Page 6 of Accidentally Fearless

She made that sound again—the sharp exhale through the nose. Then she looked around the receiving bay for the second time, and I watched her do it. Not the panicked scanning of a frightened person cataloging exits. Something more deliberate. Her gaze moved systematically—the walls, the ceiling height, the door placement, the guards' positions, the weapons rack, the communications hub. She was reading the room the way an officer reads terrain.

"Okay," she said, more quietly. "Okay. I need clothes. Real clothes, not whatever you guys consider formal wear if it involves metal. I need food—I'm assuming you have food that won't kill me? And I need you to explain this war. The whole thing. From the beginning. Because if I'm stuck here for thirty days, I'm not spending them sitting in a room staring at a wall."

I had expected many things from this interaction. Weeping. Screaming. Perhaps an attempt to run, which my guards would have prevented gently but firmly. I had not expected someone in cat pajamas to start issuing logistics requests.

"You will be provided with quarters, clothing, and sustenance," I said. "Our atmosphere and food supply are compatible with human biology. The war briefing—"

"Tonight. Now. I can't sleep anyway. I was unconscious for however long that beam thing took, so I'm wired. Might as well use it."

"It is 0300 hours."

"And? You're awake too." She looked at me—really looked, past the scales and the claws and the half meter of height I had on her. Her gaze settled somewhere around my eyes, and she held it with a steadiness that was either very brave or very foolish. "You're losing a war. You called the alien temp agency. You got me. So either we start figuring this out, or we both stand here wasting time we apparently don't have."

The markings along my spine glowed. I dimmed them—not quickly enough.

"This way," I said, and turned toward the war room.

The soft pad of bare feet on metal flooring followed behind me. And something else—quieter, almost inaudible. The human was talking to herself.

"Giant lizard man with glow-in-the-dark tattoos wants me to win a war. Sure. Fine. This is fine. This is absolutely fine."

I had thirty days to win a war I had been losing for three years. My only help was a human in cat pajamas who talked to herself and issued demands in her bare feet and looked at a room full of armed aliens like they were misbehaving teenagers at a birthday party.

The markings on my forearms glowed despite my best efforts.

3

RORY

The quarters he gave me were roughly the size of my entire apartment back home, except instead of Ikea furniture and motivational posters, everything was made of some dark metal alloy that hummed faintly if I pressed my palm against it. The bed was wide enough for three of me and firm in a way that suggested Velkorin sleeping preferences ran toward "slab of granite." The lighting was warm amber, built into the walls themselves, and it adjusted when I moved—brighter near my hands, dimmer at the periphery, like the room was watching me.

I was trying really hard not to think about that.

I was also trying really hard not to think about the fact that I was on an alien planet, wearing borrowed clothes that fit surprisingly well in spite of being designed for a species with a fundamentally different skeletal structure, staring at a tactical display that showed a three-year war I'd been asked to help win by a seven-foot reptilian commander who took everything literally and glowed when he was stressed.

Instead, I was thinking about the war. Because that, at least, was a problem I could break down into pieces.

Vrex had spent two hours briefing me. I'd asked for paper—they didn't have paper, but they had a stylus and a flat tablet that recorded strokes, which was close enough. I'd filled six pages with notes while he talked about the ceremonial war.

Two factions of Velkorin disputed ownership of Kren Valley. The dispute went back generations. Rather than total war, which the Velkorin had apparently tried several centuries ago, with results devastating enough to change their entire civilization—they'd developed a system of formalized combat. Rules. Schedules. Neutral observers. Specific weapon categories. Designated combat zones within the disputed territory. Everything documented, everything witnessed, everything bound by a complicated honor code.

The goal was straightforward—control enough of the valley to force the opposing faction—led by General Krenix—to concede. Controlled territory was measured by holding strategic positions during scheduled engagement periods. Think capture-the-flag, except the flags were carved into mountainsides and the players were seven-foot-tall warriors with claws.

"So it's competitive paintball," I'd said, about forty minutes into the briefing.

Vrex had stared at me. His officers—two of them, standing at the edges of the room like gargoyles—had made sounds that I was learning to interpret as various flavors of disapproval.

"It is a sacred tradition spanning four centuries of—"

"Right, right. Sacred tradition. But the mechanics. You have defined playing fields. Time-limited engagements. Specific weapon restrictions. A scoring system based on territorial control. You rotate through different zones on a schedule. You can't use certain tactics because the honor code forbids them." I'd tapped my stylus against the tablet. "That's tournament paintball with extra steps."

The silence had been magnificent. Two officers, one seven-foot commander, and a holographic tactical display, all staring at a woman in borrowed clothes who had just compared their sacred ancestral tradition to a weekend activity for suburban teenagers.

"The analogy is not—" Vrex had paused, and I watched him process it. Really process it, not the defensive dismissal I'd gotten from his officers. His amber eyes had moved to the tactical display, then to his notes, then back to me. "The analogy is not entirely without merit."

"Commander—" one of the officers began.

"The human's comparison is imprecise but structurally sound. The engagement framework shares functional similarities with competitive simulation combat. This does not diminish its significance." He'd looked at me. "It merely identifies its mechanics."