The hints of curves under her clothes intrigued me, made me want to see more. Strands of flame-red hair escaped from under her hood, framing a pale face, full red lips, and bright green eyes. If not for the anger in her eyes, she could have stepped out of an art exhibit labelled The Human of Karnac’s Dreams.
A hologram sat on her shoulder, looking at me. A ‘cat’ I believed the humans called that animal type, but there was something different about this one — its eyes were the gray of static on a view screen.
“Hello?” I tried again. “I am here to assist at the Vidstation One. You are here to show me the way?”
It wasn’t easy to keep bitterness from my voice. Coming up this mountain was emphatically not my idea, but I’d had no choice. Auric, the leader of Prytheen in the Joint Colony, wanted me here, and so here I was. Meeting this female might make up for the inconvenience, though. Something about her called to me on a primal level, made me want to pounce and ravish her and show her the pleasure a real male can give a female.
I held back for now. It would be a poor introduction to the others of the station to arrive late because of hours spent making love. Humans have strange hang-ups about such things.
“I’m Molly King,” the human blurted suddenly. “Chief technician. Come with me.”
The stress she put on ‘chief’ made me smile. This Molly took pride in her work, and that suited me. Too many humans adopted a fuck it, it’ll do approach. And beyond her words was her voice. A sweet sound, one that made my chest tighten and my manhood stir. Aside from being angry with me for no reason I knew of, Molly seemed designed to be my perfect match.
Is this what the mate-bond feels like? I’d heard the poems by those lucky enough to meet their khara, heard a hundred bawdy songs in the vague hope of understanding. None of them prepared me for this. I ached for her, needed her touch, wanted to ravage her and show her true pleasure. Restraining my urges with difficulty, I smiled at her and looked for an appropriate way to let her know.
But Molly didn’t give me a chance to say anything more. She turned and stomped away, leaving me to follow her onto a track winding itself upward through the rough terrain towards the unmissable tower that stabbed the sky. From here, signals reached almost the entire planet, giving the Joint Colony a way to spread important information and to share what culture the humans had scattered across Crashland in their colony pods. A vital part of the Joint Colony’s attempts to unify human and Prytheen, to pull together in the hopes of leaving this Void-damned planet.
We walked toward the tower in silence, the only sounds the crunch of snow underfoot and the constant, painful howl of the wind. Molly stamped along the trail, her holographic companion turning to stare at me with his disconcerting eyes. I gave him an encouraging smile, only for him to dissolve into static and vanish.
A ghostly weight on my shoulder startled me enough to inhale sharply as I whipped my head round to see the hologram animal reappear. The AI’s forcefield generator pushed down on me, giving him the illusion of weight, and up close those eyes of static were disconcerting.
“Hello, small one,” I said, recovering my composure and gently touching the artificial predator’s head. “Are you well?”
“He’s fine.” The vehemence in Molly’s voice surprised me — and even more so, how strongly I reacted to it. The pain was almost physical, making me wince. Something had hurt her, and I whoever or whatever it was, I felt an urgent need to bury my claws in it.
The hologram blurred into a cloud and then popped, reappearing by Molly’s side with a whine. Off we went again.
Over the course of our walk, I tried to start a conversation. Tried and failed, my assaults rebuffed by the solid walls surrounding her heart.
“What is it like here?” I asked.
“It’s okay.” Her answer barely qualified.
“Anything I should know?”
“Probably.” She shrugged. “You’ll pick it up though.”
“What are the people here like?”
“Human.” That seemed enough for her, and I winced at the implication. The rest of my questions could wait. I’d gain nothing by pressing her when she made her preference so blatantly clear.
But the pain she warded herself from made me want nothing more than to breach the walls around her heart, to show her that we were mates. Despite every rebuff, I still felt the pull toward her, knew with an instinctive certainty that I would give my life for hers, that I would dedicate myself to making her happy. That she was my khara, and I hers.
If words would not turn this beauty’s heart, so be it. I would woo her with actions, then. Kill an enemy of hers and bring her the heart. Make her the perfect meal. Give her a fresh weapon.
There is one problem — I have no idea who she hates, what she likes to eat, or what weapon I could offer her.
I let out a breath and watched it crystalize in the freezing cold. My heart beat a little lighter. This was a worthy challenge for a hunter.
It didn’t take long to reach the station, a brisk walk in the early morning chill. For Molly it was more like torture to judge from the heaviness of her breaths, the weight of her footfalls. I considered offering to carry her and kept my laugh at the thought quiet.
Even the short time I’d known her was enough to predict how she’d hate that idea. A good plan if I wanted to learn more human swearwords, a bad one if I wanted to ease her walk. She was in no danger, anyway — if she wished to climb this mountain, let her.
The red-blinking eye of the transmitter tower came into view, and I stopped to admire it. Supported on one side by a cliff face, tied down by guide ropes anchored into the mountain, the metal framework was, under the circumstances, an impressive achievement. A sacrifice, too — the humans had carved the core of it out of the Wandering Star’s systems, and those parts were irreplaceable. All the hard work paid off, though. Once they set it up here, the Colony could reach most of the world with its broadcasts.
That only mattered to those with working receivers, which meant the humans’ colony pods. Prytheen technology did not function on Crashland, the power draining from it in seconds, which locked my people out until they got access to a human radio. That mostly happened when the Prytheen conquered a colony pod, only adding to the tensions between our species.
My hand went to my blaster, resting on the worn, familiar grip. More powerful by far than the humans’ primitive lasers, and completely useless without power. I’d tried every trick I could think of to charge it, without success. This hateful planet ate the power quicker than I could feed it.
To distract myself from those thoughts, I looked at my new home. The single building that sprawled around the transmitter tower looked almost like an afterthought. Something thrown together once the builders realized there would be people up here.
Red walls, easy to spot against the background of snow, insulated with materials ripped from wrecked ships. Most of the colony pods reached the surface in one piece, but too many of them didn’t. Piloted by primitive computers programmed to land on a different world entirely, errors had taken ships into mountains, trees, oceans… and sometimes just hit too hard, killing the human passengers before they could wake from stasis.
At least we Prytheen could do something about our situation. We’d been conscious, able to steer as our fighters lost power. I remembered my fighter bucking under me as the thrusters failed, the ruby-red glow of others burning up in the atmosphere, too slow to adjust. So many lost that day, good and bad.