Interspecies: Volume 1 (The Inlari Sagas)

by M. J. Kelley

  The inlari officer’s timely intervention had saved her life back in the forest. Furious, the berserker had plucked her from the broken hole, his ugly cleaver poised for killing. She shrieked, but then the inlari officer had appeared out of nowhere and ordered the berserker to stand down. Thin and lithe like a panther, the officer barely reached the giant creature’s shoulder.

  The officer’s metal armor and helmet glimmered like the shiny insides of a shell as he reached for her wrist and squeezed. Her fingers popped open and she dropped the knife back into the broken hole. Speaking in a language Samantha didn’t understand, the inlari barked at the much larger alien, and he reluctantly sheathed his cleaver and tossed her over his massive shoulder. They returned to the cinders of Samantha’s home, leaving behind her dad’s last gift to her.

  Nothing but smoke and embers remained of the cabin. The barn, too, lay in ruins. Her parents’ bodies were unrecognizable, charred and grotesque. Seeing what was left of her parents, Samantha screamed. She screamed until her throat burned and her chest ached, and only silent tears remained.

  They were almost at the river when she saw an unconscious Kimberley slung over the shoulder of another berserker. She shouted Kimberley’s name, but her voice came out hoarse and grated raw in her throat. She squirmed and pushed against the alien, but a giant hand held her legs tightly. Exhausted, she gave up.

  That had been many hours ago. Samantha couldn’t tell time anymore. Everything seemed a daze to her, unreal, like a series of horrific images she couldn’t escape.

  Her eyes wet from fresh tears, the shock of losing her parents had taken something from her. Mentally exhausted, she couldn’t muster enough strength for even fear, and numbness set in. She peered down at her baby sister and carefully pushed the hair from her face. Dried mud and soot streaked Kimberley’s cheeks, and an ugly bruise darkened the side of her face. Her eyelids twitched with restlessness. Samantha stroked her face and whispered sweet things. Things she knew were not true anymore. Things she did not believe, that no longer existed. After a while Kimberley’s breathing fell into a rhythm, and her face softened.

  Watching her sister’s serene face, the thin shell of numbness cracked, and new tears swelled in Samantha’s eyes at the thought that this was a temporary reprieve only. As raw emotion surged through her, Samantha wept with loss and regret and shame. Shame that she had caused her father’s death and deserted her sister. A terrible anguish threatened to tear her apart as she strained to keep her sobs from wracking her body.

  Left alone without food and water, Samantha’s stomach growled in protest. Her tongue felt thick and rough with thirst, but she tried to ignore the discomfort. She didn’t deserve water anyway, not after abandoning her sister the way she had and getting her dad killed. Misery was her penance.

  But what about Kimberley? She was only four years old.

  The cabin door clunked open, and an inlari officer entered, the same one who had murdered her dad. He still wore his armored suit, but no helmet to hide his horns. Ribbed, brown, and swept back from his forehead in a majestic swirl, they resembled a ram’s, only smaller. His lean face boasted high, sharp cheekbones, and his eyes narrowed to slits as he glared at them.

  “We are almost at our destination, humans. When we disembark, do not attempt escape, because there is no place to escape to. From here on out, you listen to what your masters tell you. Failure to obey will result in punishment. Severe punishment. Is that clear?” He studied the girls, his eyes lingering on each one. “And wake up the little one!”

  Samantha cuddled Kimberley to her chest as if the mere act of doing so would protect her little sister from their fate. Startled, Kimberley howled again. The alien ignored her, but before he left, he paused and looked back and gave a half-smile. “Welcome to Lakarta.” The door clunked shut behind him.

  The Thompson girls sobbed, and Samantha held Kimberley tighter, her baby sister’s fear rattling both of them.

  The sun dipped in the west when they reached what she guessed was the Port of Auckland, only the area had been renamed to something she couldn’t pronounce. Two berserkers escorted Samantha and the girls to the deck of the ASV.

  Kimberley held on to Samantha, the knuckles of her little fists white as she clenched the fabric of her older sister’s tattered fleece jacket. Samantha wrapped her arm around her as they trudged down the gangplank behind the Thompson sisters and onto the pier where another haggard-looking group of girls waited.

  The port was a bustling mess of confusion. Inlari and berserkers mingled with other humans as they conducted their business. Traditional forklifts transported huge containers and unknown goods, and a variety of oddly-shaped vehicles painted blue or yellow blustered through the streets and around the wharves. Samantha had seen cars and bikes and other powered vehicles in Dorrigo, but they never looked this new and shiny.

  With the aliens calling New Zealand home and being at odds with humans in Australia, Samantha wondered how they even had a busy port. The humans here differed in shape, age, and size, but they all had three things in common: shaven heads, white tunics over white loose-fitting pants, and a thin silver collar around their necks.

  They were ushered towards a procession of inlari military vehicles with matte black exteriors and blackened rims when a berserker tore Kimberley from her grasp, grabbing a fistful of the little girl’s hair. Samantha reached for her, shouting Kimberley’s name as her sister shrieked, but the inlari officer stepped in and swatted her across the mouth.

  Falling to her knees, she tasted blood, and tears welled up in her eyes. Kimberley’s anguished screams echoed in her ears, and Samantha pushed up again and called after her. She tried to shove past the officer, and he hit her again, sending her sprawling onto the bleached concrete surface of the wharf. Through dizzy eyes, she saw the berserker toss her shrieking sister into the back of a yellow vehicle and shut the latch, muting Kimberley’s wails of pain and horror.

  “I warned you, human. You are property. Your duty is to obey. Nothing else.”

  “She is my sister!” Samantha cried. “She is my sister! You can’t do this. Please don’t do this. Please let me go to her. Please!”

  Ignoring her pleas, the officer’s face remained impassive as he produced a baton the size of his fist. He twisted the end of the stick and three cords shot out, crackling with pulsing blue light.

  Samantha shielded herself the only way she could, by lifting her arm, but the first lash curled around her forearm and tore through fabric and skin. She screamed and turned away reflexively to protect her injured arm, inadvertently exposing her back to the alien. Four more lashes cut into her back, hips, and shoulders before Samantha could roll away. Her body blazed with agony as blood soaked her shredded jacket. She sobbed and whimpered, calling out to her dad to help her. Another lash ripped into her raw back, and Samantha lost consciousness.

  Her dad made faces, mimicking their mother’s stern expression after she’d reprimanded Samantha for skipping her chores earlier that day.

  Her mom shook her head in mock disapproval of her dad’s escapades, and Samantha and Kimberley laughed. Her mother’s freshly baked bread filled the air with a sweet aroma that mixed well with the fragrance from the old wood burner and roasted coffee beans.

  Her dad’s dark eyebrows twitched and his forehead wrinkled as he laughed. Gray streaks colored his bushy beard and his teeth shone like white marble, but then he glanced at Samantha and turned serious.

  “Still, there’s a place and time for everything, Sam. Your mom is right about you needing to do your chores. You can’t skip them. There’s plenty of time for practice with your bow and for exploring afterwards. Remember, it’s about keeping balance.”

  “But Dad, everyone needs to be able to fight and survive. I’m much better at shooting my bow than feeding chickens.” Her voice pled in earnest.

  Her dad smiled. “Yes, but who will feed the chickens then? Besides, your mom can’t do all the work. That wouldn’t be fair, eh?”
r />   “No, it wouldn’t,” Samantha answered slowly, lowering her gaze.

  “Don’t look so gloomy,” her mom interjected. “No one is angry at you.”

  “Thammy is thad!” Kimberley shouted, her face puckered with concern for her older sister.

  “No, she’s not.” Her dad winked at her. “She just doesn’t like being wrong. She’s like her dad in that regard.”

  Samantha’s face lit up then, and she broke a piece from the fresh, still-warm bread and took a huge bite.

  Kimberley laughed.

  A week passed as her injuries healed. The aliens allowed her wounds to fester for three days, probably as a reminder of the cost of disobedience. They then injected her with a serum that accelerated skin repair, fought infection, and, mercifully, numbed the pain by cauterizing the nerve endings—or that is how the female inlari who administered the injection had explained it to Samantha. She was kind and her voice soothing as Samantha battled through fever. She also told Samantha that the serum did not prevent scarring, and so Samantha’s first introduction to Lakarta left her body with a permanent reminder.

  She soon departed the medical wing of Lakarta Detention Centre for the dormitories. Tiered bunks filled a huge room at least six rows deep, but only one row was occupied. As though cast from a mold, the blindingly white walls were smooth and free of any seams or switches or indents. The toilets and basins were situated at the one end of the room; the dulled metal smelled of vile disinfectant, which made Samantha gag. A series of caged fluorescent panels dangled from chains below the rafters and illuminated the dormitory with a harsh light that made her skin appear yellow. Fear clung to the girls and hung like a heavy fog over the room.

  Sometimes, in the middle of the night, when the children’s whimpering and weeping ceased, when Samantha’s own thoughts were at their darkest, she focused on the low buzzing sound of the fluorescent tubes. The noise reminded her of the cicadas back home. And so, at times, when her fear and sorrow felt the heaviest, she would close her eyes and pretend to feel the mountain breeze on her skin as she lay in her bunk. She imagined that the yellow lights glaring behind her eyelids were the sun’s warm light beating down on her, and above her, buzzing with abandon, the cicadas called to be rescued from their loneliness. She missed those noisy tree crickets and wished she’d never spoken ill of them. What she would give to hear those insects and their weird songs of longing once more.

  Foreign-tasting gruel, which reminded Samantha of mushed cardboard, was served as their meal twice a day and gave Samantha diarrhea the first week, but she got used to it quick enough, and her body adapted.

  She heard stories by eavesdropping on conversations from the other girls, but these tales were more like whispers and speculation, made more frightful by stories of cruelty and of sexual abuse by the aliens.

  Each morning, the same inlari female would pay the girls a visit. The pale-skinned alien wore a cassock-style blue tunic with yellow and white trim, but instead of a mandarin collar, the tunic had a v-cut with some kind of tight-fitting white undergarment. Her dark horns jutted from her forehead like a billy goat’s and were smooth and thin, smaller than the inlari officer’s. She kept her shoulder-length white hair tucked behind her ears, and her thin eyes gave her an almost elvish appearance.

  “Bellogans,” she would say in heavily accented English, “your presence here is to serve as property of the great inlari nation. In that alone, there is honor far above your station. Some of you, if the Great Star should bless you with good fortune, will be chosen to serve as concubines for one of the higher houses. This position brings with it some comforts and freedoms you would not ordinarily enjoy otherwise. It would be in your best interest to pay attention when spoken to and show respect to your masters. Always obey instructions. Failure will result in punishment, and punishment will diminish your chances at finding ‘good fortune’ here in Lakarta.” She would say the last line with a smirk on her face as she weaved between the bunks, hands clasped behind her rigid back.

  With each day’s visit the same message was repeated. Over and over again. None of the girls ever questioned her, and they listened attentively, eyes wide with fear.

  “To help you adjust to your new life, you’ll be fitted with a discipline ring. If you disobey a command, the ring will punish you. It will hurt. If you try to escape Lakarta, something worse will happen. Do you understand?” Shocked faces would stare at her in horror and nod. Some girls cried.

  This speech became a fixture of the mundane routine at the detention center. The only other visitors were human wardens, women dressed in white overalls with red arm bands, who came to select the girls and whisk them away to a predetermined destination. At first, they were relieved to see a human adult, but the female wardens ignored their questions and shouldered them out of the way. They learned to fear the silent wardens, viewing them as harbingers of doom. Each day, two or three girls left. The fear in the dormitory was palpable and toxic and constant.

  Samantha met Carik during her second week in captivity. Until then she had kept to herself, occupied with thoughts of her baby sister. Carik was her own age, but where Samantha had raven hair, now shaved to stubble, and dark eyes, Carik’s eyes were the color of blue ice and her white-blond hair fell in unruly curls over her shoulders and back. Carik had been earmarked for one of the higher houses on the first day of her arrival. The inlari had already branded her with that house’s sigil.

  “Do you want to see my tattoo?” Carik asked one night. She slept on the bottom bunk.

  Most of the girls were numb from loss and terror by now and availed themselves of light banter, though a giggle or laughter was a rarity.

  “Sure.” Samantha had answered, not sure what else to say, and Carik rolled from her bunk and pulled up her white tunic sleeve, revealing the small blue tattoo on the inside of her forearm, just below the fold of her elbow. Samantha could make no sense of the sigil or “Coat of Arms” as some of the other girls had come to call it, for it looked more like hieroglyphic patterns that had been squashed together to form a rough square.

  “What does it mean, do you know?” Samantha asked, studying the weird shapes and patterns.

  “I don’t know,” Carik answered. “It’s really pretty, and it didn’t even hurt. Put your finger here. You can feel it. It feels weird.” Carik giggled as she offered her arm to Samantha, who touched the welted mark hesitantly. The edges were smooth and slightly warm to the touch.

  “They told me I'm going to be a concubine.”

  “What's a concubine?” Samantha asked. “It sounds like porcupine.”

  They both laughed.

  Neither one was yet sure what being a concubine entailed, but the female alien had told Carik the position included comforts, which, to their minds, was better than being beaten or worked to death.

  “Have they chosen you yet?” Carik asked. Her eyes were bright and innocent, her curiosity desperate.

  “Not yet. Next week maybe. I don’t know.” Samantha played with the seam of her tunic, studying the white zigzag stitch. Her mother used to make their clothing, and she had taught Samantha how to sew and stitch. Samantha hated it and always ended up pricking her finger.

  “I’m glad they took me, you know.” Carik said. “I lived with my uncle, but he was a bad man. He hurt me a lot. Now he’s dead.”

  Samantha looked up and studied Carik’s face. Her eyes were so big, but Samantha saw fear there. Carik’s bottom lip quivered as she tried to show a brave face.

  “I don’t think this will be better. You’ve heard the stories—”

  “Do you know where you’ll go?” Carik asked quickly, ignoring Samantha’s words.

  Samantha shook her head. “No, not yet.”

  “It’s a surprise then.” Carik smiled.

  Samantha didn’t smile back and wondered if Carik was right in the head.

  They came for Carik the next day. On her way out, she turned to Samantha and smiled, waving to her as if this was an ordinary ever
yday thing and she was bidding her farewell.

  Samantha did not wave back and just stared after the girl, thinking how odd it was for someone to be so lighthearted in the face of such unspeakable horror.

  She was too numb to care either way.

  By week three Samantha had stopped crying. Her thoughts still dwelled on her sister’s lot and the loss of her parents, but she’d developed a detachment from her surroundings. Samantha viewed her new life from behind a mental barrier, where she was just a passenger in someone else’s life. She would still wake up at night from time to time, cold sweat pearling on her forehead, but being awake now became a reprieve, where sleep used to be an escape.

  During week four they came for her. The two human wardens that had taken Carik, dressed in their white overalls and red armbands, and escorted Samantha from the room. She didn’t protest or fight them.

  The detention center consisted of a main administrative building and eight dormitories, four on each side of the main building, attached by an external hallway. They led her to the administrative block, where a stern-looking inlari female with long black hair and oddly-shaped horns processed her. The alien had a name tag on her chest, but the letters were written in inlari, and Samantha couldn’t read it.

  The alien stood up from behind her desk and beckoned Samantha to come closer.

  Samantha obeyed, shuffling forward.

  The alien fitted a thin silver collar around her neck. Next, she took Samantha’s left arm and pushed up the sleeve. With a coil-like machine, she tattoo-stamped Samantha’s arm below the curve of her elbow. It was quick, but it hurt. Carik had lied to her about not feeling a thing. The tattoo was slate gray and edged, and, as with Carik’s, the image made no sense to Samantha—just a bunch of lines and triangles meshed together in a rough square. Samantha traced her finger over the welts absentmindedly and saw the coloring change to a dark blue, like the color of blueberries.