by V. K. Ludwig
The Earth woman still fought me, causing most healers and warriors to disregard her with deep sighs. We captured most humans in a state of shock and disbelief. Few resisted, allowing us to absorb the planet into the Vetusian Empire with minor casualties.
But now and then, we encountered females like her.
Slightly bent, but always refusing to break.
Those ones usually made me wonder what it must feel like to mate with a flesh-born female. One who would receive my seed and grow my child, saving our species from extinction.
A foolish imagination.
While Vetusian males would soon have the stomachs of their mates swollen with daughters, the name of my noble house would die with my final breath. No need to waste a perfectly fine female at the hands of someone as defective as me, unable of love, born without much of a conscience.
“Commander, you’re injured, sir.” Another healer pointed at my thigh.
“Don’t mind me. I will have my personal healer tend to it once I return to Ardev Five.”
“Stop touching me!” The female screamed as the healer bound her to one of the fifty forcefield tables, neatly arranged in rows. “What are you doing with me? Help me! Help!”
The healer hovered a cell scanner over her core, guiding it along her limbs soon after. Unable to move her body, she strained her neck, her chin carried high, delighting us with the vulgarities of her language.
She was magnificent.
And because of that very thought, I turned around and left the module.
I stood outside for a moment, my body weary and tired from lack of sleep.
“Excuse the interruption, Commander,” a warrior said, head lowered, and hands clasped behind his back. “Officer Kael requires your help translating for one of the humans.”
I hid my annoyance behind a small sigh. “Where is he?”
“Just around the other module.”
I walked past the group of humans my warriors held at gunpoint. They cried. Wailed. Begged for mercy while they urinated themselves in raw fear.
But mercy didn’t exist.
Only a mission we had planned for five solar cycles, ever since the leaders of this planet broke their treaty with us. They had promised us a certain amount of females each cycle in exchange for fighting off the Jal’zar invasion. I had lost almost a million warriors during that three-cycle war. Not once did we receive a single human female for our losses. Now we would take what we were owed.
But there was no cruelty either.
We spared lives whenever we could, and killed whoever resisted quickly and efficiently, sparing them any unnecessary pain.
“What’s the issue at hand?” I asked, stepping into the crowded room and knocking my head on the low-hanging light. Their buildings didn’t account for the height of a Vetusian male.
Kael swayed the blue dot of his gun over the forehead of the human who held his trembling hands behind his head. “He keeps mumbling something in a language my chip doesn’t recognize. Given the way he keeps jutting his chin toward the older woman, I feel it might be important.”
I pulled a chair from the desk beside me and sat down astride it, observing the small group of humans. One male. One older female. And the two young females… so precious, so much the answer to our suffering.
“Parlez-vous français?” I asked.
“N-nous sommes d’Allemagne,” one of the young females stammered in a small, frightened voice. “En vacances.”
“They are German,” I said. “Not a language predominant on this continent. Tourists.”
“Wer ist der Mann?” I continued in German. “Und was möchte er uns mitteilen?”
She clenched her hands together to keep them from shaking, only barely daring to let her dull eyes lock with mine. “Unsere Mutter hat ein schwaches Herz. Er f-fragt ob wir bitte zusammenbleiben dürfen… Bitte.”
“She says the older female has a heart condition, and they don’t want us to split them up.” I ran a tired hand over the itchy stubbles of my beard. “Why do we waste our time with this? We cannot allow for these delays anymore, now that we lost an entire brigade inside their asteroid belt. Assign the two young females to Ardev Five. The male and the older female can go to Seneca and make a note so the healers can monitor her heart.”
“You want me to split them up?” Kael asked, his voice suddenly soft with that sympathy I knew he had for them. Not that I understood why. Or how. “It’ll be difficult for us to reunite them quickly once the healers complete the genetic profiling on the two young ones.”
“I don’t care how long we take to reunite them. What I care about is our mission. Garrison Earth first. Humans second.”
I got up and left the dim room, ducking my head this time around to avoid the light fixture. But my eyes hadn’t even adjusted to the bright sunlight outside yet when Kael’s voice reached me.
“Torin!” He called out my name with a familiarity only he used with me. “Why don’t we assign them all to Ardev Five?”
“My ship only holds females so we can speed up putting their genetic profiles into our system,” I said, briefly distracted by how guards gathered at the other intake module in turmoil. “Seneca is behind with profiling by at least a lunar cycle. It’s inefficient not to split them.”
He leaned against one of the abandoned vehicles, arms crossed in front of his chest, his eyes surveying me with a hint of hope glimmering in their depths. “Absorbing them into the Empire will be much easier down the road if we avoid unnecessary suffering. They will be more inclined to cooperate.”
“Suffering?” I scoffed, uninvited darkness suddenly looming over me. “What do humans know about suffering that we don’t? We lost an entire brigade and over eighty percent of our last crop of Vetusian males. Split them. That is my final order.”
“Yes, Commander,” he said and hinted at a bow, then smacked his lips and turned on the heels of his boots.
“I will return to my quarters and rest,” I shouted behind him, which he acknowledged with a quick wave of his hand.
“Have my stargazer ready,” I ordered into my com. “I want to return to Ardev Five before we deploy to Atlanta.”
“Certainly, Commander.”
Feet aching and thigh burning, I let my quick steps carry me around the corner of the building, ignoring whatever turmoil echoed from behind me. I needed rest. But more than that, I needed to distract my mind from that female.
My ears pricked at shuffling feet.
But before I looked up, a body slammed into my chest with such speed, I stumbled back. The red-haired female stood before me, blinking disorientedly from the force of the impact. She had escaped, her body trembling with panic. Or perhaps I trembled with panic?
It was hard to tell.
“No…” she breathed, resignation pooling at the depth of her dull, brown eyes.
And yet she rammed her elbow against my sternum, turning sharp to run into the other direction. For a moment, I considered letting her run. Any direction away from me was the right one. Why would I concern myself with this human? She was one of many.
Then I wondered when my legs had kicked against the concrete, sprinting behind her like a predator after its prey. She spoke to a most primal part in me. Undiscovered. Probably better left alone.
I reached out and fisted a chunk of her hair. She yelped, bounced back from the strain, and crashed into my heaving chest.
Head cocked, delicate neck exposed, she stared up at me with pure hate. “You cruel, unfeeling asshole.”
From afar, barks and commands breezed through the streets like an incoming storm. Any moment now, this corner would bustle with guards. How could this female stand in my presence, her eyes wide with fear and yet her gaze never break from mine?
I ran my lips along her neck, my tongue aching to lick the salt of her skin. “What is it about you running into me? You will tell me your name, leska, or I’ll probably spend the rest of my life wondering.”
She clenched her lips shut.
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“Over there!” a guard shouted.
“Very well, I will give you my name instead.” I strained her scalp some more with one hand and placed a tranquilizer pad onto the back of her neck with the other. “My name is Commander Torin da taigh L’naghal, and you, female, are a danger to yourself for seeking me out like this.”
“Si’dat!” A simple voice command injected the sedative, making her startle one moment, and collapse into my arms the very next.
I picked her up once again but draped her body over my arms this time, curiosity fraying the strings of my control.
“Commander,” one guard huffed, “she broke the nose of a healer and ran away. She was too fast there… there was nothing we could do to stop her.”
I soaked in the warmth of her body against my palms once more, tempted to keep her. But no. This planet might have held the salvation for our species, but it held absolutely nothing for me.
“Here.” I handed her over to the guard. “Have them finish her intake and then bring her to Seneca.”
“But sir, she is a young female. Shouldn’t she go to Ardev Five?”
“No!” I said in a tone so sharp the guards shrank back. “I won’t have this female on my ship. She is to be brought to Seneca.”
I stared at how he carried her off and out of my reach, ignoring the urge to change my mind.
Yes, any direction away from me was the right one.
Chapter 4
Eden
I woke with a pendant light above me, casting a warm, yellow shimmer onto the thick down blanket which wrapped me tight. Where…?
Ears ringing, thoughts dull, I gazed about the room. Polished to a shine, apples and pears rested in a wicker basket on the white desk across. Above it, a wall-mounted TV played something. Braveheart?
An aftertaste of mouthwash clung to my gums. I slid my tongue over the surface of my teeth, sleek, no plaque, as if I’d just stepped out from a dental cleaning.
Each time I blinked, the ringing in my ears faded more, making room for a monotone drip… drip… hiss. That’s when I smelled it. Coffee. Black, freshly brewed, and lingering with a thick aroma, slightly acidic. It filled a small decanter at the edge of the desk, with steam settling at the glass rim.
“Oh, you’re awake.”
Anxiety swelled my chest at each expansion of my lungs.
Where did that voice come from?
I peeled back the heavy blanket and sat up, my eyes immediately catching on to the movement coming from the small hallway. He leaned against the wall, dressed in all white, his hands casually shoved into his pockets.
“Who are you?”
The corners of his mouth lifted, though his smile didn’t quite reach his glowing green-blue eyes. “You can call me Melek. I was assigned as your healer, trying to help you during this first stage of transition.”
My vision turned blurry, black and gray speckles floating before my pupils, making me pull my knees into my chest and scoot back on the bed. What did that mean? Transition?
“Your blood pressure is currently a bit low,” he said, pulling his hands out of his pockets and strolling over to the desk. “Nothing a coffee can’t fix. Wouldn’t want to load you up on too many medications. You react stronger to sedatives than the average female. Plus, I gave you something to calm your nerves since your file mentioned you’re aggressive.”
“Huh?”
He chuckled low, poured the coffee into a mug, placed a lid on top, and handed it to me. “Right? That’s exactly what I thought when I read that remark. You’re not going to give me any trouble, are you? I had to pull a few strings to be assigned to this mission. Can’t afford any mistakes.”
Silence stretched between us as he held out the mug. As much as I wanted that coffee, I’d never take anything from his kind. Where was I? Why was I here?
Eventually he shrugged, placing the mug on the small nightstand beside the bed.
“Where am I?” I asked, pulling my knees even closer into my chest, flaps of fabric sliding down my thighs.
With a start, I realized they had changed me into a grayish cotton dress. All traces of sweat were washed from my body, my skin clean, whatever cuts I’d picked up on the run almost healed.
“You’re on Ardev Five. One of our ships which serves as a temporary housing facility for females who are transitioning.” He pulled a chair from the desk and sat, his entire posture too casual to be anything but a god damn insult. “And before you ask, because most females do, yes, you are still on Earth. And, yes, you will remain here.”
Of course, there were more females. Which explained his nonchalant demeanor about something deadly serious. That guy probably repeated the same thing over and over again to whichever woman they’d captured.
“Come on,” he said with a grin. “I’m here to answer your questions, but for that, you have to ask them. We played a great clip earlier for all the females who arrived today. Unfortunately, you slept through all of it. I wouldn’t want you to go through an entire day without knowing why you’re here.”
I grabbed the blanket and draped it across my legs as if it helped to cover that mounting desperation spreading through my core. I had so many questions a second ago. But now? They were all just… gone.
Only wrecked nerves remained.
Did I even want to talk to him? No.
But you need answers from somewhere.
“What are you?”
“Ah!” Crossing his arms in front of his chest, he gave a nod of approval. “I am what the galaxies call a Vetusian. As I’m sure you figured out by now, we’re not very different from you. Long story short, my ancestors left Earth when the planet was still young and kind of unpredictable. They settled on a planet called Cultum. Your ancestors stayed behind. The separation of the continents wiped out many of those who remained on Earth.” He shrugged. “You recovered. Just never made it back to interstellar travel.”
My vision blurred once more, my mind caving in underneath the weight of all this information.
“Take a sip of your coffee, Eden.”
“How do you know my name?”
“You told the surgeon during your second intake,” he said, a concerned frown settling on his face. “I should probably put another remark in your file, so we can tone down your sedative if it’s ever needed in the future. There shouldn’t be quite so much memory loss.”
A hollow sensation tugged at my core.
I could barely process my current reality, let alone form a coherent thought. Shouldn’t I have had a big reaction to all this? Toss myself against the door, if there was one? Scream? Fight back?
Perhaps I didn’t react because of whatever he had given me.
Either that or I was going insane.
What did they want with me? Of course, I could have asked him that, but was I ready to hear the answer? Didn’t I need answers if I wanted to make it out of this… whatever this was?
My mind was a mess.
I took a few calming breaths and grabbed the coffee, letting it trickle against my tight throat before I put it back on the nightstand. They hadn’t killed me yet. If that was a good thing or not, I couldn’t say.
“This transition,” I said slowly, trying hard to keep my wits together. “Are you saying that you invaded Earth, and are here to stay?”
He gave a lazy grunt, a twitch coming and going from one corner of his mouth. “We want to avoid calling this an invasion. That’s a very aggressive word. We’re here to establish our presence, so we can slowly absorb your species into the Vetusian Empire.”
I bit back the raw anger spreading through my clenched jaw. “Avoid calling it an invasion? You killed humans. I saw it. Saw their bodies in the streets.”
My voice echoed from the bare walls, painted in that creamy yellow found in every hotel across the planet. But no matter how hard my chest heaved my lungs seemed nothing short of oxygen deprived. Was this that big reaction I should have had the moment I woke up? Would I lose my shit now? Did I want to?
“You’re hyperventilating,” the healer said.
“I know I am!”
I was a nurse for fuck’s sake. Of course I knew I was hyperventilating! Watching how the walls closed in on me. Come on, Eden, keep it together.
Palms on my face, I rested my cold fingers on my forehead while I took slow, deep breaths. In… one… two… three. Out… one… two… three.
A set of troubled eyes caught mine. “Better? One more of those panic attacks, and I’ll have to sedate you. It’s protocol.”
I gave a curt nod. “I’m okay.”
“I know this is hard, and I get the way you’re feeling toward us. Transitions are never easy for either side. We gave everyone a chance to do this without bloodshed. But… humans died. Vetusians died. Things didn’t exactly go as planned, but it won’t change the fact that we have every intention of making this transition successful.”
He fumbled with a white band strapped tightly around his wrist, which quickly threw a three-dimensional image up, hovering above his hand in images I couldn’t read.
“The surgeon found dormant cancer in one of your cells,” he said, his finger swiping through what must have been my file. “Breast cancer. In any case, he managed to replace it with a healthy copy, so that shouldn’t be an issue anymore. Other than that you’re healthy. We detected no injuries. You were well-hydrated at your intake.”
I felt like someone had drenched me in cold water. “I had cancer?”
“No, you didn’t have cancer. It just happened to be sitting in a cell. Like I said, it was dormant. Might not have gone active for another decade. Perhaps never. But we don’t want to take chances.”
I stared down at myself, trying to get a glimpse of my breasts through the V-neck of not-my-dress.
“No cut necessary. It was all done on a cellular level. Now, before I leave you, there is one more thing we need to discuss.” He shifted in his chair, his features turning darker, more serious. “I’ll just blurt this one out, okay? We came here to mate with the female population of Earth.”
