Not Quite Terran Part 3 (Scifi Alien Romance) by Erin Tate

Part Three
     
    It was amazing how much pacing could occur in an eight by eight hospital room when half the space was taken by a massive bed. Rebecca should know, since that’s exactly what she’d been doing since code enforcement hauled her in. Though “haul” was a bit of an exaggeration. The truth was she’d been prodded and nudged toward medical, none of the officers willing to lay a finger on her for fear of contracting whatever skin disease she’d picked up.
    If she hadn’t been locked up for going on ten wentics, she would have laughed at the absurdity of those events. She’d been dressed, half-dressed since her zip seal was being an asshole, and lurching down the pathway, the occasional poke making her trip. And she’d still had a limp at that point. So, there she was, limping, stumbling, tripping… and all the while attempting to keep herself from flashing her tits to everyone. Nice.
    One good thing was the presence of the code enforcers kept the shouts and insinuations from the crowd to a minimum. It didn’t stop the stares and leers though. Whatever. She could handle a guy looking at her like a piece of meat better than she could accept that same male asking her what she charged for a blowjob.
    It hadn’t taken too long to reach medical and then everyone was rushing around. The officers were shoved into decon tanks while heavily suited doctors and nurses shoved her toward a sealed room. Now her only interaction was restricted to those same doctors and nurses coming in to inspect her and draw blood. She would almost consider it over the top, but after the incident last year… Stationmaster Poxu never underestimated a health threat.
    Rebecca looked at the markings on her hand. The ones that originally started on her palm and had slowly wrapped around her fingers and now coated the back of her hand as well. A few tendrils even went so far as to decorate her wrist. Decorate. Yes, that’s kind of what she thought of them. The twining marks didn’t itch or flake nor were they dry or painful. They were just pretty. No one else saw them as pretty. Their loss. And hey, if having this weird rash-type thing kept her from having to answer questions about the Duggises, all the better. She wasn’t sure what they had on her—if anything, but she wasn’t anxious to discuss the original reason code enforcement appeared on her doorstep.
    She had eavesdropped often enough to discover the Duggises’ ship still remained in its berth at the station waiting for an Olsara ambassador to arrive and make a judgment regarding the situation. By all accounts, they should appear any time.
    The soft beep and subsequent whoosh filling the air announced a visitor. With a sigh, she padded to the bed and took up her normal position. The first time someone entered, she’d made the mistake of rushing toward them to shout her questions. That had been a one-way ticket to Tranquilizer City. Now, she somewhat patiently waited, legs hanging over the edge of the mattress and heels lightly thumping against the bed frame.
    She immediately recognized one of the usual medical techs. A lowly gopher for the docs and nurses; they’d established a sort of friendship after she’d decked him for asking what she charged for a blowjob. But that was just a tiny hiccup in their relationship. It also resulted in her eating really, really shitty reprations for two wentics. As punishments went, it was effective.
    “Hey, how goes it out in the real world?” Same question, different wentic. She really didn’t expect much of an answer. In medical, her status wavered between prisoner and patient so not everyone knew how to react to her.
    “Oh, shit.” His eyes grew wide, exposing bright blue and midnight as his irises grew larger. Even his skin blushed a darker blue with excitement. “You haven’t heard, have you?”
    “Of course I have. I’m so in touch with universal news here,” she drawled.
    That had him narrowing those dark eyes. “Sarcasm