Bri’s jaw dropped to half mast, her eyes rounding. Kole was charging across the yard that separated them with death in his eyes.
Dansk stiffened, but apparently he was in no doubt of whom Kole’s target was. Turning abruptly, he pushed Bri firmly behind him and braced himself as Kole launched himself at him. They collided like a pair of fullbacks on a football field. The blow as they slammed against one another made a sound like cannon fire. Bri screamed, too frozen to move until Dansk staggered back several steps and nearly slammed into her. Uttering another shriek, Bri scurried out of the way, her hands over her mouth as the two men struggled briefly, broke apart, and began hammering at one another with their fists. Tiring of that fairly quickly, they grabbed one another by the throat and began trying to choke the life out of each other.
Bri’s mind had gone perfectly blank with shock, and brain activity was slow to return. “Stop!” she gasped finally. “Kole, Dansk, please don’t do this! Stop it!”
It wasn’t until both men froze and turned to stare at her that Bri realized she’d spoken to them in their own language.
In the dead silence, she heard the sizzle of burning flesh as a near blinding beam of light hit both men, knocking them from their feet. A jolt of shock went through her, but this time instead of rooting her to the spot, instinct kicked in. She rushed to the two fallen men. Falling on her knees beside them, she checked their pulses fearfully. She didn’t realize she was crying until she discovered she couldn’t focus on their faces, couldn’t see how badly either man was hurt.
The mechanical claw that clamped around her wrist took her completely off guard, but she was in no state to assimilate what was happening around her, what had been happening. She fought the pull on her wrist, whirling and beating her free hand against the metal plate. It was futile. All she succeeded in doing was bruising her hand and nearly being jerked off her feet when the bot simply ignored her efforts to fight it and free herself and kept moving.
Dashing the tears from her eyes, she twisted around to see what was happening to Kole and Dansk and didn’t know whether to be relieved of terrified when she saw that they’d been scooped from the ground by two other bots and were being carried away in the opposite direction. Were they alive? Dead? Were the bots taking them to attend their injuries? Taking them to dispose of them? She kept calling out to them, hoping both or either would respond, until the bot dragged her to a habitat and shoved her inside.
She stood where she’d stopped, staring blankly at the closed door, too numb for a while to think at all. After a while, when she realized she was alone, that she’d been standing like a stone for so long her feet and legs ached, she turned and looked around the room without recognition. It took her several moments to figure out she’d been returned to her own habitat, that she hadn’t recognized it because she’d expected to find herself in Dansk’s habitat.
Why had they returned her, she wondered fearfully? What was going on? Rubbing a shaky hand over her face, she finally wandered into the bathroom and sat down to stare at the shower for a while before she remembered she’d gone into the bathroom to bathe off.
She was shaking so badly by the time she’d bathed that her teeth had begun to chatter. After drying off, she went back into the main room, curled up on the sleeping platform, and wrapped the coverlet tightly around her. Warmth eluded her. The deep cold and shivering only seemed to get worse for a while, but in time it began to dissipate. Her teeth ceased to chatter, and the tremors wracking her slowed and finally stopped.
As she lay staring at nothing in particular, everything that had happened replayed itself in her mind over and over, and she still couldn’t entirely grasp what had happened. In part, the images moved through her mind like a film on slow mo--except that she couldn’t seem to grasp more than fractured images. The rest was a blur of speed.
She knew, though, that Kole had attacked Dansk. He’d charged right toward him. There was no way to deny that he had, or that he had intended to.
Why, she wondered blankly?
How?
He’d been wearing his collar. She distinctly remembered that because she’d thought when she had first heard the sizzle that it was the collar discharging. Maybe it was, but it hadn’t brought him down--hadn’t brought either man down, hadn’t even seemed to slow either one of them down.
That was why the bots had been sent out, she realized, because both men had been in such a rage that they hadn’t even noticed the jolts from the collars.
Was that even possible?
It didn’t
seem
possible, but then she’d never seen any of the men brought down by the collars, she realized, only the women. It had certainly deterred the men from crossing the boundaries before, though.
She covered her burning eyes with her fingers, rubbing them, fighting the sting of fresh tears. Were they dead? Would she ever know? Or would they just disappear as the Hirachi women had?
And what would the Sheloni do in retaliation?
What she couldn’t understand, and needed to understand, was what had caused the terrible incident to start with? She was afraid that one or both of them were dead. She needed to understand why. Why had Kole attacked Dansk at all? It was as if he’d suddenly gone mad!
She had no idea how long she lay staring into space while her mind whirled with questions she couldn’t answer and might never know the answer to, but exhaustion finally overtook her.
When she woke, she discovered Cory had been returned to her.
Love and gratitude filled her heart as she looked down to find him staring up at her. “Hello my darlin’! Did you miss mama?”
He smiled suddenly, recognition filling his eyes, and tears filled Bri’s. He hadn’t forgotten her this time! He hadn’t grown wary and fearful. Sniffing back the urge to cry, she gathered him against her and nuzzled his neck. He chuckled, nuzzling her back and soaking her with baby drool.
Rolling onto her side, she played with him for a while, talking to him to refamiliarize him with her voice and finally got up to bathe them both and feed him.
She didn’t know whether to expect that her routine had been restored or not, but she hoped, and she was vastly relieved when the door opened at the usual time. Gathering Cory up, she hurried out, hoping Consuelo would know something about Kole and Dansk.
She was so anxious to see what she could find out, she didn’t notice Consuelo’s behavior at first, but she’d already begun to unconsciously draw in upon herself in anticipation of attack by the time Consuelo finally met her at the edge of the yard. Ignoring her instincts, she immediately launched into questions when the other woman reached her.
Consuelo didn’t sit down to chat companionably as they always had before. Instead, she stood looking down at Bri, her expression guarded.
“Did you see what happened yesterday?”
Consuelo gave her a look. “Everyone saw.”
Taken aback by the tone, the expression, and the body language, Bri again dismissed her misgivings. “Did you see if they were alright? Where they were taken? Did the Sheloni say what they would do to them?”
Consuelo shrugged. “I doubt I saw as much as you did. I was here.”
Bri stared at the woman she’d come to think of as a friend, unable to continue to ignore the coldness in her behavior. “Why are you mad at me?” she asked, fighting the anger welling inside her to match that she felt emanating from Consuelo.
Consuelo pursed her lips. “Why don’t you tell me?”
Bri’s jaw sagged. In a split second, however, all of her repressed fears exploded into fury. “How the fuck would I know what’s got your panties in a wad!” she snapped, surging to her feet.
Consuelo ceased trying to hide her own anger. “It was disgusting watching those two men fighting over you like a bitch in heat! Doesn’t it bother you at all that they could’ve gotten themselves killed--and maybe everybody else--because you couldn’t resist publicly wallowing all over Dansk?”
That time Bri’s jaw dropped open in outrage. If a complete stranger had walked up and attacked her without provocation she couldn’t have been more stunned. It was hard to decide which part of the completely vicious and false, allegations to respond to first.
None of it, she finally decided, warranted an answer. If Consuelo had interpreted everything that way, then it had been willful, skewed because of her own emotions, and nothing she could say was going to change that false perception. “We don’t have to be friends,” she said instead when she’d mastered the urge to explode into counter accusations and/or vicious observations to match Consuelo’s. “We do have to try to unite, though, if we don’t all want to die on this little picnic the Sheloni have taken us on.
“And, for the record, I didn’t trot over there to screw Dansk. If I’d known you liked him I’d have tried not to enjoy it, but I sure as hell didn’t have any choice in the matter … no more than you did.”
She left Consuelo standing at the perimeter and headed back, no wiser than she had been before. Not that she’d really expected to get information out of Consuelo, but she’d hoped. She didn’t know why she glanced at the women in the group habitat--just to know for sure that the ostracism was wide-spread, she guessed--but she did, and she caught several looks that seemed to confirm her suspicions.
It was unjust, and she returned to a spot near the habitat to settle with Cory, fuming over the unfairness of being condemned for something she had had no control over.
It was almost easier to deal with than her anxieties about Kole and Dansk.
Maybe it wasn’t completely unjustified, she acknowledged after a while. She hadn’t merely ‘endured’. She’d opened herself to enjoy it, even flirted with them she supposed.
But why not? Why should she have suffered when she had been able to accept and even to enjoy? For
their
sake? Just because it would make them feel better if everyone was as miserable as they were?
Like she gave a shit what they thought about her!
For all intents and purposes, she’d always been a social leper. Her responsibilities growing up hadn’t allowed her a lot of time for socializing, which had somehow led to her being lumped in with the ‘different’ kids--not because she was below or above average in any way, but because she didn’t get the chance to join her peers, and she couldn’t
be
as carefree and irresponsible as they were.
It wasn’t that it didn’t bother her at all, but little by little, she’d ceased to care. She’d grown comfortable with the existence of an ‘outsider’.
She couldn’t afford to be an outsider now, though. As determined as she was to make a change, to somehow defeat the Sheloni and protect herself and Cory, she didn’t think she could do it alone--maybe she could, but her odds were greatly improved if she was working with a group.
With an effort, she thrust the sense of injustice away and tried to figure out why she’d come under attack. She wasn’t going to change anyone’s mind. She could plead her case, but it would be a waste of time and energy.
She didn’t think she’d been wrong when she’d assessed Conseulo’s feelings about Dansk. She’d been almost contemptuous of him and, try though she might, Bri couldn’t recall any telltale indications that Consuelo had been trying to hide an interest in him.
She’d felt the urge, though, herself to try to align herself with a strong male for protection. Was that it? The primal urge to seek protection from someone stronger? The territoriality that came with that urge?
How was she supposed to reason with that, if that was the case, and she sensed that that was probably what it was? Consuelo hadn’t shown any indication at all that she’d actually cared about Dansk. Obviously, though, she’d hoped the interlude had insured a connection between them--particularly since she must be carrying his baby--and now she was angry with Bri for ‘threatening’ that.
They were all screwed if they couldn’t get over that!
In the first place, none of them knew whether mating was going to create
any
kind of bond with the Hirachi, from the Hirachi standpoint, which, when all was said done, was all that counted in the quest for a mate willing and able to protect. They enjoyed sex, and any creature that enjoyed sex was completely willing to do it for recreation, not necessarily for procreation, not necessarily with the intent of mating. And, even if, in their own culture, that was the case, that didn’t mean the Hirachi would consider the Earth women in the same light. It seemed far more likely that they would think all bets off because of the differences between them--to say nothing about the fact that they’d been coerced into performing, however enthusiastically they’d accepted their fate.
In the second, the Sheloni weren’t going to allow them to create a bond of the sort they, Earthlings, were instinctually inclined to, because they were treating them all like–barnyard animals, breeding according to
their
discrimination, or maybe lack of it. Consuelo didn’t seem to fully grasp that correlation. She wasn’t sure any of the others did, but it seemed very obvious to her now that the Sheloni would
also
slaughter them without provocation, without any more thought than they would barnyard animals because that was all they, any of them, were to the Sheloni.
In the third, it seemed doubtful the instinct would help even if it worked and the Hirachi males actually
did
feel bonded to the women they impregnated and protective of the children they’d spawned. The Hirachi were tremendously strong. From what she’d seen, pound for pound, that strength went considerably beyond the strength of the typical human male, and they were
still
slaves just like the Earth people. If she understood what she’d learned about them, they had been preyed upon by the Sheloni for generations now and they had not been able to free themselves or even to prevent more of their people being taken whenever the Sheloni felt the urge, or need.
Nothing could more surely insure that their fate would not be a happy one than to decide to sit back like ‘the little women’ and wait for the men to handle everything. The Hirachi had a history of failure with the Sheloni. Obviously, they were going to have to think of something different to do.