Bears of Burden: STERLING

by Candace Ayers

  …they will destroy all who oppose them.

  Zarek need only bide his time before he will leave Earth and be reunited with his people. The last thing he expected to find on this obscure planet was a mate. But, the human female called Aubrey with her thick, soft curves, beautiful smile and warm heart initiates an attraction deep inside of the warrior that is stronger than anything he has ever felt.

  When the fate of millions rest in Aubrey’s hands, will she defy her father’s wishes to help Zarek return to his people? Will Zarek and his people accept her into their fold?

  Chapter One

  Zarek Rav shifted the control stick, moving the monitor’s red bull’s eye a fraction of an inch. The adjustment wasn’t really necessary, but Zarek needed something to distract him from the anxiety of landing on a new, virtually unknown planet. The two-foot monitor in front of his pilot control displayed images of a desert area in the southwestern region of the United States. This area, over which Zarek’s ship hovered, would provide both the isolation and the aridness Zarek’s race, the Plarizakians, needed to live a peaceful and comfortable existence.

  It looks so much like home, Zarek thought, sighing. No matter the climate, though, Zarek knew it would never feel like home. The Plarizakians no longer had a home. The Nefarianics, a water-dragon race, had flooded Plarizakia’s desserts, making it uninhabitable to the shifter dragon/humanoid Plarizakians.

  “You gonna make it over there?” Virlek, Zarek’s best friend and weapon’s operator, asked.

  Zarek jumped at the sound, turning his head quickly in Virlek’s direction. Then, he picked up his empty metal drinking container and tossed it toward his friend, a gesture of feigned irritation. Virlek caught the bottle easily.

  He tossed the bottle back before speaking again. “No one’s gonna make it anywhere if Jandric doesn’t get out here. Hey, Jandric? You done in there yet?”

  A door in the rear section of the circular spacecraft opened. A short, stocky man entered the room, shutting the bathroom door behind him.

  “Fine, fine,” Jandric said, walking to the telecommunications panel, sitting, and entering his access code. He was preparing to send a transmission to the other Plarizakian ships that waited in the shadows of the Milky Way. “What’s the hurry? We’ve been looking for an inhabitable area for what—five years now?”

  Zarek reached for his drink container again. Virlek followed his lead. Jandric, his back to them, kept tapping away at his control panel as both Zarek and Virlek threw their empty bottles at him.

  “Ow!” Jandric shouted as the metal containers hit him on the back. He picked up Virlek’s bottle and flung it back. “Do you want me to send this message or what?!”

  “Yes!” Zarek and Virlek hollered at the same time.

  Virlek and Zarek sat in silence as they waited. Zarek’s mind went back to his home planet. Images of his family, now dead, flashed through his mind. He saw his father falling and drowning in the waves that enveloped Plarizakia. His saw his mother succumbing to the same fate. His little brother had almost made it to the ship, but a Nefarianic had spotted him. Zarek saw his little brother’s petite body disappear, covered in a blast of water. Zarek blew out a long, slow breath and, shaking his head to clear the memories, forced himself back into the present.

  “Transmission sent,” Jandric said. “The ships will be heading this way soon. Meanwhile, we’re clear to land.”

  Zarek let himself smile—the first real smile that had crossed his face since the Nefarianics had attacked, since he had lost his entire family, since all hope for a future life had drained from his very being. He took the control stick between fingers, readying the ship for landing. As he was about to move the toggle, though, the ship rocked. He pulled his hand away from the panel. The ship shook again, sparks flying from the weapons-control panel. Virlek covered his face with his forearm and turned away.

  “Weapons are down,” Virlek said as soon as the smoke cleared.

  “Human aircrafts!” Zarek hollered, looking at his own monitor. “Ten of them. We’re surrounded.”

  “The weapons won’t come back online,” Virlek reported. “Unless…”

  “Unless what?” Zarek yelled back.

  “Unless one of us repairs them from the outside,” Virlek answered. “The shots tore the front panel off. They pulled the wires right out. If one of us could reattach the wires, we might have just enough juice for one shot. That should give us a chance to get out of here.”

  “Fine,” Zarek said, standing. “Jandric and I can cover you while you reattach the panel.”

  “But—” Virlek started to protest.

  “I know it’s dangerous, Virlek, but our people depend on us. If this is the only to get out of here, to warn them, then we take this way.”

  “But—” Virlek protested again.

  “Enough!” Zarek growled, already starting to transform. He shrugged his uniform vest off as his shoulders expanded, their bulging muscles growing and lengthening. He unbuttoned his white pants, hurrying before his fingers turned into claws. He pulled the pants down, exposing his abdomen, his hips, and briefly, his well-endowed frontal parts. Like his shoulders, his thigh muscles tightened, grew, and lengthened. His tan skin turned to green scales, reflecting rainbows of color.

  “Open the doors!” he ordered Jandric, looking over at his stocky friend. Jandric’s brown skin had turned to black scales. Jandric pushed the release button for the door. Both dragons darted out while Virlek, still in his human form, followed them. He had a magnetic breast plate strapped over his chest, one that would secure him to the surface of the ship and leave his hands free.

  “Now!” Zarek jumped from the ship, expanding his massive wings as he flew right. Jandric flew out the ship’s door, veering toward the left. The dragons circled the ship, forcing the planes to move back.

  “How much longer?” Zarek asked Virlek, who had been working on the panel for five minutes.

  “Now!” Virlek shouted. From the corner of his eye, Zarek saw Virlek slide the weapons panel back in place. As he did, though, sparks shot out from the edge of the panel. An explosion rocked the ship. The panel shot back out, pushing Virlek, magnetic suit and all, off the surface and into empty air.

  As Zarek dove to catch Virlek, one of the planes opened fire on the dragon, catching him just below his left wing. Zarek started falling before he could reach his friend. He watched as Virlek transformed, his clothes shredding as his muscles and bones rearranged themselves. His skin became dark blue scales.

  “Go!” Zarek shouted to his crew members, to his friends, even as he continued to fall. “Go! Save yourselves. Save our people.”

  Virlek flapped his giant wings, directing his body toward Zarek.

  “I said, go!” Zarek hollered as loudly as he could. He felt himself weakening. His chest hurt so badly. His breaths were shallow. “Go while you still can. Go while their attention is on me. This is the chance you needed.”

  Then, Zarek lost consciousness. His body continued to fall toward the desert floor. His ship hovered for half a second, hesitating before it shot up and away from the military ships, away from Earth, away from its captain, and toward the outer shadows of the Milky Way.

  Chapter Two

  “Don’t blow this,” Aubrey Moss whispered around the edge of the ID badge she held between her teeth. She started wrapping an elastic around her ponytail.

  “Don’t blow this,” she whispered again as she clamped the ID badge onto the chest pocket of her size-18 black pantsuit. She tried to get the badge to lie flat but gave up. The fullness of her cleavage did not lend itself to anything lying flat against it.

  “Don’t blow this,” she repeated one more time. These were not words of self-encouragement, though. As she spoke, she was hearing the voice of her father, Raymond Moss, the president of Gen-Ex. Aubrey was about to head out of the locker room and into her first briefing as an employee of her father’s company.

  As Aubrey tightened her ponytail, a stubborn, curly
bump popped up on the top of her head.

  “You’re so going to blow this,” Aubrey whispered, looking down at her shaking hands. She felt like she was going to cry. Tears welled in her eyes. She tried to take deep breaths. She closed her eyes.

  You are an elite female biologist, she thought, trying to encourage herself. You graduated at the top of your class. You got the job because you deserve it. Prove that to yourself. You deserve this. Prove that to you father.

  “You deserve this,” she repeated out loud. Her heart rate slowed. Her breathing became regular and she started to feel better.

  “Aubrey!” her father yelled, pushing the locker door open a crack. “What the hell is taking you so long? You need brains to work here, not beauty, thank God.”

  Aubrey’s shoulders tensed again. She put her hands in the pockets of her black dress pants, trying to hide the fact that they were trembling again. Her father held the door open for her.

  “Don’t blow this, Aubrey,” he said under his breath as she squeezed between his bulbous belly and the door frame. She stiffened her entire body to try to hide her trembling that had increased in proportion to the proximity of her father, but she kept walking.

  “All right, gentleman,” her father’s voice boomed around the room as he shut the door of the briefing room behind him. He walked to his seat, leaving Aubrey standing by the door. One of the ten men sitting around the table stood, offering her his chair.

  “No, no, she’s fine,” her father said from the head of the conference table. He sat, clasping his hands atop his belly, leaning back in the chair.

  “She can sit there. We won’t be long.” Her father unclasped his hands long enough to point to a row of chairs against the wall.

  Aubrey sat, putting her shaking, sweaty hands under thighs. The middle-aged gentleman with the goatee who had offered her his chair shrugged before sitting back down.

  “I assume you’ve all already discussed the statuses of our, uh, samples?” her father asked, looking up from an open folder and meeting the gaze of every man in the room.

  “Yes, Mr. Moss.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The men around the room uttered similar sentiments before the room fell silent again. Raymond Moss shuffled through a few more folders.

  “And the new one?” he asked, looking up again.

  The goateed man sat straight before speaking. “Well, uh, we’ve had problems getting samples and, uh—”

  “And?” her Father asked gruffly.

  “We’ve had problems obtaining specimens from the newest sample,” the man said, clearly this time.

  “Robert, Robert, Robert,” Raymond sat back in his chair, clasping his hands over his belly again. “You are the top biologist in this damn country. I pay you the wages of the top biologist in this damn country.”

  “Yes, sir,” Robert said, looking down at the table that separated him from his boss. “But—”

  “I don’t want excuses, Robert,” Raymond slammed his fist on the table.

  “Yes, sir,” Robert said, still looking down.

  “Now, go get me a damn sample.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And take Aubrey with you,” Raymond nodded toward his daughter. “She’s the top female biologist in the country. Maybe all you need is a woman’s touch. You don’t look like you get much of that.”

  Robert stared open-mouthed at Raymond’s crudeness. Aubrey fought the urge to cover her face with her hands.

  “Go!” Raymond growled, pointing to the door.

  Robert nodded, stood, and led Aubrey out the door.

  “Sorry,” Robert said when the elevator door closed.

  “How far down does this thing go?” Aubrey asked, trying to change the subject. She gestured toward the many buttons by the door.

  “The elevator goes down twenty-one floors, but there are really twenty-two floors below the surface.”

  Robert didn’t say anything else. The elevator was uncomfortably silent, so Aubrey tried again.

  “What are these samples everyone keeps talking about? I mean, why just call them samples? Are they plants? Animals? What? Why all the secrecy?”

  “You’ll see for yourself,” Robert said. “There’s no better way to explain. You’ll see.”

  The elevator dinged.

  “That’s us,” Robert escorted Aubrey out the door.

  Aubrey watched her feet as she exited the elevator. She was only wearing small heels, but to her, any heels were gigantic. The last thing she wanted to do right now was fall on her face in front of her new co-workers.

  Don’t blow it, her father’s words echoed in her head again.

  As soon as she was sure her feet were on solid ground, Aubrey looked up. What she saw was no different than any other lab, though perhaps cleaner and more humane-looking. There were rows and rows of aquariums, not the cages most research companies used to house their mice and gerbils and cats and dogs and primates. It was quieter, too.

  The glass must be soundproof, Aubrey thought.

  Robert grasped her elbow, leading her through the lab.

  “This way,” Robert said, pointing to a metal door on the far side of the room. He scanned his ID badge in the slot beside the door and they entered an anteroom. The first door slid closed behind them. The panels on each side of the narrow anteroom began to emit a bright blue light. After a few seconds, a zapping sound filled the room. Then, the lights turned off and the door in front of them opened.

  Unable to keep her eyes from the sight that unfolded in front of her, Aubrey took a step into the room, catching her heel on the door’s bottom guides and stumbling forward. Fortunately, she didn’t fall.

  Aubrey and Robert stood on a metal floor. Ten feet from her was a railing that opened up into a round hole in the center of the floor. The walls held hundreds and hundreds of glass tanks similar to the ones she had seen in the first room. The sizes of these tanks were different, though. Some could have fit in the palm of her hand. Some were over four stories high.

  Aubrey turned to the tank closest to her. It was a small tank that held what appeared to be an octopus, but this octopus was barely the size of her thumb. Instead of suction cups, it had yellow flower-like protrusions running the length of its arms. As soon as the octopus thing saw Aubrey, its eyes grew larger and larger, almost covering its entire body. Its arms tensed. With a sudden movement, metal-like hooks shot out of the flower protrusions. The animal darted to the edge of the tank, its hooks making contact with the glass. Aubrey jumped back, gasping.

  Robert laughed a little, but Aubrey didn’t sense anything but good humor in that laugh. She walked on.

  “Is that Jello?” she asked, pointing to a ten-foot by ten-foot aquarium.

  “No, that is Bob,” Robert responded.

  Bob was a red, gelatinous, square blob.

  “Fitting name,” Aubrey said. “What does he do?”

  “Uh, nothing really.”

  Aubrey looked at Robert. “What do any of these things do? What are they?”

  “They’re, uh, well, that’s kind of what we are trying to figure out. That’s what we do.”

  “Where did they come from?”

  Robert shrugged. “Mostly, well, from space.”

  “Space…huh,” Aubrey thought for a minute. She supposed she should have been more shocked, but she had always been obsessed with alien movies. She had even done a paper defending the existence of aliens, so she was far more curious than shocked.

  Or maybe I’m in shock.

  Aubrey moved on to the next tank. It was the same size as Bob’s tank, but it held something much hairier. As Aubrey moved closer, the creature looked up, exposing its electric blue face. The massive gorilla-like creature stood. The hairless skin of its front was entirely blue. The thing flexed its arm muscles. Its hair stood on end, filling every inch of the container. Electric sparks started making their way from its body to the ends of its hair.

  “Cover your eyes,” Robert told her. Aubrey obeyed,
but she could still see the brilliant blue light through her fingers as the electricity in the aquarium continued to build. Then, the light was gone. She lowered her hand and saw only hair again.

  “It builds up the electricity to defend itself,” Robert explained nonchalantly. Aubrey nodded as if she completely understood.

  “But enough of these for now,” Robert told her, picking up speed as he continued toward the door on the opposite side of the room. “We need to get down to the next floor.”

  “What’s there?” Aubrey asked.

  “Something…something…more…”

  “More than all this,” she asked, gesturing around the room.

  “Yes, something more than this.”

  “How could anything be more than this?”

  “You’ll see.”

  Aubrey followed Robert through the metal door, which was decorated with a giant “No Unauthorized Access” sign.

  “Geez,” Aubrey said as they entered another anteroom. “What kind of access do you need to get in here? I figure if you can get into the other room— ”

  “Trust me. This one’s different. There are only three people with access to this room—me, your father, and now you.”

  Aubrey was about to ask more questions, but Robert had already exited the anteroom. She followed him as he descended a spiral staircase. At the bottom of the stairs was another metal door. Robert scanned his badge. Aubrey, expecting to walk into yet another anteroom, inhaled sharply when she caught site of what was behind this door. She stood in the tiny control room as a scaly, green dragon, larger than an airplane rushed toward her, spewing fire in front of him. As the flames hit the glass separating the control room from the creature, Aubrey realized she had stopped breathing. Still, she couldn’t will her frozen self to take a breath.

  Don’t blow this, she heard her father’s voice.

  Too late, she responded as she fainted, crumbling to the floor.

  Chapter Three

  “Wake up,” Aubrey heard Robert’s voice above her. Her eyes fluttered open. Robert cradled her head under one of his hands, fanning her face with a piece of paper. She blinked a few more times before struggling to rise up onto her elbows.