PREVIEW OF THE FORGOTTEN COMMANDER
Breccan
Scraaaaaape!
The sound echoes in the command center but it’s one I look forward to each solar. Every morning at sunrise, my routine is the same. I slide back the zuta-metal door that hides the massive window that covers the entire wall and allow the sunlight in.
Hot.
Bright.
All-consuming.
I exhale heavily and close my eyes to bask in it. The warmth on my pale white skin heats me to my chilled bones. Ultraviolet rays are harmful to our sensitive flesh but we crave what it offers nonetheless.
“This journey is imperative to our survival,” Galen repeats for the millionth time this solar cycle.
I open my eyes just so I can roll them. Gritting my teeth, I drag my gaze from The Graveyard, what we call what’s beyond the window, to our faction’s botanist. “So you’ve said,” I grunt back, a slight edge to my tone.
Galen frowns and his black irises flicker from round orbs to half-moon slits, a telltale sign of his frustration. Guilt niggles at me for upsetting him. He’s only trying to do his job, and he’s absolutely correct. But as much as I want to test the soil beyond what we can see of The Graveyard, like he’s been suggesting for ages, I’m leery.
“How are the R-levels in the air?” My eyes dart to my closest friend here, Calix.
Calix scratches at his jawline and his pointy ear wiggles on his left side, a common trait when he’s deep in thought. His nostrils flare as he taps on his zenotablet and the device lights up in response. After a moment of reading the results, he glances up at me with worry marring his features. “Plus point four.”
“Lethal levels are point eight and above,” our computer system, Uvie, chirps in her feminine, digitized voice.
Galen lets out a hoot and rises from his chair. If he thinks he’s running out there without some sort of plan, he’s lost his rekking mind.
“Halt,” I bark out. “Plan?”
He puts his large hands on his hips and stares out the window, his onyx orbs gleaming with excitement. The lab coat he always wears over his minnasuit is smeared with soil samples that, if I prayed to any gods, I’d pray have been properly decontaminated. By the way Calix hisses when Galen brushes against his chair, I assume he’s just as concerned as I am.
“There,” he says, gesturing for the horizon with a sharp black claw. “Beyond that mountain.” He taps the incredibly thick and impenetrable glass. “I want to assemble a team and travel there. Five morts. From my calculations, it would only take three full solars to make it there, at least two solars to collect samples, and then three solars back. The data doesn’t predict any geostorms anytime soon. Perfect travel conditions.” He turns and beams at me, baring the double fangs on each side of his mouth.
“No.” My instant reaction is always no. It’s unsafe. Despite the R-levels being in the mild zone, there are other threats. Sabrevipes are known to prowl the area, especially in good weather. They’re rekking huge, vicious, and tricky to kill. At least their meat is worth eating.
“Breccan,” Galen says in a low voice. “We have to try. What if the soil is good for planting? We could take the seedlings that aren’t thriving and replant them.”
I wave a hand at him to dismiss his words. “The seedlings will die.” We’ll all die.
He flinches as though I’ve struck him. “But we need this for our survival because eventually—”
“No!” I roar, fisting my hands as I storm over to the window. I stare out into the barren wasteland outside of our mountain home and shake my nog. It’s dead. A few animals roam about that are worth capturing and eating, but other than that, it’s worthless space. Empty. Desolate. Rekking cruel. Rage bubbles up inside my chest and my ears flatten against my nog, a natural mort physiological reaction when preparing for a fight. “What good are thriving seedlings when our own race is dying out? The thing we need for the continuity of our people are females. And as you can see,” I hiss and gesture to the empty nothingness, “there isn’t anyone left.”
The room goes quiet aside from Calix’s tapping on his zenotablet. Galen and I get into this argument often and it’s in everyone’s best interest to stay out of the middle. It’s come to blows before, and I’m still nursing bruised ribs from the last time Galen got angry when I told him no. He’s mostly calm but loses himself to bouts of rage. Avrell, our doctor, has explained to me numerous times that it’s a chemical reaction because of his genetics and not an innate desire to drive me out of my mortarekking mind.
“Why don’t we just invite a sabrevipe into our facility?” Galen bites back, his fury rearing its ugly nog. “Why don’t we let it tear us to shreds and suck on our bones because we have no rekking future?!”
My own anger is snuffed as guilt once again takes its place.
He’s right.
Again.
“Galen—”
My apology is cut short when a trumpeting blare goes off. All discussions are ignored as the three of us take off at a sprint to the ship deck.
Theron and Sayer are back.
And the blare means good news.
Our boots slap the floors, echoing in the empty corridors as we run. When we reach the thick, double-reinforced door, each of us fumbles to quickly pull on our zu-gear. The thick material will protect us from mild to medium R-levels and our masks will keep out any airborne pathogens that could be harmful to our health.
Within seconds, we’re dressed and protected, each of us eager for a tiny morsel of good news. I key in the sixteen-digit code that only a few of us have and then we push through the heavy door.
Theron and Sayer, fully decked out in their own zu-gear, are already jumping from the ship and running our way.
“What did you find?”
“Were there any signs of life?”
“Did you scavenge anything we can use?”
Calix, Galen, and I all blurt out our questions at once. Theron raises his hand to silence us.
“Commander,” Theron says, grinning through the glass of his mask. “You’re going to lose your rekking mind.”
Sayer nods rapidly beside him. Their excitement is palpable. It can only mean good things for the faction.
“It’s something you need to see to believe,” Sayer tells me and starts for the ship.
We storm after them and up the ramp into the vessel.
Upon entering, I see the cargo area filled with what looks like cryotubes. Five, to be exact. They’re certainly not anything from Mortuus but I do remember reading about them in the library of books left behind by those who’ve encountered them before us. The same books that taught us everything from mechanics and technology to reproduction and biology, but not this. This is unchartered territory.
“What’s in them?” I demand.
Theron raps a gloved knuckle on the top of one. “Look.”
I stalk over to him and peer into the small window—and find myself staring at the strangest creature I’ve ever laid eyes on.
Lips similar to mine but much plumper and an odd shade of pink are the first thing I notice. The nose on the alien is pert and adorned with a device that looks to be used for breathing. Light brown markings speckle her flesh. Long, dark lashes fan the creature’s high cheekbones and an obscene amount of brown hair—the same color as my favorite root tea—frames her face.
Her.
Her.
Her.
Images from those books—books meant for older, mating morts—are forefront in my mind. Books that explained in detail not only mort anatomy, but also how two morts physically fit together to reproduce. The same books that every rekking mort in this facility has memorized and looked at for their own selfish reasons. Books we never imagined we’d get to use what we’d learned.
But now?
“W-What is this?” I drag my gaze to Theron. “Where did you get this creature?”
His grin is cold. “We were orbiting our planet in the Mayvina just outside the atmosphere, sending out pings. You know, the usual, searching for life.”
“And we pinged something huge. A cruiser,” Sayer explains, also grinning. His double fangs glisten in the light.
“A cruiser?” I growl. “What did you do?”
Theron shrugs and gestures to the cryotubes. “We detected life on the vessel. Hundreds. However, they had some life protected in these units, as though they were put in stasis for some reason. Being the slick mortarekkers we are, Sayer and I boarded the ship, slipped as many cryotubes into the Mayvina as would fit, before the vessel went into hyperspeed and disappeared. I’m telling you, it was a chance. A small sliver, and we took it. These are ours.”
I stare into the window again, mesmerized by the intriguing creature. “Have Avrell ready the lab. I want all steps being taken to ensure we don’t expose the facility to disease. Only open this one pod but keep the alien in stasis. I want Avrell to test her biological code.”
Four pairs of intense stares are on me. The hope is bright in their onyx eyes. Guys who never smile are grinning like it’s their rekking job. Something fills my chest.
Hope.
“And if they’re a match?” Galen asks lowly, his voice slightly muffled behind his protective mask.
“If they’re a match, we breed.”
* * *
Nine morts stand all too close to Avrell as he works quickly to study the biological data. It’s been six solars since Theron and Sayer brought home the cryotubes and we’ve all been on edge with the need to know if breeding will work. Galen’s seedling mission is a thing of the past. Nobody wants to leave the lab, much less the facility, to trek through The Graveyard hunting for good soil to plant.
“There are only five of them,” mutters Hadrian, the youngest mort at only seventeen revolutions old. “Who will get one?”
I drag my gaze from the unconscious alien who remains in a deep sleep to the only mortling in our faction. Memories of when his mother died, the last of our females, is a dark solar I try desperately not to remember. Vetta was like a mother to all of us. And because she was still fertile, we had plans to keep our existence going via her womb. That all faded away the solar she caught The Rades and died shivering while she clawed at her own flesh, lost to the madness of the disease.
The child in her womb, one that belonged to her deceased husband Puno, passed along with her. It was a devastating moment. I took Hadrian under my protection and have looked after him as a son ever since.
“Yeah, Commander, who will get one?” Draven, our faction’s lieutenant engineer, challenges from the doorway of the lab. I know he won’t step inside. He suffers mentally and always feels trapped. It all stems, according to Avrell and his studies, from when Draven caught a mild case of The Rades. He was in a sleeplike state for almost an entire revolution—hundreds and hundreds of solars. His skin seeped with a puss-like substance from sores that had formed all over his body. If it hadn’t been for Avrell caring for him at every moment of every solar, he would have met death along with Vetta and her unborn mortling. When he came to, his eyes were crazed and he babbled on for many solar cycles about “the captors.” They’d chained him up and tortured him.
All in his mind, of course.
They still haunt him with every breath he takes.
It’s been many revolutions, and he’s never lost the unhinged glimmer in his coal-black eyes.
I straighten my spine and walk over to the alien. Avrell has taken to calling her Specimen Az-1. Her chest, beneath the thin sheet covering, rises and falls with each breath she takes. We’re all wearing our zu-gear until we can ascertain if she’s carrying anything harmful.
“Any updates?” I ask, my eyes glued to her unusual, dirty-looking face. She has skin the color of a sabrevipe’s belly. If she weren’t potentially dangerous to touch, I’d love to remove my glove and see what the texture of her flesh feels like.
He looks up from the micro-viewer on the table near the alien, and a small smile, revealing his semi-filed-down fangs, has hope once again dancing inside my chest. “I think it’s good news, Commander.”
Everyone in the room seems to be holding their breath. The tension is thick enough to cut with a magknife.
“Proceed,” I urge, tamping down my eagerness.
“Have a look.” He gestures to the micro-viewer.
I walk over to the machine and peer into the viewer. Inside are colorful cells but they mean nothing to me.
“See the cerulean cells?” he asks.
“There are many,” I agree.
“Now find the opaque ones. You may have to squint to see those.”
I blink as I attempt to focus. “I see them. The cerulean ones are being eaten by them.”
“Not eaten,” Avrell says, a smile in his voice. “Fertilized.”
I jerk away and glare at him. “What does it mean?”
“Exactly what you think. Not only is our genetics compatible, but we can breed the aliens. That right there,” he gestures to the micro-viewer, “is the hope for our survival.”
“What will you do with them?” There were at least four fertilized cell units under the viewer.
“I could destroy them or I could implant them.”
I look around to the other eight pair of eyes watching my exchange with Avrell. Ten morts. Five aliens. It’s unfair to choose between who gets an alien to mate with and who doesn’t. As much as I’d love to wake and mate with them properly, it’s too risky. If the aliens were to fall ill and pass on like Vetta, all of this would be for nothing.
My ears flatten against my nog as I crack all twenty-eight of the sub-bones in my neck. All my subordinates slightly bow their nogs in submission. They know my word is binding. Even if they’ll hate what I’m about to say.
“Keep them in stasis,” I say, despising my own words. “Gather samples from all ten of us and implant the fertilized cells into all of their wombs. Keep any extra samples frozen for future use in case these don’t take. This is the only hope for our future at this time.”
My morts all wear the same tortured expressions that I’m sure I do.
We want them.
We want them awake and we want to mate with them. Need to mate with them. Not only as a biological imperative to ensure our survival, but to remind us of what it means to live instead of merely survive.
But sacrifice is in our blood. It’s all we’ve done our entire lives. The sacrifice will end with us, though. These implanted cells will grow into mortlings. Mortlings will grow into doctors and leaders and fighters. Families will be bred from our sacrifices. One solar soon, this facility will bustle with life and activity. Our sacrifices will be worth it.
At least that’s what I’ll keep telling myself.
“I’ll be in the command center,” I mutter before excusing myself.
An addictive dose of ultraviolet rays is much needed because I’d do just about anything to bring a little light to my nearly pitch-black future.
Sacrifice.
It must be done.