Pact

She didn’t want to leave her home, but with choice taken away from her she agrees to be an alien’s bride... with conditions.

Mila was living a quiet life. Too old to join the Volunteer program, she was resigned to her position in the middle of nowhere.

When a recruiter comes to her and orders her to join she says no. When he explains that due to her genetic heritage she has no choice, she reluctantly enters a pact to gain an education in return for her genes.

As her assigned Familiar isn’t interested in her, Mila is left on an alien world looking for someone to take on her training. Who could possibly want to take her on, body, mind and soul?

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Pact

Copyright © 2016 Viola Grace

ISBN: 978-1-4874-0462-8

Cover art by Martine Jardin

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Pact

Terran Times Second Wave

By

Viola Grace

Mila wiped down the counter and glared at the alien on the other side of the Formica. “No.”

The shock in the black eyes was understandable, even if the recruiter’s features were not usually the ones seen at this tiny truck stop in the middle of nowhere.

“Miss Carter. Why would you not wish to join the Volunteer Project?”

Mila tossed aside the rag and glared at the small creature. “I am to damned old for the project.”

The creature blinked several times. “Ah. Yes. How old are you, precisely?”

“Thirty-eight. Eight years past your highest available age.”

She washed out the coffeepots and glanced at the two security officers by the door.

“There would be a special dispensation made in your case.”

She turned back to him and narrowed her eyes. “Why?”

“You are descended from a crashed ship and one of five survivors. You recently submitted your DNA for an ancestry scan?”

Mila crossed her arms. “How do you know that?”

“We received authorization to check it. Two of those found have already been sent off to the world in desperate need for a new injection of genetic material.”

“And I will be an injection? That is why you are here?”

He shrugged. It was a very human gesture. “Yes. I am sorry. This is not something I have had to engage in before.”

She snickered. “Well, if they are looking for genetic material, they had better be looking for skin and blood samples. My ovaries bit the dust a year ago.”

He waved that away. “Not a problem. Regeneration technology can replace and repair any damage to your body. As long as you are not completely dead, we can restore you.”

“I am not sure I want them back. I have gotten used to the menopause.” She frowned.

“What can we offer you to convince you that this is a good idea?”

“Why do I get the feeling that if I don’t agree, I am just going to be hauled along anyway?”

Norz sighed. “Because you are a very smart woman. Your government has sold you to the Lrrko.”

She wanted to say that they couldn’t do that, but she had lived long enough to know that folks could simply disappear.

“Why me?”

“Because they are desperate and on the edge of extinction. The humans found with the matching genetics are a lifeline that they were not expecting but will not ignore.”

“What happens if I run?”

“They will come here and get you. They do not hold human life in high regard, and they will plow through the population to find you.”

“They don’t sound very pleasant.”

Norz didn’t touch that one. “They will give you whatever you demand. Make a list of what you want in your new life, and they will make it happen.”

“What is the catch?”

“You need to leave tonight. With us. You have one hour to make up your mind, but if you try to run, we will find you.”

She made a face, and when Norz was outside, she grabbed a notepad and pencil. She made a wish list of what she wanted her life to be. Education in whatever she chose to study, languages, adventure, living rent-free, clothing allowance, communication with friends and that was about it.

She took her list to Norz and returned to shutting down the building for the night. It was two in the morning, and the day shift would be arriving in three hours.

She wrapped the place up for the night and got herself a bottle of water, playing out the clock.

At the one-hour mark, Norz returned. “Agreed to. All are very reasonable.”

He fired up a tablet and handed it to her. “These are the demands of the Lrrko.”

“They have demands of me?”

He nodded and rocked one hand from side to side. “Yes and no. They are more like requirements that will fully qualify you for the position as a citizen of the Lrrko.”

She flicked through the display and frowned. “They can really regenerate what was removed?”

“Yes. Despite their normal occupations, the nature of their species has required an expertise in the reproductive sciences.”

Mila flicked back and forth. “It doesn’t describe the nature of what the Lrrko do or are.”

“They are compatible with you. That is the larger picture.”

She laughed. “That leaves a whole lot open for the imagination. Silicone casts are compatible with my physiology.”

Norz looked uncomfortable. “That is true, but the Lrrko men are not so different from the human body structure.”

“Oh. Good. What about the women?”

“There aren’t any.”

Mila blinked. “Aren’t any.” She said it just to confirm it. “Aren’t any women?”

“Well, there are the five located here on Earth. This is why you are so important. They know you are here now. They will come for you.”

“If they have agreed to all my terms, there isn’t any need to threaten. I am going.”

Norz’s shoulders slumped in relief. Mila grabbed her keys. “I will just lock up.”

They left the rest stop together. She locked up, wrapped the keys in her apron and stuck them inside the hollow brick kept for such moments.

She would have someone call Antonia in the morning. She had a feeling that the world would be behind her by then.

Her heart pounded as they drove down the highway. Her pulse was rapid and her palms were sweaty.

Norz turned to her. “You seem nervous.”

“I am petrified.”

“Why? They won’t hurt you.”

“You are kidding, right? This is bizarre even for me. I swear if I had any pets or family, I would have laughed in your face.”

“So, there is nothing to keep you here?”

“If there was, I would have excused myself and gone out the escape hatch.”

Norz paused before chuckling. “Escape hatch?”

“Oh, sure. Antonia has been held up before. She tells folks she is going to the safe and she jumps into the floor. All of the night staff knows how to get away if they need to.”

Norz blinked his huge black eyes in surprise. “You are adapting to my appearance with surprising ease.”

She shrugged. “I have seen stranger.”

Norz laughed, showing shark-like teeth. “Hold onto that thought.”

She didn’t get her first medical exam until she was on a small base on the moon. Mila kept looking out the window at the expanse of Earth rotating below.

“Miss, please look into the device so we can check your ocular acuity.” The scaly doctor hissed slightly as it spoke, but otherwise, it was completely comprehensible.

She obliged and asked, “Is there a chance for me to get some common languages before I go into that tank?”

“I don’t see why not. Let me get the flash.”

The doctor returned with a small, flat tablet. “Hold it out in front of you, and press the icon in the centre.”

Mila followed the directions and stared into the light that burned and cascaded into her consciousness.

The doctor pulled on the tablet, but she kept staring and it kept flashing at her.

Images, data, languages and tactics flooded her mind. She was drawn to the details of the faces of the alien races. Mila absorbed the micro expressions that gave away the telltale signs of the other species’ expressions.

She fought to hang onto the tablet, but two techs and the doctor pried it from her grasp.

Light danced in front of her eyes, but her mind was full of new information. Studies were her life. She loved to read and absorb knowledge, but she had never had the money for school. First, there was paying her parents’ debts and medical expenses, and then, there was her own attempt to keep her head above water. By the time she was able to look around, she was over thirty and had nothing to show for it. There didn’t seem to be any sense in pursuing a career after that. She settled into the simple life and used her ability to read folks to serve the guys at the truck stop during the quiet nights. She stopped fights, gave advice and generally mothered the hell out of them.

She covered her eyes with her hand and enjoyed the new data.

“You have had a lot of surgery, Miss.”

She lifted her hand and looked down at the frowning expression on the face of the doctor.

“I donated a kidney to my mother and my ovaries ended up donated to science. They had abnormal development, and the docs felt it was prudent to remove them.”

The doctor made a hissing sound. “Butchers. You had the physical characteristics of a Lrrko. There was nothing wrong with them.”

“They had no way of knowing. To them, they looked weird, and weird means cancer around here.”

“What was wrong with your mother’s kidney?”

“It was ruptured in a car accident. Both of them were. I was her only chance at a match, so I agreed to donate one of mine. She lived for five years after that.”

“What did she die of?”

“Liver failure. When my father died in the accident, my mother waited until she was out of the hospital and then began substance abuse. She didn’t last very long after that.”

“Well, that would explain her early demise. Your folks are usually indestructible and live to an astonishingly long age.”

Mila shrugged and went back to playing in her own brain.

The team arrived to prep her for the tank, and she was taken from the room with the view to an interior space with a large cylinder in the centre.

“We are going to have to sedate you to get you in the tank.” It was all the warning she got before she heard a hiss, felt a cool spray and then arms caught her as everything went dark.

They had waited until she was in the tank to show her her new Familiar. He was the supposed robot that would keep her alive and healthy. She knew the moment that she laid eyes on him that he was a thinking and reacting being.

The cameras on his faceplate stared at her, and she was creeped out.

D’sekin was impatient and didn’t want to hold the tablet for her for hours on end. To say that she wasn’t impressed was an understatement.

The doctor checked on her every six hours, and she counted the minutes until she could grow whatever the hell she needed and get out of the damned tank.

When decanting day finally came around, she lunged upward and ignored the hand that her Familiar held out to her.

She puked up the oxygenated liquid she had been breathing for the last ten days. Her abdomen felt heavier, but being out of the liquid, she felt lighter than air.

The moment that they dried her and wrapped her up, sans cables and hoses, her Familiar picked her up.

She ignored him.

Mila accomplished her physio in record time, and when D’sekin led her into a shuttle, she spent the entire flight reading up on the Lrrko.

Cracking the firewalls on the shuttle and getting into the really interesting stuff about the politics of assassinations was fun. It was a bit of knowledge that she had obtained through her malfunctioning language download. She was sure that Norz had something to do with the amount of information in that tablet. She had demanded information, and it had been given to her as a first instalment of the agreement.