Z’Xak sneezed.

They had been sneezing for almost half an hour now. It wasn’t a bad sneeze nor an unpleasant sneeze, but Z’Xak knew that it was a biological reaction that did mean something, and as such it should have been addressed.

It was technically not a sneeze, as Z’Xak lacked lungs as much as the standard language did an appropriate word to represent a violent push of air through their spidery gills. Their language of origin, a language without a self-given name if not for the one that Z’Xak had invented when the Federation bipeds had asked him to put a name on something that didn’t need one, wasn’t fully translated.

Z’Xak didn’t really understand the social bipeds. They got being a biped — he had observed them for many long hours, and was now relatively convinced that despite looking precarious and unstable, those two silly legs were enough to maintain an upright position — but they didn’t get being social. Z’Xak’s species, the Ukarimi wasn’t social. They did speak to each other — they had developed, over their hundred-thousand year history, many languages — but they didn’t rely materially or emotionally on anyone but themselves.

These were the reflections going on in Z’Xak’s mind as they pondered the fact that, roughly twenty minutes ago, someone had been very scared of them and had hit them by throwing contundent objects.

That hadn’t hurt Z’Xak: not physically, as their exoskeleton hadn’t been pierced in any way, and not emotionally, as they didn’t experience the feeling of rejection. They knew what rejection was — they had read about it, avidly, with incredulity, with amazement, with full alienness. They could intellectually understand that a social biped would feel bad when their emotional needs were not fulfilled by the social bipeds they had elected to be providers of the gestures and words to ease the emotional turmoil; but they couldn’t emotionally connect to this feeling. The idea of having emotional needs that someone else needed to help you with struck Z’Xak as the epitome of meaninglessness: why were the bipeds built like this?

But, if Z’Xak hadn’t been hurt by the hurling of suppellites, they had been confused. They thought that the bipeds believed this aggression to be, at least, uncouth.

It had started roughly around when Z’Xak had started wheezing. That had given them a clue that something was not right with the air — the only way for both them and a biped to share a biological input. They had started a scan, studying their own breathing system, and found an accumulation of an unknown fungine spore on the fine barbs of the second valves. They were sneezing as a physiological attempt to rid the barbs of the spores, of expelling the foreign agent.

Looking at the tricorder, they had sneezed.

Z’Xak had known that they should have reported it, but the new Chief Engineer under whom they worked — an aggressive Klingon — had shouted something about … petards?… and stormed off out of engineering. Z’Xak had decided to take care of this themselves.

They needed to go to Atmospheric Control. The spore was being distributed ship-wide, and all air was cycled through Atmospheric Control. They had to get there and have a look at the filters. They hadn’t a relevant working experience in those systems, but they were confident that a couple of minutes with the manual would be enough for them to master it well enough to allow the removal of the spores.

Suspecting that someone would again want to pellet them with assorted items, Z’Xak had decided to go via the Jefferies tubes. They preferred those tubes anyway: they had something familiar, something very spidery. They were comfortable and cozy. Z’Xak was always surprised to see that so few people used them to move through the ship. Probably a consequence of the bipeds being maladapted to non-bipedal movement.

They had finally arrived at Atmospheric Control. They scanned and saw that there were life signs inside.

They opened the access panel of the Jefferies tube and peered inside, hesitant, but immediately reassured. They recognized Lieutenant Sakar — who often helped them with translations, as well as giving invaluable insights in the emotional affairs of bipeds — and Lieutenant al-Kwaritzmi — who was probably one of Z’Xak’s favourite co-workers due to the fact that they were clever, quick, taciturn, and didn’t require any emotional labour from Z’Xak’s part. The curly-haired one… they were new. They were the Romulan, Dhae, Lieutenant, science. Diran Koli had tried to explain that some sort of bonding had happened between Iskander and Dhae, and that they had formed a stable, coupled system of mutual emotional need, but Z’Xak had been thoroughly puzzled because at no point Diran had mentioned eggs, and Diran had not even managed to understand Z’Xak’s questions about eggs or alternative surrogates (Z’Xak knew that most bipeds didn’t lay eggs).

There were two other bipeds in the room — Z’Xak didn’t recognize them, so they probably belonged to the Sternbach‘s original crew — but the situation seemed stable. They seemed to know what they were doing and their body postures hinted at a certain tenseness and determination. They were about to diffuse something in the atmosphere. They were aware of the fungus, weren’t they? Z’Xak didn’t find any other explanation.

Then a big knife cut through the door of Atmospheric Control. The door was pried open and Lieutenant Commander Kornatuv, the chief engineer, entered.

“LOOK AT YOU MAGGOTS!” she screamed. “I KNEW SOMEONE WAS BEHIND THIS!”

In one hand she held an Klingon wrench and in her right hand her big knife. She waved both with some significance that escaped Z’Xak.

They had invested much time trying to understand the concept of a weapon. Of course, Ukarimi had knives and similar technical utensils — they needed to cut all sort of things. But they had, as far as Z’Xak knew, never built a device with the purpose of hurting someone else. Someone had suggested to Z’Xak that this reflected a certain privileged position in their ecosystem: the Ukarimi had no natural predator, being too large and too well-armoured in their exoskeleton to invite any sort of predation, but they were also plant-eaters and didn’t need to create hunting equipment.

If the need really arose, on the other hand, they had quite a powerful bite.

So, they suspected that the really large knife that Commander Kornatuv was waving with such enthusiasm was a weapon, which certainly had a specific name which didn’t matter to Z’Xak.

“I should have known that the Romulan would be behind this!” she was saying. “And his boyfriend isn’t a surprise. But the councilor and T’Vylin? Wait – ARE YOU ROMULANS TOO? YOU POINTY-EARED BETRAYERS!”

“Romulans being behind every single sneaky plot is a very unproductive cliché” screamed Dhae back.

The context and content of that exchange went entirely above Z’Xak’s head. It was like hearing two Chinese rooms talking to each other.

“You are behind all the weirdness that’s happening aboard the ship” proclaimed Kornatuv, “pumping whatever dishonourable toxin in our air system. Well, THIS STOPS NOW! DIE WITH HONOR, YOU BITS OF GAGH!”

Confirming Z’Xak’s suspect that the big knife was to be used to harm other beings, she charged at two bipeds who were unknown to the Ukarimi — a Vulcan of the one gender that performed the egg production and a biped with big liquid eyes. They seemed to be unarmed but assumed fighting positions and coordinated their defense.

But it was for naught. The Klingon looked furious and irresistible; she hit the male biped with the hilt of her big knife. The Vulcan managed to kick the big knife out of the Klingon’s hand, but Kornatuv stunned her with a massive blow of her massive wrench.

“Commander, you are being paranoid!” was saying Sakar. “This is the effect of Astrolisomyces paranoosferos! We are diffusing a cure!”

Sakar, Dhae and Iskander were still standing. Sakar and Dhae had assumed a protective stance around Iskander, as if to create a last line of defense.

“LIARS!” screamed she. “I’m going to stop you and everything is going to go back to normal. BUT NOT FOR YOU!”

Paranoia, as a concept, had fascinated Z’Xak as being, simultaneously inconceivable and undesirable. Ukarimi knew fear, of course, and they knew terror; but they didn’t establish trust or mistrust towards one another. The most they felt for each other was a sort of mild indifference: they lacked any instinct for harming each other, and had not constructed any social one to contravene their nature; at the same time they failed to have positive feelings for one another except for some vague intellectual recognition of mutual prowess and some interest in a successful reproduction — they were hermaphroditic, but performed sexed reproduction. Helping each other was unknown, requesting help was an impossibility, and in their literature the question of whether it was moral to save a fellow in deathly danger was a sort of provocative canard.

So, Z’Xak didn’t feel any compulsion to help any of the bipeds who were now skirmishing in Atmospheric Control.

They had come to solve a problem with the air, though, and knew that either Commander Kornatuv or the trio of Sakar, Dhae and Iskander, was aligned with the Ukarimi’s purpose. Z’Xak’s long years in Starfleet had taught them, at least on an intellectual level if not an emotive one, that having co-workers sped tasks.

“GET YOUR ISOLINEARS REALLIGNED, ROMULAN SCUM!” screamed Kornatuv bludgeoning Dhae with her Klingon wrench. The Romulan flew to the side, stunned.

“Please, Commander, if you do not let us diffuse the cure, everyone is going to become increasingly paranoid!” said Sakar, holding a martial art stance. “The ship is going to get destroyed.”

“I’LL DIFFUSE YOU!” she said. She threw a blow, but Sakar caught the wrench and held on it. Each of them started pulling on the Klingon engineering tool. “LET GO OF MY WRENCH, YOU VULCAN TOOL!”

“That would really be illogical” evaluated Sakar holding very tightly.

Iskander had remained next to the atmospheric diffuser unit, monitoring and adjusting the release of a material that Z’Xak couldn’t recognize from the canister. “Commander, please. You need to trust us.”

“I TRUST YOU TO STOP WHEN YOU’RE ON THE FLOOR!”

Those words woke something in Z’Xak. Iskander had just claimed that Kornatuv needed to trust him. But wasn’t that potentially true for Z’Xak too?

Had they ever trusted anyone in their life? They hadn’t. For them to intervene now, to pick a side, required trust. They didn’t know whether Iskander was to be trusted, whether what he was doing was really helping or was causing the problem.

But they also knew that Kornatuv as about to physically prevail upon Iskander and Sakar, two bipeds whom Z’Xak… whom they… whom… they liked?

And, before even knowing why exactly they were doing it, Z’Xak threw themselves out of the Jefferies tube and shot themselves at Commander Kornatuv, levying all the force added to their muscles by the Starfleet exoskeleton they wore. The impact was strong enough that they felt it through their chitinous layer. The Klingon and her stupid wrench flew to the side.

“THE SPIDER IS A ROMULAN TOO!?” screamed Kornatuv.

The Ukarimi had no weapon. If the need really arose, on the other hand, they had quite a powerful bite.

In the first feat of trust in their life, Z’Xak bit really hard.