by Lisa Lace
"It's best not to underestimate the humans," I warned. "My time with them on the Fortuna has taught me they are capable of much more than we realize. Their will is resilient."
"I never doubted they were resilient," Captain Fore said. "But a lamb cannot destroy a wolf, no matter how hard it bites."
I thought the conversation was over, but he added, "You've done well, Jidden. We were only the vanguard fleet, meant to assure the safe arrival of the other fleets. Not only have you secured a command center for us, but you did it without harming the women we came here for. I won't hold the actions of Kalij against you. Rest assured, when we return home, your promotion will be discussed."
"I'm pleased to hear it," I said, trying not to let my surprise show. Captain Fore rarely acknowledged success so formally.
"When should I expect the light out?" I asked.
"By the end of the day," he answered. "Be prepared."
TERRA
"And so we bid goodbye to our dear sister," Bellona said to the women of the Fortuna. We were all gathered outside the temple. Beside her, Juventas held Gallia in her burly arms.
Gallia's wounds had been cleaned, and she wore a fresh jumpsuit, but her face appeared restless even in death.
I didn't believe Gallia would ever be at peace until Earth was safe.
The temple was usually a place of great beauty, with ivy cascading down the small Roman structure. As I looked around today, I only sensed a terrible sorrow. The sadness ripped through me as I stood at the back, listening to Bellona say farewell to our Commander.
Lucina could not bear it. She slept away her grief in my quarters, unable to return to her room after being trapped there for so long. I wanted to hide away with her and exchange the nightmare around us for the bliss of slumber, but I couldn't.
Bellona needed me. We needed each other. We were barely holding it together. I knew what she was thinking because I was thinking it too. We had to kill the Surtu and rip them apart one by one.
It didn't matter if we died in the process. It was better than letting them win.
"...as brave as the solitary moon. Let us leave our sister with the goddesses she now walks beside. She will be another star to light our path."
Juventas turned and entered the temple with Gallia to lay her on the altar, followed by Bellona. Slowly, the women filtered in to say their individual goodbyes to Gallia before returning to the inner station. I watched them leave, understanding the cloak of anger and sorrow they wore.
I felt it too.
I was the last to enter the temple. When it was only Bellona and me beside Gallia, I ran a hand across the altar, afraid to touch our fallen Commander, knowing there was no warmth left in her.
"Some of the soldiers saw you," I said to Bellona. "They stand guard on the edge of the wood."
"There are three hundred women on this station. I'm sure they'll forget my face soon."
I doubted it. Her fiery red hair and amber eyes made her a rare beauty, even when those amber eyes held an assassin's chill.
Standing next to her with my mousy brown hair, I felt like wood next to a flame.
"I think the Surtu are about to attack Earth," I said.
Bellona didn't flinch. "It was only a matter of time. We have to escape before Earth succeeds in shooting us down."
"We don't have to make it to Earth. Not initially. We just have to make it to the next military base."
"True," Bellona said. "But how?" She wasn't asking. She was thinking.
"We have to take back control of the cargo ships in the docking bay. I don't think we can use the underground tunnels to sneak away, but we can use them to launch a sneak attack. We'll find some way to distract the soldiers on the Fortuna, and then we'll raise the divide that cuts off the docking bay. That leaves fewer soldiers to fight. We can use the tunnel that leads to the docking bay to attack."
"Once the hatch is open, anyone not on a ship will be swept away into space. Some women may have to sacrifice themselves."
That included us, but I didn't argue. We were never going to be able to save everyone.
"We'll get to that," I professed. "First we have to figure out a way to distract the soldiers on the Fortuna so that we can access the tunnels."
Bellona nodded, distracted by her grief. She went to Gallia and slid her fingers down Gallia's already closed lids. "Will they send her to Earth to be buried?"
"I don't know."
"Then we must take her with us."
"Of course."
A tear trickled down Bellona's cheek, the first and only I had ever seen come from her eyes. "I'll miss her. She was tough on us, but it made us better."
"We will remember her," I promised. "As our friend and as our Queen Sister."
Bellona smiled a sad, broken smile. "Our Queen Sister. I like that."
Suddenly, the Fortuna trembled, indicating the arrival of another ship. "We better get out of here soon, before the entire fleet lands," I murmured.
Bellona looked at me with heartfelt resolve. "Be prepared," she said. "You are the one the women will follow. You really are our Commander now."
* * *
The moon was almost full. With the limited sunlight on the Fortuna, the moon was like our sun. Sitting alone on a stone wall that surrounded the wildflowers in the gardens, I embraced the moon and absorbed its feminine power.
I was not the same woman I had been before the Surtu arrived. I felt a darkness brewing in me and boiling my blood black.
It wasn't because of my relationship with Jidden. With his dark hair, a strong body, and flecks of light dancing around his blue elfin eyes, his touch was the one thing keeping me from shattering. The way he ran his hands lightly over my bare skin when we slept next to each other sent shivers down my spine.
If anything, Jidden was my light.
At least, he had been at one time. I wasn't sure if I could forgive him for feeding Lucina to the beast that was Kalij. I had pleaded with him to call off the light bonding ceremony, and he had refused.
Now Lucina was devastated, and Gallia was dead.
I could not blame Jidden for the hatred transforming me. I blamed his people – the Surtu. They threatened everything I loved. My sister warriors on the Fortuna. And my family back home.
They deserved their extinction.
JIDDEN
From the trees, I watched Terra as she sat on the wall in the gardens. Her expression was complicated. I could tell that rage twisted within her.
She had always been beautiful, but with the moonlight streaming down upon her, illuminating the curves within her skintight jumpsuit, she was more exquisite than ever.
She had me. I had claimed her, but I wanted more. I wanted to bring her into the light.
I doubted that would ever happen. Now, more than ever, I was her enemy. And as much as it was in my right to do so, I could not take her against her will.
I would not force her to light bond with me. If I did, I would lose her forever.
We remained enemies. The only thing I could do for her was to let my love harden into an anger of my own.
TERRA
"Come with me," Jidden ordered, finding me in near the wildflowers. "We need to talk."
Whenever Jidden summoned me before, I had obliged.
Things were going to change, starting now.
"I'm not going anywhere. If you think you'll get any action from me, you're mistaken."
"I don't," he said coolly.
"If you have something to say, just say it."
He turned to leave, appearing unimpressed with my attitude. Suddenly he snapped back around. "What have you done to me?" he demanded, losing his composure. "I was grounded until I met you. I was in control. Now I constantly feel like I'm falling."
I struggled with his words. Every part of me gravitated towards him, but he was a black hole. He was my destruction. This morning had proved it.
"I haven't done anything," I uttered. "You're the one who claimed me."
"Becaus
e you told me too!" He began to pace, running a strong hand through his dark hair. "You've weakened me."
"Your obscene morals weakened you. It's not my fault if your conscience finally outgrew your cock."
"Don't say that," he said. "You know you mean more to me than our time in bed together."
I did know it, but I wasn't in the mood to let him off easy, not with Gallia dead in the temple. "I thought your career meant the most to you."
"I'm not sure about that anymore."
"What do you mean?"
"You call us the Depraved. Soldiers of the past would never have allowed the life of a woman to spill across the floor. Now we kill what is precious to us. We travel to the stars to find love, only to corrupt it. There's no reason to claim women. Look at us. We've mated freely, haven't we?"
"Yes," I admitted, my mood softening. "We have."
Jidden came to me, and we kissed, sealing our loyalty together under the moonlight. The kiss started tender, but it soon turned passionate. Without breaking the kiss, he reached behind my back to unzip my jumpsuit, using the stone wall for support. I let him, wrapping my legs around him, feeling his cock press against me through his uniform, but then I remembered Gallia.
"I can't," I said, pushing him away. "Not today."
He understood. "Of course," he said, stepping back. "You need time to mourn."
Torn between my grief and my need for him, I looked up at the moon. It inspired me. "Tell me again about the Surtu warrior goddess with the auburn hair," I implored. "The one you told me about before."
"Nelti," he reminded me. "With her auburn hair and eyes without color, only flecks of light, her dark beauty was incomparable. She was a merciless warrior and ruthless to protect those she loved. She had lovers, both men and women, but her love was not warm. It was cold like a starless night."
He stopped, a thought troubling his speech. I saw the conflict waging within him. "There's something you should know," he said. "Earth with soon be invaded."
"I already suspected. I didn't know it was today, but I knew it was coming soon. How will it happen?"
"A light will blind out Earth and the surrounding space stations. Your technology will shut down. It will be brief, but our ships only need a moment to land on Earth."
He was transparent, and it made me wrestle with a confession of my own. "I can trust you, can't I?" I asked.
"I hope so," he answered.
"I'm not the Commander of this space station," I disclosed, my heart racing. "It was Gallia."
Instead of trading lies, we were trading truths.
"I would never have guessed," he replied, neutral, making it impossible to tell how he took the news. "You have such a high intellect. You're a natural Commander."
A day earlier, I would have disagreed with him, but there was no more time for self-doubt. "We need to do something."
He agreed but didn't have a direction. "We can't save Earth."
"No. But we can save the women of the Fortuna."
* * *
My grief and rage were like the tide of the sea, ebbing and flowing at will. I wanted to fight, beginning with the scum who had terrorized Lucina and killed Gallia – Kalij.
Bellona was the Red Assassin and able to move with the shadows. She often spoke of a hit list. I don't know if she kept one or not, but I had mine, with Kalij at the top. If he lived beyond this day, he would pay.
It was a shame Jidden had returned to the inner station to do whatever it was the Lead Officer of a ship did. Otherwise, I would ask him what became of Kalij, my target.
I had not followed Jidden inside. I stayed out in the gardens with no intention of going to my quarters, as he had asked. I did not want to wake Lucina nor did I want Gallia to be alone in the temple. Bellona was with her now, but she couldn't stay all night if she wanted to continue avoiding the guards.
Bellona was like the warrior goddess Nelti. She ruled the shadows though her heart was full of inner light. Her state of mind was alluring.
An impulse propelled me to the herb section of the gardens. My knowledge of herbs wasn't great. My mother had tried to teach me, but it was a subject that didn't interest me. There were so many other subjects I wanted to explore, like geography and cosmology. I recognized a few herbs, including the perse-thistle with its reddish-purple leaves.
As I picked the perse-thistle, I looked over and spotted another something else. A root. I couldn't remember its name, but I knew its properties. Something that could prove useful in the future.
As I reached for the root, a bright light blinded me. It lit up the Fortuna like a solar flare. I don't know how long it lasted. When I could see my hands again, they were clenching the root. I barely noticed it as I was caught up in the implications of the light.
The Surtu had invaded Earth.
* * *
"Drink this," I said to Jidden later that evening, handing him a mug of tea. It had taken me a long time to find him here in his quarters on his ship. The tea was starting to go cold.
He smelt it then suspiciously pushed my hand away. "No," he refused. "It smells like the hair of a burkey."
"What's that?" I asked, swirling the hot yellow mixture around in the mug.
"It's like your human horses."
It didn't know what a burkey smelled like, but the tea smelled nothing like a horse. It was much worse.
"Drink it," I insisted. "Trust me."
He sat on his bed. It was the only comfortable furnishing in his small, efficiently sterile room. "You look too eager to trust."
"My appearance is exactly why you should trust me."
"That makes no sense," he replied, but he took the mug from me. He spit out his first sip, but he managed to down most of what remained.
"That tasted vile," he seethed afterward, wiping his mouth with the sleeve of his uniform. "What was it?"
I still couldn't remember the name of the root, so I made one up. "Pest control."
"Is that supposed to be a joke?"
There was no need to answer him. He passed out, falling unconscious on his bed.
"Nighty night," I said with a little wave, and I looked over at the timepiece on Jidden's desk. "And the clock starts now."
As I waited for Jidden to wake, I went to his closet and began searching through his uniforms. Most were black, but a few were dark blue. One was white. The white one was what his fellow soldiers would dress him in to send him off if he died.
It was chilling to think that to the Surtu fleet, death was part of the standard issue outfit.
Jidden didn't have much in the way of possessions. I didn't expect photos, not on a battleship, but maybe a trinket or two that revealed what his life was like on his home planet. There were only boots and uniforms and bed sheets.
And then I remembered Jidden had grown up in the military after his parents died, each in their tragic way, and I found the emptiness in Jidden's room terribly sad.
He woke sooner than I expected. "What the hell did you do to me?" he demanded groggily.
"Damn," I muttered. "The amount of pest control I gave you would have knocked a human out all night."
"I was your test dummy!" He was as equally outraged as he was intrigued. "What if your tea had killed me?"
"I would have found another drug to try on someone else," I said easily as I slid the door to his closet shut.
He studied me carefully, mistrustful. "Did you find what you were looking for?"
"I didn't give you the tea to snoop. It was an experiment. You were out for over an hour, almost two. That's how much time I have to get everyone where they need to be."
"You're going to drug my soldiers," he concluded. "How?"
"As Gallia said, being in the kitchen has its advantages."
"But you're not part of the kitchen staff anymore. Whether you accept it or not, you truly are the Commander of this space station."
"I accept it. That's why I have to find a way to help the women escape."
"Where will you go?" he a
sked.
"As close to Earth as we can get."
His face fell. "Maybe you shouldn't give me the details. It's better that I don't know."
A knot formed in my stomach. It was my turn to study him. "Do you plan to betray me?" I asked.
He was indignant. "No. Of course not."
"Then why aren't you coming with us?"
He was surprised and conflicted. It was funny how the war did that – caused people to confront themselves. "I'm not sure I can abandon my people," he said truthfully. "Allowing you to leave is one thing, but leaving with you is another."
I sat on the bed next to him. "How long can you go on here, just watching? You despise your soldiers. You think they are heathens, as we do. Is this a life you can continue to live? Is your promotion that important to you?"
"No," he determined, and he took my hand. "Not without you. I'll leave with you. I'll help ensure your women make it to safety. They will charge me with treason, but I have already acted against the Captain's orders. If anybody finds out we have mated outside a light bond, I could be executed."
It was momentous to hear. I dropped my eyes and swept my hand over his. "I thought you were my destruction when all along I was yours."
"You are my salvation," he said. "You are setting me free. But escaping does have its dangers. It's possible we won't survive this."
It was true. War did not guarantee life. "It's possible none of us will," I added, my heart heavy.
"When a couple alters their state of being during a light bond, becoming light out of flesh, what do you feel like afterward?" I asked, curious to know.
"From what they have told me, during the light bond, it's like sharing one soul. You are completely exposed to each other. After, you feel connected with the person. Your instincts about them are heightened. If they are in pain, you know. If they are happy, you know. If they are making love to another person, you know. Distance does not matter."
