by Lisa Lace
My heart stopped. "What?" I asked.
"While our sisters were being rounded into the Grand Hall, one by one as they fell, I watched as a man with hair a much dirtier shade of red than my own grabbed Lucina. He didn't take her to the Grand Hall. I don't know where he took her. I lost sight in the rampage."
I had trained to be a warrior since I was a little girl. I don't know when my mind flipped against war or when I began to believe that there was a better solution. It had probably occurred while I was reading, when my adolescent mind was full of ideals, preferring the joy of peace over the tragedy of combat.
But that changed the moment Bellona told me about Lucina. An animal instinct took over and overwhelmed my intellect. I marched away from the gardens, towards the inner station.
"Wait!" Bellona called behind me. "You can't save her, not without getting caught. I need your help."
"You are like a shadow," I said, more serious than I had ever been before. "If anyone has a chance of escaping capture, it's you. But I'm not meant for the shadows. I need the light. If something happened to Lucina, I'd never forgive myself."
"I understand," Bellona said solemnly.
Before I could say anything further, she slipped back into the unknown.
I charged ahead, towards my quarters where I had hidden several weapons. Even if they had trashed my room, the Surtu would not have found them.
I had hoped that amongst the fighting, I could slide towards my quarters without being noticed. A warrior with a sword was worth much more attention than a mousy brunette treading quietly against the wall. But as soon as I entered the corridor of the inner station, I realized my mistake. Few women still fought, and their numbers dwindled quickly.
There was a rhythm to the battle. Soldiers with blasters would cause a distraction while others came from behind and disarmed the women. It was like watching poachers capture a rare cat, handing the creature carefully so as not to harm its coat.
"Stop there," a soldier yelled behind me. I kept walking, praying he was talking to someone else, but then he grabbed my shoulder and spun me around. His face had the same mythological quality to it as all the Surtu, but his smile was grotesque. "Look, it's the pretty Commander. I think I'll claim you for myself."
"You can't claim her," Jidden proclaimed, appearing beside him. "No soldier can. She is a superior, she is extremely intelligent and her has a high rank. She's not meant for soldiers like us."
A small part of me was relieved to see him. The bigger part of me wanted to slap him.
He'd used me.
And I'd let him.
"I never heard that before," the soldier said, refusing to move. He had me pinned in a corner, and he knew it.
"Do you really think the Fleet Captain and his financiers will approve of a light bond between someone like her and someone like you?" Jidden challenged. "Do you think they'll just give her away that easy when they could have her?"
The soldier faltered. It was the hesitation Jidden was looking for. He knocked the blaster out of the soldier's hand. It would have been my moment to run, but there was nowhere to go. More soldiers filled the corridor, blocking my path. All I could do was watch as Jidden and the soldier started to fight.
Please be okay, Lucina, I thought, feeling sick at the thought of her locked away with one of these monsters.
The stories from childhood were TRUE. The Surtu were monsters. They were the kind that stole the souls of women in the middle of the night.
I didn't want Jidden's help, but I knew I was safer in his hands than any other, so I was horrified when the soldier pulled a knife from his boot. The hilt was encrusted with a crescent moon. It was one of ours, taken from the hand of one of my sister warriors.
With the knife firmly in his hand, the soldier took a swipe at Jidden, but he missed. He tried again, but Jidden kept dancing around him, much quicker and more capable.
When the soldier lunged forward one last time, Jidden dodged and caused the soldier to stumble. The move ended the fight, but not in the way either man intended.
The soldier fell straight into me.
I felt the blade go through my abdomen, but I didn't feel any pain. I was in too much shock. The hilt glowed against the florescent lights of the corridor, calling my destiny out to me. I was mesmerized by the glow, reminded of how I thought the Surtu ships looked like glow flies out in the distance from my kitchen window.
Then the glow wavered, dimming as I bled.
I remembered Jidden picking me up in his arms, but that was the last thing I remembered.
Part 2: Extinction
TERRA
The light hurt my eyes.
I struggled to wake up, unsure of where I was. A thick fog clouded my mind and the glare around me blinded my eyes. What could I remember? I had been talking to Bellona in the gardens of the Fortuna, the space station I was now Commander of. And what about Lucina?
Oh God, Lucina!
Bellona had informed me that while the other sister warriors defended the Fortuna against the invading Surtu, Lucina, my best friend, had been taken captive by some redheaded mutt of a soldier. I had gone to look for her, intending first to go to my quarters and retrieve my hidden weapons – weapons I thought I'd never use.
And I had been stabbed.
Wide awake now, I pulled up the shirt I was wearing. There was a bandage around my waist which covered the stab wound, but I wasn't in pain.
"Our medicine is far more advanced than yours," Jidden said from across the room, "but even our medicine has limits. You're lucky the knife missed your heart."
I hadn't even asked a question. He was reprimanding me, but I barely noticed, suddenly realizing that I was no longer on the Fortuna. Nor was I in my clothes. I wore a gray thermal-looking top over white shorts. The clothes were too small to belong to Jidden. I had no idea how these garments appeared.
I wasn't even sure how long I'd been out.
"Where are we?" I demanded, looking around at what appeared to be sleeping quarters...if I were in a mental asylum. The walls cold steel with no decor, unless I counted the tiny window above the bed where I sat as interior design. A narrow closet and a desk lined the wall to my left, but there was little else.
"We're on my ship," Jidden replied, pulling off his top.
I briefly lost focus as I tried not to stare at his hard, chiseled physique, but I couldn't help myself. Jidden was many things, and unfortunately for me, sexy was one of them. The Surtu were a mesmerizing race – almost completely humanoid except for their broader height and elfin eyes. But Jidden was something special altogether. There was a depth in his dark blue eyes, which had flecks of light around the pupils. He was unaware of how mesmerizing his eyes were.
Ashamed, I thought of how intimate we'd been in the gardens, of his hand sliding up my thigh, exploring me.
I shook the memory away. It didn't mean anything. He'd wanted to distract me while his soldiers sieged the space station, so he'd seduced me. It was strategic.
Why do you have to be so hot? I thought, praying he would magically turn into some hideous creature. When that didn't work, I willed him to put his shirt back on so that I could hate him properly.
He didn't.
The ship shook, and I nearly fell off the bed. "Are we moving?" I gasped. Panicked, I stood and pulled up the metal shade covering the window.
"Yes," Jidden answered, but I didn't need him to. I could see the Fortuna growing smaller in the distance. We were heading deeper into space than I had ever been before. "I'm taking you to my Fleet Captain."
HE was irritated. I didn't understand why. I was the prisoner being transported, handed like cattle from one owner to the next.
I didn't fear for my safety. Jidden wouldn't have saved me only to kill me later. He was cold and calculating, but he wasn't sadistic. I was scared for my integrity, however. I refused to be a slave like the women from Florentine, the Earth colony the Surtu had attacked sixty years prior. The Surtu slaughtered all the men, and the
women and children were taken captive.
"You can't do this to me," I said earnestly, hoping to appeal to the gentler side of him, a side he kept hidden. I'd seen it, out in the garden. "You can't turn people into slaves. We may be human, but we're still people."
Jidden reached into his closet and pulled out a fresh top. It was black, similar to the uniform he'd worn when he first arrived on the Fortuna. "You fight well, but you were never a match for my soldiers," he said, pulling the top over his head. "You were fools to think you could defeat us."
He left the room, locking me in.
"We will still defeat you!" I screamed at the door, hoping his entire ship heard me.
JIDDEN
I had nowhere to go when I left the room. I just needed to get away from her.
I preferred Terra when she was asleep. She had looked so beautiful lying in my bed, her wavy brown hair falling over the sheets in a way that made me ache to touch her again.
Seducing her in the gardens had not been part of the plan. I had meant to distract her while my men sieged the space station, but what happened in the dark of the wood?
That was spontaneous.
I couldn't let it happen again. I wasn't some low-class gunner ruled by my lust. I was better than that. I was disciplined and the Lead Officer of my ship. I needed to set an example for my men and not be captivated by some human woman, no matter how fascinating she was.
Even if I did want to find a mate to light bond with, it couldn't be Terra. I hoped she would forgive me for deceiving her, but she was an elite mate. She was Commander of a space station, and she was intelligent. Those who outranked me would claim her before I could. I had to oblige.
I was still just a soldier. For now.
TERRA
I couldn't get Lucina out of my mind, even as our ship docked, attaching itself to another larger ship like two pieces of a puzzle. Out the window, the Fortuna was a mere dot and hardly noticeable against the backdrop of stars.
The rage I'd felt hearing about Lucina being taken captive lingered within me, even as I realized all of the women of the Fortuna were now hostages. A tiny part of me still did not believe a war was the answer. With war, humans and the Surtu equally risked destruction. There had to be another way.
My instincts told me the Surtu were here for the women. It made sense.
On Florentine, they'd only killed the men. And when they invaded the Fortuna, they tried not to hurt my sister warriors, as if we were prizes in a game of hide-and-seek. Jidden had said it himself.
I can guarantee their survival, but nothing more.
I simply had to figure out why they flew across the stars for us.
Jidden returned to the room. The air around him could freeze a polar bear. None of the affection he had showed me before remained.
"It's time to go," he said firmly, leaving no room for me to object. "Captain Fore, the man in charge of this fleet, is waiting."
I obeyed, not because Jidden intimidated me, but because all I possessed at the moment was my dignity. I didn't want him dragging me out.
"Thank you, by the way," I said, passing by him briskly as I entered the long corridor. "For saving me. I appreciate it."
He seemed surprised by my thanks, but it did not change the frigid atmosphere between us. "The soldier who cornered you was out of line. Better men put a claim on women like you."
"No one's putting a claim on me," I muttered. "Least of all who your kind deems worthy."
We continued our walk in silence. I had questions, and I wanted to get answers, but now was not the time. I needed to focus and take in everything I could about the ship in case I was able to escape and contact Earth.
I will escape, I thought to myself. I need redemption. I let the Fortuna fall.
We passed beneath a giant metal arch. I assumed it was where the ships met. Soon after, we arrived at the Fleet Captain's office.
The office was functional, not decorative. Like Jidden's sleeping quarters, it was sterile and efficient, furnished only by the necessities. Though it was small, great power radiated from a man behind the desk at the center of the room. Wearing the same black uniform as Jidden, he looked to be in his sixties, his hair tipped with gray. The flecks of light in his eyes crackled with vitality.
"Your charade was clever," he told me, his voice booming across the room. Polite greetings seemed to be beyond the Surtu. "But it wasn't clever enough. Did you think we'd believe you were holy women or that the Fortuna was a sanctuary? Not only did you have military arms, but you also had a fight in your eyes. We knew that you were bait."
"Then why siege the ship?" I asked. "We'd already surrendered."
"No, you hadn't," Captain Fore argued. "You pretended to surrender so that you could learn about us before it was time to strike, just as we did to you when we pretended to send an envoy ship."
"We played each other," I concluded, not for the first time.
Captain Fore smiled. "But the Surtu won."
"For now," I said, forcing an unnatural confidence into my tone. I may have only been made Commander of the Fortuna because I was the most believable, but I still had a role to play and information to gather. "So why are you here?"
"For you," Jidden answered. He was standing behind me and refusing to be forgotten.
"For the women of Earth," Captain explained. "Two centuries ago, Surt was hit by a large meteorite. It did not alarm us. The damage was minimal. If anything, it was a scientific curiosity. But then our women began to die, taken by a mysterious disease."
It was terrible to hear, but I was intrigued. It explained many things.
"In the decade that followed, the population of women on our planet rapidly diminished. Thankfully, some were genetically immune to the disease, and others fought it and survived, but my people knew it was only a matter of time before we faced total extinction. We sent expeditions into space in search of an alien race genetically compatible with our own."
"The universe works in patterns. All the races are similar, no matter what their origin is. A flower on one end of the world is similar to a flower on the other end, requiring the same minerals to grow and the same air to breathe. Although we found many races that were close to our genetic profile, we couldn't find a race that we could reproduce with."
"Until we came upon the Earth colony you call Florentine."
It was a lot to take in. The Surtu were the first alien race Earth had encountered, but from what Captain Fore told, there were an indefinite number of alien races out there, beyond human reaching.
My emotions were mixed up. I felt compassion towards the Surtu. They were fighting for their survival. But I was not naive. Their method of survival was intolerable. It was uncivilized. The Surtu needed human women, but they didn't take them because they had no other choice. They took them because it was the easiest choice.
"So you stole us," I said bitterly. "Because we're a genetic match."
Jidden stepped forward. "The laws of the universe don't care about morality." he stated coldly. "We take what we need, or we will die."
Captain Fore nodded. "We make no apologies for what we do. We know the implications our actions have on Earth, but we stand by them. After the expedition had returned with the human women, we waited an entire generation to ensure the women were capable of producing Surtu children and that the children grew up healthy. They did, particularly those conceived within the light bond. Many are still alive today."
"Our search is over."
I wasn't sure what he meant by a light bond, but I had more important questions to ask, the answers of which I hoped to feed to Earth. "What about the disease? If the disease is gender-based, aren't human women vulnerable to it as well?"
"No, they are not, and neither are their daughters, from what we can tell so far. But we are aware that by sharing blood, the same vulnerabilities in our genetic code may present themselves. That is why not all the Surtu soldiers will be returning home. They will remain here on Earth with the women they
claim."
It was a shock, but I tried to keep my composure. "Are there human Surtu within the fleet?"
"No," Captain Fore asserted. "To keep the Surtu bloodline strong for as long as possible, only full Surtu are allowed to mate with humans. No one here is half-human."
Their tribulations tugged harder at my heartstrings, demanding absolute empathy, but then I thought of Lucina, and the inner rage I had been carrying returned. "If you're thinking about making me one of your playthings, then you're dead wrong," I told him, letting my rage show itself.
Captain Fore laughed. "I'm not thinking about you like that at all. My mate is of the Surtu, immune to the disease. She is the only type of woman in this universe more valuable than a human. You're here because I want you to tell your people to surrender."
"You have already captured the Fortuna," I reminded him.
"I'm not talking about the Fortuna. I mean Earth. We are the first fleet to arrive, but we are not the last. More will come. Trust me when I tell you the Surtu are more powerful than you could imagine. Earth has two options – either the men can live out the rest of their days in peace, or they can die."
"Either way, the women belong to us."
"Why must it be war?" I demanded, before glancing over at Jidden, who stood as still as a statue. "I'm sure it's possible for a Surtu man and a human woman to fall in love if the two races were to integrate peacefully, without force."
"Love cannot be controlled," Captain Fore replied coolly. "We need control. There are very little Surtu women left. We're not here to ask permission. We're here to dominate."
To hell with that, I thought, but I didn't say it out loud. Captain Fore had offered me an advantage. I wanted to take it.
"I'll do it," I said. "I'll try to convince my people to surrender."
I had no authority on Earth. If I asked the leaders of Earth to surrender, no one would listen to me. Agreeing to do it would give me the opportunity to tell Earth everything I had learned from my conversation with the Fleet Captain.
He seemed pleased. "Good. You know what you need to do to protect your people, as do I. That's what makes us leaders."