The woman reached out to Payton and caught her flailing hand. “You’ll have plenty of time to debate who and what I am later.”
“Your doctor needed a keeper of the soul. I chose you as the vessel to harbor her soul through the night.”
“Leela was already dying. I needed to keep the general away long enough that she died from what I gave her and not from him killing her. That’s what we fought for. No one understood why, but they fought just the same. After she died, I needed you to keep her on the planet. It was your genuine grief that could not be mimicked that worked in our favor. I knew she would survive, and I wanted to kill the general.”
“When you spent the night watching over my child like a grief-stricken mother, you earned the title the children have given you. You are now Signy.” The female disappeared.
“What does Signy mean?”
“You are the mother of the people. You will always be honored with that title,” Leela told her.
“I’m not.”
“You are. I am the leader, but you are the mother.” Leela threw her head back and laughed. “I wonder how long it has been since the leader had to deal with the mother of the people. They will come to you as the mother as they come to me as the leader.”
“I have a question. Why did the general say he needed to break the connection between you and the planet?” Malic asked her.
“My people have always been connected to the planet through our goddess. The one he believes doesn’t exist. He believed that as long as I was alive, the goddess would rule that planet. He is a fool. The goddess rules wherever she fits.” Leela opened her hand, and the window to the medbay flew open. Outside, the ground shifted, and beautiful neon colored rocks came from the planet like a geyser. “Now, she will rule here.”
“Not it!” Payton screamed. “I will not be the one to tell the command triad that not only have they inherited a people, a goddess, and a planet with the most sought-after mineral in the galaxy. Nope, someone else gets that emotional joy.”
They all looked at her before laughing so hard she a sure she saw tears. “Let’s go tell the people their leader is alive and well.”
Payton sat on the couch, covered with a blanket as she looked at the fireplace. The fire wasn’t red. Someone, somewhere, understood that better than she did. It burned and gave off heat, and that’s all that mattered. Now, if only she had some hot chocolate.
Malic curled up next to her. Cassic and Leela were arguing about the primary components of their bodies and their differences. Along with how each planet changed the physiology of the beings that lived on it. She left that conversation with a promise to ask Isaac Asimov if she ever met him in the afterlife.
It had been a week since the general had come. They had a party that lasted for days to celebrate the defeat of the general. The rainy season was finally here. She couldn’t keep her eyes off Cassic and Malic. Every day she expected to wake up and find them gone without her being able to say a final goodbye. Every time they were still alive, she held close to her chest the possibility that they weren’t going to die.
She got up to walk to the window when she felt light-headed. She staggered, catching herself before she crossed the room.
“Payton?” Cassic came up behind her.
“I’m fine; there’s not a lot to do in the rainy season. I’m probably taking it too easy.”
“Since it just started raining yesterday. I think we should check you out. What happened?”
“I felt kind of light-headed as I was walking. Maybe I got up too fast. No exams, haven’t we had enough of them?” She pressed herself to him and placed kisses on his neck. “I’m more concerned about you and Malic.”
“We are stable. Our numbers are trending towards normal.”
“That’s good, right?”
“I don’t know. I should have spent more time talking to Julze about what to expect.”
“I love watching the rain. I always have. When I was little, I would stand in the doorway and catch the tail end of the rain as it made small splashes against my skin. The thunder would make me jump, and the lightning always scared me, but I loved the sounds and the smell of rain. It fired my imagination but calmed my body. It doesn’t surprise me that a planet as fertile s this one has a rainy season. I can’t wait to see the fields brimming with food.”
“It will be beautiful. Life. There was a time females walked around carrying offspring in their wombs.”
Payton turned, prepared to laugh when she realized that Cassic would have never seen that in his lifetime.
“How are children created on Hasian’s?”
“Each citizen donates genetic material after they reach a certain age. The children are kept in vats until they are born.”
“How is it done on earth?”
“There are now many ways, but for the most part, we are still using the old-fashioned method. The male and female have sex. He gets her pregnant; she carries the baby for approximately nine months. The child is born.”
“I can’t imagine how afraid the female must be.”
“Fear is relative. There are some things to worry about or fear. Then there are so many joyous moments along the way. You get good with the bad. Can we call it a night?”
“We can. I don’t know if our children can be conceived within the body of a female.”
Payton thought about that as she got ready for bed. Should the Hasian’s be praised for finding a way to keep their society alive, or should they be reprimanded for doing away with all females? She wasn’t there when it happened, but she had already learned valuable action about holding everyone accountable for one person’s actions.
“Goodnight,” she whispered, snuggling into the arms of her males.
The words were loud, rough, and guttural. They hurt her ears even as she tried to move away from them. The scene changed, and she was being chased by the biggest crocodile she’d ever seen. For reasons that made no sense, she had the Speed Racer song going through her head. It was fast and encouraged her to keep her speed up.
One stood in front of her, standing on its hind legs
A scream poured through her as she tried to fight against the bindings that were holding her down. Freedom, she wanted freedom.
Those words came again. They tore at the synapses in her brain, causing them to misfire. She screamed. The sound faded as the pain left. The words still fuzzy and pain-filled; now, they were also understandable. She sat straight up in bed and screamed.
Arms held her, restraining her. She screamed and struggled curse words she would never have thought to use left her lips as she fought for her life before she finally collapsed. There was no escape, but she swore she would keep trying. She’d die before she gave into the alien pestilence that was experimenting on her.
Her name slowly penetrated a brain that was fogged fatigued. Words should make no sense, but she was there even as strong hands caressed her gentling her like she was a child suffering from a nightmare.
“Love, baby.” The voices said repeatedly even as she was cradled in more arms than seemed possible.
When she opened her eyes, she was staring into the worried faces of her males. “What happened?” Her voice was raspy. It might have been from the screams or the tears flowing down her cheeks.
“You woke up screaming,” Malic told her.
“I dreamed I was…” She grabbed her head and started to scream, rocking back and forth.
Cassic grabbed his scanner. Then he gave her an injection that loosened her muscles. She sank onto the bed, looking at them with wide eyes.
“The Fulyer are coming for me.”
Chapter Twenty-three
Malic and Cassic spent the night pacing as they kept guard over Payton.
“We can’t leave her.”
“Tell that to our bodies that are forcing a shutdown. They call it a biological imperative,” Cassic hissed at his mate. “Don’t you think I would stop it if I could?”
“It makes no sense. Our
children are grown outside the female body. We have jewels that helps to focus both our thoughts and our strength. Our planet has almost no disease. Why are males dying if they do not find their female mate by a certain age?”
“It’s an interesting question. One, you would not be asking unless you were in a situation like this. Tell me, Malic, how are we dying?”
“It’s coded into our cells?”
“I only have a theory, but that’s what I believe. They use it as a natural defense system to get rid of the undesirables. Also known as the ones who have an old sequence of Biometric DNA.”
“Why don’t they eliminate them at birth?”
“Every Hasian male born has the sequence.”
“It doesn’t activate in all of us?”
“Much like a recessive gene. They don’t understand what combination of genes and lifestyle choices bring it about. They wait until it becomes active when it does. It triggers a failure in the basic building blocks of life.”
“You can’t stop it?”
“I could spend a lifetime and not come close to the solution.”
Malic opened his arms. Cassic walked in, seeking comfort.
“Life is like,” Payton whispered, her throat dry. “When you think you have it all together, it regroups to kick you in the balls.” She pushed herself up until she was leaning against the backboard. “Except the three of us will not go down without a fight.”
“How are you feeling?”
“Like someone beat me up,” She grinned as Cassic ran his scanner over her. “Fess up, who kicked me last night?”
“If only it were that simple,” Malic told her. “I think you had a nightmare. Then you announced the Fulyer were coming before passing out.”
Her hand went to her head, where she rubbed it and groaned. “It was a nightmare. I remembered what they did to me. It was worse the second time around because this time I understood what they said.”
“How’s that possible?” Cassic looked at Malic.
“I heard them in my brain. Sounds that made no sense became words in my mind that cut through me, leaving me helpless.”
“That’s impossible.” Malic brought his scanner up to her, focusing on the translator in her brain stem. “Your translator translated what you heard in the dream. It’s not programmed for that language, which is why there was pain.”
“How could that happen?”
Cassic didn’t say anything. He dressed, picked her up, and carried her to medbay. Several hours later, he was sitting close to her going over images. He pulled an image up in the surrounding air.
“Do you see this area here?”
“I do. Why is it highlighted in red?”
“That is a large part of your language system. Normally, it would be the same color as the rest of your systems. Everything you see in black, white, or gray is functioning normally. Everything in a different color the Fulyer experimented on. Down here is where I inserted the translator.” He drew a circle around the area with one long finger. “When I did, there were obvious signs of distress in this area. When you dreamed about them last night, your already compromised language system fired up the translator teaching it a new language.”
She stood, taking it all in before she began to pace. “Coming across my planet was just the luck of the draw. Their planet is dying. They found a new place but wanted to explore the portion of the galaxy they were forced out of so long ago. They were looking for you when they found me. The experiments are what they do. I was just another biological entity to them.” She went to the window, watching the rain that hadn’t let up since it started.
“It wasn’t until they received the call to come back that they realized I would be helpful. I withstood all their experimentations, and I was able to carry the extra meat needed for when their children hatched in space on their way to the new world. They decided to go back to my world and farm it for a new food supply they could take with them.”
“Why are they coming after you?”
“The only coordinates to my planet were on the ship I was on. Also, all the research was on that ship. They can’t track it, but they can track me.”
“Why?”
“They didn’t know what enemies they would find here. They only had two ships they could send and didn’t want to risk losing both.”
“They are coming after you?” Malic asked. Hopeful that maybe he was in a nightmare.
“They are.”
“We won’t be hiding in the trees this time.”
“Where are you going?”
“To make a battle plan. Then I’ll send a plea for help to the Falling water. After all that, I plan to negotiate several more days of life with a goddess. You know, your average everyday thing.”
“I don’t exactly make his life easy, do I?”
“He doesn’t need easy; he needs love. Between the two of us, we give him more than he can handle.”
*~*~*~*
Payton wanted to be anywhere except here. They created several lean-to’s as well as dug holes used to capture the enemy. The bait would be her with the hope that if everything went sideways, they would take her and leave everyone else.
The Fulyer were harder to locate than the Casillians were. When Malic found them, he sent out a second message to the Falling Water to update them. They just received the first message from the Falling Water. It would be close with no guarantee they could make it in time.
The ship moved in uncloaking over the north. They wanted them to know they were there.
“I’m trying to get a scan on their ship. I wish Sassy were here,” he was talking aloud, but not aimed at anyone.
“One again, the skin of the Fulyer is tough. I’ve tipped the weapons with a poison that will help to take them down if you can get it past the skin into a soft membrane. Eyes, ears, nose, genitals. I don’t care where just get it there.”
The warriors nodded in agreement, picking up their weapons before going to battle stations. Cassic gave a very human grunt learned from Payton at the thought of calling them warriors. They had fought the Casillians with luck and the help of the goddess. The goddess who was now ignoring them.
“They’re transferring down,” Malic called out.
Payton ran to the cave entrance. This where those not fighting were hiding.
“What is that?” They were coming down with a thin tubing around them that disappeared when they reached land.
“I don’t know,” Cassic turned to look at Malic, who was still buried deep in the computer program he was running.
“Will they make it?” Payton asked, keeping her eye on the landscape in front of them.
“Let’s hope so. Either way, we have to deal with the ones who landed on our planet.” There was a loud war cry as the first battle began. They grabbed weapons and ran into the chaos.
The Fulyer lived up to every nightmare she had about them. They were easily eight feet tall when they stood on their hind legs. They reminded her of crocodiles from the earth. Their skin was a deep green with a leather look to it. It was also thick; they had protrusions on their back that could kill if you fell on one. Their hands were tipped with vicious claws they used to rip apart living beings. When they did surgery, they used a mental hand that made the precise movements for them.
Every group had four or five fighters in it. There was no way they could fight the Fulyer one on one and survive. She managed to sneak off from her group. If this were the beginning, she’d think she had a death wish. Maybe she did. The thought of being separated from Malic and Cassic cut.
She took out the voice modulator that Malic gave her before crawling around the fighting to get to the Fulyer that was standing guard but not engaging. If she survived this, she was going to make sure the whole planet was covered in AstroTurf. The ground was hell on her knees.
“What did you do to get put in time out?” Her voice was soft, knowing that the translator would make it harder. The language itself would give it a nasty edge. It was part of who t
he Fulyer were.
The guard looked around, his eyes narrowing before he finally found her.
“Surprise sucker, I understand your language.” She had no idea if the box in her hands was translating her words correctly, but she had to try. “You are under arrest…”
Yep, that was her cue to run. It went down to all fours. They were faster that way. It was a good thing she didn’t have far to go. She was already panting as she approached her destination. That buzzing sound started again, and she knew there was no way she was going to make it. At the last moment, she fell rolling down the incline, waiting to feel the Fulyer’s long sharp teeth biting into her leg. When she was able to stop, there was no one behind her. She climbed the hill to find the Fulyer in the deep pit.
Payton sat at the side before looking for her bird. There was something going on, and she didn’t think it had anything to do with the Fulyer.
“Do you like the pit?” She leaned in to see him hissing in anger when it couldn’t manage to climb the walls.
“Bitch.”
“Somebody taught you a bad word. I’d wash your mouth out with soap, but the teeth. I know you and your people are leaving your planet. Good for you, but why here? Why me?”
“You’re asking the wrong one.” A Fulyer she hadn't heard came from behind her. Before she could move, his hand was sunk deep in her chest.
*~*~*~*
“Sassy,” Captain Rale called. “Is that cloaking device functioning?”
“It is.”
“Engage.”
“The shield is up and working at one hundred percent efficiency.”
“Get me a visual of what’s happening, planet side.”
“Aye, Captain.”
Rale looked up before shaking his head. His AI seemed to be growing and maturing into a separate being all her own, but he knew that was impossible.
Different pictures of the fight came across the screen.
“We have to help them.”
“There’s nothing we can do as long as this ship is here,” Rale told Neveah as he paced in front of his seat. “Anyone have an idea?”
Payton's Surprise (The Perfect Match Book 2) Page 14
