by Lee Savino
Three heavily bandaged Infar are in the common room, eating their morning meal. They turn around at the commotion, shake their heads, and then turn their attention back to the food, opting to stay out of the fight. Smart.
I’m out of patience. “Stay behind me,” I say shortly to Alice. I grab the Cotari priestess and fling her into the common room. Her neck hits the edge of the table with a loud crack and snaps. Oops.
Her companions don’t get the message. A scarred trader draws a bone knife and attacks, moving in a blur. He stabs down, aiming for my right shoulder. I block the lunge with my wrist, kick his chest, spin around and punch the Cotari behind him in the ribs, snapping his neck as he drops.
The fourth Cotari is lying on the ground, a knife sticking out of his chest. The knife I gave Alice.
I lift an eyebrow. Alice shrugs, brushes past me, frees the blade from between the man’s ribs, and wipes it clean on his robes. “I told you I could take care of myself.”
She’s good. The trader’s not dead. Not yet. He’ll live if he can get medical attention.
The Zorahn wipe the memories of their soldiers in an attempt to prevent the sickness that comes with taking lives. Most people are not murderers. Death wears on them, and they fear for the fabric of their souls.
Not me. I was made for battle. If someone needs to die, I kill them. It doesn’t eat at me. I don’t fear judgment in the Gardens of Caeron; I won’t even gain entry to that sacred space.
But Alice is a healer. Once the adrenaline from the fight wears off, she’ll be sick to her stomach at what she did. If the trader dies, it will affect her.
I slap some money down on the counter in front of the innkeeper. “Take him to a healer.” I turn to Alice. “Stay close to me, human. And do as I say.”
A smile touches her lips. “Otherwise, you’ll tie me up, right?” Her voice lowers into a whisper. “Maybe I’ll even enjoy it.”
I really don’t understand human women.
12
Alice
Here I am, trying to do a nice thing, and this is the thanks I get? He orders me to heel as if I were a puppy, and he threatens to tie me up if I don’t obey?
Bossy, aggravating, impossible, alien asshole. That’s what Kadir is.
The bossy alien asshole you kissed, Alice.
Grr. Kissing Kadir was a mistake, one I shouldn’t have made. But I hadn’t been able to help myself. His lips had been inches from mine. The heat from his body had washed over me. His scent, smoky, woodsy, and male, had filled my senses.
I’d lost my head. That’s okay. People are allowed to make mistakes. Even me. I just can’t make the same mistake again.
He’s a pretty fantastic kisser. His lips had pressed against mine. His tongue had slid into my mouth, seductive and teasing. He didn’t need to coax a response from me; I was there every second of the way.
Lying to myself is a waste of time. Let’s just be honest here. I was ready to sleep with him.
Bad idea. No, not just bad. It’s a terrible idea. Apart from the whole ‘he’s an alien’ thing, Kadir’s a perfect stranger. He’s secretive. He’s a warrior, he said. I believe it; I’ve seen him fight, and his body is littered with scars. He’s been a prisoner of the scientists, just like me. What did they do to him? Did they torture him and break him? Did they try to control him and fail? Is that why they put him in stasis?
Lots of questions for which I don’t have any answers. I don’t need answers though. What I need to do is find Tanya. I’m in a strange galaxy, light-years from home. Tanya Sinclair was imprisoned with me for seven months. She’s the only human I know. Her wellbeing should be my only priority.
Four days later, I’m in a shitty, tearful, whiny mood. Thank you, PMS.
I’m not the only grumpy one. Kadir woke up on the growly side of the bed this morning. “I’m ready to set fire to the entire star system of Coter,” he’d snarled as he entered the galley kitchen. “I close my eyes and imagine how blissful it would feel to torch all three of Coter’s inhabited planets, Calis, Vuhim, and Frez. Burn every market, every trading outpost, every dusty space station to the ground.”
Sounds pretty good to me.
Back on Earth, I considered myself a peace-loving person. Space is bringing out a whole new side of me. I’m not quite as ready as Kadir to burn everything in sight, but if I see the Zorahn scientists that imprisoned me or the Cotari traders that bought me, all bets are off.
Speaking of the Cotari traders… The three-person crew that bought us from the Zorahn scientists have been extremely difficult to track. Evidently, Bad Breath is Cotari minor royalty. For four days, we’ve been going to every market in the star system, trying to get someone to talk. Kadir’s bribed. He’s cajoled. He’s thrown punches. We’ve got nowhere.
Then, last night, Kadir located a compound in the far north of Vuhim, where Bad Breath’s mortal enemy lives.
Which brings us to now.
The Bikana touches down inside the walled compound. Kadir scans the monitors for signs of trouble, and then he nods in satisfaction. “Nothing we can’t handle. Ready?”
I tuck my knife into its sheath and pick up a bright green gun from Kadir’s arsenal. It looks like a Nerf gun, but judging by Kadir’s raised eyebrow, it’s far more dangerous. “What?” I ask defensively. “Just point and shoot, right?”
His lips twitch. “You’re holding the wrong end.”
Well, that’s embarrassing. My cheeks flaming, I turn it around. “How do I fire it?”
“You don’t.” He takes the gun from me and sets it back down the table. “You don’t know what you’re doing. You’re more likely to hurt yourself than anyone else. If you want to learn to shoot, I will teach you. But not now.”
Gah. I hate logic. “Fine.”
I sound like a brat. I’m acting like one. I’m on edge; we both are. And then there’s the sexual tension, so thick you could cut it with a knife.
After that morning on Akan, I haven’t kissed Kadir again. He doesn’t seem to care. It shouldn’t matter to me that he’s not making any moves, but it does. I thought I’d worked through my demons, but Kadir’s indifference brings every teenage insecurity flooding back to the surface.
I’m scarred. Kadir’s gorgeous. Why would someone like him want someone like me?
The bedroom situation doesn’t help. The Bikana, Kadir’s spaceship, isn’t large. It’s designed for a one or two-pilot crew. There are no bedrooms. There’s a small dormitory with a set of bunk beds.
When we’d first got aboard, Kadir had offered to sleep in the narrow galley. I’d shaken my head at once. “Don’t be ridiculous,” I told him. “You can’t sleep on the floor. There are two beds. Can I have the bottom bunk? I have an irrational fear of falling.”
“Of course,” he’d replied.
So we share the dormitory. Every night, I go to sleep, knowing he’s in the bunk above me.
The temptation is driving me out of my mind. This desire… it’s invaded my body like the flu. I’m a shivering, feverish, trembling mess when he’s near. And then I remember he can read my emotions, and it’s even worse, because then I have to confront the reality that he knows exactly how much I want him, and he’s still not making a move.
The Bikana’s ramp extends down. Kadir exits first. He swivels his head from side to side, and then turns around and extends his hand to me. “Come. Stay behind me.”
“Yes, yes,” I grumble. “I know. You’re the big, bad, scary alien. All will flee before your might.”
He gives me a sharply amused smile. My insides turn to mush as he wraps his big hands around my waist. Anticipation sizzles through me at his touch, but all he does is swing me to the ground. Jerk.
“Why are there no guards?”
He looks at me a moment too long, and then he answers the question. “There are guards, plenty of them. I’m assuming the serench is waiting to see what we want before they give the order to attack.”
Not exactly reassuring. “How come you d
idn’t insist I wait in the ship?”
He laces his fingers in mine, and we walk to the compound gate. It lies open. The hair on the back of my neck rises, but Kadir strolls through as if he doesn’t have a care in the world. “You’re safer with me than in the Bikana,” he replies. His eyes sparkle with laughter. “Besides, had I told you to stay put, would you have listened? I doubt it. You have a regrettable tendency to ignore my instructions.” A pair of soldiers emerge from the house, guns drawn. “Ah, the first test. Stay behind me, please, Alice.”
I blink in confusion. “Hang on. Did you just say please? I don’t think I’ll survive the shock.”
Kadir winks at me. He waits until the soldiers are almost at us. Then he moves, so quick that it’s a blur. His hand closes on one of the rifles. He yanks the soldier forward and wrenches the gun free. Using it as a club, he hits the other guy twice in quick succession. He brings his elbow up into the first soldier’s jaw with such force that the man goes down.
If I’d blinked, I would have missed it.
Kadir takes my hand again. “You cried out in your sleep.”
What the hell just happened? “Why are we being tested?”
“If we show that we can fight, the serench will give us Bad-Breath’s location,” he responds. “You had another nightmare last night. What was it about?”
Kadir is like a dog with a bone. Both soldiers are breathing—they’ll live. I step over the nearest body. “I don’t remember all of it. Tanya was being raped, and I couldn’t stop it.”
I’d woken up in the middle of the night, and I’d wanted to crawl into bed with Kadir. I wanted him to put his arms around me, and I wanted to feel safe again. I’d wanted it with a desperation that terrified me more than my nightmare.
“It’s just a dream. You know that. Nobody will touch your friend ahead of the Offering of the Tribute.” Kadir gives me a sidelong glance. “You haven’t been eating either.”
He’s noticed. I don’t want to have this conversation. “It’s nothing.” I free my hand and step around him into the archway. Another soldier materializes in front of me, his gun pointed straight at my face.
Oops. I take a step back, holding my hands in the air. The soldier advances threateningly, saying something to me. I don’t understand him, but the gun makes his meaning pretty self-explanatory.
Kadir steps into the archway and slams his fist on the gun. The back of the rifle smacks into the soldier’s chin. Bones crunch. He flies backward from the force of Kadir’s punch, lands on the ground, and stays down.
“Which part of ‘stay behind me’ didn’t you understand?” Kadir asks grumpily.
His annoyance is perfectly justified. My heart is hammering in my chest. It takes me a minute before I feel ready to move again. “Sorry.”
His lips tilt up. “An apology? Now it’s my turn to survive the shock. This way.”
We step through the archway into an enclosed garden courtyard. Flowers are everywhere. Trees bearing small purple fruit sit in three-feet-tall planters. An artfully constructed waterfall trickles into a pond, and fat fish swim lazily through the water.
It’s beautiful here. Peaceful. A stark contrast to the world outside. The waterfall is a shock though. Like Calis, Vuhim is a desert world, its water hidden in deep underground lakes. To waste so much water… The serench must be both wealthy and powerful. A bad enemy to have.
I hear a noise behind me. I whirl around to find the door in the outer wall shut. We’re trapped.
My fear must show on my face, because Kadir squeezes my hand. “Relax,” he says under his breath. “I won’t let anything happen to you.”
His words take the fear out of me. “How will we get out?” I whisper. “We can’t fly. The outer door’s shut. We’re stuck in here, with no way out.”
Kadir gives me an enigmatic half-smile. He steers me to the left, toward a metal door set in the inner wall. As we near it, another Cotari soldier rounds the corner. Kadir flings his pack at him. The soldier goes down. Looming over him, Kadir picks up the soldier’s weapon and snaps it into half.
Holy fuck. Kadir broke the guy’s gun with his bare hands. Big, scary, terrifying alien. Good thing he’s on my side.
“I’m getting tired of this,” he says. I turn to him, only to realize he’s not talking to me, but to a camera mounted above the door. “If the serench doesn’t want our help, we can leave.”
The inner door swings open.
Twenty minutes later, we’re back in the Bikana. We have the information we need. The serench saw the murder in Kadir’s eyes and was happy to give up the location of his archenemy. Bad Breath, Suhas, and Zalae are conducting a raid on Frez, in the seaport of Kosagash.
Tanya will be with them. She’s their tribute offering to the Great One, and they won’t risk leaving her behind on Calis, especially not now that the scientists are desperately searching for Tanya and me.
Kadir sets a course for Frez. “Like I said, you’re not eating,” he says, picking up the conversation as if we’d never been interrupted. “You’re not sleeping. What’s going on with you?”
Warmth blooms in my chest at his concern. Ignoring it, I shake my head. “Nope,” I tell him. “We’re not doing this.” I’m so indignant I even forget to be terrified through the take-off. “So far, you’ve been asking all the questions, and like an idiot, I’ve been answering all of them. It’s your turn to talk, Kadir.”
He finishes plotting the course and then gets to his feet. “I’ll make you a deal. We’ll go to the galley. You will eat. As long as you keep eating, I’ll answer your questions.”
Huh. I thought he’d brush me off again. “Works for me.”
In the galley, he puts a bowl of stew in front of me. There’s a food synthesizer on board, and it does a decent job with junk food from Earth. French fries, pizza, chicken wings, that kind of thing. Not a vegetable in sight. The food syn is courtesy of the human women that were on the Fehrat 1. Since I quite like my arteries, I’ve mostly ignored the food I recognize in favor of the food Kadir prepares.
This looks like chili. At least it isn’t deep-fried. I pick up a spoon and try it. It doesn’t taste like chili, but it’s delicious, whatever it is. “You said you were in stasis for a thousand years. Explain.”
His eyes rest on me. I feel his indecision hang in the air, and then he shrugs his shoulders and seems to come to a conclusion. “You are human. A sperm fertilizes an egg, which implants in the womb. The fetus develops, and then, if it is viable, a youngling is born. Yes?”
I nod. “That’s about the gist of it.”
“For the most part, something similar happens with the Zorahn,” he says. “Not me. I was created in a lab.”
My mouth falls open. “You’re a robot?”
“No. I’m all organic.” He makes himself a cup of the alien equivalent of coffee and then sits back down. “The Zorahn are geneticists,” he says. “They would never think to use inorganic components. They took Zorahn DNA, mixed it with the DNA of other organisms, and came up with the Draekon. Six of us were grown in a lab. When it was time, we were awoken. We were trained, punished if we disobeyed. And then we were sent to war.”
I’m so shocked I don’t know what to say. “Why?”
“They needed soldiers,” he responds simply. “The High Emperor wanted to expand his empire.”
The imposing size of him. The height. The corded muscles. The broad shoulders, the strength, the sheer physicality of the man. It all makes sense now. No wonder I’d broken my wrist against his jaw.
The full impact of his words sinks in. “They created life.”
“Yes,” he agrees. “They did. And once they tested their prototypes and found them satisfactory, they mass-produced Draekons and sent us to war. For years, the galaxy burned. We conquered thousands of worlds in Kannix’s name.”
They created life, and they enslaved their creations. No, not creations. They had enslaved their children. I can’t wrap my head around the sheer monstrosity of such an a
ct. The complete callousness.
I make myself eat another spoonful of stew.
“Eventually, the Draekons rebelled. Some of them went on a rampage in the homeworld. Cities burned. The High Emperor’s daughter was killed. By Kannix’s orders, every Draekon, innocent or guilty, was rounded up and executed. The scientists’ records were destroyed. They were once skilled enough to create new species. They’ve never been able to do that again. I’m glad. No one should have that much power.”
“Did you kill the High Emperor’s daughter, Kadir?”
He shakes his head. “No. The six of us didn’t rebel. The scientists had ways of keeping us in line.” A bitter smile twists his lips. “The rest of the story is fairly straightforward. The Supreme Mother—the scientist who made us—tried to defy Kannix’s orders. She didn’t want her creations destroyed. She loaded us on her ship and tried to make a run for it. The last thing I remember was the order to go into my stasis chamber.”
The stew turns tasteless. I force myself to eat another bite. “Then they woke you up a thousand years later and sent you to look for us? All six of you?”
A pained expression flashes over his face. “No. There are only five of us left.” He stares blankly at his cup of alien-coffee. “First is gone. He wasn’t there when I emerged from stasis. We had the same challenges. Being a warrior was easy, but everything else was difficult. The scientists implanted knowledge into our brains, but we still struggled with mundane tasks. We didn’t know how to survive in society.” He laughs humorlessly. “Zorahn politics is a cesspool of intrigue and corruption. We found it bewildering, and we soon realized the only people we could trust was each other. The Supreme Mother wasn’t interested in teaching us. The more we didn’t understand, the more we were in her power. As if the rathr wasn’t enough…” His voice trails off. “We were called the Crimson Force. Now though… I guess we’re the Rebel Force.”
