by Lisa Lace
Auxem
A TerraMates Novel
Lisa Lace
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Newsletter
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Chapter One
JAYNE
An angel stood over my bed.
He was hot, with washboard abs and burning brown eyes. As I looked up at him, he sat down on the edge of my bed and took my hand. His skin was warm and dry. Touching him made my hand tingle in a sensual way.
Was I dreaming? If I was, it was quite a dream.
A voice called out behind him. “Do you have the sample? Come on. You’re taking all day. We have to sample her properly. The tests become less accurate over time.”
“Give me a minute, okay?” The angel had a slight tinge of annoyance in his tone. “If you don’t think I’m doing it correctly, I’m happy to trade places with you.”
“No thanks. You do the testing. I’ll analyze them.”
I wasn’t sure what they were talking about, but I forgot their conversation as soon as the hot angel’s eyes zeroed in on me and I held my breath. He leaned down and slowly kissed me. A burst of emotion exploded through me and sent tremors through my body.
I don’t know what I thought angels were supposed to be like, but chaste came to mind. This angel was anything but chaste.
Against my will, a sound came out of the back of my throat when he pulled away.
“Did you get it? Are you finally ready to go? You’re not kissing this one too, are you? We have to go, Arnon.”
My angel’s mouth stretched into a grin that made me weak. His voice was deep, dark and smooth, like chocolate.
“Give me a minute here, Ayrie. This one’s cute.”
“Look, brother, just take her DNA and get out of here. We have a lot more women to test tonight. Did you wipe her memory yet?”
“Not yet,” he whispered, gazing into my eyes.
I wondered why angels were talking about DNA. But for all I knew, there was a lot of science going on in heaven. If God made science down here, then he probably used it up there, too.
“Are you waiting for permission or something? I don’t want Father giving us grief about showing ourselves to the humans. You know it could wreck his plans if they find out about us before they’re ready.”
Father? Did he mean God?
The angel took my hand, but I didn’t spend a second looking down. I was lost in his eyes until I felt a tiny prick on my finger. I frowned. I had never heard of angels poking people in a dream. Shouldn’t he be blessing me or something?
“She won’t remember you now, right? Are we done here?” the agitated voice came again.
“I’m done, Ayrie.” The angel hadn’t given me anything that affected my memory because I could still remember everything about him. He leaned down and kissed me briefly on the lips.
“This was only a dream,” he whispered.
I gathered all my courage to speak for the first time. “Are you an angel?”
He smiled again. “Nope.” He shook his head. “You are.”
“I don’t think I am.” I felt confused as he stood and moved away from my bed.
There was the sound of a great wind from the window. I sat up in bed as Arnon spread his wings. “You are an angel,” he said. “And you’re going to be mine.”
A shiver ran through me that felt a little like destiny and a lot like desire.
He stepped through the French doors and onto the balcony. With a leap and a vigorous pumping of his wings, he vanished into the night.
“Jaynie, what are you staring at?”
I was gazing off into space at breakfast, thinking about the angel again. The dream had been so vivid that I had his image burned into my brain. “The name’s Jayne, Mom.” I speared another forkful of scrambled eggs and put them into my mouth. “I’m twenty-seven years old now. Remember?”
“You’ve never been called anything but Jaynie in this house.”
“It’s my real name, Mom.” I was trying to be patient. “If you wanted my name to be Jaynie, then you could have put it on the birth certificate. Now that I’m finished with school, I have to go job hunting, and I want to sound professional.”
“I’m proud of you for getting your master’s degree, sweetie.” She frowned slightly. “Between you and me, it should have been you in that job instead of the other woman.”
“I know, but I can’t be something I’m not. I wasn’t going to giggle and pretend I didn’t know the answers to questions. My competition was better at faking it. She’s going to be Heinstoff’s research partner because she won’t look smarter than him. I could never do that.”
“It’s a shame. You would have been a perfect fit for that job.”
I shrugged. “Once it was clear what Heinstoff wanted, I couldn’t do it, Mom. I have too much integrity.”
She snorted. “Integrity. And a helping dose of your father’s need to rescue everything.”
“I don’t rescue things.” Did I?
“Don’t you remember the birds, Jayne? So many were injured hitting our windows. You would get them, bring them into the garage, and nurse them back to health. How many were there?”
“I don’t exactly remember.” Fourteen.
“You loved birds. You always wanted to fly, too. After we had watched that movie, you thought you could jump off the fence and fly.”
I rubbed my wrist unconsciously, remembering the pain. “So what? I’m proud of myself, and I like to fix things. Isn’t that a good thing? I think you’ve done your share of saving the world.” My mind drifted back to all the stories she told about rescuing Dad early in their relationship.
“It’s not good if it gets in the way of what you want,” she said. “I don’t want anyone to take advantage of your generous nature.”
Mom was sweet at home, but she was completely different at work. She ran a business that arranged for women to become mail-order brides for aliens. I had seen her on the job. She was terrifying.
“Maybe instead of looking for a job on Earth, I could just become a TerraMates bride. It would be an easy way to make a bunch of credits.” I had a twinkle in my eye.
“Jayne Lynch, you will do no such thing.” My mother’s eyes flashed angrily. “Don’t even think about it.”
“What kind of business are you running if you wouldn’t put your child into it? That sounds like a terrible endorsement.”
“You’re not serious, are you?” She looked at me carefully before an annoyed look spread over her face. “You’re playing with me.”
I laughed. “You’re too easy to rile up. I would never do something like that. I know you and Dad worked out fine. Everyone seems to find love through your business, but it’s not my kind of thing. I’m going to choose who I marry.”
“You can’t choose who you love, Jaynie.”
“Jayne, Mom. And do you know something? Yes, I can. I will date. When I find the right man, I’ll choose to marry him. And when he loves me back, we’ll get married. That’s how
it’s going to go. Simple. Easy. No. TerraMates. Required.”
She huffed out her breath, dropped her shoulders, and gazed at me with a mother’s look that made me know she thought I was hopelessly wrong.
“You’ve never really been in love yet. That’s not how it works.”
“We’ll just have to agree to disagree, then.” I stood up, gave her a kiss on the cheek, and put my dishes with the unfinished food back into the fabricator. The elements would either be sterilized or recombined into something else to eat. The machine hummed softly for a few seconds, then played a pleasant tone. I took the clean plate out and put it away in the cupboard.
“Let me know how your first day of job-hunting goes,” she said. “I’ll be at work late, but I want to know. Good luck.” She smiled at me brightly.
“Thanks.”
Who knew what the day had in store for me? Maybe I would meet my true love on the street. Mom didn’t know everything, even though marriage and love were her business.
I was going to find a job and the perfect guy, and make it home in time for dinner.
I stepped onto the transporter pad and punched in the coordinates for my destination. The stations had started out as luxuries for the rich and famous but had quickly dropped in price. Now they were a fixture all over the cities of Earth.
Our family lived close to a transporter, and it was my preferred method of getting around. Cars were becoming quite old-fashioned, though they were still used by people who were afraid of a machine scanning in their atomic structure, being disintegrated, then having a different machine reassemble them somewhere else.
In a moment, I disappeared then shimmered back into awareness at a different station. I waited on the pad for a minute to make sure there weren’t any problems with my reconstructed body before I decided to get something to eat. My favorite restaurant was down the block from here. I could get some breakfast and update my resume before I registered at the job bank.
Something felt wrong as soon as I entered the restaurant. No one was talking. Instead, they all stared up at the video screen on the wall. Even though the volume was turned low, the sound reached everywhere in the room.
Not knowing what else to do, I started watching too. A newscaster was speaking.
“Large starships are hovering in the skies over all the continents, and a delegation has arrived at the President’s office to negotiate.” The picture cut to a shot of five men. One was distinctly older. The other four looked so similar that they must have been brothers.
The video was just giving me more questions to answer. There was a server next to me, standing with arms crossed over her chest and gazing unwaveringly at the screen. “What do aliens want to negotiate with us?” I whispered.
“It’s the king of Auxem and four of his sons. The crown prince isn’t with them. They said he’s in meetings with our scientists. They want to negotiate with us.” The server turned to face me and wagged her eyebrows suggestively. “They want women.”
“In other news, wildfires are burning throughout the area as drought affects the region for the third consecutive year.” Apparently, an advance alien strike force landing on Earth was not important enough to get a newscaster’s full attention. As they switched to another story, the woman turned to me, eager to share the gossip.
“Let’s pretend I don’t understand anything you’re saying.” I doubted that aliens had made the trip out to Earth so they could pick up chicks.
“Their planet experienced what they call a biological holocaust. Years ago, they encountered a virus that only attacked their females. Now their race is dying. They need women so they can save their species.”
If the story were true, my mother’s business was going to take off. I wondered if the aliens were rich and could pay her fees.
“Wait a second. We can’t catch this girl-only virus, right?”
“I don’t think so.” The server shook her head. “That’s one of the reasons why they’re meeting with our scientists right now. The other is that they know Earth is overpopulated. They hope to convince as many women as possible who don’t carry the H4T7 gene to go back to their planet.”
“Why do they care about one gene in particular?
“Something’s the matter with their genetics, too. Earth isn’t the first planet they approached. Their physiology makes it likely their babies will come out male. They traced the problem to a combination of their genes and females who carry the H4T7 gene. All they care about is making girls now. More males will add to their problems.”
The restaurant was beginning to fill with conversation, and the woman showed me to a table. I opened my computer and started to check the available jobs. I didn’t have time to think about aliens looking for female mates.
That was my mother’s world, not mine.
Hours later, I stumbled up the steps of my parents’ house, feeling exhausted and tripping over my own feet. I had finished my master’s degree only a few months ago. They had encouraged me to work and save so I wouldn’t have to go into debt. It sounded like a good idea to me, and Dad was a great cook, too. I continued to live with them even though I was looking for a place for myself.
As soon as I walked through the door, I dropped my bag and took off my shoes. I wanted to shower, watch some television, and go to sleep. I was ready to relax after my first day looking for a job.
Relaxation wasn’t in the cards for me.
“Oh Jayne, you’re here already!” Mom looked flustered. My mother was usually calm and in control, so her state of disarray sent off warning signals in my mind. “You’ve heard about the Auxem, I presume?”
I nodded, sitting down on the bottom step of the stairs which led to the second floor.
“The President has invited us for dinner. There’s a delegation that wants to speak with me. I think they’re going to contract with TerraMates to coordinate the women for the aliens. There will be a lot of paperwork and genetic testing that the government is not ready to process.”
“Don’t they have the information they need from everyone’s BioScan already?” The BioScan became an everyday item when my mother was a young woman. It recorded significant health statistics like information about your immune system, hormones, micronutrients, and even fertility cycle. Once it became integrated with people’s medical records, it reduced the number of credits spent on health care worldwide by half.
Overnight, people could know if they had a serious medical condition as long as they scanned their body once a day. It helped both physicians and patients. At first, doctors felt threatened by the devices, thinking that robots were going to take over their jobs. When BioScans started saving lives, the doctors changed their minds and started embracing them as a useful tool. They now saw BioScans as assistants that let them focus on finding cures for diseases and encouraging people to live healthy lifestyles. The scans had high accuracy rates; they ended up being better than most physician’s diagnoses.
“The gene they’re looking for is not included in the Bioscan’s genetic testing. We’re going to have to pay some scientists to add it. Well, first we have to get the contract. But imagine how many credits it will be worth!”
“Sounds perfect for you, Mom, but I still need to find a job. I hope you and Dad have a nice time out there. I’m going to take a shower.”
“I think you misunderstood me. The invitation was for all of us. You can take a shower, but afterward, pull out your evening wear and choose a dress. You’ve got to be ready in an hour.”
I didn’t want to go, but I wondered if it was even possible to turn down a Presidential invitation. As I looked through my fancy dresses, I thought about dining with the President. I had met this President exactly once before. She seemed like a kind woman. I remembered her being charismatic.
Who was I kidding? Tonight was going to be one of the most boring evenings of my life. Still, the aliens looked cute. Maybe I would get to see one of them. I wondered if the king and his sons had been invited to the dinner as well.
With my luck, they would be somewhere else and the only men there would be fifty years old and balding. I sighed and picked out a red dress. I thought it would look fantastic with my blonde hair and turquoise eyes.
Whether or not I was seeing aliens tonight, I was determined to look stunning.
Chapter Two
ARNON
When Father asked me to meet with our scientists, I followed orders. It didn’t matter what I wanted. Even though the rest of my family was having a formal dinner with the Earth President, I would be meeting with the geeks.
We all did what the king requested these days. He had always been a harsh man, but he was worse now than before. The loss of all the women on the planet had affected us all in different ways.
My mother died when I was ten years old. She was one of the first of our species to succumb to the virus and her loss still affected me today. I had pushed the grief inside me into the background, but a hint of the emotion always colored my actions. Her loss had made me reluctant to become close with anyone.
For now, both my father and I had the same goal. We wanted to save our people from destruction. Nothing else mattered. We had been traveling the galaxy for five years, going from planet to planet and testing their women for genetic compatibility.
It sounds callous, but they were all willing. We chose our best young men as representatives of our race. Any women accepted into the project were volunteers. Unfortunately, all of the planets that we had tried until now had disappointing results.
The women could bear our children. The problem was that most of the children were male and completely unnecessary for the preservation of our species. If we were to survive, we needed female babies.
Usually, it would have taken years to determine the cause of the baby gender problem. Our scientists solved it within months. They were highly motivated. A single gene was the culprit preventing us from breeding. Women who had the gene almost always produced male offspring.
The new information changed our quest. Now we needed a plentiful population that was willing to breed with us and didn’t possess the H4T7 gene. With luck, we would find our targets in the women of Earth.