The Watcher [Alien Nation #1]

Small Comforts

A/N. This standalone short story takes place before the events of The Watcher and aims to expand on the world of the Alien Nation trilogy.

As usual, Lorra suu Talvay was not sleeping.

She'd never been a particularly heavy sleeper-it had always been easier to grab a few minutes when and where she could, in the hours they spent travelling or the intervals when she had to let her ice-mining equipment cool before it overheated (ironic, she knew).

This particular sleepless night had nothing to do with old, dodgy machinery, or that useless pilot Ghirr who seemed determined to hit every pocket of hyperspace turbulence he could.

No, this time it was the muffled sobbing of the Glacier 5's newest crew member that kept her awake, and she had absolutely no idea what to do about it.

Suzanna Khan had only joined the crew three weeks ago, when their old storage tech went and got himself hurt during a routine space walk. She seemed like she knew what she was doing, and the Glacier 5's foreman didn't have any complaints so far, but she kept to herself. She didn't really talk at meals and got on with her work alone.

Lorra thought she'd probably feel the same, if she were in Khan's position. She imagined being the only ghraal on a human vessel-everything so small and horizontal, everyone so squidgy, the air so cold and moist, surrounded by strange expressions and body language. She'd go insane. All things considered, Khan was coping pretty well. She didn't even seem to have trouble with all the ladders and claustrophobic (by human standards) passages that made up the interior of the ship.

And yet she lay in the bunk below Lorra's, sobbing.

One thing that had surprised her about humans was the crying. Ghraals couldn't cry, but they still felt grief and rage and elation-so why did humans have to express all those things in the same way? Lorra liked to think she had a pretty good grasp of human facial expressions and their weird flat voices, but crying still confused her.

She herself only had occasional pangs of homesickness-for her, home wasn't about the place but the people, and the only people that mattered were here on the ship. Lorra had nobody else. She'd brought all she owned onto the Glacier 5 in a steel crate, and had not looked back.

She knew it wasn't the same for Khan. She had parents and siblings, but communication through Starbridges was difficult for an old ship like this one, and she was probably cut off from every other human for the first time in her life. She could tell the woman put on a brave face most of the time, but obviously it was at night that she let her true feelings out.

What could you say to someone going through that? Especially when the two of you were so very different?

Eventually Khan drifted off into silence and, Lorra hoped, sleep. Still, the ghraal stayed awake for another hour, worrying. There had to be something she could do. If one crew member was feeling like shit, it was only a matter of time until the shittiness spread.

That, she knew from experience.

XxX

"Oh. Morning, Lorra."

"Hey," The ghraal said, looking up from her datapad, glad to be given an excuse to put off replying to Tev, the foreman, and his request that she work overtime that night.

Khan, clad in pastel lilac pyjamas and a pair of fluffy socks, shuffled over to the cupboard. Lorra may have found human emotions confusing, but at least they were always clearly displayed on their rather elastic faces, and the dark shadows under Khan's eyes, and the pink tinge to the white bits, were a stark reflection of last night's sorrow. Even her voice sounded tired and weighed-down.