They were dead... they knew they were dead... the explosion, there was a gaping hole in their side and yet... yet they were alive. A breathing mask on their face, they were in an ICU drawer, but it was a rough one, just barely enough, who.. what saved them? Their last memory, explosions, they were getting those Vorax kids off of their ship, not as prisoners, the ship had been struck by some kind of debris, cometary? A face showed, oh no, an adult vorax! Wait,, it wasn't killing them, what the he....?
[Vorax] "You saved kids, we owe just this once, almost to station, we get help. You hurt bad."
[Human] "Why did... why did you save me?"
[Vorax] If it could roll its eyes, it would. "You saved kids, just this once, we leave you at station, you get help, we owe for kids lives." -- Fighting Fit
There are unwritten rules that many people fight for, no matter how illogical they are. Always come to a distress call because the distress may one day be yours. Share what you can spare to those who cannot spare anything. No child, no matter the species, deserves to die in hard vacuum.
Human Kin didn't even notice the small creatures he was herding into spare lifepods were Vorax until he was at number twenty. By then, he was actively searching for little ones hiding under the furniture or in closets. No nook or cranny left unseen. The first thought, always an inane one, was, Oh, they're Vorax.
The next thought hit like the debris that hit him[1]. Oh shit. They're Vorax. Then everything went black. The last thought - or what Kin assumed to be his last thought - was, Okay. I got most of them out. Kin did not expect to wake up. It was a mixed surprise.
Pain. Air. Blink. Ceiling. Huh. I'm alive. Living hurt, for sure, but it beat the flying flakk out of the alternative. Which, according to Kin's legends, usually involved meeting a tall skeleton in a black robe who carried a scythe. This was... marginally better. For limited definitions of 'better'.
Stock-taking time. This was like no ICU drawer that Kin had ever experienced. It didn't match any familiar architecture and the script above his head was not GalSimple[2]. Which meant that it was from a non-Standard vessel.
Okay. Wow. Other people follow the unwritten rules. Cool. Now what? Kin risked small movement, trying to feel out an invalid-friendly interface with his fingers. Weird, rough surfaces. Some things wiggled. Others were unpleasantly squishy. No friendly pictograms appeared to show Kin he was doing anything noteworthy.
Damnit.
The drawer opened and Kin winced at the light. "I ain't dead," he rasped. A squinting adjustment and... Oh shit. That's a Vorax. Do they even know GalSimple? "Self likely toxic eating. You no eating self."
The Vorax had often been described as the unlikely and unholy progeny of a lobster and an octopus with a dash of C'thulu. It was even worse up close and personal. The tentacles on its face moved and it took a while for Kin to realise that they were trying to speak GalSimple.
"You is... not... food." If anything, the result could be described as 'heavily accented'. "You... saving young."
Flakk. The kids. "Is self finding all? Did self missing any?"
Vorax were hard to read. It wasn't as if there were many who survived a close encounter with them anyway. Whiskers twitched. Or were they barbels? Antennae? Kin didn't know what it meant.
"You finding all. We watching record. Seeing you searching empty vessel to near death. Many not doing this for us."
Kin recited, "Nobody deserves to die in hard vacuum."
Whiskers again. A curl of the outer tentacles. Was that? A Vorax smile? Kin nervously grinned in response.
"We is having understanding. Peeeeessss..." the word was very unfamiliar to them. "You saving us young. We saving you. Getting help."
They had to know that an Alliance station would be readying their weapons the instant their ship was identified. That had to be why they bundled Kin, ICU drawer and all, into a lifepod and literally shot him at the station.
The attending Mediks were equally surprised. "That a Vorax ship and you're alive? What the flying flakk?"
"Long story, but I did them a solid."
[1] This is why, in larger Galactic society, 'flakk' is a curse word.
[2] When a written language has to include every possible phoneme, even the simplest text gets complicated.
[Image (c) Can Stock Photo / foldyart1980]
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