He shook his head, smiling fondly as he thought of his firstborn. Zerlix was stubborn and headstrong, but having a Little Brother to play with would surely settle him down. It would also help to mold him into a future leader for the Crimson Blades Clan. Yes, taking the mammalian child was a good decision.
He was sure of it.
1
“I don’t like sending you on your own, with no Protector.” Commander Sylvan frowned in apparent concern as he leaned across his desk. “It will be almost impossible to contact you—Avria Pentaura is beyond an especially thick section of the Blind, which is—”
“Excuse me, Commander, but I do know what the Blind is,” Bobbi interrupted. “A vast cloud of cosmic dust that separates the known universe from the unknown universe. And yes, I know that it scrambles signals and makes interstellar communication almost impossible sometimes.”
Dr. Roberta McClelland—Bobbi to her friends—was a Xeno-Cultural Anthropologist who had won an academic contract to work with the Kindred of the Mother Ship. It was a grant to study extraterrestrial life and cultures on different planets and she was itching to get on with her research. But first she had to convince the overprotective Head of the Kindred High Council to actually let her go and do the research.
Not that she disliked Commander Sylvan—he was gentlemanly and kind and intelligent and not at all condescending, like a lot of human men were when faced with a female scientist. But he was extremely protective of women, as all Kindred were, and he was proving to be difficult to convince.
“Look, the Orniths are a matrilineal society—they don’t trust males,” she explained to him now. “They only mate once a solar year—the rest of the time, the males are all banished from the tribe—forced to live in the wilderness away from the females. If I brought a male guard with me—especially a huge Kindred warrior—they would never warm up to me. All my research would be tainted because they wouldn’t be able to be themselves around me.”
“So you don’t just want to observe them…you want to live among them?” Commander Sylvan raised an eyebrow at her.
Bobbi nodded eagerly and pushed a strand of curly, flame-colored hair out of her eyes. She really needed to get a haircut before she went on this mission—her mane was getting out of control. But first she had to convince the Kindred Commander to let her go on the mission—by herself—in the first place.
“No simple observation for me,” she told him. “Complete integration and immersion—I believe that’s the best way to study the Orniths. I want to become one of them. Well—as much as I can, anyway. I mean, I know I don’t look anything like them, but I think they’ll accept me, because I’m a female and so not a threat.”
“Well…” Commander Sylvan frowned. “I’m still hesitant because of the lack of communication, but I do believe that you’d be safe there. Our observations have concluded that they are a completely peaceful—if somewhat primitive—people who never seem to have any wars. They don’t even have any weapons, as far as we’ve been able to tell.”
“Which makes them a perfect society for a woman to study alone,” Bobbi pointed out eagerly.
Sylvan sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Sometimes I wish we hadn’t published our findings about the peoples we found beyond the Blind on Earth. Humans are always so eager to explore, but you seldom consider the consequences.”
Bobbi cocked an eyebrow in return.
“Forgive me for saying so, Commander Sylvan, but aren’t you married or ‘Joined’ to a human yourself?”
A reluctant smile twitched the corner of the big Kindred’s mouth.
“Yes, that’s true enough. And I suppose my Sophia had her share of exploring other planets before we finally settled down on the Mother Ship. The difference was, she was going to known Kindred home worlds—not someplace millions of light years away in the unknown universe.”
“Well, it won’t be unknown for long, if I get a say in it,” Bobbi declared. She leaned forward eagerly. “Just think of it, Commander—a whole race of people who are avian instead of mammalian. I mean, not that the Orniths can fly—they’re much too heavy for that. But they’re covered in feathers and their beaks—”
“All right, all right…” Commander Sylvan held up his hands, the smile twitching the corner of his lips again. “I can tell how eager you are to begin your research, Dr. McClelland.” He shook his head. “I can see now why my mate’s friend, Kat, described you as ‘a real firecracker.’ She claims that human women with flame-colored hair have a fiery temper to match.”
Since Kat herself had red hair, Bobbi didn’t take this as an insult. As for the “firecracker” remark, well, she wasn’t surprised by that either. She brought a lot of enthusiasm and excitement to whatever project she was involved in—she always gave a hundred percent. It was a “whole lot of personality wrapped up in an itty-bitty package” as her dad used to say. Sometimes it took people aback that so much energy could be packed into a five-foot-one, curvy-petite woman like herself.
“Redheads are supposed to have hot tempers—I’ve heard that all my life,” she told Commander Sylvan. “I don’t know if it’s true—I just know I’m impatient to get started with my research. Please, don’t stand in my way!”
He sighed deeply and ran a hand over his short, blond hair.
“I won’t. I just want to be sure you’re safe before I have someone drop you off where there’s no communication and no way for you to call for help. There is another inhabited planet in that particular solar system, you know,” he added. “It’s called Saurous.”
“Is that right?” Bobbi tried not to look too surprised. She had focused almost all her attention on Avria Pentaura and its fascinating inhabitants. The rest of the Orthura System hadn’t interested her much but only because she’d assumed the rest of the planets were barren and devoid of life. “Is Saurous inhabited by Orniths as well? But it can’t be, can it,” she went on, answering her own question. “The Orniths are too primitive to have any kind of spaceflight.”
“It’s inhabited by a reptilian people who call themselves Saurians,” Commander Sylvan told her. “They’re a cold-blooded race—which is just as well, since Saurous is located at the far edge of the Orthura System’s temperate zone, which means its extremely cold there. They do have spaceflight, but Avria Pentaura seems to be too warm for them to bother with.” He shrugged. “So the inhabitants of the two planets pretty much leave each other alone—at least, as far as our observations go.”
Bobbi’s head whirled with possibilities.
“Another race that isn’t mammalian! I’d love to be able to study them, too!”
Commander Sylvan frowned.
“I’m afraid that’s completely out of the question, Dr. McClelland. Unlike the mild-mannered Orniths, the Saurians are extremely dangerous. The entire planet of Saurous is divided up into territories that are run by ‘Clans’—which operate very much, I believe, like Mafia families on Earth. Any outsider is seen as a threat and treated accordingly. No, I’m sorry…” He shook his head. “I wouldn’t let you go there with a whole battalion of warriors armed to the teeth, let alone by yourself as a female with no protection.”