Page 38 of Doom

But even more than the dress, words failed me at the sight of my mother and my sister standing on each side of it.

“Mom…” I whispered, my throat too constricted by emotions to say anything else.

She closed the distance between us and pulled me into a fierce embrace. I clung to her with a bruising hold, tears pouring down my face. Although we had managed to talk over the radio, I hadn’t seen my family in six months, since the beginning of the invasion. Elizabeth also hugged me before they both began chastising me for blubbering all over them. If I didn’t cut it out, with my pale skin I’d look like a zombie clown with a red nose and puffy red eyes.

“Where’s Dad?” I asked, then turned to Liz without waiting for a response. “Where’s Mike?”

“Our husbands are upstairs in the Great Hall with your sexy alien,” Liz said while dragging me towards the bathroom.

“And pretty much most of the people on this ship,” Mom added.

“Splash some water on your face,” Liz said in a commanding voice. “I’m not having Dad walk you down the aisle looking like a mess. We’ve got twenty minutes to do your hair, makeup, and put you in that dress.”

“I don’t like makeup,” I said scrunching my face.

My younger sister’s murderous look shut me up. How we managed to get me all ready in twenty minutes was beyond miraculous, but we did. Mother had fixed my hair into an elaborate braid with an artistic mess of red locks freely falling beside my face. She then affixed to it a crown of flowers with my veil. To my relief, my sister spared me the foundation that always made my face itch, content with some lipstick, a smokey eye-shadow and mascara. Apparently, my skin had become flawless and luminous—no doubt due to the bonding fluids Doom regularly injected me with when we made love.

It took everything for me not to bawl my eyes out again upon seeing my father and Michael—Liz’s husband—waiting for me outside the lift to the Great Hall. The X-Girls—with the wretched Laura among them—wearing the same gown version of their black and gold Vanguard uniform, lined up before me as my bridesmaids, with my sister as my matron of honor.

And then Stran strutted up to me and bumped his snout against my hand. Cradled between the recurved sides of his wide tail, the Creckel held a cushion covered in a pearly-white silk in the center of which a set of rings had been attached. Lifting his head with pride, my scaly ring bearer took position in front of me.

I was so choked by emotion, I could barely breathe. Leaning heavily on my father, I walked into the Great Hall to the tune of the Wedding March. My knees nearly buckled seeing how, with a clever system of holograms, they had recreated the exotic beach of Wyngenia, a primitive planet near Khepri that Doom had shown me pictures of. Its sky shimmered like the Northern Lights with the ghostly silhouette of a fat moon hanging low overhead. Beyond the white sand of the beach, a rainbow river sprawled into the horizon. A gleaming white platform made of an unknown material created the path to the dais where Doom and his best man Legion waited for me next to Father Robert from Our Lady of Mercy. On each side of the aisle, a crowd dominantly of aliens that could have come straight out of a Star Wars movie, with a sprinkling of humans, stood by their seats while my father walked me to my man.

I would have laughed when my gaze slid over Dr. Soroz’s amused face, realizing that she—like Laura—had been part of the detaining tactics for them to finish setting everything up. But, like a magnet, my Doom’s beautiful face drew my attention.

The rest of the wedding flew by in a dream. I only recall Father Robert declaring us man and wife, and Doom saying ‘I love you’ before he kissed me.

* * *

Nine months had lapsed since our bonding—four since our magical surprise wedding—and still no bun in my oven, despite us going at it like rabbits. Although no one openly pressured us, it didn’t take a genius to realize that many Warriors hoped Doom and I would conceive. We needed to know whether more Xian Warriors could enter the world through natural conception and birth. I personally supervised further fertility tests performed on both of us. The results continued to state that we were good to go. Stress and pressure surely affected our ability to conceive. Whatever the case, Doom and I both agreed not to let it get to us. All would come in due time.

At least, a few more Warriors also found their soulmates among humans, which increased our chances. Between this and the effectiveness of our Soulcatchers, the lukewarm attitude of the Intergalactic Coalition towards humans became, instead, quite protective now that they at least had the confirmation thatwewere the Xians’ mates. Humans were turning out to be the saving hope of the Vanguard, just astheywereouronly hope of survival.

My role within the Vanguard also shifted. I’d come in as a medical doctor and research trainee with the Vanguard. While I still occasionally practiced when required, genetics and medical research became my new focus and passion under the unorthodox mentorship of Dr. Soroz. She saw to it that many of the most brilliant medical minds of the galaxy were available to me. I absorbed all that I could from them and joined their efforts to recreate Dr. Xi’s work.

If nothing else, the Battle for Earth had united the human race in a way one would have only believed possible in a utopian world. Race, religions, gender, geographic divisions, and political alignment lost all relevance. Ensuring the survival of our species, in all its shades, nuances, and heritage became our common goal.

Chapter 13

Doom

Istepped into the meeting room aboard The Avenger where my brothers had just finished another of those boring meetings with the Coalition.

“How did it go?” I asked Legion.

“Fine,” he said, glaring at me. “But not as good as if you’d led the discussion.”

I waved a dismissive hand. “I’m a Warrior, not a politician. I crack heads and squash bugs. I have no patience for pretty talk.”

“And yet, you have a way of selling your ideas that gets things done,” Legion argued. “You’re also nearly unkillable, which makes people feel safe.”

He cast a look at Chaos and Wrath, sitting around the oval conference table.

“The Coalition is running out of steam,” Chaos said. “This war has been going on for two years now. Every time we think the end is near, we discover a hundred new Breeding Swamps. The Coalition troops do not have our stamina to maintain the fight on four hours of sleep every two or three days for months on end.”

“Not to mention the General has been active again on the other side of the galaxy,” Wrath said.

I shrugged while settling into a chair across from Legion. “You haven’t said anything new. Am I to understand the discussion went around in circles with no resolution?” I asked, feeling slightly annoyed.

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