by Viola Grace
The shift from warrior to woman was difficult for her and not one that she thought she would ever have to undergo, but her body was very specific about what it wanted, and what it wanted was holding her hand formally as they took the lift to the officers’ dining room.
In front of his men, he was always stiff and polite. He relaxed when he was alone with her, but those moments were few and far between.
After lunch, where they talked about the history that she had been taking in, they headed to the medical centre where an older physician ran the scanners over her, jerking his head up abruptly.
He spoke quickly to Hinlior, and thanks to her knack for language, she managed to translate Anvin into something she could understand.
“She is ovulating.”
The general straightened. “What?”
The physician shook his head. “I don’t understand it. Four days ago, her system was completely dormant. I was in conference with the enclave for the best supplement to stimulate her.”
Hinlior looked queasy. “We don’t have a breeder on board.”
Saloa cleared her throat and tried to work out her words in Anvin. “It wasn’t a breeder that got my system active.”
Both men whirled to look at her; the physician stared at her. “What did it?”
“I met a match that suits my biology. When that happens, Protheans become receptive.” She spoke in Prothean and Hinlior translated.
The physician ran his hand through his hair. “What...how long will this last?”
“I have forty-eight hours where I can get pregnant. After that, it is another six months before anything happens.” She shrugged. Once a female Prothean had been triggered, the distance between her receptive phases shortened dramatically until it was a constant biologic signal. That was why the Protheans could out breed most other species. Once they got started, they didn’t stop. A viable breeding pair with good medical treatment could put ten or more children into a world if there were no population restrictions in place to sterilize them at a certain level. They were world fillers.
The six-month gestation didn’t hurt either. The two most populated educational choices were obstetrics or paediatrics.
“We could put her into cold sleep.” The physician was frowning.
She shook her head. “It won’t work. My body will just turn off, not pause its programming. If you want to test me as Life Bringer, I am going to need to find a partner to make a child.”
Hinlior’s eyes lit with an inner fire. “We have no registered breeders on board.”
She waved that off. “Registered breeders are for pure-blood Anvin women. Any child I bear will be out of your specifications. Allow me my choice.”
The physician blinked. “I need to run that past the enclave. Do you have a male in mind?”
She gracefully extended her hand, palm up to Hinlior. “He is attractive, intelligent and more than that, he is the one who started this entire situation.”
Hinlior blushed. “I am flattered, but perhaps you should meet a few more of the Death Bringers to help you make up your mind.”
“I have been around men all my adult life. None have keyed in the reaction that you did. Now, the point comes, are you willing? Even among my people sometimes what is felt by one is not shared with the other.” She waited, trying to look like she wasn’t holding her breath.
He jerked his head and the physician sprang into action.
“General, please submit to a full set of scans. I will send in reports of your information, and the enclave can look them over to compare them for genetic compatibility. They are closer now, I should have authorization for you in a few hours.”
Hinlior got off the medical bed and extended his hand to her. She slipped her fingers along his and threaded her grip through his. He blinked in surprise at the small intimacy, but he lifted her hand to his lips and pressed a kiss on her knuckles.
“It will be fine, Saloa.”
She looked into his face and saw the patience there. “I hope so. Something tells me that we will make really cute babies.”
He swallowed hard and closed his eyes for a moment. “Don’t tease.”
He spoke rapidly to the physician, ordering him to find him when the authorization came in.
Hinlior walked with her to her quarters. Inside her room, he swung her into his embrace. “Are you sure?”
She shrugged. “No, but if my body is calling for yours, it is the only solution that I can figure out.”
He sobered, “What if they demand that you give me up for the next child?”
Saloa reached up and stroked his cheek. “I will fight them. I am a good fighter. You may have noticed.”
He turned his head and kissed her palm. “I have noticed. I have noticed that you wrinkle your brow when you are going to say something I won’t like. You bite your lip when you are embarrassed, and you hunch your shoulders when you are worrying. They are hunched now.”
She laughed softly. “I am worried. Do we have to wait for the official report?”
He pulled her close until she was flush against him. “I think I am willing to take a chance.”
Saloa kissed him, pulling his head down to hers. His hands moved over her feverishly and cool air caressed her skin when her gown slumped and slipped away. His body was hot, and she rubbed against him, fumbling at the unfamiliar clasps of his tunic as he walked backward, leading her toward the bed.
She focused on the sensation that his hands were evoking as he tipped her to the wide expanse of her bed. His hands took on a fevered intensity, and his teeth scraped against her skin as he tasted her inch by inch.
Saloa shook violently, and she finally pulled his hair to bring him up along her body. When he entered her, she arched into him, taking him deep.
He rocked, twisted and rolled with her as their bodies strived to prove who was in charge. She found pleasure three times before he joined her, and as he shook and pressed into her, Saloa whispered his name. “Althur.”
He slumped against her and rolled her to one side. “Saloa.” He caressed her sweaty hair away from her face.
“I am beginning to see why your people have populated three worlds in five thousand years.”
She blushed.
“I mean no disrespect. If the rest of the Anvin knew what I just found out, they would have left the colonists here and simply requested a personnel exchange.” He pressed a kiss to her temple.
Saloa had to ask. “Is it too late? I doubt that the generation ships have even made it out of the system yet.”
He sat up and looked down at her. “You are serious.”
She nodded. “I am. We have a two female to one male ratio. It makes for a lot of very cranky administrators. Can you at least ask the enclave?”
“I will have to put it to all twelve of them. Would they agree to population control within the confines of a set area?”
Saloa grinned. “Yes.”
He groaned and flopped back, pressing a wrist to his forehead. “This is going to take some explanation. They may not agree.”
“Nothing ventured, nothing gained.” She had a dream that her people and his could live in harmony. It wasn’t likely. Her people were as fixed in their way as his were in their own, but she hoped that a happy medium could be reached.
If the two species managed to start communication, it would still cause a small rippling of evolution. That progress would be one drop in a larger change for both of them. Saloa could only hope that generations down the line they would be able to cooperate.
Althur rolled back to her and took her in his arms. “I will send the message the moment that I am back in uniform. For now, I would enjoy trying this first relationship between our people, once again.”
Heat surged through her veins, and she grinned, “I believe we can bring ourselves back to the table. Would you care to negotiate for position?”
He laughed and pinned her to her back. “Death Bringers ra
rely negotiate. That is best left to the politicians and those who enjoy words. I enjoy action.”
Saloa enjoyed his action twice more in the afternoon before he regretfully left her with a soft kiss to her shoulder as he returned to his duties.
She took a bath and got dressed before resuming her education with her thighs gingerly together. He was exactly as big as he looked, and she was not complaining.
When the door opened, she rose to her feet and smiled, but the smile died. Two guards were there and one of them spoke in stilted Prothean. “It is time for your dinner.”
Food was brought in on a tray, and she began to understand. She was confined to her quarters. She had one question. Where was Althur?
* * * *
General Hinlior was frowning at the screen. “They have the potential to help us break the limit of our reproductive restrictions.”
The councillors’ expressions ranged from sceptical to disgusted.
Enclave Eleven’s spokesman leaned forward. “How do we know they will cooperate?”
“Contact them. There is nothing to be lost by contacting them.”
Enclave Seven’s councillor spoke, “Is she appealing?”
Hinlior inclined his head. “It is an attraction that takes some getting used to, but it is definitely striking.”
Seven spoke up, “We have reports that you are requesting breeding privileges with her.”
“Yes. She was in a receptive phase, and I am her choice. We are awaiting the decision.” He kept his face impassive.
“Does she know what you are?” Councillor Five scowled.
“She was a guard herself. She knows what we do. She was expecting me to kill her.” When he mentioned that Saloa was a warrior, he could see the ripple of confusion.
Five frowned. “She was a Death Bringer and a Life Bringer at the same time?”
“Apparently. The Protheans have more females than males. The women take positions as guards just as the men do.” Hinlior kept his face impassive.
The enclave council screens went dark for a moment while they deliberated.
They came back on, and Seven nodded. “One ship with the largest amount of unattached females can return to the surface. We will assign them to the southern continent and allow them to rebuild their settlement there. Contact will commence immediately.”
Hinlior stifled his surge of enthusiasm.
Six cleared his throat. “While you and your Prothean are an excellent genetic match, we cannot allow one of your uncertain genetic stability to breed the next generation.”
Hinlior nodded. He was disappointed but not surprised. “Any child that she breeds, as a Prothean, will have a different genetic makeup from our own. There is no loss in my being the father of her offspring.”
The screen went blank again.
They returned, and the Six was not happy. Two filled in. “One child. If the infant is found to be sound and full of possibilities for the future, we will consider introducing Prothean blood on a trial basis.”
The duty captain rushed in. “General, she is gone.”
Hinlior felt his blood run cold. “What?”
“Her meal was brought to her, and she had escaped. The guards outside her room were unconscious and a skimmer is missing. We tracked her to the new city, but we lost her in the EM halo.”
Hinlior jerked his head at the monitors. “Please excuse me.”
He bolted out of the com room and ran for the main level. He knew where she was going. She was heading home.
He didn’t know how he was sure of her destination, but he knew she was seeking out the stone behind the city. He was going to find her.
* * * *
They wouldn’t tell her where he was, so Saloa ran. Knocking out the guards was easy. No one on the Death Bringer expected a woman to be battle capable.
Apparently, they were going to be briefing their comrades when they got up.
She had found the schematics for the ship on the entertainment console. Making her way through the lifts had been a little tricky, but if you walked like you knew your destination, folks tended not to bother you. No one was expecting her to go wandering around alone, so they made up an excuse for her being in their area.
The skimmers freaked her out. There would be a twenty-foot drop before the skimmer kicked into hover mode, but after that, it should be easy enough to fly the small sled.
She shivered and used Hinlior’s passcode to open the skimmer hangar and override the door.
With her feet still bare, she settled herself on the skimmer and reached up to grab the controls. It was now or never. She hit the tractor, and the chains pulled her along the floor and into launch position. She keyed up the green lights and held on as she was tipped out of the warship.
She fell for twenty feet before the lights flashed purple and the skimmer propelled itself along the plain toward the city. The structures weren’t occupied yet, and the mechanical sprawl would cover her trail.
Saloa had to admit that the Anvin were excellent at building cities from nothing. She didn’t pause to see the sights. She continued on into the mountains that her people had made homes in and parked the skimmer half a kilometre from her home.
The lights had been stripped from the carved stone, but she knew her way around. She sprinted through the halls by the dim glow of the lichen in the niches dug into the rock walls.
Her feet echoed in the silence where once crowds had gathered during the cold winters. She let herself miss them just a little as she walked down the familiar route to her apartment.
She wanted her things. Her clothing, her keepsakes. If the Anvin were taking Althur from her, then she would just hide here until she bore her child. There was enough food locally if you knew where to look, and the water ran clear from the purest glacier.
It would be a primitive existence, but she was carrying the next generation and she was going to defend it.
Saloa wasn’t sure how she knew that she was carrying, but every instinct in her body had just gone into overdrive. Her sisters had gone feral when they were with child, and it was the steady comfort of their mates that kept them calm and productive.
If the Anvin wouldn’t let her have her mate, she was going to defend her child with everything in her, and she had the weapons collection to do it.
She changed out of the soft gown and into an insulated bodysuit. It would flex with her until her final month. After that, she would have to wear sheets if she couldn’t find a spare maternity uniform left behind somewhere.
Saloa sat in the darkness for a while, breathing in the scent of her own room. She curled into a ball and sniffled as the loneliness took hold.
She jerked awake and wiped her cheeks. Someone was coming. A wave of worry cascaded through her, and it wasn’t coming from her own mind.
Saloa grabbed her knife and stunner. She flattened herself against the inner wall next to the door and waited as the footsteps got closer.
The steps paused outside her door. “Saloa, if you try to stab me, I am going to paddle you into next week.”
She smiled with relief. “Althur, do you know what a paddling is?”
“The image is very clear in my mind, and I have to say, it beats having to skip a meal in the crèche.”
She snickered and pulled the door open, falling into his arms with relief.
He hugged her tight. “I can feel you scrambling around in your mind. What is going on?”
“Prothean hormones. They kick in when the child starts to develop. Our men know what is coming, and it is probably why the male sperm hide. We need our mates constantly during the first few weeks. Because, we have an accelerated gestation, our hormones hit hard.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
She looked up at him. “When would I have had time to do that? I wasn’t sure that it would even work until I got this urge to run.”
“Is that normal?” He stroked her back in a soothing pattern.
“Surprisingly, yes. Again, our men are trained for it. They take them aside in school and explain what the sequence of events is.” She chuckled. “You are going to have to learn the hard way.”
“How did you learn to fly the skimmer?” He kept rubbing her back.
She pressed her forehead to his chest and whispered, “I saw it on the educational vids you gave me. I am a visual learner.”
He stiffened. “Tell me you are joking.”
“Nope. I also learned how to open your clothing and the maximum capacity of a Death Bringer ship.”
He sighed. “One of your ships has been authorized to return if they want to. The negotiations have started.”
“Oh. So, you weren’t there because you were getting authorization?” She looked up at him through her lashes.
Understanding lit his gaze. “From now on, I will tell you when I have to break our pattern. Did you miss me?”
She chuckled. “Ask the guards I met on the way out.”
He sighed. “How did you find your way in here?”
“It is home. This was my home. My people didn’t have fancy buildings that turned into cities. We had a squat generation ship that dropped and woke us up on landing. We grabbed our supply packs and headed into the wilderness, making our new world a home as best we could.”
“And then, we returned and ejected you.”
“And then that happened. Yes. Fortunately, we had spent the last decade refuelling the ships, just in case.”
“A sensible precaution. The enclaves are asking your people now. The ship with the most available women will be the one asked to return. They, of course, have the right of refusal.”
“Thank you for asking them to make the offer.” She opened the closures on his vest as her moods swung again.
He jolted, and she could feel his surprise in his thoughts. “You can’t possibly...”
She laughed, “You can feel it, too, so don’t tell me what is or isn’t running through me.”
He kissed her, and she surrendered happily, showing him how to open her suit and enjoying the result.