Chapter 16

SIXTEEN

The Mating Fever had broken.

The after-effects were still there, lurking beneath the surface, but the viciousness was gone, making Mavrel’s existence bearable once again.

He hadn’t expected to Claim her so quickly.

He hadn’t expected that she’d be so delightful, sure of herself, and willing.

He thought there would be misunderstandings, frustration, and differences in communication.

The rest of their time together had felt like an alternate version of reality, where only good things occurred. Mavrel had never experienced anything like it. Delighted by her human curiosity, he’d taken her through all the different showcases and exhibits, indulging her questions and slowly learning more about her life on Earth.

She was a rare soul, a kind of individual he’d never encountered before.

She might be a soft-skinned, defenseless human, but she was more free in spirit than he’d ever comprehended to be possible.

How fortunate he was.

The Goddess had smiled upon him. Mavrel didn’t know what he’d done to deserve her blessing, but he would take it.

For a short, blissful time, the Universe was at peace. The Krael had been dealt with, and the old empire was no more.

Tarak was free to reorganize the rule of law in the Nine Galaxies as he saw fit, and Mavrel understood very well that Tarak’s so-called selfish reasons would dictate how the Universe ran from now on.

The strongest species had become intertwined with one of the most vulnerable.

And biologically, they were one and the same.

He’d seen her off in the docking bay, delivering her to the small cruiser that would return her to her home on Earth.

How could he forget the warmth in her dark eyes, the glow in her features, the gentleness with which she kissed him before she turned and walked up the ramp, elegant and graceful in her newly created shoes?

He’d watched as the hatch closed, dark Qualum fibers swallowing her up, stealing her from his hungry sight.

And then, just like that, she was gone.

I’ll see you soon, she’d said. I never expected any of this, but I don’t regret a minute of it. Please understand, though, that this is a lot for me to take in. I just need a couple of days, okay?

The Earth equivalent of three rotations, in fact. She’d invited him to her home, giving him a time and a date.

Mavrel wanted to go and see her right now, but he sensed that this was some sort of test—it was important to her.

So he refrained.

Brief discussions with Rykal and Kalan and further reading of the so-called Manual convinced him that it was the right thing to do.

He would wait.

It was bearable now, even though she invaded his thoughts at every waking moment.

He possessed enough discipline to concentrate on the task at hand, at least.

To his surprise, Tarak hadn’t given him any additional tasks, making his workload relatively light for the time being. That meant he could focus on one particular project.

A personal one.

Something had stuck in his mind.

Zharek.

If Zharek could play at manipulations and matchmaking, then so could he. Mavrel had been around. He knew a few tricks, too.

That’s why, right now, he was painstakingly delving through the labyrinthine databases of the Sylth, trialing different algorithmic combinations, searching through obscure pockets of supposedly dead records.

He was sifting, catching micro-particles of information, piecing them together bit by bit.

He was patient.

He was meticulous.

The deeper he went, the more he was able to put his thoughts of her to one side, just for the time being. As the details came together, as a picture began to emerge, he focused even harder.

Time became irrelevant. He was immune to hunger, thirst, and fatigue.

He just wanted to crack this code.

This biological puzzle.

For he, Zharek, the one who knew everything about everything and everyone, would never intentionally piece such a thing together.

He’d probably taken measures to obscure it.

But whether he liked it or not, Zharek al Sirian was a son of the old empire, and even he had left traces of his imprint all over the ships he’d traveled on and the labs and bases he’d worked in. At one point, he’d signed his life over to the empire.

The records were still there. They couldn’t be erased, no matter how hard one tried.

It helped that Zharek had been born into a rather infamous Noble House. He shared genetic material with the deceased rulers of House Sirian, and the nobility had never had any incentive to conceal records of their reproductive potential.

As he worked, Mavrel slid deeper into a state of intense focus. He’d sealed the door to his office, preventing outsiders from interrupting.

Nobody knew what he was up to.

Zharek might be clever, but Mavrel had been around for long enough to learn a few tricks. He was probably only one of a handful in Darkstar who could do this.

It might have been easier to just get a sample of Zharek’s biological material to begin with, but Mavrel didn’t want to arouse the medic’s suspicion.

Zharek was notoriously paranoid.

This way was safer, quieter.

Nobody would notice. Mavrel disappearing into his office to work on some project or other was nothing out of the ordinary.

He sat before his many holoscreens and threaded together the scattershot data until he got the answer he was looking for.

A stream of glowing text flew past, and Mavrel quickly scanned it all until he found it.

There.

Zharek’s precise biological signature.

His reproductive signature.

His pheromonal profile.

His perfect genetic match.

Human, of course.

Who was she? Where was she?

One of the first tasks Tarak had assigned him when they’d arrived in Earth’s orbit was cracking Earth’s databases and transferring anything of significance to a secure location within the Sylth.

The human tech had been easy enough to figure out. There wasn’t that much information to contain, especially when it came to biological data.

Human records weren’t very complicated.

So, Mavrel had diligently sourced and transferred the lot. It was part of the Sylth now, easily accessible to those who knew what to look for—especially him.

Now, he used Zharek’s genetic information to search for a perfectly complementary match.

A one-in-a-billion.

Or more.

As it turned out, Zharek’s odds were worse.

One in about three billion.

Three matches had come up.

One was merely a child—that ruled her out of the equation.

The other was well beyond reproductive age, and she’d already had two male sons—now adults.

That left one.

In the entire Universe, only one human could activate Zharek’s Mating Fever.

The computer had created a precise match.

Her name was Marie Simon.

She was thirty-eight revolutions of age.

Where is she?

He asked the machine to find her location on Earth.

Present location not found.

Strange.

He asked the machine to search all known human locations outside Earth.

Present location not found.

Even stranger.

A dark thought entered his mind. What if she was deceased? What if Zharek had zero chance of ever finding his mate?

Is she dead?

No official record of her death can be located.

That was a mild relief. Mavrel thought for a moment, then decided to explore a highly unlikely scenario.

Well, it should be unlikely, but it was Zharek he was dealing with here, and therefore anything was possible.

Before now, has any data relating to her presence ever been detected onboard any of the Darkstar Fleet’s vessels.

The Sylth almost seemed to hesitate for a moment. The logical part of Mavrel’s brain understood that she was no longer sentient—she was merely the remnants of the consciousness of a ghost that had been imprinted on the fleet’s vast artificial intelligence.

Ever changing, ever evolving.

Controlled once again, now that Lodan the hyper-synchroniser had dealt with her.

But sometimes, he swore…

Yes.

“What did you say?”

Yes.

“Where?”

The subject of interest is currently held within Deep Medical Laboratory One.

Mavrel blinked in disbelief. “You’re being serious right now?”

I am serious.

He took a deep breath. “Is she… alive?”

That is indeterminate.

At that moment, all of Mavrel’s plans to give Zharek a taste of his own medicine evaporated.

Fuck.