So I stroke her back and press my lips to her brow, trying to comfort her. “I’m here, Helen. Calm down. I won’t let anything happen to you. What man did you see?”
Her hands twist in the front of my tunic. “In the lavatory.”
What? “Someone’s in there?” I don’t smell anything at all. This station looks like it’s been long abandoned, and those streaks of blood are very, very old and very, very dried. “Did he talk to you?”
“He didn’t get a chance,” she whispers. “His head fell off first.”
This is making less sense by the moment. I detangle myself from Helen’s clinging grasp and hand her my blaster. “If something moves, you shoot it, all right?”
She blinks at me. “What if you move?”
“Something other than me.” I turn and eye the row of commodes. Most of them have their doors open, but the one with the blood smears leading to it is half shut, hiding whoever is inside. No one’s made a single sound, though, and I wonder if Helen’s imagined something. Carefully, I take a few steps forward and push the door in so I can see inside.
There’s a man, all right.
The desiccated corpse of a long-dead szzt male in a mining uniform sits atop one of the commodes. His clothes are covered in more of the rusty stains, and he’s been dead for so long that he’s practically mummified. His head is at his feet, and when I examine his neck, it looks rather cleanly sliced at the front.
Either someone took advantage of leaving the station and cut this man’s throat, or he was a pirate that got left behind. Either way, he’s been long, long dead. I relax, my shoulders dropping, and I rub my face. I’ve aged ten keffing years at hearing Helen’s scream. “Helen, he’s dead.”
“I know,” she says, and her voice catches in a sob. “His head fell off—”
“No,” I correct. “He’s long dead. He’s probably been dead longer than you’ve been alive. You couldn’t tell?”
She blinks tear-filled aquamarine eyes at me. “I thought…I thought maybe he was an alien. That that’s how his people look.” Her lower lip quivers. “I’ve never seen a dead thing before. Do all their heads fall off?” She gives me a terrified look, her gaze fixed on my neck. “Do body parts just fall off like that when you die?”
Ah, kef. That’s right. Helen is new to a lot of stuff in the universe. The women have always handled their attackers by drugging them and sending them back into space. She wouldn’t know what happens when you die, that the corpse shrivels after it rots. She’s so innocent it makes my teeth ache.
“Hey,” I say gently, moving toward her. She’s trembling madly, her eyes wide and stark as she watches my neck. “It’s going to be fine, all right? Someone cut that man’s throat and when he rotted, that’s why his head fell off. It was nothing you did, and it’s not normal. I promise. Don’t be afraid.”
“A-are there more dead things here?” She whimpers, and when I hold my arms out, she rushes into them and buries her face against my chest again.
“I don’t know,” I say. “But I promise we’ll check everything out, all right? We’ll secure the station. Together. Give me your hand and I promise I won’t let go.”
She clasps her hand in mine desperately and hands back my blaster.
The station’s deserted. The long-dead szzt is the only occupant we find, so we clean out a couple of the old crew rooms and take them as our quarters. Helen doesn’t look happy at the prospect of having a bed in a room apart from mine, but I’d be equally monstrous if I insisted she climb into bed with me. One of us has to be responsible.
But when Helen wakes up in the middle of the night, shrieking, I race to her side only to find her sobbing again. “You weren’t here,” she weeps, frantic. “You weren’t here and all I could find was your head! You left me behind!”
“I’m here,” I promise her, climbing into the bed next to her. I’d forgotten that Helen has never slept apart from anyone in her life. Even in the escape pod, we were an arm’s length away from each other. Here I am trying to be noble and she needs reassurance more than she needs a champion. So I make sure my trou are fastened tightly at my waist and I pull the covers over both of us. “Look, we’ll sleep in the same room, all right? No nightmares.”
“You were gone,” she cries, the sound pitiful and breaking my heart.
“I’m here,” I promise her, wrapping my arms tight around her smaller body and pulling her close. Helen is taller than the humans, but she has a slender, delicate fragility that they don’t. She feels slight against me, her body quaking against my bare chest. “I’m here, Helen. I’m not going anywhere. I promise. I won’t leave your side.”