by Brandon Hill
I gave a vain token struggle against my restraints and then stopped, having noticed my still-present bumps and bruises from Keisha’s barrage and battery. They had been bandaged, but I was still very sore. There was no use banging myself up more with a useless fight against sturdy, unyielding restraints.
I shivered as another cold breeze assaulted my nether regions. I figured that the doctors were off prepping, and someone would come in soon to take me to the operating room, but it would have been nice if someone had kept this place at a more comfortable temperature so that I would not have to suffer the worst case of shrinkage known to man.
My consternation, as well as any fear I might have had, was soon drowned out by depression. Though I would suffer the consequences of my having mated outside my species, I felt no shame for my love for Sar’vana. My melancholy was borne, rather, by way of regret. Despite my disinterest in Keisha, I had wanted to be a father someday. But I’d forfeited any possibility of that. An’Kya Felyans might have been compatible with humans; there were plenty of hybrid children born on An’re’hara, and even some on the more liberal colonies, as word from the spacers went, but I had never heard of any children born from a union with a Re’Kya Felyan, much less a human falling in love with one. And yet Sar’vana treated our relationship as the most normal thing in the world. Had she gone through the same inner struggle that I had this past month? Was this kind of relationship even normal for Re’Kya Felyans? It had always been so hard to know what Sar’vana was thinking.
A sound at the door at the room’s far end interrupted my train of thought. My first emotion was a great swell of relief. The cold was really starting to bother me, and any change from at least this temperature would be good.
The three men who entered were not doctors.
“Who are you?” I asked as fear poured into my relief like cold vinegar tainting sweet tea. The men wore white, but not medical scrubs. They were business suits, made with fabrics in different shades of white, but not so glaring as the white of the room. Their guns were incongruously black and evil-looking against the fabric of their clothes. The sight of the weapons made me gasp. No one but police or military carried guns in the cities. Karr was one of the sturdiest materials known to man, but ricochets could still hit stress points in the habitat seals and let in the cornucopia of poisons outside into the city. Because of this, penalties for possessing firearms inside city gates were swift and very severe. Even my colleagues and I were only allowed pistols for the odd mutant threat in the outside wastelands and keeping slaves in line. We were forbidden from bringing them into the city proper, and had to dispose of them at the end of our shifts every day. Weapons lockers were also thoroughly inventoried daily to prevent anyone from stealing away with a gun.
The one who entered first, a tall, burly man with mutton chops that were dyed white as his suit and a bald, shining pate, looked at the others and spoke to his equally white-haired comrades in a language that I found both incomprehensible, and horribly familiar. The memory of the madam at the brothel sparked to mind as one of the three fitted a round, flat device against the door and nodded towards the first.
“Zadians…” I whispered from a suddenly dry mouth.
The burly man’s gaze, cold and blue-eyed, switched over to me.
“We apologize,” he said, speaking in a thickly-accented English. He drew the jet black .9 millimeter from his holster, and pointed it at me, pulling back the hammer as his colleagues did the same with their respective guns. “But you know too much.”
Fear became complete terror as I stiffened. The events of today slammed through my mind, birthing comprehension in a mad rush. These men either were, or worked for the Zadian slavers who had procured the Felyans that I had seen at the brothel. Even on Zynj, enslaving aliens was illegal. How they found out where I was, I could only guess; they couldn’t have possibly known that I would tell Sar’vana, but it was obvious that they wanted to leave no witnesses who might tell.
I was maddened with soul-wrenching terror. My Sar’vana … my li-ah, what would she say if she found that I had died, and with no final, loving words to say to her? Not here! I thought as I my heart pounded the blood through my ears like the roar of the arboretum’s waterfall. Please, God! Not like this!
“Wait!” I shouted, attempting to cringe, but restrained by the damnable leather straps. I struggled wildly, but to the same lack of effect as before. “Wait! Please! If this is about those Felyans, I won’t tell! You can keep your secret.”
“Too dangerous,” the burly man said, his gun hand unwavering. “Dead men tell no tales, my friend.” He made the sign of the cross with the other hand. “May God bring you to your rest, and grant us forgiveness.”
“Amen,” the other two said with a monotone reverence.
What happened next was something that could almost be described as divine, as the entire room flashed with a dazzling, blinding white. A high-pitched whine broke through the room’s relative silence. It was near-deafening, and caused my ears to ring, even after it ended. The light faded quickly, and instantly, one of the gunmen fell as a snarling gray blur knocked him to the ground. Straining against the straps, I caught a glimpse of the impossible.
“Vani …?” I breathed, disbelieving at the sight of the girl I loved crouched atop one of the unconscious gunman. For a moment, I thought they had killed me and my guardian angel happened to look like a Felyan … or that I had gone blessedly mad with fear. But then my thoughts converged at last with reality, and I knew that she was really here. She was looking down into the would-be assailant’s passive face, still growling. This was not the soft, sensuous bedroom growl that I had become familiar with when we made love; rather, this was a low, deep, threatening noise, like what a wolf made when defending its territory.
Her head jerked towards the remaining gunmen, and I shouted in fear. Sar’vana’s muzzle was withdrawn in a snarl, far above her long canines, giving her a wild, almost feral look. The leader, seeming to fight off his own panic, shouted something, and the two remaining gunmen opened fire. But Sar’vana was quicker, and she was in the air before they could shoot. With inhuman grace and speed, she twisted in midair and landed on her feet behind them, inches ahead of the bullets, and just in time for the gunmen to empty their clips. Her back partially obscured my view of the fight. In a flash of gray and black, a mist of blood sprayed from the second assailant, and he staggered back, clutching his throat. Making gurgling noises, he collapsed to the ground. Sar’vana’s hand was stretched out away from her body, and I saw her weapon: a small, curved stiletto. A drop of blood fell from it before the final gunman’s terror-widened eyes –which remained wide open in death as Sar’vana thrust the blade deep into his chest. Silently, he went down like a felled tree.
Sar’vana’s snarling growl faded away, and she turned around, grasping the edge of the bed where I lay, panting for some time, and trembling all over. She wiped her muzzle, and withdrew a hand that had a tiny smear of blood from the second gunman’s severed artery. She shook the blood free of her fur as her wide, violet eyes settled on me
“Jules! Are you okay?” She said, her face gentle once again, but wrenched in grief. She leaned over and stole a moment to nuzzle my cheek. Her gentle purring echoed loudly in my ear, and my heart burst forth a torrent of love. I wanted to hold her to me, but the straps prevented me.
“Oh, my li-ah,” she whispered, placing her velvety hand upon my cheek. “I was worried sick! I knew something was wrong when you didn’t show up at Blue Point, but I didn’t know what happened until I tried to go to your home. It was crawling with police, and your neighbors practically chased me out with pitchforks and torches. The authorities weren’t very cooperative, and it took father and I hours to find you!”
“Hours?” I said as Sar’vana began to unbuckle my restraints. “Wha- what do you…?”
“Jules, you were gone for five hours!” Sar’vana said, pausing in her work to eye me with a blank stare. “You mean you don’t know?”
“Not all that,” I said. “They found out about us, Vani.”
“How?”
As she worked to free me, I explained what happened with Keisha. No sooner than I had mentioned her name, however, Sar’vana scowled.
“It’s not what you think,” I said. “We didn’t do anything. Well, at least I didn’t.”
“What do you mean?” she asked, eyeing me with understandable suspicion. But I was not about to back down at this. She trusted me, and I was determined to make sure that her trust was well-placed.
“She came on to me,” I said with no trepidation. “I didn’t do anything; she was moving so fast, I couldn’t get a word in edgewise. Then she found out about us.”
“How?”
My bed,” I said. “She practically threw me in it. I hadn’t cleaned it off yet, and she got a nice handfull of fur. And she read your note. That’s how I got these bumps and bruises. All the commotion attracted the police, and they found out the rest. All I remember after being brought to the precinct was being led into a room with a chair. I was told to sit down, and then the next thing I know, I’m in here.”
The restraint fell from my wrist and I undid the strap that bound my left hand. Immediately, I sat up and grasped Sar’vana’s forearms with a bit more vigor than I’d wanted, but with the same gentleness as when we made love.
“Vani, I know it sounds really suspicious, but I swear to you that I did nothing. Keisha pried her way into my home; she came on to me; I tried to bow out, but she was persistent. If the condition of the bed, or your note hadn’t stopped her, I would’ve ended up shoving her off of me if I had to. I love you so much, and I’d never be so fickle as to jump in someone else’s pants so quickly. Any of my family could tell you that I’m not that easy. I love only you.”
Before she could speak, I pulled her into a kiss for as long as I dared. She stiffened for a bit longer than she had during our first kiss, but eventually relaxed and reciprocated. And when it ended, she returned my smile before going to work on my legs.
“I guess they kept me sedated while I was being prepped for surgery,” I observed, and snorted in the direction of the door. “Looks like they waited too long.”
“Good for us, eh?” Sar’vana said with a teasing smile. She quickly unlatched the restraints on my ankles, and I slid off of the bed. “And Jules?”
I paused and shot her a questioning glance.
“I believe you.”
My wounds still hurt, but they did not stop me from pulling Sar’vana into another passionate, thankful kiss.
“Looks like I owe you twice, my li-ah,” I said afterwards, and then looked around, pausing at the device the Zadians had placed on the door. “How did you get in here anyway? I recognize that device; It was like the thing you had on my door back at home.”
“It was,” Sar’vana said. “But who knows where it came from? Some pirate cartels deal in scavenged technology, especially that of my people. As for how I got here …” She patted the pouch upon her belt and flashed another mischievous grin. “There’s a lot you don’t know about us.”
I nodded, accepting this semblance of explanation. I’d heard that Felyans had mastered matter transportation, but it was the first time that I had seen it in action. Still holding her close, I allowed this moment, still protected by the Felyan device on the door that guaranteed our privacy to just be with her.
“I’m so sorry, li-ah,” I said as we rocked together in each other’s arms, still not quite having recovered from the events of mere moments ago. “I wanted so much to meet you at Blue Point, but … well, so much has happened.”
“Father and I figured as much,” Sar’vana said.
“It’s a lot more than just what I told you about Keisha,” I replied.
“I figured that as well,” Sar’vana’s voice betrayed a hint of morose humor as she gestured towards the corpses upon the floor, amongst splatters and pools of blood that made glaring patterns of deep red upon the room’s sterile white.
“That’s why we need to speak with your father,” I said. “This is bad. Really bad. He’ll need to know about …”
I caught it in my peripheral vision. It seemed that the first gunman that Sar’vana had subdued had not been not quite dead as previously thought. At the sight of the glint of the gun’s silver barrel tip in the overhead lights, I spun like a top, unsheathing Sar’vana’s stiletto and throwing it in one fluid motion. I had never been the best thrower when Chester trained me, but today, my strike, born of fear and seat-of-the-pants thinking, was deadly accurate. The knife buried itself handle-deep in the man’s skull just as the gun went off. I had already been in the process of jumping in Sar’vana’s way in order to shield her when I felt the bullet strike. A burning pain seared my shoulder, coupled with a force that felt like the tail end of a two-by-four clipping me. It nearly sent me spinning.
“Jules!” Sar’vana screamed, as I grasped the edge of the bed. Agony fired through my injured arm, and I toppled backwards with a dissonant cry. Sar’vana grabbed me to break my fall, but was not strong enough to handle my weight. It was all she could do to ease me to the ground, and even this was a strain for her.
“I … I think it only grazed me,” I said, turning to look at my shoulder. There was a great deal of blood and the wound was deep, but the bullet had merely carved a groove in the flesh, rather than penetrated it full-on.
“Oh, Jules…” Sar’vana keened, her hands hovering gingerly over my wound.
“I’ll be all right,” I said, my mind focused back on the task at hand. “It’s me those guys wanted. I think the Zadians got worried when I ran out of that brothel.”
“Brothel?” Sar’vana repeated in a shrill, incredulous tone. She eyed me with a look that was both of borderline hurt and suspicion.
“Like Keisha, it is not what you think,” I said, my voice even and with a level of conviction that mollified her. “It was Chester’s damn fool idea, and I went along with it because he didn’t tell me.”
“But why would these men have wanted to kill you for going to a brothel?” Sar’vana said, and I could see that she was genuinely confused. She most likely had no idea what the Zadians were doing, and this made things much clearer for me.
“It’s what I saw,” I explained, “and my reaction to it. Vani, I don’t know how to break this to you easy, so I’ll just say it. They’re using Felyans as sex slaves.”
“What?” I’d never thought it possible for her voice to have risen to so high an octave, but thank God she believed me. Her look of horrified shock changed swiftly to seething anger as she snarled at the bodies of the Zadians who had nearly ended me. I believe that she was considering how to make them even deader than they already were.
“Let’s get your clothes,” Sar’vana said. She seemed to have recovered from her brief rage, but her voice was almost monotone, and terse as she and I went over to the table where my clothes lay neatly folded. Though the pain seared through my shoulder, I managed to ease myself back into a standing position. With my injured arm, I was unable to carry the bundle, and I had no wish to stain them with the blood that had only now stopped flowing with the pressure I placed on it, so Sar’vana took the clothes into her arms and headed for the empty spot in the room where she had appeared.
“Stand beside me,” she said, and when we stood side by side in that open area, she touched a blue stud in her ear that I hadn’t noticed before. She spoke in Felyan, but used words that I was unfamiliar with.
“Close your eyes, li-ah,” Sar’vana said, and I obeyed.
I was glad that I had, because the light was so bright that it shone through my eyelids. There was the same high-pitched whine, and then I was struck with a momentary feeling of vertigo. It only lasted a split-second, and then it vanished with the light.
The floor beneath me felt strange, and I stumbled. I steadied myself, then opened my eyes to truly alien surroundings.
9
I had never been inside a Felyan ship before
. Few humans had. I’d loaded slag countless times onto many kinds of human starships, and had my own glimpses of their interiors. Even the sturdiest and cleanest were not much to look at on the inside; they were not unlike the corridors of our cities in Valis, basically tin cans with lit and furnished interiors.
Felyan ships were unlike anything I had ever expected.
As I was guided to the infirmary by the two Hara’kya Felyan guards from the room in which we arrived, I gawked at the interior of the corridor. It was made entirely of wood, pure and natural, filling my nostrils with a spicy scent.
As if it were grown to naturally fit around the parts of a ship, the wooden walls were not pieced together from paneling by adhesive or nails; rather, they seemed to be all one solid piece, flowing with natural smoothness about ventilation ducts, access panels, and glowing green masses that produced a sultry, near-white light. A tiled floor and octagonal doors of highly polished steel covered the ground and walls between the living framework. It was as if someone jammed technology into the body of a tree with glowing blisters of sap, and the tree had naturally given way for these contrasting fixtures.
“The light comes from special bioluminescent algae native to our world,” Sar’vana explained, seeing my fascination. She suppressed a giggle as she led me on. Throughout our stroll, my sense of wonder overrode the searing pain in my shoulder. “We have more of it in the ventilation ducts, which recycles oxygen. They’re all engineered for the job. They work much better than the chemically-based atmospheric scrubbers in human ships.”
One of the two black-furred guards, a female, I surmised by the pitch of the voice, said something that I translated with uncertainty as, “Don’t give away the homeworld, my lady.” Sar’vana paused to hiss at her, and I suppressed a laugh. The guard bellowed a dog-like barking laugh of her own, along with her companion.
