“So the guy who tried to get away,” Dylan says, as the shuttle drifts from the station toward the sleek skyscraper of the Qena-Qel. “What’s gonna happen to him?”

“We’ll send him home.” Xamika’s tail pulls back on the clutch. “Not with a hostage and not with any technology he can bring back, but if he really wants to go, we aren’t about to spend manpower stopping him. He’ll say he was abducted, and nobody will believe him for a while, and maybe he’ll be picked up and questioned by your government, but he won’t have anything useful to say.”

“That’s it?”

“Well, he’s not getting the full payment, that’s for sure.” Xamika flicks the catch over the transponder. “He ruined one of Researcher Jainema’s earrings. We’ll have to knock at least a few million off his recompense.” She brings the shuttle to a stop in the frigate’s towering shadow. “Okay. I’m changing. No peeking, kay?”

“You’re gonna look flawless and I’m gonna be bumming around in a metal t-shirt,” he says, as she rummages through the duffel she’s packed and scurries behind the row of seats.

“I think you look quite masculine.” An expensive-looking tunic flips over the seat and lands in his lap. “But you can put that on if you like.”

He opens the crimson tunic and whistles at the intricate embroidery along the front. A forestscape, he thinks, though the alien geometries of the trees make him unsure. He turns to thank Xamika, sees the dress slipping down over her head and the bare lusciousness of her naked back, and looks away again. He changes from his metalfest shirt into the tunic and straightens its waistcloth.

“Help me out here,” he says. “This is two holidays at the same time?”

“Sorta. Come back here, okay? The shuttle will fly itself.”

“Are you decent?”

“What?”

“Are your clothes on?”

“Ohhh. Yes. C’mon.”

He climbs behind the seats. Xamika has changed into a rose-print sundress, its billowy skirt further exemplifying her teeny-tiny waist.

“So originally,” she says, as she secures a braided band around her head, “this is an Eqtoran holiday called Koa’t Qavava. It celebrates Koa, the Goddess of Crabs.”

He boings one of the antennae on her headband. “Of crabs?”

“And resilience,” Xamika says. “And endurance. But yes, crabs is her sigil-animal, and what you eat on Koa’t Qavava. We’ve moved a Taiikari festival called the Night of Joyous Burdens to overlap with it, which is to celebrate the laborers of the Empire.” She clicks a high-vis belt around her midsection. “Hence the, uh… bifurcated costumes. We’ll work out the mix better as the mirikan go by.”

“So does every sector celebrate it on a different day?”

“Sure,” she says. “Second-tier Taiikari holidays move around all the time, to better fit onto host holidays. It’s a bit far, admittedly, but Zar Tymar—he’s the cleric in charge of the sector’s omnidivine church—he saw the opportunity and he’s progressive enough to make the link. Xami says kneel.”

He gets down on one knee. She hangs a wreathed necklace around his shoulders. Little beads in the shape of crab claws clatter along its line.

“We haven’t quite figured the combined name out,” she says. “But happy Crab Burden, Dylan Thorogood.”

He laughs. “Happy Crab Burden, Xam.”

The shuttle slips from space’s eternal night into the Qena-Qel’s artificial day.

---

“So this is an Eqtoran crab, huh?” Dylan holds the thing’s chitinous shell up to the violet light of the artificial sun. It’s been boiled to a bright indigo.

“I know it looks… weird,” Xamika says. “But they do eat them.”

“No, not weird. I’ve eaten Earth crabs.” Dylan cracks the leg with the silver pinchy thing the stall provided him. “Dunno why I’m surprised, even. Like, aliens look like sexy people. I bet this is an extremely sexy crab, if you’re a crab.” He slurps the meat from the shell. “Oh, shit. This is a sexy crab if you’re human.”

The hab level aboard the Qena-Qel is a city block decorated in a tasteful fusion of Eqtoran aesthetics—vivid, colorblocked, and carved with intricate patterns—with sleek Taiikari futurism. Whatever they’re doing to emulate the sky works amazingly; if the street wasn’t curving infinitely upward ahead of them to betray the level’s ringlike layout, the illusion would be perfect. The festival is in full swing across this miniature ring-city, and bunting hangs between the cheerful hab blocks—construction paper crabs and glow-tape streamers, some of which are low enough to brush Dylan’s scalp.

“Xami!” A keeper at the front of a cluster of festivalgoers waves excitedly and trots toward them, her big piscine tail twisting.

“Krai, Sheqta.” Xamika claps the keeper into a tight embrace. The two aliens enter into a flurry of Taiikari or Eqtorish or maybe some mixture of the two. When he hears Dylan Thorogood, he waves, and the giggly receipt he gets from the cute, unambiguously fascinated crowd of aliens him inflates his head.

“Kraaaai, Dylan.” Sheqsa bats her eyelids at him. He’s still a Taiikari guy, but he admits that the sleek, petite shark girl, her eyes bright, her slim shoulder and her delicate collarbone exposed by her slouch-collared robe, does give him a better understanding of Santi’s enthusiastic embrace of the Eqtorans.

The Taiikari are evidently just as enthusiastic, if the way one girl’s tail wraps around Sheqsa’s hip is any indication.

As Xamika plays cheerful chattering catch-up with her friends, a Taiikari man approaches Dylan. Smilingly he gestures to the translation pane by Dylan’s side. “Sziaki?” he asks.

Dylan hands it over and the Taiikari man steps to his side, a little closer than he’s used to.

A string of Taiikari turns into How did you arrive here?

“Xam and me took a shuttle. From the station.” Dylan isn’t sure why he’s telling the guy this, or why he’s been asked.

Was the flight all right? Didn’t run into any trouble?

“No,” Dylan says. “Uh—the flight was just fine, I mean. No trouble.”

And what’s been your favorite experience here at the festival?

“The crab’s pretty delicious,” he says. “Appropriately enough.”

Lovely. The Taiikari man gives him a companionable tap on the arm. You must try the [translation error: unknown word].

“Uh oh,” Dylan says. “Say that last one again.”

“Moo-visiks,” the man carefully says, and the error shows up again. Must not be in the lexicon yet. It’s very new. Ask your girlfriend about it.

“You got it,” Dylan says, and by the time he’s realized he ought to correct the guy, that he and Xamika haven’t used the G-word, he’s been given another friendly touch and the fellow’s off.

“What’d Specialist Zfo want?” Xamika’s at his elbow.

“He wants me to try the moo-visiks,” Dylan says. He shows the conversation history. “And whatever this was.”

“He—ah, come on.” Xamika scoffs. “He used the triangulation questions on you.”

"That's what, exactly? Did I just miss someone flirting?"

“They’re a set of questions you ask a man in order to make sure he isn’t being adversely compelled,” she says. “He knows well and good that you’re immune, but it’s a cultural thing, I guess. Like a show of solidarity. That’s boys for you.”

Those words hitch Dylan up. Before he can sort out how he feels about them, Xamika’s tail pops a brightly pink, spherical pastry from a stall up into the air; she catches it and holds it up. “Here’s a muvizx, by the way. It’s savory.”

He’s back in. He takes a bite. “Tastes—seaweedy? I think?”

“Yep.” She grabs another for herself. No money changes hands; the cheerful Eqtoran running the stand makes no sign he was expecting it. “Seaweed clusters with a Taiikari mince thing in them. The best Taiikari-Eqtoran fusion food so far, I think. I’m personally obsessed.” She lets out a gratified hum as she chews. “It takes a lot to get the Taiikari into fishy flavors. The Eqtorans are really twisting our palates.”

“What do you reckon the human imprint is going to be?”

“I think beyaynetu is going to besiege us,” she says.

“Beyaywhats?”

“Beyaynetu. A mix of stews and salads and such?” She tilts her head at his vacant reaction. “You eat it on injera?”

“Okay, so—keep in mind I grew up in like East Bumfuck, America.”

She gasps. “You’ve never had misir wat?”

“This is Ethiopian, right? I was gonna have it in Chicago once and then my date canceled.”

“What about pizza? You have to have had pizza.”

“Oh yeah,” he says. “Pizza I’ve had.”

Her tail wags. “Pizza has me in a chokehold.”

He follows her to the central square, sidling past a Taiikari man standing atop a curb to reach his Eqtoran partner’s lips and a pair of belligerently leering Eqtoran women engaged in some kind of arm-wrestling barter over a blushing stall owner’s last crocheted fish stuffy.

A statue of a keeper at twice life size holds a position of prominence in the center of the square, her wiry stone arms holding out a huge bowl from which water burbles to her webbed feet. Her ornate robe is hung with safety harnesses and velcro straps—real ones, not stone, left by revelers. Extra arms sprout from her sides, clutching garlands and various power tools that passers by have hung in her hands. A ladder leans on the bowl.

“Krai, Koa.” Xamika makes the ok-sign in front of her eye that Eqtorans use as a greeting. Dylan follows suit. She retrieves a pair of stones from the multicolored stack at the Goddess’s feet. Her tail thwips to Dylan’s shoulder to stabilize herself as she climbs the ladder to the basin. Dylan tiptoes to see into the bowl; it’s full of similar stones, each marked up with white waterproof ink.

Xamika takes a pen up from the bowl’s lip. “What’s your joyous burden, Dylan?”

“Like, what am I glad I have to do?” he asks.

“Exactly.”

“Hmm.” He puts a hand on the tail draped across his shoulder. “Cultural exchange.”

She writes something on the first stone and tosses it into the statue’s bowl.

Dylan eyes the thin arms that hold up the Qena-Qel’s communal burdens. “Thing looks like it’ll fall over.”

“I’ve been assured it won’t.” Xamika scribbles on her own stone and drops it in. “Bloop.”

“What did you write down?”

She smiles. “You’re not supposed to say.”

“What—you asked me.”

“Yeah and you told me. Bad move. You know what happens if you tell anyone?” She holds up her hands. “You get crab-pinched.”

He takes a step back. “You’re making this up.”

“We haven’t even named the holiday yet. I can make up anything. C’mere.” She skitters down the ladder in pursuit of him. “C’mere! You’re not celebrating Crab Burden right!”

He jukes left behind a laughing keeper who’s painting the statue in watercolors. Xamika pounces; in a moment of unlikely agility, Dylan grabs her out of the air.

“Dylan!” She kicks her little feet at him. “Put me down! I must pinch!”

“I did not hear Xami says.”

“Cause I can’t talk with my mouth full.”

“Your—hey.” He tugs his arm away from her as she tries to nip it. She cackles and twists out of his grip. A sharp pinch on his thigh.

“You’re it,” she sings, and darts into the crowd.

He gives chase, excuse me-ing through the amused onlookers and the colorful commerce as if they could understand him. Xamika squeezes through groups and past stalls with much greater ease, but Dylan’s legs are long enough to make up the difference. A foot away from his quarry, she pirouettes around and flashes her compelling crimson at him. “Xami says freeze.”

He halts, teetering on his feet.

“Okay.” Xamika fixes her hair and smooths out her sundress. “Xami says pick me up again but very formally this time. One arm under the back and one under the knees.”

He lifts her up. “Where are we going?”

“Block four, 16B.” She taps his tricep in a giddy-up fashion. “Onward, fearless human steed!”

He puffs his chest out and troops off. “What’s 16B?

“That’s my cabin.” Her fingernails rasp the fabric at the nape of his neck. “That’s my bed.”

His jokeyness springs a leak and spins away like a deflating party balloon. “What, uh… what are we gonna do in your cabin?”

“I’m curious about that joyous burden of yours, Dylan Thorogood,” she whispers. “Wanna exchange cultures?”

---

The cabin door skids open. Light pours in, as do Dylan and Xamika, who are peeling each others’ clothes off. It takes Dylan three tries to find the button to shut the door because Xam is trying to suck his tongue out of his mouth.

It’s scratchy. Her tongue is scratchy like a cat’s. Her hips are rocking and gyrating against his and she tastes like cherries and her tongue’s scratchy, because she’s an alien. Holy fuck. Dylan is about to boldly go.

In the midst of the spartan exactness of Xamika’s cabin are cute little creature comforts. A poster on the wall of a squid-looking alien with a microphone in its three-fingered hand. A model of Prince Grant’s flagship, halfway constructed via tweezers and plastic blister packs. A kettle with a little flower painted on the side next to a stack of human instant ramen. A round, nested bed with a sunset spread across its fabric and a thicket of multicolored pillows. Dylan puts his back to the nest and lets himself fall.

Xamika makes a heart-meltingly cute squeak when she lands atop him. She straddles him, burrowing her hips against his. “Luaz’ti Qena-Qel,” she whimpers as she kneads against his hardening length. “Koa nuazka’n vaktai.”

“You praying to Koa?”

“For endurance.” Her fingers trace the imprint he’s making against his tunic. “And resilience.”

He couches her cheek in his palm. “Will I fit?”

“I am a soldier of the Taiikari.” Determination narrows her eyes. “I’ll make you fit. But it’ll be tight. So tight it’ll shape me.” She’s undoing his belt. With trembling hands he helps her. “I think you’re gonna make me scream, Dylan.”

She tugs her sundress up over her head. Her breasts bounce playfully down, into Dylan’s face. The hardening buds on the end like dark, ripe grapes.

“How the fuck,” he mutters, “are you so beautiful? How the fuck did aliens show up and they’re so human?”

She giggles. “How are you so Taiikari?”

“Maybe we let the scientists figure that out,” he says. “And devote our research elsewhere?”

“Xami says that’s a great point,” she whispers.

“That’s not a command, Xami.”

Her tail is wagging so rapidly he feels its vibrations through her pelvis. “Xami says touch me.”

He runs his hands up her spine. He laces them into her hair and gently, gently pulls to raise her cherubic face. He bends forward and closes his lips around hers.

His tongue presses against the roof of her mouth. He needs more. God, the taste of her. The feathery little noises she’s making. Her fingers tighten in his shirt. His hands slide down, and down again, and then finally—finally, thank fucking God—they fill with the vivid purple butt he’s spent the past week locked onto like a missile. Xamika isn’t all muscle, he finds. Her ass is so malleable in his hands, so springy and hot and squeezable. It’s a work of art; he feels the beautiful barbarian urge to deface it. When he smacks her ass, she gasps, then giggles with horny disbelief. “Muzanvi’rakni throokva, Maekyoniz.”

“You too, baby.” He tucks his thumbs into the band of her little black panties, and she urgently helps him pull them the rest of the way off.

“Xami says taste me,” she says.

She doesn’t need to tell him twice.

He takes hold of her and flips her onto her back. She’s so light. So bouncy. Her breasts spill tantalizingly outward; he kisses between them, then to her stomach, and he opens those toned, thick legs—

And they snap shut again. She jerks away from him, eyes huge and wild and dismayed.

He sits back away from her, blood immediately rushing from his dick to his face and heating his cheeks. “Are you okay?”

“I—yes, I just—” She’s blushing too, even deeper than he is. “You surprised me.”

“Did you not—”

“No. I mean, I…” She takes a deep unsteady inhale. “I didn’t—I didn’t tell you to—when I said taste me I meant like more sucking on my…” She waves a hand across her chest.

“Oh.” He deflates. “Oh, shit.”

“No, no no, it’s okay.” She laughs uncertainly. “Of course it is. It’s—I just—I’d love for you to… to taste me like that. I was going to have you do it later. And I overreacted, because you—because I was surprised.”

“I’m sorr—” he says, and then nearly bites his tongue in the haste not to finish the word she’s already told him they don’t say.

“Don’t,” she says. “I mean, don’t be. There’s no reason to be, at all. I didn’t… I should have said, or not been surprised, but you’ve been doing such a good job that I forgot you don’t…”

Her knees hug together.

“I forgot you can’t feel it,” she says.

She surely doesn’t mean those words to hurt as bad as they do.

“The compulsion, if you do it right, it—you can broadcast a lot with a few words,” she mumbles. “And I forgot. If I wanted you to suck on them, I should have just… said that.”

He rests a tentative hand on her knee. “Do you want to keep going?”

“Yeah. Yes. Of course.” But her smile is strained. “Xami says let’s get back to it.”

And then they’re kissing again, but he can feel it for sure now. The gleeful abandon that animated them is gone. Her movements are guarded. When he nibbles her lip, the coaxing sound she makes tastes like artificial sweetener. He lifts her gently away. “I think we’re maybe done for the night, huh?”

Her ears droop. “I think… yeah.” She flops off him and rolls onto her back. “Konzaf’kai,” she mutters. “So much for perfect.”

“Shh.” He wraps an arm around her and drags her back onto his chest. “A little bit of cuddling is perfect enough.”

“Perfect enough.” She breathes a sorry laugh. “That makes no sense.”

“Welcome to dating a human, I guess,” he says, and that was meant to be light, he said it with a little grin, even, but it doesn’t land that way. She sighs and snuggles against his heartbeat and they lie in the dark, and Dylan remembers how incredibly far he is from home.

He thinks of Grant’s children. He thinks of his coworkers back home. He thinks of Santi laughing in Viaq’s lap. He thinks of Randall and the way his arm twisted. He thinks more than he wants to, which is less than he should. He knows that. But it’s like the sun. It colors everything and shapes the world and he can’t look directly at it, or it hurts.

“I’ll get around this,” Xamika says. “I will. I just… need time. Time I’m realizing as I say it I don’t have.” She buries her face in his chest, breathes deep, and lets out a long, heavy sigh. “God, Dylan. I’ve been… I’ve been shoving your horns in, haven’t I? I’m such an ass.”

Despite the situation, he smiles. “Does that mean blueballing?”

“Does blueballing mean holding out for six days, then being an awful coward?”

“You’re not a coward,” he says. “I’ve wondered what’s up, but you’re not.”

“It’s not just the compulsion thing,” she says. “It’s… and it’s not just us running out of time. It’s all of us. It’s everyone.”

“The annexation?”

She nods and covers her face with her forearm. “It’s not… we’ve been studying you all as we were assigned to, and what happened today with Randall… that wasn’t just an anomaly. Everyone is slowly realizing what’s about to happen.”

“What is about to happen?”

Her lip trembles. She shakes her head, forearm still over her eyes.

“That bad, huh?”

“It’s bad,” she whispers. “It’s gonna be some bad years. A lot of humans will be hurt. A lot of Taiikari will break. I don’t know what to do. None of us do. And if I could prevent it, or, no, not that, but if I could… if there was anything I could do… that’s why I took this assignment. And all it’s done is…”

She’s quiet again.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers.

“You said you don’t use that word.”

“We don’t,” she says. “Unless there’s nothing we can do.”

The tiny woman who’s conquering his species is crying now, in his arms. He holds her haltingly and wonders whether he’s the first human to ever find himself in this unthinkably strange situation, or if Grant Hyde ever held his wife this way.

“If…” she says, once the tide goes out. But she doesn’t go further.

“If what?” he asks, tenderly.

She finally removes her arm and he can see her eyes again. The shine in them has nothing to do with compulsion. “I shouldn’t. I can’t say it. You’ll hate me if I say it.”

“If I take the deal,” he says. “You’ll be able to keep me safe, if I’m a lord. If I get the implant. Is that what you were gonna say?”

She’s still for a few breaths. She nods.

“There are people who would call that a betrayal,” he says. “Smart people.”

“I know,” she says. “But it’s all I can think of. All I can do from here. I’m not… I don’t even know what English word to use. Strong. I’m not strong. If I was…”

She doesn’t know how to finish that thought, it seems. Silent tears rolling down her delicate nose.

“And will you be part of it? The invasion force?” His arm feels like lead around her. “Will you—”

“No,” she says. “Nobody you’ve met will. The Qena-Qel is a laneguard vessel and the station is a science vessel. When it happens, it’ll be the Kei’na Terokai.”

“It’ll be Grant,” he says.

She nods again.

“How—” could he do that?

But she’s soft and warm and weeping and Dylan doesn’t finish the question because he doesn’t need to. What distant, terrible things has he let drift away on comfort in this way? Not just with Xamika, but all his life? He’s not some galactic warlord like his old roommate became. He can’t understand how that happened, and he doesn’t want to. He’s a face in a crowd scene. He’s the guy who looks up at Superman, or Doomsday, or whatever the hell Grant Hyde’s become. He isn’t built to hold it.

Are you built to hold her?

“Well,” he says. “One more day, right?”

She giggles, though the crying hasn’t stopped. “Right.”

“You’d better make sure it’s a good one, Xamika phar Zwinai nai Qena-Qel.”

Her face hovers hesitantly in front of his. Her delicate little lips brush his chin. He tilts his face down and they kiss again, softer and gentler.

“I’ll make it perfect, Dylan Thorogood,” she says.

---

It starts less than perfectly.

Dylan wakes up to the sound of hastily opening drawers and his bedmate thumping about her cabin. Xamika’s brushing her teeth with one hand and digging through her drawers with the other. Her tail clutches a steaming thermos of tea.

“What.” Dylan blinks the sleep away as he sits up. “What’s got you, uh, up and about this morning?”

“We gotta get back to the station now.” She glances his way. “Put your stuff on. Xami says.”

“Why’s Xami saying it? What’s—”

She spins around, eyes flaring. He recoils for a moment. He’s not supposed to ask, he knows. But she’s not angry. She’s bewildered.

“The annexation,” she says.

“What about it?” He stumbles out of bed. “It’s not happening today, is it?”

“It’s not,” she says. “It’s not happening.”

“No, no, Dylan, it’s not happening.” She lets out an awe-stricken chirp of a laugh. The expression on her face is suspended halfway between terror and jubilation. “They’re cancelling the fucking annexation.”