A New Direction for Humanity

Note: The main character in this story is transgender. Also, no sex in ch1, sex is present in every subsequent chapter, however.

***

Shae frowned at the alien terminal she'd been working on. She'd been organizing a schedule of visitors and meetings for the Rei-sa ambassador and the quartermaster. It was honestly about 80% of her job there and it would barely take up any real time, but she had to work against the limitations of her technology. The terminal she had which was basically an alien touchscreen tablet had been hacked together by one of their engineers specifically for her. The way the Rei-sa interacted with their tech was via some kind of weird twitching they were capable of doing with their irises that humans absolutely couldn't replicate. Her little tablet worked, certainly, but the software was absolutely not designed for her, and it took ages to even do simple tasks that she could have done in moments using Excel or something.

What looked like a dialog box or some kind of announcement had covered her screen, going so far as to hijack the program she'd been using. The wall of text was in Rei-sa which she could read relatively effectively, but while the Rei-sa had one spoken and written language, they had one very literal dialect, which Shae understood, but they had another dialect that was deeply interpretive, metaphorical and poetic that was just utter jibberish to her. The current message on-screen was going on and on about the wind's family and some star's... Yilan? Not sure what that word was. Shae only tried to make any sense of it for a few minutes before she gave up, the Rei-sa used that dialect specifically to confuse humans, there was no way she'd be able to understand what it meant. She tried again to close out the prompt but nothing seemed to work.

Grumbling, she put the tablet down on her desk and got up to go ask her Lehl-ta what was going on. Her Lehl-ta, Manna, was basically her supervisor, though curiosity had gotten the better of her and after some in-depth translation efforts she'd determined the word seemed to be more akin to 'babysitter'.

Shae got no more than a few steps towards the door to her little office when a massive tremor shook the ship, sending her tumbling onto her ass. "What the fuck?" Shae swore, trying to rise to her feet when the ship shook again, harder this time, sending her back down onto the floor. She felt... a pressure, like gravity was higher. Oh no. no no no no, was the ship taking off? That's not... what the FUCK. Shae scrambled to her feet and ran over to the door. It was locked, and the little interactive panel next to it wouldn't interact with her stupid human irises. She kicked and banged on the door, yelling as loudly as she could, trying to get someone's attention. She knew it was pointless even before she split a knuckle open and bruised her shin, Rei-sa ships, even moderately-sized shuttles like this one, were soundproof and radiation shielded, no human attempt to spy on what went on inside them from the outside had ever yielded anything. Frustrated and bruised, Shae dragged herself back over to her chair and sat down, fiddling with her paper copies of her files, more as a means to keep herself occupied than anything else.

This shuttle hadn't moved in two years since it had set down in the middle of Vancouver to act as an embassy and office for the government and various contractors to sell them Copper. Now it was flying? She thought? And what was that shaking, had the ship fired its weapons or something? It wasn't supposed to have anti-personnel weapons, only some kind of space gun that could blow holes in spaceship hulls, the kind of weapon you'd use to level a skyscraper, it was wildly impractical for smaller targets.

The ship rumbled and shook, going through motions that Shae was having a harder and harder time convincing herself weren't that of a flying spaceship. Finally, the ship lurched a little, and stopped moving. Shae checked her tablet for the 100th time. It was back, she'd never been happier to see her clunky impossible to use alien spreadsheet before. She closed the program quickly and went to the menu, accessing the direct message program. She opened a line to Manna.

"Lehl-ta, what is happening?" There was a long pause.

"You are still on the ship?" Shae had no idea how to 'read' that statement, was Manna happy, scared? Confused? It was hard enough in english text from a human, let alone Rei-sa text from an alien.

"Yes! I'm locked in here, what's going on?" Shae quickly decided that there was no real way to 'play' this situation, there was no way she was going home unless the Rei-sa allowed her. She got no response from Manna, and she was starting to panic, expecting Rei-sa soldiers to knock her door down and vaporize her any second.

The door did open before long, but it wasn't anybody coming to vaporize her, it was Manna.

"Lehl-ta, what is happening?" Shae asked him in Rei-sa. Manna knew how to speak english but Shae felt like if any time was the time to be respectful, it was now.

Manna looked at her in what Shae could only assume was the Rei-sa equivalent of consternation. "You... are on the ship," Manna muttered, probably more to himself than to Shae.

"Lehl-ta... the ship is not still on the ground, is it?"

"No, Shae. We are docked with the Mekorial."

"Manna, I cant be here, I have family, I have friends, I need my medication I didn't eat lunch, I can't eat Rei-sa food, I..." Shae trembled as she babbled, on the verge of tears. She'd also switched back to english halfway through without even realizing it.

Manna stepped forward and Shae flinched and shrunk back. Rei-sa weren't much taller than most humans but their overall posture was slightly more slouched, with longer arms and legs, which made them very physically intimidating up-close. They looked more human than most would have thought, with human-like skin, and mostly human faces and hair. Their noses were slightly flattened and they had slightly bigger yellow eyes with long vertical irises. Shae always thought they looked like they had cat eyes, and being up-close to a Rei-sa made her feel like child, especially since she herself was pretty small, at less than five and a half feet.

Manna's hand came to rest on Shae's shoulder. He wasn't wearing power armor right now, for a change, but he was still fully capable of overpowering Shae's one hundred and ten pound frame very easily, if he wanted.

"Shae, calm down. I can't stall very long, I'll need to go tell my superior you are here," Manna switched to english as he attempted to calm the trembling, sniffling Shae. "If they see that you are having a mental break, I do not think they will want to bother with you."

Shae sniffled "So... so what do I...?"

"Be respectful. Remind them you are no threat, that you have been our ally for almost three years. Assure them that you had nothing to do with the attack."

"The attack?"

"An airstrike hit the ship. The Mekorial shot down most of the jets from orbit before they hit us but one landed a missile. We took some serious hull damage so we did an emergency takeoff."

Shae paled. "We... we launched a preemptive strike?" She forced herself to switch back to speaking Rei-sa. Last week another six... battleships? Dreadnoughts? Extremely large Rei-sa space vessels had joined the two already in orbit around earth. The Rei-sa had given assurances that it was none of the humans' concern, but it had made a lot of them panic, fearing a Rei-sa invasion. Shae, of course, knew that there was no real reason to fear a Rei-sa invasion. If the Rei-sa wanted earth, there was nothing humanity could do about it. So why worry?

Apparently her stupid panicky government or maybe just strictly the stupid panicky American government had just launched a preemptive strike after four years of... mostly mutually beneficial co-operation with the Rei-sa. The Rei-sa kind of jerked her species around a little. Some people said it was by a lot, but they were mostly xenophobes.

"I must go, Shae. Stay here, someone will come get you." Manna spoke, looking at her intently.

Shae swallowed and nodded. "Thank you, Lehl-ta."

"I am not your Lehl-ta anymore, Shae." Manna rumbled as he turned and walked out the door, closing it behind him.

Still trembling, Shae sat down at her human desk on her human chair. Her little office was barely big enough to contain them plus the little filing cabinet in the corner. She rested her head in her hands and waited, unable to do anything other than agonize over her situation.

After probably another hour, she was starting to get exhausted, and the ship was vibrating and rumbling slightly. It had probably been six hours since this started with no living contact other than her brief conversation with Manna. After a long period of concocting possible ways this could unfold and playing them out in her head, Shae laid her head down uncomfortably on the table and drifted off to sleep.

*****

Shae was abruptly woken up by a large hand on her back shaking her roughly. It actually squished her boobs into the top of her desk painfully and she cried out, squirming away from the hand. The hand belonged to one of the two Rei-sa wearing power armor that were in her office, looking at her.

"Awake?" The one shaking her asked in very broken sounding english.

"Yes, I am awake now," Shae answered, doing her best to speak very clear Rei-sa as she squirmed out from under the hand on her back.

"She speaks! Good, no--" the soldier trailed off into a string of slang Rei-sa. As far as Shae could tell they were talking about how dumb they thought human language was. The other soldier in the doorway chuckled and agreed.

"Do you have any technology with you?"

"I always give up my devices when I board and they give them back when I leave. I have some writing implements and..." Shae looked around for her tablet before she realized she'd been sleeping on it, a little puddle of drool had collected in the corner. Shae quickly picked it up, wiped it off, and offered it to the soldier who snatched it out of her hands.

"Did you use this since you docked?"

"I sent one message. It logs everything I do, you can check."

The soldier paused for a moment, their expression unreadable behind the tinted visor of their armor's helmet. "We will," they finally said, handing the tablet to their partner.

"What is in that container?" The soldier asked, gesturing to her backpack.

Shae paused. She there was no word for pencil or paper in Rei-sa as far as she knew. "Sheets of plant matter and tools made out of carbon. I use them to write and make notes. All my notes stay here on the ship in that large container. I also have some medicine in there that i need to take."

The soldier grabbed her backpack and ripped the zipper open, dumping the contents out on the floor. Two blank notebooks and several pencils clattered to the floor, along with two small pill bottles. "What do you think?" They asked their partner in the door.

"It looks like--" their partner referenced something that Shae didn't understand at all.

"Does any of this have value to you?" The soldier asked.

"Just those two - my medicine," Shae pointed to the pill bottles. The soldier scooped them up and handed them off to their partner who dumped them into a weird-looking box they were holding.

"Looks fine. Follow us." The soldier grabbed her by the shoulder and roughly dragged her onto her feet. Shae knew they probably wasn't trying to hurt her, Rei-sa who didn't interact with humans didn't realize how rough they were being.

"Ow! That hurts!" Shae complained as the Rei-sa soldier basically dragged her out of her office.

The soldier let her go and looked at her over their shoulder. "You are serious?"

Shae rubbed her shoulder, "Yes. Small female humans like me are not very strong."

"Strange. Put this on and follow me, then." The soldier handed her an over sized bracelet that kind of looked like a single handcuff except covered with electronics. Shae also noted that the soldier had used a male-gendered word to refer to himself. As far as any human could tell, no Rei-sa displayed any gender dimorphism, and yet, they had gendered sets of certain words, and seemed to not only identify with the concept of gender quite easily, but had even equated one of their genders to being male and another to being female, fully on their own. Human anthropologists and biologists argued about that. A lot.

Shae slipped the device on and tightened it until it was snug. It was surprisingly comfortable, and didn't feel much different than wearing a watch. A big watch. The two soldiers started leading her outside, thankfully letting her walk on her own.

Shae almost had to jog to keep pace, Rei-sa were fast when they wanted to be. She was lead out of the shuttle not through an airlock, but through the hatch she'd used to enter the ship for work that morning. They walked through what she assumed was one of the Mekorial's docking bays, Rei-sa engineers were working along with some big complex alien machines to patch the massive hole in the shuttle's hull that must have been caused by the human airstrike.

They took her to some kind of tram, on the other side of the docking bay, and the three of them piled in as the door shut behind them.

"So am I... a captured person?" Shae asked, not sure how to convey the word 'prisoner'.

The soldier looked at her for a second, expression unreadable through the darkened visor. "Personnel on board this vessel must be registered and approved. You are neither. The Vakita will decide personally."

Shae had heard of the Vakita. They were Rei-sa leaders... nobles... politicians, whatever. Supposedly only one had come with the initial two ships, her name was... Xiac? Some people on earth called her Zack. It was a relief to hear they hadn't been told to space her, either way.

The tram lurched to a stop very abruptly, sending Shae tumbling into the soldier in front of her. They barely seemed to notice, the one holding the weird alien box full of her "stuff" carried it into the room and dropped it on a table, then promptly left through another door. The one who'd been talking to her just sort of picked her up and placed her inside the room. Gently, this time.

The room was... some kind of lab? Or workshop? The walls were covered in strange devices and panels with various probes and clamps and wires sticking out. A Rei-sa in a strange uniform was sitting on the floor cross-legged behind a squat desk that wasn't as far off the floor than a human desk would be. Shae had actually seen this a number of times before, the Rei-sa weren't fond of chairs.

"Do as you are told." The soldier instructed her, heading outside through the same door his companion had left through. The Rei-sa behind the desk stood, looking at a tablet similar to the one she'd been given. They approached her, and then turned the tablet to face her. The word 'REMOVE' was written very clearly in capital english letters across the screen.

"I'm sorry I don't understand," Shae apologized, again making an effort to speak in as clear Rei-sa as possible.

"You speak!" This new Rei-sa seemed very surprised. Shae supposed she'd have to get used to that. "How strong is your language?"

"I have been working for the Rei-sa for three years. I can converse but not argue." That last bit was actually a idiom Shae had picked up, one of the only ones.

"That will make this easier. Remove your clothing. Place it in the container."

Shae burned with embarrassment. She considered asking if it was necessary, but it probably was. She had no reason to believe that any Rei-sa had any interest of any kind in leering at her body or embarrassing her. Still, undressing for anybody she didn't know, even an alien wasn't something that made her comfortable. Still, she complied, remembering Manna's advice.

Shae quickly stripped off her pants and t-shirt, folding them neatly. Next came her bra, which was actually relief, her tits and skin were so sensitive lately, and she'd been wearing that bra for who knows how long. Last, she stepped out of her panties, breathing an internal sigh of relief when the Rei-sa seemed to have absolutely no interest in her crotch.

Shae shivered a bit as the Rei-sa walked over to her and flipped a switch on her weird handcuff/bracelet, which turned it on - or something.

Shae spent the next hour or so shivering because of how cold it was, following simple instructions and being poked and prodded with all sorts of weird alien devices, although thankfully no big dick-shaped probe up her butt (which would almost certainly have had an embarrassing side-effect). Shae had come to the conclusion halfway through the process that this person was almost certainly some kind of doctor or nurse or maybe even a biologist.

"Finished. Thank you for being co-operative" the doctor said cordially (she thought). They put away the last device They'd been using and went over to the weird box and started putting Shae's clothes into it

Shae opened her mouth to speak. She wanted to ask about being able to have her clothes back, about getting some food and water, and about her pills, but she wasn't sure if she should push her luck by asking about all three.

"I... have some medicine in there I need to take" For some reason she decided her pills were more important than food.

The doctor stopped and looked at her "Medicine? Are you ill?"

"No, I just... have a condition. They make it better." She had no idea how she was going to explain that to an alien.

"Alright. I can see about Ciskerrla you some." He used a term shae didn't recognize, and removed her pill bottles from the box. He took one of each, and then came over and handed her the rest. "I will require permission to do this. Use what you have for now." Shae picked up another male pronoun.

"Thank you! But could I-"

"We're done!" The doctor raised his voice, as though he were calling to someone else, and went back to his desk.

An armored hand gripped Shae gently by the elbow before she could ask about her clothes. The soldiers from before were back in the room, one had grabbed her box of stuff and the other was leading her back towards the tram they had come in on. "Come along." he instructed.

"My clothes?" She asked.

"No." The soldier carrying the box replied as they piled on to the tram.

Shae continued to shiver as they rode the tram somewhere else. Rei-sa were comfortable in cooler climates which wasn't that bad unless you were a naked human. The tram stopped before long, and opened onto what was... unmistakably a prison block. A good thirty cells or so lined the walls of the circular room, sealed doors with clear viewing panels. Not all of them were unoccupied, most had Rei-sa in them but Shae thought she spotted a human or two.

Shae panicked. "Please... please no..." she was too frightened to speak more fluidly.

"This one can speak! That is interesting," A Rei-sa approached the three of them. "Place her belongings over there. What are you holding, human?"

Shae forced herself to calm down a little. "My medicine. I need to take three of the small blue ones and two of the white ones every earth revolution."

The warden, jailer, or... maybe interrogator (hopefully not), spoke to the two soldiers in metaphorical Rei-sa, something about... animals and dirt? Crescent blue?

"We were told no." The soldier replied.

"Fine, I will leave instructions. Put her in that one."

Shae cried as the soldiers led her over to one of the cells, placed her inside. The floor and walls were actually padded, it wasn't too uncomfortable, but it was still a prison cell. Shivering and crying, she curled up into a ball in the corner of the cell, and fell asleep from exhaustion and terror.

*****