Page 5 of Scars & Starlight (Of Blood and Conquest #1)

KAIREN

T he human flinches away like I burned her.

I can only imagine how invasive the notion of nanites must be to her.

My nanites have been with me since birth and have access to every part of my organism.

They’re self-replenishing and perpetually healing their hosts, and over the last few thousand cycles, they have completely obliterated disease and aging among my people.

They even mitigate the chances of death due to injury.

Well, unless one gets stabbed with a medical probe through a nano port, an artery, and directly into the brain stem.

I glance at the dead soldiers. They both received the punishment they deserved.

The one the human spared tried to argue that it can’t be rape if the female is from a species as unadvanced as Earthlings are.

My lip curls, and I have to fight the urge to stab their corpses myself.

“It’s harmless,” I say, letting the mech translate my words.

“A few thousand nanites will gain access to your brain through your nose.” I cringe, thinking of how aggressive that sounds.

“You won’t feel a thing,” I quickly add.

“Once inside, they will attach to the language comprehension structures and aid you in understanding our words.”

She, understandably, remains skeptical, her eyebrows crawling up to her hairline. She’s been through so much in a short amount of time. I take a deep breath.

“You already have nanites inside you,” I admit. “They’re repairing the internal damage you suffered during your skirmish with the Ghorvek.”

Once the mech translates, she pales so fast I worry she’s going to meet the ground again. “I have… robot mites inside me?”

I frown, double-checking that her meaning is translating properly. My nanites are still assimilating the language she speaks. The assistive unit begins explaining what nano-robots are and how they work. My eyes drink in her many small expressions, watching as her confusion turns to fascination.

“Commander?” I had forgotten Orran is still here.

Facing him, I lift an eyebrow in question.

“Shall I have Zaiem and Rheven taken to the decomposer?” I glance at the dead Avaren.

They were always troublemakers, but I never expected them to turn to rape.

Picturing them potentially finding their matches on Earth and mistreating them turns my stomach.

“Yes,” I reply succinctly. “And Orran? We will talk about you entering a med room where a guest was recovering later,” I add, making the soldier shrink into himself.

He may have tried to stop Zaiem and Rheven from assaulting the human girl and was ultimately the one to sound the alarm, but he still behaved inappropriately by coming here in the first place and hounding her.

“Yes, Commander,” he says with a bow and a blush, his neural filaments flickering with his unease.

When the mech finishes telling the human what nanites are, I suggest we move our conversation to a room that doesn’t have blood and bodies in it. Hesitantly, she follows, my cousin and the assistive unit in tow.

“I should take another look at the patient,” Lirael says as we exit the recovery room. “If there are new internal injuries, the nanites she was given may not be enough to handle more epicenters.”

I shake my head as we move aside for the cleanup staff.

“When we convince her to accept more nanites from me, I’ll give enough to handle both the language center and any other injuries.

” I glance back at the human, wide-eyed and awed, then at my suspiciously quiet cousin. “What?” I ask, exasperated in advance.

“You didn’t hesitate,” she answers.

I know what she means. “I would have punished Rheven – and Zaiem if the human didn’t do it for me – in the exact same manner, regardless of which female was assaulted. Or male, for that matter.”

“That’s true,” Lirael says finally. I open the door to the closest sitting room, gesturing for her to precede me, then waiting for the human and little mech to enter as well.

When the female gasps, I consider that I should have perhaps chosen a room with fewer distractions. This one lies on the outer levels of the Sovereign, facing the Earth and its orbiting moon.

“This is incredible,” she breathes, placing both hands on the viewing pane.

I can’t imagine being an adult and not seeing your planet from orbit. Tentatively, I walk to her side as Lirael settles at the table. She pulls out her cube, obviously striving to give us the illusion of privacy. I resist the urge to roll my eyes at my matchmaker cousin.

“I’m sure your planet was very beautiful before the Ghorvek came,” I say, wishing the assistive unit wasn’t needed to translate.

Her lips twist. “Lots of places were and mostly still are. Nature.” She tears her eyes away from the view to meet mine.

“But man destroyed plenty before the aliens ever came to our solar system. Ghorvek, you call them?” Her mouth forms the unfamiliar word with some difficulty, and she swallows some sounds while exaggerating others.

I nod. “That is the Avaren name for them.” While the mech translates, I gesture for her to take a seat, leaning against the wall myself.

“Cycles ago, they came to Avaris,” I begin our story.

“We were already a spacefaring species, but have never initiated contact, opting to avoid conflict. Well.” I click my tongue. “Conflict found us.”

I start pacing, gathering my thoughts while the assistive unit speaks for me.

Lirael discreetly scans the human woman with her cube.

“I’m sure you can guess how things went once they arrived.

It took us several cycles to chase them off.

By then, they introduced a pathogen that made us all but infertile, unless very rare gene combinations were observed. ”

The human’s jaw drops, a universal display of shock. Her eyes dart left and right as she thinks. “But, if this was a long time ago, how is your kind still around?”

I gulp, dreading her reaction to my next admission. It’s always hard to disclose, no matter the planet we’re on. But for some reason, I feel like I have a stake in the way she accepts it. Or doesn’t.

“From the information we’ve accessed, your kind lives to a maximum of one hundred of your cycles. Our kind is, with the help of our nanites, nearly eternal.”

Her eyes bug out, but she doesn’t shrink away when I take a seat opposite her. So far, so good.

“Our longevity allowed us time to experiment and learn what allowed for those very rare couples to conceive.”

When the AU finishes interpreting, the woman’s eyes flit between Lirael and me. “And what did you find out?” she asks.

“The particulars of the gene sequencing are unimportant for this conversation,” Lirael takes over.

“But we took samples from every remaining Avaren. And realized there aren’t enough matches to ensure our species remains viable.

We may not age the way you do, but we’re still vulnerable to physical injury if caught unaware. ”

Like she caught Zaiem unaware. An incredibly lucky strike. When her eyebrows climb up, I start suspecting she knows where this tale is heading.

“So you had to find matches,” she says, not a question, but a statement.

“Indeed,” I continue. “We went from planet to planet, following the Ghorvek, liberating the occupants, and then testing them.”

Her nose wrinkles. I’m not sure which part disgusts her, but I feel uneasy. “And if they were a match?” she asks .

I blow air out of my nose. My cousin doesn’t spare me, blinking at me slowly with a neutral expression. “If they’re a match, we introduce them to their Avaren counterpart,” I answer. “If they’re on Avaris, we ask whether they wish to travel there to meet them.”

The human audibly grits her teeth. “And if they say no? If they’re married or simply unwilling?”

I lift my hands, palms up. “I believe you saw what happens to Avaren who don’t respect a rejection. Not that it was accepted before, but since the Ghorvek, rape only has one punishment. Death.”

When the mech finishes speaking, she shudders and hugs herself, rubbing her arms to chase away the chills. Since I set the room to the perfect temperature for her human body, not far from our own, I know it’s the memories of what almost happened that haunt her.

“You really just let your rare matches go on their merry way?” Her words come out dry, disbelieving.

“We really do,” Lirael says. “Though the preservation of our species is our primary biological imperative, we didn’t stop believing in the emotional components of partnerships.”

I cover my hand, where my neural filaments began blinking. When my cousin purses her lips, I shoot her a cold look.

“How are people from other planets even a match?” the human asks with furrowed brows. “We’re visibly different,” she continues, pointing at my eyes and the glowing lines on my cheeks. “Are our parts even compatible?”

Now her eyes drop to my lap, partially hidden by the table between us. When she realizes what she’s looking at, she quickly looks away, but my blood has already been set afire. I can feel myself thickening under my uniform and quickly lean forward.

By Seris, I don’t remember a female ever eliciting these intense feelings of intrigue and uncertainty from me. I have to fight the urge to impress her.

She could be someone else’s match, Kairen , I tell myself. Rein it in.

Lirael gently clears her throat. “With research, we’ve come to discover that we had identical inceptions,” she begins.

“We believe that our mutual creators planted us on habitable planets across the universe as some kind of experiment. While differences come from varied environments, at our core, we’re all the same. ”

After the AU is done translating, the human shakes her head in disbelief. “Even the Ghorvek?”

My cousin tips her head in acknowledgment. “Even the Ghorvek. We posit that a disaster, perhaps irradiation, altered their appearance much more than ours. But they have roughly the same organs as we do. They have four hearts to our two, and your one.”

“What’s your name?” I blurt out, tired of referring to her as ‘the human woman’.

She’s momentarily taken aback by my sudden question, but quickly recovers. “Tara,” she says. “Tara Novak. What’s yours?”

“Kairen Veyrath.” I tip my head to Lirael.

“And this is Lirael Veyrath. Cousin,” I add quickly, before the AU translates and Tara can process that we share a family name.

According to the data Kael keeps sending me, humans practice sharing a family name between partners as well, though they almost without fault pick the male’s family name, while for us it’s a thing of agreement.

Lirael kicks my foot under the table. I ignore her, keeping my eyes on the blushing woman. Tara.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Tara,” I say. “Now, how about we talk without the mech between us?”