Tink’s Neverland

Chapter 2

Chapter Two

Tink was just putting her foot on the first step when out of the corner of her eye, she noticed a strange light emitted from the metal “doorway.” The entire thing seemed to shimmer, and then it cleared up, opening to another room. The room was a soft gray with low lights emanating from the floor and ceiling. Tink blinked a couple of times, thinking she was hallucinating from being overtired.

What the…? she thought as she shook her head again to try to clear her eyesight.

No matter how much she shook her head or rubbed her eyes, the room was still there. Hesitating, she slowly put her foot back down onto the concrete floor of the lab. Turning, she walked toward the metal “doorway.” Glancing up, she looked at the metal surrounding the door, noticing there were a series of lights running faster and faster around it.

Shaking her head from the dizziness of watching the lights going around, she gently stretched her hand out to touch what should have been solid concrete where the wall of the lab should have been. She felt a slight tingling as her hand passed through the doorway but nothing that felt dangerous or disturbing. Tink pulled her hand back and glanced up toward where the console was with a frown.

“RITA, what do you make of this?” Tink asked in a slightly husky voice.

“I’m not sure, dear, but I don’t think it would hurt you. Why don’t you take a look and see what it is!” RITA replied, sounding almost eager.

Take a look? Was RITA nuts? Could a computer be nuts? Was Tink going nuts? Hooray, now all she was doing was thinking about nuts!

“What do the readings say?” Tink asked curiously.

“You were able to pull over 12.8695 amps out of the generator! What a wonderful increase, dear. It seems to be just what Cosmos needed to get his project running,” RITA said, sounding excited.

“Well, maybe you should power it down now that we know it worked. I’m not sure what Cosmos is doing, but if he can create a room that wasn’t there before, maybe I don’t want to mess with it,” Tink said, starting to turn around.

Tink hadn’t taken more than a step when she heard something coming from the other side of the “doorway.”

“What was that? RITA, did you pick up anything?” Turning back toward the doorway, Tink looked closer.

A tall, dark-haired man was fighting with… Tink shook her head again. A… What the hell is that? Tink moved closer as the man raised his sword. Holy crap, the guy had a huge sword! The man looked like he was fighting a big iguana! The other creature was hissing, its tongue moving in and out as it swung what looked like a double-edged sword toward the tall, dark-haired man. The dark-haired man moved backward trying to stay out of the iguana dude’s reach. He was holding his right arm close to his body like he was hurt, and he was dragging his left leg.

Tink glanced down at it as he moved by and saw blood flowing from a deep gash that had to hurt like hell. As he moved by, Tink saw the dark-haired man’s face for the first time. The man’s features caused Tink to gasp. He looked more like a kid! Not more than sixteen or seventeen! The iguana dude raised his double-edged sword over his head and struck a particularly brutal blow on the sword arm of the dark-haired boy. The power of the blow caused the boy to fall backward where he lay sprawled on the floor of the hallway. The iguana dude roared with triumph and raised his sword over his head in order to deal a death blow.

Derik knew his time had come. He knew death would come quickly now. When their ship was attacked, he gripped his battle-sword, ready to defend his shipmates and his brothers. A feeling of regret surged through him as he thought of his parents’ and brothers’ reaction to his death.

He was only seventeen planet cycles old and had begged and pestered his father and older brothers to let him join them on this trade mission to a nearby star system. Everything was fine until they’d received a distress call from a starship two clicks ago. They were the closest ship and offered to help. The signals coming from the ship identified it as a class-five passenger starship on course to Caldara Four to drop off its passengers. The distress signal also identified multiple system failures, including environmental.

Responding to the distress signal, they encountered the Juangans instead. The Juangans had obviously hijacked the starship. They used it as a decoy in an effort to get unsuspecting ships to come to its rescue. They were a fierce species that preyed on anything that moved and were known for their brutal treatment not only of each other, but of any species they encountered. They were not picky about who or what they ate. They were known to even sacrifice members of their own crew to fulfill their grisly appetites.

Derik was a member of the Prime, a proud warrior people who lived in a galaxy that had several habitable planets. There were three planets in the Prime system that supplied a wide variety of materials the Prime used for trading with other nearby galaxies, though only one was fully inhabited. Baade was the home world of the Prime.

Two smaller planets, Lacertae and Carafe, had only small, isolated cargo ports, mining facilities, and military sites. Their most important resource was the crystals that helped to power their world and their ships. Mined on the smallest of the three planets, Carafe, the crystals were heavily protected. Their ship on this trip had not contained a cargo of the crystal, but of fruits and other natural products the nearby galaxy of Grus used for their space stations and planetary needs.

While this ship was a military warship, they used it sometimes to transport products to nearby galaxies as a cover to gather and observe data on the neighboring inhabitants. They had already dropped the shipment off and were returning with a variety of materials that could not be found on their home planet.

One of the things they would have liked to have found were females from the other galaxy that were a match for their men. Women on their home planet were held in very high regard. Unfortunately, there were not very many women available. Most of the women on Prime were already spoken for through the mating rites which were performed as soon as the female came of age. The problem was the birth rate of females remained low, making it difficult for the unmated males to find mates.

Prime males were matched to their mates though a mating rite ceremony, and if no match was made, life for the unattached males meant a solitary existence. The mating rites were a chemical reaction that occurred when a Prime male had a physical and emotional chemical reaction bonding them to a female. The males become overwhelmed with feelings of possessiveness, protectiveness, and s****l desire. A mating mark, a series of intricate circles denoting the unbreakable bond between mates, appeared on the palm of the male and the matching female when they come into contact with each other. Each mark was as individualized as the bonded pair. It would not appear until the male and female reached the age of mating.

Due to the decline in the birthrate of females, fewer and fewer males were finding mates. This decline had reached an almost critical level. The Prime males were desperately looking for an alternative solution.

One of the main reasons for the trips to other galaxies was the hope of finding a compatible species that could procreate with the Prime males. A mating rite had never been done outside their species before, even though some of their males had tried to bond with other species from nearby galaxies. All had failed. Procreation was impossible without the mating rite and with the fact the species found so far were either incompatible or downright unappealing to the males. It was hard to get turned on to a green, scaly creature with six arms and four legs, or one who had more hair on her body than a Prime Tookey, a long-haired, long-limbed creature found in the thick forest of the mountainous region of Prime.

I’ll never have the chance to find my bond mate, Derik thought, disheartened as he stared into the cold, dead eyes of the Juangan standing over him.

He stared defiantly at the Juangan, determined to end his life with honor. The Juangan took one step toward Derik, then suddenly stopped. Its mouth opened slowly, and a green slime slowly trickled down its chin. It slowly dropped to its knees before pitching face-first toward Derik. Derik scooted back, looking down at the dead Juangan with wonder before glancing up to see which of his fellow warriors came to his rescue.

“Ja tasn meszk talkock,” he muttered. “I must be dreaming.”

Derik stared at the vision in front of him. It was a goddess! It could only be that as he had never in his life seen anything so beautiful. Behind the vision, a shimmering wall of color swirled in the narrow corridor. The vision of the goddess before him appeared out of it. Light danced around her, and she looked like she was—furious. All he could do was look at the tiny figure standing before him. She truly was the most beautiful creature he had ever seen, and she had just saved his life!