Forsaken (19 page)

The truth in Raylon’s words deflated the rest of Kotto’s anger. All he’d been able to think about since he brought Raina on board was claiming her. He crossed to Raina and gathered her hands between his. “Raylon’s right. The choice should have been yours. I apologize for my selfishness.”

Raylon moved away from Bandar, but he appeared less adversarial now. “You must agree not to touch her until your mark fades. Then we’ll do this the way it should have been done.”

Raina’s gaze darted from Kotto to Raylon and back. “How long will that take?”

She’d been looking at Kotto when she asked the question, but Raylon answered. “Not more than a week, as long as he keeps his hands off you.”

“We can make sure they’re never left alone,” Bandar assured him.

Raina looked almost panicked, so Kotto pressed his hand against the side of her face. “No one is going to harm you. I would never let that happen. This will just give you more time to make your final decision.”

“The process needs to be established before we involve any more females, and Garin will have to approve whatever we come up with,” Bandar mused. “Do we all have time to work on this now or should we schedule something?”

“I can spare an hour or two,” Raylon told him. “Irron needs to be involved. He’s coordinating everything with the research teams.”

“I’ll find out.” Bandar stepped out into the corridor, Ashley on his heels.

“Let’s move this to the conference room.” Despite the mandate that Kotto not touch Raina, he took her hand as he led her down the hall. The command deck was the smallest of the ship’s four levels, but frequently the most hectic. The officer cabins were aft and the command center spanned the entire forward section. The conference room, or planning hall as some like to call it, butted up against the command center and could be accessed through an adjoining door or from the hallway.

“Raylon scares me,” Raina whispered, pressing in close to Kotto’s side. “There’s no way I’d ever bond with him.”

It was in his best interest to foster her fear, but his possessive instincts had caused this fiasco. Besides, he wanted Raina to feel safe and protected, not vulnerable. Regardless of how this mess unfolded, she was on his ship, which made her his responsibility. He just happened to want her to be much more than just a responsibility. “Raylon was angry with me, not you. And I sort of brought it on myself. You need to at least have a conversation with him when he’s not trying to kill me.” Her only response was a distracted nod.

Twenty minutes later, the two couples sat on one side of the oblong table while Raylon, Dr. Irron and Sental, the resident computer specialist/navigator sat on the other. Sental and Irron both had a sarcastic sense of humor and they entered the room together. Not a good sign.

“We’re so far ahead of you guys on this,” Irron started before he even took his seat.

“As usual.” Sental softened the brag with a playful smile.

“Who won the fight?” Irron elbowed Sental in the ribs. “We’ve got money on the outcome.”

“I did,” Bandar insisted. “They were beating the shit out of each other equally when I broke it up.”

“I don’t know about ‘equally’,” Raylon muttered and the newcomers laughed.

“You set this up.” Kotto crossed his arms over his chest and glared at the doctor.

“I did no such thing,” Irron snapped with obvious indignation.

“At the very least, you let it happen,” Kotto persisted. “You had to have known Raylon was a match by the time you did Raina’s language infusion, and still you said nothing to any of us.” Before Irron could respond to the charge, Kotto looked at Raylon. “How did you find out?”

“From Letos. Same as you.”

“It must be standard procedure for the Integration Guild to turn people into troublemakers.” Kotto turned back to the doctor. “You withheld medically relevant information from three of your patients. Care to explain why?”

“Call it a social experiment.” Irron was clearly unconcerned with Kotto’s anger. “I needed to see how strongly bonding fever would affect the male, or in this case males. I honestly didn’t expect there to be more than one match. Boy was I wrong.”

“Then Bandar was the only one compatible with me?” Ashley sounded relieved.

Irron nodded. “Your genetics have been manipulated in a completely different way. You, my dear, are one of a kind. My other findings don’t apply to you.”

“What other findings?” Raylon still glared every time he looked at Kotto, but that wasn’t surprising. They were rivals now.

“When you both ended up being compatible with Raina, I realized I needed a central genetic database for all the battle born males. It was the only way to determine all of the possible matches for each female.”

“Does such a thing exist?” Kotto asked.

“It does now.” Sental grinned. “Ship commanders were able to give me access to the individual crews, but not all of the battle born males are currently assigned to ships, some aren’t even in the military.”

“Garin has top level clearance,” Bandar pointed out. “Can he grant you access to the needed information?”

Sental shook his head. “Not without leaving a trail and his clearance doesn’t help with civilians. This needed to be seriously stealthy.”

“We can’t let Quinton realize how far we’ve progressed,” Irron stressed. “Thanks to the misinformation Letos planted, Quinton’s research teams are chasing their tails. If he finds out we’ve moved on to clinical trials, he’ll send half of the RPDF after us.”

Kotto shrugged. “That will get our brothers here that much sooner.”

“Overconfidence will get us killed,” Raylon warned. Apparently, he’d regained control of his temper. His gaze reflected only cunning speculation. “Quinton might be incompetent, but his elite officers aren’t.” He looked at Sental and asked, “How did you gain access to the rest of the genetic profiles?”

“I hacked into the Brain.” Sental leaned back in his chair, clearly thrilled by his accomplishments.

“What’s the Brain?” Raina asked, still looking much too uncomfortable for Kotto’s liking. Making sure his movement was concealed by the table, he reached over and squeezed her thigh. She covered his hand with hers, but didn’t look at him or let her expression give him away.

“Rodymia’s central computer,” Bandar told her. “The most powerful, and most highly protected, piece of equipment on the entire planet.”

“Are you sure you got in and out without being detected?” Raylon sounded doubtful.

“I’m positive. I took exactly what I needed and nothing more,” Sental told him. “When hackers get greedy, they get sloppy, and that’s when they get caught.”

“I’m starting to understand why General Nox assigned you to this crew.” Kotto smiled at the younger man. “It sure as creation wasn’t your navigational skills.”

The other three Rodytes laughed, but Sental took it all in stride. “We now possess an up-to-date database of every battle born male’s DNA. And, by the way, there are a whole lot more of us than we were taught.”

“What do you mean?” Raylon asked the question, but it was echoed in everyone’s expression.

“We’d all been told that there were about 1.3 million battle born males and almost half were under the age of eighteen. Well, that’s another government lie. I have profiles proving that the true number is almost 8 million. There are 5.7 million already in the military.”

Bandar shook his head as if to clear his disbelief. “Why lie about it?”

“To keep us from realizing how strong our movement could become if we all rise up together,” Raylon said.

“Exactly.” After giving everyone a moment to absorb the implications, Sental motioned for Irron to continue.

“As each female is… What did we decide to call it, recruited, inducted—”

“Kidnapped,” Raina suggested with an innocent smile.

“Once she agrees to participate,” Kotto countered, giving her leg another squeeze.

“Commander Tarr, move over to this side of the table,” Raylon snapped. “You’re already violating our agreement.”

“Seriously?” Kotto fought back a fresh rush of anger.

“I have a better idea. Raina move down here.” Ashley motioned her toward the empty chair on Ashley’s other side.

“This is ridiculous.” Kotto fisted his hands on his knees and glared at the wall across from him.

As Raina switched places, she trailed her fingers along the top of his chair, brushing his back. He shivered, but used the sensation to help him let go of his anger.

Irron’s throaty chuckle drew Kotto’s gaze back to the doctor. “This, my friends, is a taste of the madness we’ll face if we don’t carefully manage the potential conflicts. The mating drive is strong in all Rodytes, but it seems especially strong in battle born males.”

“So how will this work?” Ashley prompted. “Each female ‘agrees to participate’ in the program, then what?”

“We all agree that she must be willing, but there also needs to be an approval process,” Irron explained. “The primary qualification is the protein marker. If she’s not a hybrid, the rest is moot. But there are other things that must be considered. At its heart this is a breeding program.”

“Even if that’s true, you’re going to have to find a better way to market it to human females.” Ashley looked at Raina and they both shuddered. “No twenty-first century woman is going to sign up for a breeding program.”

“Let him finish the criteria and then you two can figure out how to ‘market’ this to modern women,” Bandar suggested.

“Sorry.” Ashley smiled at her mate then looked at the doctor. “What other qualifications are we looking for?”

We
. The word echoed through Kotto, making him long for a similar ending. Ashley considered herself part of the battle born’s quest for independence. Would Raina ever see herself that way? He thought they’d been heading in the right direction. Last night had been amazing, but now he was back at the start or perhaps farther away than he’d been when this thing began. He couldn’t even look at Raina. He wanted her too badly.

“Like it or not, there has to be an age range,” Irron resumed. “Females too old or too young to bond with a male are—”

“No use to you?” Raina muttered.

“Is she always so feisty or did a night in your bed make her irritable?”

Even knowing Raylon was intentionally provoking him, Kotto had heard enough. He stood so suddenly his chair tipped over and he slapped his hands down on the table. “In the training cage now! We’ll settle this like warriors.”

Raina jumped up and blocked his path. “You can go beat each other bloody. I don’t give a damn. But I
will not
be awarded on the outcome of a cage fight!”

Raylon just sat back and laughed, clearly accomplishing his goal. “It’s going to be a long week. Isn’t it,
Commander
?”

Raina turned on him, eyes flashing. “I don’t need a week to know you’re an asshole. I’m not bonding with either of you!” She spun on the ball of her foot and rushed from the room.

Kotto started after her, but Bandar caught his arm. “Ashley will check on her as soon as we’re finished here. Hopefully, you and Raylon can be more productive without a female to impress.”

Muttering under his breath, Kotto righted his chair and sat back down.

Irron shook his head, not even trying to hide his amusement. “Can you imagine how fast my infirmary will fill up if we have several thousand potential mates going at each other?” He looked at Sental and shook his head. “It’s honestly worse than I expected.”

“So focus on a proactive structure that will keep it from getting to this point,” Bandar prompted. “We’re looking for females between the age of twenty and thirty-eight who have the protein marker. What else?”

Irron thought for a moment before he responded. “We can cure most human diseases and correct congenital defects, so health issues shouldn’t be a concern. However, both parties will need to be in optimum health before the transformation begins. A simple screening should be sufficient to identify any problems that need to be corrected before we begin.”

“Will you be willing to help others with medical issues or just those participating in the program?” Ashley asked. “As soon as it gets out that you can cure cancer, everyone is going to want access to you.”

Irron paused as if debating what to tell her. “Decisions like that are above my pay grade. Access to our medical technology will likely be part of the ongoing negotiations. For now, let’s stay focused on managing multiple matches.”

“So we start with a mandatory blood screening,” Raylon said. “There’s no need for the process to go farther until medical problems are resolved.”

“Agreed. But as soon as the female is cleared by medical, I’ll compare her genetic code with our new database and the computer will provide us with a list of potential mates.”

“I know how fond you are of simulations,” Kotto finally calmed down enough to participate in the conversation. “Do you have a projected average or something like that?”

“Too much of the data is extrapolated for real accuracy, but my best guess is six to eight matches per female. Actually, I could run Raina’s genetic profile back through the program now that the database is complete. It’s likely she’s compatible with more than just you two.”