One of them pointed to a small table that held three masks. She picked one up. It was soft, like silicone, with no strings or elastic to hold it in place. One of the men impatiently indicated that she should put it to her face.
She lifted it up and it instantly suctioned to her face, sealing off her eyes, nose, and mouth.
Panicked, Luna tried to pull it off, but it wouldn’t budge.
She couldn’t breathe. Did these alien men know she needed her mouth and nose to breathe?
Her heart thundered in terror.
Then the first man began to spray her.
The caustic gas stung her skin and she was suddenly grateful that her face was protected. The second man was spraying her from behind.
Luna shivered as her lungs screamed for air.
The spraying stopped and there was a whoosh and a rush of air like a mini-tornado. Then gloves touched her face and the mask fell away.
Luna gasped in a breath.
One of the men spoke, it was a deep, groaning language.
“Be still,” her chip said.
As the first man held her face, the other approached with a dropper.
“Eyes open,” the chip announced.
She braced herself as they slowly applied icy cold drops into her eyes and nose.
“Mouth open,” the chip added.
She opened her mouth and a device was inserted.
A buttery mist coated her teeth and tongue.
“Finished,” the chip said. “Bring luck on Clotho.”
One of the men pointed to a flap in the tent.
Luna exited in a daze. Everything was still a little blurry after those eye drops, but the world was slowly coming into view.
She stood on the grassy surface of a meadow overlooking all of Clotho. There really was a massive water source below them. And on the crest overlooking the water, mountainous woodland extended as far as she could see.
In the sky above, she could see the glow of Hesiod-8, the planet they were circling. It was a desolate place, mostly used for mining gas. Lachesis and Atropos, Hesiod-8’s other two moons, were nowhere in sight. She knew they would only be visible at certain times of day, but she wasn’t really sure when that would be.
There was a commotion behind Luna as Phoebe staggered out of the tent, nearly crashing into her.
“You okay?” Luna asked her.
“I swear, no one ever used to have to ask me that,” Phoebe said in a disgruntled tone.
“These are trying times,” Luna said, trying not to smile.
“Oh wow, look at that,” Phoebe said gazing out over their surroundings.
“Gorgeous, right?”
“I’m just wondering how long it will take to clear a decent plot,” Phoebe said. “I had no idea the vegetation would be so dense.”
“Holy hell,” Aurora exclaimed, staggering out of the tent and joining them.
Luna gasped at the sight of her and took a step backward.
“What?” Aurora asked.
Aurora’s hair, which had been a mousy brown until now, was full out titian red.
Red as a fox.
Aurora’s hand went immediately to her hair. She must have realized that the sterilization process had revealed its natural color.
Luna glanced around.
There was a one-million credit reward on the Fox’s flame-colored head. Had anyone else seen?
For now, the two workers were busily disengaging the tent from the little spacecraft.
“Get my cape off,” she hissed to Phoebe, who was also staring at Aurora. “Now.”
Phoebe seemed to come to her senses.
She ripped the gauzy cape from around Luna’s shoulders and handed it to her.
They both ran to Aurora.
Aurora’s expression went slack, as if she expected them to try to tie her up.
“Don’t worry,” Luna murmured.
Phoebe put herself between Aurora and the view from the captain’s seat of the ship. Luna began wrapping the gauzy cape around her friend’s hair, hiding the bright color as best she could.
“Thank you,” Aurora whispered.
“It’s not the best fashion statement I’ve ever seen, but I think you can pull it off,” Luna replied, finishing her work just in time.
The workers freed the last contact point from the little ship and turned back toward the meadow to fold up their tents and pack up their equipment. Luna guessed there wasn’t enough traffic coming into Clotho to warrant a full-time decontamination setup.
While they worked, the ship rattled to life, and then sailed off in the opposite direction.
A few minutes later, the men in the suits disappeared down the hillside with the tents in tow. They didn’t even spare the three women a look back as they headed out of sight.
Aurora let out a relieved sigh.
“Do you think they saw her?” Phoebe asked worriedly.
“If they did, there’s no way they would have left us here,” Aurora said, her voice lacking any of its usual melody.
Luna wrapped an arm around her friend.
It was odd to see Aurora shaken. In the time they’d spent together, she had naturally become the brave leader of their little gang of three.
“Good point,” Phoebe said, nodding. “What do you think we’re supposed to do now? Isn’t it kind of weird that they left us alone on a foreign moon?”
“I don’t think we’re alone,” Aurora said, looking up into the sky.
Luna followed her gaze.
Where before there had seemed to be only sky, something had begun to waver into existence.
The ship was egg-shaped, and made of some kind of gleaming metal, too big and shiny to miss. It must have been cloaked until just that moment.
As they watched, a hatch opened and a ramp slid out into the grass.
2
Noxx
Noxx watched from above as the ramp slid down from his ship to the grassy field.
The three women below clung to each other, as if they thought they were going to be boiled and eaten. Their low-cut, purple gowns swirled impractically in the wind.
Terrans were frivolous creatures. He knew this much already.
Noxx’s mentor, Vice-Admiral Longbaak, told him that such prejudices weren’t helpful, so Noxx had done his best to go into this meeting with an open mind.
But one look at these three clowns dressed like pleasure ship workers was enough to tell him all he needed to know.
These women were supposed to be ready to tame a frontier moon and raise a whelp, not dance for credits at an intergalactic cabaret.
He let out a low growl.
The whelp in his arms made a sound like a ration-bag being unsealed.
It was trying to growl too.
It wanted to do everything Noxx did.
And lately it screamed every time he tried to put it down. He had taken to carrying it around like he was a gadabout and the whelp his unruly passenger.
The whole situation was a nightmare for a career soldier like Noxx. The warriors of Invicta were a ruthless force, battling evil in all its forms.
But long ago they had made a grievous mistake.
In the heat of battle the Invicta had wiped out the gentle people of planet Imber. All that remained of that race had been a DNA vault, and a mineral-rich, but empty planet.
And the rumor of a woman who claimed to be the Crown Princess of Imber, rescued by a soldier and living in refuge on Omega-7T.
Until now.
After decades of officers and ambassadors arguing about the ethics of the proposal, the Invicta had at last been granted the right to use the Imberian DNA to cultivate a crop of pod-babies to honor their fallen ancestors and resurrect their kind.