Genesis (10 page)

She was confined for almost a week, not allowed to go out at all. As punishments went, she thought that wasn’t too bad. She was in no shape to try to exercise the first few days anyway. In fact, she discovered when she woke up that she could barely move and not at all without a great deal of pain. It was probably just as well that she
had
to move because Cory needed to be tended. Otherwise, she might have been tempted to do nothing but lay around. As it was, she thought she managed to work the soreness from her muscles more quickly than she would have otherwise.

By the third day, she was chafing at not being able to go out. Since there was nothing she could do about it, and she had no idea how long she might be confined, she got on the floor and did all of the exercises she could remember over and over until she was exhausted, rested until she felt like she could do more, and repeated them.

She was stronger than she had been. She might still be weak compared to the Amazon Hirachi, but she’d managed to climb the tree. She’d managed to outmaneuver the bot, at least briefly. As terrifying, and painful, as the experience had been, she felt heartened that she had made progress and might stand a chance of surviving.

They came for her on the fifth night for the first time in over a month. There would’ve been no way to prevent it even if she’d been expecting it, but she was taken completely by surprise.

The hissing sound of the gas wakened her. Instinctively, she gathered Cory closer, fighting the effects of the gas to try to hold on to him. She succeeded after a fashion, but once she reached the room they simply took him from her.

She struggled inwardly anyway, trying to focus her mind to
make
her body cooperate.

* * * *

Kole made no attempt to resist when the
Sheloni
sent their droid to fetch him. He had expected it since he had pitted himself against the thing and received far more damage to himself than he had been able to inflict. His ribs still hurt, and he suspected he had cracked at least one when the thing had flung him away.

His apathy had little to do with the injury, however. He had not attempted to pit himself against one of their machines since the
Sheloni
had first captured him, and he had discovered that the newer droids were far more powerful than the ones they had brought to his world before. Those earlier droids had been difficult to disable, but not impossible. These seemed virtually indestructible, and he had contained his fury and frustration when he’d failed to destroy the thing that had captured him. If his strength was not enough to destroy or at least disable it, he had no intention of allowing his anger to drive him to pound against it in mindless, useless fury. He would have to find another way to destroy the things, study it, find a weakness.

There had to be one. There always was, because the
Sheloni
were arrogant bastards, certain of their superiority in the scheme of things.

And, aside from their physical frailty, their arrogance was probably their only weakness … unless it was their greed.

It was that greed that prompted them to ensure their slaves arrived at their destination in excellent condition--not any sense of right or wrong, not sympathy for any creature they believed inferior to them.

They would send a droid to fetch him to be examined to make certain he hadn’t been permanently damaged.

And fortunately he hadn’t been. Anyone who became too ill, or who was injured in any way not easily fixed, was destroyed.

He wasn’t particularly afraid of dying. In some ways it would almost be more welcome than living as their slave, toiling for them on whatever godforsaken cosmic ball of dirt they found that contained the mineral so precious to them. He wanted, with every fiber of his being, however, to destroy the
Sheloni
, and as hopeless as that task seemed whenever he allowed himself to dwell on it, he wasn’t ready to simply give up.

They’d been enslaving his people for generations. The first
Sheloni
had arrived on his world as ‘friends’. In exchange for helping the
Hirachi
advance their technology, the
Sheloni
had asked for help in mining their precious mineral. He supposed it could be said that it was their own greed that had resulted in the downfall of his people, the
Hirachi
, the destruction of the world as they’d known it, the breakdown of their society that had thrown them backwards much further than the technology they had so anxiously sought had taken them forward.

The
Sheloni
were cold blooded bastards, but they were clever manipulators. It was disgusting how easily they’d turned the
Hirachi
kingdoms against one another, favoring one above another until they had them fighting among themselves and then handing them the technology to cripple themselves with. Once they’d killed off half their population, destroyed their cities, and lost the technology that supported their civilization, they’d had no recourse except to fall back on their instincts for survival. In three generations they’d gone from a civilized people to barbarians using sticks, and rocks, and clubs to defend themselves and their territory, to exist.

With no way to throw off the yoke they’d allowed the
Sheloni
to place around their necks, they’d become grimly determined to thwart the
Sheloni
in any way they were able and those ways were pathetically few--in fact there was only one thing they had managed that had had any effect at all.

They’d refused to procreate. If they couldn’t prevent the
Sheloni
from enslaving them, from stealing their young to be reared as slaves, they could at least refuse to bring more slaves into the world for the bastards to use.

That only worked while they still had the freedom to choose, though. Once the
Sheloni
captured them, the women no longer had control of their own bodies, or access to the herbs they used to prevent or abort a pregnancy.

Many had chosen ritual suicide to keep from bringing a child into the world, and, when even that option was denied them, they had killed their newborns.

And then the
Sheloni
had begun taking the infants.

The females they destroyed themselves. They had tried to cultivate the males since those were the most useful to them. They had not been able to make the infants thrive, however. Without their mothers, the infants had grown weaker and weaker despite everything the
Sheloni
could do and died a slow death instead of the quick death the others had had.

Deep down, Kole had known from the moment he first saw the alien females that the
Sheloni
had decided on a new tactic.

And he had still been inexplicably drawn despite his certainty that the
Sheloni
would use them against the
Hirachi
, despite the strange coloring of their skin and hair, drawn particularly to the pink one with the strange reddish brown hair.

It still fascinated him that these tiny beings looked so much like the
Hirachi.

It said a lot for the ruthless determination of the
Sheloni
that they’d searched the cosmos until they found a world that had beings so similar to the
Hirachi
.

When had they found them? And were they, even now, systematically destroying their world as the
Sheloni
had destroyed
Ach
?

There was no chance that they would be left in peace, replaced by this weaker race of people, he decided. If the females were any indication, and he was certain they were, then it was doubtful the males would be as big and strong even as
Hirachi
females.

They would not be as useful to them, therefore they were safe from the machinations of the
Sheloni
.

Why take the females then?

In spite of their strangeness, they were pretty creatures in a way--in the way that a flower was pretty--and just as fragile he was certain and virtually useless as slaves.

The
Sheloni
could not think they could breed the
Hirachi
with these weak creatures, surely? Even if they did, the offspring could not help but be less.

But any offspring, if it survived, would still likely be stronger than the female’s race.

What would make the
Sheloni
think that the
Hirachi
males, who had grimly denied their manhood and shunned their own beautiful women to prevent bearing offspring, would not be able to resist these females?

Maybe it was their arrogance? Maybe they thought the
Hirachi
were too stupid to realize that they would not introduce the females unless it was possible to breed with them? Maybe they thought the
Hirachi
males, having been denied access to any female at all for so long, couldn’t control their needs if a female was dangled in front of them? Especially if the female was not
Hirachi
and therefore could not breed more
Hirachi
for slaves?

Unfortunately, once he had allowed those thoughts into his mind, he could not shake them. Partly, he knew, it was because denying his physical need for a woman was sheer torture anyway. The
Hirachi
accepted that as a testament to their strength of mind, body, and will. To refuse to yield to something so basic to their nature was to have power over their destiny--not much, granted, but at least something. Abstinence ceased to be nearly as much torture over time, but the need never completely went away.

Partly it was because he allowed himself to think that, even if he did breed a child on one of these females, it truly would not be
Hirachi
. He would not be giving one of his own kind into the hands of the
Sheloni
.

Partly, though, it was because his interest in the female had turned to fascination and the fascination had turned into obsession. If he had not watched her day after day strolling back and forth just beyond his reach, he might not have come to such a pass.

Then again, he might have anyway, he acknowledged wryly.

Her strangeness, especially her frailty, should have put him off, revolted him or at least not appealed. Instead, those things had instantly riveted his attention, fascinated him.

Her fear should have disgusted him. Any weaknesses he detected within himself did--and he had certainly not looked for such a thing in a woman in the days before, when he had been a free man. He had wanted a woman of strength and intelligence to bear his young when he had considered the possibility of being able to do such a thing--when he had been naïve enough to believe there was a chance of destroying the threat of the
Sheloni
and building a life.

Not only had it not, her fear had aroused something inside of him that he hadn’t even been aware was there--a fierce desire to protect. It had made him feel stronger, more capable, more determined--and stupid.

It had given him a false sense of his manhood and his abilities as a fighter.

Which was why he’d been so stupid as to throw himself between her and the damned droid, even knowing he couldn’t stop the thing, and gotten cracked ribs for his stupidity.

He’d been enraged when she’d taken the infant. It was
Hirachi
. It deserved freedom or a quick death to prevent its suffering.

It wasn’t her kind. She looked at him most of the time as if he was a monster, and he’d thought she would surely ignore it. Instead, she had picked it up and coddled it, coaxing it from the brink of release--teaching it the weakness of dependence.

And in the process, even though he had tried his utmost to distance himself from the infant, tried hard to feel nothing for it so that he could focus on what was best for it, he had lost his ability to shield himself from his emotions. Her determination to protect and nurture the infant when she was even less able to protect the child than their own women were had begun his fall from interest to an obsession to have her.

To begin with the fact that the alien females seemed perfectly content to accept slavery made him doubt their species was particularly intelligent, especially since they didn’t even appear to have the capability of communicating with each other except with some sort of bizarre hand language. They had the capability of speech--both females tended to babble excitedly when they were together, but obviously it wasn’t much more than babble because he could see they weren’t actually communicating by the puzzled looks they exchanged.

When it had finally dawned on him that they weren’t communicating because they were each speaking two totally different languages, he’d thought maybe they were from two different worlds. But it seemed farfetched that the
Sheloni
had found two species so similar on two different worlds, especially when both were so similar to the
Hirachi
. True, there was a notable difference in their skin and hair color, and the brown one was even smaller than the pink one, but he decided they had to be from the same world if for no other reason than the astronomical odds of finding three different worlds that was home to three such similar beings.

Besides, they had both appeared in the hold of the
Sheloni
ship within days of each other … and both referred to Earth, which he’d come to realize was their name for their home world.

Unless they were from related tribes but two different worlds in the same solar system?

That seemed plausible, though it didn’t explain the subtle difference in their appearances and the difference in their languages.

He would have liked to have mastered their language so that he would know how closely he had guessed the situation, begin to understand the miniature aliens better, and perhaps from that figure out just what the
Sheloni
had in mind. Unfortunately, he was far too interested in the one who called herself Bri to be able to focus his thoughts on learning her tongue. No matter how hard he tried to concentrate, he found his mind wandering to the expressions that flickered across her face, the movements of her lips and her hands, the subtle fragrance that clung to her, the smoothness of her skin, the rise and fall of her breasts beneath the thing she wore--but mostly to the darker pink lips of her
tup,
which he’d caught just enough of a glimpse of, that the desire to thoroughly investigate it was driving him slowly insane.