Bonnie

Commander Slate was going to make Bonnie late for her first appointment of the day.

For a man who took every instance of tardiness as a personal attack, he was apparently unbothered when it came to Bonnie’s time. His lack of respect for her field was maddening. If she were a doctor of anything other than psychiatry, she was sure he would think more carefully about ordering her to his office right as her day was to begin. The more he talked (at her, of course), the more clearly she could envision herself stuffing her shoes down his throat.

Unfortunately, they were sealed inside of an enormous spaceship with no means of escape for months. This made conflict very difficult. Borderline awkward, in fact, as Bonnie attempted to argue her stance without raising her voice or seeming in any way aggressive or rude. Slate did not show the same courtesy. He was sharp and blunt and disinterested in Bonnie’s opinions. It did not bode well for the main mission of the ship: the Human-Ailu't Alliance’s trial of mixed flight crews.

Three spaceships had been drafted in for the test: one for battle, one for exploration, and one for exporting goods. Each had their own assignment, and each was filled with an equal share of humans and Ailu't. Up until now, humans and Ailu't had been firm allies, but they did not mix their forces. If Ailu't soldiers or explorers needed support, the humans would send a vessel of their own, but once the job was done, they would never retire to each other’s ships. Hands would be shaken and all personnel would go their own way.

It was not that either side was opposed to the other. It had simply not been done before and no one wanted to be the first, at least not without permission from higher up. There was talk of diseases being spread between the species that they would not be prepared for. Of ship modifications needed. Of the dietary and environmental requirements.

Eventually, the Alliance felt they had conducted enough research and it was time to proceed with the trials. Eventually, Slate also finished his monologue and excused her to get on with her day. She managed not to sigh loudly in the corridor as she hurried to her office.

Dr Bonnie was drafted in as the ship’s psychiatrist for a six-month deployment aboard The Sentinel, the military wing of the trial. The enormous battleship would be assigned missions and patrols from both the Ailu’t and Human ministries of defence. So far, they had looped a few small planets and removed a group of squatters from a construction site for a research hub on an otherwise barren moon.

But that made for far more productive reporting than Bonnie’s efforts to work with the Ailu’t officers. She had been chosen for the mission due to her extensive work with the Human-Ailu’t Alliance, particularly the medical research and information migration teams. Sharing knowledge was highly important to both species, especially in the medical fields. However, the Ailu’t aboard The Sentinel were nothing like those she had worked with for the alliance. They were hard, and cold, and hiding behind blank masks. What exactly they were hiding, Bonnie could not say for certain. But she hoped it was emotions.

She scheduled mandatory one-to-one mental-health check-ups with all crew-members periodically but the ratio of Humans to Ailu’t who managed to attend their meeting was shocking. This was not cultural; this lack of interest in emotional well-being amongst the Ailu’t officers appeared to be isolated to this ship. She had not experienced any push back against psychiatric care amongst the Ailu’t of the alliance, and humans regarded mental health as a top priority for military service peoples since the twenty-first century. So Dr Bonnie had found herself working with half a co-operative crew, the other half blank slates.

That did not stop her giving her best attempt to open them up, though. She would still book their appointments, send them reminders, follow-up if they missed their slot. Anything to get them into her office and seated across from her. Even if they had nothing of substance to say, she needed them to know there was a room where they could speak freely, regardless of what they needed or wanted to say. The Ailu’t officers rarely had anything to say, despite Bonnie’s best efforts to encourage them.

When all coaxing and conversation-starting tactics failed, she always had her fallback line.

“There’s something I’m rather curious about. I wonder if you would mind helping me understand it a bit better?” She leant back in her chair and pulled her legs up under her like a student on the floor of the classroom. He watched her silently, awaiting her request before answering, she supposed. “Is it inappropriate for me to ask about soul stretching? I understand it is quite an intimate subject for Ailu't.”

His eyes focused, his slack face tightened, and his spine straightened barely perceivably. The Ailu't loved to explain, or try to describe, soul stretching with humans. Bonnie couldn’t fathom why, but it was something they all were eager to share with anyone who showed interest. She knew a great deal about it, having worked with Ailu't physicians for a long time as part of the Human-Ailu't Alliance. But she would always pretend to have little to no knowledge in front of patients, it was the one sure-fire conversation starter she kept in her back pocket.

“No, it- it’s not inappropriate. Soul stretching is so woven into our culture, we love to share it with others.” Bonnie got herself comfortable and prepared to nod and make ‘hmm’ noises for the next hour. “It’s both a personal activity and a communal means of connection…”

By the end of the day, or what the clock informed her was the end of the day without rise and fall of the sun to keep her in touch with time, she was exhausted. It was incredibly draining having to coax people to talk to you all day, like being at a party filled with people that didn’t want to be there. An office happy hour except all of the people that turned up are from different teams to you.

Within moments of dropping into her armchair in her living quarters, she was dozing off.

She woke with a start. Bright artificial light burned her eyes and she groaned, her internal clock unable to give her even a guess at what time it was. The digital clock embedded into the wall said it was two in the morning. She pulled herself up with a wince and forced her body to go through the bedtime motions, brushing her teeth and putting on pjs and taking her vitamins. Just as she was about to slide under the covers of her bed, she realised her water bottle was empty. No doubt she would find herself with a parchment tongue and wake back up in a few hours anyway, so she slouched out of her quarters grumpily.

The nearest water fountain was not far, thankfully, and she padded down the dim, metallic corridor barefoot. It filled her oversized plastic bottle as slowly as always and she did her best not to sway sleepily as it did.

The appearance of a figure rounding the corner to her had Bonnie almost lose her grip on the bottle. She leapt back a step, spilling some of the water down her night dress and whispering a curse word.

It was Slate.

“What are you doing?” she gasped. “You scared the life out of me!”

“I had a notification of movement in the hall, so I came out to check what it was,” he said, stopping a few feet from her.

Bonnie glanced over him, noticing now that he was wearing only cotton pajama trousers with a gun holstered to his hip. His bare chest had numerous scars and discolourations painted across it and his tight abs. His posture was immaculate.

“Why are you armed?” Bonnie snapped, using her bottle-less hand to point accusingly at the gun at his hip.

“I didn’t know what might be out here.”

“You could have checked the security cameras.”

“My quarters are less than ten feet away; I didn’t see the point.” He dragged his all-black eyes over her in a way she took to be condescending. “Why are you collecting water at this time?” he asked.

“Because it tastes better after one am.”

Slate raised his brows and rested his hands on his hips, his pajama trousers were a little loose and she could see the deep lines leading from his hips down to his groin. She shuddered to think what kind of brutal workout he did to manage to tone even the unsuspecting muscles like those.

“I was being sarcastic,” she added.

“I know. We have sarcasm, too, you know.”

“Do your troops know that? Because they act as though they are unfamiliar with most forms of humour. In fact, there are plenty of emotions they seem conditioned to pretend don’t exist at all.”

“You were trained to work with humans, you wouldn’t under-”

“I have worked with Ailu't.” She stated firmly. She would not let him tell her she did not have the experience necessary for this post. Her place here was not something she would ever allow to be questioned. “I was heavily involved in the medical sector of the Human-Ailu't Alliance. And I have never known Ailu't that act like this.” She crewed the lid onto her bottle a tad too aggressively but did not break eye-contact with him. “I have come to suspect this is your doing,” she accused before she could catch her unusually sharp tongue. “That you have made them this way. Either that, or it is an Ailu't military attribute. Because Ailu't in other fields are not closed off and cold like this.”

This was, unfortunately, not a new argument for them. At least, the part about the Ailu’t being emotionally impenetrable. In fact, if more than a few days went by without them breaking out into the same debate, Bonnie would assume the commander was seriously ill or she was in a fever dream.

Slate had not so much as twitched during her tirade. His response was bordering on a growl. “They need to be closed off and cold for their duties.”

“They are not robots. They are not killing machin-”

“Not yet,” he snapped. “Some more drills-”

“Slate, please.” Bonnie raised a peaceful palm to him and took a calming breath in the pause it allowed her. “They are living beings with entire lives that are separate from this job,” she said slowly. It was a shock for him to allow her to speak so much in one go. “You cannot assign your military rank to every facet of your existence. They are more than just soldiers.”

“Outside of work, they are more than soldiers. Here, deployed in deep space, they are soldiers.”

“But-”

“Keeping them battle-ready is my duty, talking about tantrums is yours. Let’s keep within our assigned boxes going forward, doctor.” He said doctor like one might say ‘bitch’. Before Bonnie could retaliate, he had turned away, striding back to his own quarters like a panther slinking in the dark.

Bonnie scowled at his back. Some things never changed.