by Calista Skye
- - -
Nichole and she usually had breakfast together, but that morning Nichole only came shuffling into the mess hall when Dani was almost done. The atmosphere in the mess hall was unusually subdued and quiet, and most people were sitting by themselves and picking at their trays. The celebration the night before had taken it out of them, it seemed.
"You look like you've been to the wars," Dani commented when Nichole sat down, her hair shaggy and her face tired. "I can only assume you were fighting aliens all night. Or were you doing something else?"
Nichole scratched her head and looked down at her tray with no obvious hunger. "I don't even know. There was some fighting, sure. But I kind of like that. He wasn't an alien, though. Definitely not an alien."
Dani downed the last of her orange juice. "Someone I know?"
"Maintenance crew. Name of Grem. Gren. Grek? Something like that, I couldn't really hear him over the size of his ego. It's not like he was bad or anything. Just not... great."
Dani nodded. "Egos and greatness don't go together, in my experience. It's one or the other. Well, at least you didn't go for a marine."
Nichole nodded and picked at her food. "I guess not. I wasn't actually too picky last night. First come, first served kind of thing. Which is funny, because he did come first."
"That is funny," Dani agreed and sipped her coffee. "Mostly for him, I'm thinking."
"Oh, I came too. Just had to help him along a little. You know, instruct. But he was a slow learner, and that actually worked out okay. Dammit, I had kind of decided that this time I wouldn't go for a grunt, but maybe aim higher. You know, an officer. Captain or above. No dice. Remind me to stay stone cold sober next time."
"Right. I'll keep that in mind." Dani smiled behind her cup. Nichole would only consider officers for long-term material, but then she'd give up the goods to any swaggering private who came along. Dani had never seen her with anyone above corporal.
"So," Nichole said. "Did our champ meet anyone on her way to her cabin last night?"
Dani looked away. "Nah," she said truthfully. "It was a peaceful night." Well, there hadn't been outright war in her cabin.
Nichole finally pushed her tray away and grabbed her coffee cup. "Your willpower amazes me. You haven't jumped anyone for months, it seems to me. And every guy on the ship have indicated their interest. And a bunch of chicks, too. You're a better woman than me, Dani."
Dani sighed. "I think most people would disagree. Colonel Abeni especially."
"You worried about the hearing?"
"A little. It was a live combat situation. I hear they tend to hit you harder then."
"I wouldn't worry. That colonel made your situation impossible. They have to know that."
Dani shrugged. "Who knows what they will think. This is the Space Marines. Logic isn't really what we do."
10
Nichole went back to her cabin to sleep, but Dani wasn't tired. She went where she usually did when she had free time, which was the Procurement section. It occupied a major section of the ship, and it was considered one of the more important parts of the Space Marine Division. Their force would usually be sent to the outskirts of human-occupied space, which meant that supplies could be a challenge. They were expected to live off the land deep in space, and they were equipped for most scenarios. Procurement had large volumes of the ship dedicated to growing edible plants, and they also specialized in dealing with alien species that might have food and other things to trade. The Procurement section looked most of all like a trading station, with its walls and glass cases filled with exotic objects and strange goods and otherworldly weapons and art and plants.
Dani walked in and was briefly overwhelmed by the display, as usual. It was like a museum on steroids.
Doctor Kienle nodded at her from behind a display counter. "Ah," he said. "Our illustrious Ethereal ambassador."
"Hi, doc. They didn't make me ambassador yet. Can you believe it?"
"A travesty," the scientist said and shook his head in mock sadness. "After all, it seems you're the only one they'll talk to."
Kienle was in his thirties and was one of the new breed of xenobiologists that Dani's mother had brought into Space Force to find out more about the many aliens they met during the expansion of the human-inhabited bubble in space. He was a round, cheerful man and one of the few people Dani knew who was happily married. The secret, he said, was that he spent months and years at a time on missions with Space Force, so he hardly ever saw his wife. But when they did meet, it was like meeting your soulmate for the first time.
One of the reasons Dani liked spending time with him was that he never came on to her. He just behaved like a friend who shared interests with her. And he was a civilian, so with him she could drop the tough-as-nails Space Marine shell and be herself. It helped remind her of who she was.
"I guess I am," Dani said and leaned on a display case containing black alien insects of various sizes. She hoped they were dead. "So they can't be all bad. I mean, it shows they have pretty good judgment."
"Perhaps," Kienle said with a scientist's reluctance to agree with anything he couldn't have verified by an experiment. "It would be the first time they displayed that, but I suppose anyone can change."
She stuck her hand in her pocket and fished out the little bone that Crixael had gnawed on and then left on the floor of her cabin. "Can you tell me what this is?"
He took it out of her hand and looked at it. "You suspecting the mess staff of serving you rat meat instead of something else?"
She felt her stomach turn. "It's a rat bone?"
"No, it's chicken. But you can never be too sure with those guys. You're prudent to make sure their fried chicken is actually chicken."
"Right. Yeah, just checking." She was relieved. At least it wasn't from a human, which she had half expected.
She spotted her machete on his laboratory bench. "You get anywhere with the blood on that thing? I'm guessing you're the one who analyzed it."
He leaned on a counter opposite from Dani and lit a cigarette. He was the only person Dani had ever met who smoked, and she was always half-shocked when he did it. Open flame was very forbidden on any spaceship.
"Oh sure. Mostly its human blood. Type oh plus. Very common. Normal genome. Then there's another part that is too alien for words. I can't make heads or tails of it."
"That weird, huh?"
Kienle nodded and pushed his old-fashioned glassed up on his nose. "Imagine you're an expert on, say, playing cards. You can identify pretty much any card. Five of clubs, king of hearts, three of spades; you know them all, or you can figure them out with a little work. Even alien ones like the seventeen of squares or the whore of three-dimensional dodecahedrons with orange space fronds on top. Then one day someone comes to you and gives you something that looks like a card and asks you what it is. And you get all fired up and you just know you can handle it. Then when you've been dealing with it for hours, you realize it's not a playing card at all, but has more to do with, say, a mix of carpentry and geology and women's winter fashions from fifteen years ago. With a good helping of ancient Greek theology mixed in. Just something completely different and so strange you don't even know where to look for answers. That's the alien part of the blood."
"Wow. That sounds like the Ethereals, I guess. What do we know about them, anyway?"
Kienle took a puff of his cigarette. "Not much. They claim to be immortal, but it looked like they can be killed. They claimed to be kind, but then they bombed our Moon colony. They like to eat humans alive. They bleed liquid gold. They can only be killed by iron blades. They leave a golden sheet of something when they die. Or when they appear to die, I should say. They can move extremely fast or even instantaneously. They are described as being supernaturally attractive. Their social structure has a king on the top, and a lot of the power the other Ethereals have is somehow derived from him. When he dies, they're pretty easy to kill. As in, not completely impossible to defeat. Where do
they come from? We don't know. Why do they travel through space and destroy everything? We don't know. How are they born? We don't know. Are they born at all? We don't know. How do they work? We don't know."
"But we know they're bad news."
Kienle looked down and hesitated. Dani knew why. He knew that Space Force doctrine placed the Ethereals at the top of the list of dangers and enemies, and he didn't want to completely contradict his employer. "We know they were bad news last time. We also know that they have very strange powers that would probably be extremely useful if we could get access to them or just know how they work. This time, from what I hear, they're approaching us differently. These may not be the same ones. So I've been thinking, what if instead of always coming at someone new with our guns first, maybe try to talk? With our guns ready, of course. Locked and loaded and on a hair trigger. But held behind our back, not pointed right at the alien's face from the get-go."
He shrugged and smiled apologetically. "Just a thought. Not really Space Marine policy, I suppose."
"Not really," Dani said slowly, "But you know, I've been thinking that exact same thing."
11
"Sergeant Smith, this panel finds you guilty of disrespecting a senior officer. It finds you not guilty of insubordination."
Lieutenant Colonel Berenson's voice was flat and impassive. The two other members of the panel were plainly uncomfortable with the whole thing. Dani could see them practically twisting in their seats.
"Given the high seniority of the officer in question, the penalty for disrespect must be severe. The panel places no emphasis on the fact that this happened during combat in the front line, and this does not add to the severity. All things considered, the panel finds that the disciplinary action is that you are to be transferred to Battalion Six for three days. This takes effect as of six o'clock this evening. Dismissed."
Dani straightened and turned as snappily as she could, then left the room. Her whole squad was waiting outside the door.
Nichole was there and held out a can of beer for her. "Well?"
"Penal battalion for three days," Dani said and cracked open the beer.
"What?!"
"Three days?"
"Is that a joke?"
"Sounds like they really wanted to give you a bunch of flowers and a promotion!"
Dani shrugged. "No Subordination, either. Just Disrespect."
"That explains it," Nichole said. "A little Disrespect would never reach the panel anyway. The major would just give you mess duty for a day or so. But I guess the panel had to do something. And it was a colonel. Anyway, congratulations. I thought at least you'd get a month."
They walked to the accommodation section together. "Yeah, this wasn't so bad. Must feel like a slap in the face to that colonel, though. Like they thought he deserved it."
"He did! First he stumbles into the line of fire right where he has no business being, and then when you save his life, he goes and charges you on bullshit. Not Space Marine behavior."
"That's true. Well, I guess I'll have to find out where the Penal Battalion is. Not aboard this ship, I'm guessing."
"You guess right. I took the liberty of checking where they are, in case you'd be stuck there for weeks. It's in this solar system, on a planet where the Vlon are present in force. I think the Penal is there to soften them up before the Space Marines land in huge numbers, but don't quote me on that. They're on the surface. Old-fashioned camp with domes and everything."
"Shit. Think they'll let me keep my old cabin here while I'm gone?"
"For three days? Yes. Yes, I think they will."
She sent a message to her mother, informing her of the verdict, as if her mom hadn't made sure to check the second if was passed.
Then she got busy packing. She was neither happy nor too sad. A penal battalion couldn't be that different from any Space Marine unit, except that they usually didn't get the best equipment and their officers were those that were too incompetent to be trusted with a real command. And of course Penals were sometimes used as cannon fodder, but that hadn't happened for twenty years.
She looked around her cabin. It seemed like years since Crixael and she had enjoyed each other there.
She missed him. His smell and his touch and his strength and his sheer presence. He had been the perfect mix of caring and demanding. It had felt good. And he had seemed like he enjoyed it, too. 'Mystery', he had said. Well, that didn't exactly harm her self-esteem.
If he came here while she was gone, would he find someone else on board? Or was she special to him, except for the fact that he knew she was King Ator'aq's and Queen Olivia's daughter? Would he miss her?
She looked at herself in the full-length mirror she had glued onto the closet door, against regulations. She looked okay in her formal uniform, all much too flared hips and much too skinny chest and dark hair that she had to carefully put up every morning. Most female Space Marines got buzz cuts or page boys, but she hadn't. She was still herself, marine or not. She wondered if Crixael liked it.
Damn, was she crushing on him now? On an Ethereal? Who was half human?
She looked into her own eyes in the mirror. One green like her father's, one dark brown like her mother's. Just one more delightful quirk of mixing Earthling and Braxian genetic material, in addition to her weird body shape. And then her skin. Sometimes it looked white as snow, sometimes the light caramel tones from her mother gave it a warm glow, depending on the light. She was an alien, too.
So what if he was an Ethereal? He had never hurt her or anyone else, as far as she knew. In fact, he had saved her life. And he had made love to her like no one else had ever come close to.
Well, it didn't matter. She had no idea where he was, and if he never showed up again, she would still cherish the experience. A little crush now wouldn't hurt. It had been far too long since she had allowed her heart to have a say in anything. This time, she would follow it. Secretly, if necessary.
Yes. That would absolutely be necessary.
And if the Space Marines found out and objected, well, then they could go to hell.
If her parents objected, well... then she'd be totally crushed. She loved them both dearly.
She sighed. Okay, and now she was dreaming of introducing Crixael to her family. That's a little early, girl. Let's not get carried away.
She looked around quickly. Bella the alien cat was already safe in Kienle's custody, and her cabin was as tidy as it would ever be with her as its occupant.
She put on her beret, gave it an against-regulations little tilt to the side and left the cabin.
12
The huge planet spun the way it had for billions of years and would continue to do for billions more. It had a hypnotic quality, and Crixael knew he had been staring at it for too long.
He was troubled. For the first time in his life something bothered him.
The life of an Ethereal was easy. Travel through space, find some civilization, toy with it for as long as it could hold their interest, abduct some of its inhabitants and see if they tasted okay and if their screams were pleasantly piercing. Then fill the stores with living food and destroy their society, leaving nothing alive. Then travel on through space. Forever. Leaving only destruction and death.
He had not been all that active in the destruction part. Confusing and tricking other sentients had a mild entertainment value, but those other things bored him and he tended to occupy himself in other ways. He knew he was different from other Ethereals, and he knew that he was viewed with some suspicion.
Was his human side now taking control? Why could he not get her out of his mind? Her earnest face, her eyes with the different colors, her natural scent, her face in ecstasy, so unlike anything he'd ever experienced. Her intensity in living her short life...
It was a strange sensation to have someone so fill his mind. It was usually so full of himself. It was pleasant. Very pleasant. But not as pleasant as being close to her.
She had showed him a sliver of he
r world, of what it meant to really be alive. And he found that he was now addicted to it. To Danai'a.
What was going on in his mind?
Queen Benirsheba had kept her under some surveillance before she sent him to take her away, and at first, everyone had been interested because she was the daughter of Ator'aq and Olivia, the ones who had ruined Denibael and wiped out his wave. It made her an obvious first target. And possibly dangerous.
Then, when he had seen her, and noticed her bravery in the face of someone she had to see as death itself, something had broken in him. A barrier of some kind. Something had matured and hatched in his soul...
In a flash he knew what it was: it was his humanity. Among only Ethereals and weaker species, that half of him did not have good conditions. But face to face with Danai'a, he had seen what he was supposed to be, recognized himself in her eyes and her ways.
And then, when they had shared the ultimate embrace, it was made final. He wanted her. Not for a few minutes or hours.
Forever. She and him. Always.
How could he get her to love him?
"Are you taking up planetology, Crixael?" a soft voice said next to him.
He turned his head. "Of course, Diamsheba," he said to the one person who came closest to being a friend among his kind. "I am taking it up. At some point, I mean. Though wouldn't it be better if someone else were to take it up, and then give me any interesting results there might be? Or give them to you, rather. Because on reflection, planetology isn't my thing. I've been staring at this now for hours. But I don't find it too interesting."
Diamsheba nodded once, an amused look in her bronze face. "And it took you hours to determine? We have long lives, Crixael, but even for us there is such a thing as wasting time."
She was unspeakably beautiful, like all Ethereal females. Pitch black curls hung to her waist and beyond, artfully arranged to look like a constantly falling liquid. Her outfit was so white it glowed, perfectly contrasting with her dark skin and showing just enough of her female shape to be as enticing as any woman could ever be. Her bright yellow eyes glinted in a flawless face, much smoother than the finest silk.