by Stella Sky
“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 Helna 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.
Any humans heading to Helna had to be cleared by those in the highest positions of the government. That meant the doyan or me and our appointed council. Being second-in-command, I knew I was entitled to a human if I wanted one. But I had never believed I would be the kind of man to take advantage of that option.
And now here I was, a female trapped in the cell across from me, her eyes full of fire as she studied me. I was gaining strength slowly with my half a dose of Vari-X, but it wasn’t enough that I felt confident in an altercation.
“I’m going to go deal with the ship’s coordinates, if that’s all right with you, female,” I said, standing up tall and fixing his most intimidating look upon her. The girl’s gaze held mine, clearly unimpressed.
“I don’t care what you do,” the human said, her beautiful face clouded over with anger. “So just leave me the hell out of it.”
For some reason, the words hurt more than any physical wound I had ever endured. I turned away before she could see the pain reach my face, and stalked to the command center of the ship, where I sat down in my seat, puzzled.
“Commander Curad, what is your location?”
I sighed and lifted my communications device to my lips.
“I am taking off for Helna now.”
“Was the mission a success?”
I pursed my lips, my thoughts lingering on the beautiful human within the confines of his prison. Things hadn’t gone according to plan, exactly. But I had managed to tap into the information on the crude human technology. That was a small victory that should overshadow the huge mistake of bringing the female to Helna. I couldn’t let my feelings about the situation get me down.
“Yes.”
“The Doyan will be pleased to hear that.”
“I’m bringing a female to Helna,” I said after a moment of hesitation. “I will perform all necessary ceremonies.”
The man on the other end seemed surprised to hear this and stammered for a moment. “Oh! Uh, all right, Commander. Safe travels to you.”
“Thank you,” I said.
The cabin went silent, and I took a deep breath. Whether I liked it or not, I would have to figure out what to do with the human. Some Verians used them for free labor around the house or on their oka farms, while others used them in the place of wives. The children born to Verian-human hybrids had a tendency to grow strong and quickly, which was why the children were raised to be the supersoldiers that my brother was going to use to storm Zone 70 and gain the advantage in the war between worlds.
I had no interest in breeding supersoldiers in my own likeness, but I would have to find some reason to justify keeping the h
uman in my home. It seemed cruel to use her as a slave or send her to one of the farms. Perhaps she could tend to my plants while I was away, or clean my home…
If I told the others that I thought the human might have valuable information, she would be locked in one of the stern high-security facilities that caused many humans to succumb to illnesses and deep depression. The conditions there were less than ideal, and if I sent that beautiful female there, she would never be the same. The fire in her eyes that had so impressed me would be snuffed out forever, and I couldn’t think of a sadder fate than that.
I shook the thoughts away. It didn’t matter what happened with the human. As long as I was able to get the Vari-X that I needed, then everything was going to become a lot easier to figure out. Maybe I hadn’t been thinking clearly when I had abducted her.
The combination of the illness and the pressure to annihilate Earth had caused me to panic a little bit upon seeing her for the first time. That, and something else had been nagging at me about her. I hadn’t been able or willing to let her go. The idea of spending the rest of my life without her near me was unfathomable. But there was no logical reason for me to feel that way.
Still, it seemed impossible that I should let the girl go back to the base after saving my life, only to be wiped out of existence just a few months later when Grod launched the attack that would change everything.
Not only that, but because of my illness, in a way, I was afraid of making the trip back to Helna alone. It was a slight comfort knowing that the girl was present on the ship and that I had somebody to protect besides myself. I could find it within myself to stay strong. I would do it for the human, and I would do it for myself. No matter what it took.
***
“What’s that smell?”
