a low, weed-covered sandbar for the extraction when they were needed.

Out of nowhere - out of the very night air - she and the others were suddenly looking at two freaking strange ... roughly human-shaped figures in the dark.

Only ... they were too damn big to be human. Even if the Superbowl was in town.

Looking back, since she'd had a bit of time to do that, she'd come to the rather shaky notion that whatever they were, they were there looking for something. Well, for someone, more likely. They'd looked to her to be aliens and it wasn't even a stretch to make that assumption - since she doubted that at this point in the conflict, the other side had a bunch of seven and a half-foot tall guys in some sort of armour hidden away for use now.

She knew that it hadn't been the tequila that somebody had smuggled in, since that had been at least a day ago by then and besides, drinking that didn't make her see things, necessarily.

She tended to stay away from that stuff, mostly because of the hangovers the next day if she wasn't careful.

That, and the way that she wanted to take her clothes off if she got hammered enough.

It hadn't happened since high school and other than a little drink alone some nights, Dana was determined that it never happened again.

And it almost hadn't, but that had been a long time ago and Dana couldn't even remember the woman's name anymore.

The two men there with her moved then and began to shoot the things up. There was a light and then ...

Dana flexed her fingers experimentally and placing her palms down on either side of her, she opened her eyes and tried to push herself up out of the snow. The coldness of it had helped her face for a time, she supposed, but it was getting painful in another way now.

Easing her ass backwards to sit up for a moment, she remembered waking up alone in a cell of some sort where nothing happened or made any noise and then ...

She looked down at the spot where her face had been and seeing the blood in the snow there, she reached to touch her face.

It hurt some, but things seemed to be roughly about where they ought to be.

Her fingers came away with a little blood and as far as she could tell, her lips were pretty fat, but all of her teeth were still in the right places in her mouth. She scooped a little snow to wipe her face with as she spit what blood she could out.

She looked around and saw her M11 service pistol there not far away along with her M4 rifle and her shotgun - since she'd had those weapons on her person when the big light had come on that night.

It triggered the very recent memory of earlier today - down inside the ...

She looked back.

Down inside the freaking spaceship which was no longer there.

She looked ahead, wondering, and saw some other people standing roughly together except for a few who ...

Dana shrugged. Why not?

A few others who had half-horse bodies or some such, clearly. They stood in another group some distance away. Both groups seemed to be involved in some meet and greet activities, was her guess.

Then somewhere in her mind, an indicator came on and things cleared a little more all at once.

The big things had come to take her out of her cell and had pushed and prodded her along to a big-assed doorway. Then they gave her back her weapons.

So ...

So, her thumb had found that the safety on her M4 was still on. So that meant that it was still locked and loaded.

So ...

Well, they'd been a little helpful and given her back her things. She figured that she ought to thank them or something but they couldn't understand each other. Remembering that she hadn't actually had a chance to do anything when they'd grabbed her or whatever that all had been about, and that she wasn't where she ought to be and ...

She'd raised her weapon, thumbed the safety off and shot the nearest mother in the face.

The rounds were deflected by the annoying detail that he was wearing that helmet, the one that matched the armour.

Her rifle was deflected by the rapidly-moving hand-thing which swatted the annoying rifle out of her hands, so she'd let go and whipped out the pistol, taking it off safe and even adding the now-you're-gonna-get-it, pissed off and determined look as she started shooting.

That detail was deflected even more easily and then she was deflected right out the door by the hard-hitting back-hand and ...

Dana sighed.

That was how she came to be out here in the snow.

She got to her feet slowly with a bit of quiet groaning and gathered her things, pistol, scattergun, rifle and after a little re-situating of her small pack, body armour and all, she found a place by some frozen, twiggy bushes to piss before she walked over to the group of two-legged people, guessing that she just might have a little more in common there.

It was a bit of a disappointment at first. There were two more of the things there, females by the shape and smaller and they - even the other ones who seemed to be even more aliens, though not like the two females in the fucking armour that she now hated - they were all speaking some growly, clicking talk.

The larger one held out something. A - a bracelet?

Dana shrugged and took it, fitting it onto her wrist as they indicated and -

Suddenly she could understand them all.

That's when the real surprises began.

She didn't know, so she couldn't say how long she'd been held on the ship when they asked her. She told them that it couldn't have been too long, not more than half a day.

They told her the vessel hadn't been near this planet for a period that somebody worked out for her as not less than two years in this time frame here. Dana almost fell into the snow again at that point.

They told her that most of them had been prisoners, captured after their ship had been crippled after a pursuit. For Piracy.

Dana struggled with it, referencing the term within the contexts that she was familiar with. But no ...

They were talking in space.

Space pirates. She wondered just how the fuck you could get to be one of those anyway.

She had a bit of a bright spot when she'd been asked where she was from and she told them; United States Navy, Navy Expeditionary Combat Command, Riverine Squadron 2, stationed out of Bahrain and working in Iraq.

They told her that they were on Earth presently so that gave her a rush of hope for a minute, but then she came off it almost instantly. She had almost zero family that she knew of and of those, none that she had addresses for anymore. Her parents had died more than five years ago. Add another two years to that and ...

"Where are we?" she asked, "I mean, where is this place? I was in the Middle East."

When she heard the answer, she looked down at her boots, "I don't think it's gonna go well if I just walk into a cop shop in the nearest town, dressed the way that I am and tell them that ... "

She sighed, "Fuck, they'd lock me up."

She suddenly noticed that she was somewhat less than dressed for the weather at that point. She began to shiver and her teeth chattering made things like speaking clearly suddenly difficult, as though the adrenaline and then the shock had kept this from her until now somehow.

A different kind of alien ... ok, what looked to her more like a fantasy creature stepped up and with a word to one of the armoured girls, took her gently by the arm, "I will take you where it is warm - inside. I am ..."

She paused for a moment, "My name is Yonyi. Come, you must get warm. I have a chamber here - a place to sleep."

She saw that Dana wasn't getting much of what she said, so she searched for other terms.

"It is my place to be when I am not working - or it will be. I need a better word for this. A crew person's place?"

"A bunk?" Dana suggested as she allowed herself to be led inside.

"Yes," Yonyi nodded, "but more than that. It - it is a room."

"A cabin?" Dana asked.

Yonyi nodded with more of a smile, which intrigued Dana, "Yes! It is for two people. There are two bunks and a pull-out one for if more people need to be here. I asked if you could stay there because I think you will need to understand many things. From what you said that you are and where you were ... it is confusing, yes?"

Dana nodded, "Oh yeah."

"How did you go from where you were to here?" Yonyi asked and Dana gave her an abbreviated version.

"They just threw you out?" Yonyi asked and Dana nodded.

"They got pissy over my bad manners for an abducted captive, I guess. Can't imagine why they'd think that."

She sighed loudly, "And while it's true that my manners were lacking a little, they bashed me hard enough to send me sailing out the door and into the snow over a little thing I did."

Yonyi giggled quietly, "What was this thing?"

"Well I can't say I did it," Dana smiled, "Their armour is harder than it looks. I didn't know that then and I tried to shoot his face off."

She looked a little outraged, "And they just THREW me right off the ship then. I mean, I knew it was wrong, what I did."

Yonyi chuckled and watched Dana's very animated description as they walked farther inside and Dana's voice echoed a little as the sounds receded.

"I just needed a bigger gun. But I did the best that I could with what I had ..."

She was watching where she was going as she was led, but she was also trying not to stare at Yonyi. This was all far out of her frames of understanding as it was.

Yonyi looked like a ...

Dana spent a moment trying to fit things together in her head.

She looked like a slightly mottled, mostly snow-white ... uh, bipedal, hoofed, and horned female, um ...

Mountain goat.

Well, Dana told herself, it's about the best that she could do to put that together, the way that the day was going and all.

Yonyi's legs lower down and her forearms had fur like you might see on a goat. Most of the rest of her body was covered in very short, fine fur everywhere. Dana could tell by the way that her skin looked when she moved, though what she saw couldn't possibly be longer than a millimetre or so. She hadn't really gotten a chance to look much, but when Yonyi had approached her, she'd seen little in the way of a thatch at all and her belly and breasts looked like bare skin.

Those breasts caught her eye because; well for one thing, just because, and for another ... they were white like much of the rest of this girl, but ...

She'd seen black nipples before, just not on anyone who was not, um ... well, black. So that was a bit of a head-stumper.

She had normal-looking hands, sort of, by the count of her digits, though the fingers were long and graceful-looking - and ended in long nails.

Looking back for a second, Dana could see a very short tail - again like a goat might have, but what she was having the devil's time with was Yonyi's head and face.

Yonyi's hair was long and it was a tumble of white curls which ran far down her back. In fact, Dana couldn't tell, but it might actually end in a long line down right over the girl's spine. Maybe it was attached that way.

She wasn't sure yet, but the curly mop was most definitely prominent over most of her head, barring the slightly pointed ears that she could see under the ...

Horns.

Black horns, curled rearward and down in a spiral like a ram might have. Dana wondered how a person with a set like that could sleep.

"So, you're part of this ... pirate crew, Yonyi?" She asked.

Yonyi nodded, "I was for a very short time before we were captured. I was only on the ship for several days, I think you would say when we were captured. I was hired for communications."

She shrugged, "I did not want to be in a crew like that - pirates - but I was starving. There was no work there for someone who looks ... like I do. Not in that area, anyway.

"And we are not pirates anymore, the new boss said."

Dana looked at Yonyi's face and somehow ... she had no idea, but she found that she really found herself liking this person pretty much instantly.

Somehow, the placement of the horns where they emerged from the skull also showed that the front part was thicker than it would be on a human, though it wasn't unattractive at all. It just went along with the rest. The slight thickness ran down from the eyebrows to merge just below the white widow's peak that Dana could see. That thickness ran down so that each side met the other to form the nose at the end of a very short snout.

There were three things which caught Dana's eye then. Two of them were Yonyi's eyes. The irises were very light grey, but the pupils were like four-pointed stars, taller than they were wide, though at the moment, in the relative dimness of the interior, they were opened wider.

The third detail was the mouth. Yonyi had lovely coal black lips. She seemed to be making a bit of an effort to keep her mouth closed when she wasn't speaking, but even so, there were moments when Dana could see fairly long canine teeth - for a human. It was probably what was normal for whatever Yonyi was, she reasoned.

Yonyi seemed to notice that she was being looked at and seemed to withdraw slightly.

"I know this must be a large shock," she said quietly, "I am sorry."

Dana noticed that she must have been in some sort of mild trance, since she was out of it now. "Sorry? For what?"

Yonyi looked down, "For my appearance, how I must look to you."

Dana shook her head, "You don't have to be sorry about anything Yonyi. Ok, seeing people like I've just seen are pretty different for me - well, it would be for anyone who's from here. But ... "

She chuckled, wondering at the way that she felt. Given who she was, her role in her occupation and everything, she was much more used to being just straight-ahead in her dealings with anyone. Dana loved her job and she was proud of the road that she'd had to be on to get where she'd been. But it had left her little time and opportunity to find someone who interested her.

Right now ...

"Yonyi, you're like someone that I've never dreamed to ever see. People like you just don't exist in this place. Some of the others out there shocked and scared the hell out of me to even look at and I could accept it if they'd said what you just did to me.

But you don't need to. I very rarely just ... like ANYone right out of the gate, but I like you, Yonyi, just to meet you and be able to speak with you. So trust me, there's no need to apologize for anything."

Yonyi stared for a moment and then she seemed to relax and sigh, "Then I feel better."

She pointed at what Dana took to be a door, "We are here. Let's go in."

As they walked in, they both looked around for a moment, "I think that we will need to ... clean this a little. I was told that this vessel has not had a proper crew in a long time. It is not as bad as I feared, but I have a sense that you live ... "

She stopped there and Dana chuckled, "Uh-huh, I'm a Navy girl. That means that where I live, things are at least more squared away than this. I think you're right."

Yonyi looked over, "Squared ...?"

"Neater," Dana laughed softly, "Where I used to be, onboard a Missile Destroyer, I was one of the ones whose job it was to make sure that everybody else's quarters were neat and clean. You can't be that person and live messier than everybody else. We can do it together, just show me ... "