Episode Seven
The Forgotten:
Discovery
By
Kaitlyn O'Connor
© copyright by Kaitlyn O'Connor, February 2010
Cover Art by Alex DeShanks, February 2010
ISBN 1-978-60394-396-3
New Concepts Publishing
Lake Park, GA 31636
www.newconceptspublishing.com
This is a work of fiction. All characters, events, and places are of the author's imagination and not to be confused with fact. Any resemblance to living persons or events is merely coincidence.
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Chapter Thirteen
Danielle hadn't honestly thought the maneuvers would be enough to convince the Danu, or more specifically Baen, Kiel, and Jalen, that they really didn't want anything to do with space travel. It would've been more accurate to say that she'd hoped it would give them pause, make them decide to rethink the situation.
It didn't. They looked downright green as they trudged up the gangplank for the final time and the cyborgs watching didn't look a lot more enthusiastic, but they were clearly determined and not about to let anything as minor as getting the piss scared out of them to deter them.
She had mixed feelings herself as she did the final systems check. The ship had performed well above her expectations and she still had a tiny bit of lingering anxiety about taking it out on a mission. She was still worried about what they would be facing on their mission-whether the Danu really meant to form an alliance and if her own people would go for it.
It all seemed beyond her control, however, and although on some levels it was almost a comfort to be able to tell herself that she'd done all she could to avert the potential for disaster, it still wasn't much of a comfort. It wouldn't be any consolation if things went badly, but she still couldn't think of anything that she could say or do to change it.
She did realize, though, once everything was stowed and they'd settled in their seats for takeoff that she was surprisingly comfortable with the idea of traveling with them. A little soul searching produced the realization that it was because she'd grown to think of them as peers rather than aliens or enemies. She thought their anger the night before had even helped, because they'd been really, really pissed off and all they'd done was growled at her and then let it go once they'd voiced their displeasure. It was a relief to have passed that hurtle intact-first fight and she was still in one piece!
She was surprised and not very happy when Kiel took the pilot's seat, relegating her to the jump seat he'd taken before.
"You're piloting the ship?"
"Yes."
"Do you know how?"
"Yes. I watched you."
Uh oh! Big uh oh! "Uh … it actually takes a little more than watching … usually," she added when Baen, Kiel, and Jalen turned to give her a look. "I'm just saying …."
"Everything was recorded," Kiel said dismissively.
"Yes, but …."
It actually didn't occur to her until they'd begun to rise above the landing pad that she'd deliberately pulled a few dangerous maneuvers just to scare the hell out of them.
Alright, well it was to test the equipment and the ship's reaction, too, but she'd known it wasn't necessary for a performance test. Thankfully, Kiel didn't pay her back, either because he didn't realize she had done it on purpose or because he didn't feel up to it. He did perform as flawlessly as the ship, however, and Danielle was impressed in spite of herself. "God! I wish I could learn things that easily!"
"If you were half robot, you could," Kiel said coolly.
She honestly hadn't thought about that. She knew it, but it was impossible to keep 'cyborg' in mind when they didn't behave like robots. She thought she'd had a harder time accepting the fact that they were alien and not human.
She was mildly resentful that Gertrude accepted him as commander of the ship without a whimper of protest, though. Clearly they'd reprogrammed her … uh … it!
She threw off her harness as soon as they'd left the planet's orbit and artificial gravity had been engaged. "I should check the star charts and navigate a course to the closest base."
"We are going to our home world, Chab, first."
Danielle stared at them uncomprehendingly. "Why?"
"This is the first part of the mission, to contact the Danu."
She frowned in confusion. "I thought that was what Manuta wanted you to do."
"In part, yes."
Irritation began to replace her confusion. "Is there some reason you just don't want to tell me what's going on?" she demanded.
They looked genuinely surprised and then thoughtful as if they were trying to decide whether there was a reason not to tell her.
Kiel shrugged. "We will make contact as Manuta wished and others now wish for us to do. We will inform them that the planet assigned to us to terra-form is prepared for colonists and we will negotiate for female colonists for the males who want them."
Danielle's belly knotted. She tried to tell herself that they'd clearly meant to take her home and that hadn't changed, but it was hard when they were behaving now as if she should've known the only mission they had any interest in was in finding women. "What about me?" she asked a little weakly.
"We have chosen you," Jalen informed her. "Three are enough! We will go to Chab and find women for the others. I do not mind competing when I know that is the way of things, but there are far too many without a mate on our colony world."
Danielle blinked at him, feeling her jaw sag with shock. It wasn't the answer she'd been looking for and it was pretty obvious that neither Baen nor Kiel had intended to tell her that. Both of them glared at Jalen.
A denial sprang to her lips. Fortunately, she was in no state to voice it because it gave her time to consider whether it was wise to say anything at all considering she was trapped on a ship with the three of them and bound for an unknown planet. She looked at Kiel accusingly. "You said you would be taking me home!"
His lips tightened.
"We will go to Chab first," Baen responded soothingly. "When we have completed that part of the mission, then we will find your people, ally ourselves with them, and help to destroy your enemies."
Danielle studied him for a long moment, but he seemed completely sincere. "You aren't just saying that?"
He frowned. "It was always a part of the plan."
She glanced from Baen to Kiel and finally Jalen, trying to decide if either of them looked like that wasn't part of the plan. She couldn't tell, but she realized it would be pointless to ask. Whether true or not, they were liable to agree with Baen and she still wouldn't know for certain.
Finally, she realized there was nothing she could really do-certainly not at the moment. Maybe she would think of something between now and their arrival on Chab and maybe she wouldn't have to. Maybe they really did mean to do what they'd said they would.
In any case, she realized she had a more immediate problem. She hadn't actually spoken to Jalen about their single-minded pursuit of mates-her. It was sure as hell news to her that he considered himself a contender! She had told both Baen and Kiel, however, that she wouldn't consider it and it seemed pretty clear they meant to use the trip to convince her.
She discovered she was too shook up at the moment to figure out what to do about it, though, and forced a tight smile. "Ok, so we're going to Chab first. How are we going to get there when none of you have ever been?"
The men seemed to relax. Baen turned to the console he was sitting in front of and pulled up a star chart. She saw that a course had already been charted and marked with a bright line across the display. "We have reversed Manuta's original course from Chab to the target planet. Some adjustment was required due to the length of tim
e that has passed since Manuta made its voyage, but we have tracked the movements of the bodies and pinpointed the location of the mother world."
Danielle moved closer to study the map but discovered quickly enough that it meant nothing to her when there were no reference points. "Gertrude, overlay this with any star charts you have that has any matching points."
Obligingly, Gertrude began to flash charts on the display in overlay, one after another, adjusting them to match it in size and changing the angles by degrees. "I have no matches," the computer finally announced.
Danielle frowned. "There has to be some matches!"
"Negative."
She considered that. "You're saying this star chart is of another galaxy?"
"Unknown."
Danielle's belly cramped. If it wasn't even the Milky Way galaxy, how the hell were they supposed to make it back, assuming they meant to, once they'd completed the first part of their mission? "How long since Manuta left the home world?" she asked a little faintly.
"Thirty thousand years … give or take," Baen said promptly.
The bottom seemed to fall out of her stomach. "Thirty thousand …?" she echoed numbly, glancing from Baen to Kiel.
"Manuta marked the time upon our world and calculated the time that would have passed on the mother world," he said.
She stared at him. "So … Manuta has been terra-forming your world thirty thousand years?" she asked hesitantly, her mind leaping from that information to wondering about the time line of the cyborgs.
"Nay," Baen corrected her. "That is the calculated time of what has passed on Chab. Manuta has only been terra-forming our world for ten thousand."
And they actually thought their people were still going to be there? "When did … uh … Manuta decide to create the … uh … colonists?"
"It is a thousand years since that time."
Danielle gaped at him, unable to process that. "I … you know, I don't actually feel very well. I think I'll just go lie down on my bunk for a little bit."
Jalen bounded up, beaming at her as if he had a special treat to offer. "I will show you your cabin."
"She does not need you to show her to her cabin!" Kiel growled. "She cannot get lost!"
Jalen sent him a sullen look. "I will explain everything."
Kiel surged to his feet. "Baen, set the course. I will show her."
"You are the pilot!" Baen immediately disputed. "I will show her."
"You are the navigator," Kiel said pointedly. "Navigate!"
Irritation buoyed Danielle. "Just tell me where it is … or better, yet. I'll just pick one!" Turning on her heels, she stalked from the bridge and entered the corridor leading back through the ship. There were four cabins, she discovered, and a surprisingly spacious gathering area for food preparation, dining, and, she supposed, socializing. She discovered that the cabin at the very rear of the ship was the largest and appropriated it for herself. Kiel had followed her. Instead of turning back when she entered the last cabin and dropped to sit on the edge of the wide bunk she found there, he followed her inside.
"There are facilities there," he said, indicating what appeared to be a smooth wall.
"I don't need it now. I'll find it later," Danielle said, pushing back on the bunk and turning to lie down.
Kiel stood over her, frowning. "You are … disturbed?"
What an understatement! "Surprised," she corrected him.
"It was not a pleasant surprise."
No, it actually wasn't. The problem was, she didn't know why she was upset about it. "It's hard to believe you're a thousand years old," she muttered.
His gaze flicked over her length. "This is what disturbed you?"
"I'm not disturbed!" she snapped. "I told you. I'm just surprised."
He digested that. "What is the lifespan of humans?"
"Not that long," she said dryly. "Three hundred if you're lucky, although I'm not sure it's really all that lucky. I haven't seen that the last fifty are anything to get excited about. And that's with some serious medical advances, I might add. Naturally, about half that or less. They had to modify life expectancy a lot just to make colonization at all practical."
He was silent for several moments. "You are very young. I do not understand why it disturbs you. We are in our prime," he added tentatively.
Danielle swallowed a little convulsively, realizing abruptly why it bothered her so much. "You do realize that that makes you incompatible as mates for humans?"
Kiel frowned. Moving closer, he settled on the bunk next to her, bringing his face into her range of vision since she was staring at the ceiling. "Why?"
Danielle released an irritated huff, but there was a knot in her throat that made it hard to speak. Trying to dislodge it gave her a few moments to consider what she'd said and to realize that it wasn't true. It certainly wasn't true insofar as mating on a purely physical level. He'd said they were in their prime. That certainly put them at the perfect time for reproducing if that was what they had in mind, and she was pretty sure it was. "You're right," she said. "It won't make any difference at all."
"It makes a difference to you," he said grimly. "Why?"
"Oh, I wasn't thinking about me," she lied. "I was just thinking in a general way."
He caught her face with one hand and forced her to look at him. "That is not true," he said after studying her face.
"Could we just drop it? I don't really feel like talking about it."
"I cannot understand if you will not explain it," he said, frustration creeping into his voice.
And maybe it was better if he didn't? How stupid was it to want … something she had no right to even think about given her obligations?
It occurred to her when he'd left that they had planted a seed in her mind, though, made her begin to think about life after war when she hadn't allowed herself to think in those terms. It was stupid to do so when she had no idea if she would even make it through the war in one piece and, even if she did, no guarantee that she would be capable of still having children.
Despite the huge advances in lengthening life expectancy, the window of reproduction opportunity was still comparatively tiny-and for a very good reason. Longer life meant more possibility of utilizing knowledge and experience, but it also created population problems if they were able to reproduce for very long. Of course most everyone was deeply conscious of their moral obligation to limit their off-spring, but they were in constant battle with their natural urges.
For men, the urge to spread their seed never really left them. Women were prone to want to 'nest' from early maturity to well past the time they were actually capable of producing healthy off-spring and the urges of nature were hard to fight even with reason.
She hadn't considered it before because she'd barely reached the age where her natural urges were starting to kick in when the war started and she'd been too busy fighting since then and worried about getting killed to think about much else. She supposed, she'd been too busy battling mourning for her lost family and the close friends she'd lost since that time to think about life.
Until she'd crashed on their world and they didn't have anything else on their mind! It was small wonder that they'd managed to pierce her armor. She'd honestly thought, though, that they hadn't really tapped into anything more than her libido. She hadn't wanted to acknowledge that much, but it was pretty hard to ignore. In any case, she'd been able to comfort herself with the knowledge that it was perfectly natural. Women might not typically have the sex drives men had, but they certainly had needs. Hers had gone largely ignored almost from the time she'd been old enough to have them.
Not that they didn't all seize pretty much any opportunity to scratch their itches when they could, but they didn't get a lot of opportunities. She wasn't piloting a ship, alone, just because they didn't have enough pilots. That was part of it-because it was an ongoing battle to keep pilots and ships patrolling for the enemy and fighting-maybe most of it, but it was also because the commanders didn't wa
nt to take the risk pairing them up with entail-that they'd be more interested in fucking than watching for trouble.
Risk added to the urges, either because of the added excitement or because of the fear of missing opportunities to actually live while they could.
She focused on Kiel when he released his hold on her and straightened. "It's hard to explain and it would be even harder for you to understand."
His lips tightened. "I have a superior understanding," he said angrily.
It made her own anger rise to the surface. "And no damned experience with the opposite sex! Or emotion, or relationships, which is more to the point! No woman is going to want to risk her heart with a man that isn't likely to be around long!"
He looked absolutely blank and then thoroughly confused. "I do not understand the correlation between age and the heart," he said after a long moment. "How does either of those have to do with mating?"
"Apparently, they don't!" she said testily. "Not to you, anyway, and that's exactly my point!"
"Well, explain your gods damned point because I do not understand it!"
She sat up abruptly and poked him in the chest with her finger. "You're in your prime, you son-of-a-bitch! That should be self-explanatory!"
He looked at her blankly.
"Extrapolate!" she said angrily.
"With what starting point? You have not given me anything to work with!"
She glared at him. "You're just being deliberately obtuse! You know what I'm talking about, you philandering bastard! All this talk about 'mating' and you knew it wasn't going to work any of the time! Don't tell me you didn't! Manuta analyzed me as soon as I got there. You're just talking about fucking! Well! You can just take your cock and shove it up your ass!"
"I do not want it up my ass!" he snarled.
She sent him a drop dead look and flounced over on the bunk, putting her back to him. She could feel his angry gaze burning her back for several moments, but finally he got up and left … just about the time she'd decided he would apologize for leading her on.
And didn't that just show he was like every other damned man she'd ever met!
The Forgotten Seven Page 1