The Warrior's Proposal (Celestial Mates Book 7)

by Marla Therron

  Tau was silent for a moment, taking in the magnitude of those words, before he kissed her forehead and held her tight.

  "I love you too, Penny Allyn."

  Chapter Eleven

  The chime of morning came too early. Penny woke, her arms stiff from still being chained to the cage, her body pleasantly sore but decidedly in need of a shower. Tau woke more slowly than usual, holding on to her and to sleep, reluctant to meet this inauspicious day.

  "Come on, Tau," Penny said after a little while, as reluctant as he was, "It's time."

  He said nothing as he unfastened the restraints from the cage and led her to the bathroom. But as she shed her stained clothing and stepped into the shower, he followed her and pressed her to the damp, tiled wall to kiss her deeply.

  She looped her shackled hands around his shoulders as he caught her by the thighs, lifting her up. She bit her lip as he rocked into her again for what might be the last time.

  When he was done, they cleaned each other, slow and careful and thorough, the gentle movements of their hands somehow more intimate even than the sex.

  Penny helped him with his armor; having watched him put it on so many times that she knew how it fit together by heart now. She wore her flight suit again, and for a moment as she looked down at herself felt the same fearful trepidation she had the day she'd left on this journey. Tau handed her a translator chip to tuck into her clothes.

  "The data has all been transmitted to the regency," Tau explained, fixing her restraints as they stood outside the doors of the Cathedral, "I will present it to the Queen and argue for your innocence. Wait here for now, and you will be brought in for the verdict."

  Penny nodded, trembling with nerves, and he put his hands on her shoulders to steady her. They were surrounded by a squadron of six drones, but Penny knew by now that they were mindless, more extensions of Tau's self than independent beings. She wasn't embarrassed when Tau kissed her, sweet and loving, trying to settle her nerves.

  "I'll keep you safe, Penny Allyn." he promised.

  "I'll wait for you, Aiten Tau." Penny answered.

  He entered the Cathedral, leaving her behind, guarded by his drones. She couldn't hear anything past the huge doors. She could only wait in worried silence, growing more anxious by the moment. If Tau failed, if the regency rejected the evidence and chose to have Penny killed anyway...

  She thought of her team, waiting for her, depending on her. Would they approve of her putting her faith in Tau, letting all their fates depend on him? Maybe she should have tried harder to escape.

  She looked up in surprise as she heard footsteps, and saw two winged males with a contingent of drones approaching, their wings shimmering pearlescent behind them, twitching with agitation.

  "There it is," one said, pointing at her, "Gag it, before it speaks."

  Penny opened her mouth to do just that but the drones around her only stepped aside, deferring to the winged male's orders as its drones stepped forward to slap a strange, waxy substance over her mouth, sealing it completely.

  She could still breathe through her nose, but she couldn't speak as the new drones grabbed her by the arms and pulled her towards the Cathedral doors.

  "I don't know why they left it unfettered like that," the other male said with a scoff, "Don't they know its voice is dangerous?"

  "What do you expect from a half drone mutant?" the first replied, rolling his huge, glittering eyes, "That thing should have been killed when it hatched."

  They pushed Penny, bound and speechless, into the Cathedral and towards the dais where, even from this distance, Penny could suddenly see why the Cathedral was built so large.

  The Queen, reborn and now in her third instar after only seven days, was massive. The size of a two story building on earth, she towered over her subjects, vast and terrifying. She was still growing, even now.

  Penny could almost see her getting infinitesimally larger every few seconds as she molted continuously, her skin drying and sloughing away like sheets of silk from her bulbous, insectoid body.

  The Cathedral's shining walls crawled with activity. More winged males than she'd ever seen in one place crowded around the base of the dais or flitted above, their shimmering wings catching the colored light of the stained glass windows.

  She caught glimpses of workers, their golden shells glinting in the dark, darting through the shadows at the edges of the room at some secret work. Drones were everywhere, guarding the Queen and the males from danger. From Penny.

  They forced Penny to her knees between two pillars of waxy comb and chained her there, Penny searched the crowd in front of the dais for Tau, but when he was in his full armor and surrounded by other drones it was difficult to tell him apart from the others.

  She spotted one whose kintsukuroi pattern looked familiar and watched him for some sort of cue for what she should do, how she should act. But he wouldn't look at her. He barely moved.

  "JUDGE MENT HAS BEEN REACH ED," the queen spoke, her voice impossibly low, reverberating in Penny's bones and almost painful, "THE INVA DER INVI OLATE UT TER UNTOUCH ABLE CAPTUR ED CONFESS ED DIRE DANG ER TO HIVE AND HEARTH VAN GUARD OF VI O LENCE BRINGS BAR BAR IANS TO OUR DOOR."

  The chaple vibrated with the buzzing agreement of all those present. The males shook their glittering wings at her in disdain.

  "SEN TANCE REN DERED," the queen went on, "A MESS AGE TO DELI VER SAN GUINE SCOUTS RE TURNED SANS SKULLS SHALL AS SURE NO FUR THER FOOL ISH FOR AYS INTO SOV ERIGN SPACE."

  Penny's blood ran cold. She'd been prepared for this, but the wild injustice of it still burned in her chest. She stared at Tau, wishing he would at least look at her, be with her, give her some kind of reassurance.

  The queen was leaning forward, shed skins rustling, her onyx mouthparts working hungrily as they descended towards her and Penny realized her execution was to be immediate. She closed her eyes, preparing for the end. She hoped her team could forgive her. She should have tried harder. If she had just done more...

  Suddenly, something collided hard with Penny's side. She opened her eyes in shock as the shouts of winged males and the high buzzling alarm calls of drones filled the air, followed by the shouting of humans.

  "Over there! Break those chains!"

  Penny turned in confusion as she heard Rivera's voice and saw her team storming the cathedral, armed and armored, chitin plates strapped to them by improvised fastenings and stolen stingers on their arms.

  A drone was shielding Penny, facing down the Queen with hissing defensive rage. The Queen's massive head turned between this disobedient drone and the insurgents in her cathedral in bestial bewilderment.

  Other drones were slicing at the chains binding Penny, and a second later her team surrounded her, defending her as Salome dragged her to her feet and pulled the gag from her face. There was a strange conflict of drones, winged males shouting orders and her team shouting them right back, drones fighting each other and switching sides as whichever voice controlled them shifted them from instant to instant.

  The queen could have taken control with a word, but she seemed stunned by confusion and indecision. She'd only been a grub a few days ago. This was likely her first action as a fully realized Queen. Penny couldn't blame her for confusion.

  But more importantly, where was Tau?

  "This way!" Rivera called, and the team fled the Cathedral surrounded by a legion of drones, increasingly more friend than foe the further they got from the melee before the dais.

  "What's going on?" Penny asked as they rushed down a hall Penny had never seen before, "How did you all escape?"

  "Tau freed us," Rivera explained, "He's been making plans with us for the last week, in case the verdict didn't fall in our favor. He's determined not to have war between our planets. You really must have got through to him."

  "Where is he now?" Penny asked, stomach twisting with fear, "Where are we going?"

  "Don't worry," Ian smiled at Penny knowingly, "He's coming with us. He just needed to t
ake care of some other things first."

  They burst suddenly out of the building altogether. It was the first time any of them had been outside the hive. They all paused for a moment, stunned, staring out at the softly waving lilac grass, the dark midday sky, the buildings of the city rising like strange papery obelisks from the plain. Like glaciers, she knew most of their structure lay underground, and wondered why the hive dwellers seemed to leave those tunnels so rarely.

  They couldn't pause for long, rushing away towards another building. The drones were leading them, following a latent command from Tau as well as more current commands from Rivera, relayed through Salome in Pakistani.

  "All of tried to figure out how to use our voices on the drones like you can," Cho explained as they hurried down another winding tunnel, "Rivera only managed it once or twice. I'm a little better but not enough to be useful. Salome is pretty good, as long as she's speaking her own language. They don't listen to Ian at all."

  "Typical," Ian laughed it off with a shrug.

  "Finally," Rivera said in relief as the drones turned off the hall, leading them down steps to what looks almost like a subway station. A small vehicle waited in the tunnel, just big enough for them to pack into, leaving the drones behind.

  "Wait, what about Tau?" Penny asked, grabbing Rivera's arm as one of the drones began fiddling with the controls of the train, "We have to wait for him."

  "He'll catch up," Rivera promised, "He has his own transportation."

  The doors of the train closed abruptly and it rocketed off at unexpected speed, making them stumble against each other as it raced away at what felt like near the speed of sound.

  "Will we be followed?" Penny asked, frowning behind them.

  "With any luck, they have no idea where we're going," Rivera said, "Tau told us the people rarely leave the Hive cities. They have all the technology for space travel but don't use it. They don't see any value in exploration unless it's to expand. There are huge parts of their planet that are completely unexplored because they were deemed less than optimal for settling. This mag lev will take us to the edge of the city. From there, he's arranged a craft to take us into the mountains."

  "What's in the mountains?"

  "A way home."

  Chapter Twelve

  It took twenty minutes, even in the bullet train, to reach the edge of the hive city. From there, Rivera hurried them into a waiting vehicle, which turned out to be some kind of magnetic hover shuttle. There was a worker inside, its golden carapace more striated and unique than those she'd seen in the city. Also more worn. The worker didn't look at or speak to them.

  Penny had only seen the workers acknowledge her existence at all when she used her voice. It just operated the controls to raise the shuttle off from the grass and send it soaring silently out over to plains and towards the blue gray mountains that reared solemn in the distance.

  "Tau mentioned Wasp-kind living out here beyond the cities," Cho peered through the windows of the shuttle as they flew, looking up at the dark sky, "Will they be a problem? I'm not even sure what they are."

  "I don't think so," Penny joined her at the window, curious, "From what I gathered, they're a closely related species. Like us and homo sapiens idaltu or homo habilis. Hive-kind consider themselves superior because Wasp-kind don't have a Queen. Wasp-kind also apparently lay parasitic eggs in anything they can catch, including Hive-kind. They raid the edges of the Hive cities regularly apparently."

  Cho shuddered.

  "So how do we know they're not going to attack and lay eggs in us?" Cho asked, raising her eyebrows in concern.

  "Well, they're mostly a solitary species," Penny went on, "Nomadic. They form small groups of no more than three or four on occasion, and there have been reports of large gatherings once or twice in one of this planet's years. But I doubt they would try to attack a vehicle like this with only three or four people."

  "That's not very reassuring," Cho frowned, "How technologically advanced are they? If they're equivalent to the Hive-kind, three or four people are all they would need to take us down."

  Penny frowned back, realizing Cho was right.

  "I don't know," she replied, "He made it seem like they were sort of backwards..."

  "But you said Hive-kind think Wasp-kind are inferior. What if he was just underestimating them?"

  Penny didn't have an answer for that. They watched the skies warily for the rest of the trip.

  At last, they reached the mountains and the silent worker set the shuttle down on a high peak. It exited ahead of them and the team followed it, wary and unsure of where they were going. That this might be a way to get home was all Tau had told Rivera. With no one else in this solar system they could trust, she'd had to take his word for it.

  The worker led them into a cave which at first seemed unremarkable. A little deeper in, strip lighting illuminated its stone walls, which were soon after replaced by the smooth wax Penny had become used to seeing in the city.

  "Tone of greeting! Welcome! Hello friends!"

  The tunnel opened into a wide cavern, the sides and ceiling of which were dotted with nests, some waxy, some papery, some made of no material Penny had yet seen. Like beehives or small houses they filled the cavern, illuminated by strip lighting that ran between them and hung in loops from the cavern roof.

  It was full of people, some of them recognizable as workers or drones, others not so easy to identify. A figure raised its arms to greet them and Penny, momentarily confused, tried to determine what caste it was.

  He was humanoid, like the winged males, and appeared basically masculine, but his skin was layered in gold chitin scales. His hair, which Penny had learned was actually a kind of clustered antennae, was golden as well.

  His eyes were solid black, with no visible iris or pupil, reflecting the light iridescent when he moved. As he spoke, Penny saw translator chips light up on her team's clothing and realized Tau must have given them the technology.

  "Hello," Penny replied, stepping forward, "Tau sent us?"

  "Tone of friendliness, yes! We've been expecting you!" the golden carapaced man said, "I imagine he did not tell you what to expect, in case you were captured. Please don't worry, I will explain everything."

  Chither See, who was flustered and delighted when Penny asked his name, took them to one of the larger wax hives, which was decorated with furniture made of the same organic material as everything else she'd seen the Hive-kind make.

  Even the computers, if that's what the blocky machines filling one wall of the house were, seemed organically based. Chither asked them to sit and explained that this mountain was a refuge for mutants and dissidents, Hive-kind and Wasp-kind alike, which explained why Penny hadn't recognized many of the life forms she'd seen in the cavern.

  "Tone of pride. I am myself a mutant," Chither said without the shame Penny had seen in Tau, "In my larval stage, I was meant to be a worker, but began developing gendered traits. I might have become a Queen, but a new one was not needed at the time and the proper adjustments to my pheromone intake were not made. If I had been born without a self, they would have destroyed me. But being conscious, they waited to determine if I could be useful. I was luckier than Tau. Before they could decide how to use me, I was smuggled out here."

  The mutants in the caverns were not just cross-caste like Tau and Chither. There were otherwise physically unremarkable workers and drones who had been born with or developed unique selves. There were persons of all castes with physical deformities, some of them inherent, some of them the result of injury or illness.

  Penny glimpsed a winged male, ragged and harrowed looking, who'd had his wings torn off in an altercation with an ex-lover, according to Chither. Not all of the people there would have been destroyed for their abnormal physicality.

  For some, it was the social stigma or the trauma that sent them looking for somewhere to begin again. For that reason, they kept people who could hide their mutations among the hive city population, to find peo
ple looking for a way out and help them.

  One had approached Tau, but by then it had already been decided that Tau would be kept alive to work with the drones, and he'd decided to stay, thinking he could be more useful in the hive. Many of the mutants here were here because Tau had found them and helped them.

  "It seems likely that you'll be the last people he helps out of the hive city," Chither sighed, "If what I'm hearing about the stunt he pulled getting you out of the trial is accurate. He's been keeping me up to date on everything, since he approached me about decoding the data from the first ship's computers."

  "That was you?" Penny asked, surprised.

  "It was indeed. The regency didn't care about his investigation and didn't want him wasting resources on it. He had to go outside the city to find help. And I've been working on more than just that."

  He led them out of the main cavern and down to a smaller, lower one, one wall an open cave mouth looking out over the mountain range. There were a variety of small mag-flight vehicles in various states of disrepair scattered across the hanger like cave, and one huge shuttle whose silhouette Penny recognized at once.

  "The Hermes!" she exclaimed.

  "Not quite," Chither corrected, "Tau could only steal bits and pieces of the original wreck for me. Most of it I had to recreate from local materials. But, as you can imagine, the workers here work very fast. I've led them in not just rebuilding it, but improving it, upgrading it with some of our tech. It will be much easier to get into atmosphere now. No need for the rockets you were using before. You'll be able to move much faster as well."

  The team, excited, boarded at once to examine the replica ship, exclaiming at how incredibly accurate it was. Of the few mistakes, most were cosmetic, or misunderstandings about human functioning. Only one really stood out. Chither had added a sixth cryo pod to the sleeping area.

  "It seemed indecent to leave it at five," he confessed, blushing, "I don't know how you could stand it, being so close to six but one away. I would lose my mind."

  "How soon do you think it'll be ready to fly?" Rivera asked, clearly eager to get home.