Holy shit, now I was officially an alien?
I glanced down at my body, at the excess of curves and softness that no one seemed to want and figured what the hell? I felt like an alien half the time already. “I understand.”
The wall began to glow with a beautiful blue behind me, the light casting the warden’s face in shadows the seemed to haunt her somehow. Yet she still smiled. “You will have thirty days to decide if the primary candidate is acceptable. If, after thirty days, you are not satisfied with your mate, you will be assigned another mate on that world and transferred. You will have thirty days to accept or reject each candidate until you are satisfied with a mate.”
If they were anything like the males in my dream, there would be no need to trade them in for new ones. I’d be well satisfied. I couldn’t wait. “Okay.” That, it seemed, was my word of the day.
Warden Egara nudged the side of my chair as it slid toward the wall where a large opening appeared. I moved, chair and all, as if on a track, right into the newly revealed space on the other side of the wall.
The blue room was small and glowed, the color coming from streams of bright blue lights. My chair came to a stop and a robotic arm with a large needle moved silently closer to my neck. I winced as something pierced my skin.
Right. The NPU, or neural processing unit I read about in the handbook. A kind of universal translation thing that would make it so I could talk to my mates. Tell them what I wanted.
Where to touch me.
Wouldn’t do me any good to beg if they didn’t understand what I was saying.
&nb
sp; Maybe I should get two of them. “How long does it take this translation thing to work?” I asked, speaking loudly because now Warden Egara was in the other room and everything was getting fuzzy.
“You might get a headache, but your transport is some distance. The NPU should be fully integrated prior to your arrival.”
Sweet. Meet hot, sexy aliens. Make them fall madly in love and claim me forever. No problem.
Unless they didn’t like big, beautiful women from Earth. Or smart women. Or opinionated women. Or tall women. Or women who don’t like to be treated like a doormat.
Then I was screwed.
The injection site tingled and a sense of lethargy and contentment made my body go limp. There had been more than just an alien computer chip in that injection. Drugs? Good drugs. Something was making me very, very sleepy and happy. But whatever. I felt too good to worry about it as I was lowered into a bath of warm blue liquid. I was so warm, so numb…
“Relax, Erica. You’re going to a good place.” Her finger touched the display in her hand, and her voice drifted to me as if from far, far away. “Your processing will begin in three… two… one…”
5
Commander Ronan Wothar, Intelligence Core, Sector 438, Battleship Varsten
* * *
“You shouldn’t be here, Karter. And no female should be either. It’s too fucking dangerous.” By the gods, it really was Makaed Karter, my childhood friend, and possibly the only person in the universe who could recognize me after all these years. Old instincts surged. He was my friend, closer than my own brother when we’d been young.
Rubbing my throat in annoyance, I looked from Karter to his companion. The Prillon warrior standing at his side had the markings of the second in command on his uniform. “You should have stopped him. That’s your job, Second. To protect him. Get him the hell off this ship. Now. I’ll send your mate directly, after she arrives.”
“You are in no position to issue orders, Ronan.” Commander Karter’s voice brooked no argument. “And I will not leave an innocent female here, mate or not.”
“Still an arrogant ass, I see.” I taunted him, knowing his honor would keep him in check. I expected no less from Makaed Karter. The perfect son. The perfect warrior. And now, no doubt, the perfect commander. He’d held a very dangerous sector of space against a very aggressive enemy for years. I read the reports, kept up on his battlegroup. I knew exactly who I was dealing with.
And fuck, though I knew he shouldn’t be here, it was good to see a familiar face. A face that knew me, the real me. Not the I.C. asset who lived without any identification, who was considered just shy of rogue. While I’d volunteered for the secretive intelligence gathering group, there was no fucking way I’d have done it if I’d known how… alone I would become. Cut off.
I turned to the control panel and resumed scanning the data, looking for the probe, for the Hive ship. Something. Anything. There had to be something here, some clue. A trail. A hint of what the Hive had hit us with. There had to be.
“Why did you let me believe you were dead, Ronan? You were my brother.”
There was no pain in his voice, but I felt it regardless. I knew the depths of the warrior who spoke to me. But what could I say? I lied to you because I made a huge mistake and joined the I.C.?
No. That would be a lie. I would have done it anyway. The Intelligence Core was the reason the Interstellar Coalition had made great progress in the war with the Hive. That was worth any sacrifice. That was worth the price I had paid. I had told myself that too many times to count. I could not stop believing it now just because we’d lost another battleship, a brilliant, seasoned commander and still had no idea what the fuck kind of weapon had been used against us. Two steps forward, one giant fucking leap backward.
“I did what needed to be done, same as you.”