Chapter 12:
Drake could not believe what he had just heard. He could not have heard what he had thought that he had.
He stuttered out, “You? Wait. No. The weapon can’t be you.”
No, it couldn’t be.”
She wiped her eyes with one shaking hand. Her eyes filled again as soon as she had wiped those tears and he reached for her, pulling her into his arms and holding her slender body against his broad chest. She choked out, “It was not always so, but it is now. I’m both the weapon, and the rest of the machine. The part of the machine that will force me back to the prison that was Tralam should I be used as the weapon. You see, he thought, as did the race who created the weapon originally, that the weapon could never be left in a place where it might be used by those without good cause to arm it.”
Drake could not comprehend what he was hearing. “Slow down, okay?” God, she felt so good in his arms, and she was telling him the truth, that he was sure of, but there was a story there, and he had to know what it was.
She took a deep breath. He wrapped his arms around her more firmly, pulling her into his lap. Her bottom bumped against his now flaccid member, and he held his breath, willing it to stay limp so his head would remain clear. He said, “Start at the beginning.”
“I’m an Eldern.”
He didn’t know the word. He frowned and asked, “Is there…is there a word for that in my language?”
She shook her head. Her fragrant hair brushed against his cheek. He said, “All right. Is that the name of your race or your tribe?”
“My race. We did not have tribes. We had one race, one people, one…” Her body heaved in his arms as she fetched in a long breath and released it again, clearly frustrated by the language barrier. “We could think together.”
Think together? He thought about that for a moment. “You mean your minds were all somehow linked?”
“Yes!” She looked relieved, but that expression changed to one of sorrow and loss. “But some did not have that. They were…private. So when the wars between my people, when my people began to war with each other, we were all, those who were linked, part of it if we wanted to be or not. So some of us decided to flee our home. War was not what we wanted, and so many did, and it battered at our minds. We turned our backs on our people, and we were wrong for that. We knew of Tralam. We had many advances in tech and the like and someone who knew the map codes because they had heard the legend centuries before.”
His eyes widened. “I see. That is what you meant when you said your race didn’t build the weapon.”
“Yes. The race that built it, they were far ahead of us, but when we arrived at Tralam, they were dead and gone. Tralam was ancient even then. Many eons old. Yet so advanced. So we stayed because I had the gift of making things grow, and others had gifts too. We made Tralam a home. All until the founders came and destroyed us.”
His hand found her silken hair and slid down those tresses, then gathered a long strand and wrapped it around his finger. “Franchine is revered in this universe. You must know that. They all are.”
“I do know. Some were decent enough. I do not think all of them knew what Franchine was, but many did, and helped him with what he did.”
He didn’t want to know. He didn’t. He had seen the heads of the founders on those spikes and in those chambers and if Franchine was capable of that, and to the very people that he was allied with, what would he have been willing to do to her, to her kind?
Lornia shifted again. Her smooth skin met his. The subtle perfume of her body rose between them, mingled with the scent of their sex. “He created beasts. He was building what was supposed to be a way to keep them alive. The machine began to fail, you see, and life was slowing down and fading for so many and so much there in Tralam. We agreed to let him try, not knowing what he would create and believing that he was working for the greater good. The greater good.” Her lips twisted in disgust. The beasts were abominations. He put minds of those who had died into them. So they had logic and reason. They had emotion. And they were cunning and warlike too.”
Drake wanted to throw up. Franchine had been a science maker such as had never been seen before or after. His work had been what had led him to go to other leaders and ask for that alliance that had become the Federation.
“Did we kill a human that day we killed that beast?”
“I do not know. They bred, and fast. Before we could figure out what he had done and stop him, they were already breeding and creating even worse things. Deadly things. The wars came, and we won, but most of us died in that war. Those of us who were left, and Franchine was one of them, retreated to the far end of the fortress, by the machine because the machine still had enough power to keep them at bay.”
“You sealed off sections of Tralam against them.”
She nodded and let her shoulders droop. “The gardens had been nearly destroyed. I can make things grow but the wars and the beasts were a lot to fight against, and the gardens went to seed and neglect while we were busy trying to survive. So we chose to cryo for a century each.
“I was in the cryo chamber when I heard them, my people, screaming in torment. I could not wake up.”
Her eyes wore a haunted expression. “I heard them. In my sleep. I thought it was the beasts. I thought that they had come through the seals and I thought that my race died to them. I did not know why I lived, and I tried to wake up, but I couldn’t. Not even when he began his experiments upon me.”
Drake’s urge to vomit faded. Now he was angry. His fingers rested on her jaw, and he tilted her head so that he could look into her downcast face. “What did he do to you?”
“He implanted me with the weapon and the machine’s innermost workings. I do not even know what all I am capable of. I just know that once you lead me into battle and order me to deploy my abilities, Tralam will form again. That is what the machine did. It made Tralams.”
She’d said Tralams. Plural. He noticed that, but he overlooked it at that moment because there was so much to say just then, and his horror at what had been done to her was overwhelming.
So was the fact that she, this stunning creature who tugged at his body in a way no other had ever been able to, was a weapon capable of massive amounts of destruction and death.
How when she was so soft and gentle? So warm and sweet?
And how could he command her to kill knowing that she was, despite everything else that she was, a being that he wanted in his life?
That she would be sent back to that prison if he did so?