Page 241 of Mates for the Raskarrans #1-6

EPILOGUE

Grace

Four weeks later

I head into the lab space where Lorna is still bent over one of Mercenia’s computers.

There was one of the machines in the medic offices where I worked, but they were only used by supervisors, not by myself or any of the medic staff.

I wouldn’t know where to begin using one, but Lorna has the benefit of a top tier upbringing and education.

She knows how to get information out of the computers.

“How are you getting on?” I ask.

We’ve been here a couple of days now, and the discomfort of being around Mercenia built things is only outweighed by the discomfort of wondering what the hell they were doing here in the forest in the first place.

It’s clear this building has been abandoned for a while, but that doesn’t offer much reassurance.

Mercenia bothered to make a base here, bothered to stash a load of women in cryostasis in the basement.

There must have been something they wanted.

We need to know what to properly assess the chances of them ever coming back.

“It’s difficult,” Lorna says. “There’s plenty I can access without passwords, and some of the passwords are written down, so I can get at the information.

But I’m not a scientist. I understand less than half of what I’m reading, and a lot of it is like notes, not complete thoughts.

” She shakes her head, squinting at the screen.

“They were definitely researching something. There’s a lot of information here about local flora and fauna.

Photographs, observations, samples and then a load of science stuff that I don’t understand. Lots of talk of genetics and genomes.”

“Samples?” My stomach drops. “Did they have captive raskarrans?”

Lorna’s expression darkens, and she glances at the doorway where Maldek is talking with Gregar. Maldek has been Lorna’s shadow this entire trip, looking out for her in Shemza’s absence.

“I think so,” she says, keeping her voice low. “I haven’t said anything to anyone else yet, because I want to be sure. I know the raskarrans won’t take that idea well.”

No. It would be devastating to them. When there are so few of them left, to think that some of their number might have been taken. Kept as prisoners.

“It gets worse,” Lorna says. “I don’t understand what they were doing, but… This operating system.” She gestures at the computer screen. “It’s old. Really old. Like, older than what I used when I was first starting on computers at school.”

Lorna is twenty. She would have first started schooling fifteen years or so ago. A computer system older than that - the implication makes my stomach go cold.

“I can’t prove anything,” Lorna says. “Maybe the chain of cause and effect isn’t sinister. Maybe the sickness came, and that’s why they abandoned this place.”

I don’t think she believes that any more than I do.

“We need a scientist,” she says, turning back to the screen. “Even if I didn’t have baby brain, I wouldn’t be able to decipher most of this. Do you think any of the women in the pods…?”

I doubt it, somehow. Mercenia are famously big on not letting their upper tier women be anything other than housewives.

Perhaps there are some middle tier scientists, but would they have the education and the power to end up on an expedition in space?

And if they did, why would they be left behind, frozen, when the other people here abandoned this place?

No, I suspect the people in the pods in the basement are women like us.

Lower tier, expendable. What exactly they were needed for is just another question we can’t answer.

I head down there now, descending the stairs, heading past the various lab spaces, the infirmary, the shower block, to the room at the end of the corridor. I’m not surprised to find Liv sat against the back wall, watching the pods. There are twenty of them altogether, all containing a human woman.

“Are you okay?” I ask.

She looks drawn, pale. I know she’s been struggling with fatigue, thanks to her pregnancy - far more so than she lets on around Gregar, who wouldn’t let her get out of bed if he thought she was struggling even a little.

While I understand her desire not to send her protective mate into unnecessary overdrive, I have questioned the wisdom of her making this journey with us. It’s obviously left her drained.

“We can’t leave them down here,” she says, ignoring my question as she stares up at the pods.

“No,” I agree.

“But we can’t absorb another twenty people into the village.

Not yet. We don’t have enough huts for everyone as it is.

The expansion is going well, and our reserves are getting back up to more reasonable levels.

But the tribe needs to adjust to the current influx of people. We can’t just introduce even more.”

“The raskarrans would probably argue for waking them all up now, everything you just said be damned.”

Liv manages a small smirk. “I know. I wondered at first whether I could be a good chieftess to the tribe. I’ve never been a leader.

But it turns out a lot of what I have to do is talk excitable raskarrans out of doing things.

Be the voice of reason. They’ll want them waking up because they’ll be desperate to find their mates, I know that.

But I don’t think it would be fair or right for these women to be absorbed into the tribe right now.

You don’t have a house, we’ve got no food security, things are in utter chaos.

Oh, and you’ll probably have to shack up with one of the big green guys and have his babies.

I’d rather introduce them from a position of stability. ”

“That sounds reasonable and logical,” I say, wondering what’s troubling her about all this. “Could the tribe spare a few warriors to make an outpost here, guard them against those other raskarrans coming back?”

Liv nods. “I was thinking a rotation. Spend a couple of weeks camped out here, then a new group comes out, takes them off duty. It’s too far to travel here and back in a day, even if they aren’t slowed down by short-legged humans.”

And they’ll all be willing to do it. No one would argue or protest against it.

“So, what’s the problem?” I ask.

Liv inclines her head towards the pods. “Do we need to know what they know about what Mercenia was doing here?”

The question hangs heavy in the air between us.

“Do we know that they’ll know anything?” I say.

“No, but the same logic can be applied the other way. Lorna has been talking about science experiments.”

Liv is clever and cynical enough to have made the same connections I did.

“We need to know,” Liv says, firmness coming into her voice. “We need to know what Mercenia was up to, and what the chances are of them coming back.”

I remember those days on the beach, Liv telling us all that Mercenia wouldn’t be coming for us, that we’d have to make the best we could of our new lives in the raskarran forest. I remember the arguments about staying, waiting for Mercenia to come back.

Being torn about staying or going. I knew Mercenia probably didn’t have good intentions for us girls, but going with the raskarrans was giving up on everything I’d ever known.

Part of me would have preferred Mercenia to arrive, take the decision away from me, return me to familiar hardship.

Now, the thought of Mercenia coming back here makes cold dread run down my spine. I think of my work with Shemza and Rachel, Molly, the community growing between the tribes. Calran and the deep, ever-growing love we have for each other. I don’t want Mercenia to touch any part of any of that.

“We do need to know,” I say. “But, you’re right.

We can’t wake them now. Another month or two and the huts will be finished.

Lorna might have managed to decipher a bit more of the information - there’s plenty of stuff in folders, written down, that she can take back with her.

We don’t even know how to open the pods safely.

You need to give her time to figure that much out, at least.”

Liv dips her head. “True. Ugh, I just hate to think that through inaction, I might leave the tribe vulnerable. The raskarrans might think they can protect us - and from threats from their world, they can.”

“But not threats from ours.”

Liv doesn’t respond.

“This place has been abandoned a long time,” I say. “What reason would Mercenia have for coming back for it now?”

Liv’s expression goes completely dark for a moment. But then she smiles at me.

“You’re right,” she says, voice bright but sharp. “You’re right. We have to deal with what’s in front of us. We don’t open any pods until we know how to do it without hurting the women inside. Their lives are far more important than Mercenia theoretically returning. One thing at a time.”

The next smile she gives me is warmer, more genuine.

“Thanks, Grace, I appreciate your advice. Most of the decisions made for the tribe - we discuss them together, me and Gregar. But this - whatever we decide to do with all of this,” she gestures round the room, “it’s on me.

Gregar doesn’t understand. He can’t understand.

I’m grateful to have other people around me that do. ”

Later, as Calran kisses my neck, trying to initiate some sex before sleeping, I find I can’t get thoughts of Mercenia out of my head.

“You are troubled, my Grace,” Calran says, drawing back from me only enough to put an arm round me and pull me into an embrace. “Speak of what is on your mind.”

I wonder if it’s the right thing to do to tell him, but then I remember how he asked me to always tell him what I was thinking and feeling, so he would never overstep with me.

That helped us build our relationship, helped me to overcome my past and my struggles.

Continuing will keep our relationship strong.

So I tell him about the coincidence of the timings, the fact that raskarrans were probably held here - maybe just for study, maybe for something worse.

I tell him about my conversation with Liv and the frightening possibility that Mercenia might return, and what I fear that could mean for the tribe. For us.

I let it all out in a torrent. When I’m done, I look up, expecting to see fear, apprehension, maybe confusion in his expression. I’m surprised to find him looking relaxed, resolved.

“I am not worried about these things,” he says, stroking his fingers through my hair. He still loves to play with the curls, stretching them out to their full length before allowing them to ping back into place.

“Don’t you think you should be? Just a little?”

He shifts us so we are facing each other, gazing into each other’s eyes.

“It troubles me some,” he says. “An unease in my heartspace at the thought of my brethren kept in this place. But I kept faith with my goddess when things were at their darkest. When the sickness came and it seemed that all was lost, I trusted in her ways. And now she has brought you to me. I do not believe she would give me such hope and joy only to have it taken from me again.”

“She couldn’t protect you from the sickness…”

“Because it was new. Your people have been here, have left their mark on Lina’s forest. And you are here, sharing in her dreamspace with me. Lina knows your people now. Should we need to be, she will ensure we are ready to protect what is ours from them.”

He kisses me, and his confidence, his certainty, melts away some of my unease for now. And as he rolls on top of me, fingers questing for the edges of my clothes, a thought fills my mind. A firm, unwavering thought.

That whatever comes, it won’t just be the raskarrans who are ready to protect the tribe. It will be us girls, too.

Mercenia took everything from me when they allowed Simon to buy me. And I had so much less ‘everything’ then. In the tribe, my friends, my work, Molly, Calran, I’ve found an everything that fills my heart more than I could have ever imagined.

And I won’t let Mercenia take them without a fight.