Ceasefire_Team Orion Nebula

by Kayla Stonor

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered. Swallowing hard, blinking tears away, she extracted the next stone.

  “Why go out there?” He spoke through gritted teeth.

  “Do you want pain meds?” Third one out.

  “No.”

  She didn’t argue. Pain meds would slow Tierc’s focus on healing his wounds. He might not be shifted, but his Qui employed superior healing ability and he had the added benefit of nanos. “Okay, that’s the big ones. Now for the little ones.”

  Ahnna hadn’t changed out of her suit for a reason, she wore little underneath, but when she became too hot to move, she shrugged the suit down and over her hips and stepped out of the boots. She worked for a solid thirty minutes on Tierc’s back, scanning, locating microscopic pieces of debris, digging through flesh and muscle to extract the burning pellets, washing out the wounds and cooling the burn. For Tierc, it had to be akin to torture. As she cleared an area, she could see muscle regeneration. When her scan finally read clear, she added wound gel and dressings. They couldn’t hurt and it made her feel better.

  She sat opposite him at the table, grimaced. “I need to untangle my safety line from the engine.”

  Tierc opened his mouth, presumably to object, and then closed it again. His larger suit was shredded. Finally he nodded. “Check with Axo, make sure it’s clear. In and out.”

  “Agreed.”

  “Why, Ahnna?”

  She’d been expecting the question. “I couldn’t sleep and I wasn’t thinking straight. I needed to get off this ship, and I knew you’d stop me.” She smiled. “I slept really well out there. The comms was working when I left. Axo was supposed to alert me to any danger. Nothing like this should have happened.”

  “I’m beginning to realize neither ship nor Axo are fully reliable. We need each other.” He let out a heartfelt sigh. “When you woke up, saw me, you released your safety line!”

  She blushed to her ears. “I assumed, unfairly, that you were being all… macho.” She raised her hands, flooded with guilt and embarrassment. “And I’m sorry. You didn’t deserve that.” She paused. “You risked your life for me.”

  “Ahnna, whatever we once were on Earth, that universe and all those arguments and issues are gone. We’re in this together now. We can’t function as enemies. We won’t survive this race.”

  She nodded. “Yes, of course.”

  “And I’m beginning to understand your life—your choices—are not what I assumed.”

  Tears sprang out of nowhere. Losing Fais had unclogged a well of grief and she seemed incapable of turning off the flood.

  “You loved your boy, Joseph.”

  “Please, don’t…” She pushed away from the table, but Tierc covered her hand.

  “You should talk about him, Ahnna.”

  “So all of Paragon can pick over my grief?”

  “Do you have a favorite memory?”

  The question caught her off guard. Getting to her feet, she unsealed water and poured it into two glasses, pushed one across the table. “Drink. You’ll dehydrate.”

  He did, raising his hand gingerly. A normal human would be out for the count. Dead. Even with his Qui suppressed, a hybrid still possessed superior strength, abilities, healing, and for the first time, she was grateful.

  Ahnna didn’t want Tierc dead. Once, she’d have killed this man without blinking and never understood how wrong that would have been.

  “If my son is alive, they’ll teach him to fight, to kill, the same way they taught me, and I don’t know what’s true anymore. I feel…” she paused, struggling to frame her thought. “I grew up believing that the Qui are evil, out to destroy and subjugate, oppressors of the universe.”

  He sighed. “Three hundred years ago, you’d have a right to think that, although the Qui Empire’s influence didn’t extend beyond the galaxy.”

  “So that part of history is true? The K’lahn invaded Earth on the orders of the Qui.”

  “Yes, but the Qui has undergone much change since then and humanity is largely the reason.”

  “But soon there will be no humanity left.”

  “Four hundred years ago interracial marriage was unheard of in much of western civilization on Earth. Now you’d be hard pressed to find a human with genetic purity of any single human race. So yes, I think that over time, genetics will reflect increased diversity across our species, but Ahnna, shared ancestry brings people together. HD-X feels threatened by that, but that’s crazy. No one is forcing humans to breed with Qui. It’s entirely your choice.”

  She heard his words, but couldn’t find the strength to rebut his claim, memories of Joseph filled her mind, but her silence only encouraged Tierc’s lecture.

  “If HD-X has proven anything, we know there will always be humans who prefer their own kind and shun interspecies matings. I don’t understand your concern. Humanity is far more prolific at breeding than Qui, by a factor of a thousand to one, at least. Though we found a genetic match with humans, and it has revitalized our birth rates, we could never keep up with human breeding habits. The idea of humanity’s extinction is a horrible joke. Do you know how rare it is for a Qui—hybrid or otherwise—to bear a child?”

  The question jolted Ahnna back to life. “No.”

  “One child is a blessing for most Qui. Noble bloodlines can enjoy more.”

  Tierc Marcel was born of a noble Qui bloodline. He looked so… human. Even vulnerable with his shredded clothing and taut body coiled with tension, his condition the result of saving her.

  “Do you consider yourself human first, or Qui?”

  He frowned at her question. “I feel as much Qui as I do human. The two are indistinguishable to me. Ahnna, no one including the Qui, the United Regions, and species from across the Qui-Surashan Empire—no one cares if human colonies elect to breed only with human, on Earth or off. Just don’t force your prejudices down everyone’s throat with a loaded gun.”

  He sounded so reasonable, and yet Ahnna struggled to reconcile his words with everything she’d been taught. The HD-X raised her to kill Qui and stole her child so he could be raised to kill. They created the woman she was now, a soldier of war, an assassin on the battlefield, but the evil creature they trained her to slay, she couldn’t see that monster anymore.

  Without fear and revulsion of the monster, fighting her instinctive attraction to him would only get harder.

  She stared into Tierc’s heart-stopping dark eyes, her breath catching at the gentleness in his expression. His scent stirred her blood, his heat fired desire in her soul, and her resistance nearly melted for this man, this Qui swinging a sledgehammer against the foundations of a lifetime. Instantly guilt rushed in, voices from her past, admonitions and dire predictions, calling the blessed pure to hold fast against temptation.

  What was she thinking?

  Guilt lurched Ahnna to her feet. Excuses tripped over her tongue. “You should rest. We have a whole galaxy watching!” She laughed, too nervous. Dammit. “I should get that line in.”

  The disappointment and sadness in his face killed her babbling. Tierc banished the emotion behind a shrug but his jaw twisted with tension. “Sure. Be careful out there. We’ll be watching.”

  She nodded, guilty now for another reason. Tierc sensed her rejection, but it wasn’t her intention to hurt him. She stopped in the doorway, wanting to tell him, to let him know she wasn’t closing the door in his face, that she needed time, to think, to work out her feelings.

  “Joseph loved to catch ball. That’s a favorite memory.”

  Tierc smiled, nodded, his eyes warming, and Ahnna smiled back, her heart somehow lighter for the admission. “I made sure to play ball the day they took him. I wanted him to remember we were happy.”

  Shock shafted his eyes. “You knew they were coming?”

  “It was Joseph’s third birthday.” Her voice rose. “They all get taken on their birthday. I didn’t know losing him could hurt so much.” The admission hurt deep in her core and the restlessness kee
ping her awake crystallized. She stared at him. “I need to go back! I have to find my son. He needs to know I love him. I have to know he’s safe. I had that chance, after…” She tailed off, unwilling to admit that her chance to locate her son came at the cost of a life—the Qui she planned to kill. Tierc’s quizzical look spurred her on. “… before Paragon.”

  Before I met you.

  Chapter Eight

  A T-47 yacht hailed them fifteen minutes out from Altaira.

  Tierc recognized their call sign and glanced at Ahnna. When she appeared receptive to making contact, he accepted the connection. “Crisp! You made it safely out of Altaira then.” He racked his brain for the female’s name; Crandal had introduced them at the opening gala. “Bella. All good?”

  Bella leaned in. “We are now. I’ve watched the Great Space Race my entire life, thought I’d seen it all, and I swear, on my mother’s grave, that jewel of Allermo’s crown is a vindictive bitch. Now I understand why they call Altaira the Farewell planet.”

  Farewell? Tierc accessed the ship’s library, quickly read up on the nickname.

  “Place is a fucked-up alien joke,” Crisp added.

  “We thought we’d get Altaira out the way,” Bella continued, the chatty one, “and I am so happy to be leaving. You’re new to Paragon, so a friendly warning. That planet isn’t all there, you know what I mean?”

  Tierc laughed. “I think you need to expand.”

  She shuddered. “Schizo. The whole planet is schizo. We got assigned a maze. One minute you’re somewhere you’ve been before, and it’s all good, the next second the path ahead is in the sky and over your head—”

  “Hallucinations.” Tierc glanced sideways at Ahnna. Octiron wasn’t that good…

  Bella shrugged. “Suit yourself. You’ve been warned.”

  As Ahnna hastened to thank the pair for the heads up, Tierc was dismissing their warnings as scare tactics. Crisp and Bella hoped to distract them, have them too busy looking for ghosts that weren’t there…

  * * *

  Bella hadn’t been kidding when she called Altaira a jewel in the Allermo Sector’s crown. The Orion Nebula safely parked in orbit around their destination, Tierc gazed down upon a miniature Earth complete with sea, mountains, a little brown desert, but mainly lush verdant forest that dominated the land mass fringed by sparkling white beaches. This planet had every ecosystem imaginable crammed into a planet one quarter the size of Earth.

  Ahnna had been researching old shows from the Great Space. She sat back in her chair and folded her arms on her chest. “I told you they weren’t lying. That planet’s gonna kill us.”

  Tierc laughed at her defeatist outlook. Newly healed muscle and skin stretched across his back and he sobered up. Maybe they should wait until he was fighting fit before setting foot on Altaira. He looked at Ahnna’s sultry pout that stirred a deep set and persistent need to ravage her, strip her naked and press her ass into her leather chair, slide fingers into her slick warm channel…

  His fist clenched and Ahnna looked alarmed, and then restless, blood high in her cheeks.

  Neither said a word and yet Zeke roused to life, his holovid drone assuming a position front of ship that covered them both. Their vid operator missed nothing.

  Ahnna rose and walked off the bridge without a word.

  “Zeke,” Tierc said, “one day, your eyes and ears will come off.”

  Zeke’s holographic form materialized and grinned. “Technically, you’re not allowed to destroy Octiron property.”

  “Technically?”

  Zeke looked around him, before lowering his voice. “Altaira’s not good for the drones. We get lots of accidents. Normally contestants are more than one challenge in by the time they hit Farewell. People are tired and pissed.”

  “Interesting.”

  “Just so you know, I ain’t lost a drone yet.”

  “Then you conned me. I was convinced you’d done this rodeo before.”

  Zeke laughed. “They say the funny ones fall hardest.” His eyes met Tierc’s, a trick of the holo tech because Zeke only saw him via the drone perched to Tierc’s right. “You live on Earth long?”

  “Most my life. Why?”

  “I don’t get Ahnna’s bitterness towards you. I mean, she wants to jump your bones! So her attitude makes no sense. Sure it sounds like the Qui were cruel in the past, sending the K’lahn to invade Earth, stealing humans, etcetera, but you’re not Qui. You’re human with some extra genes that don’t do much.”

  And if Tierce had his way, only Ahnna would ever know those extra genes were why he looked so… human. That his human form came so naturally didn’t make his shift to human form any less real. Zeke could never know that. He eyed the man thoughtfully; Octiron’s cameraman was being unusually inquisitive.

  “I can hear Ahnna’s heart skip a beat when she sees me. I can track her movements by her scent. Did you notice how Ahnna blushed when she left the room?”

  Zeke frowned and tapped something Tierc couldn’t see. He stopped and shook his head. “No, she didn’t.”

  So the vid drone hadn’t picked up the subtle color change.

  Tierc checked their orbit and made a course alteration. “Her nanos counteracted a rise in body temperature, reducing the capillary flow to her epidermal layer.”

  Surprise widened Zeke’s eyes.

  “HD-X agents are trained from birth to control certain body indicators and Ahnna’s adept at adjusting her body’s natural responses back to the norm.” Or she would be if her body wasn’t so responsive to his mating call. Not that he could talk; his pheromones had been in overdrive for days. His cock ached constantly with manual relief hard won. “Human Defense-X resents a Qui’s superior senses, our strength and speed, plus we have a natural healing ability. HD-X invested heavily in nano tech and training for operatives to better match a Qui’s heightened capabilities, but it’s never enough to counter their fear of the Qui.”

  “What drives them?”

  “HD-X believes the Qui harbor a secret agenda to eradicate the human genome. We don’t. The increased population of Qui-human hybrids is spontaneous.”

  Zeke nodded, but he looked unconvinced. Perhaps viewers had been asking questions, like if a Qui was so harmless, why was HD-X raising entire generations of future terrorists?

  “What’s changed in recent years is a growing tendency for Qui-humans to reside on Earth in their formative years and I think this has got HD-X spooked. The human race is not at stake.”

  Zeke shrugged. “Obviously tricky if a HD-X agent turns out to be compatible with the Qui sent to arrest her…”

  Tricky?

  Tierc’s attraction to Ahnna was a major problem. With the rare exception, a Qui never harmed their mate—the notion went against his every instinct—and one day, Ahnna would realize this truth and her fear of him would lessen. When that day came, Tierc prayed their mutual attraction and connection overpowered her hatred for Qui. Right now she balanced their mutual distrust of Octiron and the Paragon galaxy against her fear of Tierc on the loose. The shift suppression cuffs gave her room to breathe, time to work out a strategy. Tierc had learned enough of Paragon to know a lone Qui could never be safe. The Central Alliance ruling this galaxy would hunt him down and turn him into a public exhibit at the bare minimum.

  After all, they allowed Octiron license to operate.

  * * *

  “Sorry for the delay. Your challenge is ready.”

  Crandal’s smarmy tone revealed the lie in his apology and a chill curled up Ahnna’s spine. She hated the man. Their handler manipulated them, paraded their vulnerabilities in front of trillions. Tierc’s grim expression as Axo uploaded information to the Orion Nebula’s main viewscreen added to her foreboding.

  A holographic representation of Altaira spun around between them, a cylindrical section rising out from the planet. A thin layer approximately two kilometers below the surface flashed red.

  “The challenge is to survey this layer,” Crandal continued.
“You will be provided with sample collectors, geo-scanners, and caving gear. An altimeter will confirm you have reached the required distance. Once you have completed the task, Axo is authorized to port you back onboard the Orion Nebula.”

  They were being sent underground, alone.

  “How long have we got?” Tierc asked.

  A tingling sensation rushed through her and Ahnna swept into a defensive posture as her world changed to blue sky and a deep void punctured by a colorful tapestry of verdant life. She jerked back from a precipice that dropped at least two miles. The appearance of a vid drone before her startled her further. A hand clamped around her upper arm.

  “Steady,” Tierc murmured.

  “Fuck.” She shook him off. “Where are we?”

  “I’m guessing Axo ported us to our challenge.” He peered over the edge, his jaw twitching with tension. “And I’m guessing we need to go down that.”

  Ahnna looked around them and walked over to two backpacks resting on the ground next to climbing equipment. Also present was their personal blasters complete with holsters. She descended on a pack and opened it. “They could have let us prep first, at least change clothing.” She began an inventory as Tierc fitted his blaster and took watch. “Basic camping gear, two ration bars, water bottle—empty—and an altimeter.” She attacked the other pack. “Same, except this has a scanner and a sample kit instead of the altimeter. Basic medkit.”

  “See that waterfall?” Tierc pointed to a gush of water emerging out of a pillar approximately a hundred feet down. It crashed onto a crystal azure pool fifty feet below. “Damn this is crazy.”

  “That pool has to drain somewhere,” Ahnna said, repacking the packs. “We should fill the bottles and I don’t see another source of water. Do you?”

  Tierc scanned sand dunes to the horizon. “That water has created an oasis in what looks like a sink hole. I reckon those pillars are formed from a different rock to whatever collapsed here.” He inched closer to the edge and peered down. “Skal, it’s a long fall.”