Chapter 148: Bless Her Heart
As someone who has had an extremely successful career in anthropology back on my home planet, I was well aware of sexual dimorphism within the species. This could range from females not being as brightly colored as their males, like in most avian species, to females being drastically more diminutive than their male counterparts, like in some primate species.
However, the only time I can remember coming across a time when the females were larger than the males was in certain fish species, such as sharks. As far as most scientists were concerned, it was the evolutionary result of the male needing to hold on to the female through copulation with their teeth. It was also the reason why the female’s skin was thicker around their gills.
But not once have I ever seen a female tower over the males by at least a foot.
Part of me was curious about what evolutionary requirements would have been to make that type of dimorphism. Would it be similar to the reason why female sharks were at least a foot longer than their males? Did the Saalistaja men bite during intercourse?
"Did you hear me?!?" demanded the deep voice.
If the dimorphism resulted from their type of intercourse, then that wouldn’t explain her voice. It seemed to be as loud as a howler monkey, coming in at 128 decibels, which meant that her talking inside my ship was enough to cause my ears to ring. But in the case of the howler monkeys, it was only the males that could produce that type of sound.
Then again, the male howlers with the loudest sound were often the ones with the lowest sperm count and testes. So maybe her species had a similar evolution.
"I am pretty sure that people living three planets over could hear you. What does that have to do with me?" I asked. GA stood between the two of us, preventing me from actually seeing what she looked like. Waving GA aside, I took my time studying her.
I honestly had no idea what to expect, but this wasn’t it. She wasn’t wearing any armor whatsoever, so I could clearly see her coloration and bone structure. She appeared to have a frill similar to a triceratops, but it fused with where the eyebrows would be on a human and grew out and back, making it look like she had a massive forehead with a receding hairline. It was connected to the rest of her skull around the back of her head, so it couldn’t act as a shield to protect her neck.
There were also a series of small horns that lined the frill before long, thick hair fell down to about her shoulders. However, that was not caught my attention. What caught my attention was the two large mouths that took up the entirety of the bottom half of her face.
The outer one had four long, sharp tusks at each corner and opened side to side, exposing an inner mouth with two tusks coming down from the upper jaw and several sharp teeth protruding from both the upper and lower jaws. The second mandible opened up and down, similar to how most other species ate. I wonder what the benefit of having two sets of jaws that worked independently from the other would be.
Physically, there wasn’t an inch of fat on her, and she had enough muscles to make a human bodybuilder jealous.
Yeah, she and I were as physically different as could be possible, which made me concerned that two of my males were from her species.
"You aren’t answering me!" she shouted, causing my entire ship to vibrate. Night, not at all impressed, hissed, taking her attention from me to him. "Ah!" she cried, taking a step back. "Kill it!"
None of the males behind her were able to obey her command as they were trapped outside of the ship, thanks to her filling up the only entrance.
"I have no idea what kind of answer you are looking for. I think I was quite clear. You can go stay in one of those two crashed ships, and when the solar storm is over, you can call someone to rescue you. This is my ship. And I don’t share."
I was beginning to feel like a broken record, but I would repeat that phrase as long as there were people who didn’t understand it. I didn’t share, so if you were dumb enough to still take something of mine while knowing that, then you couldn’t complain about the consequences.
"Are you going to let a young male speak to me like that?" she demanded, turning first to GA and then to Ye’tab. "You know that the comfort of females comes before any male."
"You will not be speaking to them," I said, coming out of my nest. I knew that it would automatically put me at a physical disadvantage, but the idea of her speaking to either one of my men, well... it made me a little upset.
She looked at me, and I could tell the moment she realized that I didn’t even come up to her navel.
"Why would I want to speak to males that are clearly inferior enough not to be able to find a proper female to mate with," sneered the giant, and I only scoffed. As far as I was concerned, it was the males behind her that seemed to have a problem with their brains for choosing someone like her.
But then again, I couldn’t really apply human standards to alien relationships.
"Leave or die," I said, more than done with this whole shit show. I could see ice forming around the ship, and I could only guess at how cold it was without my armor.
"You cannot kill me," sneered the woman, "But I can kill you," she continued, lunging at me.
Unfortunately for her, she didn’t take her environment into consideration before starting the fight.
Compared to me, the Sisalik were a larger species, maybe measuring around 6 feet tall or higher. However, as big as they were, they were still much shorter than the female trying to kill me.
To put it a different way, the bitch in front of me was a bull in a china shop while I had a lot of room to maneuver.
But bless her heart.
