Hi there,

I am terribly sorry about the delay in getting this next chapter written. The past few months have been downright depressing, and it has been terrible trying to get my head together enough to put the thought to paper (or Computer in this case).

I hope that the work has not suffered too much in my distracted state. Please stay with me, I hope to get myself back on some kind of schedule here soon!

Darwin

(Enjoy)

Chapter Ten: Help or Die

Gui'Yata burst through the doors of the dwelling where Gerard was being carefully guarded since arriving on the planet. In this small growth he had been staying since that day, carefully protected from the visitors that often came through the city. They were fearful of others finding the unaccounted for human in their midst, it seemed. What he had gathered was that his presence had not been divulged and that could mean excommunication from their society. Gerard's presence, hence, was a carefully guarded secret.

The Soua had been severely disappointed that Gerard had not followed Courtney's example and at least attempted to become one of them. That at least would have given him a foot in the door if he had returned here a fully-fledged hunter. As it was, he was a burden to their society, and they grew quickly tired of protecting him. They made sure that he knew that on every occasion. They bumped into him on purpose while walking the city, many would stop him in the street and glower at him while he cowered in their shadow, knowing not to make eye contact with them.

Gerard knew that he needed to try and fit in, knew that he would have to ask for the training that would make him socially acceptable. And yet he balked at the idea, feeling deep down that he would lose sight of just who he was, something he had suffered from thirteen years prior when he had worked for the Organization. That lack of forethought had nearly cost him his life at the hands of his employers.

When the fighting had broke out he had attempted to join the fray, something about the attack threatened his own safety as well. His guard, who made it clear in no uncertain terms that Gerard was not worthy of joining in to protect the city, blocked him from that act. Gerard did not need to speak or understand the language, the spear point aimed at his chest was explanation enough. He had considered forcing his way past the creature, but thought better of it. He had shrugged and turned back to the Spartan quarters, sure that any attempt to help these creatures would only result in his own death. Recently it had become quiet and Gerard had begun to wonder just what had happened.

Gerard looked up startled by the thick Soua's violent entrance into his space. He turned to face the alien, taller than he by at least a head and a half, crossing his arms. The creature looked angry and frustrated with something. Gui'Yata stopped short of the smaller human, crossing his arms in a mirror of Gerard's posture, "You have heard?" The alien started in perfect English, and Gerard noticed a grin flickering at the corners of the alien's mouth at his startlement.

Gerard shook his head negatively, frowning heavily, "Heard what?"

The large creature looked down, "The Noa have taken Courtney hostage."

"What!" Gerard replied in a fearful whisper.

"It is true," Gui'Yata nodded in response, "They have gone into Lmarianta and we are gathering a party together to retrieve her. You must come with me now." He stated gravely.

"What? Why me?" Gerard protested.

"She was taken on the orders of a human," Gui'Yata watched as a shock went through the Earthen soldier before him. After a moment his body relaxed again.

"Why would you need me?" He asked again, his heart still pounding. Yet he was not willing to be liaison to these creatures to treat for Courtney's life, "I don't know what I could say to convince him to return Courtney or to stop these attacks," Gerard finished shrugging and turning away to hide the anxiety he was feeling suddenly, "Really you should be more careful about who and what you bring back here." Gerard added sarcastically.

He was spun violently back around by the alien and lifted bodily off the ground. Gerard blinked heavily looking into that enraged foreign face, "Because…the human is a soldier from your group!" The creature growled, "If anyone can convince him of this war's madness it would be you…you were his leader!"

"O…One of my men?" Gerard repeated in a small voice, "They survived? But you…your people killed them all."

The anger drained from Gui'Yata's face suddenly and he pushed Gerard out, releasing his grip and watched as the man fell heavily to the floor. Shaking his head the alien said, "They were not all killed immediately," He sounded to Gerard like he regretted that decision, "Several were taken prisoner the night your people attacked, they were brought back here. They were released into the fields beyond the landing and were assumed killed by what lives there in the grasses."

"They made it through," Gerard finished, a certain note of pride filling his voice.

"He made it through, no more," Gui'Yata corrected quickly, "Now he poisons the Noa with some scheme. It is too much coincidence that he is in their group and only recently have they begun to attack us in earnest. This man…has taken Courtney."

Gerard looked at the alien sourly, "And you want me to fix this?"

"She means a lot to me I would like to see her return," The alien admitted. Then he cocked his head to one side seeing the look on Gerard's face, "Does she mean nothing to you?" He asked crossing his arms, standing taller and staring down its fangs at him. Gerard remained silent, looking down at the rough floor. He returned his gaze to the creature when it let out a heavy, very human like sigh, "I thought to have seen interest for her in your eyes…but then I am not a expert on human emotions. Perhaps I was wrong." The creature Gui'Yata grunted derisively and turned to leave, "The council is still pending on the decision to allow you to live," He added without turning back, "We have no use for uselessness in this society. Grapada is most certain to release you."

"Wait," Gerard said catching Gui'Yata before he disappeared onto the landing. The creature turned back toward him, "I'll help," He blurted before his nerve gave out.

He watched as the creature nodded, and there was a light in his eyes. With a sinking sensation in his gut he realized that he had just been played.

"It took ten long 'rotations' to prepare for this war," Thomas said nodding to Courtney, "Time to gather enough gear, to spy on the cities and gather information, to formulate plans, and to decide where best to start the slaughter.

"We watched with interest when Taysa and Donona began fighting with each other. In that lay the seed of a fine plan. Our original thought was to attack the Brethren, openly declare a war, but I knew, as the Clan did that the Brethren possessed greater technology, even if Clan numbers surpassed their own. When your civil war broke out we decided that it was the perfect way to destroy the Brethren. Attack a city looking like their own, automatically blame would go to the other better-established cities. We instigated Donona into thinking that you, the Taysa, had done it, the rogues, already beleaguered by the mainstream, they were the easiest of all to convince that society had finally desired their extermination.

"Right now, the Brethren should be at each other's throats…only their not," Thomas stepped in to Courtney's space looking very ugly, "For a long time I could not figure out why their reaction had not been as predicted. They are a very biased people, very proud and willful. Affronts to their code of honor are usually swiftly and harshly dealt with. Only no war had broke out…because of you."

He nodded as he turned away again, "A human amongst the Brethren, a level head with a different view on the world. You somehow convinced each of the three sides that the other two had not been the root cause of their problems," Courtney snorted, he was giving her way too much credit for her part in these events.

"I really had nothing to do with the idea to talk rather than fight," Courtney growled.

"Please don't underestimate yourself," Thomas said unconvinced, "They are too passionate about the hunt, about fighting to think of negotiations."

Courtney looked down at her feet realizing that she was not going to change his mind. His own bias seemed to be clouding his view of the Soua. She changed the subject, "But why after all these millennium would the Noa wish for the destruction of the Soua? They coexisted peacefully before you planted this idea in their heads to take the planet for themselves."

"I did not plant the idea!" Thomas bellowed, then more quietly he said, "The thought has been simmering in their minds for over two and a half millennium. You don't understand what happened here…The Brethren aren't natural to this world!"

Courtney tilted her head at that statement, realizing that he had said that before to her, "Then make me understand it."

Thomas looked at her a long time not blinking. Suddenly he sighed, moving away he sat down on the pile of crudely cured skins. Courtney slowly moved nearer him, but did not join him on the furs. Thomas started softly, "The Clan has told me to the best of their recollection the events surrounding the current power balance on this world.

"The Brethren split from the clan long ago, taking to the trees, where life was easier. They were the weakest of the Clan unwilling to endure the conditions and constant dangers of the forest floor. Then the Clan begrudged them nothing, for the Brethren kept contact, discovering new things to hunt and trade from their new treetop world. Sometime after that, when is not certain in the reckoning of the Clan, but long ago, when the planet was still new, the Masters visited this planet and took many of the Brethren for their own purposes. Trapped in the trees the Brethren had been very easy to capture. It is said because the Brethren were such fierce and cunning hunters, that they were warriors that the Masters had to have to swell their ranks. The Clan lost all contact with the Taken Brethren for the many hundreds of years following the Masters arrival. Life was lived as it had always been hunting, fighting for survival, mating and raising the young and teaching them to hunt in turn. Both the Clan on the floor and the Brethren in the trees lived in harmony each complementing and assisting the other to make life more bearable on this inhospitable world.

"In the passing of time The Taking had become legend, stories to tell the young in order to keep them in line on hot and sleepless nights. None of the current population believed the stories to be true. Then the Master's ship returned and Clan and Brethren alike quailed at the sight looming in the summer sky. It had been like a great earthquake as the ship had touched down, breaking the sky with a large crack, flattening trees that had stood for millennia. After a long passage of time the vessel was silent, and the Clan and Brethren stood at a distance observing the metal monstrosity now perched atop the ruin of the forest.

"The masters had returned and all was lost to the minds of the population. Many ran from the site unwilling to be swallowed up by the ship, to become slaves to the Masters after so many generations of freedom.

"What stepped off the ship was wholly unexpected, they were definitely not the Masters as the stories had described them. The Masters had been tall very thin, their heads were egg shaped with a high flat forehead, their eyes were huge, dark orbs, slanting upward from the almost non-existent nose in their face. Their mouths were thin lines below the two specks that were their insufficient nostrils. Their skin was smooth and they wore no clothing. They were an advanced race, and though they were at war with another highly advanced civilization they themselves did not battle. They took more primitive warlike species and made them into their army forced to fight in their stead.

"The Clan moved closer to observe the new arrivals. These were not the Masters…what emerged from the Master's ship was something entirely different from that. A realization sent a wave of horror through the Clan. They were looking at the descendants of the Taken Brethren, wholly changed from the warriors of old that had been taken into space. The Masters had certainly liked their new hunters, their new front line in the galactic war they waged, but they had found need for improvements. They tampered with them, shaping their bodies to more resemble their own. The Masters gave them eyes, the ability to see heat, to make them more effective in the battles that they would wage. They made the Brethren taller more massive with long locks of hair genetically changed from the sparse spikes that adorned the Clans' crowning ridges. They split their fingers adding several digits to enhance their ability to manipulate items and shorter and flatter clawed feet with gripping toes to enhance their innate climbing ability. The Masters made them in their own image, only more crude more vicious than the Masters could ever be. They had enjoyed playing God with their newfound living toys. They had desecrated all that the Clan was in making their Brethren to fight in the stars.

"Even their language had strayed from the Clan's own and they found it difficult to communicate with their bastard cousins. And in their frustration with the simple peoples still living on Soona these space-fairing Brethren began to massacre them. The Brethren that had lived in the trees since before the time of the Taking were ousted from their homes, and were forced to return to the forest floor where the Clan reabsorbed them. These new Brethren took over the treetops, beginning to transform the traditional homes with their newly stolen Master technology.

"They could no longer be considered of the planet, they were too foreign to it, removed from their stock by time, distance, and mutilated DNA. Yet they took it from the Clan upsetting the power balance. For many rotations they harried and hunted the Clan, for sport, for fun. That occupation dulled for them after a time, in which they had become prolific, their population nearly tripling.

"But they were bored with what their small planet had to offer having hunted and fought off planet for so long. They saw no challenge in the Soona's fauna to suit them and that is when they began the tradition of a pack ship, of seeking other stars for more challenging prey.

"You see, they do not deserve the planet…their right to it was forfeit when the Masters remade them like so much molding clay."

Courtney could not speak for a long time…they were originally Noa? And these Masters had made them into mutant slaves? That sent a shiver up her spine, that their past was filled with such slavery. They had used the Soua as attack dogs so as not to sully their own hands with war. How sickening was that? Courtney wondered if the Soua knew this course of events for themselves? She had certainly never heard mention of such a history in her ten rotations with the society.

"Now that you are here, it will be that much easier for us to defeat them," Thomas added rising again, "You have much information, I am sure, about their society. Their prides, their weaknesses."

"You think," Courtney started her eyes narrowing, "You think that I would help you kill and maim my friends, my family?"

"Your Family!" He barked laughing, "You really think that you are any more than a well trained pet to them?"

Courtney's head raised higher until she was looking down her nose at him. Her fury flooded up and she reacted before she could calm the tide. She rushed at him intent on throttling his life from his body. A look of shock passed over his face but he had recovered and signaled before she could reach his back-stepping form.

Where they came from she was not sure but suddenly eyeless Noa surrounded her, each latching strong clawed hands about her to restrain her. Before she knew what had happened she was shackled to the center post of the dwelling, feeling a slimy strip of decayed flesh pressed against her wrist. She struggled heavily against the bonds as she watched the Noa retreat to the corners from which they came and suddenly blend, fading from sight as their chameleon like skin changed to match the mottled light and dark of the dusky walls.

Courtney glared back down at Thomas as he strode back up to her, "Oh, you'll help me all right…or you'll die where you hang. See if you don't supply me with information…I have one of them bite you. You ever seen what a Noa bite does?" Courtney shook her head minutely, "Hurts like crazy right off the bat then the numbness takes over. You know what happens then?" Courtney looked down on the madman a mixture of fury and fear in her eyes, then shook her head in the negative, "You'll get the privilege of watching your own flesh melt off your body. Too bad too," He said smiling wickedly, running a hand up her inner leg to her crotch grabbing her roughly, "You're so pretty…and it's been so long."

Courtney kicked out viciously, wincing as it came up against the chain to the shackle sending pain all the way up her leg. He ducked away laughing at her, then turned to leave, "Think about it…I'll be back."