“Wrong answer again!” she shouted more vehemently, smacking him vigorously several times. He obliged her with a grunt and she saw his balls and penis shrink. How could he say that? To suggest that
she’d
orchestrated their love scenes. It was absurd!
As though he could read her tormented mind, Azaes continued, “Every time I entered my Epoptic trance through the
vishna
drug,
you
came to me. You and your cursed dreams. I was your prisoner of love.”
She slapped him with the vines again. “Wrong, wrong, wrong!” she said sharply. Was that why he’d forced himself on her now, because of her intoxicating scent and those suggestive dreams she’d foisted on him? Or was it tormented frustration, the simple and natural act of a man who’d spent his entire sexually mature life in denial? Of course, it had nothing to do with love.
“You said they felt guilty, the crewers.” she stammered her next question. “Why would they?”
“Because they’re human beings,” he snarled, turning his head slightly to glare at her. “They should feel guilty! They should not have come. We don’t want them!”
“Wrong again!” Whack! Whack! Whack! She’d stopped enjoying herself a while ago. The sadistic pleasure in physically tormenting him had given way to a maelstrom of anguish that roiled uncomfortably inside her. He said
them
but surely he meant
you
. She remembered his first angry words to her in Eosian,
su neehat mo legglis
. Of course he included
her
in his misanthropic thoughts.
“But it was you who came to us in the first place,” she insisted, her voice quavering under a storm of emotions.
“Ah, yes, with the promised gift of eternity,” he said sourly, lowering his head, bare butt still facing her. “That was fifteen years ago,” he continued grimly. “I’ve since changed my opinion of your people and long ago abandoned any possibility of collaboration. I had thought that your race was on the verge of enlightenment. But I was wrong. All the ships you sent were run by men and women of irreverence, ignorance, mendacity and greed. Their mission was always to simply take, without any regard for my people.”
Her husband had been one of those men. “Not
all
of them.”
“Yes,
all
!” he insisted, cutting her off with such vehemence that she flinched and scrambled out from under him, vine whip forgotten. She tucked her bent legs behind her and hugged her waist with her arms. He sensed her changed mood and turned around to face her, sitting cross-legged, face stern with determination. “They came to take our gifts, by force if necessary,” he continued gravely. “Your husband included.” His face tightened into a sour mask of mixed regret and disapproval. “It was all described in your DAWN Project. Don’t forget, I could enter their minds, every single one of them, Captain Dan Gallagher included.”
She tensed and found herself swallowing down the saliva that poured into her mouth. Azaes’s disturbing proclamation lingered in her mind, unsettling her. Before he’d so energetically fucked her, Azaes had claimed that Dan had killed himself. She didn’t want to believe it, but was it true? Had he felt alone in his guilt? If he’d known he had a son, would he have felt the same way?
“So even you know what DAWN is,” she grumbled, letting frustrated anger release some of the tension. “Seems I’m the only one in the universe who doesn’t.”
“You’re probably right,” he agreed absently. “Yes, DAWN, the most beautiful time of the day and the most evil plan your people have ever conceived.” He frowned and looked through her into some faraway place in his mind. After expelling a long breath, he explained, “Zeta Corp and its crew were fulfilling a government military contract.”
“Wait!” she objected. “
I’m
not on contract with the military.”
“Not directly, Genevieve. But the company you work for is. Believe me, I know. In fact, most of your crew had military backgrounds, and some of them were still on a military payroll.”
Her gaze dropped. Yes, she knew that. It made sense. Bragg, for instance, in addition to having a Ph.D in extraterrestrial ecology and a P.Eng. in spacestream-transport engineering, was a colonel in the armed forces.
“Your government’s mandate was simple
—
seize by force or stealth what they could not obtain through diplomatic means. The former was considered most likely because of our reluctance to relinquish anything to you
until you were considered ready,
as I had stated in my initial address to your people.” His face twisted into a sneer as he returned his focus on Genevieve. “Your precious DAWN project was conceived in several alternative plans. Plan B, which went into effect at the first sign of aggression upon your ship, was to mobilize into combat-stealth mode, which involved seizing in any way possible our bio-technology without regard for Eosian welfare and take back a hostage. I was the most likely candidate. You see, they already had in their minds that we would attack.”
“And they were right.” Genevieve cast her eyes down in morbid thought. “Only it wasn’t you, it was the Epoptes.” She snapped her gaze to his eyes with new intensity. “Wasn’t it? So they do exist?”
“Yes, of course they do,” he said impatiently. “They possess the knowledge and means to manipulate all physical things on and around Eos, including the asteroid belt that surrounds our planet. They simply pelted your flimsy ships until they broke up, exploded or, as in the case of your ship, came down.” His eyes looked into hers with a mixture of remorse and pain. “I
soul-drifted
into your fellow human’s dreams in an attempt to discourage them, to make them turn back. Unfortunately the dreams were not enough, and your crews met their demise.”
That shed him in a much better light, she thought, feeling gladdened that Azaes had at least shown some compassion toward her people. It gave her the strength to meet his gaze with a challenging one. “What about me, then? Your dreams weren’t exactly discouraging.”
He made a sound of exasperation and frowned, suddenly uncomfortable. “I already told you that you interfered with my ability to affect your dreams. You took control. You changed it all.”
“I don’t believe that,” she said stiffly, leaning forward to eye him more closely. How could she have imagined the
vishna
joining? “You played a big role in those dreams. I couldn’t have possibly imagined all those things.”
He sighed in frustration. “Yes, yes, of course I did,” he said impatiently, his frown deepening. “I concede I heartily provided. But the tone of your dreams was entirely your doing, not mine.”
So, the loving was truly one-sided, she concluded miserably, and felt her body sink with disappointment. Then she felt anger boil up at her weakness. It was bad enough to realize that she had strong feelings for this stern Eosian, but to discover—rather, to confirm—that he didn’t reciprocate in the least except for this lusty interlude, was hard to accept. Logic told her that there was no reason for him to be interested in her, except as a curiosity of science. He was going to marry his equal, a beautiful woman who understood him and would give him what he wanted, heirs worthy of ruling the
Sthanu
Circle. What in hell kind of fantasy was she dreaming about?
She half-listened to him as he pushed his lower lip out in grave thought and continued, “Your government seeks our crystals.”
“What?” She pulled herself out of her dismal thoughts to what Azaes had said. “Crystals like the one in your pyramid?”
“The large hexagonal ruby stone you saw is a Fire Crystal. It’s responsible for my unique mode of communication and appeared in my original broadcast to Earth. Our crystal communications network is incredibly sophisticated and very powerful. Your scientists and politicians decided that our crystal technology was responsible for all that we have and are, particularly the immortality part.”
“What did you say…” she trailed off, thinking she’d heard him incorrectly.
“We are what you would call immortal.”
“What?” she gasped, mind reeling. She bumbled out the next words, wondering how old he really was. “I thought what you said in your vid-cast was metaphor about offering us the gift of eternity.”
“Ah, you’re a very rare breed,” he said with sardonic amusement. “A naïve intellectual. An oxymoron. The others took my message literally, as it turned out. They wanted to believe in an all-powerful elixir that would cure all ills and bestow on them power and life unimaginable. So they did. And they sent you, their callow angel, to fool us and get it.”
“You’re wrong,” she objected, not appreciating being called callow. “I was never meant to land here in the first place. I was supposed to remain in orbit aboard Zac.”
“But you didn’t, did you?” he challenged with a grim smile. Then he leaned forward on his hands, looking suddenly very intense. “Now I have a question for
you
. I had a team search the area of this wreckage to assess the damage you’d done to our forest. We only found traces of six of your fellow eleven crewers. Five are missing.”
She swallowed and felt the pit of her stomach lurch. With a sudden dry mouth, she said, “Perhaps they were scattered in pieces too difficult to find.”
He looked at her with a deep frown. “Believe me when I say that their remains were not in the vicinity. We use a genetic tracking technique far superior to anything you have.”
“Then where are they?” she said, thoughts racing.
“That was
my
question,” Azaes grumbled, looking very annoyed.
“They couldn’t have been torn out of the ship earlier while in space during the initial breach, because I checked. Both the
Chimera
and the crew were still aboard then. And the only other breach occurred on the surface of Eos during my crash-landing…” she trailed, eyes suddenly fixing on Azaes with stiff fear.
“Precisely,” he said, reading her thoughts. “Your smaller vessel, the
Chimera
, the one that’s missing…” He let the rest trail.
“Oh, my God…” she breathed. Project DAWN. She tried to recall the disjointed facts about their mission that Zac had tried to warn her about just before he snuffed it. “Who are the missing crew? Can you tell?”
“Of course I can,” he responded, rather peevishly. “That is how we could determine how many were missing in the first place, through their individual signatures. Your missing crewers include Mission Commander, Howard Bragg, the crystologist, Ricardo Sanchez, your weapons expert and pilot, Gordon Porter, the archeologist, Irena Wagner, and nano-biologist, Drummond Heller.” Azaes didn’t wait for her to respond. “Fits, doesn’t it? It’s DAWN.”
“Oh, my God,” she mumbled, staring at him. That was what Zac was trying to tell her. That at the first sign of attack he’d awoken and alerted the DAWN crew, like he was programmed to, and they’d already mobilized into the
Chimera
. Upon impact, the
Chimera
with the DAWN crew shot out like a seed from its cracked shell and disappeared into the Eosian jungle, leaving the dying husk and what was left of its crew to die. “I’m so sorry, Azaes. I don’t know what to say.”
He shook his head and sighed, frowning deeply.
She grabbed for his hand with sudden inspiration, but he snatched it away. Undaunted, she said, “You know what they’re looking for. Why don’t you simply hide it?”
He waved his hands up in the air. “It’s not that simple.” His eyes flashed at her with impatience. “They will destroy our cities looking for something they can never use.”
“What do you mean?”
“The crystal does nothing of itself, Genevieve,” he said grimly, brows furrowing. “Our bio-technology is all about this forest ecosystem, the
vishna
forest.”
The
vishna
again! Was there anything that tree couldn’t do?
“The crystals your DAWN crew covet so highly are only a medium, a tool, for the
vishna
force. We have worked with this force for thousands of years and still do not fully understand it.” He leaned forward. Without thinking, she mirrored his motion and drew closer to him. “The crystals only amplify or store whatever is put into them. It is the
vishna
that provides us with everything from youthfulness and health to all of our comforts and amenities.”
“Diaprepes told me that the Epoptes introduced the
vishna
to Eos,” Genevieve said.
Azaes nodded. “By integrating itself in the Eosian ecosystem, the
vishna
has converted the entire planet into a symbiotic sentient community.”
“Oh, my God,” she exhaled, awestruck. It was no wonder Azaes had been so upset when she’d destroyed those
vishnas
with her crash-landing. It was only now that she fully understood their importance to the Eosians. The
vishna
was the foundation of their entire society and perhaps the planet’s survival. She fixed an intense gaze upon him. “You and I must stop the
Chimera
and its crew. We must find them!”
Azaes exploded with impatient anger, “Don’t you think we know where they are?”