Destin's Hold

Chapter 1-3

Jersula Ikera stomped across the soft sand in a foul mood. The thin, dark blue silk cover she wore clung to her lithe body and floated behind her. If anyone saw her from a distance, she would look like she was floating across the powdery white crystals that made up the sandy beach.

Her long white hair was unbound and blew around her. Her icy blue eyes flashed with an uncharacteristic fire and her pale blue lips were pressed into a firm line of irritation. She had come down to the beach to escape for a while, at least until she could find her center and restore the calm mask she relied on to interact with others.

A swift glance up and down the beach showed it was deserted. Jersula – Sula to her family and her few close friends – breathed a sigh of relief. She could mull over the orders she received early this morning in private. They were distressing, but she knew she needed to release some of the anger she was feeling if she wanted to get through the day without making a mistake that could devastate her career.

“Why? Why are they sending me to that horrible place again? Wasn’t once enough? Who could I have angered so much that they would send me there again?” she muttered under her breath.

Her mind flashed to the dozens of people that could be responsible. She knew her icy reserve and sometimes blunt attitude had angered certain members of the Usoleum Council, but she was always right in her assessments! It wasn’t her fault that most of the political members of the council were sweet, confused people who couldn’t think their way out of a wormhole.

Sula glanced back at her transport to see how far she had walked along the beach. Not far; it seemed that stomping wasn’t the fastest way to travel.

The small transport glinted in the sunlight. It had been given to her when she arrived on Rathon six weeks ago. She had hoped to be appointed the new ambassador between her people and the Trivators. That hope had been brutally crushed when her new orders arrived this morning before dawn.

“No, I have to return to that horrible, war-torn excuse for a planet brimming with savages! Those uncultured, hostile, brutal beasts who were ignorant of any life forms outside of Earth until a few years ago! They haven’t even mastered space travel,” she snarled under her breath in frustration before her footsteps slowed and she blinked back tears of annoyance. “That is what they are… ignorant beasts!”

Her anger boiled when she thought of her previous visit. The last time she had been to the primitive planet called Earth, her assignment was to assess the situation left by the previous ambassador who had been killed, and it had been impossible to do anything when she had received no support from the Trivators or the humans.

At the time, she had been forced to wait two weeks before the Trivators would even allow her access to Councilor Badrick’s starship. By the time she was finally allowed to board, the previous crew had been recalled, a new crew assigned, and all of Councilor Badrick’s reports and personal files had vanished. The only things Sula had been left with were a clueless crew, a Trivator named Cutter who had regarded her with suspicion, and a human male who had dismissed her with a look of contempt during their one and only meeting! It wasn’t until much later that she had unraveled the reasons behind the Trivator and human’s animosity. Unable to blink back the tears of frustration this time, she lifted an impatient hand and brushed them away.

Sula had reported her initial findings on Badrick to the Council and her father, and within weeks of arriving on Earth, she was recalled to her home world, Usoleum. Believing she was being groomed to take over the Ambassador’s position at the Alliance Headquarters, she had worked day and night on a variety of issues, but it had all been for naught. She had discovered a hidden cache of Badrick’s files, and shortly after reporting the discovery, she was reassigned to Rathon. Here, she was to work with the Trivators to wring every bit of information possible from those files and to strengthen Usoleum’s relationship with the Trivators after the damage wrought by Badrick’s unconscionable behavior – a behavior that had mortified her family.

There were a large number of files to sift through, and in the meantime, she had adhered to her assignment to grovel at the Trivators’ feet for the past six weeks. It should have shown the Usoleum Council that she would make an excellent Ambassador to the Trivator Council here on their planet. But once again, her hopes were crushed. Sula was the only living Usoleum with experience on Earth, and she was now reassigned there to finish her original task, which was to clean up the mess Badrick left behind – almost two Earth years later! Her only hope for any kind of real success with the humans lay in parsing useful information from those files. To get even the slightest bit of trust and good will on Earth, she needed to be able to answer the question preying on everyone’s mind: where were the rest of the missing human women?

Sula still had a couple of days left on Rathon, however, and part of reassuring the Trivators and the Alliance that everything was under control included attending some ceremony between a member of Chancellor Razor’s family and a Trivator warrior. It would begin in a couple of hours, and if she was not able to gain control of her emotions before the ceremony, her career would be in even worse shape than it already was.

“This is an insult!” Sula hissed, discarding her maudlin misery in favor of the more empowering anger she had felt earlier. “If Father thinks my brothers are so much better at diplomacy than I am, then one of them should be the one to attend the ceremony, not me! When they need a problem solved, they send me in to fix it. Father knows I am more than qualified for the ambassador position. Yet he gives the position to Sirius, the progeny who is least qualified. All Sirius wants to do is chase women that he couldn’t do anything with and play at the gaming tables! He isn’t even fit to be – to be – to care for the racers in the stables, much less be the Ambassador to the Trivators,” Sula muttered with a slashing wave of her hand in the air.

Sula released a long sigh and stepped through the narrow chasm in the rocks. She gazed out at the water protected by the small cove for several seconds before she walked toward it, drawn to the soothing waves. She missed her world. It was mostly water and her people were born within its beautiful seas. They live on land, but the water is where they find solace.

Sula’s hand moved to the tie of the gown and she released it. The garment fell to the sand around her feet. Her body was covered in a form-fitting dark blue suit made for the water. She spread her fingers and the fine membranes between them spread like small webs. Stepping forward, she relished the first touch of the water against her skin. Pleasure coursed through her, cooling her fury and soothing her despair.

Her gaze scanned the water. The waves broke against the reef almost two hundred meters offshore. It would be a short swim for her, but she could do it several times before she had to return to her temporary lodging to prepare for the ceremony. Sula slowly walked forward until she was deep enough to sink down below the surface.

The two almost invisible slits along her neck opened and she drew water into her gills. The refreshing liquid filled the second set of lungs with life-giving fluid, extracting the oxygen trapped in the water into her blood when she exhaled. She loved living and working near an ocean. A shudder went through her when she thought of her next assignment. It was so far from the large oceans that covered most of Earth. There was a long, narrow lake, but it wasn’t the same. She would have to make periodic trips to the coast to satisfy her body's craving for the salty water.

And I’ll need to swim frequently to keep from killing that arrogant human male if he is still there, Sula thought. Perhaps I will be lucky and he will already be dead, and a more reasonable human will have replaced him.

Remorse swept through her at her hateful thoughts. It was so unlike her. She hated the idea of hurting anything or anyone. Her six older brothers teased her, saying that was why it was ridiculous that she would even consider becoming a member of the Alliance Council.

Sula pushed the negative thoughts away. She would lose herself in the pleasures of the ocean around her. Pushing off the bottom, her body cut through the crystal-clear liquid like a laser cutter through steel. All around her, colorful fish and plant life flourished in a world few could appreciate.

The cove was protected from the larger marine life that lived on the other side of the reef. She had researched Rathon’s oceanographic environment and decided it would be best to stay within the protected barriers that sheltered the coast line. ‘Nature’s unique fencing’ is the way Sula liked to think of it.

She was starting to feel more herself, more collected, but a wave of longing swept through her to just let go, to be wild for a few unadulterated minutes – not the frazzled, bitter release from the beach, but something… untouchable. To hell with her father’s belief that she wasn’t capable of dealing with the stress of being a leading member of the Usoleum Council or an integral part of the Alliance. She knew she could if she was given the opportunity.

Closing her eyes, she twisted until she was facing upward and allowed her body to slowly sink to the bottom. She relaxed her arms and a serene smile curved her lips. Maybe she would just forget about the ceremony and stay here all day. It wasn’t as if it really mattered if she attended. No one, especially the Trivator male and his human mate, would even miss her.

Finally, the peace that Sula had been searching for settled over her. Her body floated above the soft white sand. The light from the rising sun created shafts of glittering beams that reflected off the silver threads in her bodysuit and made them sparkle like diamonds. She was unaware of how ethereal she looked against the satin bottom of the ocean, or the fact that she wasn’t alone.