Heart of the Agraak

by S. J. Sanders

  Yellow eyes with only the barest slit of a red pupil at their center peered down at her from what had to be well over seven feet in height. Standing a head taller than every Agraak she’d seen up until that point, and with his deep coloration that made his eyes gleam all the brighter, he was an intimidating sight. More so given that he was thick with muscle. Even his veined forearms and hands bespoke strength with the most casual gesture.

  Frankie swallowed nervously as he stepped toward her, his movements slow as if approaching a wary animal. He outstretched one hand carefully toward her, his black claws relaxed. His rolling, deep mellow voice flowed out from his lips then, surrounding her. At once it both soothed her and stirred a low, sweet burn of arousal.

  “Female.”

  It was a simple, one-word greeting, yet it was not spoken in a manner unaffected. Frankie watched the sliver of his pupils expand upon an inhale, scenting her desire, but to his credit he did not otherwise react.

  “The name is Frankie Martins. You are Kaede, I presume.”

  His nod was stiff and then he summarily dismissed her. He abruptly walked away and joined the elderly priest at the other side of the room, where he was straightening supplies, to confer in low tones.

  Right.

  So that was the guy she was going to be spending gods knew how long with. The experience was going to be as comfortable as a root canal without Novocain. Especially if he spoke to her in clipped sentences and avoided her company the entire time. If she ended up going mad, it would be a short trip and she was going to take him with her.

  They exited the room and left her alone for a time. Frankie spent what she was certain had to be a large part of the day alone on her cot with nothing to do but stare at the walls and ceiling. Every so often, a young member of the clergy would bring her a small meal. Otherwise, she was left alone.

  It wasn’t bad at first. She was able to nap a bit more and had the privacy to contemplate her circumstances. She knew she didn’t have much choice but to go with this Kaede person. The only bit of luck was that if they were going into the swamplands, there was a chance they would go near the facility.

  Comforted by the painfully thin silver lining that she’d managed to find in her situation, she waited patiently for their return. The last five years had been nothing but a great exercise in patience. She could wait a little longer, though she wanted to leave immediately to discover what she might of her sister.

  Late after the evening meal, the rustle of long robes over stone announced the return of Crix with Kaede following close behind. Her eyes met Kaede’s stoic regard and shifted to the priest as he handed her a small pack. As if sensing her turmoil, he dropped a hand on the top of her head comfortingly.

  “I pray you find your peace, Frahnkee, and I shall entreat Agmuk for her favor on your journey. I have prepared these supply packs for you and Kaede. There are water tablets, and rations enough to last you until you have breached the interior swamps. Our swamplands may be dangerous but at least they have plenty of game and numerous freshwater springs to be found. Kaede will send a transmission to me once you are settled in a safe place.”

  Frankie gave Kaede a dubious look, making the elder male chuckle.

  “Don’t be concerned, Frahnkee. Kaede is the most loyal and charitable of Agmuk’s devotees. He is also the largest and strongest of our brethren and will protect you well,” the elder confided with a smile. “I have known him since he was but a juvenile running wild through the temple, overflowing with the abundant curiosity that led him away from the palisade often. You couldn’t be safer than with him.”

  Kaede stood just feet away, his face void of expression as he watched her with a kind of pervading stillness that seemed to be an innate part of his nature. If he heard any word that the priest said, he gave no indication. His eyes were fastened on her as if she were the sole object of his focus. She would have felt flattered if any emotion at all had flickered in his eyes. He could give the most dour and devout monk a run for their money—and she was stuck with him.

  Pressing her lips together, she slid her pack on and pushed up from the bed.

  “All right. I suppose there’s no sense in wasting any more time.”

  “Night is the best time to travel,” Crix agreed. “We’ve been giving you as much opportunity as possible to rest. You have a long way to go and were recuperating from a concussion and several minor lacerations. It is best that you go on your way now that night has fallen. I’m afraid a flyer or a terrain vessel will attract too much attention, but I have given Kaede codes that our order uses to tend to our fields outside the dome-city. Our clergy often go in small groups to tend to our plots at various parts of the day and night, so it should not rouse any suspicion.”

  Frankie let out an anxious breath and offered the priest what she hoped was a confident smile.

  “Let’s do this.”

  Kaede silently stepped forward and once again offered his hand. This time, she set her own palm against his and his warm fingers curled around hers as he helped her to her feet. She looked up at him as he tilted his head down to meet her eyes. Again, a warm tingle of awareness swept through her. Like every unwelcome feeling, she analyzed it and let it go, refusing to allow it to hold sway over her. She swore his long, tapered ears twitched but then he dropped his hand away, breaking the spell.

  Wordlessly, he turned away from her, his own pack tied tightly to his back below his lowest spines that flattened along his shoulders and upper back. She stared after him for a long minute and shook her head. Offering the priest a friendly wave, she followed after the silent guide as they slipped out of the humble temple into the night.

  Chapter 9

  Kaede walked through the dark shadows of the lower district. If they had been in any other part of Aminae, it would have been impossible to move about unseen. But in the lower district, much was concealed from the eyes of the authorities who long ago stopped caring about the welfare of the lowest raniks.

  His spines rattled. The only thing that the officials cared about was that the roads and buildings remained clean and pristine as a statement of Agraak higher civilization. The homeless sought shelter in vast subterranean overcrowded districts to avoid imprisonment. Anything went in the subterranean vaults away from the prying eyes of the Imperial House and the warrior ranik. Not all of it was fair to look at, especially since the subterranean vault was a place that the upper raniks neither cared about nor offered basic amenities to for the cleanliness and health of the population dwelling there.

  It was of no surprise that there was no love for the upper raniks in the vaults. Kaede himself had struggled for revolutions to be accepted among them. In many ways, he still could not get away from the invisible taint of being born into a privileged ranik.

  The vaults were more connected with the historical foundations of their city more than any other place, and they went the most neglected. The mire of filth was not the only stench within the vaults, so heavy was the atmosphere of hopelessness that came from Agraak with no purpose in the social order that had been established. Markings were painted on various surfaces declaring bold statements against the ruling ranik, sometimes accompanied by crude images.

  Kaede dared a look at the human following close behind him after passing one of the more sexually explicit images and wondered what she thought of this other side of Agraadax that no one else saw. All the Intergalactic Union knew of their planet was the perfection and grand architecture of the imperial dome-cities. They saw beauty without knowing of the festering rot that lay beneath.

  He was oddly pleased to note that Frahnkee didn’t recoil from the imagery. Instead, she studied it, her soft pink lips pursed thoughtfully. She never complained, not even when they passed through some of the worst areas stinking of refuse, feces, and piss as they trudged to the surface level near the outer walls.

  The priests’ route to the outer walls was clear and easy to follow. Even if it hadn’t been, he’d taken that route countless times in his
youthful explorations before he acquired the necessary visas to take flyers out to the swamplands. Before long, he saw the familiar hazy blue lines of the dome energy field in front of them.

  The small human stepped beside him, her strange white-ringed gray eyes staring at the wall. The blue light of the dome reflected off her eyes, making them appear as pools of water. The effect was riveting. She glanced up at him, questioning, and it roused him out of his enthrallment. He pulled up his comm and activated the code sequence. A portion of the wall glowed brighter for a moment before a small portal opened up on its surface.

  A warm wind instantly swept through, smelling of damp foliage rather than the sterile air and carefully arranged perfumed gardens of the cityscape. It was the scent of crops and wilderness and he breathed it in with pleasure. Tapping the female’s arm with two claws to let her know it was time to proceed, Kaede slipped through the portal.

  The road they stepped out onto was an ancient one made by their ancestors to lead from the city to the bog fields. Wide enough for four Agraak to stand comfortably side by side, the carefully set stones had lasted generations, weathering the turn of time better than even the simplest constructs that seemed to require endless repair within the dome-city. The stone beneath his feet was cool and damp with the condensation from the night air, his claws on his feet clicked upon them as they put distance between them and Aminae.

  When the city had become little more than a bluish blur on the horizon and crops rose around them like a thick wall of growth, Frahnkee startled him by breaking the peaceful silence that had fallen over much of their trip.

  “I appreciate you doing all this.”

  “All of what?” he grumbled.

  “You know... this. Saving me and hiding me. I just want to thank you.”

  Kaede snorted. The human was thanking him for dragging her into a dangerous swamp. He didn’t want anyone feeling beholden to him for doing what was right.

  “There is no reason to thank me. I am doing this for the sake of a human I met before. You remind me of her, though you smell different. I am merely acting on the principles of charity put forth by the Amin.”

  The female fell silent and he hoped the matter was dropped.

  “You must have admired her,” she murmured.

  Kaede wanted to curse.

  “She was a strong female, courageous to go through what she did and still help me for what needed to be done,” he admitted at length.

  “Where did you meet her?”

  “At the facility. I was gathering evidence. None but the wealthy raniks who are able to buy admittance knew what went on there. When presented with the opportunity to investigate, I took full advantage of it, posing as a male looking for a breeder.”

  “The facility,” she breathed, drawing his attention. He narrowed his eyes at the hopeful look that lit her face. “Do you think you could take me there? I know from the coordinates on my comm that we’re passing near it.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m looking for someone.”

  Kaede shook his head, his heart softening in sympathy despite his determination to remain aloof.

  “There are no more humans at the facility. It was shut down cycles ago. At least three lunar cycles have passed since I received notice.”

  “Where did they take them?”

  “No one knows.”

  A look of uncertainty passed over her face among a myriad of other emotions that flashed too quick for him to take note of. He inhaled her scent, noting the tinge of worry, though she didn’t express any outward indication of it. A begrudging admiration of her grew.

  She was a strong female. What was she afraid of?

  “There might be some record there of where they took them to, right?”

  Kaede grimaced, doubtful. Although the scientists had seemed to be keeping copious notations of everything, he wondered if discovering the fate of the captive females from the facility would be so easy. Or if they would even be able to enter.

  “I am uncertain.”

  Her face fell and, entirely unlike himself, he felt a desire to see the fragile hope bloom once more over her features. Gritting his teeth, the words slipped out from between them without his permission.

  “We can investigate if it will comfort you.”

  She looked up at him, her eyes brightening.

  “You would do that? Thank you.”

  “Do not get your hopes up,” he cautioned. “We do not know what we will find at the facility, or if we will even be able to get in.”

  She nodded and fell silent as she trudged beside him along the main road winding through the fields. There were numerous paths that stretched through the fields which Agraaks utilized for tending to the crops and collecting their harvest. Much of the bog was unsafe to stand on. The stone road and various paths were the only places where safety was guaranteed, especially the main road. Soon, however, that road would come to an end at the furthest field and they would be left to traverse the uncertain ground of the swamp.

  “You know, you’re not exactly what I expected,” she stated quietly.

  He glanced down at her, his brow raising in surprise.

  “How do you mean?”

  She shrugged, her hand stretching out to skim along a tall grain crop, deep orange in color as it neared its time of harvest.

  “From everything I read, I figured Agraak were a volatile, repressed species with a misplaced sense of self-importance. Especially after seeing vids of your cities. I mean, they’re beautiful but so obviously artificial...” she paused and flushed. “There’s nothing wrong with it, but I just wasn’t expecting what I’ve seen since you saved me... or even this.” She waved a hand around. “I just assumed you all ate from food replicators, disdaining humble organic forms of food like the vainglorious pricks you are.”

  Kaede stared at her, and then an unfamiliar ache began in his chest that pressed air through his throat breaking free in laughter. He hadn’t heard the sound of his own laughter since he was a youth, and the sound of it made him laugh more. She stared at him, but then her lips begin to twitch, and a small feminine laugh escaped her that was utterly charming in sound.

  When his laughter finally died it left his chest aching and empty, as if for the first time in revolutions he felt unfulfilled when his meditations, charity, and devotions had always been enough to fill him. He instinctively yearned for more of this... happiness... pleasure... whatever small thing that it was that had momentarily filled him.

  He leaned down to look her more directly in the eye, a smile curving his lips with an unfamiliar stretch of his facial muscles.

  “It seems that nothing is ever quite as it appears to be. You surprise me too, Frahnkee.”

  Chapter 10

  Frankie stilled when Kaede leaned close to her. She could almost feel the heat coming off his body and scented the hint of citrus musk, sunshine and rain-wetted grass that he exuded. It reminded her so much of home that for a moment she was lost in the scent, wanting nothing more than to pull him closer to drink it in deeply. She knew that if they had been sitting, she would’ve instinctively climbed into his lap and snuggled up to him as if he were a comfortable old blanket. How could a male who barely spoke more than a handful of words to her feel so much like home?

  A wave of homesickness hit her. Never would she have thought that she’d miss her hometown after she’d left. She hadn’t thought of it at all since she’d been in space. Yet, at that moment, the familiar scent called to her, and she came close to closing her eyes and leaning into him.

  It wasn’t real.

  Clenching her jaw, she stepped away, putting distance between them. The need dropped away to a vague tingle of awareness and familiarity. She knew from orientation when she first joined that sometimes various species gave off potent pheromones. For offworlders, the reaction to the pheromones could be minimal, next to none, or explosive. It varied from species to species, but it seemed that humans were often strongly affected by it despite their c
omparatively poorer senses.

  Naturally, all the men in her training group had laughed and elbowed each other as they joked about who’d be the most likely to follow his nose to a nice piece of alien ass. The jokes didn’t last long. Not when their team instructor, a rather formidable Teril, had leveled them with a dark glare. That had shut up even the rowdiest of recruits.

  At the time, Frankie had found the entire concept amusing. The idea that several technologically advanced beings could succumb to rutting for days to secure their mate before the pheromones decreased like mindless beasts had struck her as absurd.

  It was no longer amusing. Not only was she reacting to him, but he’d been also showing signs of reacting to her. His nostrils had flared with interest and his spines quivered as he’d pushed in closer toward her. She wished she hadn’t lost her helmet. Her face shield would have filtered the air and reduced its impact. All she could do was try to maintain some distance between them. It didn’t do more than ease the strength of his scent, but it did allow her to regain some grip on her mental faculties.

  Kaede’s smile fell and his eyes narrowed on her, as if she were a puzzle he was trying to figure out. His expression cooled once more and she regretted losing that moment between them. She had to remind herself that he was a stranger. Her dependence on him was only temporary. He eventually turned away, his eyes scanning the crops before he spoke again.

  “We possess replicators, of course, and we do make use of them when necessary. For the most part, however, we prefer the food cultivated of Agraadax. Some because they have difficulty digesting replicated food, others for the taste, and others again because it means something to watch our crops flourish and come in over the bog fields. Do you not find it the same?”