by Robin Lovett
“What?” I stop walking. “She turned into a Ssedez? Just from him biting her?”
Anewtan pauses and looks back at me. “I believe he bit her many times, but yes, our venom seems to have that effect on humans. She is now gold of skin with a dexterous Ssedez tongue and has lovely fangs of her own.”
Nemona is now not only mated to a Ssedez, but she is one. I start walking again and run my tongue over my teeth just thinking what that would be like.
“I believe it was an accident,” she says. “It is not normal for a Ssedez to bite a non-Ssedez.”
A wild ecstatic thought occurs to me. “Did Nemona also get your natural armor?”
“I believe so.”
To be invincible like that, to never be harmed by a blaster or a blade again… I’m now even sorrier Gahnin refused to bite me. I suppose that was why—he didn’t want to make one of his enemies invincible.
Anewtan says quietly, so no one around us can hear, “You know what it means that Gahnin’s fangs come out when he’s near you, right?”
“He’s turned on by me.” I surmised that on my own. I don’t know why she thinks that’s not obvious. She doesn’t respond. “Gahnin said his mate died. How long ago was that?”
“Tiortan died in the final year of the war with the Ten Systems. She was aboard a civilian cruiser that the Ten Systems destroyed.”
“Oh.” That explains a lot of Gahnin’s anger toward me. I pause to do that math. “But that was over a hundred years ago.” More than a human lifetime.
“The Ssedez live near a thousand years. For him to only mourn Tiortan for such a short time is…well…” Her voice gets tight. “On our home world, it would be very shocking, but this planet, Fyrian, is making us all do strange things we would not normally do.”
I frown at the back of her head. Her implication that Gahnin had sex with me only because of the desidre is…sort of true, I guess. But it wrenches my heart to hear it that way. He could’ve chosen anyone; he could’ve found someone else to help me feed my desidre, but he didn’t. He chose to do it himself, so Anewtan can make excuses for him all she likes. He’s attracted to me, despite me being human, despite humans killing his mate.
Whoa, it suddenly really hits me what that means. He must be attracted to me like…a lot. As if I didn’t know that really. I’m still achingly, erotically sore; that’s how well I know it.
Koviye comes to walk beside me, his expression and voice grave, full of a seriousness I’ve never seen from him. “Did Gahnin tell you?”
“He’s not speaking to me.” Which, now I know about his mate’s death at the hands of humans, I wonder he’ll ever speak to me again. My lungs spasm on my breath, and I have to cough it out. I don’t want that. I don’t want this to be over between us.
But am I really expecting us to have contact without wanting to have sex? No.
We have a mission. A ship to repair, a crew to recover, and…who knows what host of other problems wait for us there. Those are priority.
I almost expect Koviye to make a remark about my sexual relationship with Gahnin, but he surprises me.
He almost ignores my mention of Gahnin. “You should know, the Fellamana scanners tracked an unidentified ship orbiting our planet.”
A chill runs over my skin. “What do you mean ‘unidentified’? As in you don’t recognize it, or as in there are no markings?”
“As in there are no markings. It’s flying under stealth. The only reason we even know it’s there is because our satellite is transmitting an image.”
My heartbeat accelerates, and I have to remind myself to breathe. No reason to overreact yet. I school my voice to remain calm. “Can I see the image?”
He pulls a vid from a pocket in his uniform that he donned in place of a robe, which now I think about it, resembles the Ten Systems uniform with its gray panels and black piping. “Here.”
On the screen is a live image from space. The Fellamana planet, red as fire due to the desidre toxin in the atmosphere, is a curve on the edge of the screen, but in the center is a starship. A warship. An ebony, glistening, unmarked, Ten Systems ship. That I recognize like it’s my own.
“Dargule,” I whisper, and my heart flies in my chest. I have to stop walking and center myself.
“Assura, what’s wrong?” Koviye asks.
I start to see spots, and I have to close my eyes and count my breaths and talk myself out of my panic. Dargule is not actually here yet. He’s still in space. He may never come down and enter the atmosphere.
Koviye calls out to the others, and everyone is bustling around me.
“Assura, what is it?” Gahnin’s heavy voice sounds in front of me, and I absurdly, maddeningly, take comfort in him being there.
I reach my hand out. I don’t even have to open my eyes to know it’s shaking.
Gahnin takes my hand and whispers, “You recognize the ship?”
“The Hades.” I open my eyes and meet his. “I used to live on it.”
We race up the trail as fast as our feet will move. It gets steeper.
I juggle Koviye’s radio in my hand, trying every signal, calling, “Jenie, come in. Jenie, can you hear me?” at every station. Koviye communicates with the Fellamana in town on his commlink, telling them to hunker down and prepare for a possible attack.
I’m consumed with guilt. The Fellamana are an isolated, peace-loving species, and we have brought the Ten Systems on them. There’s no doubt Dargule found some way to track the Origin. Some way that I didn’t think of.
And we’re all going to pay for it, with our lives.
I give up on the radio. Jenie must have no signal systems set up. They have no reason to. We’re alone in our rebellion. We have no one to communicate with.
“I’m sorry,” I say to Koviye between panting breaths, my feet padding as fast as they’ll go on the trail.
“Don’t be,” he says, and I swear there’s a smile in his voice. “We’ve been preparing for this day for a long time.”
I don’t have the heart to tell him his people don’t stand a chance against the Hades if Dargule decides to destroy them.
“Just because we don’t fight,” Koviye says, “doesn’t mean we don’t know how to defend ourselves from the Ten Systems. We may be isolated, but we’re not stupid.”
Not wanting to crush his hopes, I don’t respond. There is no scenario in my imagination where the peace-loving, no-tolerance-for-violence Fellamana survive an attack from the Hades.
In front of me, Gahnin passes me a look over his shoulder. He’s thinking what I’m thinking: we’re all screwed.
We’re racing to get to Jenie and the surviving crew, to warn them. They have no satellite imagery to tell them the Hades is orbiting around us right now. Though how the warning will help them, I don’t know. If Dargule decides to enter the atmosphere, to attack us from the air, we have no capability to fight the Hades’s weapons system.
The Origin had the defenses to fight back, but she’s in pieces. Pieces big enough for the Hades to view from space. They’re likely just circling until they find the crash site. Then they’ll destroy what’s left of us.
“How far away are your Ssedez ships?” I ask Gahnin, out of breath. I don’t want to bring his people into this, either, but I have to ask.
“Too far.” His voice is subdued. He knows this is bad. Very bad.
Koviye says behind me, “You must relax and believe me. The Fellamana have our ways. We will protect you all. You will be safe.” His voice seems unlabored by the run.
“What are you planning?” I ask.
“You will see.”
Not wanting to argue, I roll my eyes and move on. Let him cling to his delusions if it gives him hope. It’s not my job to crush his naïve optimism.
We reach the outskirts of the Origin crew’s temporary camp, and the others wait on the edge of the jungle, where the guards to the camp can’t see them.
Since I’m the only one they know, it’s best I go forward alone.
Koviye marches up beside me. “I’ll come with you.”
“I don’t think that’s wise.” I don’t pause in my run, though. Time is too urgent for me to slow and argue with him.
“Jenie knows me. We’ve been introduced.”
If the situation weren’t so dire, I’d probably laugh. “Good luck to you. I hope you don’t get shot with a laser.”
“I’m with you. They won’t shoot me.”
“The only person here who will recognize me without my armor and credentials is Jenie.” Gods, now I think about it, I hope I can get past the guards.
We reach a break in the trees and come to a village of temporary metal structures. I’m glad to see it. They obviously salvaged a lot from the Origin’s wreckage. They should have stockpiled weapons as well.
Not that they’d help against the Hades, but if Dargule actually lands his ship and tries to wage battle with us in person, we’d be able to fight back. Though in any case, I doubt it will last long. There’s no reason why he shouldn’t just blast this whole place from his ship, killing us all.
Well, there’s one reason—me.
He’d want to see the fear on my face as he captures me. He’s that sort of evil. And if he did, if he landed the Hades, I could sneak aboard. Because there are other people on board that ship. People who need my help. The people who I’d promised I’d save and then never did.
This could be my chance to free them from the cages in the bowels of Dargule’s ship. My excitement makes my feet go faster.
The first guard I see is female. She’s dressed in a Ten Systems informal uniform, the gray with black piping on the sides. It’s all we had to wear after launching our rebellion. We’d had no time or resources to make new uniforms, so we ripped the Ten Systems logo patches off our existing ones.
She brightens on seeing me. “Hey, did you just come in off an escape pod?” She puts up a hand to halt my steps.
I stop. “I need to find Jenie. Do you know where she is?”
“Who are you?” She glances curiously at Koviye on my other side.
I almost don’t want to tell her who I am. She’ll know me by reputation. Every person in the thousand-member crew knows my name. “Assur.” I say my gender-neutral name she knows, that the Ten Systems assigned me, and then follow up with my fifteen-digit ID number, known only to crew. “It’s actually Assura.”
She quickly checks my ID on a nearby computer, and then her expression changes to one of pure joy, and though I don’t recognize her, she shrieks with excitement. “You’re alive!”
I bypass her jubilation. “There’s an emergency. Please take me to Jenie.”
“Right.” She asks no more questions and runs ahead, leading the way.
We pass lots of crew who wave hello. I recognize none of their faces since I’m used to seeing them only obscured behind helms and armor, which I’m happy to see no one is wearing anymore. I’m overjoyed to discover as we move past them that such a large number of our rebel crew are women, though there are some men in the group.
I don’t know why I never figured it out before. I guess we were all pretending so hard to protect ourselves, we even fooled one another.
The guard leads me into a three-sided shelter and stops with a salute. “General Jenie, Assura is here.”
“What?!” I hear a cry in surprise and recognize Jenie’s voice.
A thrill goes down my spine, and I step around to see Jenie’s beautiful, radiant face. I can’t help it; I start to cry.
“Jenie,” I choke.
She walks toward me, and tears cloud her eyes, too. “Assura, my love.”
She embraces me, and it’s the homecoming I’ve needed since crash-landing on this planet. Of all the times in the jungle I thought I would die and never see her again, here she is. Her arms are warm and her comfort welcoming. I can’t not give her a kiss.
She rests her forehead against mine and whispers, “You came back.”
“I promised you before, I’m impossible to kill.”
She laughs and hugs me again. It’s what I told her before I went alone to plant the bomb in the Ten Systems space station that created our diversion to escape.
I haven’t admitted to her that I stole one of Dargule’s prized experimental weapons in my failed attempt to free the prisoners.
She stiffens in my arms. “Koviye?”
I pull back. “You know him?”
She’s staring at the Fellamana over my shoulder with a note of astonishment. The joy that had transformed her face on seeing me fades, and in its place forms a bright red blush so hot, her cheeks look like someone took pink paint to them. “What are you doing here?”
Koviye gives her his worst, or I guess best, flirtatious smile and a slight bow. “It is a pleasure to see you again, General Jenie.”
She straightens her shoulders, obviously not certain what to say, and her jaw grinds. Which for Jenie is strange. She’s not socially awkward; she’s articulate and self-assured and…
She’s totally attracted to him.
I can’t help a soft chuckle. I don’t know what happened between them before, but I can’t blame her, really. His joviality would do her good.
As much as I enjoyed sharing a bed with her on occasion, I’ve never felt possessive of her, always wanting her to find pleasure with whomever she chooses. I miss the easygoing-ness of this relationship.
This thing with Gahnin and all the possessive, fierce, consuming lust is something completely new and overwhelming and…
Never happening again.
I have to stop myself from smacking the side of my head to get the thoughts to end.
Koviye puts a hand over his heart, or where a human heart would be, and says sincerely, “I hate to interrupt this beautiful reunion, but there is a source of impending death over our heads.”
Jenie squints at him. “What are you talking about?”
I touch her arm, drawing her attention to me. “They found us.”
Chapter Fourteen
Gahnin
It takes too long for Assura to come back. Pvotton talks nonstop caution in my ear, telling me to wait and not be rash and go after her.
He’s giving me concerned looks, too. All the Ssedez are.
I’m pacing and acting like a male who’s entered the second stage of the Attachment—where I would be no longer just physically Attached to her, but emotionally as well. As though my emotions for her are inhibiting my reason.
I cannot see past my obsession of getting to her. It’s no longer about sex and just my physical need to mate with her. It’s turned deeper. Like I am invested in her. Like her well-being matters to me.
I feel like my insides have been ripped open. Feeling this…this…whatever it is for her is tearing holes in the very fabric of me. It should not be possible. And yet, it is happening. I can no longer deny it. I am forming the Attachment for her.
I do not know how to stop it—if it can be stopped. I have to somehow. I owe another century of mourning to Tiortan’s memory. I cannot think of Attaching to anyone until then, least of all a human.
The terror on Assura’s face when she saw the image of the Hades wrenched something open in me. I cannot abandon her. I would rather die. Which is…shocking. And has me pulling on my hair so hard, I am in danger of ripping it from my skull.
Anewtan pulls me aside, grabbing my arm. “You haven’t bitten her yet, right?”
“No, of course not,” I snap.
She nods emphatically. “Have you tried to save her life?”
“What?” I don’t understand her question.
“Have you irrationally tried to save Assura’s life, endangering yours in the process?”
“No,” I growl. “She takes care of herself.”
She slaps my back so hard, I give a grunt. “Good. As long as you don’t do those things and you don’t turn her Ssedez like Oten did to Nemona, no matter how rampant your feeling for her, the Attachment will not complete itself. You are still in control of what happ
ens.”
She’s right. No matter how far gone my body and emotions are, as long as I never bite her or try to sacrifice my life for hers, I’m safe. For the Ssedez female to Attach, it is even easier. She need not willingly sacrifice herself for her male, merely bite him and give her heart, soul, and body to him—though that is hardly a simple thing.
I remember doing it for Tiortan. The Ssedez have made the last part of the Attachment a ritual, which couples formally agree to once they freely choose to finalize the biological mating. They arrange for a scenario, a surprise fake scenario, where the couple who has begun to form the Attachment must “risk their life” to save the other.
Many get very creative. There’s always a safety net, of course. No one would actually die, but when you’re in the throes of the initial stages of the Attachment, you’re not thinking rationally enough to know that. The ritual forces us to admit just how important the other is to us. And that admission cements the Attachment into a lifelong bond.
No one’s going to do a Ssedez ritual for me Attaching to a human. I would have to complete the Attachment on my own. I won’t. “I can still control myself.”
Anewtan hardens her tone. “You’re still in mourning, Gahnin. The fact that you have let your feelings go so far for this human is shameful to Tiortan.”
It is like she reached into my chest and pulled my heart out. I have to close my eyes to cope with the pain. I am glad she said it. She’s right. Were I home among our people, having sex with someone else after only one century of mourning would be taboo, and others would think much less of me. It is so rare among the Ssedez.
The shame clears my thoughts, refreshes my mind so I’m able to think clearly for the first time since I felt the desidre. “It is true.” I am Ssedez, and that comes before any irrational feelings caused by an alien world. I cannot abandon our sacred traditions. I cannot love a human, a race that robbed Tiortan and countless other Ssedez of their lives.
Anewtan grasps my arm. “Do not lose hope. I know you have been alone for nigh a century, but someday, when your mourning is over, you will find a new mate among the Ssedez.”