Learned behavior is passed down.
Unfortunately.
Thank you for seeing us again. I know it's not easy and I know you're worried about your husband.
He's unregistered and the last thing we need is for him to be detained. She glanced at me.
Isn't it relatively easy for refugees to be registered?
Yes, but he was a High Commander in the War Battalion on our planet. If Reptalon refugees find him or learn about his history, they could come after him. Not that he did anything wrong…they started the war with us and they're the reason we needed a War Battalion to begin with. Unlike her daughter, Cyriah's expression remained poised and focused while she spoke. She didn't gesture or give any hints that she was speaking telepathically to me or anyone.
I think that's what happened where my parents were from, except my mom joined the American Army on Earth.
Cyriah nodded, her eyes never leaving Cressida, though she continually glanced at me. Jukara and Praxar warred for years. Praxi people were a very peaceful, land-bound race. Americans would've called Praxi people…hippies. I think that's the word. Bending elements, communing with nature. It had many Earth-like qualities. Natural resources were plentiful there.
Why did Jukara start the war?
They wanted the resources. They'd burned through their planet's stores, much like Earth has done, and yearned to relocate. Praxi people would've welcomed them, had they not come in with aggression and attempt to overthrow.
But the Praxi were no match? My stomach sank when I thought about it, images of war and strife running through my mind's eye devastated me.
They weren't. Cyriah shook her head. Praxar had never known war or death or pain like that. Many took up arms or tried to. They didn't have weapons or technology, only themselves and their intellect.
You travelled the universe to research all of these things? I blinked away the threat of tears that made it to my eyes when I thought about my mother, my grandparents, aunts and uncles I'd never get to meet.
The universe is greater than all space and all time. Cyriah nodded, her gaze locked on mine now. I've learned much and seen more. Our planet prided ourselves in our technology, before the Reptalon wanted to subjugate us and take our knowledge.
What happened to Praxar? I swiped at my cheek, though noted how the shadows swirled at my feet.
Cressida and Nalea watched us now, both in silence and I assumed they noted the heavier emotions.
The surviving Praxi people evacuated their planet, escaping on ships they were able to hijack from their Jukara foes. Most only managed to make it out of Andromeda into the Milky Way. Plutonians greeted them first, but Pluto isn't a survivable environment for Praxi. They began sending all Praxi people to Earth. She motioned to me. And that's how your family arrived here.
I nodded, my hands on my hips as I fought the overwhelming emotions. Are there many Praxi here?
There were many. She nodded, a small smile twitching the corner of her mouth. But now there are few Praxi, and many Hybridian. They survived by evolution and are now a part of the Earth. Praxi people are Earth people.
What happened to the planet Praxar? Is it still there?
Fifty years changes many things. My last travels to Andromeda were fifteen years ago, and although Praxar was there, Jukara sat in ruins. Habitable, but in ruins. Much like Mars in this solar system. There are thousands of solar systems in Andromeda, just like here. Jukara fighters might've made it to Praxar, but without their ships and no technology, they became stranded, but alive.
I nodded and folded my arms over my chest while attempting to hold on to my emotions.
This is a lot for you… Cyriah took a step closer to me, but her presence didn't threaten. I am sorry.
I think I needed to hear it. Do you know a lot more?
Not much more, but you should know that many Praxi people survived and escaped to safe havens. They may have lost their planet, but many lives were saved. The people of Jukara might've been aggressive and violent, but they were not gifted with the elements.
Are there Jukara people on Earth?
She shook her head and shrugged. Probably. None that I have witnessed. Praxi people took their ships and their planet died. It's possible some made it with them off planet with the Praxi. The Juk don't have many human characteristics that are easy to hide like the Praxi. Here. She looked over her shoulder to the shelf with the heavy stones. When she lifted her hand, a tiny, circular object flew across the room and landed gently in her palm. This is an information core. It has some of my research and findings. I will trust you with it on a promise to return it.
How-how do I view it? My stomach gave a great leap as I stepped toward her.
A Holoport will display it for you. We…can't afford them here.
I accepted the coin-sized disc and noted its heft. Do you have many of these that you can't view?
A few. She nodded and smiled at Cressida. We will one day. My ship isn't able to find a fuel source here, and so it hibernates until then. She glanced to the orb that Cressida eyed earlier.
Thank you. I gulped down my words and looked to Nalea.
"Ready to head out?" asked Nalea, as if she could sense my ending. "Cressida is doing awesome."
"She said I'm awesome." The kid smiled and sprawled out on the sofa. "Guess that means I can skip homework."
"You wish, my darling child." Cyriah pointed toward her bedroom. "Off with you."
Cressida whined, but it only made Nalea and I stifle our amusement.
"Bye, Veyda. Bye, Detective Spooner." She waved at us, then pouted her way down the hall.
"Thank you, Cyriah." I held the information core to my chest. "I'll return it."
"Thank you both for looking after my daughter."
"We'll keep doing it," I declared as we headed toward the door.
"Have a good night." Nalea nodded as she opened the door for me, her more formal work face reappearing as we parted from them.
Once we made it back to the car and away from the others, my resolve fractured. Shadows swirled at my feet and the air around us spiraled.
"Vey…" Nalea leaned over and swiped a tear from my cheek. "What happened?"
"I'm going to Harlow's—"
"Take that creepy thing off." She slipped her finger in the ear loop of the mask, but when she tugged it, it didn't give way. "Veyda."
I shrugged away from her, but held her hand instead. "Go home, okay? I need to bring this to Harlow. She has a Holoport in her office."
"Okay. I'm not an Offlander, but I can feel your energy flipping out. What did Cyriah say to you?"
"She knows about Praxar. I want to see this." I held tightly to the tiny, heavy object in my palm. "I'll see you later. Love you."
"Love you, too. Veyda—"
In a whoosh, I bolted from her car, phasing through the roof and shooting up into the night sky. All of the information spiraled in my head, and I needed to know more. My heart pounded, my breath hitched, and I raced toward the museum, my ears trained on the sound of Harlow's easy pulse.
Chapter Eighteen
"Veyda." Harlow hurried into her office, her windswept hair falling heavily around her shoulders. Her eyes scanned the room until they landed on me in the corner. "What's wrong, baby?"
"You-you have to look at this." I choked on my voice as I fought the wave of tears that continued to threaten.
"I can't see you well." She locked the door behind her. "Come out."
I moved closer to her, and she rushed me, her hands cupping my face immediately. "Are you hurt? What do I need to look at?" Without a speck of warning, she whipped the mask from my face, then followed with my hat. Her heart pounded in time with mine and her eyes blazed with worry.
"I'm okay. Just—someone gave me this. It has information about Praxar." I showed her the disk in my palm. "Your Holoport."
"Okay. We can look at it." She brushed her thumbs over my lips. "But I'd like you to breathe first. Come with me."
&nbs
p; She tugged me over to her desk and urged me to sit on the edge of it. I pushed myself back, and she came to stand between my knees. I rested my forehead against hers and the second only Harlow encompassed my attention, the swell of chaos inside me settled. Gentle fingers caressed my cheeks, over my ears, then all the way down my ponytail. I nuzzled her nose with mine and she smiled.
"I love you," I whispered when quiet hit my ears, drowning out the city sounds.
"I love you, too, honey. I think you had a panic attack." She pecked me on the lips and we both shivered.
"I've never had that before." I caressed the curve of her waist, down over her hips and up again. "I love your outfit," I blurted out when I finally saw all of her, and it brought a smile to my lips.
In her blue and black skirt that fell to her knees and hung smoothly around her, she appeared work-ready and sexy all at once. The black long-sleeved blouse and matching black stockings sold the look and I reveled in it. Her cheeks turned a light shade of pink and she poked the end of my nose.
"You're looking me up and down."
"Yes, I am." I chuckled and held her palm to my lips to kiss it. "You're beautiful."
"Thank you, baby." She smiled and unzipped the front of my hoodie. "Are you hiding a dapper bowtie under here?"
"Always." I chuckled and let her do whatever she wanted to me.
"Good. Because you're sexy as hell and I missed you." She fussed with the collar of my shirt before smoothing down the front. "Your bowtie matches my skirt."
"Maybe we're a little psychic." I chuckled and laced my fingers behind her back. "Sorry I came flying in here freaking out."
"You were upset, honey. There's no need to apologize. What did you find that we need to look at?"
I released her to tug the small metallic orb from my pocket where I tucked it away, then opened my palm to show her. Her eyes widened immediately, and she opened her hand to accept it. As soon as she took it, her hand tugged downward while she adjusted for the weight.
"This is from Triangulum Galaxy. The gravity—"
"Effects them differently, yeah. I don't seem to notice it much, though. Cressida's mother lent this to me. She's an intergalactic researcher and traveler, but they're also refugees." I inhaled slowly to keep myself calm. "She told me a lot about Praxar and the war with Jukara. She said Praxi people are now the people of Earth."
"That book I read written by the Offlander from Andromedan said the same thing. Earth and Praxar share a similar habitat." Harlow reached around me to place the marble-size object into the blue light that beamed upward from beside the computer screen. The light brightened, and the information core began to spin. Its color broadened, appearing more like liquid mercury rolling in the air.
We both looked up when the computer beeped, and the screen began to fill with information. Pages and pages of words scrolled by, laden with images that flickered too fast for me to see.
"I can't read it. It's not—It's not English." My breath hitched, and Harlow took my hands in hers.
"Easy, honey. Let it download and translate. Information cores are stored in native languages."
"Why do you know so much?" I met her gaze again as weariness hung heavily on my shoulders.
"Because I've spent over a decade of my life studying ancient civilizations, honey. That includes current civilizations and the closest galaxies to us. All of this information is written in textbooks and teaching materials."
"Instead, I chose really old history to teach, didn't I?" I smirked at the irony of it.
"You chose human history, and it's just as valid and important. It's half of you…I'll help you learn the other half. That's why we're here, right?"
I nodded and squeezed her with my knees. "Yes."
"Speaking of…the end chapters of the book written by the Andromedan Offlander, I can't read. It's not in English and I couldn't translate it."
"Let me see." My brow furrowed and she broke away from me to pull the now well-worn book from her bag.
It must've been over five-hundred pages, I noted, when I examined it up close. A rainbow of colored bits of paper stuck out all over the place where she made notes. She opened the book to the final quarter of it, and sure enough, strange characters covered the pages.
"It's Andromedan. I've seen it once before." I pulled the book into my lap, focusing on the chapter title to begin.
"I assumed it was Andromedan, but there's no codex to translate it anywhere. I've scanned it three times and uploaded it into every system available to us. I even sent it to Zenobia. She said Andromedan language isn't translatable unless verbally transcribed, but no one knows why."
I fell quiet as the symbols formed words in my mind, the same way they had once before.
"'This portion of the book is only for you, my Andromedan mate. Or perhaps you're Hybridian now as time has a way of evolving our genetics. Earth is our home now, but our language will remain only ours.'" I read the opening disclaimer and looked up to Harlow. "I can read it."
"I noticed." Her eyes widened as she gazed down at the book with me. "Is it symbol for word or character for word?"
"Nothing like that. I just…understand it. Like inside my head. No one has translated this? I'm sure they have somewhere."
"This book is pretty old so probably. I tried actually translating it instead of looking for a translated version." She ran her fingers through her hair, her eyes wild as she stared at me. "You can read Andromedan."
"It's not the first time. The first time I noticed, though was when I followed that oil-smelling Hybridian to his garage after he held up the casino. The flyer he thrust at me told of the cargo ship heading to Andromeda, and the forty-thousand-dollar fee to get there." I gnawed on the inside of my cheek for a moment. "I might've seen Andromedan before, but just automatically translated it and read English in my head."
"Just like any other language for a bilingual person. I read Spanish and just understand it as easily as I do English. The brain decoding is the same mechanism across species. This makes sense to you innately. That's the difference. There must be some sort of evolutionary process involved." She paced in front of me, her brow furrowed while she pinched her chin between her fingers while deep in thought.
I smiled while watching her, my stomach giving a leap of excitement. "Maybe this book will tell us if I keep reading it."
"It might." She scurried back over to me, then glanced to the computer when it sounded. "Download and translation is done. Where should we start?"
"Cyriah said the people of Praxar were a peaceful race who could commune with nature and the elements. They didn't have technology or a need for it. She described them like hippies, the way we do for people who lived during the nineteen-sixties, but more deeply rooted than that."
"I understand the comparison. That's what I've learned, too. Praxi people were more like the ancient civilizations of Earth. Indigenous people, Native Americans, tribal communities. Except they didn't fight or war with each other. They lived harmoniously with little conflict until the Jukara arrived," she said, returning to stand in front of me. "And then the war and conflict. They had to learn to fight and defend themselves. Which they did quite well using their elemental gifts."
"Cyriah said they hijacked Jukara spaceships and many escaped. Many died though, too…"
"Thousands of people died, but thousands also escaped." She tapped the book in my lap. "Giranyi Pantekov, the Offlander who wrote this, details the war from his experience and how his people arrived on Earth. We're the closest habitable planet for Praxi people in the Milky Way."
I nodded when my knowledge matched hers and ran my thumb over the corner of the book fondly. "I feel guilty for not knowing this. My mother escaped on one of those ships. She had to. She wasn't born here."
"She did… What was your mother's name?"
"Isolde Halpern. I'm assuming she took my father's last name though."
"Do you want to start with learning about Praxi people or about your mother, Vey?" she ask
ed, delicately, while stroking my thighs.
"Um…" I gulped when my thoughts raced around a starting point. "Can we download the files on the information core to keep? I have to return it."
"Yes, of course. It's already done."
"I'm going to buy a Holoport and bring it over to Cressida's family. All of their life, their history, they can't access from their information cores because they can't afford a Holoport…and they're not that expensive. They can't find fuel for their ship either."
Harlow shook her head. "Triangulum's resources are much different from here. Most likely, their fuel source is a naturally occurring gas-form substance that comes from degradation of an element."
"That…was the nerdiest thing I've ever heard you say." A broad smile parted my lips, and I wrapped my legs around hers. "And sexy as fuck."
She laughed and draped her arms over my shoulders. "I'm vested in this and in you. I'll learn as much as I can."
"I love you so much." I cupped her face and pulled her into a heated kiss.
She lifted to her toes as a rolling shiver raced down her body. Her fingers dug into my knees and a soft moan left her. When we parted, glassy eyes gazed into mine and I winked at her.
"So good," she whispered on bated breath. "And nice distraction technique."
"Caught on, did you?" I chuckled and fought the shiver that brought goosebumps to my skin. My suit slithered from me then, and the warmth of it tickled around my wrist when it settled back in its hiding place.
"I did." She caressed my face. "One thing at a time, okay?"
I nodded and rested my forehead against hers. "Okay."
"Why don't we start with translating the book since that's where this journey began? We can return the information core with a Holoport to Cressida's family, and I'll upload everything to my personal drive so we can take it in doses. How's that for a plan?"
"I like it." I grinned and brought her hands to my lips to kiss them. "I can get behind that plan."
"Good. Me too." She gnawed her bottom lip, and her shimmering eyes searched my face.
I knew that look all too well at that point and I chuckled. "I turned on the fire in your pants, didn't I?"
Jawbreaker (Four Point Universe Book 14) Page 31
