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The sound of a commotion rises, and my Brooks lifts her weapon into her arms, aiming it out towards the trees. A moment later, a group of her fellow warriors bursts back into the clearing, dragging on ropes behind them. It has obviously been a struggle for them to get this far, sweat lining their brows, staining their clothes dark. When they get fully into the clearing, I see why.
They have captured themselves a raskarran.
I do not recognise him, except that I am quite sure he is the attacker in my Brooks’ memories, the brief glimpse of that face matching with the one I see before me now. He fights and strains against his captors, succeeding in pulling some of them over. But the others step in to pick up any slack, and as they arrive in the centre of the clearing, they spread around him, using strange spears that crackle and hiss to poke his skin. Each time they connect, the raskarran male roars in pain and outrage, but though he is clearly a warrior in his prime, he cannot keep up against the attack for long.
“Shock sticks,” my Brooks says. “They give you a kind of pain that shouldn’t damage you too much, but makes you tired and hurts too much to fight back against easily.”
The cruelty of this guts me, as does the unfairness of the fight. So many of them against one male. It is dishonourable. And yet the male does not go down so easily, fighting long past when I think I would have been able to.
Then more of my Brooks’ warrior companions appear at the edge of the trees, and I see why.
They have captured a female, also. The male’s mate, if his anguished roar is anything to go by. They drag her into the clearing and shock her, just as they have done him. It is this that makes him go quiet, makes him stop fighting, as he begs them to stop hurting his female, his mate.
Of course, the human warriors cannot understand the words, and they seem to delight in the cruelty as much as they do their victory.
I realise how much I am trembling with fury when my Brooks touches a hand to my arm.
“It gets worse,” she says, eyes full of regret. “We can stop. You don’t have to see it.”
“I think I do,” I say, my voice as grim as my feelings.
She nods. Then we are moved once again, inside the Mercenia hut now, looking through a window at the raskarran male as he paces inside a room with no windows to the outside world. We are in the underground part of the hut, I think, and I am sure it is as unnatural and uncomfortable to him as it is to me. But his distress is because his female is absent.
“If you want her sedated, then we need to test the dosages on him,” a female voice says, and I look down the corridor to see a short female with bright sunshine hair walking beside a human male. He has the air of a warrior - tall bearing, an aura of strength, but does not wear the clothes favoured by my Brooks and her warrior companions. The green and brown fabrics that blend so well with the trees, the way that raskarran skin does. This male wears a crisp white top, dark bottoms made from some light, impractical fabric that would not protect his legs from scrapes or tumbles. His shoes clack as he walks, made from some shiny material. Stranger still, the female wears some sort of stiff, boxy dress and shoes that force her feet into a raised position, so that she is walking on her toes and a thin point beneath her heels. It does not look comfortable, but then I think of my Brooks’ feet in her stiff Mercenia boots. Clearly they are not a tribe that cares for the feet of their females.
“Test the dosages? What for?”
“So we don’t accidentally kill her. You want her alive, right? More so than him. Sedation is dangerous. If you do too little, the subject remains a risk to anyone approaching, do too much and you have a dead subject. I can make estimations based on human physiology, scaling up to account for his height and bulk, but we don’t know if he’ll even be affected by it the same way a human would, or if he’ll have a reaction, or a sensitivity.”
I look round at my Brooks, meaning to ask what they are talking about, but see she is hidden in the shadows of an alcove, clearly not meant to be down here, overhearing this conversation. A moment later, the scene fades and we are in the eating area of the hut, my Brooks taking a seat on the table behind the other female as she starts to eat her meal. I take the seat next to her, watching her as much as the people behind.
“The new data from the samples confirms it,” one of the males says, talking to the group around him. “Physiologically, they are far more similar to humans than we first estimated.”
“Incredible how a genome so similar could have evolved on an entirely different planet.”
“Perhaps, perhaps not. Environmentally, conditions are similar. Composition of the atmosphere, temperature ranges, availability of water.”
“Still, all the billions of exo-planets out there, and this one just happens to have an almost entirely compatible species…”
“Almost,” the female says, her tone sharp and biting, “being the operative word there. We’re no closer to achieving our objectives.”
My Brooks sits up a little, and I know she has placed herself here in the hopes of hearing just this.
One of the males at the female’s table shrugs. “Perhaps we’re just approaching it from the wrong direction. We’ve had no success with her, but what about him?”
There’s a familiar gleam in his eyes as he says this. I may not understand what they are talking about, but I understand that look. It is the same one my Brooks’ fellow warriors had in their eyes when they talked of the femalescientist. This female before us, I realise, and wonder if she senses the predatory interest of her peers.
“It is an option we can consider,” she says. “But before we pursue that course, I think it would be prudent to better understand our subjects. For all they are similar to humans genetically, there are differences. We still don’t fully understand her cycles. What triggers ovulation. She hasn’t responded to protocols we would typically use on humans…”
The scene fades again, and we are back outside the room where the raskarran male is being kept. He is calmer now, but only on the surface. Rage boils just beneath, but he holds it in, tries to hide it, and I can see why. His skin is marked in many places with scars and burns that were not there when he was first captured. Open sores heal badly, festering in a way that would make Shemza deeply angered. He has lost weight, his strength fading thanks to his confinement, his isolation, worry for his female and possibly his lack of food. I think of my tribe sisters on the sands, how they were all far more thin than they should have been for only having hungered a few days. Food is a weapon that Mercenia’s elders and chiefs use against their tribe, just as they have used it against this male, I think.
My Brooks watches him through the window, a deep discomfort on her face. She has been told all her life that her role as a warrior is an honourable one, that she can take pride in her duty. But she has been taught once already that her elders are wrong in this, that not all duties are good and honourable just because they are given to you by people who have told you they are. It does not take her long to see the same lesson playing out again here.
I hear the footsteps approaching before my Brooks does, but raskarran senses are stronger than those of humans.
“Brooks, I’ve been told you’ve made a strange habit of coming down here.”
It is the male with the strange clothing and sharp smile. My Brooks stands alert and upright, but I can see the worry flashing in her eyes that she has been caught somewhere she should not be. Two of her warrior brothers are standing with the other male, wearing matching leering smiles. Discomfort settles heavier in my belly, and fear rises up my throat for what is about to happen here.
