Sister Katherine

by Tracy St. John

  SISTER KATHERINE

  A Clans of Kalquor Story

  By

  Tracy St. John

  © copyright July 2013, Tracy St. John

  Cover art by Erin Dameron-Hill, © copyright June 2013

  This is a work of fiction. All characters, events, and places are of the author’s

  imagination and not to be confused with fact. Any resemblance to living persons or

  events is merely coincidence.

  Kindle Edition

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  TABLE OF CONTENTS:

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  This book is a companion story to Alien Conquest, Clans of Kalquor Book 3.

  Prologue

  The Kalquorian Empire was and still is a civilization of great importance to the Galactic Council of Planets. The fierce but intelligent species has been at the forefront of technological, medical, and scientific breakthroughs for millennia. Their military might has never been in question; even their ancient enemy, the opportunistic race of Tragooms, hesitates to attack a Kalquorian force half its size.

  However, Kalquor’s survival is in jeopardy. The force that has threatened this mighty race is not one that wields weaponry. It cannot even be seen with the naked eye. It is a virus.

  Centuries ago, this virus struck the home world of Kalquor, wiping out a substantial number of its people, particularly the females. Symptoms included massive bleeding of the body’s major organs, along with those of the female reproductive tract. Damaging the x-chromosome of the Kalquorians, the virus’ effects went beyond death. The majority of women not killed outright were rendered infertile, and daughters born to those who could bear children were not guaranteed the ability to do the same. The virus altered the very DNA of the entire race.

  In an effort to keep their race from going extinct and prevent fighting amongst the men, family groups called clans were formed. Each clan was made up of one female known as the Matara (childbearer) and representatives of each of the three breeds of male: the Dramok (leader), Imdiko (caregiver), and Nobek (protector).

  Despite their efforts, the numbers of Kalquorians continue to decline. So few children are born now that extinction is thought by many to be inevitable. Despite all their medical expertise and attempts to find compatible species to mate with, the Kalquorian culture seems destined to disappear.

  Less than a decade ago, a scout ship from a small, isolated planet no one knew of flew into the Galactic Council of Planets’ space. These newcomers, searching for a new planet to house the overflow of their ever-growing population, called their home planet Earth. It was immediately remarked upon how incredibly similar they were to Kalquorians. The doomed race took note at once, and hope was restored. It has even been theorized that perhaps the Earthers were the fabled Lost Tribe of Kalquor’s ancient ancestors.

  Earth, however, is not as enthralled with their potential distant cousins. Ruled by a government based on fanatical religious beliefs, Earthers have been taught they are God’s Chosen, made in his wondrous image. They look upon Kalquor with hostility and outrage, particularly since the beleaguered inhabitants of that empire suggested compatibility testing for purposes of interbreeding.

  The leaders of the Kalquorian Empire, feeling they had no other recourse, decided the time had come to seduce Earther females and convince them to come to Kalquor. Women on Earth are treated as lesser creatures and second-class citizens by the men. The Kalquorians, with their near-worship of women, hoped they could entice these lifebringers to join their clans. If the women would not be seduced, Kalquor was no longer above the distasteful necessity of abducting them outright.

  Almost 2000 Earther women went to Kalquor, putting the Empire and Earth at each others’ throats. Then the unthinkable happened: an Earther woman joined the aliens’ ruling clan, making her Kalquor’s empress. Earth immediately declared war.

  The fighting has been going on for a year now. As feared, Earth’s greater numbers are slowly overwhelming Kalquor’s more advanced technology. With their already dwindling numbers reaching crisis stage, the Empire is desperate to find a way to win the war and secure their future. That monumental responsibility has fallen to the men on one small spyship, flying straight for Earth. Chasing an Earther general who holds the key to the Empire’s victory, the Kalquorian crew ends up on Jupiter’s small moon Europa. What they find there will forever change the destinies of Earth and Kalquor.

  Chapter 1

  Screams, coming from far away. Many high-pitched voices, screaming in terror. Katherine’s eyes flew open to only see more darkness, the same as the blackness of sleep that had been interrupted. The horrified sounds continued too. She knew almost immediately she wasn’t dreaming. And on the heels of that—

  The children.

  She sat up in the hard, cold bed with a gasp. The wounds on her back pulled harshly. She didn’t notice the pain in the onrush of fear, nor the coppery scent of the blood she’d shed in the otherwise stale-smelling room. Ignoring all those senses, Katherine held her breath and listened hard. It was difficult to hear past the quick thudding of her heart.

  Shouting. It sounded like Mother Superior’s voice. Then more screams flitted through Katherine’s closed sleeping cell door. Thudding feet ran back and forth outside her tiny room. What in the world could be going on here on the remote convent colony of Europa?

  Katherine stood and rushed to the door without commanding the lights to come on. She knew the layout of her sleeping cell perfectly well without the grainy, gray illumination. There was little to see in the room: a hook upon which her underdress, habit, and head scarf hung. A chair in the corner before which clunky black shoes waited. A shelf where her bible and lash sat side by side. Her bed was only two steps away from the door in her tiny, cramped cell. She had so few possessions that there was no fear of bumping into anything except the walls.

  Katherine heard more screaming, the clarion calls of definite panic out there. Maybe the dorms were on fire. She caught her breath in stark terror at the thought.

  The children.

  She didn’t waste another second. She ordered the door, “Open.”

  It did so obediently, and Katherine stuck her head out for a look down the corridor before venturing from her room.

  She felt as if she’d shoved her face into a wall of strident sound. The cacophony of screams rebounding throughout the nun’s wing of the dormitory threatened to burst Katherine’s eardrums. She winced against the bright corridor lighting and forced herself to focus on the moving shapes before her.

  White gowned nuns ran past. They stampeded towards the end of the hall where the infirmary and linking hallway to the aspirants’ wing lay. Their faces stretched in expressions of horrified terror. Katherine detected no scent of smoke though. Her heart drumming wildly and brain swir
ling with confusion, Katherine turned to look the other direction. She stared at the end of the hall, where the doors opened to the outside of the dorm.

  She stopped breathing at the sight of huge, dark figures flooding into the corridor from the wing’s gaping entrance. Great giant men with brown skin and long blue-black hair spilled into the building. They wore black bodysuits, the armored padding of which did nothing to hide the muscled physiques the skin-tight uniforms contained. These were not men from Earth. They were aliens. Worse still, they were the enemy.

  Kalquorians.

  Katherine’s mind tried to accept what her eyes told her. Even with those massive bodies striding down the halls, sending nuns dashing in wide-eyed fear, she couldn’t quite recognize the convent had been invaded. It made no sense Kalquorians would attack a religious colony of barely 200 women. Yet the men could be of no other species. No other race looked that much like Earthers.

  Katherine’s heart pounded to see the enemy in the flesh for the first time. They were so big, so monumental. She wasn’t the only one overwhelmed by the sight of the behemoths storming down the corridor. The grim and foreboding Sister Bernadette was only a few feet from the oncoming aliens, holding her ground and waving her crucifix at them as if to ward them off. When they kept coming until they reached her, the nun collapsed to her knees in terror. Two Kalquorians immediately stooped next to her. One had a medical injector and he pressed it to her neck as she screamed. Her cry cut off sharply, and she started to crumple. One of the aliens deftly caught her and laid her gently to one side.

  The Kalquorians kept coming, the first of them only half a dozen doors away from where Katherine stood. She had to run. She had to get to the other wing of the dorm. That was where the youngest women and girls of the order, the aspiring nuns, slept.

  Katherine turned away from the oncoming Kalquorians, taking her first step towards the connecting hall that would take her past the infirmary and into the aspirants’ wing. She froze instantly.

  A couple of the older aspirants, Brenda and Ashley, were rounding the corner at a flat out run, screaming as they came. More of the colossus Kalquorians stalked into the corridor behind them.

  The aliens were already in the aspirants’ wing. They had the little ones.

  Katherine’s breath caught in her chest. She hardly noticed as one of the aliens held the feebly struggling Mother Superior while a companion pressed an injector to her neck. It was on the very edge of Katherine’s consciousness that the head of the convent drooped in the muscled arms of a Kalquorian, who laid her carefully down onto the floor.

  What mattered more than anything was the little ones were under attack. Locked cells wouldn’t be doing them any good either. The aliens were pointing what had to be frequency disruptors at the doors and opening them to the screams of those trapped inside.

  More and more of the aliens spilled into the corridor from the aspirants’ wing. Katherine knew there was no hope as she watched them come. She couldn’t stop the Kalquorians, couldn’t rush past them without them catching and sedating her. Worst of all, she couldn’t get to the children.

  Tears were already spilling down her cheeks as she backed into her cell. “Door, close and lock.”

  The door obediently slid shut. Its beep told her it was now locked, but she knew it was only a matter of minutes, perhaps seconds, before the Kalquorians forced their way in and captured her too. And then … she knew the stories of what Kalquorians did with Earther women, stories she’d not quite believed as true. And yet, faced with imminent capture herself, Katherine entertained the worst case scenario with mind-crumbling terror.

  She staggered to her bedside and sank to her knees on the hard floor. Tears coursed down her cheeks as she clasped her hands together, leaning her elbows on the slightly softer surface of her narrow iron-frame bed. She listened to the continuing cries outside her room, the pleading voices growing fewer by the second.

  Katherine thought of the girls, all her little ones. She especially thought of the youngest of the aspirants, the ones who had not even entered their teens yet. Darci and Marci Soames, sisters sent to the convent by a devout grandmother no longer physically capable of caring for them, were only twelve and nine years old. They must have been frightened to see the Kalquorians coming at them and absolutely terrorized as the aliens sedated them.

  Had Katherine actually wanted to meet these creatures, these gargantuan Kalquorians who made helpless women and girls scream? Were these the men she’d gotten herself in so much trouble for, the reason she’d been exiled to Europa?

  You wanted to meet with them. Talk to them. Reason with them. Remember the adage ‘be careful what you wish for’? Well, your wish has come true. You will now come face to face with the Kalquorians.

  Sobs shook Katherine’s slender frame as she began to pray. “Heavenly Father, I am so very sorry for whatever I may have done to offend you, especially if this punishment was brought on by me. Please let them take me, if that is your will. Give me to these Kalquorians, but let the children stay safe. Keep these young girls and women safe, give them strength, let them take me instead God, please.”

  In her terror for her children, Katherine forgot that God would never punish anyone with such horrors. That was imperfect man’s purview, not the Almighty’s. Her horror had eclipsed her beliefs as she imagined tiny Marci cowering in the shadow of giant aliens towering over her, menacing her in ways too awful to comprehend.

  Katherine knew she jabbered in her rising panic. Hearing the sound of a barking-like voice outside her door only fed the terror. They’d enter any moment now and take her like the others…

  The girls! What would they do to her girls?

  “Please, God, please, don’t let the innocent be harmed, I beg of you.”

  Katherine’s tears poured as she pleaded with all her might, thinking only of the young girls in her care that she could not save from whatever was happening to them.

  * * * *

  Imdiko Vadef followed his Nobek down the corridor of the building they had invaded, along with dozens of other Kalquorians. Miv, his clanmate of three years, waded confidently through the few panicked women left in the long stretch of hallway. These women were caught between his team and the other group moving towards them at the end of the hall. Most of the Earther females had fled into small rooms on either side. Vadef accompanied Miv into several of those rooms to catch and sedate the screaming females.

  Rooms. How could anyone call such tiny, cramped spaces rooms? Vadef was undersized for a Kalquorian, not even an inch over six feet. Even so, he almost had to duck to get through the narrow doorways. He’d thought his clan’s shared quarters in the spyship had been cramped, but this made their home feel positively spacious. Vadef had had closets bigger than these sleeping spaces of the Earther women. If he had to stay for more than a minute in such a space, he’d be screaming to be let out. He could only imagine how claustrophobic Miv found the rooms, having a good seven inches of height and much more bulk than Vadef.

  The Imdiko clutched his sedative injector in a sweating grip. He was no medic, but he’d received emergency trauma training. It wasn’t the usual protocol on a spyship for all personnel to have such instruction, but the head doctor Imdiko Degorsk insisted on it for theirs. The knowledge qualified Vadef to sedate the little female Earthers Miv caught.

  One of the tiny sleeping room doors on Vadef’s left opened. A woman, obviously panicked into attempting flight, darted out right in front of Miv. The Nobek grabbed her and tucked her struggling figure to his body, back to front. His arms encircled her, pinning her arms to her sides. The hold both incapacitated her and kept her from inadvertently hurting herself.

  Vadef had a moment to compare the differences between Earther female and his Kalquorian clanmate. The woman’s skin was pale to the point of milkiness. Its flush of pink was all that kept her skin from matching the billowing gown she wore. The arms of Miv were a rich, deep brown in contrast, making the woman seem to glow against them.<
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  The female’s long hair was wild and uncombed. The invasion had occurred at what was apparently the colony’s sleeping time. Her tangled tresses were nearly as brown as Miv’s skin, except with reddish glints. Earther hair fascinated Vadef. Most Kalquorians had black hair of such deep ebony that the highlights were blue. Age or mutation could make that hair silvery or white, but that was all. Yet Earthers had various ranges of browns, reds, and yellows, with no two people possessing the exact same coloration.

  The alien species’ eyes were intriguing too. Their pupils were round and surrounded by irises of color as distinct as the Earthers’ hair. The browns seemed to predominate, such as this one with her light, tan-colored eyes. Vadef had seen blue eyes as well, and even two pairs of green and one of gray. Kalquorians slit-pupil eyes were a uniform blue-purple. Only shape and size differentiated his from Miv’s.

  Earthers were usually not as muscular as Kalquorians either. Even the few surviving females of Vadef’s race were powerfully built. Vadef himself had nowhere near the brawn of the average Kalquorian; certainly he possessed none of the robust fighter’s heft that Miv had. Yet he was still a powerhouse compared to the female struggling in his clanmate’s arms. Her frame was spare with the hewn look of one who had worked hard in her life. She was too spare really, almost approaching scrawniness.

  With her wide, staring eyes and tiny face twisted in a rictus of panic, this poor creature looked very much like prey caught in the clutches of a predator. To liken Miv to a hunting animal was neither inaccurate nor insult.

  Miv was of Kalquor’s Nobek breed, the warrior-protectors of the Empire. That he belonged to the most ferocious category of Vadef’s people was obvious in the wary and almost feral expression he usually wore. Miv’s demeanor was the first thing one noticed about him. You had to get past that evaluating hunter’s stare to see the large eyes, the broad, crooked nose that had been broken too many times to count, and a voluptuous surprise of a mouth.