Chapter 60
POV Kaleo
“They went that way! Lica is pulling me towards them, and she knows Melissa’s scent well!” I shout breathlessly to Tagar, who follows alongside me.
The moment I saw my female being abducted, I thought I wouldn’t be able to do anything, which was terrifying. I’ve fought in too many battles and still faltered in the face of danger because Melissa is all I have that is most precious to me.
But my father’s old friend grabbed me by the arm, using his old authority, and dragged me out of the cabin without a second thought with his immense strength. Now, both of us are riding our nolas, galloping through the Dark Forest, following the faint sound of the faleus’ metal boards.
“They must be heading to the ship they landed far from the village!” Tagar yells, focusing on the path.
“Yeah!”
If I had the hologram now, I’d talk to Cirion and ask what was happening. But the device has been with Melissa all day today, so I have no way to communicate with the only faleu I trust.
“I hear the sound of a ship, Kaleo!” the priest shouts, pointing to the right, and I nod, because I can also start hearing the engine noise. We both follow the sound until I finally spot a silver ship, not very large, but the faleus who stole Melissa are already inside.
“There!” he yells, galloping towards the slightly more open space where they parked the vehicle, and I follow behind him.
The ship they brought isn’t like the ones I’ve been in before. This one must have few compartments and space for about five faleus, at most. It’s round and silver, and I know that when they want, they can make it completely invisible, and I would only be able to find it by its sound, which humans certainly wouldn’t detect with their not-so-advanced hearing.
“Let go of the human, she doesn’t belong to you!” Tagar roars.
Since he no longer carries weapons, the azuri dismounts from his mount, picks up a stone he finds on the ground, and throws it directly at the ship. And even though I have my usual knife in my pocket, I realize that this stone strategy is a bit better, so I follow Tagar’s lead.
***
POV Melissa
“There are savages outside, sir, they’re throwing stones and asking for the human. How are we going to take off like this?” the faleu who brought me asks the other one standing next to him, both of them standing in front of the huge control panel of this ship. From where I’m sitting, I can see a multitude of buttons and levers.
“There’s nothing they can do to open the ship,” the second faleu replies.
After flying here and placing me in a chair in the corner of this command room, my senses are slowly coming back. I can now feel my whole body, but I don’t have the strength to shake myself, and they’ve cuffed me with a pair of handcuffs and a very tight belt, so I can’t go anywhere or even speak.
All I can do is look at these two four-armed bastards who kidnapped me on the day of my damn wedding! Only me, the unluckiest person in the galaxy, for this to happen!
My kidnappers are dressed from head to toe in black and wear helmets that remind me of motorcycle helmets, which gives me no clue about what their faces look like.
What makes me even more desperate, besides being trapped in this chair, in this dark room with two strangers, is that in front of them, on a large screen, is the outside of the ship. They have cameras on the outside, and I can see Kaleo clearly, and my poor mate looks desperate. He’s wearing the outfit I chose for our wedding and is completely disheveled, throwing rock after rock against the wall of the vehicle.
It was a miracle that he managed to get here in time, before the ship left Selvaria, but the faleus are right, neither my big blue guy nor the azuri next to him, a male I’ve never seen before, will be able to do anything by just throwing rocks at the ship. These things are too strong; only a meteor could make this thing open.
“Permission to take off, captain?” one of the faleus asks, holding his communicator to his ear, and they don’t even look back, just left me here.
“Wait a moment, I’m verifying the human’s identity before you take off.” The so-called captain, also a faleu and dressed head to toe in black, appears halfway on the screen, leaving Kaleo and the other azuri on the right. “I don’t want any trouble with the GE, I’m tired of these bastards bothering me about not following protocols, so I’m in contact with them,” he explains, in a room somewhere in space.
GE stands for “Species Management.” They are like space police, and their control extends across all galaxies.
“Pass the identifier over the human’s eyes and hands, they need to find her in the general database to authorize the rescue.”
“Pass the identifier, Cobal,” one of the faleus orders, and from what I’ve understood so far, there’s a hierarchy of power.
The captain, who isn’t on the ship, is the most powerful among them. And between the two who kidnapped me, Cobal, the one who carried me, has the lowest rank and must submit to the other faleu in the helmet.
“Yes, Sir Ine,” Cobal says, then approaches me. “Look here at me,” he asks, kneeling in front of me to be at my height, because Cobal must be about 2 meters tall, and I blink a few times as he points a laser at my right eye for a few seconds and then to my left.
But by this point, I’m starting to feel a little better. I’m not drooling anymore, and I’m recovering well, so I feel I can speak now.
“You… can’t… take me…” I say very slowly, and I have to concentrate hard not to start crying, because that would make it worse. “I… want… Kaleo.”
“The effect of the gas has worn off, sir, but I think the human is drugged with something because she’s asking to stay. She must be following orders from the azuris,” the son of a bitch doesn’t even speak to me, he’s just talking to the other faleu, the one named Ine, as if I’m a helpless invalid.
“These damn savages!” Ine curses, and I start thinking about how I’m going to make them let me go if everything I say they think the azuris told me to say.
“I’m… not… drugged… don’t… leave…” I continue pleading, struggling with each word while the idiot grabs one of my hands that is cuffed and points the laser at it.
There’s a gigantic online DNA database where the data of every being born is recorded. I believe the inhabitants of Selvaria are definitely not in it, but humans born outside of Earth are, so that’s probably what they want to verify—who I am and where I came from.
“What’s your name, human?” Cobal asks me, finally, and his voice is softer than the other’s, so maybe he’s younger and nicer.
Maybe with Cobal, I can reason with him.
“Melissa,” I answer, and this time I feel I was faster than before.
“Do you know where you are?”
“Selvaria.”
“You’re human, Melissa, you’re not part of the authorized species on Selvaria, do you understand that? You can’t stay,” he explains, but still, there are a bunch of faleus here in Selvaria, so their rules only apply to certain species.
“I’m getting married today, Cobal, I… have to stay,” I murmur, lacking confidence in my words, but at least I don’t take a thousand years to finish, just about five hundred.
“Marriages between species from different planets, especially from primary and secondary sectors, are strictly forbidden,” he says to me as if I’m a little child. “You shouldn’t even have contact with each other.”
If Kaleo were from a planet considered developed, like Faleia, for example, these assholes wouldn’t be bothering us. In fact, these idiots even have a marriage program between humans and faleus! But since Selvaria is marked as a hostile planet and is part of the primary sector, they treat it like trash.
“I’m not from Earth, I was born in space!” I manage to even shout at him. Finally, Melissa! The gas really was light! “You can check your system ‘ship Ph4567…98y5,’ that’s where I was born. I’m not from any… sector.” My tongue still stumbles in my mouth, wanting to mess up the words.
“I don’t know what kind of torture these savages used on you, Melissa, but one of our agents in Selvaria reported witnessing severe violence between a human and an azuri. The report said you were being kept as a sex slave, and it’s the faleus' job to ensure that the inhabitants of Selvaria don’t harm themselves or those from other planets,” he continues with his low, soothing tone, but it’s just making me more nervous.
“Salton is lying, I love my Kaleo, he’s the… zuri and we’re going to get married!” I yell, and now I can shake myself, testing to see if the belt on the chair is really secure, but the gas is still affecting my head.
My thoughts seem to be spinning, my vision still isn’t 100%, and all I can do is get more nervous. Maybe if I were “sober,” I would have come up with a better plan than saying I love Kaleo.
But that’s all I can formulate right now, how much I love my big blue guy and how I can’t leave.