Why did I feel the need to run?
A small cluster of white twinkles zipped along the wall behind the Fathers who didn't act as though I saw anything. The light had no true definition. Merely glinted like the flickers from a sparkler on the Fourth of July. The sputtering diamond-like patch flitted around until hovering over the console.
I had to look like an idiot because nobody bothered watching it but me. Or it seemed working to enthrall me. Distract me? I glanced at Goro, who eyed me suspiciously.
Why was the alien playing freaking games with me? People didn't study genetics because they were stupid. He had another thing coming if he thought I would just quietly walk into chaos. Or captivity. Just like Theone. And she was bloody intuitive. I snaked my arms across my chest and faced him squarely. “It's time for answers, commander. If you want me to stay and complete this mission, I want to know what's going on. And don't think omitting anything like you conveniently did with Theone is going to sway me to assist you. I'm the only person who has what you need. So let's play hardball."
He chuckled. “I always loved that Earth metaphor.” He waved a hand toward a dark doorway. “Let's see what secrets this space station holds. I'm certain you will find them quite fascinating after your education in biology."
So he was going to drop hints like a candy trail through the forest.
And where is that bacon smell coming from? I turned, blocked by one big brute's bare chest above his silver pants, a warrior from the transport. “Excuse me,” I said toward where his pectoral muscles bulged.
He pivoted, allowing me a clear shot toward the redhead.
Dressed in black body armor, they looked more like deep-space bikers than scientists. But I wasn't going to ask if these were the Five Fathers. After all, I'd only seen four so far.
Goro waved me toward a dark shadowy doorway where one would think the door would have slid shut in this automated space station. Another massive form stepped into the shadows down the passageway, across our path.
Number five?
Another blond. His long loose straight hair hung down to his waist and seemed more yellow in the clinging darkness. But who could tell in this low-level lighting?
Footsteps behind us drummed a steady beat.
Death march seemed more fitting with the mysterious ambiance. “Commander, you haven't clarified a thing yet.” Would he grace me with a reply?
"Just a few more minutes, Cassie. I promise, you will be pleasantly surprised,” he said. “And duly rewarded."
I bet.
Something bright flitted overhead.
The damned star cluster of light. What was up with that? I turned back to the looming shoulders and followed Goro and the big guy.
A door slid open into a space lit like a noon sun hovered overhead above a dense forest's canopy beyond our silent tour guide's barely-yellow hair.
Wind? Do I hear wind? Maybe trickling water? I see tree tops.
The blond !Dako threw his chin over his shoulder at us.
Or was the unnerving gesture directed toward me? The way his steel-gray eyes locked onto my gaze told me he could see extremely well in the dark because I was cloaked in shadow.
My heart thrashed out a warning saturated in adrenaline.
One of a body's desperate subconscious attempts to ensure every cell in my body forgot about the damned bacon and stood on alert. Because this guy was deadly. Alien. Fucking perfect. And knew it the way he openly forced me to walk before him where his black-cloaked shell of clothing formed a reflection of his incredible musculature as he stood beside the doorway and allowed my entrance.
Yes.
Danger. Danger, Cassandra Krol.
This guy is scary magnificent.
Even more than the other Fathers.
Goro's body pulled me along through the doorway.
Probably because I wasn't about to be left behind with those disconcerting gray eyes that left me no room for breathing. Geesh, the cyborg had to stand a foot over me. I managed to pass his hulking form's wide chest without risking another glance at him and headed into the forest.
Just a beautiful little oasis surrounded by deep space's blinking stars in the distance. All the windows beyond the trees were only noticeable by their supportive metal girder framework holding out the heaven, protecting the lush life from the cruel vacuum of space. Life. This was living, breathing, pulsing life. Even the floor was covered with plant life except where metal pathways meandered through the space.
Serene. Beautiful. Mesmerizing. If only I could bring a few of Earth's endangered species here. Then I could do something to save Earth. But that was what the !Dakos had done. Shit. Here I go. Losing my mind. What a noble attempt to clutch at what slipped through their gloved fingers like sand being sucked away into the cold heartlessness of space.
Goro took twelve steps beneath the trees and turned to me. His stoic features said nothing.
Typical poker mask on the commander. Fine. I'd just look around while he set the plan into motion. Maybe then he'd confess what he'd conveniently omitted. He'd have to. Only a handful of us Earth volunteers were military. I wasn't. I had no training in shut-up-and-wait. More like I'm-lighting-my-bra. I took seven more steps.
Seven was a lucky number. Right?
The strange splotch of light's fluttering sparks whipped around me like a diamond cast a cluster of prisms to brighten the canopy's shade.
"Do you feel the life?” Goro asked.
What? I spun to him and the seven cyborgs who almost stood at the same excessively-tall height.
Machines. All of them.
Goro waited.
"Feel what, commander?"
"Touch it,” he nodded toward me. “Use your power. Feel the life."
He'd lost his mind. “What?"
"M'yote said you could feel everything in the universe. The groans of existence. The harmony. Reach out and feel the life."
The Master Handler probably did say that. “You're kidding? I believe he skipped that lesson. Oh, right! You whisked him and Theone off on a mission before he got to the point about I could sense the universal harmonies."
Goro could have planted his hands on his hips with the shift in his stoic mask to chastising. “Cassie, humor me. You're a scientist. Test my words."
Yes. Go ahead. Throw down the gauntlet. I'm not afraid. Of you. Maybe of my future with the big blond. But who's going to hurt me when I can dissolve you all into a pile of atomic mush with the touch of a hand?
Vult almost choked as the mesmerizing female eyed her commander with so much distrust that her dark brown gaze could have hurled a weapon at him. But she was a pacifist. The rarest of psychics, a Handler. The answer to our prayers for something, one blessing to bring our cyborg culture back to self-sustaining fruition. And she was so delightfully pleasing to the eye. The perfect match to what had become of the !Dakos’ twelve-hundred years of nanite aesthetic alteration in that she looked like the female version of what we had evolved into. An exquisite reflection of our warrior form. Wouldn't the Goddess be?
Was she truly the Goddess?
Anwa had chosen her. That was enough to make the female our savior.
Cassie's eyebrows pinched together. She exhaled sharply.
So sharply all of us could hear her.
She reached down, knees bending, and knelt as she placed her splayed fingertips on the blanket of low vegetation beneath her black boots. Slowly she lowered her palm to the purple and green shoots jutting from the nursery's floor. Light danced upon the back of her hand. Flashing with burning intensity.
The Handler's power.
A chill prickled my arms.
Shook my being. We'd waited twelve centuries to welcome a Handler into our culture's womb. And now, a female. To meet the others’ gazes meant we risked looking away, missing the moment we'd waited countless lifetimes to hope we'd see.
"This is the Goddess,” Olwan said in our minds through the central node's communication framework.
The
lead Father, Olwan, wouldn't have jumped to conclusions. He was as serious as his death-black hair bound on one side by truth and left loose to conceal any of his doubt on the other.
The light ignited into a white glove on the woman as she pressed her palm to the ground. A low hum buzzed throughout the space station beyond the familiar sounds of manufactured life-sustaining low-level noise.
"I never thought I'd live to witness a Handler meld with Anwa's womb,” Kain spoke with the same awe I felt.
"This is the beginning of the end,” Nass declared with his typical clipped logic. “We have lived to see the end of The Changing Times."
Always truth. Always from Nass.
The light seemed to travel through her arm, through the dirt beneath her palm, to sputter from the ground a few inches away from her fingertips. Taking form. Creating a mirror image of hers. From the fingertips upward, into a hand, a wrist, and arm, until a white female constructed of light mirrored the Handler's crouching form.
Purity. Anwa. At long last, she's taken form.
"Welcome, Goddess. I thought you would never come,” our ship's spirit fashioned from light announced.
Cassie jerked a pointed gaze to her commander, eyed him with suspicion, then turned back to Anwa.
Why the distrust?
"Walk with me, Goddess.” Anwa rose to stand in a gown of glimmering stars. The long white strands of her hair cloaked her body the way Cassie's would given she allowed her brown hair to hang loose.
Why had Cassie bound her hair? To reflect her quest for truth like a !Dakos warrior who'd reached three centuries of life? Dare I believe she harbor a !Dakos motive? Or was her choice in hairstyle merely utilitarian? Convenient?
Cassie rose, her legs stretching out her black leather pants until she stood as rod-straight as a curvaceous female could and faced the apparition of electrical impulses she'd conjured before her.
Each of us Fathers had lived a life founded in science, catapulted into a state of emergency and conservation by the military after the bio-engineering disaster set off the damning series of events that led to over a millennia of tragedy and suffering, only to stand here, to witness the dawning of a second chance for the !Dakos through those very same scientific lenses. And I'd be damned if someone made me look away.
"What are you?” Cassie asked.
"I am the doorway to the future."
Tears squeezed my heart and threatened to burn my eyes.
Yes. We'd found the Goddess. And the insanity could now end. We can go home.
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Chapter Two
Cassie didn't know whether to run for her life or follow the strange woman into the forest. Was she a hologram? Not that we had holograms back on Earth. Heck, this thing was three-dimensional. Bizarre. And it moved like a real person.
The woman's light-cast face smiled. “I am Anwa. I will not allow anyone to hurt you. It is safe for you to walk with me."
Could this presence protect me? Just what was Anwa? Solid? Did she have energy to back her words? Could she defend me? Hell, I could defend myself with the touch of a hand. “What are you?"
Anwa turned her smile to scan the forest. “I am the life force of this space station. All the hopes and dreams of a people and planet displaced from them. But thriving nonetheless. Twelve-hundred years of hope and yearning.” She slid her gaze back to mine. “And I have searched an extremely long time for you, Cassie."
Creepy. Way too much creepy today.
Like I was supposed to believe that?
I shuddered off a prickly chill. “Look, I don't believe any of that nonsense. Where I come from, computers have impulses. Yes, energy. But nothing that can take shape like you have.” I'd just test her. I reached out, thinking until my hand glowed white, and thrust my fingers into the pulsing light forming the woman's chest.
A hum tingled up my fingers.
Or something akin to a hum
Anwa giggled and met my gaze. “You see I am harmless. I am but the soul of this vessel. Imprisoned in vile immortality. Wishing nothing more than to end my service. And you shall release me."
My gut somersaulted.
No more insane mumbo jumbo. Especially from a computer. I pulled my hand free of the sensation.
"Come.” Anwa waved a palm toward a large wall of windows. “You would see what cannot change. You will understand that which must."
Right. Let's get this over with so we can do away with the riddles. I stepped toward two nearby tree trunks.
Anwa followed at my side. “So many stars. All I see are stars.” She shot me a serene smile. “I no longer wish to exist, Goddess. Free my soul. For the Five Fathers. For the !Dakos. Return my seed to a sheltering world. Give my essence birth. A chance to exist as life should be lived. It's time this space station be put to rest."
Did she ask for death? A computer? I paused next to the thick transparent material used for the window and turned to face her head on.
Movement shifted in the corner of my eye.
Black. With a curtain of yellow. The big blond Father. The one with the cold gray eyes. I stepped sideways into the colder glassy sheet of the endless viewport, away from him. “Are you telling me you want to die?” I tried to focus on the hologram. Light-o-gram. Or whatever you called Anwa.
"It's time for the !Dakos to return home."
Right. Those warriors probably harvested females for reproductive purposes all over the universe. “Just where are they? Out kidnapping females?"
The Father never flinched where he stood two paces away.
Quietly. I wasn't about to grace him with a glance.
"!Dako warriors only go on a Mate Quest when they have earned the right to keep one, Goddess.” Anwa thrust a palm toward the Father. “This is Vult, our geneticist and doctor."
Hell. Nice boot in mouth. I'd have to be courteous before I insulted them all. To do so would only make things more difficult for me in the future when Goro abandoned my ass.
I snapped my gaze to his now silver eyes.
He seemed to have softened with the subtle change in eye color. His glowing eyes blinking slowly, carefully, watching, or perhaps observing. He barely nodded. “Goddess."
So masculine in tone.
A tremble shimmied through my cells.
Why do I smell bacon again?
Something warmed inside me.
Made me want to wrap my fingers around his arm. Hang on and gaze into the depths of his almost-warming eyes. Search for his heartbeat. But he's a computer. A machine with pheromones capable of making me lose my sanity and spread my legs for him. He'd pump me full of his nanite-saturated semen. And I'd become one of them. A machine. Poisoned by his body fluids. No. Not today. I couldn't afford breaking the code of ethics I lived by. What would I be afterward? A laughingstock? I reciprocated the nod.
"Vult was one of the fiercest warriors when The Changing Times came upon Treusch,” Anwa announced. “His knowledge of genetics and medicine saved the !Dakos. His work has proven again and again our greatest achievements."
Work? Geneticist? Probably something more along the lines of Hitler's experiments during World War II. Abominations. Was this the !Dako who tweaked the !Dakos through the centuries until they'd been augmented to their state of current existence more machine than man?
His head barely tilted right with curiosity or suspicion. Something twinkled in those gray eyes.
Damn. Most likely from my insult. I'd be in trouble if I didn't keep my opinions and expressions as unbiased as possible. I'd need allies once I was alone here.
Alone.
My gut flopped.
Handler powers. Remember, Handler powers are as deadly as life-giving powers.
"Vult will be your guide and your guardian here,” Anwa said.
Uh. Not him. I could take care of myself. “Well, I wouldn't want to inconvenience anyone.” God, hopefully I didn't sound rude. Who was I kidding, though? Whoever made that statement always sounded like they were look
ing for a quick route of escape.
Vult bowed his head so far forward that his hair hung perpendicular to his black-encased muscle-bound body. “It would be an honor to accompany you around the space station, Goddess."
Okay, stand up already. How could I get out of this arrangement? Spending time with the man responsible for bio-engineering and augmentation of his race wasn't high on my list of must-dos in this lifetime. But he just waited, hanging there in limbo. Shit. “Very well."
"She distrusts me, Anwa,” Vult told the computer through the central node. The truth sparkled obviously in Cassie's warm eyes. Eyes promising more than the comfort of a warm embrace—a memory so haunting that a man would give anything to find a way to end the suffering of his people if he could do so honorably. Just to be the bearer of peace. To embrace his own personal long-awaited serenity.
"Her heart races when you are near,” Anwa replied in my mind.
"It is from fear. She fears me. I will not force myself on a female who fears me because you command me to. I am a man of honor and respect that which I do not have. There is more to mating than matching and sex.” I'd already lived the complete life of a warrior once upon a time.
"What more can there be, Vult?"
How does one explain the relationship to a computer? “I held my wife and daughters through the happy days I spent with my family. And in the end when they died. Besides, Anwa, I do not owe you an explanation. I have my conscience to live with. I will not force this female. Choose one of the other Fathers for her consort.” Any of the others would come to the same conclusion.
"She must be content with us. This requires she has the best match. In her body's reactions to you, she has chosen. Accept your fate."
Very well. “I will show her around the ship. And I will protect her. But when she has chosen another warrior, I will step back and permit her to find happiness. For she will have an unimaginable number of centuries to spend with the mate of her choice. And I will not cause her any anguish. Life is far too precious to mate with one who means nothing to you.” Especially to one of the Five who has vowed to preserve the Sacred Seed.
Feral Series V: Feral Foretaste Page 2