Part 1: His Captive
Chapter 1
The battle is over.
The Sethari, who have plundered and enslaved us for the last 100 years, and have reduced the human race to a fraction of its original number, are destroyed. I should be happy and should be celebrating with the others who are now free, and can live their lives on their own terms. The whole world is quaking in a happy frenzy, but my fellow female sufferers and I are not taking part in these pompous celebrations. We are captives, spoils of war, breeding machines for the alien lifeforms who finished off the Sethari. Nobody asked us if we were ready for a journey to a strange world. Nobody wanted to know if we even wanted children, much less if we wanted to mate with aliens. All of this was decided for us by the powers that be.
They told us that humanity would survive because of our obedience. I am lined up in a row with 167 other healthy, young women and wait for the president to shake my hand and thank me personally. I would love to ask him why his wife, with her expansive hairdo and stark face, isn’t taking my place. Where was he, when people like me had to hide behind the scenes, so they wouldn’t be executed? In World War II, they called people like him a collaborator, someone who will betray his fellow citizens, just to hang on to his little piece of authority. He is nothing but a game piece who was put into play by the Sethari in order to drive the last little bit of resistance out of us. This man, who is supposedly the most powerful person in the world, and is the president of the World Federation, had signed countless death warrants, just to save his own skin. The minute he saw a way to get rid of the tyrants, he jumped on the chance. I have to give the gray-haired man with those cold, blue eyes credit: As soon as the Qua’Hathri had made contact with him, he was ready to throw the Sethari to the lions.
Not that I had any sympathy for them – they took advantage of the human race for over one hundred years. They are energy vampires, and I don’t mean that metaphorically. The Sethari imprisoned the humans like livestock, and extracted energy from them. They needed this energy in order to survive. And Mr. President, who is approaching me now, supplied them with a constant stream of replacements.
Now that I see him for the first time in person, my anger brings tears to my eyes. The huge screens that are on almost every street corner, and from which he regularly spoke to us with his effusive words, don’t do him justice. His tailored suit hides a small potbelly under it. Knowing that he had it good enough to have a belly, while my siblings had to dig through the trash to find food, makes my heart race. I ball my fists and try to calm down. But the only thing I see is his self-satisfied expression. Later, he will be able to proclaim to the world via Livestream how he saved humanity from complete destruction.
His wife is standing two steps behind him, just like any good and virtuous girl should. The looks she is giving her companion are not quite so virtuous. His name is Khazaar Drasurq, the warlord of the Qua’Hathri. In some ways, I can understand why she is drooling over him. He is handsome in a strange way, and I am sure she watched, onscreen, as he fought the Sethari to destruction. I have to admit that I can’t take my eyes off of him, either. The memory of this tall warrior beheading one Sethari after another with his gleaming sword is still very fresh. He reminds me of a medieval warlord who isn’t afraid to ride on to the battlefield himself, to dive headfirst into the fight. Despite all of the progress technology has made over the last two thousand years, the Sethari were basically invulnerable. That is, until Khazaar Drasurq and his warriors showed up. Their swords, daggers and lances, made out of Qua’Hathri steel, enabled them to pierce the Sethari’s rubber-like skin.
They have almost made it to me, the president and his entourage. I try to tune him out and look at Khazaar, instead. Despite the scales that cover his pale skin, and despite his strange eyes, he looks very masculine. Human traits dominate his appearance. His eyes brush over me and then stop for a second. His yellow-gold iris is the shape of a slit, just like cats’ eyes are – just like cats’ eyes were, I should say, since most pets have been exterminated by now. I like his hair best. It falls in dark waves onto his shoulders. It shimmers blue-black and looks silky. While he is looking at me, his scent wafts over to me and wraps around me. Immediately, I want to close my eyes and bathe in his smell. To me, he smells like milk and honey, like marzipan and butter croissants, things I haven’t eaten since I was a child. His scent makes me relax, probably because it is tied to the last beautiful memories I have of my parents. I sniff unobtrusively, and sense something rough under the sweet overtones. A hint of musk brushes my olfactory receptor and increases my heart rate. If they all smell as good as this warlord, then the sex might not be as bad as I had feared. I might even be able to forget the fact that the other women and I are nothing but breeding vessels for the children of the Qua’Hathri.
The president exchanges a few pleasantries with the blonde next to me, and then he is in front of me, holding out his hand. I take it, and look into his eyes, smiling. In the resistance, I learned how to incapacitate enemies by applying targeted pressure to sensitive body parts. Even though I only use a fraction of my strength, the most powerful man in the world falls to his knees in front of me. That does me good, even if it isn’t particularly smart. His bodyguards, who don’t even deserve that designation, have been standing in the background, smirking, until now. Now they surround me and have their weapons trained on me. Since I am not a Sethari, I don’t have rubber-like skin that can deflect bullets. A thought flashes through my mind. Maybe dying wouldn’t be so bad, after all? If I died, that would nix the plans of the man who is now sweating under the strain. But if I were dead, then they would just find another woman who would have to go to the Qua’Hathri, so I let him go and take a step back. I am still smiling, but this time, it is a smile of pure satisfaction. He will remember me. Of that I am certain.
Khazaar has watched all of this unfold without intervening. Do I see a smile dart across his otherwise closed features? Only after the president has regained his feet, supported by his wife and surrounded by his concerned bodyguards, does Khazaar speak up. He steps very close to me, and I have to lean my head back to look him in the eyes. The women on my left and right shrink back in fear of the huge commander, but I force myself to stay right where I am. Even though my heart is beating much too fast, and my knees are trembling, I am not afraid of dying. In his strange eyes, I see something like appreciation, and in the way his gaze wanders briefly over the sweating president, I recognize contempt for the man.
“Why did you do that?” he asks. His deep voice sounds pleasant and calm, almost as if he already knew the answer. Something scratches very carefully at the barrier that I have built around my spirit. It feels like a polite knock, like a polite request for access. But I am definitely not ready to grant anyone else access to my thoughts. Instead, I send my spirit out, just like I have learned, and knock on his. For a split second, his eyes widen, and to my great surprise, he grants me access to his thoughts.
His thoughts are as foreign as his appearance. I am too excited to feel anything more than a small part of his perceptions. Almost all of his thoughts center on conquering foreign worlds. Killing isn’t what excites him. Subjugation is. I understand that he spared us humans for only one single reason: We are genetically compatible. The Qua’Hathri are a race on the brink of extinction, just like the humans. He has set out to find appropriate women. Suddenly, he slams the barrier back into place, and with a jolt, I am back in my body.
The whole episode couldn’t have lasted more than a few seconds. To observers, it must have looked like we were staring into each other’s eyes too long. My mouth is dry, and I swallow. Now he knows my secret. My gift. I curse my lack of self-control and my curiosity, but it doesn’t seem like he wants to punish me for it. Quite the opposite. His interest in my gift is obvious.
At that moment, a bodyguard hits me in the back of the knees, and I fall to the ground. “Answer the lord’s question right now!” he roars, and makes as if to intervene again. The pain is indescribable, but even worse is the humiliation of lying on the floor in front of Khazaar.
Before I can open my mouth to yell at the coward who attacked me from behind, everything starts to happen at once. Without warning, the bodyguard is on the floor. Khazaar’s foot rests on his ribcage, and I hear crunching and cracking, as two ribs break. The man screams, and the warlord takes his foot off of the warrior in one gentle and unbelievably elegant move. In the blink of an eye, a sharp dagger, decorated with red gems, gleams at the bodyguard’s throat. Khazaar’s voice is barely louder than a whisper, but literally everyone in the hall stiffens at the ice-cold tone it carries with it. “How dare you touch the bride of the warlord of the Qua’Hathri?” The tip of the dagger pushes into the vulnerable spot under the man’s twitching Adam’s apple.
“I… am sorry,” the man croaks, “my Lord, I didn’t know that you had chosen her.”
He isn’t the only one.