by Stella Sky
“It doesn’t matter what happens anymore,” Malnia said. “The males are all off to war or dying in an effort to liberate our people. I have half a mind to go to Earth to start over.”
“Perhaps the laws governing the Verians on Earth will change and we can both benefit from an agreeable separation,” I said with a sigh. “But for now, perhaps it is best if we try to avoid one another.”
“Agreed,” Malnia said, though judging by the look on her face, I had a feeling that she was far from a state of leaving well enough alone. She wanted vengeance, and I could only shudder to guess what she might do to seek it. Her father wouldn’t find it a punishable offense for me to breed with a human; after all, it had been a direct order from the doyan, but what else might Malnia accuse me of so that I lost favor with her father?
I left the room with these concerns on my mind and almost turned to the refuge of the guest bedroom. However, another female was in there. This time, an impregnated, moody human who was furious at the simple fact that I even existed.
The worst part about it was that I truly cared for her. I just had no idea what to do. If I wanted to prove it to her, I could try to rescue her young brother from the prison, but then I would no longer have the leverage I needed for her to cure me of the horrific disease that had been plaguing me for far too long. Not only that, but it would make me appear weak to Malnia and her father, and I would likely lose rank among my people.
I sighed. It seemed there was no winning when it came to developing feelings for this human. It felt worse having her angry at me than it ever had feeling the wrath of Malnia’s temper. At least with Malnia, I knew that most of her reasons for anger were self-centered and unwarranted. But with the human, all I could do was feel terrible for my misdeeds and wish in vain for some way to make it up to her.
Somehow, she had the real power over me. Malnia was right to feel threatened. Christina was the one who occupied my thoughts and motivated my actions. I would just have to choose those actions more carefully from now on. Especially if I was ever going to find a way to regain her trust.
***
“Jaize, you are needed at the training grounds,” Commander Karhal said. I sighed. It was the third time this week that he had sent me to deal with the most problematic, self-righteous men on the entire force. He knew just how much I loathed going there. None of the Verians there had any respect for authority of any type.
“Right away,” I said, sighing heavily. I walked to the doorway and began pulling on my uniform when a dark form in the hallway caused me to pause.
“Going out again, I see,” Malnia said, a self-satisfied grin on her face. Of course, I knew who was to blame for this. Whenever we had a fight of any kind, she told her father everything from her own perspective. The man took joy in giving me the horrible jobs that nobody else in their right mind would ever want to do. Seeing me struggle to keep my composure with the men in this particular squad seemed to give him great pleasure. He was waiting for the day when my patience would be fully tried, and I would lose my temper in full. Then he would be free to reprimand me in any way that he saw fit.
I was determined not to let it happen, and if I showed even the slightest bit of displeasure to Malnia, it would give my boss a sick satisfaction that made my blood boil. And so I smiled as brightly as I possibly could.
“You know how troublesome many of the troops can be. Particularly those who have been out on the field for a long time, only to be brought home with nothing to do. We will keep their hands busy for a while until it is their turn to be deployed again; don’t you worry about that.”
Malnia’s smile faltered slightly, and I left, an unmistakable sense of satisfaction coursing through me. Still, it didn’t last long. I mounted my thuse, taking a look at the window of the guest room where Christina was laying, her abdomen swollen slightly with child. She was being left alone with my malicious wife, and I had no way of making sure that she was safe. All I could really do was ask the Pelin chef to keep an eye on her, and since we were on friendly terms, or so I liked to believe, I could trust that he would do his best. But the small, hairy man was no match for the power of a Verian’s temper, especially Malnia’s, and it seemed reckless to put them both in harm’s way by leaving.
Regardless, fulfilling my duty was of the utmost importance, and my leg was starting to feel better on its own, well enough that I could walk again, if only with a slight limp. It made it difficult to keep up with some of the soldiers, but for the most part, I knew how to keep up appearances. If any of them knew that I had been stricken with the disease, they would avoid me like the plague. Nobody knew whether or not it was contagious, and nobody wanted to find out.
I couldn’t let them though, as it would give them something to hold over my head. I could only hope that if I was able to get Christina’s brother out of prison, she would still uphold her end of the bargain, despite the fact that she was now with child and would likely never forgive me. She thought the only reason I had lain with her the night our child was conceived was because it was my duty to create a hybrid with her, when in fact I had been burning for her from the moment I had laid eyes upon her. It seemed the cruelty of this life knew no ends.
“Yul Lorna!”
I grimaced at the sound of the most outspoken soldier on the squad, a boy named Jareal.
“Good afternoon, soldier,” I said, standing in expectation of a salute. He gave me nothing and continued on his way, and I sighed, wondering whether or not to let it go. It seemed unwise to pick a fight with a young man who was eager to shed blood as opposed to sitting on his hands and waiting for orders, so I decided to choose my battle. It would do no harm to let the boy continue walking. I hadn’t been feeling well at all throughout the week. It would be a while before I could stand up for myself again. I wasn’t stupid enough to pick fights that I couldn’t win.
“Commander! Come here and check this out! It’s hilarious!”
Nothing any of these men had ever claimed to be funny ever struck me that way, and I braced myself for something crude as I turned to walk toward the man who had summoned me.
My stomach dropped when I saw the young human boy standing in the middle of a circle of men. His face was flushed a deep red color, and his eyes were watering with strain as he attempted to maintain a squatted position while every Verian man in the area took turns filling his arms with heavy things.
The boy was just tiny, around ten Earth years, and I recognized him immediately. It was Christina’s brother Lucas.
“What is the meaning of this?” I asked, stomping through the circle of laughing men and swatting all of the garbage off of the boy’s arms. I gripped him by the neck and pulled him upright until he was standing tall beside me as he attempted to catch his breath.
“The prison shipped him out here to see if he could be of any use to us. So far, the answer is a big no,” Heane Vagios said, unable to keep the laughter out of his voice. “I mean, they could at least send us a hybrid! What the hell is this kid doing here anyway?”
“That is a good question,” I said. “I’m going to find that out.”
I shoved the boy in front of me and led him to the commander’s tent for privacy. The rest of the men hollered with laughter as they collected their rubbish from the ground, and I did my best to contain my anger.
The boy was clearly terrified, and I sat him down at the round table in the middle of the room and poured him a glass of refreshing iean from the cooler. It was on hand for anybody who hurt or strained themselves minorly, but it was also one of the most satisfying and delicious drinks on the planet Helna that was still available.
The boy drank it greedily, and I smiled sadly at him.
“Have they been picking on you for long?” I asked, sitting down across from him. The boy regarded me with suspicion in his dark brown eyes before he finally nodded.
“Since I got here.”
“When was that?” I asked.
“Yesterday.”
I sighed.
It didn’t surprise me.
“What are you supposed to be doing here?”
“They said they were going to test out whether or not I was ready to train for war.”
“For war, huh? Do you know anything about war?” I asked.
The boy nodded grimly, and I thought of his parents, how they had been killed by the horrifically efficient weapons of my people. There wouldn’t even have been a body left for the boy and his sister to say good bye to.
“And what do you think? Would you say you’re ready for war?”
“I don’t want to,” he said, with sudden fire in his eyes. He looked at me seriously, as if ready to do whatever bargaining he had to do in order to maintain his life away from the battlefield. “I can fix things sometimes! Maybe I can just work on, like, machines and stuff like that. But I don’t want to go to war or be a soldier. Especially not if it means being around assholes like them all the time.”
I almost expected the boy to cry, as his sister had been prone to do since the beginning of her pregnancy, but he looked at me evenly, waiting for my response with a kind of grim determination. He would accept his fate, no matter what that happened to be. And as far as he knew, I was the enemy. And frankly, I wasn’t so sure that I wasn’t.
“Well, I’m not really in charge of what happens to you,” I told him evenly. His face fell, but his lips stayed set in a grim line of determination. “But I will put a word in to my friend in the prison that you would do better elsewhere. Between you and me, the guys here, they’re awful. I wouldn’t be working here if I didn’t have to be.”
“Why do you have to be?” Luke asked.
“My boss doesn’t like me very much, so he gives me bad jobs sometimes.”
“Why?”
“You ask a lot of questions, Luke.”
The boy flinched. “How do you know my name?”
I stammered for a moment, unsure of how to answer him.
“I know things,” I said, deciding to keep it mysterious. Kids were always more accepting of mystery than adults; at least I had always thought so. I had never encountered one who asked so many questions though. Especially to their captors. He and his sister were both fearless, it seemed. I couldn’t help but admire it.
“All right. Well, don’t tell any of them what my real name is. My parents always told me that if I got caught, to give them the name Max. So just call me Max, all right?”
“All right,” I agreed. Though I couldn’t help but think that Verians wouldn’t give a single care about what the boy’s name was. all that mattered was whether or not he had a function. Otherwise, he would be deemed unworthy of the resources that were being allocated to him. Helna was already lacking. Having another person on the planet to care for who wasn’t serving the express purpose of winning the war was just a waste of space and resources.
“Why don’t you spend the rest of the day working on laundry duty, Max?” I said.
If he was out of the way, then he was less likely to get picked on. It was the very least that I could do for his situation. At the end of the day, he was going to be shipped back to the prison, and probably sentenced to spend the rest of his days there until an execution was scheduled. These men were clearly not going to allow him to join their ranks, unless they wanted somebody to mess with. But even then they weren’t stupid enough to put someone who couldn’t do the job on their squad. It would put every single one of them in immense danger.
“The laundry?” Lucas whined. “That’s girl stuff!”
I grinned. “Actually, the laundry can be done by anybody. I guess you would prefer to be out there with the rest of the men then? If that’s the case, then there is nothing more that I can do for you.”
Lucas sighed and shook his head. “I’ll just do the laundry.”
“Good boy,” I said, standing from my chair. I led Luke to the laundry tent and showed him the basics. I watched him until I was satisfied and then went out to deal with the rest of the soldiers, hoping that the day would bring no more unexpected surprises.
Chapter 8
Dr. Christina Evans (MD)
“Meal time, Dr. Evans.”
I smiled at the kind voice of the Pelin chef, who had agreed to call me by my preferred title, unlike everybody else in the house. It was comforting to know that someone was capable of respect.
Jaize had been gone for several hours, and the house had seemed quiet without him. I had heard and Malnia exchange words before he left. Although their tones always seemed subdued, I could tell that they were at the end of their ropes with each other.
“Please enjoy,” the Pelin said, bowing deeply for me. I couldn’t see his face, but he had been very kind over the past few days, waiting on me if I needed anything and always there if I was feeling ill from the pregnancy.
I had been shocked to find that he didn’t have a name; none of the Pelin did. It was part of their culture, and they had been colonized by the Verians and had pledged loyalty to them. They were underappreciated slaves, from what I could tell, and waited on the Verians hand and foot for anything they could possibly ask for.
“Thank you,” I said. I had learned to slow down on my eating, as eating too rapidly could make the sickness even more powerful. I had begun displaying some fairly typical signs of pregnancy for a human, such as swollen breasts and a sensitivity to smells, and some rather uncommon signs that I assumed came from the Verian side of things. For example, my skin had taken on an ashy sheen, so that my skin looked somewhat more the color of Jaize or Malnia, and my stomach was swelling rapidly, unlike in a human pregnancy.
The Pelin had informed me that I was going to be due within five months of pregnancy—at least that was the average for the human women who had been impregnated in the prison. He seemed highly interested in such matters, and we held long conversations over my meals, as neither of us had anybody else to talk to. He was a sweet little man, if a little odd at times, and I quickly grew fond of him.
“How was your sleep, Dr. Evans?” the Pelin asked as I slowly worked my way through my meal.
“It was…challenging,” I answered honestly. It had been bothering me that Jaize saw no future for our child other than in aiding the war effort. He had called my abduction ‘Operation Super Soldier’ when he’d spoken to his superiors once he had me in his custody, and now I knew why. The Verian-human hybrid children were strong and capable, and he had been wanting one of his own. It had been so stupid of me to let him have his way. I couldn’t think of any way I would possibly be able to forgive him.
“Sorry to hear that. If you’d like, I could make you—”
“Leave us.”
The food in my stomach suddenly felt heavy when Malnia’s voice sounded in the doorway. The Pelin nodded graciously to her and left the room, leaving me alone in the tiny kitchen area with Jaize’s wife. This was never good.
“Hello, Malnia,” I said, standing up from the table. She was significantly taller than me, and I didn’t like the way that she was towering over me, with that distinct look of malice in her eyes.
“I have a task for you,” she said, not bothering with niceties. “If you do not do it, you will be in direct violation of your terms for staying here.”
I stood, doing my best to smile pleasantly at her. I had learned that people like this were even more infuriated by other people’s pleasure, and from the dark glint in Malnia’s eye, I knew that this was true of her.
“Of course,” I said cheerfully. “I would be happy to help with whatever it is you ask.”
A cheerful slave was not a fun slave, we had learned in class, and so it was the first tactic I employed. Malnia scoffed and led the way through the house until we came upon a large room. She pushed the door open, and I immediately started coughing. It was absolutely covered in dust.
Malnia turned the light on, and we walked inside. I gaped at all of the huge furniture inside, covered with white cloths as if somebody inside had once died.
“This is the nursery where I was born
and spent the formative years of my life,” Malnia informed me, a look in her cold eyes that I couldn’t pinpoint. “I want you to get rid of all of the furniture in here. We were going to use it for our own children as a nursery, but I wanted to be sure I would successfully conceive before we prepared a room for a child.”
“You want me to move the furniture?” I asked incredulously. “But I’m—”
“And don’t just leave it scattered about, either. There’s a code for picking up old things like this. If it’s not neat and tidy, they will leave it in front of the house for ages. We wouldn’t want you to have to haul it all to the dump yourself, now would we?”
“Malnia, this is dangerous,” I said, furrowing my brow. “It could hurt the—”
“And don’t forget to clean all of the dust out of the room when you’re finished. I want this place spotless. I’ve decided to take up a new hobby, upon my father’s urging. It will be nice to spend some time in a familiar space.”
“I can’t just—”
Malnia turned to me, her gaze sending a chill down my spine. “If you aren’t up to it, then there are other consequences.”
She was trying to get rid of me, I realized. That, or she legitimately did not want this baby to be born without complications. But since she couldn’t outright harm me or the child, she was going to try to do it with indirect means. I felt sick suddenly, and swallowed hard.
“Of course I’m up to it. Is there anything else you would like me to do for you?”
“Nothing,” she said, the tone of her voice one of disgust. “The last thing I asked you to do, you couldn’t be bothered with. But you will regret not staying away from my husband. He belongs with me, not with you, and there is nothing in this universe that will keep us apart.”