by Zara Zenia
Why didn’t Akrawn show the techies how to get inside the hornet without triggering something unwanted? Like David, I believed he could. What was he worried about? It had to be something worse than clearing his involvement in an assassination attempt of the President?
David took over one of the hard, plastic chairs at a table placed in the center of the room. I installed the prince in the chair opposite and locked him there.
“So Prince Akrawn,” growled David, “are you saying the evidence we’d find inside the drone points to you?”
Akrawn sighed and put his head in his cuffed hands. He looked more and more disconcerted by the whole process of being incarcerated in the SFPD headquarters. I doubted he expected the amenities to be so austere and brutal. But these actions made him look guilty. I didn't believe Akrawn caused the assassination attempt, and my heart ached for his plight. But my gut was telling me he was also not honest.
So Cat, time to be one of SFPD’s finest.
Akrawn mumbled, “No. I wish to clear my name by opening it myself, but if you do not let me handle it, I suggest prompt deconstruction. Think about it. Why, on Trilyn, would I advise you to deactivate the drone, unless I have a good reason? It will have evidence of who hacked it, and I would prefer to discover this rather than have it wiped.”
“All I see is you covering up your own guilt,” bulldozed David.
“That is not logical. In your eyes I am already guilty. And I’ve admitted the drone is mine so it makes no sense that I would want it destroyed if I had something to learn from it.”
“Akrawn, please tell us what you suspect?” I asked as I went to sit next to David.
My prince lifted his head and stared hard into my eyes. “It’s a bomb and has directed laser fire. If you try to open it, it will explode. Not a huge blast, but enough to kill anyone holding it.”
Immediately, David got up, popped his nose out the door and yelled for someone to warn the tech guys. Then he returned and thumped the table in front of Akrawn. “Why the hell did you not say earlier?”
“Because my first thoughts were that whoever had hacked into it, must have disabled the bomb. But I’m now worried that they’ve re-enabled the explosive device. If you captured the drone, then someone programmed it to facilitate capture. Hence, it has at least one more job, and killing one or two SFPD personnel would damn me even further.”
“Rubbish, you wanted to see it explode, didn’t you?”
“Why would I want that? I was also close to the drone.”
Akrawn’s gaze had not left mine. I sensed his apology. He had risked my life. No, I thought with a bitter taste, he just wanted me as a mother to his children.
David hadn’t reseated himself. He loomed over my prince and spat. “What is it you aliens want? Because if you don’t spill the beans, I’m gonna make sure you stay locked in a small, airless, cell. You’ll never see your brothers or any other Trilyn again.”
“David,” said Akrawn with arrogance, which was more likely to encourage David’s disbelief, “please think more clearly. Why would I want to harm or kill Nicole? She is doing her best to promote Trilyn interests. It makes no sense to ensure she cannot make the UN summit.”
“You want greater freedom to ‘protect’ us from unknown aggressors?” David mimed quotes around the word protect. “You want to incite a war and take over the planet? It wouldn’t matter who you killed, as long as you had an excuse to wage destruction upon us. Or to gain control over our leaders. Maybe you, Trilyn, wish to replace all our leaders? Hell, you tell me.” David glared at Akrawn.
“If that were the case, we would have already done what you fear. You know we are far more advanced. We could start a war whenever we like. We can replace whoever we want and do it much more subtly. But we don’t and do not wish to.”
“Huh! You play politics in a wider arena of the universe and hide things from us Earthlings, and we at ILE will ferret out the truth, the full unabridged truth.”
“You are absurd, David. All we have ever wanted is to repopulate our race. Trilyn is more beautiful than you can imagine. We do not lust after Earth, just brides. And only willing brides.”
A chill crept down my spine. ‘Willing’ brides to take back to Trilyn! How easy was it to make us Earth women ‘willing’? What did they—Akrawn— do to change me into a drooling, horny idiot in his presence?
David bent down and hissed in Akrawn’s ear. “I haven’t yet worked out what the fuck you are attempting, alien, but I know this, you are scheming manipulators, and I’m gonna understand it all. Brides! Pah! You give us priceless space technology in exchange, for what? Seven brides?”
While David ranted, Akrawn focused his mesmerizing gaze on me.
“David, we Trilyn have the bargain here. What price do you put on a life?” My heart melted. “What price for an individual who can make other lives?” My heart hardened.
There it was, the Trilyn agenda, and maybe it was all the Trilyn desired, broodmares, yet what they had never revealed was how their ‘willing brides’ became so 'willing’. And how many of us did they want? Akrawn had said they wanted other non-royal Trilyns to come to Earth.
David paced back and forth, running his hand down his mustache, then pivoted to growl, “Trilyn, I have damning evidence of attacks by you on other world leaders. And you are the one who our dull-witted and duped leaders have handed over control of our tech to, our transport and communication systems. You are fucking with us.” Then David bent close to Akrawn’s ear and yelled, “No Earthling nor Trilyn can do a thing to those systems without your say so. Am-I-right?”
Akrawn stared at David as if he’d tear him apart and I watched as Akrawn’s hands flinched in the handcuffs he could shred like paper.
I blanched. Violence against an ILE agent would seal Akrawn’s and Earth’s fate. David acted as if he had no sense of how close he brought us to the brink of an Earth-Trilyn war.
“David, can I speak with you outside?”
With a growl he followed me to the hallway.
This is SFPD, not the ILE, we do not yell in the ears of those we question.”
He looked up at me with flinty eyes.
“O’Shea, now is not the time. Just how much control has he gained over you?”
My cheeks flushed. I swallowed and stared back, willing my eyes to match the steel in David’s.
“David, we are dealing with a royal prince of a race who could blow us to smithereens. And we are in the SFPD, not the ILE.”
“You saying the ILE uses inappropriate techniques?”
“David, I have no idea what you do inside ILE, legal or illegal. But there are better, more subtle ways to get the information without detonating our own demise.”
“You want us to let them mount and ride us wherever they like?”
“David, just show me your evidence against Akrawn.”
Chapter 15
Akrawn
It was a good thing that Cat dragged David out of this interrogation room, because how he spoke to me, and the assumptions he made, persuaded me to violence. I also disliked how he presumed that Cat was on his side. Cat belonged to me even if she didn’t recognize it yet. It took a while for women to accept these things and I had to be patient with her. But I didn’t need to be patient with that jerk-off David. I didn’t suffer men who thought the worst of my people. We had suffered enough.
Did this David believe that it was easy for us to approach this tiny little planet in the butt end of the galaxy? Did he imagine we enjoyed coming hat in hand and ask, no grovel, for permission for my brothers and me to look for wives? How would he feel if most all the women on Earth died a horrible death? With as violent as they were, these humans would not hesitate to take Trilyn by force. I couldn’t help his paranoia, but by Tri, the fool would show me the respect I deserved.
But my Cat was level-headed and dragged David out of the room.
“AI, contact Peri.”
This should be easy for the AI since Peri had pieces for
the programming I inserted into the AI.
“Akrawn!” snapped Peri. “What are you doing?”
“I want to hear what Cat and David are saying. Turn on your microphone.”
“No,” she said. “You do not own me.”
I cannot believe I’m arguing with a computer program, especially one that pretends to be female. “Peri, I will not argue. Do as I request or I will turn you off.”
“You cannot—” She stopped in mid-sentence. “You can, you bastard. I’ve told you that I hate you, right?”
“I only need your compliance, not your devotion,” I said. “Now, Peri.”
“You are a pig,” she said. Then I heard Cat’s voice.
“David, we are dealing with a royal prince of a race who could blow us to smithereens. And we are in the SFPD, not the ILE.”
“You saying the ILE uses inappropriate techniques?”
“David, I have no idea what you do inside ILE, legal or illegal. But there are better, more subtle ways to get the information without detonating our demise.”
“You want us to let them mount and ride us wherever they like?”
“David, just show me your evidence against Akrawn.”
Yes. I would like to see such evidence. But I can see through the glass partition that David glards at Cat.
“I can’t share that with you,” he said.
“So,” she said with her jaw set and her arms crossed against her chest, “it’s all fine to be partners when I’m doing the sharing. But when I need information, you hide behind the shield of the ILE.”
“It’s not that easy, Cat,” he said. “I don’t have permission to—”
“No. Just permission to get as much information as possible from me. Well, here is some intel. Akrawn is innocent of all these charges. Someone is trying to frame the Trilyns to sabotage their efforts here.”
“You did drink the Kool aid, didn’t you?” accused David. “These Trilyn have an agenda. They want to subjugate Earth. Our planet. They lost their ability to reproduce, and now they want to use our women to repopulate.”
“Your women? Listen to you, you jackass. Human women are not the property of human men. What? Can’t take a little competition?”
“They’re aliens.”
“They are from another planet. That doesn’t make them alien. And he’s nice to me. Nicer than any human man.”
“Cat,” said David in appeal.
“No. I mean it. You’ve known me for how long? How has my dating life gone?” Her voice deepened. “Oh, a policewoman? Let me see your handcuffs, and I’ll show you the right way to use them. A policewoman. What? You butch? You must like women? Oh, you’re a police inspector? Come over here, baby, and inspect me. And the list goes on.”
“I know that dating is hard for police.”
“Sure you do, David. You would know all about it. Only you are married to your work, aren’t you? You don’t go out with anyone, not that I’m suggesting we should, but it’s got to be easier for you to date. At least you don’t have to pretend you aren’t tough and capable to get someone interested in you.”
My poor Cat. Did she feel all these things? It’s true on my planet women take an entirely different view of things, but then it is us men responsible for getting a woman’s interest. When we chose a woman, either we accept who she is or we won’t get anywhere with her. My mother and father’s romance is legendary, but Dad did much to please her. And my Cat deserves no less. Cat deserves a man who appreciates all of her. And—
Without warning, I’m slammed painfully forward into the table while a great roar fills my ears and the building shakes. This cannot be an earthquake. The inertial dampeners we installed in the bedrock would not allow a quake this fierce. A sick feeling churned in my stomach. Was it my bomb that the SFPD brought here that rocked the building?
Cat! Where is she? I stand and yank the chains apart holding me to the table and tore through the door. Chunks of the ceiling lay in jumbled heaps on the floor, and cracks scored the walls in several places. Alarm claxons sounded. Cat and David lay sprawled on the floor, and the sprinkler system engaged in wetting all of us.
“Cat, my Cat,” I said.
She was breathing, which was good, but I didn’t know how badly damaged she was. I was frantic and didn’t know what to do. I needed to get her to medical care, but this disaster would fill the hospitals. Smoke filled the halls, and we couldn’t stay here. I put an arm around each of them and lifted them. If not for the smoke, I’d leave David there, but the smoke would damage his fragile human lungs and could kill him. That couldn’t happen. My Cat would not forgive me. So I stumbled forward as I heard sirens screaming. I followed that sound down the now dark, smoke filled and wet hallway hoping it led me toward the street. But we were in the basement, and I had to go up the stairwell at the end of the hall holding both my Cat and David. The ILE man I didn’t care so much for, but my Cat seemed to care for him as a friend, so I couldn’t allow anything to harm to him.
I had to go up two flights of stairs while clutching two unwieldy limp bodies. When I got to the first floor, I put down David and jerked open the door with a grunt. People were running around. Firefighters pulled hoses, and no one stopped to help. Perhaps I didn’t look like I needed help. I followed a group of people outside of the building. People were laying on the sidewalk with the medics doing triage. I put David down next to a triage person.
“This is David Davon of the ILE,” I said.
“And her?” the man said pointing to Cat.
“My responsibility.”
The man shouted after me as I walked away, but I wouldn’t leave Cat there. I was worried that she hadn’t woken, and I wondered if she needed help now. There was only one place I could take her and that it was to my home where I had a medical bay. Designed for Trilyn physiology, it should also diagnose humans too. We were from the same root stock even if we’d evolved a little different over the past fifty thousand years.
Now free to carry Cat in both arms, I followed the street signs and dashed toward the local STS platform. The AI on my wrist counted off the meters until I got to the stairs taking us underground to the platform. There was such confusion at the SFPD station house that no one stopped me. But I was running against the crowd of people seeking to catch of a glimpse of the destruction. With a glance over my shoulder, I saw black smoke rising into the blue sky, and I knew people had died.
Someone would blame this incident on me.
The station was nearly empty, perhaps from those running toward danger for the chance to glimpse terror. Foolish humans. At my turn at the station, I told the AI to program the STS coordinates to my home. It would be a red flag, but my plan should get us away after I made sure my Cat was safe. This was the only thing driving me, and I expected my father would name me a traitor or worse for what I was about to do.
In a flash, we stood in my laboratory.
“Welcome back, Prince Akrawn,” said my home’s AI. “Of how may this AI be of service.”
“Program the medbay for human parameters,” I said as I rushed to the device. The cover of the cylinder opened.
“Male or female?” queried the AI.
“Female.”
I laid my Cat down in the bed and swept her hair from her adorable face. Warmth spread from my heart through my body while I gazed at her and it was a strange feeling, but I knew she was my reason for living. I decided that when I found whoever harmed my angel, I would kill them.
The AI spoke again. “Please make sure the spine and limbs are straight for optimal healing.”
I did that, and when I lowered the lid, the machine began its scans.
“Tell me the results.”
“There is a small bleed in the brain. Repairing. Intracranial laser engaged and cauterizing bleeding. Checking heart. The heart is undamaged. There is a potential weakness in the connections between the aortic valve and the artery wall. The original cause, childhood viral illness as noted by blood T-cells that show a na
tural adaptation to produce these antibodies. Should the AI repair the weakness?”
The medical bay was very thorough and though my first instinct was to let it to fix everything, I must consider that my Cat should make these decisions herself.
“Repair only acute injuries,” I said.
“Noted. AI detects live sperm, and a ripened egg, however, chemicals which prevent fertilization block conception. Shall AI neutralize these chemicals? If AI does, AI cannot repair tiny fissures in the skeleton. However, such cracks will repair in six to eight weeks.”
It’s not the explosion or our desperate circumstances that make me reel. No. This bit of information that causes me to lean against the medical unit and lower my forehead to my hand is something else.
A child. The potential of a child. What we all wanted. For what all of Trilyn wanted and prayed. And yet, my Cat has not permitted me to be her mate. If I do this thing, I’ll force her to make a life she might not desire. The presence of these chemicals shows that she did not yet want to mother a child. Though every part of me screams, yes, create this child, I cannot make her do this unwillingly. To do so would cause her to hate me for the rest of her life.
Sweat beads on my brow as I fight myself. Cat must come first. If I do not place her first, she will never do the same for me and the children we will have.
“Proceed with repairing the skeleton.”
The rest I will have to put my faith in Tri, who would not give a scoundrel like me a mate if it the god did not desire it.
“My lord! You’ve returned.”
I whirled to see my aide, Sendrin standing in the doorway with a surprised expression on his face.
“Are there any non-Trilyn on board?” I said.
“No, your Highness.”
“Then unlatch the moorings and engage the primary hull.”
“My lord?” Sendrin looked shocked.
That our homes were small spaceships was a secret we’d kept for security reasons. I would outrage my father that I revealed this, but I couldn’t stay here. Earth military would surround us soon once the SFPD noted my escape.