They might actually be Ronan, Dax, and Jarek-the Sirian beasts that had slaughtered an entire squad of well trained security guards without much, apparent, effort!
That thought occurred to Kate forcefully when she realized that the intent scrutiny of the men coupled with the fact that they seemed to be going to great effort to mimic her could easily add up to a complete lack of familiarity with human behavior.
She dismissed it again.
Like a boomerang, the suspicion returned more forcefully when she met Ronan's gaze across the counter as she got up to clear away the clutter from their meal. Trying to behave nonchalantly with that thought riding her was next to impossible, but she made the attempt purely out of reflex.
"Kat 'fraid. Why?"
Kate sucked in a sharp breath and dropped the dish she'd been rinsing. She'd been too focused on the thoughts colliding in her brain and trying to behave as if nothing was wrong to actually notice what the men were doing. She sent Ronan a startled hare look, trying to force her brain to function.
His own gaze became shuttered. He seemed about to speak and then apparently thought better of it. "We go now."
All the starch seemed to flow out of her and puddle on the floor beneath her feet as Kate watched Ronan, Dax, and Jarek file out of her kitchen, cross the living area and disappear through her front door. A wave of dizziness followed it. She gripped the edge of the sink for several moments and finally decided she might be able to make it to the closest stool. Her muscles were uncooperative and it was all she could do to plant her ass on the stool once she'd reached it.
She lay her head on her arms on the countertop, focusing for some moments on calming herself and pushing the fear back that was creating havoc with her attempts to assert reason and sort things out. Even when she'd beat the fear into abeyance, though, she found herself struggling.
Was it possible that she was right?
She laughed a little hysterically and then clamped a hand over her mouth as the sound of her own laughter gave rise to a horde of pebbled flesh along her arms and back.
Not in her world, but the Sirians weren't of her world.
How could they change themselves to look human, though?
She pondered that for a few moments, summoning the results of the test after test that they'd conducted on the Sirians and realized she wasn't getting anywhere at all. The tests had shown that the Sirians had almost preternatural abilities to regenerate cells and yet … could that extend to an entire body? And, even if it did-which, granted was actually probable-how could that extend to altering their natural structure to something completely different?
As bizarre and completely unbelievable as that thought was, could it possibly explain how the Sirians had managed their disappearing act aboard the space station? Because, as of the last report, they still hadn't been located.
Of course it could! But did it?
She found she simply couldn't accept it, but neither could she completely dismiss it. It calmed her to ponder the situation and try to find another explanation. It didn't seem any more improbable, she finally decided, that they'd managed, somehow, to sneak out and hide themselves on one of the shuttles heading for the surface than the insane idea she'd had that they'd 'disguised' themselves as humans and managed it. If she dismissed everything except the fact that they were animals and had the keen sense of smell most animals had, then they could have used those natural abilities with the canniness she'd already attributed to them to make their escape. They would've sensed danger. No one had ever figured out exactly what the process was that animals used to do that, but they were rarely caught off guard. It took a great deal of effort on the part of humans to trick them when they weren't nearly as intelligent.
The idea comforted her, but only briefly. Not only did she realized that, as crazy as it sounded, even to her, that she did believe that her Sirians had escaped and then tracked her down, she realized she had to assume that the possibility/threat was real.
The question was, what should she do about it?
Or maybe the real question was, did they realize that she suspected and what sort of danger did that put her in?
* * * *
Ronan struggled with his reluctance to leave Kate as he led his pod mates to a safe distance from Kate's living pod to consider the situation. When he had found a place surrounded by dense vegetation that would allow him to watch her pod without being seen, he stopped.
What is this about? Dax demanded angrily as soon as they had settled to watch Kate's pod.
Ronan glanced at him angrily, his lips tightening at the demand.
He needs to think, stupid! Jarek answered testily.
Dax punched him, sending him reeling backward several steps.
We cannot afford to draw attention to ourselves! Ronan snapped when he saw Jarek right himself and tense for retaliation.
You do not think he already did! Jarek said indignantly. Tell him! He punched me in the face! I think he may have loosened a tooth!
Tighten it, Ronan advised coolly.
Yes, but ….
As you pointed out, I need to think, Ronan snapped. I do not need a distraction.
You deserved it for calling me stupid, Dax said coolly.
You have called me stupid many times! Have I punched you?
No, because you know you are stupid, Dax responded indifferently.
Jarek looked like he might explode for several moments. I did not because I am not stupid, he countered after a lengthy pause. I know we cannot afford to draw attention to ourselves and so I ignore your stupid taunts!
Dax shrugged.
Jarek clenched his hands into fists and relaxed them several times, as if debating whether to throttle Dax or not.
Ronan glared at Jarek until he subsided.
Maybe it would help to share your thoughts so that we could help figure out the problem? Dax suggested in a neutral voice after a few moments.
Ronan glared at him for a long moment but finally capitulated. She is afraid of us. I believe she may have figured out that we are those they call the Sirians.
Dax stared at him in disbelief. Well! We know that she is not stupid! You did not think she was bound to figure it out when you gave her the name that she had given you?
Ronan flattened him with a punch to the face.
Jarek grinned down at Dax smugly as he lay on the ground. Before Dax could leap to his feet and beat the shit out of Jarek for gloating, Ronan planted a foot in the middle of his chest. I said no fighting, he growled.
There is no one around! Dax snapped indignantly.
That does not mean they do not have the long seeing eyes here. They did not just use them to watch us.
They used them to watch each other. They were everywhere on the space station. Why would they not have them here, as well?
Dax was about to argue with that assessment when he recalled that he had seen things in the mating place that were very like the long seeing eyes on the space station. We do not know that she was afraid because she knows who we are, he countered. In any case, she accepted us as mates. She cannot undo that now.
Ronan's lips tightened in annoyance. She is human! They are not like us! They are not like any of the creatures in the memory! How do we know she cannot reject us? It is almost certain that the other creatures that we have taken gifts from would have if they had sensed the difference! We do not make the change only to align with the chosen for the purpose of breeding! They must believe we are the same or they will not allow it!
Beyond that, we have only begun the mating process. I do not know that we have successfully bred on her and you do not know it!
I was actually hoping that we had not, Jarek volunteered. I would not mind at all if we found that we had to seed her many times before it takes.
Ronan and Dax exchanged a speaking glance.
We will not get that chance if we are dead, Ronan said dryly.
Both Jarek and Dax sent him a sharp look at that. Dax frowned. You think they will believe her if she tells the others?
That is what I am trying to decide and also if she feels threatened enough to tell at all. I could smell her fear. It was not merely anxiety. She has guessed. I am certain of it. What I am not certain of is how likely it is that she will tell the others so that they can finish what they had planned.
Dax studied Ronan for a long moment when he fell silent. You are thinking that we may not survive to complete the breeding cycle, he said bluntly.
Ronan stared at Kate's place grimly. That was always a possibility.
Jarek frowned, thinking hard. After a moment, his brow cleared. She had fondness for us when we were little more than hatchlings. She had fondness for us when we were in her care even as we matured. Why would she not still have fondness when we have a mating bond now?
Ronan and Dax both stared at him blankly.
She thought we were dumb beasts! Ronan and Dax both said at almost the same time and with nearly the same degree of disgust.
She thought that she was nurturing, Ronan said dryly. It was no more than that and not the sort of bond that a female would feel for her own off-spring at that! She will not feel the same even that she did then because we are not the same to her mind.
It was not just that, Jarek said indignantly. The humans develop affection for the creatures they nurture.
They call it love or fondness or liking. She felt pleasure whenever she was with us. I smelled it. It was not the same as the pleasure in the mating bond, not as strong, but the same.
You do not understand humans any more than we do, Dax said with disgust.
I did not say that I did! Jarek snapped. But I have studied them just as you and Ronan have and I detected the shift in her scent and the way she behaved. She liked the female she calls Sissy. She would smile and relax whenever she was around Sissy and often feel amusement. As we matured, I often detected wariness and sometimes a little fear, but mostly pleasure. Around the others that came to the lab, her scent and her behavior was different. And she often thought that she was too fond of us. I did not completely understand at the time. I am not certain I completely understand now, but this body feels emotions. I feel them. And I think that I feel fondness for her and if it is the same then she would not want to harm us or do anything to cause harm to come to us.
Ronan frowned thoughtfully but finally shook his head. Now that you mention it, I also detected the shift in her scent when she thought about feeling affection for us, but that will not matter now. She associated the way we appeared to her then with affection. We are different to her now and she was not just afraid that we would be destroyed or worried about the punishment to her for trying to prevent that. She was afraid when she learned that we had killed to survive. I do not think this affection you speak of will make a difference because I do not think she feels it now.
* * * *
It shouldn't have taken Kate five seconds to arrive at a decision once she'd reached the conclusion that the men she'd just had a wild night of fabulous sex with weren't men at all, but the 'missing' Sirians her government wanted to get hold of so badly. It no sooner popped into her mind to call security, however, than she was filled with dismay and reluctance.
What if she was wrong? She'd be a laughingstock! She'd be lucky to get a job as a janitor!
And they would kill the Sirians on sight.
Quite aside from the fact that she still didn't want that, couldn't bring herself to have a hand in it, she could easily be caught in the crossfire and she sure as hell didn't like that idea!
The impulse to call Sissy and seek moral support was almost overpowering, but she resisted it. It wouldn't be fair to drag Sissy into her mess!
In any case, she had a feeling that Sissy would instantly insist on calling security and dumping the matter in their hands.
Well, she knew what they meant to do to 'clean up' the mess!
It wasn't right!
Was it?
It was against the laws of man to kill and the punishment was generally life imprisonment. At the very least, even with extenuating circumstances-like self-protection-they would be imprisoned for years.
That wasn't going to happen, though. They wouldn't be tried. They'd been convicted and sentenced to death before they'd killed for self-preservation!
So … if they didn't have the rights that humans had, and they weren't from Earth at all, or even human, how did the laws pertain to them when they didn't also protect them?
She wrestled with that moral dilemma for hours, but no matter how many times she told herself that they should be punished for taking the lives of the men sent to kill them, it simply didn't feel right. No matter how many times she told herself that they should have tried to simply overpower them and escape, she kept remembering that they'd been trapped, cornered, and that the law of nature-survival-always trumped manmade laws in the end.
If she'd been in the same position and capable of killing to insure her own survival, would she have?
She thought it was entirely possible that she would have. She didn't think she would've considered the moral dilemma either-maybe afterward, but not in the heat of the moment. Afterward, she thought she would have suffered a great deal of guilt.
She didn't think they felt the least bit guilty about it.
But then, why should they? They'd been … kidnapped from their home world, and poked and prodded and studied-and then scheduled for death only because someone had decided they were a potentially dangerous species that shouldn't be allowed to live. Wasn't that in itself an act of nature? Hadn't they decided to kill because they thought the Sirians might be a threat? Or worse, that it simply didn't matter at all whether they lived or died? That they weren't important enough for their lives to matter?
After a while, she gave up on trying to reason through right and wrong where the Sirians were concerned. She hadn't felt that it was right any of the time. She couldn't make herself accept that it was right now to kill them when she was responsible for putting them in the position of having to defend themselves with lethal force.
She was the guilty party in this. She was the one that had to make it right.
The question was how?
The answer presented itself the moment the question popped into her mind.
She had to see to it that they were returned to their home world.
She didn't have the power or the means to insure that, though! She couldn't just waltz into the space center and demand it. She didn't think any amount of arguing their case would make a difference either. She'd argued until she was hoarse already and no one seemed inclined to listen.
It was late in the day before she finally arrived at the conclusion that she was going to have to, somehow, figure out a way to sneak them back to their home world. There was a piece of that equation that she wouldn't have to figure out at all. She had signed up to become a colonist long ago. She was in the queue already and scheduled to ship out with the next transport.
Actually, she was supposed to leave with the group that had just left, aboard Eden II, but she'd been bumped because of her project. She should be on the roster for Eden III, though!
Assuming they hadn't taken her off because of the fiasco in her lab.
As soon as she thought of that an avalanche of problems presented themselves. First and foremost was the problem of getting the Sirians to cooperate with her in getting them aboard and directly behind that was the problem of securing passage for them without letting anyone else know what they were.
She decided to shelve those problems for the moment, however. There wasn't any point in worrying about those issues until and unless she had transportation herself. Unfortunately, by the time she arrived at that conclusion, it was too late in the day to get the information she needed.
She left early the following morning to check her status. Without surprise but with a great deal of dismay, she discovered that although she was still on the ship's passenger list, she was on hold. It took most of the day to cut through all the red tape and get that hold removed. As accustomed as she was to the nightmare of trying to deal with the bureaucracy that surrounded every aspect of life, she was frustrated, exhausted and her nerves so tattered by the time she managed to get everything in order that she was in no mood to try to tackle the next problem-finding the Sirians and convincing them that they wanted to go back to their own world and that she could and would get them there.
It was tempting to simply lay the matter out to them, assuming she could find them, and try reasoning with them straight out. The problem with that was that if it didn't work, she didn't have a fall back plan that was acceptable to her. She wouldn't have any choice then but to notify authorities.
She had managed to 'bait' them up when she'd gone to the club and it occurred to her that that might work a second time, but she was in no state of mind to attempt it after trooping from one department to another all day trying to get her papers in order. Instead, she decided to focus on getting her affairs in order for the move to the new colony. It was something that had to be done anyway, she reasoned, since it was to be a permanent relocation.
The task, she discovered, was just the sort of thing to steady her nerves since it was mostly pure drudgery. Three days later she had pretty well wound up her affairs on Earth, however, and packed up everything she would be allowed to take and she was back to trying to work out a plan to entice the Sirians onto the ship with her.
After a great deal of soul searching, she called Sissy for moral support and made plans to visit the club again. There was no reason that she could see to tell Sissy exactly why she wanted to go and she didn't think Sissy would be too keen on accompanying her if she did know.
To her relief, Sissy was bored stiff and ready to leap at the invitation.