Genesis (35 page)

Kole settled behind her again, stroking her almost idly. Bri’s excitement waned, and irritation took its place as it occurred to her that he’d dismissed her ideas. What had she expected anyway, she thought angrily? Men never took women seriously. They were too damned macho to consider women might be just as good at some things as they were. She was just surprised he hadn’t patted her on the head when he dismissed her.

“Even if we could kill them before they communicated with the main ship,” Kole said after a few moments, “the others would realize something was wrong, and they would attack. We might escape anyway, but I don’t care for the thought of being hunted. This is one of the things that I have not been able to work out.” He seemed to shrug. “The other is that Earth human females can not swim. I’d thought we could breach the sea wall and escape into the sea. It would not be easy. The walls are strong, proving others escaped before, and the Sheloni know about the
way
, but we could still burst them. Now, we are stronger than we are when not in cycle. And they send many of us down together, enough that we could work in concert and focus the
way
on the stone to make it crumble and collapse, and if the base collapses, the wall will come down.

“Which does us no good if we can not take our companions with us,” he finished wryly. “I would take freedom even with the threat of being hunted otherwise, because there are places beneath the sea where even the Sheloni can not reach us. But I will not take freedom if I must leave you.”

Chapter Twenty Two

Bri didn’t know what pleased her more, the fact that Kole seemed to see her as an equal, considered her input as important as his own, or the fact that he was willing to give up his own freedom if he couldn’t free her, as well.

It thrilled her to her toes to know she meant enough to him that he would willingly sacrifice his freedom to be with her. It humbled her, warmed her, filled her with a sense of awe to think that he could care so much.

She swallowed the bubble of emotion that swelled in her chest with an effort. “Then we’ll have to think of a way to bring the Sheloni up in their ship down to us,” she said finally, “and have a trap waiting for them. What is the ‘way’?” she added curiously.

He was silent for several moments. “Hard to explain,” he said finally. “It is … force … that we can throw … like sound, I suppose, but we can focus it as if it is something solid. Ordinarily, it is something we can use when we are in the sea to protect ourselves from predators and rarely used for anything else. But it is stronger now because of the hormone spike of breeding season. And I know, when we link our minds, we would be able to crush the stone.”

Sound waves, she wondered? Like the sound waves used in medicine on Earth, to break up the stones that formed inside of people--gall stones and the like? Possibly, but then even though it wasn’t something unknown to humans, it certainly wasn’t something they could do without a machine.

“The
way--
this is something you can only use underwater?”

“The water carries it. The air--dissipates its strength.”

Disappointed, but not terribly surprised, Bri settled and was already drifting toward sleep when a thought occurred to her. “The coral!”

Kole was silent for several moments, and she thought he might have gone to sleep. “Coral?” he finally asked.

“Whatever that is that you’re harvesting for them! That’s important to them, very important! If they think they can’t blow us up without blowing it up, too, they’ll try to save it. We might be replaceable, but that stuff isn’t or they wouldn’t have gone to so much trouble to get it.”

Kole said nothing for many moments, obviously considering the possibilities. “You must have been a great commander on your world,” he said finally.

The comment was flattering, but it surprised a chuckle out of her. “No … I was ….” She broke off as a novel thought occurred to her. Marketing required a firm grasp of strategy. It had never occurred to her that, in a real sense, it was battle … and a fight to the ‘death’. If you weren’t good at it, your company ‘died’. She
had
been good. She’d started with nothing and built her little company into something. “You know? I think I might just love you, Kole!” she said teasingly.

He caught the tone, seemed to grasp the gist of what she’d said, but the word didn’t translate. “Love? ---Think? Don’t know?”

She pulled his arm tighter, tucking his hand against her cheek when she felt him stiffen as if he would pull away. “You don’t even know the word,” she murmured.

“It doesn’t mean care?”

“It’s more complicated … more everything,” she said, sorry that she’d teased him. She hadn’t expected him to feel hurt about it. She wasn’t even sure of why she’d said it or, having done so, why she was reluctant to commit herself to a definite yes or no.

Because she really wasn’t sure, she decided, wasn’t certain she felt that depth of commitment, trust, devotion. She still felt divided by her feelings for Dansk. Whenever she was around him, she felt much the same as when she was with Kole. Did that mean she loved both? Or neither? And if it did mean that she loved both, then it must be a different kind of love, mustn’t it?

The idea confused her more. She certainly didn’t feel sisterly, or motherly toward them. And love seemed a strong word for friends, though she supposed there were plenty of people who felt strongly enough toward friends that it was love.

She’d never really analyzed love, she realized. It
was
a complicated emotion. Was it just degrees that separated the love for a parent, sibling, child, friend, lover, and/or spouse? Or was it the same emotion and just … tinted according to the person one loved? And why was it acceptable to love so many people, unless it happened to be two men?

She didn’t think it
wasn’t
possible to love two men at the same time. It was just unacceptable in her society.

She didn’t think it was unacceptable in the Hirachi society, though. Everything Kole and Dansk had told her seemed to point to the fact that they not only didn’t find it unacceptable, they embraced it, or at least accepted it as a fact of life.

Maybe it would be all right to love them both and she wouldn’t be hurting either one?

She fell asleep while she was still struggling with her disturbing thoughts.

The following day was much the same as the first two, and the day after, and the day after that. Bri gave up the effort of even trying to keep count when it occurred to her that it was not only hopeless. It was pointless. The only thing that mattered was trying to come up with a battle strategy that would break the Sheloni hold on them before the pregnant women began to balloon with baby and were too heavy and awkward to run for their lives.

By the end of the week, the women, even the die hard ‘I don’t want to rock the boat’ type and the ‘I am woman, hear me whine, I need somebody big and strong’ type had lost all interest in just ‘going with the flow’. One by one, they came to the same conclusion she had--whatever was ‘out there’ they were ready to face it. The ‘known’ was not nearly as desirable as they’d thought it would be once they realized that the Sheloni could, and would, work them into the grave if necessary to get what they wanted.

It was a relief when they also concluded they needed the Hirachi as allies, because she’d already allied with them--and just as well the Hirachi didn’t realize that many of the women they were trying so hard to protect, had willingly given up their best chance of escape for, didn’t trust them and weren’t particularly enthusiastic about being ‘their women’. Not all of them felt that way, but for many of the women it was more a matter of accepting what they couldn’t change.

It was a shame. It angered Bri, because she thought the Hirachi were worthy of a lot more than mere acceptance. They had their share of faults--Thank god! She didn’t think she could’ve stood perfection!--but overall they were good people, and it sure as hell wasn’t as if the women didn’t have plenty of faults of their own! They were damned lucky that, regardless of how fierce the Hirachi looked, and even possibly were, they were also capable of gentleness! No one seemed to realize that they were as strange to the Hirachi as vice versa--or at least
had
seemed.

It almost seemed more strange to her to realize that the Hirachi
were
alien now, enough that she was surprised whenever she discovered radical differences between them. She thought Kole was that way, too, that he’d stopped thinking of her as one of the ‘odd little people’ from Earth--even though he claimed he had always thought she was pretty.

He’d said he cared about her. He wouldn’t think of her as different in any way that mattered to him, surely?

A jolt went through her when she looked up from her work and discovered the object of her thoughts standing in front of her--both objects. Dansk, she saw, was directly behind Kole. Her heart executed a little hop and skip that was part thrill and part uneasiness as she looked from one man to the other warily. Dansk smiled, displaying his dimple. Kole’s lips curled faintly, she saw when she looked at him again, amusement dancing in his eyes.

She hadn’t realized until she’d seen them side by side what absolutely magnificent specimens of the male animal they were--tall, broad shouldered, muscular as young gods. And their faces were equally pleasing to her. Kole was just plain sexy in that harsh, totally manly featured way. Dansk was almost pretty boy handsome but had just enough maturity about his strong features to look all man.

An electrifying warmth sizzled through her. She found herself smiling back, even though it had dawned on her that there was more amusement in both men’s gazes than desire. “I look like hell, right?”

Kole chuckled.

Dansk’s grin broadened. “It’s only that the little general looks as if she has done battle.” He pointed to the tip of his nose and then his chin and one cheek. “Spattered with gross stuff,” he added, borrowing from her vocabulary.

Bri let out a huff. Using the back of her hand, she tried to mop the fish spatter off. Apparently, she only succeeded in smearing it around, however. Dansk chuckled, and Kole’s grin widened.

Rolling her eyes, she handed each of them a fish cake she’d finished rolling.

Kole leaned a little closer than necessary when he took the offering. Almost shyly, he placed an object in her hand. She stared down at it blankly for several moments until it dawned upon her that he’d fashioned a comb for her from the shell of a –something like an oyster, she supposed. It looked like mother of pearl. A mixture of pleasure and irritation filled her--pleasure to have something besides her fingers to comb her hair--irritation to have confirmation that she’d begun to look like a wild woman. Tamping her embarrassment over her appearance, she smiled up at him gratefully. “Thank you! This is such a thoughtful gift!”

He reddened faintly, but merely nodded. “We’ve found what you wanted.”

Bri’s eyes widened with excitement when she’d interpreted the cryptic remark. She nodded breathlessly. “Tonight.”

Dansk handed her a smaller pair of combs similar to the one Kole had fashioned. “To hold here like a proper Hirachi woman,” he said with a gesture toward the pony tail at his crown and a teasing look.

Moved by their thoughtfulness, Bri beamed at him in thanks. The combs were better than chocolates and flowers.

The suggestion that they might have found the means they’d been looking for was rather more like having been given the keys to a Rolls Royce, though.

Tamping her excitement when Dansk and Kole had wandered off, she glanced at the woman beside her. “Did you get the list?”

“No mechanics or engineers. The closest thing we have is Linda.”

Bri frowned. “What does … did Linda do?”

“Housewife … but she says she’s repaired everything in her house at least once. She knows electronics better than any of the rest of us.”

Bri felt her belly clench in empathy. She hadn’t asked any of the women about their families. She wondered how many had left loved ones behind--probably most of them--but it wasn’t something she wanted to dwell on, and she certainly didn’t want to dredge it up for any of the women. They were having a hard enough time coping as it was. She cleared her throat. “Hopefully that’s close enough.”

She fell silent, waiting for the men across from her to signal that it was alright to speak again. “Doctors or nurses? Any kind of medical knowledge?”

“Stacy was training as a midwife. Linda D. was studying to be an EMT. She knows some basic first aid, but … there’s nothing to work with, really. Stacy was almost ready to get her certificate.”

It was a struggle to feel optimistic about the report when she’d hoped for a doctor, or a nurse, at least. It was still more than she’d really expected. A doctor would have been a miracle, or a chemist, or a pharmacology specialist. Having a trained midwife, even partially trained, was a miracle for that matter.

With at least half the women pregnant, they couldn’t afford to let anything happen to the midwife. They’d probably be relieved that they were going to get to sit this dance out. They might as well be, because she doubted she was alone in the determination to hang onto whatever medical help they had. There were a couple of Hirachi medics, but they were trained to treat battle wounds, not help pregnant women deliver babies.

When she got the ok signal, she said, “Tell Linda she needs to give us her best guess on where it’ll be most effective to deliver the bombs. This place will be crawling with bots at the first sign of trouble. We need to know we can take them down. We won’t get a lot of second chances. I don’t want to waste the acid bombs on a spot that won’t do anything, or will just slow them down.”

It wasn’t just that she didn’t want to risk something like that when they needed to know before they tried anything that they had a chance of pulling it off--though it was bad enough to think of racing around the compound ineffectually. The worst was that the harvest area was limited. The seawalls the Sheloni had erected allowed some water flow, but it was limited to holes small enough the Hirachi couldn’t get through them, which meant not a lot besides the water flowed from the ocean into the ‘pit’.