Free The Science Officer by Blaze Ward

one who was not under her spell. Lemuel found that his purpose was clear.
    He relaxed his natural scowl and tried to remember how to smile. The Harlot was a lost cause, so he directed it at the man sitting. “He–he–hello,” he stuttered.
    He found speech to be a complicated task, once the habit was lost. He spent most of his weeks in silent prayer and the sort of hard work necessary to survive in the Lord’s paradise.
    The Harlot kept her weapon pointed at him. And her bile.
    “What’s your name?” she challenged him.
    That brought Lemuel up short. He hadn’t used his name in…a very long time. He blinked a few times. How many seasons had he been here? Many, doing the Lord’s work in the wilderness.
    “Answer me,” the Harlot continued, her anger palpable.
    The Lord counselled patience in the face of the denizens of the pit. “Le–Lemuel,” he said brokenly, finding the word deep in his memory.
    The friendly male, unbowed by the Harlot, spoke to him from the dirt. “Hungry?”
    Lemuel cocked his head. Words were difficult to process.
    “Here,” the man continued. He held out his hand, holding the bar of food that he had taken a bite from.
    The Harlot’s fury grew. “Come no closer,” she rasped harshly.
    The male looked up at her, rolled his eyes disapprovingly, and tossed the bar to Lemuel with a single, “Fine. Catch.”
    Lemuel managed to keep it from falling.
    A sniff. A blue and red thing. Fruit of some sort, dried and packed together, with nuts he could not recognize. Minus a healthy bite out of one end.
    Since it came from the male, Lemuel broke off a small chunk and touched it with his tongue. The poisons in this place were subtle, but dangerous. Mohr had died after eating the local fruit in an attempt to go native on this world.
    Thus did the Righteous fall from the Lord’s Grace.
    Lemuel took a very small bite. Better to risk illness than to refuse his one potential ally among the strangers and burn a valuable bridge. He considered his words as he slowly chewed.
    “Thank you,” he finally found. Language was coming back to him now.
    Lemuel considered the lovely taste, fruits that would not grow in this Eden, nuts from alien trees. His body remembered the taste of honey, so different from the form the local insects made.
    Perhaps the Lord was telling him that he could finally go home, after so long in the wilderness.
    The Harlot would not be an easy foe.
    The words of his father came back to him, across the gulf of vast time.
    “Welcome,” he said slowly, carefully, enunciating each word with care. “Welcome to Eden.”
    Ξ
    Djamila was not taken in by the rustic’s pose. He had already survived many years on the surface of a hostile planet, surrounded by alien flora and fauna. That made him dangerous. That Eden nonsense bullshit wasn’t going to cut it.
    And Aritza was going to play good cop. Big surprise there. The man had no sense. None.
    Predictable. But she could bad cop with the best of them. Watch this.
    “Aritza,” she called down to the punk sitting in the dirt, “Is he armed?”
    “No.” The answer was surprisingly quick. And assured.
    “How do you know?” she asked.
    “Because,” he replied in a voice right at the edge of insubordinate, “the only power sources that aren’t over here are in that.” A finger pointed at the wreck. “My sensors showed him as a bear until he came into the open.”
    “And the staff he’s carrying?”
    “What?” Aritza shot back. “You can’t take an old man with a stick?”
    Djamila considered kicking him. Aritza was really getting on her nerves.
    She scowled her best, most professional, scowl at the native. Yes, she could handle him unarmed. Plus, she was supposed to be nice.
    Interstellar law and custom said you always rescued ship–wrecked survivors and got them back to civilization. Even pirates honored that one. Mostly.
    So, catalog the wreck. Rescue the local. Figure out if she could make it look like a tragic accident