Pax

by Stella Sky

  “You agreed to flexible hours when you signed up for the force,” Dr. Cranston said, his face stone. “You signed a contract stating you would be on call to serve your world. Are you telling me that this is going to be too hard for you to do?”

  “No,” I sighed, hanging my head. “I would just really like to get my hands on a new bar of soap.”

  “We have soap at the lab,” Dr. Cranston said dismissively. “You can talk to one of the women down there and help yourself to it if need be.”

  “What about food?” I demanded. “I’m almost out!”

  “You can eat on base. Now get out to Sector 3. We have to gather up the quartz. We know the Verians are beginning to covet it. I need you to get me an approximation of how much is left in the sector so we will know just how many men to send out there to empty the mines and bring them back to Zone 70. The electricians are eager to get their hands on it anyway.”

  “All right,” I sighed, shrugging my lab coat back on.

  The idea of being stuck in my little apartment without food or basic hygiene supplies was less than appealing, but there was nothing I could do about it. Especially not when Dr. Cranston was hell-bent on making my life miserable.

  I had already spoken to the other scientists on the base who were outraged by the trivial errands that Cranston constantly had me running. My mind was needed at the lab. But because Dr. Cranston was in charge of the entire science department, he made the call about what it was that I worked on and when it was that I worked on it. I was certain that he had chosen to send me out that day on purpose, knowing that the people born in Zone 26, like I had been, were to collect their rations that evening.

  And now, instead of making sure I had my needs met for the next grueling three-week period, I was going to be stuck taking inventory on a quartz mine that hadn’t been tended to in the past six months. I could have been on the job, working with the conductive metals that the Verian ships had left strewn about Earth in order to continue work on the super-weapon that was ultimately going to turn the war in favor of Earth.

  Instead, I was being ordered to evaluate the amount of quartz, one of Earth’s most abundant minerals, so that Dr. Cranston could send a team of his lapdogs to mine it out and take it back to the lab for the electricians to play with.

  The injustice of it all nearly made me want to scream. Cranston clearly didn’t give a damn about the progress of the war on humans. In fact, it was obvious that he was doing everything in his power to provide me with jobs that would interfere with my work and sabotage any progress I was able to make on the design of the superweapon. But why? Did he want credit for my work? Or did he simply resent my place at Zone 70, believing, just as so many others had believed in the stone ages, that the Academy of Sciences was a place reserved for men and men only?

  “What a sleazebag,” I muttered to myself, walking to the huge garage where all of Zone 70’s transportation vehicles, from ships to cars to Earth’s very first thuse, were located.

  “Let me guess,” Geri Peters asked, overhearing me. “Cranston has you doing something ridiculous again?”

  “Yep. And this time, it’s interfering with getting my rations.”

  “He’s probably just bitter that you won’t give him the time of day,” Geri said, his brown eyes sparkling. “You have no idea what the guys around here say about you.”

  “And I don’t want to know!” I exclaimed. “It has nothing to do with my job or my ability to do my job.”

  Geri laughed to himself and shrugged. “Well, maybe it does. Guys like Cranston are pretty hateful when it comes to the women they can’t have.”

  “Oh my god, Geri, drop it please.”

  Geri grinned again. “Well, just so you know, anyway. What are you going to be taking out today?”

  “Think I’d be able to try the thuse?” I asked, my disposition brightening. If I couldn’t get my rations, at the very least, I could try the exciting new technology that had been acquired from the wreckage of a Verian ship and repaired by the capable mechanics of Zone 70.

  “Not on your life, I’m afraid,” Geri said. “Tony and the stooges took it out for a joy run about twenty minutes ago.”

  “Of course,” I sighed. “Just give me the truck then.”

  Geri nodded and walked behind the counter of the check-in area. He rummaged around for a few moments before presenting me with the keys to the beat up old truck that I had been forced to use for the past three pointless missions.

  “Take care out there. I heard the soldiers talking about a Code Yellow.”

  “You mean there’s a ship nearby?” I asked, furrowing my brow. That was bad news. Most of the time, the Verians knew better than to come near Zone 70. The last time they had, they’d lost all of their soldiers. In fact, that was how we had gotten our hands on the thuse.

  “Well, Yellow means that there might be. We can’t say for sure until we see it on the radar.”

  “All right,” I said, taking the keys from Geri. “I’ll be careful.”

  I could feel his eyes on me as I made my way toward the truck. I settled inside, sighing deeply to myself. Sometimes it felt so hard to be stuck in my life. My family had been slaughtered during the war, and I had worked my entire life to use my mind so I could find some way to avenge them. But Cranston would never allow it.

  With a determined, resigned sigh, I turned the engine of the truck and took off. If I was going to be forced to do this, I might as well do it right. After all, the safety of the Earth was at stake. And I refused to lose anyone else to the Verians as long as I lived.

  ***

  As aggravating as it was to be stuck out in Sector 3 instead of being where I was supposed to be to get my rations, I couldn’t help but feel optimistic when I stepped outside and breathed in the fresh air of the forest surrounding the quartz mine.

  I got to work, hopeful that if I was fast enough about it, maybe I could take the truck to my zone and pick up my rations. Still, it was unlikely. It was about two hours away, and I wasn’t sure how long I was going to be stuck at the mine.

  “Freg!”

  I was startled by the deep sound of a man’s voice echoing at me from within the mine, and I stepped forward, cautious and confused. There was something about it that drew me forward despite myself. I knew the man was speaking the native Verian tongue, but somehow that didn’t matter. He sounded like he was in trouble.

  “Who’s there?” I demanded, my voice wavering despite my desperation to stay in control. If it was one of the warrior men, I would have to stay on my guard. They could be unpredictable and dangerous, often with a penchant for abducting human women, though the rates of abduction had decreased significantly over the past decade.

  “Just what I need,” the man’s voice muttered in flawless Verian. I had never realized just how musical and pleasing the language was until I had heard it spoken in this man’s voice. “Stay away, human!”

  So, the soldiers had been right. Their code Yellow had been a Verian ship. But, where was it? And, for that matter, where exactly was the Verian man?

  Despite his warnings, I was drawn forward as the man’s voice let out strangled hisses of pain. Something had happened. Finally, I poked my head over the gaping hole in the Earth and peered inside. I drew back, my breath catching in my throat at the sight.

  At the bottom, on the floor of the mine, lay the shockingly handsome Verian man. His long silver hair was strewn behind him where he had landed, and his chiseled, serious face was contorted in pain. He appeared to have fallen from the ledge of the rock and down into the deep well beneath the surface.

  “Wait right there,” I said. “I’m coming down.”

  “No, Yula! Stay back!”

  I wasn’t sure whether I intended to capture him and bring him back to Zone 70 or what, but his angry growl of protest didn’t deter me. I had gained a basic knowledge of first aid during my time in the geology department, particularly the types of injuries that were frequently associated with mining and
gathering mineral specimens, and I made my way carefully down the rock wall to the Verian man, whose lips were pursed in agony.

  “Go back to your people before I am forced to take matters into my own hands,” he cautioned me, his clear, crystal-blue eyes icy upon me.

  “You can’t even stand up,” I said, putting my hands on my hips and looking down at him. “Who are you trying to fool?”

  “I have a weapon!” the man exclaimed, reaching for his waist. But when he did, he flinched again, and let out another deep breath.

  “What’s wrong with you?” I asked, taking a cautious step backward. “You aren’t acting like that just from the fall. I can tell.”

  The man glared at me his chiseled features pensive and angry. I had never seen a man so beautiful in all of my life, and I stared back at him, unable to look away.

  “I need my pouch,” the Verian said slowly, his long, silver hair glittering as the sun began to shine golden as twilight approached. “It has my medicine in it.”

  “Oh god, are you contagious?” I asked, taking another step backward. How stupid did I have to be to approach him like this? And yet he had looked so helpless, and so determined. What other choice did I have?

  “No, you fool,” he snapped, trying his best to sit up and fix an annoyed look on her. “This is the human virus. The one that plagues all Verian men. I need my pouch, or I will die here on Earth. Though I’d expect you would enjoy the irony of that.”

  I glared down at the man, fierce and arrogant, handsome though he may be, and shook my head.

  “You think you can bully me like that, being in the position you’re in? I ought to leave you here to rot. Anybody else would.”

  But he was no longer paying attention to me. The man’s body convulsed in pain, and hot, surprising tears leaped to her eyes. The man was dying right in front of me, and it was a gruesome death.

  I turned on my heel and scrambled up the steep slope of the quartz mine, searching frantically until my eyes finally rested upon a pouch of an otherworldly color lying in the grass near the opening of the mine. The man must have stumbled in and fallen down, losing the one possession that could possibly spare him.

  I wasted no time in grabbing the pouch and taking it down to the Verian, my heart hammering hard in my chest as he fumbled frantically to open it. He pulled out a small vial, and a needle, and suddenly I realized that this was the substance that had been working to keep the Verian men strong enough to push through and battle.

  “Please.”

  The Verian’s voice came out in a hoarse whisper, and he offered the vial up to me, his beautiful eyes fixed upon me in an expression of pleading. I took the vial and the needle from him and, without a second thought, injected the man with the substance, relieved when, against all odds, I saw the life that had been being drained out of him return once again.

  I had saved him, against my better instincts, and now, I was going to have to deal with the consequences, however bad they may be.

  ***

  “This is really underhanded, you know,” I growled, trying to move my arms enough to strike at the man. But the Verian had secured them tightly behind my back as he slowly perused the mine, carefully tapping little pieces of quartz from the rock wall and into a little brown bag.

  “There is nothing underhanded about doing my duty,” the Verian said, refusing to meet my gaze.

  “I saved your life!” I exclaimed.

  “And I spared yours!”

  The Verian turned to me, his icy blue eyes flashing menacingly. I stopped struggling against the confines of the ropes for a moment and sighed heavily. Maybe I should count my blessings. It was true, after all. Now that the Verians had the advantage, most of them didn’t think twice about raping and slaughtering human women who got in the way. I should consider myself lucky.

  “Now, please,” the Verian said, lowering his voice to a patient, low volume, “I need to focus on my job. Without this quartz, I, and others like me, will be doomed to suffer from the terrible disease you just witnessed. You know there’s no cure, don’t you?”

  I opened her mouth to reply, but the man interrupted me, turning his back on me.

  “Of course you do. You’re a human. It is your disease to begin with. I swear, using germ warfare in a war between worlds? It’s very primitive, don’t you think?”

  “No more primitive than any other type of war tactic,” I grumbled. “If it were up to me the worlds would live in peace.”

  “Peace?” the Verian scoffed, his masculine, deep voice echoing throughout the cave and sending a funny little vibration through my body. “Earth had a choice long, long ago to settle the matter peacefully and refused. Now we have no choice but to take the land by force. I refuse to hear another word about it from a human.”

  The Verian’s pleasant voice spat out the word “human” like a curse, and I prickled.

  “All of that happened long before I was even born,” I said pointedly. “I had nothing to do with any of this, whether you like it or not. But you’re still up there, taking out an age-old war on humans who had nothing to do with it. We didn’t kill your planet. You did. And you can’t just steal Earth away from us and expect us to be happy about it.”

  The air between us was wrought with electricity, and the Verian’s cold blue eyes flashed.

  Fortunately, he didn’t say anything more about it, and went back to work, poking the walls delicately with what appeared to be a crude version of a pickaxe.

  “You know there are better ways to do it, don’t you?” I grumbled. I was a perfectionist to the bone, and a geologist through and through. It wasn’t surprising in the least that seeing someone inexperienced or incompetent in my field was one of my surest pet peeves.

  “I can handle this on my own, thank you very much, Yula.”

  I stood watching him a few moments longer, fidgeting in agitation.

  “Seriously, let me show you. It’s so much faster.”

  “Oh, my freg,” the Verian muttered, turning to me. “You think I’m going to let a human, whom I have recently captured, go free with a weapon? I don’t think that would be very wise of me, do you?”

  “It wasn’t very wise of you to go tumbling over the ledge of a mine either, but you don’t see me saying anything about that,” I mumbled.

  “Oh no?” the Verian asked, turning his handsome face toward me again.

  I clamped my mouth shut. What was I hoping to prove by getting myself on the bad side of the Verian man? One look at his solid body, rippling with tight muscles and definition humans could only dream of, told me that I was dealing with an esteemed warrior. One who had no place down in the cave collecting rocks. He should have been on the battlefield.

  Maybe I and the man had that in common. I didn’t belong there either. I should have been in the lab finishing up my work on the superweapon. We both probably had bad, bitter men in charge of us.

  I sighed, unable to muster any sympathy for the man. I was the one who had been stupid enough to help him in the first place. Riling him up further by asking questions or being pushy would just get me into even more trouble. Did I really have to turn the whole situation into a suicide mission? Probably not.

  Finally, after several painful minutes of the Verian pounding unprofessionally at the quartz in the rock face, he gave a satisfied nod.

  “All right, human,” he said. “I have enough now. Let’s go.”

  Chapter 3

  Second-in-Command Pax Curad

  I was barely able to make it back to the ship before I needed another dose of Vari-X, so I was glad when I was finally able to secure the human in the small prison cell in the back of the ship. I slumped up against the wall once she was inside and, with shaking hands, took my next dose.

  In order to stay on Earth long enough to retrieve the information I had needed, I’d been forced to cut each dose in half. It was just enough to keep me going, but I was at the end of my tolerance. My body was giving out on me, and if I didn’t get back to Heln
a soon, I didn’t know what might happen.

  “I can’t believe you did this,” the human said, her fierce, ocean-colored eyes flashing in fury at me. “After I helped you. You didn’t have to abduct me. You could have let me go!”

  I winced as I put the needle back in my pouch and sighed inwardly. I knew the human was right, but I hadn’t had a choice. Not only did she know I had been there, but she was from Zone 70. She would have information. Information I couldn’t find by snooping around on Earth until the bitter end. I had already stayed too long without the proper amount of Vari-X to supplement my health. If I didn’t get back now, I was going to die, and the whole thing would have been for nothing.

  “I’d be risking too much allowing you to stay,” I said, tilting my head at her. “I think within a few months’ time, you’ll be thanking me for bringing you to Helna.”

  “Helna is a dead planet. There is no way I will ever thank you for taking me from my home and forcing me to live in a world that reeks of decay.”

  I was startled by the vehemence in the human’s voice, and she clamped her mouth shut quickly as if she were afraid of provoking me. And surely, she was. Verian men were impressive compared to humans. Taller, sturdier, and stronger. Even ill, I was a warrior in every way; stronger than the strongest of humans even on their weakest day. That was, unless the human-made disease had taken its toll on their bodies, the way that it had begun to on me. But getting back home would change that.

  “Fortunately, your opinion on my home planet is not going to deter me from taking you there. Whether you like it or not, you are now officially at the mercy of the Verian people.”

  We studied each other, my heart thudding heavily in my chest. As soon as I had laid eyes on the human, I had been in awe of her striking beauty. Never before had seeing a female from Earth had that effect on me, but somehow, every time I looked at her, I was reminded again of just how much I wanted to make her my own. It was not only strange, but it was entirely unethical. Humans hadn’t been abducted for breeding purposes in several years at that point. The army of supersoldiers was already growing strong, and the babies that were born to human females were unstoppable.