Bee led me through the dark metal corridors, our steps displacing the moist mist clinging to the floor, and wove her way through the halls until we entered a large, chilled room. My still-tingling skin prickled with goosebumps at the shocking temperature difference. The walls were just inlaid shelves containing Newton-knows-what, and at the center of the room was a simple gleaming table with two massive benches at opposite ends. It was like a combination refrigerator, pantry, and dining room with the most sterile décor an android could fathom.

I was presented with a platter of some of the ugliest produce I'd ever encountered. And I frequented Wal-Mart, so that was really saying something. Upon seeing them, however, my stomach lurched into painful convulsions, as if suddenly remembering its purpose. There were large, dark purple-and-gray stalks of something that vaguely resembled celery but tasted way too sweet to register as a vegetable in my mind; something bulbous and brown of no discernable shape, which I didn't have the courage to sample; a pile of tiny blue berries that looked like…well, blueberries, until I took a closer look and saw spiny green hairs covering them. Again, didn't want to risk it. I focused on the large maroon globules that might have resembled apples if they didn't bulge out at odd intervals and taste like…cherry bubblegum? That was the closest comparison I could make, but even that didn't do it justice. My palate didn't really appreciate the overly sweet meal, but my stomach didn't give a damn so long as it was being filled. The juices of the fruits even managed to quench my thirst entirely. Maybe that was for the best. For all I knew, these guys may not consume water outside of their food—maybe clean sources were a rare resource wherever they were from. The acerbic qualities of my shower water definitely didn't compel me to drink it. Maybe their native water was undrinkable, or maybe deserts were their natural habitat? All were assumptions that I wanted concrete answers and evidence for, but I highly doubted B'gonj-di would appreciate me speaking any more.

I kept my eyes on the food, but I managed a few surreptitious glances at my scaly dinner companion. Bee stood at the bench across from me, her expression striking a balance between bored and profoundly irritated. If she were human, her foot would have been tapping impatiently. Her gaze seldom lingered on me, or at least not while I was watching. She looked like a dog sitter stuck going through the daily, menial routine of feeding her cousin's yappy Chihuahua. At least I wasn't eating out of a bowl marked Fido. Silver linings.

Frightening expression aside, I at least had the opportunity to further observe her. The lighting was better here, more LED and less orange, which put the alien's colors into sharp focus. The buff greens and browns were deeper in tone than originally noted, the blacks more of a graphite gray, and the green actually seemed to flicker when she made slight movements. Some tangent in my brain paused to wonder if she'd lodged bits of jade and emerald into her own flesh like dermal piercings. The tangent became irrationally jealous before I swatted it away.

As if peeking into my ridiculous thoughts, Bee huffed and tossed her tresses. Metal ringlets and bits of bone clacked and clinked against one another as she snagged the chair across from me and settled into it. Her clenched mandibles and narrow eyes clearly said she was regretting her feeding comment. I was taking too long for her liking. Well, what the hell did she expect? It wasn't like it was a damned Russell Stover set that informed me what the hell I was shoving down my gullet.

Resigned, I plucked a lone black fruit from the platter. It looked like an orange going through a Goth phase. The flesh was thick and didn't budge when I squeezed and prodded it. It felt more like a dense bouncy ball than anything edible.

"Naxa," Bee said.

"Gesundheit," I replied. The dull black flesh of the fruit gleamed under that ubiquitous LED/orange light. Huh.

"What?" I looked up to see Bee staring at me like I'd just offered her my own arm as the meal's main course. She nodded pointedly at my hand and flexed a mandible for emphasis. "Naxa," she repeated in a tone that suggested an unfavorable opinion of my IQ. "Difficult to find. Savor it. Likely never have another."

"Uh, cool." I honestly wanted to use it as a weapon, not a comestible. I squeezed the leathery skin again, and a vaguely familiar, fragrant oil seeped from between its segments. "You sure I can actually digest this?"

My companion paused, considering. "Will find out soon."

"Great…" Cautiously, I sank my teeth into the tough skin and, with a mighty yank, tore off a small hunk. The flesh felt as leathery as it looked; I may or may not have entertained the fantasy of ripping out a chunk of that N'cho bastard. Thankfully, the leathery ball tasted more like a savory licorice than alien flesh. Whether or not Bee was joking, the fruit was tasty enough that I didn't really care if I'd be up all night(?) exorcising my bowels. Something about it reminded me of a house party gone bad. Where had I had this before…?

"Oh, Jäger!"

For a fragment of a second I hoped the unrealistically familiar taste of my favorite liquor meant that this was all some wacked fever dream following a bender. Maybe I hadn't found Jim in the tree at all. Maybe I had sprinted straight back to the dorm and celebrated my relative freedom with one too many shots. Except I'd never owned my own alcohol or felt the need to smuggle some into my alcohol-free hall. Nice try, brain.

My companion narrowed her eyes. Despite the cooling balm, heat flooded my face and neck. "Sorry," I grumbled. When the hell did I start making all these inane comments aloud? Dumbass. Bee just cocked her head, which my idiot brain took as invitation for further commentary. "It's, ah, alcohol. One of many. Kind of a preference in my region, I think. Well," I reconsidered, "maybe it's just the beer…but Jäger's gotta be a close second. Tastes just like this stuff and makes you perform regrettable actions," I finished lamely. She just stared at me. Yeah, I wouldn't give my rambling much credence either. Good to know my awkwardness didn't stem solely from interacting with other humans, I guess.

"So, um…" I fiddled with the leathery skin of the na-something foreign. "You mentioned before that…that there were others here. That they fixed me."

The green of her eyes disappeared as she narrowed them at me. What the hell was with the constant scrutiny? Was I breaking some alien etiquette just by speaking? Christ… "Yes," she said, finally, and reached to pluck one of those purple-gray celery things off the platter. "Two. You will not see them."

"Oh…" Didn't care too much about that. One giant reptilian was hard enough to handle.

"Do not like soft meats," she added before clasping the stalk in her mandibles and daintily crunching away at it with her inner maw. The tusked appendages and a thick, forked tongue made tiny adjustments as the stalk whittled away. The urge to scoot closer for further inspection was difficult to suppress.

"Wait, that's meat?"

Bee stared at me again, though this time her look of bland confusion morphed to some sort of humor. She spoke around the stalk clasped between her tusks. "This is root. A b'vak'na. You are meat. Soft meat. My companions like b'vak'na." She took a mighty crunch of the…whatever, and finished it off. "They do not like soft meats."

Ohhhh. "You don't seem too fond of them either," I pointed out wryly. I tore out another hunk of the Jäger fruit, trying my damnedest to appear as calm and collected as the Yautja. She could probably smell my apprehension, though, so what was the point?

"More fond than I should be," she said.

"More fond? How the…never mind." Maybe it was better to remain ignorant in this case. I had other questions to ply her with. "Can you tell me how this trial is supposed to work?"

"Like a trial," she intoned. I clenched my jaw and waited for more. Several moments passed, in which she neither spoke nor blinked. I mirrored her silence and unwavering scrutiny. Unbidden, my biceps and triceps quivered and locked up, my core and calves tightening for a bolt to the door. The immediate reaction pissed me off—like there was anything I could actually do—but any attempts to relax were thwarted by those calculating eyes. A predator sizing up her kill. B'gonj-di was a hunter, no questioning it, and whether or not the food at the table was appealing to her, there was an altogether different hunger in that penetrating gaze. That wasn't fondness darkening her eyes, but I was hard-pressed to identify the true emotion. Unnerving was no longer a suitable descriptor for this chick.

"Paya's Court," she rumbled at last. I blinked in time to see her dreads tussle and swish like spaghetti al dente over her shoulders and down her back; the thick tubes had lifted at her bony crest without my noticing, and a sharp, acrid odor straight from a chem lab sizzled through the air.

Holy shit, are they tentacles?

What was that about papayas? "Which is…?"

Snorting, she tossed her tamed "hair" over her shoulders and reached to pluck something else from the platter. My guts roiled at the sight of the selected amorphous brown blob, which the Yautja set to skinning with her talons. Between that and her possibly-sentient-no-way-to-tell flesh tubes, my nervous system felt ready to implode. I tried to tell myself I was just being too sensitive. "Will be nothing but talk. Not like Cetanu's Court, where death is dispensed. Said before, he is not likely to die, by your hand or mine." The sound of her ripping the rind just made me think of Jim's skin being draped in dripping swathes over tree branches. I managed to keep the rising bile at bay. Bee continued, "Much will be said, little will be witnessed. Doubt many will even care to witness, though some will be forced. Low rank, not enough scandal. Very dull. Some evidence will be shown, but do not think this will be in your favor. Pray hard, little scholar. Perhaps Paya will hear you."

"Scholars don't pray," I said. The sneer I'd blocked from my lips leaked into my tone. "We form deductive conclusions and figure out what to do from there."

She snorted again. "And what have you concluded?"

I glared. "That this is fucking insane and will be even more insane if this guy walks away unpunished."

At last, the brown glob came apart in her massive hands, and a gooey sweetness soon overpowered the angry burning stench. "Scholars know only what the gods have shown them. Paya is Mother, but she is not always merciful. Should N'cho be at fault, She will know, and he will be punished accordingly."

Great. Justice was now in the hands of an alien deity. The fact that they even had a god was baffling, not to mention disturbing. It didn't seem to fit with all the technology surrounding me. Would that be humanity in a few centuries? Surrounded by glowing metal and automatic everything while stridently clinging to ancient mythology? Would we even get to this pinnacle of technology before snuffing ourselves out? Ugh… Good thing I'd be dead by then.

Speaking of the soon-to-be-dead: "Is he on this ship?"

She blinked slowly, brown goo dripping from her mandibles and talons like queerly sweet sewage, but she knew immediately to whom I referred. "Yes," she replied, sounding uncertain. Head cocked, she gave me a level stare. "You wish to meet him?" she added, her low timbre pitched higher with sarcasm.

I didn't even think before answering. "Yes." The harshness of my own voice didn't shock me. It felt like a volcano of outrage surged and spewed lava in my chest. I needed to see the fucker, if for no other reason than to confirm to my overzealous endocrine system that I probably couldn't kill him with my own hands and would have to wait for someone bigger to do it for me. I couldn't wait for this trial. "Might as well at least see who I'm condemning to death."

I'm a liberal, atheist biology major who consciously chose to live in a staunchly conservative slice of the Midwest, so even at nineteen, I'm pretty sure I'm well-versed in making terrible decisions. This one? Worst. Decision. Ever.

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