Taken to Voraxia Read online

  Taken to Voraxia

  A SciFi Romance

  Xiveri Mates, Book I

  Elizabeth Stephens

  Copyright © 2020 by Elizabeth Stephens.

  Published by Elizabeth Stephens

  www.booksbyelizabeth.com.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored, copied in whole or part in any medium (including into storage or retrieval systems) without the express written authorization of the author, Elizabeth Stephens.

  To request authorization, or for media inquiries, please contact Elizabeth Stephens by email at [email protected].

  eBook ASIN: B085S5Z4GW

  Digital art and cover design by Amygdala Design

  To words. Without you, we’d all be lost.

  And to my mom. For sometimes helping me make sense of them.

  

  Contents

  Pronunciation Guide

  Miari

  Raku

  Miari

  Raku

  Miari

  Raku

  Raku

  Miari

  Raku

  Miari

  Raku

  Raku

  Raku

  Miari

  Xoran

  Miari

  Xoran

  Miari

  Miari

  Xoran

  Miari

  Xoran

  Miari

  What’s next in the series

  Series by Elizabeth

  Kiki

  Pronunciation Guide

  Because I’ve been asked…

  Voraxian is a fictional language, therefore I encourage you to pronounce things however you like. In my mind, all words that begin with X are pronounced as clicks, like in isiXhosa, one of the official languages of South Africa. For those of us who cannot click, myself included, Xs at the beginnings of words are pronounced as TZs; e.g. Xoran = [‘oh-rahn] (with click) or [tzoh - rahn] (without click). With this in mind, a brief guide to keywords can be found below.

  Key Characters

  Kiki = [Kee - kee]

  Krisxox = [chris - zocks]

  Miari = [Mee - are - ee]

  Raku = [Rah - kooh]

  Rakukanna = [Rah - kooh - kah - nah]

  Svera = [Ss - ver - ah]

  Va’Raku = [Va - rah - kooh]

  Va’Rakukanna = [Va - rah - kooh - kah - nah]

  Xoran = [‘oh-rahn] or [tzoh - rahn]

  Significant Places

  Cxrian = [Ss - ree - ahn]

  Kor = [kohr]

  Nobu = [Noh - boo]

  Qath = [Kwath]

  Voraxia = [Voh - racks - ee - uh]

  Repeated vocabulary

  Hexa = [hex - ah]

  Nox = [nah - cks]

  Xok = [‘ok] or [tzok]

  Xhivey = [‘iv - ay] or [xhziv - ay]

  Xora = [‘oh-ruh] or [tzoh - ruh]

  1

  Miari

  “Miari,” Svera whispers beside me, “they’re here.”

  I swallow, but my tongue is paper, my throat ash. “I know.”

  Sand billows up from below the Dra’Kesh ship’s great underbelly and needles my cheeks, tears at my closed eyelids, charges through holes in my tattered shirt to scrape at my skin. I bite my bottom lip so hard I taste blood and sweat slicks Svera’s palm in mine as we hope a shared hope – that Kiki doesn’t get picked again. But she’s too pretty not to. It isn’t fair. None of this is fair.

  “Why are they even here?” I hiss angrily, though I already know the answer. They come because it’s fun for them. Because they can and we can’t stop them.

  “Those were the terms that Mathilda and the Antikythera Council agreed to.” Svera’s answer, ever diplomatic, makes me seethe.

  “We didn’t ask for this. Any of it. To be here on this universe-forsaken planet,” I whisper, haunted. “And now we’re tortured.”

  Svera grimaces up at me, but I keep going, not caring who hears or the scornful glances they throw in my direction. I’m used to their derision. Being hated by them. Even though I try to keep it covered, my luminescent blood-orange skin glitters in the unforgiving sunlight as a constant reminder of the aliens that hunt us once every rotation.

  I am the first half-Dra’Kesh baby born out of the Hunt. The first half-Dra’Kesh baby to kill their mother. One of six carried to term who did, though four of the babies also didn’t survive it. Now, left in their memory — scars of the Hunt — are just Darro and me.

  Fleetingly, I glance through the crowd, trying to spot his red skin or his flickering tail. Even though he’s taller than the rest of them — even taller than me — I can’t see him now. Not that it would really matter. There is no solidarity between us.

  Instead, I just see people. Humans. They — we — stand clustered together, holding our breath, watching the ship’s drawbridge slowly lower while the Deuterium engines power down.

  “And just because the Antikythera Council can remember life on board the Antikythera satellite before it crashed doesn’t mean they should automatically get to make decisions for us. We didn’t elect them to lead. And the fact that they agreed to this knowing that their own families would be spared from it is disgusting.”

  “Their families aren’t spared. Only Mathilda’s granddaughter.” Lame, she’s exempt from the Hunt. I know that in my head, but it doesn’t make the anger in my heart go away. “It wouldn’t be right to make her participate.”

  “It isn’t right to make any of us participate,” I huff.

  “That family has already suffered enough.”

  “We have all suffered enough. And now they lead lives of luxury while women like Kiki suffer on their behalf. Over and over.” Desperation fills me that I don’t even have a right to. I haven’t been among the selection yet.

  But next rotation. Next rotation Svera and I will be right there next to Kiki kneeling naked on the sands, waiting for the monstrous alien warriors to choose us and chase us and savage us in ways we don’t come back from.

  I might not get picked because of the weird half-alien way I look, and Svera may not be picked because she doesn’t have the coveted dark skin that the most beautiful women in our colony do — instead, her father has the pale skin of those most commonly afflicted with sun sickness — but Kiki will be picked every time. Until it kills her.

  I wince. “It doesn’t seem worth it. It isn’t worth it. Just for the Drolax Barrier in return…”

  “The planet is dangerous. You’ve seen the night monsters that prowl the Barrier’s perimeter. We’re only human. The Drolax Barrier keeps us safe.”

  “Keeps who safe? Women like Kiki? Women like my mom?”A woman I never knew. It’s incredible that, without knowing her, I can still miss her.

  Svera glances up at me. Dark pupils surrounded by green surrounded by brown surrounded by green again. Eyes so typically full of light, now dim. “Mathilda and the Antikythera Council are just doing what they think is right.”

  “We didn’t elect them,” I insist stubbornly, and then much quieter, in a pitch none but Svera can hear, “it should be you. You’re smart and kind and everyone loves you. It should be you who leads and puts an end to this.”

  Svera just shakes her head, but before she can answer, we jump collectively at the sound of the drawbridge completing its descent and thudding down onto our colony’s packed brown sand. It sounds like doom.

  The thousand three hundred some odd humans gathered — plus the one hundred and seventy-two who kneel — don’t speak a word between each another and the stark, hard world is made starker still by the silence.

  Svera brings my hand to her heart where her many necklaces clatter. Marked by the symbols of those who worship the Tri-God of the ancient
Earth, her pale brown fingers roam absently over a six pointed star and a cross strung on a collection of beads. She calls it her nagoom-cross, and the covering on her hair a hijab.

  Dark blonde lashes the same color as the hair beneath her hijab fall over her light eyes. She begins muttering prayers in ritual and I can only hope that she’s right, and that the Tri-God is real and listening.

  I flinch as the first of the Dra’Kesh emerges from the darkness of the ship and descends the ramp. From where we’re standing, he’s just a smear of red against the world behind him. Below the sand is brown. Above the sky is a cloudless, opalescent white.

  “They're here,” I whisper through clenched teeth.

  Svera clutches tighter to me. At the same time, two aliens walk out into the light. Both men — or males, rather — carry advanced weaponry — shields that are not solid, but radiate an irridescent blue around each edge and bowl outwards in the middle. They must be made of holax… I hate that the engineer in me is impressed.

  The two step aside, making room for more Dra’Kesh males to descend. Around two dozen, these males are all weaponless, each wearing a dark cloth around his hips, fastened with a heavy belt and met by sturdy black boots way too hot for our planet and its scorching sand. They don’t seem to care, and march in an eerily synchronous motion left…but ordinarily where they’d already begin sniffing at our women…they walk right past them.

  “What are they doing?” I whisper.

  Svera opens her eyes. Her expression twists. “I don’t know. Where is he? Do you see him, Miari? The one they call Bo’Raku?”

  I grimace at the name while sweat dampens my armpits. My tongue feels thick in my mouth as I say, “No. Not yet. Maybe…maybe he’s not coming this time.”

  As I speak, the male in question strides from the bowels of the ship. I curse. Svera’s weight ease a little more onto me, full of disappointment.

  “God help us,” she whispers. “He isn’t alone.”

  She’s right. This time, the monster who brutalized Kiki is joined by two other males. The look of them shocks me. I’ve only ever seen the long, bright white hair of the Dra’Kesh and their red skin that matches my own, but the one on the far left is an indigo hue, the color of twilight, while the one in the center is a dusky blue. Both have hair the color of darkness and both stand taller than Bo’Raku.

  The one in the center casts his gaze around — eyes huge and monochrome. He wears the same black boots, cloth and belt the others do, and though his expression is equally ambiguous, there is something in his air that grabs my attention and refuses to let go.

  Maybe it’s because he somehow looms larger than the others. Than everyone. Than anyone I’ve ever seen before. His tail whips the air agitatedly behind him and I feel myself tracking his every movement as he walks. Leader. He’s their leader. I shudder despite the sun pounding down, afraid, not just of him, but of the sudden fluttering tattoo of my heart.

  “This can’t be good, can it?” Svera says.

  I shake my head, but when I go to answer, can’t seem to find any words.

  Svera exhales, as if relieved, “Finally. There’s Mathilda. I was wondering where she was.”

  Leader of the Antikythera Council and our colony, an older woman with grey hair and leathery brown skin peels apart from the crowd. She moves past the fence, past the rows of kneeling women, and approaches Bo’Raku first, but when he pivots, angling his body so that Mathilda has nowhere to go but towards the center alien, she does.

  “Welcome,” she says, bowing before the blue one with the prominent brow and the dominant air. She bows so deeply, her long green sleeves brush the ground.

  Green leaves only grow on trees from the west side of the planet, the uninhabited place. Venturing there is suicide, so I know that dress would have cost her a fortune. Or just the value of a human life.

  “We are most honored to welcome you here to our colony, Bo’Raku, and your…honored guests.”

  Goosebumps break out on the backs of my arms, so stiff they hurt. How dare she say such things to them. To the one who hurt Kiki. To the one who will hurt her again.

  The one named Bo’Raku answers in a series of guttural hisses and clicks and I shake Svera gently. “What are they saying?”

  Svera’s mother purchased an old Dra’Kesh holoscreen from the Antikythera Council and studied their language from it. She says that because she was able to communicate with the male who chose her, her experience being hunted wasn’t a torture…and she was able to feel more than pain. That she was able to endure and move on, free of scars.

  Svera is learning from her and thinks it might help her too, next rotation. I don’t know that it will, but at least she’s trying something and now she’s one of two who can understand their language outside of the Antikythera Council who were all given some kind of translation device that allows them to communicate with the aliens one-to-one.

  Svera scrunches up her face, concentrating on reading his lips as she mouths the Dra’Kesh words softly to herself. “He greets her. And he welcomes two other…sorry, I missed that part. He says that they should be afforded every luxury. They’re from…Voraxia? Have you ever heard of that?”

  “No.” I shake my head, eyes still glued straight forward to the blue-grey alien as I try to shake the feeling that something is wrong. He’s fidgety and restless, glaring at the rows of women kneeling before him like he hates them.

  Abruptly he leans over and whispers something to Bo’Raku, who stills. Some sort of silent communication passes between the two males as they share a ferocious glare, a battle of wills, which the blue alien wins. Bo’Raku bows his head and speaks again to Mathilda.

  “He says that this year, his two honored guests will choose first and that…” Svera’s voice falters, her eyes get huge. “He says that if they’re pleased, there is a possibility that they’ll take chosen breeders with them back to Voraxia.”

  The people nearest us turn in unison. They don’t speak, but they don’t have to. I can read their faces, likely mirroring my own. “Off-planet?” I feel lightheaded at the thought. No one has ever left this planet. No one has ever left the colony. No one.

  “Svera, did you say off-planet? Back to his planet?” Drant, in front of us, whispers over his younger brother’s shoulder.

  Svera nods. “Off-planet. But to Voraxia…I mean, that’s what it sounded like he said. But only for the ones that the hunters choose.”

  “Taken to do what with?” Rae asks beside him. Her aged forehead crinkles with worry. Her son, Mika, stands next to her and he’s leaning forward onto the balls of his feet. His wife is part of the offering this year. And she’s pregnant.

  “Maybe they’ll be wives,” Svera offers.

  I wince, even though I think Svera’s intending to be hopeful, because that really, truly is the best case scenario. And it’s still a nightmare. Married to one of those…those things? I look away, but not before I see Rae scowl, jerk back and slide her arm around her boy’s shoulders.

  “You are welcome to choose any that please you, Raku.” Mathilda’s voice rings over the crowd, light and singsong, and a moment later the blue-grey one with the furious face steps forward and walks purposefully…

  Straight towards Kiki.

  It’s not possible. Oh, but it is.

  “Barukh ata adonai eloheinu, melekh ha`olam, hallowed be thy name, thine kingdom come, thy will be done, aoud bil Allahi min el shetani el rajim…” Svera goes on in the language of the Tri-God, but I don’t hear her. Can’t. I just stand there, agape. Horrified. Wounded.

  I knew that Kiki would get picked. I always knew. But seeing it happen again feels way too much like déjà vu.

  I don’t believe in the Tri-God Svera does, but right now I pray to anyone listening. The stars. The comets. The universe. The sand, hot under my bare feet. The suns baking my shoulders from above. The rations we never get enough of. Hope. Survival. Please not Kiki, please not Kiki. Let her be spared. Let her be saved. Somehow. Some way.
/>
  I shift again so I can catch a glimpse of Kiki. Her beautiful brown skin is so dark it’s almost black. It glows where she kneels in the first row of women, in the place nearest to danger.

  Her hair puffs out in an enormous shadow behind her, ending at her shoulder blades. I remember what it looked like, matted with blood.

  I jump when the one Mathilda called Raku drops down onto one knee in front of her. He falls forward onto his hands, his face pressed forward, eyes closed, nostrils flared…

  “Is he smelling her?” Svera asks incredulously.

  I open my mouth, jaw working. Yes, he is. “I…”

  And then it hits me. A gust of lightheadedness — maybe because I’ve been holding my breath? No. The sensation is too strong for that, too acute. Too punishing. I gulp in air and try to focus on Kiki and the monster kneeling beside her, but I can’t, the world is shifting, colors blazing together…

  “Miari, you’re hurting me.”

  I glance down and see my hand gripping Svera’s arm hard enough to leave bruises. I try to release her, but my knees wobble. I stumble. Dizziness morphs into full-on vertigo. My stomach cramps and I clutch at my abdomen.

  “Oh thank Allah. Thank you, Jehovah,” Svera breathes at my side. “He’s not going to pick her. Do you see, Miari?”

  No. I don’t. I can’t see anything past the sudden moisture filling my eyes.

  “Hey, are you okay?”

  Crashing into Svera’s side, I feel her scrabbling to stabilize my much larger body. My nostrils flare. I can’t breathe right. Is this how it goes? One in, two out? Two out, one in? One…one? No…

  “No…I…I think I’m going to be sick.” But it isn’t sickness I feel. And it isn’t pain. Or rather, it isn’t only pain…

  There’s a coiled snake in the pit of my stomach which seems to be unraveling, lifting its head and gazing around. How long his it lived there? All this time? Satisfied with what it sees, a sudden warmth blossoms through my entire being. My stars…what is happening to me?