Epilogue

THREXIN

The sky on Kannth was not like that of Old Earth, at least judging by the footage he'd seen.

It was blue, but a sort of muted greenish-blue. Closer in color to some of the vast bodies of water he'd seen in Alina's footage. Sometimes it was as though he could jump up and swim through it.

The air was hot and humid. A syrupy mixture that permeated with a fresh tang. He wondered if that was what Old Earth smelled like. According to the geologists examining the planet and contrasting with records, both human and uhyre, some parts and seasons of Old Earth came close, but there were other substances in the air here that Old Earth had not possessed.

Threxin leaned against the railing of the science lab building they'd constructed ten clicks from the crash site. They had to stay close to maintain access to resources, yet far enough to ensure the volatile ruins of Colossal could be quarantined. He brought the roll of hak to his lips and sucked, closing his eyes to the familiar itch.

Well, almost familiar. The mineral they'd found on Kannth was not Apthian hak, not really, but it was close enough to surprise and to satisfy .

Threxin had a few ticks left before he was due in the lab. He flicked a six-legged crawling thing off the thigh of his thick canvas pants.

Animals. They hadn't found anything edible or farmable yet in the wildlife, but they found lots of crustaceans and insects. They'd been experimenting with turning them into foodstuffs.

Most importantly they found water. Not drinkable on its own, but they'd fashioned solar-powered evaporative purifiers from the breakdown of the ship. The crash had deprived them of much of the equipment his Colossal was designed to provide, but luckily parts of it were salvageable.

The idea, of course, had been to have Colossal remain in orbit as both a resource and a sentinel while they shuttled to and from the planet for supplies and research. Clearly that was no longer an option.

"You are here." Tetha dipped his head from the lab. "Come."

Threxin sniffed and took one last drag of not-hak, snuffing it out against the metal railing before rewrapping the roll and stuffing it in his pocket.

"What is it?" Threxin sat on the high stool near the long steel table that ran the length of the room.

Tetha braced both hands on the table and closed his eyes for a tick. A projection beamed to the steel surface from overhead.

Most uhyre had gotten their Neurosyncs by now. The results were… varied.

Threxin scanned the figures being projected. "Vaccination? We're due to start full population administration next week."

"Were. Were due to start it. Not anymore."

"Explain."

"The first test subjects. From the brig."

Everyone in the brig had died, save for the fortunate vaccination subjects, who had been locked away in a smaller isolated space up on the command deck.

"What about them?"

"Their immune systems continued to overcompensate after that blip we saw before the jump. It seemed to settle, then spike again. Each spike escalated."

"Spikes simply indicate an even stronger response than necessary, no? Are you suggesting a cytokine storm?" Threxin frowned. Humans were prone to those, especially early in life. It could be deadly. He thought of Alina.

"Nothing like that. They're fine, only their systems have worn themselves out. Burnt through their own ability to defend themselves against exorin. Haywire."

"What does that mean?" Threxin was growing frustrated with the way Tetha hid behind his technical speech to avoid delivering the data bluntly.

"It means they were immune and now they're not anymore."

Threxin clasped a hand to the back of his neck. That couldn't be. They had observed full immunity. Real immunity. The vaccine was based on Kaia Halena's blood, and they had detected nothing of the sort in her.

"What did we miss?"

"Nothing."

Threxin slammed a fist to the steel table, black claws constricting behind his ribs. "Obviously we missed something , considering the woman I have been mating for the last month under the security of immunity may not be shoqing immune after all."

"Your female still has time, I believe," Tetha said, as if that was any comfort. "She was one of the last to receive the current iteration, and we had only just noticed these effects in the first test subjects. She is approximately one ship week, or one and a half Kannth weeks, behind."

Threxin's fist was in Tetha's face before he could—or wanted to—think. The biogineer snarled and lunged forward across the table. Threxin grabbed his fist and twisted hard until he hissed, black spittle flying into Threxin's face.

Threxin? The small voice wormed into his brain.

Shut up.

Threxin. Placating and calm, his Alina ruined this thing he was so enjoying, forcing the knot in his chest to loosen until he remembered his surroundings.

Gritting his teeth, he released Tetha, who stood hunched over the table with exorin melting between his lips. He did not have the benefit of a calming human presence, but Alina's placation seeped to him by proximity through Threxin's NS.

Threxin slowed his breathing with effort.

"Will reinoculation help?" he ground out through his fangs.

"No. Their system is accustomed to it now. It will not react. We need to start over. I will begin work on a variation, but… we have no simulator capacity anymore. We will need to test it live."

Threxin nodded. "Do so."

As Threxin walked back to his and Alina's cabin at the center of the outpost, he watched humans scurrying about the place, giving him a wide berth. He had not yet come to the idea of the wall. He hadn't needed to, with most of the humans naturally herding together at one side of the outpost while the uhyre kept to another.

Their cabin, a rectangular cargo box extracted from remnants of the ship, was the meeting point from which the human and uhyre sides sprawled in either direction. Orion Halen took the humans, and Threxin oversaw the uhyre. They had been forced to work together as they explored and settled the land, but outside of necessity the species kept to themselves for the time being.

Threxin was watching how cross-species interactions developed as his cohort received their Neurosyncs, trying to decide just how together or separate they needed to be. It was fortunate that the Neurosyncs appeared to help temper his cohort, though of course nothing as aggressively as the limiters. Some of his cohort did grow surprisingly complacent when their limiters were first replaced, however, and Threxin suspected intermingling was already taking place.

He had not yet officially sanctioned such actions, but considering his relationship with his own human female, it was presumed—not inaccurately—that no more throats would be slit or fangs removed. Except with the failure of the vaccine, it was suddenly looking like the entire strategy was collapsing around him.

"What is it?" Alina asked, looking up from the wet heap of clay on the table before her. She was creating eating vessels.

He stood and watched her. She had a blot of wet clay on her cheek, her hair tied high on her scalp to get it out of the way. Except for those shoqing bangs in her eyes, of course. A permanent nonsensical fixture that she insisted on keeping even now.

She frowned and rose from her seat, dipping her hands into a bowl of water and wiping them dry on the towel tucked into the waistband of her skirt. When she stood on her toes before him and craned her neck to kiss him, he jerked his head up and out of the way, knowing full well traces of exorin from his scuffle with Tetha were still on his mouth.

"Threxin?" a frown dented her brow. "Tell me."

He enveloped her tiny hand in his and guided her back to the table. He sat across from her, the shapeless clay drying between them. The innocent curiosity in her eyes, unsuspecting of the terrible news she was about to receive, made his chest constrict with a pang of regret .

"The vaccine has failed," he finally said.

Alina's frown deepened. "Does that mean we need a booster?"

Threxin flicked his apertures to the negative and rubbed at the drying patches of clay on the back of her palm his thumb. "You need a new vaccine. Yours will soon be ineffective, if it is not already."

She looked at their joined hands, her fingers tracing his knuckles. She kept her mind carefully guarded behind her NS, not offering a link and him not prodding for one. This was, of course, her worst nightmare coming true.

When she looked up at him again her eyes were wet. Shoq, those always had this way of cracking his heart open and making him want to go to the ends of the damn planet to make them stop.

"I will not let it happen, Alina Argoud," he rushed out. "We will develop another vaccine. A thousand if we must."

But Alina ripped her hands from his and bit her trembling lip. His spikes flicked flat as she sat rod straight in her chair, chin wobbling with suppressed upset.

"Is this temporary for you, Threxin?" she asked, voice thick but level. She gathered herself, the tears practically sucked back into her eyes as he watched her.

"Is what temporary?" He was confused.

"This!" She gestured wildly between them. "Us."

"What? Shoq, human, of course not," Threxin growled. Everything he had done, for longer than even he himself had realized, was to keep her close. To force her to his side one way or another. To make her want him. How could she even ask such a stupid question?

"Then what's the problem? If this is the real deal for you. If this is…" She hesitated, but then barreled on. "If it's meant to be forever, then why are you so horrified at the prospect of me needing you?"

It hit him like a hakstone, knocking all thought right out of him. He blinked, staring at her, apertures gaping with confused stupor.

"I only…"

"You only want me around, but the thought of me getting dependent, that's just so damn terrifying, isn't it?" She snapped, and he couldn't take it anymore—he chewed through the walls of her self-control until he was inside her head, his NS hitting her with the full weight of his rebuke so that she had to close her eyes and shove her hands against her temples.

If I had my will, I would make you drink me every day for breakfast lunch and dinner, female. I'd have you crawling on your knees begging for the benefit, if only the thought of it weren't your worst shoqing nightmare.

Alina bared her teeth and jumped from the seat, stool toppling behind her. My worst nightmare? How about I tell you my worst nightmare, Threxin?

He rose and followed, rounding the table. Iron was already on his tongue. The visible pulse in her throat invited his mouth as he advanced, and she backed away like the prey she was, until her back hit the wall and she had nowhere left to go.

And still her stream of expletive-ridden mental protests invading his head did not stop. My worst nightmare is that you'll decide I and the rest of the ‘pests' belong behind a wall after all. You'll wake up one day and realize we're more trouble than we're fucking worth and you'll go off with one of your own kind. Who will it be, Threxin? Silarra? Someone who won't get so damn addicted ?

How can you be so stupid? He slammed both hands into the wall on either side of her. Stupid enough to think I can imagine being anywhere you're not? You think me capable of knowing you're breathing on the other side of a shoqing wall with me not there to fuck that stupidity out of your head?

The growl that left her throat was unlike anything he'd heard a human make. Pure, desperate rage, like a young uhyre before the vocal flaps in his sternum fully developed, but with fury already in its heart. And the shove she delivered to his chest, laughably weak but impassioned enough to sting, somehow only served to temper his rising fury.

"If you want to be angry, don't look so shoqing fuckable when you're doing it," he leaned in, suppressing the chuckle filling his throat.

Alina tried to kick her knee up at him—entirely futile of course—as he hiked up her skirt. Bare underneath, as instructed.

"If this were real for you, asshole," she hissed as she tried to shift her hips out of the way of his hand, "you wouldn't be worrying so much about me needing you."

"You say, human?" Threxin grunted, pinning a forearm across her chest to keep her in place.

"I fucking say, Commander," she spat.

He yanked her legs up to his waist and entered her with a growl, drawing out a yelp as he drove her up into the wall. He kept her pinned in place with his arm, capturing her eyes and watching with satisfaction as the irises disappeared and the black of her pupils took over. He withdrew and speared her on him once more, his spikes elongating inside her, pressing at her suckling flesh. With the next thrust, the strained line of her mouth loosened, her jaw slacking as she gave in.

Threxin bent his head to her ear, lapping at its shell with his blackened tongue. She seized around him then, a whimper catching in her throat as her hips jerked against him. Her eyes sparked as she leaned forward, biting his shoulder as she rode out her own orgasm, her teeth claiming his flesh.

When they were both spent, he pulled back reluctantly, leaning his forehead against hers. Her ear and temple was smudged with black that trailed down her neck. A pang of possessive pride coursed through him, enticing him to smear the exorin along her cheek with a rough thumb in further defilement.

Threxin watched as his Alina gathered the poison from her skin onto her finger, then licked it off her fingertip.

He closed the space between them, smearing black onto her tongue in an all-consuming kiss.

Thank you for reading Command .