The Mercenary's Dawn

by L P Peace

  If the Ulidon caught them, it would be her fault.

  It seemed like she was getting through to him before. She thought he’d begun to identify with her, that the story of The Violation would change something.

  It couldn’t be a coincidence that Thanesh and his people appeared at the same time as the human men disappeared. It couldn’t be a coincidence that the pale aliens took only men and that the Cealin ‘created’ a similar number of male aliens. She thought he would be curious. She thought he would want to know more. She thought he would care.

  Alethia searched her mind for a way to draw him in. To make him understand the threat the people of his home planet faced. Deep in thought, Alethia’s eyes wandered to a small area underneath a tree and the marks left by an animal.

  ‘Look,’ she cried out. Thanesh turned suddenly, looking around like a male about to go on a murder spree. ‘No, there. Look.’ Alethia pointed to a patch of earth. Thanesh looked at it, then turned to her.

  ‘Don’t you see the claw marks?’ Fighting gravity, she walked over to the base of the tree. Fronds were growing around it and the surrounding soil was disturbed. As she got closer, she saw evidence of edible detritus.

  She fell to her knees and dug at the dirt.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Thanesh growled. Alethia ignored him long enough to grab the root vegetable.

  ‘Food,’ she said, holding up a pale green root vegetable. Thanesh did a double-take and joined her helping her dig up another seven roots.

  ‘We need to wash these,’ she said, getting up and walking towards the sound of the stream, vegetables in hand.

  ‘How do we know these are safe to eat?’ Thanesh asked.

  ‘Other creatures are eating them,’ she said. She dropped carefully to her knees next to the stream. ‘But even so, we should cook them and try a bite and leave it for a bit.‘ Thanesh knelt beside her.

  Her vision doubled and dimmed. She swayed and closed her eyes. When she opened them again, she was lying on her back, Thanesh bent over her. He had dipped the top back into the water and was pressing it to her face.

  ‘This looks worse.’ He was frowning, deep lines etched into his forehead.

  ‘It feels worse,’ she admitted.

  ‘We need to find cover,’ he said. ‘I should not be driving you so hard in this condition.’

  ‘We have to get away.’ She forced her eyes to focus. ‘Ulidon are coming.’

  Thanesh only gritted his teeth in response, his jaw muscles ticking. He packed the vegetables in his bag, slung it over his shoulder and picked Alethia up again.

  ‘You should tell me if you’re feeling ill.’ He sounded angry.

  ‘You didn’t seem inclined to give a shit,’ she whispered, leaning gratefully against his broad chest.

  ‘Shit?’

  ‘Durv,’ she clarified.

  ‘Shit sounds better,’ he admitted after taking a moment to consider.

  They fell quiet as Thanesh picked his way through the forest. Alethia drifted in and out of sleep, trying to ignore the pain she was in and the growing heat of her body. Lying against Thanesh was almost unbearable, but she was just too tired to move.

  After some time had passed, Thanesh stopped and cocked his head slightly to one side. Alethia opened her mouth to speak, but he shook his head in a jerky movement and continued listening for another few seconds.

  ‘Do you hear that?’ he asked finally.

  Alethia shook her head. ‘I can’t hear anything over your heartbeat.’

  Without saying a word, Thanesh changed direction. He carried her for a few minutes before she saw a rock face come into view. The stream they had been following ran parallel to the cliffs, and Thanesh followed it. Finally, a cave came into view, the stream emerging from the wide entrance.

  ‘Let’s get you out of the sun,’ he whispered.

  ‘There might be something living inside,’ Alethia whispered back.

  Thanesh nodded. ‘I will check.’ He placed her down on the ground, in the shade, and disappeared inside. She could hear him moving about inside. After a minute or two, he emerged.

  ‘Nothing as far back as I can see.’

  ‘Any weird smells?’

  ‘How would I know?’

  Alethia shook her head. ‘Do any of your people know survival?’ Thanesh picked her up. ‘Surely some of them know survival?’

  ‘Some survival,’ he said as the dark and cold of the cave interior settled over them.

  ‘You’re so sexy and then you say something like that.’ The words were out of her mouth before she could stop them. The dazed, dizzy feeling loosened her tongue, his scent fuzzing the edges of her sense. Shame and embarrassment crept over her.

  Thanesh stopped walking.

  Alethia shook her head. ‘Let’s pretend I didn’t say that,’ she whispered.

  He placed her on the ground and stood.

  ‘I will hunt for something to add to those vegetables,’ he said. ‘You have the knife?’ Alethia nodded. ‘Stay here.’ A moment later, he was gone.

  Even though she had asked him to pretend she hadn’t said the sexy comment, his complete lack of a reaction to it was unbearable.

  Why had she even said that? Yes, he was sexy, from the horns on his head to his sexy ass, down to his huge feet. He was gorgeous; he was also her enemy. He intended to imprison or sell her, was intent on finding her colony, she couldn’t afford to be a silly girl around him. A silly girl was exactly what she was turning into, especially whenever she got a whiff of him. He smelt so damned good; it did something to her. It made her needy, aroused. It made her want things she had carefully avoided wanting. If she was honest with herself, it wasn’t just his scent.

  He mesmerised her. Whenever he was around her, he was all she was aware of. The way he held himself when he stood. The way he moved, walking, running. The way he licked his lips. The way his nose scrunched when he smelled the air, the fine lines that appeared on either side of his nose. The shape of his eyes. The lines of his face. His neck. The veins that protruded against his skin, making her fingers itch to touch him.

  There was something about his hands that, whenever he was doing anything with them, all she could do was stare at them. She wondered what they would feel like against her skin. Quickly, Alethia shut down that line of thought before it could take her to a place she wasn’t ready to go.

  His intense stare made her feel seen in a way she never felt before. Most of Alethia’s experiences with aliens had involved them enquiring about buying her. They saw a human, small, delicate, vulnerable. They thought about what they wanted and that alone.

  Thanesh wanted her. She knew that was true. The way he had pulled her into him the night before. The way he had lost himself in her scent, the way she had lost herself to his. The way his lips had briefly caressed her ears. But it was more than that.

  Other aliens wanted to fuck her, but none of them cared about who she was. Thanesh had nothing but questions for her. Obviously, most of them were centred around her activity as a woman who had stolen his racial identity. Still, she got the impression he was genuinely interested in her to the degree that it annoyed him. Whenever he questioned her about her life, he seemed irritated with himself for asking.

  So why was he so different today? Why had he put a wall up?

  Alethia almost scraped her hands over her face in frustration but stopped herself when she felt the pulsing red heat that covered her skin. She let out a frustrated growl instead, which echoed around the small space. It brought her attention to the cave.

  It was small near the mouth but opened up into the cliffside the farther back it went. In the distance, she could hear the constant, steady drip of water and farther back, the trickling stream. The grey stone surrounded her on all sides except for the entrance and the deeper black behind her. The ground was covered in compact red-tinted soil.

  Letting out a sigh, Alethia decided she couldn’t just stand around anymore. She cleared a suitable spot and dug down until she
had a sizeable hole in which to build a fire. When she was done, she got up to wash her hands but dropped back to the hard floor almost immediately. She lay there for a moment, the wind knocked from her.

  ‘Well, fuck,’ she whispered when her breathing had steadied. She crawled over to the edge of the stream, snagging the water canister on the way, and emptied it down her throat. She refilled, drank and refilled it again, then bathed her face until she felt refreshed, stronger. When she stood again, she wobbled on her feet. But her stance was sturdier this time.

  Snatching up the thermal blanket, Alethia wrapped it around her head and went back out into the forest. She looked at the treeline of massive flora and patted the knife on her belt to reassure herself it was still there.

  ‘You’re so sexy and then you say something like that.’ Her face flamed with a fresh wave of embarrassment. She had to find a way to deal with her attraction to this male. She wasn’t worried about selling her people out to him. That would never happen; she would only give him her people’s location if he stopped being a threat. But for the sake of what scraps of dignity she had left, she had to get control of herself.

  Broken wood was an abundant resource on this planet. She found a small clearing just inside the treeline and, choosing a spot, began depositing tinder, twigs and branches there.

  She was gathering for a few minutes and had a good pile going when she caught a flash of something green-grey out of her peripheral vision. Alethia turned to face it, a gasp escaping her lips, but there was nothing there.

  The wind stirred. Alethia chuckled in relief.

  When she walked over to the pile of branches, most of it was gone. Her mouth dropped open in shock and a small amount of fear; she wasn’t alone.

  She saw another flash of green-grey and turned in time to see a tiny, multi-limbed creature dropping a twig of wood back to a spot she had taken it from only minutes before.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she cried out in surprise.

  Enormous red and gold eyes were reflected back at her before the creature disappeared into the underbrush.

  Shaking her head, Alethia grabbed as many sticks as she could and deposited them next to the cave before going back into the forest. She made the journey several times. Whatever the creatures were, they didn’t seem inclined to leave the safety of the forest

  She was getting ready to haul the wood into the cave when the dizziness returned. This time, when she fell, she was already unconscious by the time she hit the ground.

  Hunting was not easy. Thanesh had assumed it would be, that his instincts as a warrior translated to abilities as a hunter. This was not the case.

  Survival training. When Thanesh got back to Calaia, he would instigate survival training for all of his men, starting with the highest ranks, working down.

  He would need someone to teach them. He stopped walking. He was still looking for a reason to keep Alethia around. Exasperated with his traitorous mind, he tried pushing the thought from his head and found a spot of underbrush where he could wait for something to come by.

  Inevitably, his thoughts returned to Alethia, then of course, to Calaia, the Amaran female he had once loved. The female he’d named his ship after.

  Not long after leaving Teralis, Thanesh and his brothers were discovered by an Amaran ship. The Amarans helped them, protected them and he quickly became friends with their leader, the Ilan Kailen. Later, Kailen’s son and heir had become a good friend. The two trained together daily. It was Ashan who taught him the martial art of fighting with Adunis sticks.

  Thanesh watched the young male grow, find his bond mates, father his children and then one rote Thanesh went from being trained by Ashan to teaching his heir Orldon. Every rote, when Orldon arrived, he was followed by his little sister, Calaia. Thanesh paid it no mind and was happy to instruct the young girl as she got older.

  Calaia stopped coming at some point. Thanesh couldn’t even remember when, but the next time he saw her, she was fully grown.

  Calaia was the rarest of Amaran females: an Adala.

  The Amarans had three genders: male, female and Adalan. Adalan were neither male nor female, though they presented as smaller, darker-skinned males. Amarans needed all three genders to conceive because females didn’t make the necessary hormones to ovulate. Rarely, very rarely, once in generations, an Adala was born, a female who could ovulate without an Adalan.

  Thanesh hadn’t meant to fall in love with her, but he had and she with him. Ashan was angry at first, but Calaia had a way of convincing people.

  They never conceived a child. After sixty solars together, Thanesh buried her. It took him solars to come to terms with her death.

  He couldn’t do it again.

  Alethia and Calaia were very different people. Amarans were taller than humans, so Calaia was over six fenth in height. She was strong-willed, fiery, used to getting her way, but conscious of her responsibilities as a member of the royal household.

  Alethia was quiet. She was still strong-willed, but there was a deep sadness to her that affected Thanesh, that made him want to see her smile. She was small, vulnerable. The longer he was in her presence, the more he sought to protect her. Further, she carried her responsibility to her people like a weight. Calaia wore her responsibility effortlessly, but she was born to it, trained for it. Alethia volunteered to carry this weight and, he guessed, had no one to share it with, no one to ease the burden for her.

  A twig snapped Thanesh back to the present. He looked out of his hiding place and saw movement through the trees before the creature stepped into the clearing.

  Darting from his hiding place, he snagged the creature as it tried to run. The fight was brief; the beast died quickly.

  This was the same animal Alethia butchered the rote before, furred, brown and black. It was vicious, but nothing like the phantom of death that dragged her out of the lean-to last night.

  Its dark grey skin was slashed with black markings which turned out to be armoured scales that covered its vulnerable spots. It had three ridges of spines running from its head to its mid-back. They picked up again on its haunches and down its long tail, turning the tail into a weapon, which it tried to use on Thanesh. It was an apex predator and not used to having someone defend its meal.

  Powerful digitigrade feet were tipped with long, razor-sharp talons that would have ripped through her flesh with ease. Its face, intelligent and calculating, opened into a bite circumference that could have easily cost her an arm or her head had it been so inclined. Long teeth protruded from the mouth would have severed limb from limb, rendered flesh from bone.

  A shiver ran through Thanesh. How could he defend such a defenceless creature? How could he shield her from a galaxy that saw only a product it wanted, not a person? She could so quickly have disappeared and yet exposed herself to protect others. How could he protect her?

  Yet, how could he not?

  Cutting the creature’s throat, as Alethia did last rote, he waited while its dull gold blood drained to the forest floor.

  Thanesh had tried distancing himself from her. It felt unnatural, wrong down to his bones. All day, a mocking voice confronted him with the truth. He wanted her; more, he needed her.

  But she was a short-lived species, like Calaia.

  His reduced ageing was only becoming apparent as he fell in love with Calaia. Still, it was when he noticed her ageing, that Thanesh realised what that truly meant and the pain he was going to experience when he lost her. Since then, he avoided intimate relationships, choosing to take short-term lovers. Usually, he didn’t really care about beyond a certain level of fondness or sexual attraction. As soon as he felt anything more develop, he ceased all contact with them. Somehow, Alethia passed through all of the defences he had built around himself like they didn’t exist, his protections undone by this small human in little more than a handful of rotes.

  Seeing the creature was drained, Thanesh threw it over his shoulder and began making his way back to the cave.

&nbs
p; It wasn’t really Thanesh that needed protecting though was it? She was so vulnerable. So much weaker than him in body. But when he saw slavery and accepted it, Alethia fought it in a small but stubborn way; she tried.

  One rote, Alethia would die. The thought took Thanesh’s breath away and he froze, dizzy at the idea of losing her. He knew when that time came it would hurt to lose her, but the idea of living without her felt like a crushing weight. He realised he had no choice but to accept that he couldn’t go on without her now.

  This, however, opened a whole new cluster of problems the principle of which was her safety. Thanesh knew he could keep her relatively safe on the ship, but while they weren’t often at war anymore, they still had skirmishes. There were always stupid aliens doing unwise things that invariably ended in their deaths. But while they existed, it would never truly be safe for her on Calaia or anywhere else for that matter. Her race saw to that.

  The only way there could be a galaxy safe for Alethia, was if someone influential enough stood against the status quo and demanded change. They would need to have contacts, like the Amarans. They would need to have influence in the IGC, many of whom directly profited from slavery. They would need to have the forces to hunt down the slavers and protect ships. They would need to have access to the technology to give Earth so that they could get themselves to the IGC and apply for membership. They would need to have the strength and the influence to halt the Bentari and the Fedhith in their attempts to take Earth.

  They would need to have the influence in dozens of systems to intimidate them into releasing their slaves. Slaves that he could then bring to a planet within Protectorate space, a world they could turn into the Protectorate homeworld.

  The only thing he didn’t have was the influence in the ICG, something that had been a thorn in his side for over a century.

  Thanesh stopped walking. He shifted the creature over his shoulder, stopping its slow fall, and swore. All he needed was the influence with the IGC and to send someone to Earth to negotiate terms to send them the technology, the scientists and the metal, Amot, to build their own ship. Thus expedited, he realised, he could get this done in a handful of solars.