Bredhe woke with a start, never having meant to fall into such a deep sleep.  Dressing quickly, he made his way back to the bridge of the ship, but there was no cause for him to hurry, his crewmembers were manning their stations faithfully.

“Everything’s going smoothly, Captain,” Aud reassured him enthusiastically as he stepped up to the bridge.  The boy always seemed especially cheerful whenever Bredhe left the controls for an extended period of time.  The navigator probably enjoyed being in charge and ‘playing Captain’ as it were, in his absence.  Not that Bredhe begrudged it. He recalled having similar fantasies when he was a young navigator.

“Umm, Sir,” came Daq’s voice from behind him, “I tried to take our passengers their meals, but there was a security code blocking me out one of their rooms. May I ask why? Does he present a danger? Is there something we should be concerned about?”

Aud’s ears immediately perked up at this information.  Most of the time the two older men were careful not to let him know any more than was necessary. This was a protective reflex towards their young crewmember, but it annoyed the boy all the same—and only made him more inquisitive.

Shaking his head, Bredhe confessed, “I’m sorry about that, Daq. I meant to tell you.  Oddly enough, the extra security was at the Seraph’s request.”

“But why?”

Other Captains might have been disapproving of the mechanic’s inquisitiveness, but Bredhe was close with his crew and very egalitarian.  “I’m not sure myself.  He was extremely vague about his reasoning, said something about a ‘fit’.  I’m guessing it’s related to this ‘peak’ or tenshinn, as they call it. Supposedly, they’ll be going through it for the next couple days.”

As he spoke, Bredhe moved to his Captain’s chair, opened up his personal database, and began a search for Seraphim history.

“Captain,” Aud chimed in, glancing over at the man from his navigator’s seat across the bridge, “What do you mean by ‘peak’?”

Bredhe caught Daq’s sidelong smile as he came over to lean against the computer console next to him.  They both knew this was the first in a long line of questions to follow; once Aud started in on a new subject, he was relentless.

The Captain hesitated, wondering how he could explain the matter tactfully.  It would have been easier if the boy had been raised on a less conservative planet. As it was, he knew very little about any mating rituals at all, and Bree and Daq had been called upon to explain numerous intimate subjects to the boy.

Bredhe decided to be direct.  “I believe it’s the height of their sexual cycle, though I’m not positive.  It’s one of the things I’m trying to look up now.”

“I didn’t know males could, well, go into ‘heat’,” Aud said, his cheeks tinted a pale pink as he tried to stare intently at the controls in front of him.

“It’s not that rare, actually,” Daq told him, feeling a heat of his own coursing through him as he observed the boy’s delightful blush.

“What else do you know about the Seraphim?” Aud asked, trying to steer the topic into safer waters.  He could feel the mechanic’s eyes watching him.

Bredhe shrugged, distracted by the files appearing on the screen as he answered, “Only basic history, that they maintained an isolationist policy ever since first contact hundreds of years ago—until the Cordenians forced there way in and started colonizing the planet.”

“I heard that the Seraphim invited them to stay.”

“That’s a matter of debate.  Even if they allowed them to stay for a time, the Cordenians have long since worn out their welcome.”

“I can’t imagine anyone inviting those warmongers onto their planet!” Daq interjected.  “I don’t care if their old planet burned out, that doesn’t give them the right to just hop onto the most convenient world they can find and start exploiting it.”  The mechanic’s voice was laced with indignation.

“I quite agree with you there,” Bredhe replied, “They knew the Seraphim were isolated, without weapons or ties to allies, so they just swept right in, taking over their resources, their trade, and pushing them into tiny corners of land.”

“Why didn’t anyone try to stop it?” came Aud worried voice.

“As I said, they had no allies.”

“But, wouldn’t someone have tried?  I thought that was what the Interstellar Board was for.”

Bredhe shrugged again.  “That’s what it should be for, but the Board and the governing Council are bureaucracies and most of the time they are more interested in keeping their power than supporting people’s rights.  In any case, El-Isel never requested official membership, so it would have been difficult for them to intercede.”

“I see,” Aud replied, although it was clear that the discussion had left him with more questions than it had answers.

“Why do you call it ‘El’ Isel?” he ventured after a moment.

Though Aud’s endless questions were distracting him from his research, Bredhe humored him.  “It refers to the original Seraphim government and  means roughly ‘Our Planet’, as opposed to what they have termed the Cordenian fraction of the world, Bal-Isel, or ‘My Planet’, alluding to the invader’s self-interested mentality.”

“Oh,” was all the navigator had to say to this.  Unlike his comrades, he was only just beginning to understand the wide array of injustices propagated throughout the galaxies and upon receiving new information such as this, it sometimes took him time to digest it all.  Often he would lie awake during his designated sleeping hours, mulling over the meaning of such cruelties.  Tonight, however, he now recalled that he would not be sleeping alone; Daq would be slumbering in the bunk below him.  Suddenly all thought of Isel and Seraphim slipped from his mind as he considered the impending situation.

Bredhe didn’t know why Aud had finally become so quiet, but he was glad to have a respite from his endless curiosity.  The only problem was that he was still having trouble focusing his mind on the task at hand.  Try as he might, the information on Seraphim biology and culture was slim, to say the least.

The lack of data stemmed not only from the Cordenians suppressing such knowledge, but also from the fact that the Seraphim had remained isolated for so many long years beforehand.  Not that Bredhe could blame them.  It had been a group of Terrans that ‘discovered’ the planet and they had immediately equated the winged people to the angels of their ancient scriptures, making all manner of assumptions about their lives and projecting their own expectations onto them.

The pioneer’s vision of Isel as the ‘New Eden’ was quickly shattered when they learned of the people’s open sexual habits and many of the Terrans grew almost violent in their disappointment.  The travelers were subsequently ejected from the premises and left the Seraphim with a very negative view of outsiders; they had kept a tight lid on their planet ever since.

Bredhe rubbed his temples as he felt a headache creeping into his skull.

Daq gave him a friendly slap on the back.

“You don’t look so good,” he told him amiably, “I’m sure the research can wait.  Why don’t you take some more rest while you can. Aud and I are fine.  Those visions can take a lot out of a person.”

Bredhe accepted his offer gratefully and retired to his bunk once more, but his mind slipped in and out of consciousness uneasily.  It was as if something was pulling at him from the inside out; the sinew in the back of his knees and hands quivering with an itch he couldn’t name.

He was just about to give up and head back to the bridge when a piercing scream shattered the air.  The voice sounded unearthly and a violent tremor ripped through his body as if he were hearing the cry not just with his ears, but viscerally, in every fiber of his being.  In a flash he was out of his bunk and in the passageway, searching for the source of the sound.  It was evident enough where the cry was coming from—the room next to his, where the Light Seraph, Vali, was locked inside.  Bredhe could now hear a wild banging within and he marveled that the slender man could cause such a raucous that it would be heard through the steel-reinforced walls of the ship.

Was this what the Seraph had warned him of?  But what if it was something else, what if he was really hurt and in pain?  The voice cried out again in a keening note of anguish.

Was Bredhe really supposed to just ignore this?  Gods below! That scream tore through him, seemed to call to him…

Without another thought, the Captain punched the code and released the manual lock…

And was met with a pair of golden eyes holding the most naked, raw need he had ever witnessed in his life.

“Captain…”