Keen (3 page)

Ikil extended his arms and Kyna handed the sleeping toddler over.

Pandora linked arms with her and hauled her to the dining area while Ikil followed behind them.

It was not a family dinner like Kyna had ever had before, but she got used to it in the following few days.

Pandora delivered her to the one person who knew exactly what Kyna was facing. “Kyna, this is Kyra Dannick vi Rannith, our first Champion and an archivist. She is going to take care of you from here on out.”

Kyra grinned. “Welcome to Azon Prime. We will have time to talk afterward, but for now, you are due in medical.”

Kyna blinked and smiled. “Call me Kee.”

Kyra was wearing a gown that was elegant and made of layers, some of which were cinched around her belly. “Kee, come along. I know it is all new, but once you have the implants, you will be able to access information as you need it. I wished we had more time to prepare you, but Jhenno is impatient. Apparently, they have a contract at stake and need to provide an archivist ASAP.”

Kyna understood deadlines. “Right. Put me in the tank and we will talk when I come out.”

Kyra kept walking, her skirts fanning out behind her in graceful style.

“Your clothing is very…elegant.”

Kyra laughed. “It is, and a pain to get into without help, but when Tiergar is home, he has no trouble helping me. The little ones are still too short.”

“How many children do you have?”

“Three. Terrans and Azon get along very well. Other species require alteration on our part, like Pandora. She had to have her system tweaked to allow her to carry her child to term.”

They were inside the medical building, sweeping through the halls until they came upon a collection of serious-faced medics who fixated on Kyna.

Kyra smiled and gave her a quick hug. “I will be nearby at all times. Don’t worry. You are in the best hands possible for this procedure.”

Kyna tried not to stare at the feline-looking Azon as they coaxed her into a medical gown and from there onto an exam table. She heard a hiss, felt cold pressure and grey filled her vision. That was unexpected.

* * * *

Kyra watched as they performed the rather simple procedure of installing the data retrieval system.

When they began the second portion of the scheduled surgery, Kyra winced. Should she have told Kyna what she had really been chosen for? Her ability as an archivist was only half the equation. A Terran with Kyna’s genetic pattern had been requested by the Jhenno high council, and to everyone’s shock, they had found one.

Deep under Jhenno, there was a sleeping Drai and Kyna was his match. Kyra just couldn’t make herself tell the young woman what was in store for her. Some things were better discovered on your own. If anyone had told Kyra what was waiting for her, she would have run the other way as fast as her feet could carry her. Now that she had settled in with Tiergar, she embraced the new life that she had started. It was a decision she had had to make on her own.

Kyna would have to make the same choices and then pretend that she actually had a choice to start with.

Kyra sighed. After two hours of surgery, Kee was placed in the tank for the next seven days. It was going to take a while to verify the alterations to her genome. One thing would be certain, Kee’s humanity was going to be gone in a matter of hours.

* * * *

Kee felt the liquid around her and she drifted with her eyes closed. A shadow flitted in her mind.

Hello?

The shadow didn’t speak, but she heard a song in her thoughts. Tension melted from her body and she floated with the music in her mind, an alien song that appealed to her senses in every way.

Kee opened her eyes and thought about the Azon. Information began to stream in her mind, and it was edifying.

She thought of Kyra and learned that not only had she been an archivist, but she had also been kidnapped and held in an arena where she met Tiergar. He was currently the primary Azon ambassador while Kyra was a Terran representative, capable of acting in a supervisory capacity over the Terrans in her sector.

The thought of sectors led to information on the Sector Guard, and from there, Kee got information on the Citadels.

It was an entertaining week when her every thought brought her more information until she finally had a grip on where she was and what she was going to be doing. Even the singing in her mind made sense now. A Drai was courting her, and the song in her mind was proving that they were compatible.

The idea of being romanced by a person she hadn’t even seen was creepy until she had looked up the records of Drai sleepers and their partners. Terrans were an easy fit with only a little alteration.

That alteration had just been done without her consent based on the reports that the doctors had been reading within her field of vision. She wished she could be upset about it, but the lonely part of her was delighted that someone, somewhere out there wanted her, sight unseen.

It was pathetic, but the constant song in her mind kept her calm when she should have been panicking.

Her tank was loaded onto a ship. Kyra was at her side and speaking into the com unit. “We are not going to get that conversation, Kee. You are healing more slowly than anticipated, so you are being shipped directly to Jhenno for decanting.”

Kee nodded her head and pressed her palm to the interior of the tank.

Kyra placed her hand over it. “I am going to contact you the moment you are settled in, Kee. You are not alone out here.”

Kee smiled and tapped her head.

Kyra paled. “I was going to tell you about that.”

Kee mimed
O-k.

“You are more understanding than I would be.”

Kee pressed a hand to her chest and bowed.

Kyra smiled with relief. “Yes, you are a superior person. Call me if you have any questions that the link can’t answer.”

Kee nodded and inclined her head before she waved farewell. She was breathing oxygenated fluid and could not talk, but her time in the tank had given her insight into her own talent for miming what she needed.

The ship’s crew locked her tank down and she gave them a thumbs-up. Next stop was Jhenno.

“Where are you concentrating today, Archivist?” Her assistant, Leno, smiled brightly at her with his teeth carefully hidden.

“The Daclon files. I will be in there if any messages come through.”

Two weeks on Jhenno and she had already gotten into a routine. Each morning she had breakfast and caught up on correspondence. From there, she headed into the sealed files, wearing a suit that provided her with oxygen in the vacuumed space. The archive was completely oxygen free.

Pandora had sent her a planet-warming present, as had Kyra. She now had a formal wardrobe of Azon clothing and a collection of Terran books and chocolate for two years as well as a dozen archivist uniforms. She was all set.

The singing in her mind had gotten stronger and the dark silhouette in her mind had not firmed up its shape. That little tidbit gave her pause, but the songs kept her calm no matter what she was doing.

“I will send for you in a few hours for your meal.” Leno smiled again. His slate grey skin and yellow eyes had made Kee wary at first, but his people loved bright colours and they loved to party, so their appearance was environmental.

“Thank you, Leno. I am making progress.” She smiled brightly and went to work in the sealed archive.

Putting on the pressurized suit was becoming easier. Her bodysuit was formfitting, so the baggy pressure suit slipped on without any trouble. She flexed her fingers and put on the helmet before charging the suit for a hole check. The gauge held at steady pressure, so she was safe to unplug from the test unit and slip on her breathing kit. It contained enough air to keep her running for twelve hours and a full alarm system when she ran low.

With her tank full, her suit whole and her curiosity high, she went through the three locks that protected the sealed archive.

An interior transport that was a cross between a hovercraft, a magnet and a scooter waited for her. She stepped onto it and zipped through the kilometres of documents from thousands of worlds that were all protectively sealed in the vacuum.

This was her domain now; it was her world and she rather liked it.

The Jhenno had asked her to concentrate on one thing when she took on her position. They wanted to know where, precisely, the Drai was sleeping under the surface of the planet. She was now poring over all the original colonist reports in an effort to find that spot.

She found a clue to her next avenue of inquiry in the diary of the first lady of the colony. Haliata mentioned speaking to the captain of the ship that had brought the colonists. He had heard talk of a stranger in the blue sands who told the colonists where they could and could not build.

Haliata’s husband had grown pale when she asked him about the stranger in the blue sands. He had not answered her.

Kee stood up and rubbed the base of her spine. She checked her chrono and scowled. Leno should have sent a signal for lunch. She had been working for four hours already.

Another archivist walked up to her through the stacks. “Good day, Wenderson.”

She inclined her head. “Good day, Akenan.”

He walked up next to her and his sleeve brushed against hers. “Productive morning?”

“Fairly. Yours?”

“I have hopes for a productive afternoon.” He smiled, his yellow eyes burning behind his mask.

She didn’t know how to respond to that. “Well, good luck with that.”

He patted her hand and asked, “May I borrow your slide for a few minutes? I will bring it right back.”

She didn’t have a chance to ask where his was going. He hopped on and was skimming away on her scooter in seconds.

Kee sighed and turned back toward the diary. She heard a hiss and froze. Panic gripped her when she saw the thin line of vapour leaking from her elbow where she had been in contact with Akenan. He had punctured her suit.

What should she do? She looked around as if he was going to return on her slide. When she realized that he was genuinely trying to kill her, she made up her mind. She sealed her workstation with a voice code and headed toward the exit with her right hand clamped over her left elbow to slow the leak.

Three attempts of her inner com to Leno let her know that her suit had been sabotaged before she even put it on. Depressing.

It was a five-kilometre hike to the exit and she could do it in twenty minutes through the stacks of records. Nothing was a straight line, but she walked through the centuries and aeons of documentation, keeping her steps even and her mind calm. The song in her mind had taken on a thunderous intensity.

With a sigh of relief, she finally made it to the exit. She struck the access panel for the first air lock and fell to the interior floor the moment that the doors opened.

The door closed and she lay there, waiting for it to allow her into the next segment of the locks.

Her air was nearly gone, and she rose and pounded at the locks to allow her access to the far side, trying to get the doors to open. The ground under her feet rumbled and she wasn’t sure if it was just her panic or an actual physical event.

She groaned and slid down along the wall. Kee had crossed solar systems, met aliens, met a few friends, and now, before she could even begin her new career properly, it was over.

Stupid. She had been so stupid that her leaving Earth had been her ticket to something bigger. All her life she had wanted more. More life, more experiences, more love and family of her own. She wanted more, and now, she was concentrating on one thing. She needed more oxygen.

Her tank was sending out distress signals and her thoughts were going grey. As a last effort to keep calm she pulled up images of Drai over recorded history.

The squealing of metal on metal brought her out of her dazed state. The sound repeated itself, and she turned her head limply to look toward the point where the noise was emanating from. Huge clawed hands parted the doors in front of her, and they pulled the door open, letting in a rush of air as the metal was ripped in half over and over until the huge bulk of the man attached to the claws could make his way to her side.

She lifted her hands to the seal on her helmet, but she had no strength.

The deep blue male with the huge bat wings opened her seal with the utmost care.

Air rushed into her lungs and she coughed a little. “Hello.”

He smiled and lifted her in his arms, carrying her carefully through the torn holes in metal and circuitry.

Instead of setting her down in the changing room, he kept walking with her in his embrace right up into the high council chamber.

“Um, you can put me down now.”

He looked down at her and smiled, his eyes were the same yellow as the rest of the colonists on Jhenno, but he was not one of them. She had just found her Drai, or rather, he had found her.

The council was in session and he simply walked past the security officers, kicking the chamber door open to face the councillors who were responsible for inviting her to Jhenno.

The men jumped to their feet, and they looked at each other nervously before one got up the nerve to say, “Welcome to the modern day, Jherin Utal.”

Another councillor said, “I see you have found the bride we located for you.”

“A few more minutes and she would have been dead. Now, why would anyone try to kill a woman who had been assigned to find me?” He stood easily with her as if she didn’t weigh a thing.

The first speaker cleared his throat. “We have been aware of a resistance to the idea of returning the responsibility of the world and colony over to you again. We were not aware that they would take action against your female.”

“What did you think they would do?”

The seventeen men in the room looked at each other and shrugged. “We thought they would file protests when you reappeared. Do you know who made the attempt?”

Jherin looked down at her, and she blinked, nodding minutely. “I know the person who pierced my suit.”