Chapter 5
The Alien Bride Race complex on the moon above Earth is a stunning wonder of engineering with its shimmering blue shield, envirodomes, and the freshly erected defense systems that stand perched all over the lunar surface.
The last battle near Earth was three years ago, but Denarso, Novarks, and Nebs are still threats.
And Talhuskins. They have been kicked out of the Federation for their attacks on Drathious and dealings with Denarso in recent years.
After a few days to recover in safe Federation space, get my health check-up, and sleep in while surrounded by Earth patrols, I feel much better.
I just wish I could stop thinking about Jorusk.
He lingered in my thoughts during the day as I tended my backup supply of plants on my smaller transport, Gypsy Star.
And he has been in my dreams for the last three nights.
He was nice. I really hope he finds a place where his kind can live in peace.
The day of the race finally arrives. After checking in, I’m sent to a round room with thirty other women all being monitored and tested by the doctors to determine our band colors, so the males have a way to identify us.
The sleeping meds kick in, and I forget about the sterile scent of the medical bed to rest in a safe place, one last time before the race. Heavy darkness presses in around me, taking me to a realm of deep sleep.
As I sink away from consciousness, embers float up from my bed, dancing like little fireflies across the black sky. I imagine I’m camping with my family again in the back pasture behind the farmhouse.
“Ahna Rae?” I call for my sister even though I know she married a Xarthrin years ago to get as far away from our dirty little world as she could. I’ll never hear from her again. I know that much. She loves her crystal castle and her lavish life.
I never wanted that. I never wanted to lose you.
When I sit up from the blanket and look around for anyone else in my family, I find I’m alone by the campfire, flames rippling the night air.
I tuck my knees up and think of the Drathious serving Talhuskins, then finding freedom just to be annihilated all over again on their barely civilized new world. That’s a hard, dirty life if I ever saw one. Ahna Rae had no idea what difficult was.
You always were a spoiled brat.
Something darts overhead.
I look up and catch movement. It glides by again. I get up and chase it instinctively. “Hey!”
“Hey, yourself,” a man says right behind me.
I whip around to see a dark figure among the shadows of night. His red eyes burn as they travel with hunger over my body. Cinders rise from his skin, stirring up in little lazy tornadoes.
“Do I know you?” I ask.
He tilts his head. “Do you? You made me. I am your darkest desire.”
“My… No, that can’t be.”
“You feel it in the meds. The heat they force into your veins, and the required rest by the doctors. Come on, Brynna. You’re smarter than this.”
My subconscious is playing dirty tricks on me, impersonating a Drathious. “Look, I’m not interested in being spit-roasted, torched to ash, or clawed to death. So you’re not a good match.”
“But you want me.”
“The hell I do.” I cross my arms and try to tear my eyes from him, but deep down, desire simmers in my core just looking at him in all his radiant, muscled glory. His dark wings are bound behind him and twitch like they’re uncomfortable.
“You don’t have to keep them tied up around me. I’d rather you be comfortable.”
“I am never comfortable. My people are dying.”
As he comes closer, I try to sharpen his face, but all I see are red eyes, orange fiery veins, and a great expanse of wings that open around me. He’s so close I can almost feel the heat from his body.
He’s a large, hot male, and I’m curious what bonding with an alien of his magnitude would feel like. Wings close in, and he reaches for me. My heart thumps faster, and my pussy slicks with intrigue.
Light washes through his image. A nurse rouses me before I’m ready.
“Brynna, how are you feeling?”
I blink and push up from the bed. “Disappointed I couldn’t have more rest.” Secretly, I want to know where things would’ve gone had he captured me.
A woman three beds down moans in erotic pleasure.
“Why didn’t you give me what she got?” I ask.
The nurse waggles her blond brows. “I did. You just processed the meds faster than most.”
“Damn.”
Her blue eyes dart over a screen as she smoothes her navy blue scrubs, sending her gold Abr badge dancing on her shirt. “I have two questions for you.”
“Okay.”
“How would you fix a broken friendship?”
“Food. It’s the most basic of needs. To share it with others shows I’m willing to care for their life. But they still have to play their part, or it’s a one-way star street, not a relationship.”
“What is pain, to you?”
“A necessary evil.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Nobody likes it, but it’s a feedback system. It tells us when something is wrong that needs our attention. A thorn, a sting, a fractured bone, a broken heart.”
A doctor walks over, her hair tied back in a braid. She draws a tablet from her pocket. “Results?”
“She didn’t run but didn’t accept it either. Just talked.” The nurse swivels a screen toward the doctor above my bed.
The doctor muses over the results and enters something on her tablet. “Fearless but in denial. Daring enough to be curious and have a conversation?”
“A bit sassy,” the nurse adds. “Red?”
“Orange.”
The nurse takes the monitor off my forehead. “Please proceed through the doors to get your first set of uniforms and bands. Everything else will be in your assigned room, which you can access with the wristband you’ll get.”
I thank her and follow the other women who are getting up from their naps.
We form a line. The room we enter is large and filled with female racers.
When I get to the attendant at the counter, she confirms my name.
A vertical chute system sends a package to her.
She pulls out the contents and slides a navy one-piece uniform, wrist band, and orange arm bands to me.
Carrying my things into the locker room, I change.
Several of the other girls shower and help each other comb out matted hair or cover up bruises and scrapes with makeup.
I know I am fortunate to have my own money, armored suits, and a place to sleep that is mine, but seeing them now brings reality to it.
A woman sets a dirty duffel bag down on the bench beside me and sighs like she’s exhausted. She looks around at the other girls like she feels an outcast. I feel the same for different reasons.
“Hi, I’m Brynna.”
She looks over at me with pale gray-blue eyes, hiding inside black eyeliner. “Skylar. Most just call my Sky.”
“Where are you from?” I ask.
“Suburb of Mega-city Fairlane. Couldn’t make enough for tech school.
Just ran road repair robots. Sorry. I’m sure I smell like asphalt.
” She digs through her bag and pulls out a small case.
“Kept looking for a better job. A cleaner job. One where I wasn’t always surrounded by speeding hover cars.
Had two wrecks just in the last day. Autopilot gone haywire. ”
I hum a note, familiar with unruly bots. “I have some hydroponics systems and pollination systems that could use an upgrade. I can’t pay much. Profit isn’t great in the mobile nursery business. But I could use a second pair of eyes. If you have time.”
Sky’s expression moves through surprise, confusion, and ends with hope. “That sounds like a dream.”
“I thought so, too.” I change out of my clothes into my race suit and put on my orange arm bands.
“Then the Novarks eat holes in the hull trying to get inside to steal food. Talhuskins ice engines. Nebs just zap you. EMPs, so the whole ship is dead. But they don’t usually raid my ship. I did have one on board, though.”
“You’re kidding.” Sky slowly changes. “Did he hurt you?”
“No. Took a few things and left. Didn’t even break anything,” I reply, tying my hair into a ponytail.
“Weird.”
“Right?” I strap on my wristband and put my things in a locker.
Swiping my wristband over it, the door locks.
“It seems like everyone is focused on war and has forgotten how much farmers make or break civilization. No food? Everyone dies. And yet prices are so high for goods that I barely eek by with my net pay. It’s why I’m here. ”
“Yeah, same. I can’t get ahead. I’m tired of risking my life and getting sworn at by rich people as they whiz by me. I just want to feel important and valued without feeling like I’m going to die for no reason, even if I don’t have money.
“Right now, no one will notice if I’m gone. Someone else in robotic road repair will take over. But the government doesn’t pay shit.”
“We used to have a farm on Earth,” I tell her, sitting on the bench, feeling less alone talking to her.
“But the regulations were insane. They put caps on the price of food in our state, so we just had to figure out how to grow food for less than that. One bad year for crops put us below the break-even point. We didn’t have enough to reseed and fertilize for the next year.
“So we sold it to a corporation and made enough for my parents to get a small place outside of Vale.
I bought my ship, filled it with a few plants and hydroponics, and slowly built it up year after year.
But the war causes fuel cell replacements, hypercapacitors for high-speed travel, and other items that need replacement often, to be taken up for warships.
“Prices went up on everything ship-related in the last few years. I’m tired of always looking over my shoulder, being the pilot, maintenance, and gardener. And a soldier. That was never on my to-do list. I just didn’t want to die. Or lose all my crops.”
“I never thought I was going to have to wear body armor to work.” Sky braids her brown hair and fixes her boot laces. “So what kind of man are you looking for?”
“Don’t care. Just want him to be nice to me. Unafraid to handle the monsters. Someone I can trust, who understands what it’s like to have lost family.”
“Well, you saw him in your dreams, right?”
“That was just in my head. A dream.”
Sky groans like she thinks I should have figured it out. But that can’t be right. I can’t want what I can’t have. There’s no way that would work.
“A dream, yeah,” Sky says with a shake of her head. “They have had a long time to figure out how to tap into our deepest desires. You looked through the participant list of species, right?”
“Well, yeah.” I had three days. I looked at it a lot, especially the different species’ unique mating implements.
“What did you see during your hormonal nap?” she asks.
I grimace. “A species not in that catalog.”
“Really?” Sky packs her things in her bag and opens a locker.
“But I just got done with helping them, so I’m sure that’s why the species is on my mind.”
“Or you’re regretting being here instead of there, helping them. Maybe that should tell you something.”