Chapter 4
Maya
When consciousness returned, it came in fragments. The taste of sand in my mouth. The sound of worried voices.
“—neural feedback from the bio-fusion—”
“—never seen readings like this—”
“—been dormant beneath the crystal formations until her scanning equipment triggered its awakening.”
I tried to open my eyes, but the light stabbed like daggers through my skull.
Everything was too bright, too loud, too much.
And underneath it all, I could still feel the presence in my mind, vast and alien and desperately trying to communicate something I couldn’t understand.
Every breath I took seemed to resonate through her.
“Dr. Chen, can you hear me?”
The voice was unfamiliar, deep and resonant with the Destran accent I’d grown accustomed to since arriving on their moon.
I managed to crack my eyes open and found myself staring up at a face that was definitely not human.
Color-shifting skin, eyes like blue silver, and strong male features that were almost humanlike but not quite.
A Destran. He looked familiar and I recognized him as one of the lords I’d read about in the research files. This had to be serious for one of them to be at my bedside.
“My name is Savair,” he said, his voice carefully controlled. “You’re safe. You’re in one of our medical facilities.”
I tried to speak, but only a croak emerged. The Destran lord—Savair—frowned with concern.
“The scanners,” I finally managed to whisper. “What happened to my scanners?” That other male—Rykar—had said they were “fucked,” but I needed more information than that.
Savair exchanged a glance with someone I couldn’t see. “Your equipment has…integrated with the crystalline formation. We’re not sure how to separate it safely.”
Integrated. Oh, great. LunarLink Surveys was going to be thrilled to hear that their million-credit setup had been eaten by an alien.
“How long was I unconscious?”
“Three hours,” came Cleo’s familiar voice. “Maya, what the hell happened out there? Your scanner readings were off the charts.”
I closed my eyes again, trying to process what I’d experienced.
Trying to remember exactly what had happened.
The Sola’s memories, her desperate loneliness, her joy at finally being awakened.
And underneath it all, a sense of purpose.
The ancient consciousness hadn’t just been waiting for someone to find it.
It had been waiting for some energy. More than that, it had been waiting for someone.
My head still pulsed with the connection I didn’t want, although the Sola seemed to have calmed. Maybe she was tired. Well, that made two of us.
I shifted on the comfortable surface I lay on, which was warm and somehow soft and firm at the same time.
The white walls and ceiling were comforting, as was the murmur of nearby voices.
I’d done my research prior to coming here.
LunarLink had sent over troves of data on the Destrans, who had welcomed our survey and given us guest quarters in their Solas.
I had read everything I could find on their physiology, society, history.
It was just sloppy to show up to a surveying job uneducated about the species and cultures that lived there, and I was not sloppy.
So, I knew that if I was right, if the crystalline formations really were the dormant remains of an ancient Sola, then my accidental awakening had woken up a being that would need a Destran lord to bond with in order to survive.
A being who would die without that connection, likely taking anyone psychically linked to her—like me—along with her.
“We have a problem,” I whispered. The thread of light in my mind pulsed with ancient hope and growing desperation, and I realized that three hours of unconsciousness had been just the beginning. The real crisis was about to start.
“We are aware of that,” Savair said patiently. “And we’re going to help you.”
I could hear Zara’s tinny, broadcast voice over Cleo’s comm system: “Is she there? Maya, if you can hear me, the atmospheric readings are very strange. Whatever you did out there, it’s affecting the entire sector. The crystals are all glowing, and the energy signatures are—”
Her words cut off abruptly as Cleo winced and tapped the unit beside her ear. “Not now, Zara. Return here Scaron’s Sola, please,” Cleo said in a firm, warning voice. “We’ll get your report later.”
I took in a deep, balancing breath and looked around a little more.
The medical bay inside Scaron’s Sola was unlike anything I’d experienced during my research preparation.
The walls pulsed with a gentle bioluminescence and there was a soft edge to most everything.
Even the corners of the walls weren’t sharp, but gently rounded.
Under normal circumstances, I would have been fascinated by the opportunity to explore the medical facilities of a living vessel.
But these were not normal circumstances.
“The psychic feedback is increasing,” said Dr. Wyn Jones as she strode in from an adjoining room.
I’d met the human physician when we’d been welcomed aboard Scaron’s Sola, and she’d socialized with me and the team, along with the other women who were now mated to Destran lords.
Of course, I’d read about all of them in the LunarLink files.
Wyn was a former Earth doctor who’d ended up mated to Scaron, one of the lords.
She had the competent, no-nonsense demeanor I recognized in medical professionals, but off duty, she was sweet and warm and easy to talk to.
Now, she approached me, white coat neatly fastened and screen in hand, with a gaze that missed nothing.
Even now, as she looked over my vital readings, there was a gentleness in her warm brown eyes that spoke of someone who’d found peace after her own difficult journey.
“It’s good to see you awake. You must have so many questions. ”
I did. I was afraid to know the answers to most of them. “Am I going to die?”
She smiled and shook her head. “I don’t plan on letting that happen on my watch.
We have an intravenous drip of diluted lami going into you, and that is fortifying your body.
” She perched on the edge of my bed. “I won’t lie to you, though.
Your neural pathways are being rewritten to accommodate the Sola’s communication patterns. ”
I took that in and tried to understand what it meant. I had a “Dr.” in front of my name, but that didn’t mean I could do what she did. “I take it that’s bad.”
“Hmm.” She tilted her head. “It’s not good. But the Sola is looking for her lord and once she bonds with him, she will be able to release her hold on you. Can you tell us what she was saying to you, if you can understand her?”
Through the mental connection I couldn’t sever, the ancient Sola’s confusion and distress had felt like someone was twirling a fork through my brain.
She—the Sola’s energy was definitely feminine—was trying to communicate, but it hurt.
Maybe she didn’t intend that part, but it was worse than the worst headache I’d ever had.
“She didn’t use words,” I said. The Sola’s…
I didn’t know—concepts? Needs? were being forced into my brain, but they weren’t exactly clear.
I could interpret them, as best as I could, and it sounded like: Need…
bond… Dying without… “It was more like…emotional broadcasts. Fear. Loneliness. And something else. Something about needing…” I trailed off as another wave of alien need crashed through me.
“She’s looking for someone. A specific someone. I thought she found him, but…”
The door to the medical bay opened, and three more Destran lords entered.
Their skin showed the dark, somber colors of serious concern.
I hadn’t met these lords, yet, but I recognized them from images in the briefing materials LunarLink had provided: Zurian with his scholarly bearing, Grael with his unnaturally dark eyes and silent intensity, and Ledos with his swagger and perpetual smirk, although he wasn’t smirking now.
“Status?” Grael’s voice was barely above a whisper, but it commanded immediate attention.
“Maya has confirmed an established psychic link with the ancient Sola,” Wyn replied.
Zurian was friendlier than Grael. “A pleasure to meet you, Maya, despite the less than ideal circumstances.” He stepped closer as he studied me. “An ancient Sola requires a Destran to bond with. Without that connection…”
“She dies,” Savair finished grimly. “And likely takes Maya with her.”
The significance settled over the room like a heavy blanket.
I’d read enough about Destran biology to understand that.
Solas chose their lords, not the other way around.
And once chosen, the symbiotic bond was for life.
If this awakened Sola had somehow latched onto me as a substitute for the lord she needed, my human physiology wouldn’t be able to sustain the connection.
“How long do I have?” I asked. “If the Sola doesn’t get her lord, how long can my brain endure this?”
The lords exchanged glances. It was Ledos who answered, with uncharacteristic seriousness. “In the old records, unbonded Solas rarely survived more than a few weeks. The psychic strain of maintaining consciousness without a proper symbiont becomes too great.”
Weeks. I closed my eyes and tried to process that. Three days ago, my biggest worry had been whether Zara would remember to calibrate her atmospheric sensors. Now I was apparently dying of alien psychic overload.
“Can’t you just…turn her off? Put her back to sleep?”
“Solas cannot be forced into dormancy once awakened,” Grael said quietly. “It would be like asking you to fall asleep immediately after a full night’s deep slumber. She is awake. She will remain awake.”