by L P Peace
Heavenly Survivor
Survivors of Teralis
L. P. Peace
© 2021 L.P. Peace
All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed “Attention: Permissions Coordinator,” at the address below.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
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www.lucypeace.com
Cover by Sam Muraski
Editing by Ly Publishing
Contents
Glossary of Terms
Note from the author
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Epilogue
Universal Menagerie
Also by L. P. Peace
Reading order
About the Author
Kerr has arrived on Tessa to claim his mate.
Charlotte just wants to raise her daughter in peace.
But Charlotte is about to learn that Kerr is determined. More, he's everything he seems and everything she's ever needed.
Glossary of Terms
Standard IGC measurements
Hacri - Hour
Metri - Minutes
Scira - Seconds
Madith - Miles
Fenth - Foot/feet
Inith/iniths - Inch/inches
Rote - Day
Cycle – month
Solar - Year
Common Amaran insults
Vrok - Fuck
Vrokking - Fucking
Durv - Shit
Durev - Shithead
Vashni - Idiot
Keth - Scum
Weyilan Insults
Kovach - fucker
for those of you already familiar with the series, this book starts just after the events of The Mercenary’s Dawn.
For those of you who aren’t familiar with this world, you can download The Captain’s Promise free from BookFunnel.
The city of Teyrin was a mess. It also wasn’t a city yet. Instead, it was a collection of cleared plots of dirt and newly rising buildings.
Kerr stared out of the viewscreen of Calaia’s main shuttle and took in the view of the strange planet, now his people’s official homeworld.
Several cycles previously, when they had first set eyes on this world, Kerr had wondered how they could ever take a virgin planet and create a capital world. But he had underestimated the High-Protector. In the days after they arrived, Thanesh had gotten to work, using companies who specialised in raising buildings quickly. City planners, architecture companies, and building firms from a dozen different worlds had descended on Tessa and begun mapping out the capital city. They laid out the city, planned each district, and within a month had broken ground. The buildings had begun to rise shortly after. In another cycle, Teyrin would be near to completion and they would break ground on the second city they planned to build, Adanith.
It was stunning what Thanesh could get done, but then again, it always had been. He was driven in a way Kerr had never seen in another being.
Except maybe Kerr at this moment.
The shuttle, under the piloting skills of Dak, banked around the city to show the entire view.
‘Dak!’
‘You’re in such a hurry,’ the mottled Protectorate-Inadiine hybrid smirked. ‘I know you’ve spoken of nothing but being here since we left, but surely you can appreciate this momentous occasion?’
‘Bring us to port, or by the Weyilan gods, I will throw you out of the airlock.’
Dak’s smirk broke into a huge grin, and a chuckle rumbled in his throat. ‘Very well. I commed ahead before you came to the shuttle. Thanesh is expecting you.’
‘What about you?’
‘I am happy to accompany you. I want to see this angel you speak of. But it’s not as though I have any investment, other than seeing my best friend happy.’
Kerr’s heart warmed. Dak was a good friend. He had listened while Kerr talked incessantly for the last half-solar while Kerr described the female he’d seen over and over again.
‘She’s so beautiful,’ Kerr said.
Dak sighed. ‘With creamy gold skin and a cloud of golden hair. I know.’ The shuttle banked abruptly until they were on a direct path for the new port. ‘When the government building is complete, we’ll be able to land directly on the roof,’ Dak said in an attempt to change the subject.
It wasn’t that the female—who’d once been human and was now one of them—was beautiful. It was that at the moment Kerr saw him, his Weyilan mating instinct had been tripped. This female was his mate. She was his. Now that a facility had been built where she and those in suspension could be awakened, Kerr was determined she would be one of the first and that his face was the first face she would see.
‘You are not listening to me, are you?’
Kerr realised Dak had been talking about the city while he’d been thinking about his little human. He shook his head. ‘I am sorry. It is just… she is so close now. I cannot think about anything else.’
Dak let out a long, drawn-out sigh. ‘It is fine. I understand.’
‘Where is Thanesh?’
‘He is with his new mate, showing her their home. Apparently, it is almost finished.’
‘A home!’ Kerr looked at his friend. ‘I have to find a home!’
‘I believe that is the kind of thing mates do together,’ Dak sighed, banking the shuttle into the temporary spaceport to land.
Many of the roads of Teyrin were still being laid out. Kerr and Dak got out of the transport they’d taken and walked up towards the beach, watching as the house where their leader would live with his mate rose into view.
Climbing the last few feet onto a bank, they stopped suddenly when they came to a massive pit dug deep into the earth. Looking down, Kerr could see that there was a sizable underground structure that disappeared under the dirt.
‘You’re two of only a handful of people who’ve seen that,’ Thanesh said. Kerr turned, watching his superior officer, the head of their people, approaching them from the beach.
‘Bunker?’
‘Bunker. War command. Government backup building. Everything we’ll need if Tessa is ever attacked.’ Thanesh stood over the hole and looked down, his cool blue eyes assessing it. ‘It goes much farther inland than it looks and was built completely by our people. No non-Tessan knows about it.’
Kerr looked back down the hole. Thanesh expected trouble. That meant, sooner or later, there would be trouble.
‘You wanted to speak to me, Kerr.’
‘Yes, sir.’ Kerr ordered his thoughts, planning his request, sculpting his words to be the perfect device to get what he wanted.
‘He’s bonded to one of the humans in stasis. He’s hoping you’ll allow him to wake her up so he can start charming her.’
Kerr glared at Dak, who grinned back at him.
‘You were taking too long.’
Thanesh was grinning too. He turned, looking back down the beach. Kerr followed his gaze and sa
w Alethia.
She was standing on the shoreline, basking in the sun. Her white hair fell about her, strands caught by the ocean breeze. She wore a blue dress and stood bare foot in the sand, the water gently lapping her feet. Her face pointed to the sky. She was everything his brothers had ever talked about. Smaller, perhaps, but just as beautiful as his people had dreamed.
He switched his gaze to Thanesh. He stared at her, a wondrous look on his face. He stared for a long minute, neither Dak nor Kerr interrupting him.
‘She’s going to have a baby,’ Thanesh said, almost too low for them to hear. ‘The first natural born of our kind.’
‘Thanesh… ’ It was Dak who spoke, his voice choked on the emotion the three of them were experiencing.
‘Each of you hybrids was a gift. You gave us hope, but you were so rare.’
‘We understand, Thanesh,’ Kerr interrupted him. ‘This is our future.’
Thanesh turned to him. ‘And yours is in stasis?’ Kerr nodded. ‘I’ll contact Tevin. He’s in charge of the facility. You go wake up your female.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Do you know where it is?’ Thanesh looked at him.
‘Yes, sir. I had it memorised as soon as the location came in.’
Three days passed agonisingly slowly while Kerr and Dak helped transfer the first group of sleepers to the facility in the foothills overlooking the city. From there, they could see their new world taking shape and see what they were joining.
Tevin, who had been the head of Medical on Thanesh’s ship and was now the head of medicine for the planet, was personally overseeing the awakening of the sleepers. Some had been fully transformed by Kallis’s experiments, others partially, and some were still simple humans.
Those undergoing partial transformation would be the last to be awakened while Tevin worked on a way to arrest the transformation. Though the new additions would be welcome, they had to consider that those subjects might want to have their transition stopped. More importantly, they had no idea what each individual would be going through, mentally or physically. Several scientists the Protectorate had taken into custody from Teralis helped Tevin in his work and research. But even they didn’t know half of what Kallis was doing, or why.
Finally, they were ready to awaken the first batch. Tevin had chosen a mix of humans and new Protectorate. There was a temptation to wake up females only. That there were now more than three-thousand females, where once there were none, threatened to overrule common sense and decency. But, as ever, Tevin was as determined to help their new brothers as their new sisters.
However, the males and females were being woken and cared for in separate facilities. Thanesh had insisted upon it. At first Kerr hadn’t understood, then his father, Gadayn had told him about the rage they had experienced on their awakening. They wanted the males far away from the females.
They were also stationing a dozen Protectorate soldiers for every Tessan male they awoke.
The first group of females were taken out of stasis and decanted, as the Cealin scientists put it. From there, they were brought into separate rooms where they were placed within beds while the drugs they were on were slowly withdrawn from their systems.
Kerr waited for his female to be delivered, Dak at his side.
She was wheeled in on a bed. Her creamy gold skin glistened with sweat, her hair a golden cloud around her head.
Beside him, Dak stood. ‘I have to say, my friend, she is stunning. Would you like me to leave you alone?’
‘Please. Thank you, Dak.’
His half-Inadiine friend nodded and left the room. The medical staff who were taking care of her—two Protectorate doctors, a Cealin scientist, and a Kuyon researcher—moved around the bed, plugging it into the various machines and services rendered into the very fabric of the building. When they were done, they left, the Kuyon closing the door behind her.
Kerr moved his chair over to the side of the bed and settled in to wait.
‘There is another female with your condition,’ Kallis smiled down at her. ‘She is substantially paler than you. Perfection. I didn’t know it could exist outside of Cealin.’
‘Good for you.’
Kallis’s laugh rumbled through the room. Charlotte gritted her teeth. She hated that noise. She hated him.
‘She’s a few rooms away,’ Kallis smiled down at her. ‘I will perform her treatments on you first. I don’t want to risk her.’
‘Fuck you,’ Charlotte hissed.
‘Be good, human, or I’ll perform them on your young instead.’ Kallis appeared over her, another medspray on his hand.
Charlotte buried her response behind her grit. She would take it. She would take everything this evil bastard did to her to save Elise.
Charlotte hadn’t seen her daughter since the metallic purple alien sold her to this one three months before. She’d heard her, once, when the alien brought her by the room. Elise hadn’t been allowed to approach her mother and Charlotte couldn’t turn her head, but they spoke. She’d heard her daughter’s voice. Heard her fear and her bravery. Charlotte had told her how proud she was of her. She told her that every day before the ship to Mars. Before the alien attack. Before the sale.
It was two days since she’d heard her, and Kallis had only brought her when Charlotte became completely uncooperative.
‘I will perform every experiment on you, or on her,’ he’d whispered in her ear after the other scientist had taken her away. ‘And I will make you watch.’
Now she kept quiet while the pale alien injected her with a chemical that grew hot in her veins. She squeezed her eyes shut and panted through the pain and pretended she was giving birth, that had been less painful than this.
‘Very well done… What’s your name again?’
Rage rose in Charlotte’s veins. Three months he’d been trying to find a way to replicate her condition, her albinism, on the other people in his experiments. Three months and he couldn’t even do her the courtesy of remembering her fucking name.
‘Charlotte,’ she hissed, knowing he’d forget it again within minutes.
‘Very well done, Charlotte.’ He spoke in a gentle tone as though he thought she’d care about his praise. ‘Now for the next stage.’
Above her, the array turned on. A whimper of fear rose involuntarily. The array was the worst. It was beyond words, beyond pain. It penetrated every part of her. It made her feel weak and helpless and left her physically weak for days after.
Despite her determination not to beg him to skip the array treatment, Charlotte found her bottom lip wobbling and tears slid from her eyes.
‘You will be better for this, Charlotte,’ Kallis said. ‘And when we’re done here, and I’ve had time to see how the treatment has gone, I can replicate it on the other of your kind.’ His voice grew breathy as he mentioned the other albino.
Charlotte had never met another albino. They were extremely rare on Earth now. Only born to the poorest, those unable to afford the gene therapy to patch the genetic issue. She thought about the woman down the hall and wondered who she was. Where she’d come from. How Kallis had managed to get one, let alone three of them.
Charlotte and Elise’s albinism affected the black skin they should have had. Looking at Kallis, his skin that was almost pure white, Charlotte didn’t doubt the woman was white, therefore her skin paler, closer to Kallis’s own skin tone.
For a moment, Charlotte hated the unseen woman. If she hadn’t come, Kallis wouldn’t have sped up his tests. She wasn’t supposed to undergo array treatment for another few days, and her mind was yet to fully grasp the full extent of pain she suffered each time.
The sensation of pins and needles pricked her skin. Charlotte knew that poor woman would have to go through this soon. Probably never having undergone anything like it before. She felt deep pity for her then, but as the pins and needles became heated knives, and the screaming began, all pity faded in the face of incomprehensible, inescapable pain.
A sharp ga
sp pulled Kerr from his dreamless sleep and into the room with her.
A day after they had entered the room, this was the first sign of consciousness.
Kerr stood, looking down at her, at the female and marvelling once again at the sight of her.
‘Where’s Elise?’
Elise?
‘It’s okay. You’re safe now,’ Kerr said. His tail whipped behind him as she struggled on the bed. His mate was agitated, so he was agitated; he couldn’t help it.
‘Don’t give me that bullshit,’ she snapped, her voice thick from the drugs, her eyeballs moving wildly under her lids, which she seemed to be unable to open. ‘I want Elise!’
‘Tell me your name,’ he said gently, touching her face.
She jerked back when he made contact, her breath drawn in sharply. ‘Get off me, you bastard. Bring me, Elise. I’m not doing another thing until I see her.’
‘Who is Elise? What is your name?’
‘You know who Elise is… Why do you keep asking me questions you know the answer to?’
Kerr’s tail whipped quicker behind him. ‘What is your name, sweet one?’
‘Sweet one?’ A defeated look appeared on her face. ‘Charlotte. My name is Charlotte. Why don’t you write it down this time!’
Her eyes opened but rolled wildly in their sockets. ‘Bring me to Elise.’
Charlotte tried to rise then, sitting up with wires and tubes stuck to her skin. Panicked, Kerr tried to push her back down.