Authors: Lisa Lace
"Really. You'll find your sheeranlo. He's out there."
"Sheeranlo? What's that?"
"It means your soul mate in Susohnnan. He's out there waiting for you."
Jakk stuck his head in.
"Or maybe he's closer than you think," I murmured to myself.
"Dar's looking for you, Kenna. We're docking in twenty," he said.
"Thanks, Jakk."
"No problem. I was looking for Elara as well. Can you run through the supply list one more time with me and make sure we haven't forgotten anything?" he said.
She sat up straight, sniffing and trying to pull herself together.
"Yes, sir."
"Good, I'll see you on the bridge." Then he was gone.
She looked at me for a long time before she finally spoke. I don't know what the words cost her but she could hardly get them out.
"He's married."
I pressed my lips together, shaking my head.
"Not anymore, Elara. The divorce went through."
"Are you serious?"
"You bet. Dar just told me. He's a free man. He's also hurting and lonely because his relationship with his wife has been dead for some time, so tread carefully. Men's hearts are awfully tender, remember."
She gave me a shy smile.
"I remember."
I pulled her in for a hug.
"We'll meet again, Elara. I know it. You're invited to my wedding, so don't do anything stupid when you're off squid hunting, okay?"
She smiled.
"Okay."
"Now, I guess there's a supply list that needs to be gone over, again. Maybe he just wants to spend time with you."
Her face lit up in surprise and then she gave me one last smile.
"Thank you, Kenna," she said as she headed for the door.
"May you may find as much happiness as I have," I whispered to her back as she disappeared through the doorway.
DAR
I looked around me and smiled. We were in the oasis at the back of the palace.
To one side we could see through the trees out onto the burning hot sands. The harsh wind was blowing across the desert but here the air was cool and moist. The huge trees sheltered us from both Susohn's suns as they traveled across the sky together.
The servants had set up banquet tables and we had invited people to come celebrate our engagement. My heart ached when I thought about Mana and Jared and how they would have been here if they hadn't been captured.
There was a ship on its way through the wormhole right now but I didn't have much hope. They might even be dead already. I shook my head to clear it and tried to pay attention to what my mother and my fiancee were talking about.
"I've talked to the Conveyor and he is willing to give you a special dispensation to get married this year, since you have known each other for some time and have proven your love for each other in many ways â not the least of which is you completing the ritual, Kenna. That really impressed him."
Kenna smiled a little and ducked her head. She was wearing Susohnnan pants that had a panel cut out to show the skin of the left hip. Mother had probably picked them out for her. She loved showing off her future daughter-in-law's scar and telling people what Kenna had done to get it.
"Really, mother? When can we get married?" I said, eagerly.
"Now, now, calm down child. You're as good as married now. There's no need to rush."
I took a deep breath, trying not to be annoyed with my mother for calling me a child and telling me to slow down, as if I had been running in the halls of the palace. I felt Kenna's hand on my thigh under the table. I could tell she was trying not to smile.
"Mother, we are not rushing."
Just then a servant approached me.
"This just came in for you, sir. I thought I ought to give it to you immediately." He handed me a piece of paper.
I opened the note and read it while the servant waited to be dismissed. I stared it, reading it over and over.
"Where did you get this, Mervoll?" I demanded.
"It just came in to the communications center, your highness. Is there a problem?"
"How did it come in?" I said, knowing my voice sounded urgent, but unable to control myself.
He smiled then, shaking his head.
"You won't believe it. Morse code. My brother and I always loved old Earth war movies and one year we spent a couple months learning Morse code. I recognized it right away. Good thing I was on duty, or someone else might have missed it as just space noise."
Kenna and mother were watching our conversation curiously.
I drew in a shaky breath.
"Thank you, Mervoll, excellent work." He made the sign of The Three and left. I made a mental note to give him a huge bonus.
"What was that about?" Kenna said and they leaned towards me.
I swallowed hard.
"It's a message."
Kenna gave me an exasperated look.
"Yeah, we got that. What does it say?"
"It says...We're alive. MJ."
"That's it? That's the message? Who's MJ?"
"Mana and Jared?" I said. My mother made a surprised sound. "They managed to get us a message somehow, using Morse code. Jared must have taken the prototype of Mirallaley's communication technology with him. They left before we got the full shipment. They're alive, Kenna. They're alive."
I felt like crying I was so relieved, but that wouldn't do. I grinned instead.
"Thank The Three," my mother said, putting her hand on her heart.
"This makes this evening even more perfect," Kenna said, smiling at me happily. "I've been so worried about them. There's probably more to worry about but if they were able to get us this message, then there's hope."
I nodded. That was my thinking exactly.
I leaned back and let a servant set the next course in front of me. There was a white cube, drizzled in some kind of red sauce.
"What is this?" Kenna said under her breath to me. She was clearly disgusted.
"It's space whale. Speaking of the Mirallaleyans. Remember the diplomatic visit I went on to Mirallaley to thank them for the intergalactic technology they provided us with? They took me whaling." I grimaced at the memory. "And I got one."
She blanched.
"A space whale? I didn't even know there were such things. And this is it?"
She poked at the small white cube.
"Well, this is some of its blubber. The Mirallaleyans have a very cold planet and so they used to go out into space and hunt the whales and then bring them back and live off them for months as the winter raged. They often eat the blubber straight up. They consider this a delicacy."
She gave me a look.
"They made me take some with me. I was going to give it away or throw it out but somehow it must have got into Chef's hands."
"Oh, stop complaining kids, and eat it." I watched as my mother cut off a piece and put it into her mouth.
Kenna cut off a small piece. She pulled it gingerly off her fork with her teeth and chewed slowly but didn't gag.
"It's tough," she said.
"Wouldn't you be if you had to survive in space?"
"I guess so," Kenna said and she continued to eat.
"You don't have to eat it if you don't want to," I said, unsure whether I wanted to eat mine.
"I come from an Italian family. If it's on your plate, you eat it," she said.
"Italian?" My mother found it difficult to pronounce the foreign word.
"It's an ethnic group on Earth that my family comes from. We're big eaters."
My mother and my human fiancee were getting along and discussing space whale blubber and Earth's ethnic groups together. I must be dreaming.
I thought back to when I had met Kenna and was so glad I could remember my life again. We had been through so much. And now that we were engaged and would get married soon, we would be going through the rest of our lives together.
I couldn't wait.
KENNA
The hovercraft had dropped us off at the entrance to the oasis and Dar and I strolled through, chatting.
"So, when do you think your mother will let us get married now that the Conveyor has approved us?" I said, as Dar picked a small purple flower and tucked it behind my ear, kissing my neck.
"Probably a month or two. Why do you ask?" he said, looking at me curiously. He knew I had something up my sleeve. He pressed the triangle in the rock and I followed him into the cave with swirling rainbow lights on the ceiling. I stared up in awe.
"This place never ceases to amaze me," I said.
"You never cease to amaze me," Dar whispered.
I smiled, still trying to keep it light.
"You've never seen a human eat space whale before? It wasn't that impressive."
He picked me up and spun me around so that my legs swung out and I got dizzy. Then he set me down and very thoroughly kissed me until my knees got weak.
When he let me go, I swooned.
"Now, tell me what you're up to woman, or I won't be held responsible for my actions."
His eyes looked predatory in the weak light. Good.
"Are you saying that because you love me? Or just because you're on your mating cycle?" I said, as innocently as I could.
He narrowed his eyes at me. "Both," he said.
That's what I thought. I just needed confirmation.
I swallowed. "If you're planning on ravishing me tonight..."
He took a step towards me and I saw his chest rising and falling quickly.
I took a step back.
"...we might have to use some protection."
"Protection? What is this protection?" he said. "I remember now, you mentioned it the first time we made love."
"You remember that?" I said.
He nodded.
"On Earth, humans use it so that women don't get pregnant."
He blinked.
"Don't get pregnant?"
"If you make love to me tonight, I could get pregnant because I'm on the fertile part of my cycle, too."
He stared at me.
"What? Shouldn't I have told you?" I said, feeling really nervous now.
"Of course," he said. "I'm just stunned. It often takes years before a male and female's cycles come into alignment. It's just one more sign that you are my sheeranla."
"So do you have anything?"
"There's no such thing on Susohn. If the cycles line up, the couple is happy. And if they don't want to get pregnant, they simply abstain."
"So we're going home now?" I hoped my voice didn't reveal the disappointment I felt.
"Not on your life," he said, pulling me into the circle of his arms. "We're starting a family tonight."
I smiled and looked up at the glowing lights dancing on the rocks of the cave. I remembered how I had been so sad that I couldn't see the stars before I left home to come on this crazy adventure.
"I love you, Dar," I said, kissing his face with The Three â forehead, cheek, cheek.
"And I love you, my sheeranla. Now come on. I've got some ravishing to do."
Like the night when I had first decided to leave Earth, my life suddenly seemed full of possibility.
Kenna and Dar's story is complete for now, but Elara and Jakk's is coming soon. In the meantime, enjoy this sneak peak from Warriors of Surtu!
TERRA
They were out there. The Surtu.
I could see their ships from my tiny window in the kitchen where I worked as a porter on the Fortuna space station.
I thought their ships would be more hostile looking. Intimidating or depraved perhaps, like the Surtu themselves. But as I took a rag from over my shoulder to dry a glass, I couldn't help but think that the ships looked like glow flies out in the distance.
The view would have been romantic if we weren't worried that the Surtu were going to kill us all.
We knew the Surtu were going to come. It was a war Earth had sixty years to prepare for. Now, that war was about to begin, and I was part of Earth's first line of defense.
Well, to be honest, my home the Fortuna was. It was one of many military space stations constructed after Earth learned that the Surtu were out there and we had to be ready. Unlike the other space stations, it was disguised as a spiritual sanctuary. We looked like a sisterhood, where women of the cloth were ready to welcome alien visitors into the gardens and marble halls under the pretense of peace.
Setting the glass down, I snickered at my own thoughts, more out of tension than any humor.
Nothing about the Fortuna was peaceful. Every woman on board was as lethal as a cobra. From one generation to the next, the women chosen for the Fortuna were taught the art of warfare with precision, as if it were a school subject like algebra or English. Earth never knew when the Surtu would come, but we knew what the Fortuna was built for. We were the furthest station away from Earth. Fortuna was a deathtrap, meant to lure the enemy in, learn its weaknesses, then eliminate them.
Our time was now.
"Gallia wants to see you," Lucina announced brightly as she bounded into the kitchen, grabbing an apple from a nearby bowl. Lucina Whitmore was my best friend. Like me, the petite blonde had been primed to join the Fortuna since she was little. Our mothers were once sisters here before they returned to Earth to marry and have children.
All women assigned to the Fortuna were given the name of a Roman goddess, which was used proudly like a badge. Lucina and I were different. We had been given Roman names since birth, our destiny already decided by our mothers.
I'd known Lucina since I first beat half the boys in our kindergarten class at arm wrestling. We knew more about each other than our own families back on Earth. I didn't know one thing, though. How she managed to stay so bubbly and upbeat, even with danger looming close to us, was beyond me.
"Did Gallia say what for?" I asked, deciding whether or not I should finish my duties in the kitchen before heading to our Commander's office. Lucina twirled the apple on her finger before taking a huge bite. "No," she said, her mouth full, "but I'm assuming it has something to do with the alien race that's about to attack. The ones with the big fangs and hollow eyes."
I was surprised. "Is that really what you think they look like?"
"We grew up listening to stories about the monsters in space. It's hard to know what to expect." Lucina shrugged.