Chapter Seventeen of my current wip. As before, all and any comments very much appreciated

Please note: This is now a weekly post

Jess woke in a sweat, heart pounding. He wanted to run, to hide, to undo what he had done. Guilty, guilty. He had touched her. GUILTY. The Techs were sure to know and would remove him. Skin him. A most brutal way to die, he couldn’t imagine the pain – didn’t want to imagine it. Rather would he yield to her and thus in her die. But no, he’d no intention of allowing such weakness; he wanted to remain alive.

Again, the memory of yesterday surged through him, his body and mind, to arouse the forbidden in him.

Was she the same female? She wasn’t clad the same, hung about instead with dragon skins. But the eyes and enticing fragrance, they were the same.

She shouldn’t have been there, not that close to the textile farm at Hive Seven. It had been Jess’s last visit of the day, checking out the holos. He had seen her before he landed the flier; he had watched her. So now he knew that holo was working – she had triggered it. Yet, though she’d backed away some paces, she hadn’t fled in fear.

He ought to have remained in the flier, he ought to have waited and watched what she’d do. But nothing as wise as that for Jess, not his style. When would he learn? But this time there would be no restorative refuge with the Fire-keepers on Colabri.

Even before he held her his skin had been deliciously aware of her, as if to a warm pleasing breeze on a cold day. And his hands, he couldn’t control them, seeking flesh beneath those dragon skins, pulling her close and closer still. His body wanted nothing between them, wanted to be surrounded and held in captivity by her alien body. His mind ecstatic, wanted only to die within her and in that moment feel utterly alive. He tried to brush that image away. Yet the memory remained.

She had allowed his touch, yielded to it. At first. Then of a sudden she became as evasive as those legless dragons whose skins she wore, and she was out of his arms and fleeing. He watched her throwing up heels in her haste.

He wanted to follow and would have followed but for a call from behind him. So ensorcelled by the Itamakki Jess had forgotten Eulal and Niapse, the textile operatives that worked the farm. Eulal’s call rescued him from the folly of chasing her.

And now…now he must face the consequences of his heedless stupidity. Removal. Death.

Death, slow and agonising at the hands of the Techs? Or death, rapturous death, enveloped within her? Yet how he could set such an example that his clutch might follow? That would be wrong, more wrong than his touching her, wanting her. But by Pendle’s Dark Staff, he did want to be enfolded within her.

He shook himself out of his self-concerned mood. The problem was no longer his, or not his alone. The problem had ramped to red alert, and he didn’t trust the Techs to deal with it. Was this what had happened on Urgula Teth? He suspected it was. He called Kookka and Joel to his hive. Armar, already there, raised a censorious brow at him.

“We need to talk. As a matter of high priority. Away from ears, eyes, and minds.”

Kookka’s eyes barely squinted, but it was enough for Jess to know what he was thinking. “Another trip out to the islands?”

*

Jess landed the flier on that same black rock, finding a spot away from the breaking waves. As soon as out of the flier he said, “We need to move on that action we postponed, to close the watchers’ eyes.”

“What’s this about?” Joel asked. He’d not previously been party to this.

“Jess has proposed we show our inquisitive Techs these islands,” Armar said. “Three Techs. Three fliers. Three of us. But, Jess, we agreed not to move on that yet.”

“I fear I’ve…set things in motion,” Jess stuttered the words. “It’s too late, I can’t stop it, I can’t refuse it. Perhaps not today, perhaps not tomorrow, but I know it will be. I’ll submit and—you know it’s not what I want. But this, here, now, this isn’t about me. This concerns all of us. Everyone here. The entire clutch. The holos no longer protect us.”

He picked at his nails as he walked away, unsure what else to say.

“This relates to something yesterday?” Armar asked. “While you were checking the holos around the farms?”

Jess turned back to his companions, an exasperated roll of his eyes. He clasped his hands, high over his chest, almost to his mouth – then whipped them away as again he registered the fresh growth of facial hair. With a deep intake of breath, he exploded, “A Pendoling female walked right through it. That shouldn’t happen. She should have stopped, vomited, turned, ran. And what does that vision say? Wretched useless Techs.”

“You mean an Itamakku female?” Armar said.

“Yea, an Itamakki. Though for all the problems this will cause us, she could have been an evil Pendol spirit.” His hand was back to his mouth, gnawing now on his knuckle. He was aware of how Kookka watched him. Doubtless he thought Jess had regressed to the nursery, suckling at the milk-mother’s teats. But he couldn’t help it, his hands had taken a will of their own.

With determined effort he pulled his hand away. And cursed his head for conjuring visions of the Itamakki, again feeling the weight of her breasts found beneath her dragon skins. His body responded. He walked away so his companions wouldn’t guess what was happening beneath his clothes; not yet triggered they wouldn’t understand. He wanted her, wanted to die in the bliss of her. His face was afire, betraying those desires that he could not, must not, would not admit to them. Yet surely he’d said enough that they must already know

“And she walked straight through the holo-vision as if it wasn’t there?” Armar asked. “Maybe it wasn’t working, and she didn’t see it.”

Jess turned back. “No, she saw it. She hesitated, spoke some words, then walked directly to me as if…as if that vision was nothing to her.”

“Or meeting you was more important?” Joel suggested.

“Joel has a point,” Kookka agreed. “What did she suppose you to be? Not an Itamakki.”

“A god?” Joel suggested.

Armar scoffed at that. “Like, these Itamakku know about the Animosphere? That’s the stuff of Techs.”

“And?” Joel answered. “Do we know what the Techs have done to them? What they might have given them with their modifications? Though we can’t see the gods, maybe like the Techs these Itamakku can.”

Again, Kookka agreed with Joel.

“Does it matter? I touched her,” Jess uttered in horror. “If I succumb to this, then I’m destined to mate and to die. But that’s mine to deal with. And so too is the other problem. Don’t you see what I’m saying? The holos don’t hold the Itamakku away. Everyone – every one of us – is at risk. To be within distance is to effect the change. Is this what happened on Urgula Teth? And did the Techs eradicate the entire breeding pool? We can’t allow that to happen here. The Techs must not know about this…this…this potential breach.”

Kookka nodded. “Put like that, I can see that you’re right. Whatever’s the truth of the Techs’ real scheme—”

“The GM programme is only a cover,” Joel said.

“But what are they doing that they need such a cover?” Armar asked.

“Beyond me,” Kookka said. “As Joel says, they harvest Monza Imms from Adamzal to work the mineral mines of Kreegirn.”

“Only from Adamzal?” Armar said.

Kookka shrugged. “I’m supposing with the demise of our breeding females, there are no more Monza births.”

“That’s it!” Jess exclaimed. “It’s obvious. Their GM Programme isn’t to benefit us. It’s purely to ensure a continuous supply of Imms for their mines. Hybrid Imms.”

“But Adamzal—”

“No, Joel,” Jess cut in. “Because Adamzal can’t supply enough. And there’s something else.” Jess raised a hand as if that helped him order his thoughts. “I’ve now sat through six briefings as a zem, and I should have noticed this but…not thinking. I know the Techs chose those planets for the indigenous species, their fitness for the Programme, but it’s odd, very odd, that they all have oceans. Wide-spreading oceans.”

He remembered then his visit to the Nexus Yeho, his blue-hued room, the walls that showed an ever-rolling seascape beneath a blue cloudless sky. The very air in that room smelled and tasted of the sea.

“I think this Programme’s true purpose has something to do with the sea.” He shivered, a tell that he’d hit on a truth. “Yea, and that’s all very well, but knowing their purpose doesn’t help with our problem. The holos no longer protect our clutch. The Itamakku can walk straight through them. Which means sooner or later we’re all going to change – to become mature Monzas, not only able to breed with those Itamakku, but desperately wanting to.” Overwhelmingly driven, but he didn’t add that. “Then what?”

“But the Techs will skin any trespassers.” Armar’s disapproval of that act both deepened and flattened his voice.

“And us,” Jess added. “We’ve already said it, the Techs will be in control of the…the mixing of genes. They’ll not take kindly to mature Monzas openly mating with the Itamakku. I’m sure that’s what happened on Urgula Teth and that’s why they abandoned their Programme there. We can’t have that happening here. We have to stop them.”

“Yea,” Kookka said. “But how?”

“As I’ve already proposed,” Jess said. “We bring them here, take the fliers and leave them stranded.”

“For how long?” Armar asked the obvious, but no one answered,

“We must have no thought in our heads of this,” Jess said. “The Techs will find it and negate us. But here’s my idea, our cover story. We’ve found an anomaly which needs their inspection. That’s what we’ve been doing here, our several trips out. Now, unable to explain the anomaly, we’ll refer it to them.”

“What sort of an anomaly?” Armar could always be trusted to look deeper. “Flora, fauna? Geological?”

“Water,” the answer zoomed into Jess’s head. “Maybe something to do with the sea?”

“Fine. But what?” Armar pushed.

Jess pointed to where the sea was crashing over the rocks. “You see how the waves send spouts of water through those fissures? What if the incoming waves were salty – which we know they are – but that splash was fresh drinkable water? Would that be anomaly enough to fetch their interest?”

To be continued
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