Hidden Rage: Kindred Tales

“Wherever this part it is,” she muttered to herself, clutching her head. “I don’t even know where I am!” She was feeling dizzy again, she realized—everything was swimming around her. “Oh God, I need to sit down!”

There was a long, low couch in one corner of the large room—which was mostly bare of decorations and lit from above by a soft, golden light that seemed to come from some unseen light source in the corners of the ceiling. Well, at least it wasn’t the weird, black-light that had lit the Saurian ship, she reflected. But the room was really bare. In fact, it was almost Spartan in appearance with no pictures or paintings of any kind.

There was a large white banner with red markings that looked like some kind of words hung on the wall opposite the couch, Bobbi saw. She squinted at it as she sank down onto the couch, trying to make it out. But though the translation bacteria she’d been given aboard the Mother Ship generally allowed her to speak and read just about any alien language, the red lettering refused to translate itself in her brain.

The couch, as it turned out, wasn’t very soft at all—in fact, it felt like she was sitting on a piece of wood. Which wasn’t surprising since, upon closer inspection, she found that the couch didn’t actually have cushions at all.

“I think it’s just a wooden bench covered in fabric,” Bobbi muttered, frowning as she prodded the hard surface beneath her bottom with her fingertips. “Who would make a couch like that? Don’t they care about being comfortable at all?”

Then again, they—meaning the Saurians, she supposed—also apparently believed in keeping their houses so cold you could see your breath—hers was puffing out in front of her every time she exhaled. So she guessed that comfort wasn’t high on the list. Or, more probably, their idea of comfort was different from a mammalian’s like herself.

Shivering, she drew the blue towel-sheet closer around her bare shoulders and looked around the room some more. Besides the banner on the wall and the sleeping pit, there was an extremely high table—or was it a desk?—in one corner and what appeared to be a closet on one wall.

In front of the extra hard couch was a low table with a large, flat, rectangular screen on it, which curved slightly inwards at either end. Bobbi wondered if it was a kind of viewscreen like the Kindred used for communications or some sort of television set. Or maybe it was a computer screen?

She looked around for a remote or a keyboard but the only thing on the low table besides the curved screen was a round metal ball. It was about the size of a softball and it seemed to be covered in tiny silver buttons. Could that be the remote?

Curiously, Bobbi leaned forward and picked it up. Like everything else on this planet, it was ice cold, and extremely heavy—so heavy that she nearly dropped it on her bare foot.

“Oops!” she exclaimed, saving the thing from falling on the floor at the last minute. She clutched it tightly to keep from fumbling it again, which pressed some of the many buttons covering its round surface.

Suddenly, the curved screen in front of her flared to life. A lizard man in a high, stiff black collar that emphasized his yellow-tipped scales was projected about two feet in front of the screen. It was a 3-D image like a hologram, Bobbi thought, staring at it in surprise. The lizard man was talking in a serious voice, his long, forked tongue flickering with every word, his slitted nostrils flaring for emphasis.

“…the Nine Daggers Clan has apparently declared war on the Deadly Flowers Clan,” he was saying. “After negotiations failed earlier this solar week, violence seems imminent. Citizens living on the border between the two Clans’ territories are advised to go to ground or, if you have family in a peaceful Clan’s territory, to go stay with them until the conflict is over. The last time the two Clans went to war, many innocent lives were lost in the bloody conflict of 5217.”

Bobbi frowned as she watched the hologram of the serious-looking lizard man. He seemed to be some kind of reporter or newscaster and he was talking as though a war between two of the Saurian Clans was normal business.

It was almost like he was predicting a natural disaster like a hurricane, Bobbi thought, and telling people to get ready for it. But why in the world didn’t the police step in and stop this kind of activity? Were there police here? Or did the Clans all operate independently, like some kind of city-states?

She had no answers, and no real interest in the rest of the Saurian newscast. But maybe there was something more interesting on another channel?