The weapon that the woman drew looked archaic, ancient even. Nevertheless, it seemed to be the only thing capable of felling the beast. It went to all six of its knees, screaming in a high-pitched voice that buzzed through Drake’s head like a band saw. He scrambled on the floor, doing his best to keep from throwing up as the pain grew worse and his body rebelled against the fiery agony that scrolled over his flesh.
The woman pounced on the beast, leaping onto its back. Her arms, very long, incredibly slender, and so pale that they may as well have been made of moonlight, wrapped around its neck and then cut off its breath. She spoke in a voice so husky and so low that he could barely hear it through the remnants of the scream still echoing through his brain. He didn’t understand the language that she was using and his vision had gone too blurry to see her face and to read her meaning there.
Jessica stepped forward, pointed her laser directly at the one staring eye on its forehead, and pulled the trigger.
No! Drake’s scream was all in his head, mingling with the last fading vestiges of the beast’s horrible bellow. He expected the woman who jumped onto that thing’s back to fall over dead as well, a victim of the laser that it cut through the foot-thick skull of that creature and finally killed it.
She had moved to the side just in time it seemed because just then her feet, bare and also slender and pale, appeared on the floor again. His hand came up and his arms slid forward. The tips of his fingers brushed against the top part of her foot, feeling bone and flesh that was as cool and unyielding as marble. He managed to get only a few words out, “What are you?”
Then everything went black.
Lornia gawked at the beings staring back at her. Humans! At least some of them were. She had no idea what the three other males might be. She searched their faces, hoping to try to reconcile the physiology with the memory of one like them that might be hidden within her brain, but nothing would come to her.
She said, “You have come far, travelers.”
They all continued to gape at her, but none spoke. Frustration set in. Once upon a time, when the founding members of the Federation had calm, she had learned to speak their language. She had not spoken it in so very long that she was not sure that she could.
To complicate matters, she had spoken so little over the centuries, as there was no one there to talk to, that she was not sure that she even remembered how to go about using her ability to speak.
Lornia cleared her throat and tried again. “Travelers.”
Had she said that correctly?
The face of the man who resembled the fallen one cleared a bit. He stepped forward, his dark eyes holding a question. Lornia felt a jolt of recognition, and her eyes flicked away from that man’s face to the profile of the man writhing on the floor in agony.
It was him!
Her dream lover! Confused and slightly dazed, she took a fast step back and away from the man who had gripped her foot before losing consciousness. The one who looked like the one on the floor said, “Help him.”
She puzzled through that for a second and his meaning came clear. The memory of the old language she had learned, that of the humans, didn’t come flooding back but it kicked into a sort of rusty but workable thing.
She knelt beside him, and the others quickly did as well. Lornia turned him over to see three long scratches along his side and blood weeping up from them through the torn remnants of the garment that he wore on his upper body. She formulated a word in her mind and then spoke aloud. “Poison.”
Yes. The beast’s claws carried poison. She remembered that then. Back during the beast wars, the one that had just attempted to murder these travelers had been one of the worst ones to encounter. One of the females and one of the non-human males knelt down next to him, moving in closer. Her eyes went back to his profile, and the jolt of familiarity came back again. He was the man who had made love to her in that dream not so many nights before. But how had she dreamed of him before he had even come there?
The fragments of that dream and the pleasure she had known within it made her face go red, and she turned her eyes elsewhere, looking back at the house. Healers. She would recognize that almost immediately just by the way they touched him and examined his wounds, and her suspicion was solidified as soon as they began pulling medicines from their packs, working upon him with a swiftness that said injury, even ones as deathly engraved as this one, were not new to them.
Eventually, he stilled and fell into a deep sleep. Lornia took a deep breath and tried to remember more of the human language. She said, “Are you hungry?”
Every face turned to hers with the exception of the man who was now unconscious on the floor.
One of the women stood and held her hand out in a gesture that Lornia was familiar with. She took the woman’s hand, feeling the warmth and the rush of the blood beneath the woman’s skin.
The woman said, “I’m Jessica.”
She introduced the others and then Lornia introduced herself. The one called Jenny asked, “Will Drake live?”
Lornia said, “I do not know. Maybe. Some did after having had the poison.”
That did not seem to be what they wanted to hear, but she had nothing else to tell them. Suspicion came up in her as she surveyed them. They were human. What did they want there? She had no doubt that what they wanted was the weapon, the machine. But for what purpose? That was always the question, wasn’t it?
She had to formulate a plan, and she had to do it fast. She said, “We should stay here for now. I don’t know if more of them are nearby or not. This part of the fortress has been unused for centuries. I had thought, for a very long time, that they were all dead, but occasionally I would hear them. I thought I was dreaming or just having a nightmare.”
The one who’d been introduced as Blade, the one who looked like the man named Drake on the floor, stepped forward. He asked, “Where are the rest? The rest of your kind? Are they nearby?”
A hard lump hit her throat, and she had swallowed back. “I am the only one here. I have been the only one here for very many years now. Centuries. All of those who were human are gone too. Nobody survived but me.”
Drake stirred slightly, moaning as the poison ran through his system. She looked down at him, and her heart gave a small lurch that discomfited her. “Can he be moved or should we stay here? Where I reside, the beasts cannot enter. I resealed all the doors on my way through those rooms, and we would be more safely sheltered there, but if it means his death to move him, perhaps it would be better to risk the beasts and stay.”
Blade said, “I think we shall be here for quite some time. Talon, turn off the ship. There’s no one here.”
The one named Talon took out some type of controller from a pocket and fiddled with it. He looked at her, and she read the suspicion in his face. He was of some race that she had no experience with and so she was sure the suspicion, both for him and for the humans, also showed on her features. She attempted to smooth her features into an impassive mask but her heart was beating fast again and under the suspicion came a sort of wild and careening joy. She was not alone anymore!
They quickly rigged a way to tote Drake out of there. They formed a sort of rough cradle with extra clothing and weapons and the strongest of them, her included, settled the poles made by the weapons on their shoulders and started off with her in the lead.
Every step brought new questions to her mind, but now was not the time to ask them. It was a long journey back to her side of the fortress and they needed to be both fast and quiet in order to hopefully not draw the attention of any other hungry creature that might be about.
