Page 22 of Narzek
“Hello,” Cayla murmured cautiously, noting that she didn’t quite look human. She had blue hair and green feline eyes. She was a Narovian feline. Cayla had met one on the slave ship.
“I understand that you are soul mated to one of the Farseek Warriors. It is my job to assist our Alliance citizens in getting the help they need to contact their families or to secure passage back to their planet of origin if that’s what they wish to do.”
“I’m not going back,” Cayla blurted.
“Understandable,” Sherine said. “That is your right. My job is to make sure that you know your options.”
“I appreciate that. Our customs are a little different on Earth, but my commitment to Narzek Pardantu is the same as being married to him on Earth.”
“That is my understanding, too.”
“What I would like is to let my parents know what happened to me. I am sure they think I was killed in the war on Earth. I was reporting for duty when my partner and I were kidnapped by alien slavers. Now I am serving with the Farseek Brigade. We are planning to settle on Farseek when we finish.”
“I just need you to answer this question. Have you made this decision not to return to Earth of your own free will?”
“Yes, I have,” Cayla said solemnly, meeting the gaze of the female on the screen.”
“Thank you, your response has been recorded. Now, if you give me their contact information, I will contact our base on Earth, so they can notify your parents. We will also provide all the com officers information on how to set up vid-mail to Earth and other Alliance worlds. Once they set up the system, they will instruct you on how to contact your family.”
“Thank you, Lieutenant.”
“You’re very welcome. If you need any further information, your com officer will know how to contact us.”
Cayla nodded both in salute and understanding; then, the screen went dark for milli-span before it resumed with reports about mission progress. They were still evacuating the rescued slaves, with no estimates of when the job would be completed.
Cayla paced back and forth in the small space between the dining table and the sitting area in front of their bedroom nook. She was glad that her parents would finally be notified that she was alive. Now that she had been located, she vaguely wondered what the Army would make of her found status. Technically, it probably made her AWOL, but the last year and a half certainly weren’t voluntary.
As far as she knew, Earth didn’t even have interplanetary space travel let alone interstellar capabilities. She couldn’t imagine that the Alliance would have any kind of extradition treaty. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to serve her country; she didn’t want to go back to Earth period.
Besides, no one on Earth would even know she was still alive if the Farseek warriors hadn’t rescued her from slavery. She could have been a slave for the rest of her life. Even if the Army decided she owed them for the rest of her enlistment, she doubted they would force the issue. By serving with the Farseek Brigade, she wasn’t just serving a country, she was serving Earth.
Undoubtedly, some of the people abducted from Earth and rescued from slavery would want to go back. They still had families and children back on Earth. The Farseek Brigade was freeing them right along with their own people. If not going back to finish her service with the Army made her a fugitive, so be it. From what she heard about the attack on Earth by the Drayids, they were too busy cleaning up that mess to be worried about a couple soldiers abducted by aliens.
Now that the opportunity was real, Cayla wondered if Luanne would choose to go back? Personal communications were restricted as before during the last rescue operation. They were still bringing people up from the planet. Very likely, they hadn’t yet contacted Luanne to let her know it was a possibility. But really, they had known that all along. It just seemed more real now that there were Alliance ships minutes away by shuttle.
Cayla paused to read the updates on the com screen. Narzek’s team was searching at another of the secondary mine sites. More than a dozen people requested extraction. Shuttles weren’t delivering people to theKurellisas quickly. They were touching down in two or more locations for pickups before returning to orbit.
The landing teams were still searching for people to free.
Cayla started pacing again, it could still be hours before they finished and Narzek returned. She wished that she would be called for duty; she wanted to do more than just wait for Narzek to return.
They had droids for most of the gofer and cleaning work. There were no shuttles to service. Finally, she remembered that she hadn’t dictated into her journal that she started soon after Narzek gave her the com tablet. Finally, she stopped and sat down at the dining table.
Instead of the standard entry in Consortium common, she decided to record in English for her mom and dad.
“Hi Mom, Dad,
I bet you were shocked to know that I am alive and well after all this time. All this time we thought those people who claimed to be abducted by aliens were making it up. Well, maybe some of them weren’t, because that’s precisely what happened to Luanne and me. We never even made it to our post.
The next thing we knew, we were on a spaceship, and they told us we were slaves of the Sargus Empire. Luanne and I got separated, but I didn’t think we were on the same planet until we were rescued by Farseek Warriors.
They were looking for their people who had been abducted for slavery by the Sargans. I was surprised to learn that Earth is not the only planet in the galaxy inhabited by humans. The Farseek warriors I’ve met so far are all human, with unique variations in hair, eye, and skin color.
Which brings me to what I need to tell you; I’m not coming back, at least not any time soon. The Farseek warrior who rescued us has claimed me as his soul mate---they call itsolmatu, and I have accepted. His name is Narzek Pardantu, and I love him very much. We are now mated for life.
Right now, I am serving in the Farseek Brigade with him on a mission to rescue the people who were stolen from his world by the Sargans. One day we plan to go back to his world, Farseek to settle and start a family.
They tell me that we will be able to exchange video mail so we can keep in touch, but it seems unlikely we will come to Earth. It takes months to get there, and we would have to cross a warzone to get to Alliance space.
