Base Zero, page 2
part #2 of Captured Earth Series
More ridges running along his sculpted cheekbones, his jaw, and his firm chin.
The way his pointed ears settle at the sides of his head and twitch the moment I looked up at him.
His charcoal skin is almost as dark as the suit he wears and he blends into the darkness still.
My gaze darts his way again, taking in the thick locs on top of his head that are pulled back away from his face. Darker than his skin, his hairstyle is like a shadow that makes you focus on his strange features.
I force my gaze back to the fish before me, but I have the urge to look in the alien’s direction again, and I oblige myself. But when I do, I find he is not looking at me this time.
Some kind of feeling forms in the pit of my stomach and I kill it immediately.
Hunger.
It’s just hunger.
Shaking myself a little, I go back to working on gutting the fish.
I force the alien away from my thoughts as I push my thumb through the thing, removing the entrails.
When I hear a click of disapproval coming from the alien’s direction, a small smile creeps across my lips.
Good.
Be disgusted.
I continue working and Lori’s almost-quiet approach makes me turn. She sets the stone receptacle down with the water in it, wiping her damp hands on her skirt.
Carved by the Vullan themselves, the bowl is big and can carry a lot of water, but what Lori brings back is probably about a liter.
A lot, considering we’re all skinny and weak.
“Got enough to clean the fish. Give them a good wash,” she says, her gaze moving over to the aliens near to us.
Her voice lowers immediately. “Staring as usual,” she whispers.
Her shoulders visibly shudder.
She does not trust them still.
And I understand.
It’s hard to believe another race came here to help us out of pure goodwill.
That after those metal orbs fell to Earth and began destroying us all, that help would also come from the stars.
I follow her gaze to find burgundy eyes on me still, and despite the curious jerk in my chest, my brows shoot toward my nose.
I stick my tongue out at him.
It’s a childish act.
One I regret immediately.
The alien before me turns fully in my direction.
His ears perk off his head even more.
Shit.
The darkness that looms around him, the darkness that is him, seems to dissipate as his gaze bores into mine.
For the first time, it’s like I can see him clearly.
I’m not staring at some strange alien creature, but a male. A warrior. A being who is looking right back at me with thoughts about me in his head.
Staring into those burgundy pools, I can see myself.
And I know, I knowww, I just did something I’m going to regret.
Chapter Two
GA’VAR
I’m startled as the hyu’man beckons to me with her tongue.
Even in the dim light, I had no problem seeing what she did clearly.
She met my gaze, and she pointed the little pink organ at me.
I no longer hear what my brethren are saying.
The discussion of our next tactical move becomes background conversation as I turn my full attention to the little female.
Little.
They all are, but this female is even smaller than the one beside her. Her features rounder. Her hair the color of my symbiotes, my ba’clan, that stretch over my entire body.
The strange thin gown she wears is several shades darker than her pale skin, but the contrast is enough to draw the eye.
She is the complete opposite of me.
Her eyes are wide now and she breaks my gaze, staring hard at the sea creature she is dismembering.
Does she want to taste me?
I sniff, pulling in air from her direction, but I smell no inviting scents.
Hyu’mans pretend to eat their mates, licking and sucking on their mate’s lips and tongue.
They do this for pleasure, as a show of affection.
A strange hyu’man ritual…one my womb mate appears to like—and one I’ve grown curious about.
I sniff again.
Still no inviting scents.
What I smell is fear from the female she crouches beside…and from her…sadness.
Both are emotions I understand.
So, I remain where I am, and choose instead to study the small hyu’man before me.
I cannot tell if her blatant display was an invitation that she wants to…perform her mouth-eating ritual with me.
Because…I am not her mate.
Only one of us has mated with a hyu’man.
My lucky womb mate.
Someone who had cared little for female affection back on Edooria.
While I have always…yearned for it.
A mate. Offspring. A nest.
I have wanted it all.
The arrival of the Gryken had been the end of that dream. Until now.
I spot my womb mate and his hyu’man as they exit the ship and head toward the carts, hauling the ore back for processing.
The jealousy that crawled through me when I realized he’d become mated is no longer there.
What’s replaced it is…longing.
I look back at the small female near me. Sa’am is her designation.
“It’s taking too long!” San’ten clicks beside me. His exclamation pulls me away from my musing. “We need to extract the ore faster.”
“Patience my brother,” Fi’rox says. “It is delicate and far below the surface. If we rush, we might collapse the tunnels and seal off the exact thing that we need.”
San’ten growls, annoyance wafting from him in waves.
“So we move slowly and allow that infestation to walk the surface out there? We are hiding like cowards!”
“Yes, we hide, but this is not Edooria.” Fi’rox glances my way for support. “We cannot make the same mistakes our people did. We cannot allow this world to fall to the same fate as ours.”
San’ten growls.
I can almost feel his ba’clan reacting against mine.
“What say you?” he asks, but I do not realize he is speaking to me until he calls my name.
“Ga’Var…”
“What?” I glance at him sideways, annoyed he has interrupted my thoughts. “Fi’rox is right.”
Fi’rox’s ears twitch a little as he tries to hide his pleasure in my agreeing with him.
He is young. The youngest of us all.
Every piece of recognition lifts his spirits.
San’ten growls again and stands suddenly.
He need not say more.
His ba’clan already tell me he is displeased and on edge.
He turns away from us and heads off into one of the more heavily shadowed sections of the tunnels.
I watch him go. He is behaving as if he is the only one who holds hatred for the Gryken.
We all do.
They destroyed our planet and countless others.
We will not let them destroy this one.
That is our pledge.
But that does not mean we should attack before we are ready.
Patience is not a Vullan trait, but we must exercise it now.
The hyu’man scent of fear wafts strongly around us and I realize San’ten’s behavior might have set the females off.
But when I turn my attention back to the two females, Sa’am seems unconcerned as she prepares another sea creature.
No fear scent comes from her. It is coming from the female beside her.
I glance at the female and she winces as if I have struck her, so I pull my gaze away.
Sa’am thrusts her blade deep into the sea creature’s flesh and extracts its bowels in the most barbaric of acts.
Only a vicious hunter kills its prey, then slices it down the middle, removes its entrails, and even scrapes off its skin.
I am both shocked and wary as I watch her work, and I am dimly aware that Fi’rox has moved off to somewhere else in the tunnels, too.
I am now crouching here alone, and the other female’s fear scent does not abate.
I should leave the hyu’mans be…but my muscles refuse to move.
Despite that my brother’s mate has told us to keep our distance from the hyu’mans, I do not want to go away.
Frightened, she’d said they were.
As I watch Sa’am rip another of the sea creatures in two, I wonder if I am the one that should be frightened.
A trill blooms in my throat, and I note Sa’am stiffens a little.
She is aware of me.
She is listening to me.
Even though she appears completely focused on her task, it is all a lie.
She is just as focused on me as I am on her.
The thought makes me sit up a little straighter, another trill starting in my throat.
This time, I promptly kill the sound.
She might not know what it means, but my brethren will hear and I feel I should keep this bit of pleasure, this little triumph, to myself.
I watch Sa’am’s mouth move as she speaks to the other female, and I wonder if she will turn to me and show me her tongue again.
I will not be as slow to respond to her invitation a second time.
I rise, intending to go closer to her when the earth shakes on the surface outside.
My ba’clan bristle, my hackles halfway rising.
My world shifts and the dark reality around us engulfs me once more.
How could I forget?
Despite these brief moments of calm…I cannot forget where we are…or what we came here for.
I glance behind me into the shadows and my gaze meets San’ten’s.
Even in the darkness, I can see that he is snarling, his fangs visible, his hackles rising too.
He looks toward the entrance to the tunnels—snarls at it.
The thin veil that masks the entrance vibrates like the web of a great-legged creature.
It thrums, and I feel it as if it is my own ba’clan on my skin.
It thrums again and I know it is doing the job it was developed to do.
To hide our location and the energy signatures of every life-form hiding with us here, because wherever the Gryken walk, they scan.
We are safe here.
Yet, my ba’clan rise even farther as the ground outside shakes again.
Out there, the tunnel entrance looks like rock. The Gryken cannot see inside, but we can see out.
We are safe, I remind myself. But my ba’clan do not calm.
I know the veil will not break.
It was developed by He’rox. The same medic that’s working on the weapons we need to defeat the enemy.
Time is all we need.
Outside, the ground shakes once more, and I hear a sharp intake of air close by me.
Sa’am.
My focus turns to her.
She and the other beside her have frozen mid-motion, listening. The blade in her hand is held tight, her knuckles losing color with the extent of her grip.
The scent of fear wafts from both of them in waves, so much so that my hackles rise even farther before I’m able to stop them.
My lips pull back and I snarl as I close my nostrils to the offending scent.
Sa’am’s terrified gaze meets mine and I see her eyes widen at the sight of me.
My hackles.
The snarl on my lips.
The brazenness and strength that had been in her gaze only moments before are now gone.
She is terrified of the scum walking outside…and…she is terrified…of me.
But I cannot control my reactions, so I do the only thing I can at the moment.
I turn and I walk away.
Back to work. Back to mining the ore we need for weapons.
It is not wise for me to be around the hyu’mans.
I have to remind myself of this.
Fer’ro mating with a hyu’man is an anomaly. I still do not understand how they make it work.
How the ba’clan adapted…
And Sa’am is even smaller than Adee’ra.
She wouldn’t consider a mating between any Vullan and herself.
To entertain any thoughts would be…stupid—regardless if she pointed her little pink tongue at me or not.
I roll my shoulders, choosing to focus on the distant thumps as the enemy walks by on the outside, unaware of our presence.
For they are all I came to this planet for.
They are all I need to focus on.
Chapter Three
SAM
Adira rushes toward me as the sounds of the big, metal legs of the enemy fade into the distance.
It’s gone.
It passed us.
I let out the breath I was holding.
It’s only the second machine that has passed close enough for us to hear it, but just as when the first one passed, I imagine the worst.
That the rocky cave roof will collapse on top of us as the machine attacks.
That it will pull us out, all broken and bloody, and deposit us into its belly till it is ready to force its spawn into our unwilling wombs.
That it will kill each and every Vullan and our hope, our chances of saving Earth, will die in that very moment.
“Sam?” Somebody is calling my name. “Sam!”
Adira’s face appears way too close to mine, and I blink as she comes into focus.
“Sam,” she takes my hand, “you’re cutting yourself.”
I glance down as if in a daze, my gaze finding my hand.
Sure enough, there’s dark fluid all over my palm.
I’d been gripping the blade too tightly.
She takes the weapon from me with gentle fingers, her gaze flashing to Lori for a few seconds.
Lori takes a step back, away from us, and I understand why.
She doesn’t truly trust Adira, and I can’t blame her.
Six humans have been rescued so far, and out of all of us, Adira is the only one wearing the same type of dark suit the Vullan wear…maybe because she is mated to one.
It’s skin-tight and looks more like a thin layer of oil more than anything else.
Every single line and curve of her body is visible.
It’s almost as if she’s wearing body paint instead of a suit and…well…she’s been sort of different ever since she started wearing it.
Less…human.
She walks differently. Her limbs move in a way that’s…fluid, as if she’s underwater and there is no air around her.
And her reaction to our surroundings is different, too.
She doesn’t squint in the dim light like we do. Her eyes are wide open.
She can see the Vullan moving in the shadows when we have to focus to even make out their shadows.
It is hard to explain.
Sometimes, I wonder if I am imagining it.
Adira’s staring at my palm and I hear when she pulls some air in through her teeth.
“You’re going to need to go to He’rox for this. You’ve cut yourself pretty deep.”
I begin shaking my head immediately. “It’s just a surface wound. I’ll just bandage it with some—”
“Nonsense.” Adira’s stern gaze cuts off the words in my mouth. “You know…” She lowers her voice. “You can enter the ship whenever you want to. The Vullan don’t mind.”
“That’s because they like you, Adira.”
You’re practically one of them.
I don’t say the last few words because I don’t want to hurt her feelings or sound bitter. And, well, I’m happy she’s the one that’s so close to the aliens around us.
They’re putting their lives on the line to save a planet that’s not theirs. Adira is like a bridge between that gap.
It’s a role that carries a lot of weight, but she is performing it beautifully.
Making sure that both groups are understood.
She was the one that argued on our behalf when the rest of us moved out of the ship and into the cave itself.
Sure, the ship is comfortable, but the alienness of it all…
It takes some getting used to.
Off in one of the offshoot tunnels, they carved out a sleeping area for us. Made the uneven rock face smooth enough to lie on.
To be honest, it feels more like camping than anything else, and when it’s quiet, when the terrifying sounds of the enemy walking on the outside don’t filter within the cave, I can pretend that’s just what we’re doing.
Camping.
And that the world on the outside is carrying on as usual.
But instances like this wake me up.
My gaze falls to the blade now in Adira’s hand and to the sheen of my blood on it.
Not even the blade is human. It’s a Vullan blade.
Curved at the end, with strange markings running along its length.
I can’t ignore that things are different now.
“Sam?” Adira calls my name again and I nod and offer her a slight smile.
“Yea, okay. I’ll go to He’rox.” The medic creeps me out, but she’s right. I’ll probably need a proper bandage.
“I’ll finish the dinner,” Lori says, hurrying as if she believes we’ll tell her to tag along.
She’s even more hesitant to enter the ship than I am.
She takes the blade from Adira and clears her throat.
“Should I…should I do an extra fish for Fer’ro?”
I’m surprised she’s even asking, and Adira’s suddenly widened gaze reflects the same.
“I don’t think he enjoys our food very much.” Lori glances at me as she speaks, as if she doesn’t want to meet Adira’s gaze. “But he’s your boyfriend now. Might be rude not to offer since you eat with us most days.”
Adira’s face splits into a smile. “He’d like that. You’re right though. He and the others don’t enjoy fish. He’d eat it because you offered, but I don’t think that’s wise considering…”
She leaves the rest unsaid, but I know exactly what she stopped herself from saying.
It’s the same thing that came to my mind earlier.
We’re running out of fish.
Lori nods and turns to the fish I was gutting.
“And um, Lori?” Adira says as we rise. “You probably shouldn’t offer food to any of the other Vullan either.”
