Page 223 of Mates for the Raskarrans #1-6

Liv

I take Lorna and Grace with me to this military base where Sam has been holed up. Gregar isn’t happy about the travel away from the village of course, growling protectively whenever I bring it up.

“You carry my youngling, I want you here where you are safe,” he grumbles.

But he knows I’m right about needing to have a look, and so when the time comes, he gives control of the village over to Darran and Walset, joining me, Lorna, Grace, Calran, Sam, Dazzik and Maldek on the journey.

Shemza holds Lorna tenderly, kissing her forehead before we go. I know he’s not happy about her leaving either, but he’s more pragmatic than most of the raskarrans.

“Lorna has the most learning of you,” he said when I raised it with him. “You need her. And the tribe needs me.”

“I will keep her safe,” Maldek promises, and I know this is some kind of penance for him. Even though from the way Sam tells the story, he did everything in his power to keep her safe, he still feels responsible.

It’s a long journey, several days of walking. The ground is mostly recovered from the rains, and we are numerous enough that someone can always be on watch, but I know everybody is on edge, afraid of who might be lurking out in the trees.

Darran is going to send some of his tribe back to his village to see if Jestaw, Dazzik’s old tribe brother, made it there.

How many, if any, survived the rains. Hopefully, they won’t be any trouble, but it’s useful to know who our neighbours are, whether they pose any threat.

The Cliff Top tribes haven’t made another appearance yet, and I’m grateful for that, but conscious of how vulnerable we could still be.

Being chieftess means worrying about everything, and although most of the time life is great and we have a lot to be happy about, these things are always in the back of my mind.

Like Mercenia. And the question of why they have a base here in the forest.

When we arrive, all the raskarrans look unsettled. The girls, too, but for different reasons, I think. To the guys, the unnatural straight lines of a Mercenia building look out of place in the forest. For us girls, it’s a throwback to a time we’d rather forget.

I don’t know how Sam and Dazzik stayed here for weeks. I really don’t.

Sam leads us into the security room, showing us the controls and the instruction manuals. Lorna grabs a pile, and I grab another, flicking through, looking for anything useful, while Sam escorts Grace down to the medic room to raid the medicine cabinet.

“Here,” Lorna says, pointing to one of the pages she’s reading. “‘Emergency door override. Captain’s override passcode required.’ Fortunately, the Captain has been kind enough to write his code down.”

She goes to the control panel, punching in a sequence of buttons then bending close to one of the microphones and reading out, “Four. One. Alpha. X-ray. Three. Two. Foxtrot.”

For a moment, nothing. A ringing silence. But then, a mechanical buzzing sounds, followed by a series of thunks that echo down the corridor. On the screen, all the doors that were code-locked downstairs suddenly open.

“Brilliant,” I say, grinning, then we head down.

The air has that cold quality it gets when no one’s been home for a while.

Sam and Grace step out into the corridor to join us as we make our way further along, looking inside each of the previously closed off rooms. The first couple look like storage.

Could be something useful in there, but there’s nothing immediately jumping out at me, giving me any hint as to what Mercenia were doing here.

They had to be after something. Mercenia never spend money on anything unless it benefits them in some way, and this sort of installation on another planet - it must have cost them a lot.

The next few rooms are offices, and there are a couple of computer terminals in them.

Lorna sits at one, clicking buttons and typing in commands.

If anyone can get an idea of what Mercenia were doing, it’s her.

I can read, but I don’t know computers. Lorna’s top tier upbringing might have been every bit as terrible as it was for us on bottom tier, but she does know her way around Mercenia’s tech. The tech we were forbidden to use.

We pass a couple more rooms on the sides of a corridor, one that looks a bit like the medic room, but not.

“Lab space,” Grace says. “They must have been doing some research here.”

“Or experimentation,” I say, coming at last to the room on the end.

The layout of this bottom floor is similar to that overhead, so I’m expecting a room as big as the canteen.

I think it’s about that size, but it’s hard to tell, as it’s jam packed with stuff.

I feel along the wall for a light switch, and when I find it, the lights overhead come on with heavy thunks.

“What…” Sam says, her breath leaving her in a rush.

Me, I can’t find enough breath to speak. All the air has been knocked out of me by what I’m looking at.

Cylinders. Tall cylinders about twice the width and half as high again as your average human.

They’re situated about a foot apart on all sides, rows of them going right back to the other end of the room.

On each one, there’s a glass panel, some sort of control panel beneath it with red and green lights on it. Behind that glass panel, a face.

A female, human face.

Rapidly, I walk from one end of the front row to the other, checking each of the cylinders in turn. Inside every single one, there’s a woman. Like the twelve of us, they’re a mix of colours, some blond, some dark, some as dark-skinned as Ellie, some as pale as Sam or me, and everything in between.

Human women. Human women in some sort of stasis in a Mercenia built military base in the middle of the raskarran forest.

What. The. Fuck.