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

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Jess was used to hearing angry shouts, the back-and-forth taunts and jeers of incipient fights from the breeding pools he had observed – though despite the skirmish with the Banmakka, the Itamakku had been exceptionally quiet. But with the one exception of Canipse’s uprising, he wasn’t used to hearing it from his clutch. He didn’t need Armar with his solid bulk to block his hive door to tell him there was trouble. Nor the cause. “It’s them. Your women.”

“There are five women on this base,” he said as he gentled Armar aside, “of which only one is mine.”

“You are the zem,” Armar followed Jess across the base to the source of the commotion, “and with no Techs on base every aspect of its running is now your responsibility. Therefore, they are your women, and they’re causing trouble.”

“They are not.” But three of the Monzas were.

The native widows had wanted nothing to do with the Monzas when first they arrived, which had suited Jess fine. They set up their new home in the hive the domestic operatives Murry and Tyrim had erected for them, and except that Segul and Cela-Byi visited them, they might not have been there. At first. But now, with encouragement from Cela-Byi, they regularly left the base to gather foods in the seed-heavy glades to the west. Jess had asked the catering overseer Mavlin to supply foods for the women from the base stores. But as with Segul, and even with Cela-Byi, these women spurned what they called the god-foods. And how long had it taken for certain of the pheromone-triggered lust-filled Monzas to observe and to follow.

Cela-Byi had told it true when she’d said a woman would defend with a blade. Antel had already treated three knife-wounds, none of them deep or serious, just warning strikes. Ardrax and Tyrim, operatives from Joel’s Hive Four, were two of the three. And what was the source of the current commotion? Hive Four.

Jess hadn’t heard the opening words but guessed it had run something to the effect of “What have you got that we haven’t got?” For there, being prodded and jabbed by the operatives’ aggressive fingers was Shelek. Shelek was hands up, arms crossed to defend. Shelek wasn’t a fighter. Indeed, no Monza was a natural fighter. Monza were generally compliant.

“No Techs in their heads.” The commotion had drawn Kookka too, recently landed at the fly-port.

“No Techs in my head either,” Jess answered him. And louder, to the combatants, “And I’m going to smash them if they don’t desist.”

His words had the desired effect. At least for the time it took for Ardrax and Tyrim to turn and see the zem breathing fiercely in their direction. With their attention drawn, Shelek took the opportunity to land a retaliatory punch. Balance lost beneath the unexpected force, Ardrax dropped to his knees. Tyrim looked at Shelek, face registering his astonishment, and backed off. Not so Ardrax, He was back on his feet, fists hammering at Shelek’s face, Shelek not fast enough to raise his arms again in defence.

Jess grabbed Ardrax by the collar of his red jacket and yanked him back, his own fist smashed into the operative’s jaw.

“Now, what’s this about?” Not that he didn’t know. Shelek had recently found favour in the widow Naba’s bed.

“Why him?” Ardrax said, hand to his chin to ease the pain.

“I can’t answer that,” Jess said. “I’m not in the woman’s head. All I know is the woman chooses.” Which wasn’t quite the truth, since Cela-Byi had told him in the dow it wasn’t unusual for the woman’s family to arrange for their partners.

Back at their shared hive, the day’s light now fading, Kookka scooped up Jess’s favourite drum and slapped it into hands. “Play. It’ll calm you.”

Jess put it down. He rubbed his head, heaved a weighty breath. He wanted to scream just to relieve the tension.

“Bit of a problem, that at Hive Four,” Kookka said.

“Thank you for the reminder.”

“Hey, don’t bite at me. Just saying.”

“But what am I supposed to do? Joel and Shelek both have their women, while Ardrax and Tyrim have not. And they all share the same hive.”

“Separate them?”

“You think I’ve not been thinking that? But where to put who? With Tawan dead…I’m sorry, Kookka but…”

“No, Jess, you’re fine. I told you, I never did want her.”

“But with her gone, now Joel could move in with his Segul. He’s there most of the time anyway. But that doesn’t solve the Shelek problem.”

“Why not move Naba in with Segul?”

“Different houses, different dows,” and Jess didn’t know if that would go against some star-spirit way.

“You could ask Cela-Byi.”

So he could. And that’s what he intended when he headed across the base to her hive. But when he saw her on the floor in a pool of blood, rocking and crying, face tight with pain, all other thoughts fled.

*

The rocking motion helped to ease pain. But the plants Cela-Byi had in her spice box would help ease it better. Only problem, she dared not move, afraid what she’d lose if she did. She had to nip her thighs together, to keep that infant from falling out. What relief when Jess came to her.

With one hand she dared to remove from her belly, she gestured towards her bed-cell. “My spice box. And water, you need heat some water.”

“How much?” he said, even while fetching the box. “To wash, to cleanse, or to—?”

“To drink,” she gasped. “Bring me the box. Bring it here. And, oh shit, I’m shitting.” She said no more but screamed with the pain. Not defecation – unless she’d been eating boulders. She continued to rock but now curled that tight her head hit the floor. “Byi, Byi, Byi, ease this for me.” Her mouth tasted blood. Her legs and her crotch were wet with it. She grunted. This wasn’t good, this hurt.

Under direction, Jess prepared the concoction while she rocked. Two ingredients, never tested by her, so she said in a voice thin and strained, yet known from tradition. The one to ease the pain, the other to stop the bleeding. It was the bleeding took Tawan, and she wasn’t to go the same way. She refused it.

She grimaced at the bitter infusion but swallowed it down. Fast-acting, she was barely aware what Jess was doing. Yet here she was now on the bed he had given her. Jess, her god-man. Jess… she snatched at his hand and squeezed and squeezed and cried. “If I don’t sur-sur-survive, you take my body to my dragon cave?”

“You’re not going to die. I won’t allow it.” He too was crying, tears streaming his face.

Her own tears blurred her vision, distorted what she was seeing, for surely there weren’t stars dancing around her. Yet from out of those stars a face appeared, formed of flames that were cold. She too was cold, but she knew why. It was that star-rock that hit her hard in her belly where now she bled. Frigid, rigid, tense and shattering, a thousand pieces scattering. And he, her Jess, holding her. And the dragons were whirling and twirling and wrapping around her, spinning her around the circling stars.

*

Jess sat by her bed, aware of the blood coalescing, congealing, drying and ruining the Techs’ perfected biodegradable collapsible re-constructible hive. But he wouldn’t leave her to clean it, neither would he call on the domestic operatives. And who would he call? Tyrim?

Neither had he stripped her of clothes, though blood-soaked they dried, adhering now to her fragile flesh. He wished not to touch her, just to watch and to will her to live. And to think.

Think, because thinking was preferable to feeling.

This wasn’t right, this seeding Monza babies in Itamakku bodies. Tawan’s death, and now Cela-Byi’s close, too close encounter. And she still wasn’t through it. Everything showed it, shouted it, that it was wrong what they did. The Techs had been right: No Contact. And yet… he wanted to hold her, ever and always to hold her and never let go. Whatever had happened, whatever was happening, it was more than an awakening of the mature Monza male. It was more than wanting to drive into her and to die in her arms. It was…he had no word for it. Affection? It was more than affection.

This, whatever it was, didn’t affect everyone the same. Kookka had been driven to dive into Tawan, but by his own words, he had felt nothing other for her. While Joel was happiest when tripping around in his Segul’s wake, composing poems in her honour. And now Shelek.

Continues next week
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