kayintruth:

iztarshi:

Inspired by various tumblr posts.

Humans quickly get a reputation among the interplanetary alliance and the reputation is this: when going somewhere dangerous, take a human.

Humans are tough. Humans can last days without food. Humans heal so fast they pierce holes in themselves or inject ink for fun. Humans will walk for days on broken bones in order to make it to safety. Humans will literally cut off bits of themselves if trapped by a disaster.

You would be amazed what humans will do to survive. Or to ensure the survival of others they feel responsible for.

That’s the other thing. Humans pack-bond, and they spill their pack-bonding instincts everywhere. Sure it’s weird when they talk sympathetically to broken spaceships or try to pet every lifeform that scans as non-toxic. It’s even a little weird that just existing in the same place as them for long enough seems to make them care about you. But if you’re hurt, if you’re trapped, if you need someone to fetch help?

You really want a human.

“You’re’re leak-k-king,” Frim’s voice modulator and
translator stutters. The crates that had fallen on them had badly damaged it,
nearly crushing their neck in the process. Frim think that if they had not been
wearing the modulator around their neck in the first place, the crate would
have killed them.
Their neck hurts, and they cannot move their legs, any of them except one,
whose final segment twitches madly out of control.

Beside them, the one to whom they were speaking, the human,
M’lani makes a sound remarkably like one Frim would expect to hear from some of
their own kind, high pitched, quiet and keening. The one’s thoracic cavity
(Frim can never remember what they are called in non-insectoid species)
hitches, expanding and contracting in a quite concerning way.

“It hurts,” the one says, eventually. “I think my leg is
broken.” M’lani leaks more, from the one’s disconcertingly few eyes. “Can you-“
the one’s forelegs reach down, straining to reach the one’s legs without
bending. Another keen, that sounds like the beginning of a song Frim enjoyed as
a pupae. “Tech-tech- Frim, can you see? My legs, are they straight? Do they
look right?”

Frim cannot turn their head, cannot move at all. “We-ee ar-re sorr-rr-rr-ry-ry.” The translator futzes, a soft sound that Frim’s ears hear
but M’lani’s likely cannot. Their next words have only the modulator applied,
slowing the frequencies down to a comfortable level, “We can’t move, we can’t
move our head.”

“Shit,” they hear, and then more keening like singing, and
the one presses on their far side, flipping the one’s body over and using
forelegs to pull M’lani’s body closer.

M’lani’s eyes look into and over Frim’s, two hands with five
fingers running over Frim’s thorax. The one’s eyes are still leaking, a thing
Frim have never seen before, but the translator is still broken when they ask.

“Okay, okay,” M’lani says, the one’s own translator, still
at the one’s own, soft throat still functioning perfectly. It is one of the
very, very few things their species’ share: having their primary sound-making
organs in their necks.  “You can’t talk.
Can you move? Blink- shit,” the one says again. “Your species can’t blink.
Okay, whine once for yes, twice for no. Understand?”

Frim whine once.

“Great. Okay,” the one says. “Can you move at all?”

Twice.

“Fuck,” the one
says. “Do you hurt anywhere?”

Twice. Frim cannot feel any cracks in their casing, but they
cannot feel anything at all below the neck.

“Do you know if it’ll hurt you to move?”

Frim do not understand. They try to say so, and M’lani, very
intelligent for a human – one of the many species that are ones instead of
manys – seems to get it.

“I mean I need to move you. If there’s another crash like
that last one, these crates are going to start bouncing all over again.”

Once.

“Um, wait. So it is going to hurt?”

Twice.

“It’s not going to hurt.”

Frim whine three times, because M’lani is, of course,
hampered by being one, and did not specify a number to express uncertainty.

“Yes, and no…?” the one guesses, and then, “oh. You don’t know.
Okay, three can be you don’t know.”

Frim whine three times again, to show they agree.

“Okay, well, I have to try, so scream if it hurts.”

M’lani is the one who screams, a constant pattern of rises
and falls of tone that Frim’s minds insist on interpreting into words, nonsense
and garbled.

The one settles Frim under a storage riser, and stacks
crates around them, arranged in a pattern that should prevent any from shifting
and crushing Frim against the wall.

“Okay,” the one says, and Frim feel a warm weight settle on
the back of their head.  “Okay, I’m going
to go get help,” the one says, and then there is tension and warmth around the
connector to Frim’s translator.  It comes
off with a snap, and Frim ask,

“What are you doing?” and they can tell by how M’lanis’ face does not change, that the modulator has failed, and without it, their voice is too far outside the human range of hearing to even be
audible.

The one’s hands reach
up to the clasp on their own translator, and snick it off.
Human fingers are often called clever, but are rarely
mentioned in favour of their primary reputation. Frim can feel appreciation in all of
their hearts as M’lani’s hands snap the translator shut around Frim’s neck.

“What are you doing?” they ask again, and M’lani bears the
one’s teeth in a smile. Frim knows of humans to do this often, to all crew
members, often while touching. Frim and M’lani are not well known. M’lani has
never looked at Frim like this.

Whatever the one answers, Frim do not understand it.

The one turns away, one leg functioning improperly, not
taking weight well. The one is making noises like singing again, with every
step.

There is much time that passes. Frim do not know how much
time. They are not good at judging time anywhen, but particularly when they are
distressed.

M’lani does not return. They are very distressed, and they
only grow more as they perceive time passing without knowing how much.

The ship does shudder again, and Frim wonder, afraid as they
cannot remember ever having been, what is happening. The crates shift; Frim
fear they will fall.

But M’lani did well – the one has arranged the non-uniformly
sized crates in such a way that the support struts for the storage riser block
the closest crates from shifting towards her, and the closer crates block the
farther ones.

But then there are voices, intelligible and loud.
“Technician Frim?” a voice calls, and in their relief, they only note that the
one has forgotten that they are Technicians
Frim, as ones often do.

“Yes!” they call back. “We are here! We cannot move!”

“Hold on a second, we’ll get you out,” the voice promises.

The crates are moved aside, quickly and efficiently. There are four humans
there, three of the type like M’lani, with protrusions on their thoracic
cavities, and one without. Two are of the security team, by their uniforms, two
from Medical. They have an artificial cocoon with them.

“Dr. Watts told us where you were,” one of the medical
personnel says, while the other directs the security ones in lifting Frim into
the cocoon. Frim remember belatedly that humans paradoxically have multiple names for their singular selves.

“M’lani,” Frim ask before they close the cocoon into
comforting, healing darkness. “Is that one alright?”

The medical personnel pauses. “She’s fine,” the one says
slowly, and then in a higher pitch that Frim have learned means positivity and
happiness in humans, “You know us humans, we’ll walk on a broken leg for miles
if we have to. She’s resting, but I’m sure she’ll be happy to see you once
you’re healed up.”

“We will be happy to know that that one is well, too,” Frim
say.

Frim have not spent much time with humans on this ship, or
on any other ship they have worked on. They are glad, however, that they chose to pursue
work on ships that employed humans.
(Of course, they had done so because such ships were almost always run by
better captains with better reputations; they have always preferred their own
kind for company).
They think they will continue to choose to do so, as the
human closes the cocoon and Frim feel it lift. Perhaps, when Frim wake they
will seek out M’lani, to thank that one personally. 

Many had told them of humans’ excessive pack-bonding
instincts. None had told them how nice it felt to be pack-bonded to.