2. Chapter 1

Team 2 hurried into Assan Keep behind the long line of Assan men who had brought them back from the forest. Rocor, the oldest brother, pointed to his younger brothers Warku and Gao. “Ready our weapons! Get the fliers in formation! Arm the Keep for assault!”

Jasmine Forsythe called out over the noise. “What’s going on?”

Rocor stopped in front of her. “I’m sorry, Commander. We have to meet this threat without a moment’s delay.”

“What threat?” Jasmine asked.

“The Ulasso invaded our territory,” Rocor replied. “We have to respond immediately.”

“The Ulasso! You can’t mean Fawks. He took care of us and led us to your Keep after we crashed in the forest. We would have died if he hadn’t saved us.”

“The Ulasso are the most dangerous threat on this planet,” he told her. “None of the Clans will have anything to do with them, and neither should you. We can’t overlook even one of them entering our territory. If we let it slide, they would see us as weak. They would attack and annihilate us in no time.”

Jasmine shook her head. “I can’t believe that. Fawks Ulasso is the kindest, most considerate person you could ever meet. He helped us save Sophia when she got injured by a huge animal. I would trust my life to Fawks Ulasso.”

He turned away. “I don’t have time to discuss it now. I have to get down to the armory and supervise the preparations. We’ll launch an assault on the Ulasso.”

Jasmine hurried after him. “I was hoping we could get to know your family before you race off. We just got here. We haven’t even been properly introduced.”

Rocor stopped in mid-stride. His face changed, but he didn’t really smile. “I’m sorry, Commander. My sister Freya will have to show you around.”

Jasmine searched his face. Rocor looked so different from Fawks, with his perfectly smooth white skin. Jasmine and her teammates all thought Fawks was a typical Kratak. He resembled your average human, except for his white-blonde hair and ice-blue eyes.

Now that they met real Krataks, they found out Fawks wasn’t typical at all. Rocor and his relatives had dark hair and eyes, and colored tattoo patterns swirled and undulated under their skin. The shifting images etched organic shapes in their features. The patterns rose into view and fell out of sight with a person’s thoughts and moods.

Jasmine stared at Rocor in fascinated horror. She’d never seen anyone like him. She wanted to look away, to hide her eyes from his disturbing features, but he attracted her in ways she couldn’t understand. She had to look and look, and keep on looking, even when his features twisted a knife in her guts.

The coloration changed his face into a mask of animal menace. They made him look like some kind of dragon about to swoop down and attack her. The next moment, the forms disappeared and left him a regular man with chiseled, angular features. She could understand him that way until the images came back and transformed him into a demon again.

He studied her in the same curious fascination until she blushed in spite of herself. He towered over her by inches. All Kratak men did. She became aware of her puny weakness compared to his powerful shoulders.

He wore simple linen clothing, and his pants stopped below his knees. His bare feet gripped the ground. A metal ornament was fixed in the center of a diagonal buckler across his chest. The same intertwined tendrils and branches decorated the medallion’s shiny surface, and a curved sword hung on his hip.

Jasmine’s mind whirled for something to say to this man, for some way to stop him walking away. “You don’t have to call me Commander. My real name is Jasmine.”

He dipped his chin once, and he lowered his voice to a confidential murmur. “Very well, Jasmine.”

“Maybe I could help you. I’d like to see your armaments for myself.”

He shrugged and lowered his eyes. “That’s not a good idea.”

“Why not? I’m Commander of this team, and I’ve commanded dozens of armed incursions in my career. Let me help you. I’m sure you could use another pair of hands to get your preparations finished in time.”

He chopped his hand through the air. “No! You stay here. I have to go now. Freya will show you to your rooms. Maybe I’ll see you when I get back. We can be properly introduced then.”

Jasmine smiled in spite of herself. He could be polite enough when he wanted to be. “Thank you. I’d like that.”

He raced away, along with his brothers. Jasmine turned around to find her teammates staring at the retreating Krataks with wide eyes. Sophia Tompkins, the team’s anthropologist, glanced over at Jasmine. “What was that all about?”

Jasmine migrated toward her friends. She kept her voice low, too, though murmuring or even whispering wouldn’t stop anybody from overhearing them. “I can’t believe Fawks and his people can be all that bad. He did everything for us.”

Dana Barr, the genealogist, spoke up. “Maybe he didn’t consider us enemies. Maybe he wouldn’t have been so nice if we hadn’t been foreigners.”

Doctor Ron Simons came toward them. “Either way, how are we supposed to find our way around in this place? It must be enormous.”

The whole team stared at the Keep surrounding them. They ran into the building so fast they never got a chance to see it in detail until right now. They stood in a huge hall of black stone. The whole Keep nestled under a mountain with entrances carved into the mountain’s sides. The passage through which the Assan brothers led the team plunged down into the planet itself.

The passage widened into this central hall. The chamber extended far into the distance in every direction. More passages ran off on every side going who knows where. Shafts in the ceiling let light flood the hall, and a pleasant heat radiated up from the floor.

Magnificent tapestries covered the walls. They depicted the same intricate patterns of trees, animals, people, and organic shapes woven into elaborate, psychedelic images. Vibrant colors reflected the light to give the Keep a luxurious air, but those patterns infected Jasmine with the same horrified curiosity. She couldn’t look away. They mesmerized her and weaseled their way into her brain until she could think of nothing else.

The team stood silent for a long time. Jasmine shook herself free of the patterns’ influence. When she looked at her friends, she saw them staring at the tapestries with the same blank expressions on their faces. The patterns worked on all of them the same way.

Abigail Simons, Dr. Ron’s wife, hovered close to her three daughters, Charlotte, Jane, and Leona, but no one could protect anybody else from this strange environment. Only Rex Masters, the Allies representative, sauntered over to Jasmine with his usual supercilious smirk plastered all over his face.

For the millionth time since she’d left the space station, she regretted agreeing to go on this mission with him. Their emergent romance, if that’s what you could call it, had caused nothing but problems ever since they left. Rex took every opportunity to challenge her authority as Commanding Officer. She had to shut him down more than once, and she couldn’t mistake the disgusted looks on her teammates’ faces when Rex tried to get close to her.

Thank goodness Sheena Lamb kept Jasmine grounded on the journey from the shuttle crash to Assan Keep. Jasmine had shared command with Sheena, and Sheena saved the shuttle from smashing to its doom when the white dragon attacked them on entry into the atmosphere.

Now here came Rex again, all ready to butter Jasmine up for something else he wanted. She couldn’t rely on Sheena to bolster her now. She had to hold her ground against him, no matter what. If she let him snow her here, she would lose all authority to command this team. Their whole mission would crumble.

Rex sidled up to her. He turned his shoulder to her in that confidential way of his. She understood that movement so well now. It meant they faced this situation together. “Why do you suppose he was so reticent about his armaments?”

Jasmine refused to look at him. “We are strangers, after all. He doesn’t know anything about us. He has no idea what kind of experience we have. He probably just doesn’t want us underfoot. If I went, maybe he thinks Abigail and the girls and everyone else would have to go, too. We’ll leave it alone for the moment. The question now is how we find our way around.”

“Where’s this Freya person?” Dana asked.

Charlotte Simons leaned close to her mother. “I’m hungry.”

Before anyone could say anything else, sharp footsteps rang down a path to their right. A tall woman strode into the hall and marched right up to Jasmine. She wore her dark hair long in the back the way the men did, and the same dark colors moved and seethed under her skin.

The woman wore a beautiful, ornate gown covered in the same pictures and intertwined shapes. She clasped Jasmine’s hand. “Very pleased to meet you, Commander. I’m Freya Assan. I’m going to show you to your rooms, and then when you’re ready, you can come back here and join us for the afternoon meal. Would you like that?”

Jasmine clutched this woman’s hand for dear life. “We’d like that very much. Thank you. We’re all tired and uncertain after our journey.”

“I’m sure you are. The Ulasso are far too dangerous to trust the way you did. I’m surprised you’re not distraught and collapsing.”

Jasmine shook her head, but she didn’t argue. What was the point of trying to get these people to understand how the team felt about Fawks? The team trusted him as one of their own. They trusted Fawks a lot more than these people.

Freya motioned them to follow her down the passage from which she just emerged. “This way.”

Freya glided across the floor. Her full skirts swayed with her gait, but made no noise. She became one with the Keep. Jasmine strode at her side. She couldn’t help but compare herself with this graceful woman. Her stiff canvas pants and flight jacket made her curvy body clumsy and oafish walking next to Freya. Jasmine’s straight, shoulder-length auburn hair never gave her any worries on serious space missions, but maybe it didn’t do so much for her appearance.

She couldn’t look around her without getting interested in the tapestries again, so she turned her attention inward. She ran over all the events leading from the shuttle crash to now. General Duncan had met the team outside the Keep with startling news. The Allies wanted to withdraw the team before their research even began. They wanted to escalate their diplomatic efforts to gain a foothold on this planet. The whole team decided to stay on the planet a little longer to accomplish the work for which they came in the first place.

That conversation seemed so simple at the time. Now, at a few hours’ remove, it wormed its way into Jasmine’s thoughts. She didn’t like the effect it had on her, either. General Duncan couldn’t know what she’d done to one of her most valuable officers.

The Allies put this mission together to study a remote population not connected with the Alliance. Somehow, Kratak slipped through the cracks. No one ever came here before. The Krataks represented a culture diametrically opposite to the Allies. Males dominated their society, whereas women controlled the Allies’ hierarchy. Two teams would stay in isolated Keeps to research the Kratak people, their customs and their environment.

Now General Duncan wanted to yank the teams away before their mission even began. She wanted to replace the research team with hard-core diplomats and negotiators. Why would she do that? Jasmine could think of only one plausible explanation. The research mission was never more than a pretext to get Allies people onto the planet.

The Allies offered to send a research team, a team of doctors and scientists. The Krataks couldn’t exactly refuse that, not without alerting the Allies to any suspicions they harbored about the Allies’ intentions. Once the research team established an Allies presence on the planet, the negotiators would move in. They would strong-arm the Krataks into joining the Allies.

Jasmine pushed those thoughts out of her mind. She represented the Allies here as much as Rex. She couldn’t go questioning her own position now.

Freya’s voice interrupted her. “Is anything the matter?”

Jasmine looked up. Freya’s bright dark eyes bored into her soul. For all Jasmine knew, Freya could see the thoughts written all over her face. “I guess I’m just tired, that’s all.”

Freya pointed toward a door. “This is your room, Commander.”

Jasmine colored. “Please don’t call me that, and please tell your family not to call me that, either. No one calls me that, not even the people directly under my command, and you certainly aren’t that. Everybody calls me Jasmine, and you should, too.”

Freya gave her a toothy grin. “As you wish, Jasmine. This is your room.”

Jasmine looked around. Another door stood open across the passage. The Simons family bustled around inside. Rex, Dana, and Sophia waited for Freya to take them the rest of the way down the passage to their own rooms.

Jasmine’s shoulders slumped under the weight of everything. She never let herself feel her sheer exhaustion until this moment. She slunk off to her room. “Thank you.”

Freya called back over her shoulder when she walked away. “Come back to the hall when you’re ready. We’ll be eating soon.”