by Nora Blaze
I will be the first in many generations to bear my second horns, and all because of Loretta. And although I barely believe it, my heart pounds with even greater hope that a night under the dark moon will give us a child.
When I look out to the water she is naked and holding the spear I made for her. She is close to the wreckage of the Wehizx ship, beaten by waves. I smile to see how gracefully she moves, her eyes searching the glistening water as she hunts.
Loretta reaches the ship and pauses. She looks into the wreckage and I notice something spark her curiosity. As she continues to stare, a dim white light comes on inside the mangled metal, then grows stronger.
I drop the tool I am holding. This is not right. Anything that comes alive in the Wehizx ship must be a danger. “Loretta!” I yell. “Loretta!”
She turns, and as she does, a rustling comes from the trees behind me. I jerk around and land in a defensive stance, expecting some sort of beast to emerge.
Instead, a barbarian of a species I’ve never seen before steps out. I encountered plenty of barbarian species when I led forces in the war to repel a surprise Pohilkans invasion on these planets, but this strange being before me is totally unfamiliar.
Every barbarian planet in that cluster of stars would be living under the brutal fist of the Pohilkans empire if it weren’t for the RSA. But good luck telling this guy anything about that.
He’s a little shorter than Loretta, and covered in a strange green fuzz. Two large tusks stick out of his mouth and hang over his squat, muscled body. He’s naked but he’s carrying what looks like a big white tusk that’s jagged on the end, probably some kind of weapon.
From the way he ogles his giant red eyes at me I don’t imagine his species has developed anything beyond fire and some crude tools. They must not be too biologically similar to our species, otherwise the Wehizx would have harvested them, but he doesn’t look like he is packing any big surprises, either.
I tighten my fists and hope he won’t attack, although I know it will be easy to take him.
Then another one of the barbarians steps out of the trees. And another.
And another.
I curse under my breath as I lay my hand on my knife. Two more of the barbarians step out, these ones accompanied by a sort of squat black lizard, six-legged and slurping its tongue.
“Hello,” I say with a very even tone.
They all stare at me, blinking their giant eyes, then run forward at once.
I throw two handfuls of sand directly in their faces, grab my bag, and run. They move with a strange gait that I know will be useless in the water so I sprint into the waves. When I’m directly between Loretta and the barbarians I bare my teeth at them.
I glance over my shoulder and Loretta has climbed up onto the wreckage, which is still glowing white. “Don’t worry about this. I’ll do anything I have to do to keep you safe.”
“I know you will,” she says. “I just wish I still had my gun.”
I grin, pleased by her confidence, and realize that the barbarians haven’t moved. They’re all standing at the edge of the water, hopping back and forth and howling to each other.
Loretta and I watch them for a while.
“I think they’re afraid of the water,” Loretta finally says.
I wade over and toss her the jumpsuit I had grabbed, eager for her to cover up with all the barbarians leering. The water laps my chest, high enough to be over Loretta’s neck, but she’s sitting on the wreckage and dangling her feet in.
“I think you might be right,” I say.
“Something happened with this ship,” Loretta says as she pulls on the torn jumpsuit. “I like… felt it. And then that orb turned on.”
I pull myself up on the wreckage and peer inside. The main control is glowing. It’s a perfectly circular white gem that somehow controls all of the ship’s tech while also providing their power source. They’re not too large—I can wrap my arms around an average one. But whatever the secret to the main control unit is, it has eluded our scientists for years.
Figuring it out was the dream of every researcher and scholar on the moon. If we could crack the main control, the RSA might be able to infiltrate and counter the Wehizx on a scale we’d never imagined.
“You felt it?” I ask, unclear what that means. The orb is still glowing with a steady white light.
Loretta crawls up on the wreckage to look at it. I glance back to the barbarians, grunting at each other on dry land.
“It was like I sensed that it was there, and then when I looked at it, it’s like there was a…” she searches for a word, then continues, “a switch I could turn on, so I turned it on.”
I sit on a flattened piece of metal that looks like it used to be a component of their laboratory. Around the main control, a small part of the engineering room still looks intact.
“Can you feel any other switches?”
Loretta closes her eyes. Her lids flutter as she thinks and her two front teeth sink into her bottom lip. With a whir, the control panel powers to life.
“Oh shit,” Loretta says. She looks pale, almost frightened, and I grab her arm to steady her.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine,” she says, although I’m not totally convinced. “I just had a flash of a scary memory.”
I look to the main control, still humming. I’m startled and astounded that this has happened, and as the color returns to Loretta’s face, my heart pounds with determination. “You might have just saved us again, Loretta.” I look to the shore. “Will you be okay if I leave you here for just one minute?”
Loretta checks out the barbarians. “Yeah, I’ll be fine,” she says again, now with a little smug confidence that I appreciate.
I dive into the water and power stroke to the other half of the Flash Bomber. It takes me only a minute to find the communications device I need, rip it from the console, and swim back.
When I climb up on the wreckage Loretta has a troubled look on her face. She’s staring at the glowing orb and the humming machinery, frowning with a tight brow.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
“I’m just confused. Did I just turn that thing on with my mind?”
I frown as I climb down into the machinery. “It looks like that.” I look up to her. “I have a lot of questions, too, but I know we can answer those best back on the moon. For now, you’re sure you feel okay?”
Loretta nods and folds her arms over her chest. “Just creeped out. Why can my mind turn on a Wehizx ship? It gave me this vivid flashback to being abducted.”
I tighten my fists, angered that she had to experience that nightmare again. “I’m sorry that happened.”
I’ve fooled around with recovered Wehizx technology enough to know how their strange control unit intersects with the more familiar mechanics and forms of energy I can manipulate. Quickly, I start to splice the mechanics together. “In no time here, I’ll have a secure message sent back to KrysOlak. A rescue will pick us up, we’ll take this main control home, and we’ll get ourselves a lot of answers.”
“UrTak,” Loretta says.
“Our medics have great stores of knowledge on the damage the Wehizx cause,” I assure her as I work. “We will give you a full examination.”
“UrTak,” she says again, her voice rising.
The concern in her tone grabs my attention. “Loretta?”
“I think there’s trouble.”
I pull myself out of the wreckage and look to the shore. The barbarians are more agitated than before but they still haven’t crossed into the water. “I think they’re just yelling,” I say, a little surprised that she is concerned by the noise.
I grunt as a tight pain squeezes my midsection, choking the breath out of me.
Slimy tendrils crush my ribs and throw me in the air.
Chapter Eighteen
Loretta
It looks like an eel. That’s what I think at first. A giant gray eel has grabbed UrTak and flung him straight in
the air. The creature must be as long as a school bus and its wet scales flash under the red suns.
Then I see the legs. They look like the skinny legs on a grasshopper, but much longer. As the creature thrashes, many sets of legs, each longer than the one behind it, splash in the water and propel the monster forward.
It’s with those legs that it jumps, encircles UrTak, and falls back to the water.
“No!” I yell, scrambling to the edge of the wreckage. The water where they fight looks like a violent rapid river and I can just barely see the shapes of their spinning bodies as they wrestle beneath the surface.
Anxious fear wracks my body. I hold my breath along with UrTak and when I finally gasp for air I wonder how much longer he can make it.
His head breaks the surface as he grabs the creature by the tail, swings it, and hurls it down the beach. When he turns to me, fierce anger burns in his eyes.
“Kill it!” I yell. “Kill that fucker!”
The monster rises up to full height and it’s as tall as the trees. It falls back down and crawls toward UrTak and when it launches forward he dives with just as much force to meet it.
He drives his horns into the eel as the aliens holler from the shore. The eel bellows out and when it jumps back UrTak slices its leg with a knife, cutting it at the knobby knee. The monster flails and retreats, its powerful tail flying across the shore where it catches one of the aliens and launches him straight at the wreckage.
The alien slams into the hull with a thump. “Damn it,” I whisper. I scramble to grab a jagged piece of metal to use as a weapon. The pearly object UrTak calls the main control starts to grow brighter as my heart pounds but I gather my concentration and ignore that.
One weird alien crisis at a time.
I peek over the edge of the wreckage and see the alien snarling at me. He holds the edge of the crashed craft to keep himself above the water and kicks his squat legs. He looks incredibly pissed, which isn’t surprising.
Then he jerks his head back, shoves his tusks into the metal, and uses them to haul himself up on the wreckage.
I tighten my grip on the jagged metal, which cuts into my hands. “Seriously?” I ask the alien.
He jumps up onto another piece of mangled metal, about fifteen feet away from me. In the corner of my eye I see UrTak thrashing on the eel. He rides the creatures back and pounds its head with brutal force until the eel finally throws him off.
I look to the shore. Most of the aliens watch the main event but a few are excited about my situation. They’re such bizarre creatures. I’m not sure if the green fuzz all over their bodies counts as fur or not, and their eyes remind me of giant frog eyes.
“You’re much stronger than I am,” I say to him with a gentle, cloying voice. “But I’m very pretty. Maybe I can placate you? Maybe you just want to run back to shore and join your ugly friends again?”
The alien jumps forward. His squat legs don’t give him much reach but he manages to catch the machinery I’m on with his tusks and climb up. As soon as he steadies, he charges toward me, primal lust in his eyes.
My instincts take hold. I slash with the jagged metal at just the right moment, lacerating the alien’s chest. Blood pours down my hand from squeezing the shrapnel but I barely feel the pain.
The alien grunts as blue blood pours down his abdomen. He looks confused but he’s not injured enough to stop.
He lunges forward again. I slash three times, advancing on the balls of my feet and then jumping back. The alien roars in pain and falls to his ass but I drop the metal at the same time. The pain finally hits my brain and my palm screams like my nerves are on fire.
The alien snarls and runs forward, more pissed than ever. Out of the corner of my eye, I catch the flailing of the eel. Its long body swings directly toward us, and I jump down into the crushed room where the main control glows. When I look up I see the rear of the eel swing through the air.
UrTak, riding it like a horse, kicks his leg out and nails the alien in the chest, sending him flying back into the water.
I gasp with relief and use my uninjured hand to pull myself back up. Blue blood floats like ink through the water and I spot the alien, facedown and unmoving. UrTak and the eel are still locked in combat but I realize something else. Stuck in the back of the eel are three or four of those broken bones that the aliens wield as weapons. And as I watch, another of the aliens heaves his weapon like a spear, sending it straight into the eel’s back.
“UrTak!” I scream. “UrTak!”
He dodges the monster’s gnashing teeth and turns to me.
“The aliens want to kill it too!” I yell.
He quickly assesses the situation and the next time the monster lunges at him, he grabs it around the head. I watch the creature thrash and gnash its teeth while he rides it like a bull, squeezing at the neck. When the right moment comes, he plants his feet in the shallow water and heaves the monster backward.
UrTak practically performs a backbend and the effect sends the monster’s tail flopping onto the shore.
The aliens move immediately. Some stab it with their bone shards while others stab their tusks straight into its underbelly and hold it down. The insect-like legs flail and kick until they suddenly jerk out straight and fall still.
The aliens drag the eel onto the shore and UrTak backs away. He holds his hands up, showing them that he is peaceful, and as we watch they begin to devour the creature, tearing its scales off and sucking out the flesh.
Their squat lizard pets slurp at the eel guts happily, purring so loud I can hear the noise from the wreckage.
I didn’t expect that, although I guess I should stop trying to expect things in these new worlds.
UrTak pushes through the water and climbs back up onto the wreckage. His muscles are wet and glistening and he still has the fire of the fight in his eyes.
“You’re okay,” he says, and takes me in his arms for a kiss, his strong lips crashing against mine. I’m amazed that he only has a few scratches on his body and I rub my hands all over him, eager to feel that he’s safe.
“Thanks for your save.”
He cocks up a smile. “Thanks for the tip on our barbarian friends.”
I let out a shaky breath and settle my pounding heart. “Is this a typical barbarian planet?”
He shakes his head. “Every planet is unique to itself, barbarian or not.”
“Based on the planets I know about, I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.”
He gestures to the aliens. I can hear their chewing and loud chomping even over the sound of the waves. “Sometimes good, sometimes bad,” he says. “But for what it’s worth, we are all equally strange to each other.” He holds a device in the air that reminds me of an iPad. “Hopefully we’ll be off this particular planet forever soon enough. I should be able to power the communications broadcaster with the energy I’m going to siphon from the main control you turned on.”
I smile, happy that he makes it sound like we’re a team.
Which, I guess, we kind of are.
“Have at it,” I say. “I’m ready to be safe at home at KrysOlak.”
His back straightens but he doesn’t say anything, he just turns back to the work. I know exactly what he’s reacting to. It’s the second time I’ve caught myself thinking of KrysOlak as home.
I want to ask UrTak a million questions while he works. The reality that I turned the giant pearl on with my mind terrifies me. But even when the visions of the Wehizx flashed through my brain, I was able to gather my strength and push them away.
It felt like my force of will was a light and when I made it bright enough, it cast a protective barrier around me.
It terrifies me, but it excites me, too.
Did leaving Earth make me gain psychic powers of some kind?
But they haven’t been with me since I left, only recently. I consider that this might be the result of the Wehizx touching my mind, but even though the only powers I have demonstrated are my
interaction with their technology, deep inside of me, something insists that they are not the source of this strange new ability.
They are not the ones who opened this new dimension in my mind.
And from deep inside, too, my heart calls out. I look at UrTak, deep in concentration as he works the electronics.
My heart calls for him.
The device in his hands whirs to life. A second later a digital screen projects in the air, displaying his squiggly language, a blipping diagram, and a few gauges.
UrTak lets out a satisfied grunt. He climbs back up on the wreckage and pulls me close for a kiss. His lips claim mine as the waves beat the wreckage at our feet.
“Come on,” he says. “It’s time to go home.”
Chapter Nineteen
UrTak
The ride back to KrysOlak is fast and quiet. The warrior piloting the ship is a stranger to me and he seems content to give Loretta and I our privacy. We take plenty of time cleaning each other in the steam bath and after, I toss her to the bed and bring her to climax with my lips and tongue.
We have much to celebrate.
We pass the defensive barrier that separates the RSA from the vast expanse of barbarian planets. The border has been heavily fortified in preparation for a retaliatory attack, as it should be.
Simply knowing the Wehizx were in the area after so many years should have been enough to put us on high alert.
Resting in the rear of the ship with Loretta, I tighten my hands into fists, frustrated with the timid responses the High Council has offered so far.
Once we are safely in the zone controlled by the RSA I pull out my communications device and open a secure line with PryZor. The emergency alert I sent from the barbarian planet was a necessary risk, but my first duty is to return home safely with Loretta, and chatter outside of our fortified zone risked alerting the Wehizx to our route.
Mokrov’s face flickers onto the projection. I’m immediately concerned that someone else is answering PryZor’s line and I tighten my brow as I stand.
