Flauraan

Chapter Eight

Chapter Eight

“Don’t be stupid!” one sleek haired guy with glasses was shouting, as Sophie and I came into hearing distance of the table. “The Weraynians gave us clear proof that these Paladanian people are bad news; it’s why we came here in the first place! You can’t just say that the enemy might not be so bad after all! They stole one of our ships! How can you even be on their side, Neve?”

“All I was saying was that it doesn’t make sense!” a girl, evidently Neve, replied. “If the Weraynians are being kept inside that force field, then how could they possibly know that this planet had captured a space craft? It seriously doesn’t add up.”

“Like Rot said before, they explained everything when we talked to them!” another man joined in angrily. “Look, they told us all we needed to know, so it should be clear what we have to do. Get out of this blooming force field, and attack those Paladanians with all we’ve got!”

“No, that’s precisely what we shouldn’t do!” A soldier with a beard and a gravelly voice argued back.

“What do you suggest then?” A woman snapped at him. “We lay down our weapons and chat with them over a cup of coffee?”

This started everyone off yelling at each other, shouting their arguments mixed with profanities aimed at either each other or my people.

I watched, mouth open in shock, as a couple of the men started brawling, tackling each other to the ground and continuing to yell as they fought.

“Seen enough?” I turned to Sophie to see a small grin on her face.

I nodded, and she wheeled me over to an opening in the wall, through which more people could be seen, holding trays of food to serve dinner with.

Sophie began to move along the line of people getting their portion for the night. I followed along behind Sophie, hands clenched tightly together.

As I reached the first serving lady, she handed me a tray with brown, red and green mush in different compartments. I tried not to screw up my face in disgust, and continued on, only stopping so that a plastic cup of crisp liquid could be added on my tray as well.

I knew Sophie was laughing as we walked towards the table where Jon was sitting, watching the debate, but I wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of looking at her. She was far too entertained by my shock at this so called food that we’d been served, and I was finding this whole situation weirder by the minute. I scowled as I placed my tray down beside Jon, and Sophie sat across from me. She was still laughing.

Now that I was sat down, I realised that I was actually going to have to eat this poor excuse for sustenance and that made me scrunch up my nose. How did these humans stomach it? I could tell that the ‘food’ was packed full of aritficial protein and nutrients but it certainly didn’t seem healthy. I looked over to see Sophie holding a spoon, about to dig into her portion.

“Well, aren’t you going to eat it?” she asked me with an amused smile on her face.

I narrowed my eyes at her, and she laughed before plopping some of the goop from her tray into her mouth. She chewed it enthusiastically, making an act of swallowing the food before smiling contentedly.

I glared. “Are you sure it’s food?” I decided to make sure. For all I knew, she could be trying to poison me. Okay, that is a blatant lie, I did know that it was not poisoned but I was trying to find a way out of eating it.

Sophie laughed again and nodded. “Yes, of course I am. But it’s hard to come by fresh food in space, you know, so sometimes they have to live on this.”