I awoke to the bright lights of the hibernation chamber, feeling better than I expected. As my eyes adapted to the oxygen filled air, and tears cleared away the sludge that comes from sleeping while traveling to other worlds, I looked at the screen that was showing me information about the planet I had arrived on. I hastily re-focused my eyes to look at the stats a few inches from my face that were of more interest to me - my vitals.
My vitals were not where they should be, and I rolled my eyes with irritation. Hibernation wasn’t my favorite way to travel, mostly because it took too much time for my body to be ready for action.
I looked back at the only thing my body was ready for - the screen of information about this planet. I had done a little research before I left, and I was not impressed in the least. As the information continued to flash in front of me, I became less and less thrilled to be here, which I hadn’t thought possible since I didn’t want to come in the first place. The creatures were ugly and the planet was pathetic. As I found myself hoping that my vitals would stay where they were, I stopped watching the images moving on the screen.
I laid calmly on the bed, looking back at my readings, watching my vitals increase as the rest of my body began to awaken. I was relieved that it wasn’t taking as long as I expected to get back to normal. It was quite impressive that my ship had landed only a half a day ago, but my mind was overly ready to get this mission done with so I could leave.
This planet is a fairly simple planet, all life seems to co-exist. The plant life depends on the other organisms to put the element it needs into the air, and in turn the plants give off the element that the other creatures need.
Unfortunately for me, the element that the abundant plant life put into the air was one of my least favorite - oxygen. I hated oxygen. Not only did this element smell horrible, but it had the most disgusting taste. I dreaded the opening of the hibernation chamber because it wasn’t that there was just a little oxygen on this planet. Oh no, it was an oxygen rich environment. The oxygen was in everything: the organisms, the air, the fluids, and apparently the creatures that Omatha had sent us to get couldn’t live without it… or with too much of it. Well, at least until we got a hold of them.
Why Omatha sent my sisters here was beyond me. I wasn’t even sure how she had discovered this stupid planet. It wasn’t surrounded by much of anything, let alone an object that she would find interesting. However what I found more perplexing was why she wanted these creatures. The intelligence of the creatures, as a whole, was not impressive, and everything that I had learned about them was gross.
They enjoyed wasting their short lives in front of a screen, taking in all the information that was available, but hardly doing anything with what they learned. Although, I suppose, it was possible that they couldn’t learn much. They appeared very inferior to the Omathans, and they didn’t seem to learn very quickly.
For example, they had a wide variety of extreme likes and dislikes, ideals and beliefs, what is considered corruption and acceptable among them - and it all varied across the planet. Which alone wasn’t a tragedy, but they did not seem to understand that their bodies were too fragile for violence to be the means of dealing with each other… it is a wonder that they still exist.
Their bodies… I shuddered at where my mind took me.
Their bodies craved affection, and as if that wasn’t bad enough, they tended to show this with touching: handshakes, hand slaps, pats on each other’s backs, arms draped over or around each other, putting their mouths on each other. They are very creative on how to get this done, but either way it is wrong and disgusting.
Most beings that Omatha sent us after are smart enough to distrust us when we land. I believed it was the creatures’ survival instinct, because we are after something that they have. These particular creatures didn’t take into account that Omathans will kill all others to get what we are looking for, especially my four eldest sisters. Instead of being suspicious, this planet welcomed my sisters. The humans’ mistake. My four eldest sisters loved collecting males, and they do not do it kindly. They believe that only the strongest survive, and therefore they would practically terminate an entire species to find what they wanted. In this case – as it was with every mission I was sent on - the sisters wanted males for Omatha.
In Omatha’s attempt to create a species of her own design, she has us search for the perfect gift. A male that is a champion, so to speak. She will not settle for anything but the best. I scrunched my nose at the idea of the extent at which Omatha went - and continues to go - with the creatures we bring to her.
As the pictures of these creatures continue to flash before my eyes, I cannot understand what it is that has enticed her here. The males of this planet are… blah. They have very little color to them, nothing to set them apart from the other. They all have two legs, two arms, two eyes… their bodies are perfectly symmetrical, fragile, and inferior.
I realize that my body is very similar to theirs, but I am not colorless or fragile. If I were, I would hope that someone would have come along and destroyed me. They did not feel that way, which is why I am here.
These creatures had put up a good fight after my sisters began the attack. They actually took out large amount of Omatha’s fighters. My sisters had knocked a great deal of their numbers down across the planet, which was expected, but they have come to a stalemate.
My four eldest sisters have trapped a large group of creatures in a shelter that the creatures had created, and now my sisters could not get at them. There had been nine sisters sent here and four of my sisters have been here far too long, which meant that they had found what they wanted. They are Omatha’s favorite four, and Omatha is not pleased that she had to send me to get the job done.
The hibernation chamber finally opened and I sat up. I instinctively breathed in deeply, wishing that I hadn’t. What was that I just inhaled? It was worse than oxygen. I could taste other elements in the air that clawed at my lungs.
The creatures of this planet apparently felt it necessary to add their own flavors to the already disgusting base of their air. My research had shown that these creatures had used their crude intelligence to create chemicals that were bad for the all the organisms of this planet, probably due to their need to be dominant over everything.
After I stopped coughing, I quickly moved my legs over the edge of the chamber, and hopped onto the ground. I felt my irritation rise another notch - I did not like their gravity either. I could feel the added weight making me slower.
I stretched upward against the gravity, tightening and relaxing my muscles. It felt good to be moving again. I didn’t despise the hibernation chamber. It made the trip seem shorter, but I did not like being incapacitated. Traveling to get here wasn’t the longest trip I had ever taken, but it was longer than I had wanted to travel for this mission.
“Karissa!” called my eldest sister, Sarsa, from outside my ship. “Karissa! I thought you said she was awake,” she growled.
“Look. Her vitals spiked and then disappeared,” a male voice informed her. The voice must belong to one of her many males showing her the screen that was linked to the hibernation chamber.
“Maybe she died. Wouldn’t that be just like her? Omatha asks her to do something simple, and she fails miserably.”
“No, she isn’t dead,” the male replied with caution. There were few who would tell Sarsa she was wrong, and fewer that she let live for doing so.
“That’s too bad,” she breathed out.
My irritation was almost at full capacity. Sarsa, and all of my sisters, did not like me. I was not nearly as beautiful as they were – they looked like Omatha. Well, Omatha in her original state. Omatha had five beautiful purple eyes, a large eye on one side of her face and four on the other. Her long, red hair looked magnificent against her beautiful light green skin. Me, I looked like my father, or so I was told – fathers didn’t usually live very long.
“Sarsa, Omatha sent her because…” the male began, but stopped as he saw me.
“She’s wasting our time. Why Omatha sent her…” Sarsa continued to complain.
“She sent me, because she’s sick of waiting on you,” I growled as I stepped out of my ship. “Because she knows I’ll get the job done.”
Sarsa glowered down at me.
“If I was as small and ugly as you, I wouldn’t be mouthing off.”
“And if I…”
“Oh, you’re up,” Tania cut in as if I had been sleeping in. “It’s about time.”
“Technically, she woke up earlier than…expected,” the male said as he swallowed hard.
“Whatever,” Tania said rudely, glaring at him. After towering over him intimidatingly for a several moments, she turned her evil stare on me.
“Tania, you don’t frighten me,” I growled.
She leaned down closer to me, pointing her long, slender finger in my face. I knew she thought she could just crush me, and if I wasn’t so quick and close to indestructible, she might have been right.
I grabbed her finger with my hand and squeezed, forcing it away from my face. “Who are you calling ugly?!” I inquired curtly.
An appalled look came over her and her eyes lit up with purple fire that looked absolutely amazing against her mint green skin. She was furious, and I smiled because I knew it.
“Did you just call me ugly?” she stated in a forced calm.
“She wouldn’t do that. She’s not that stupid,” Algeas piped up.
“Oh, yes she did, and yes she is,” Jazzia stated haughtily.
I turned to glare at the two sisters who had come to add their unneeded input.
“You with your stubby fingers, two short legs…” Tania began.
“Well at least I don’t look like a giant Galatician Sryorf!”
All four sisters gasped, and I knew that I was about to take a beating. I turned to run, but felt the long thin fingers spiral around my left shin and I hit the ground. I grabbed viciously at Tania’s fingers and she screamed out, but refused to let go. She grabbed my forearm, and pulled one of my hands away from her grasp on my leg. I reached back and grabbed one of my blades, slashing at her third hand that was reaching for me. She screamed and let go as her dark green blood oozed down her hand. I instantly started running again.
“You little abomination! You will pay for that,” she growled.
I grabbed my other blade, and held out both blades ready to lash out at the first sister to attempt to touch me. They were glaring viciously at me, as though I had attacked them all. I heard footsteps behind me, and I turned with my blade leading. My blade hit his dagger, causing the male to drop his weapon. It was the distraction that my sisters needed. Their hands wrapped around my arms and legs before I could slay the stupid creature for interfering. I glared at the male, and I saw the fear in his eyes.
Tania and Jazzia lifted me off the ground as I struggled to free myself. With a lot of effort on their part, they pulled my arms and legs away from my body so that I was defenseless.
“Ugly, huh?” Tania said angrily. At least…”
“Daughters of Omatha,” Sarsa’s male yelled to be heard.
“…we don’t…” Tania continued.
“…you are supposed to get the…”
“…look like…” Tania growled.
“humans,” Tania and the male said together.
“Oh, now that is very interesting,” Sarsa said cruelly as she stepped in front of me, and everyone looked from her to me.
“I do not look like those… creatures!” I yelled.
“Yes, yes you do,” Sarsa replied slowly. She stared into my eyes, wrenching my blades from my hands. I could see that she was devising a plan that would both humiliate me and put me into a predicament where I would most likely end up dead.
“My skin is green and my eyes are more vibrant…” I retorted. How dare she compare me to those nasty, oxygen breathing creatures!
“You have two legs, two arms, and your body is unbelievably symmetrical,” Sarsa remarked slowly, pulling her plan together, a plan I was sure I didn’t want to be a part of.
“Sarsa, what are you thinking?” Algeas inquired excitedly.
“I hate to agree with Karissa, but she is a better color than they are,” Jazzia remarked.
“Yea, and they’re not that stupid that they wouldn’t notice,” Tania commented.
“Do you really think the males will care about that if they see less clothing?” Sarsa commented as she ripped the sleeve off of my arm and then the other arm. “You’ve seen their files, they love female flesh. I doubt at this point that they’ll be very picky. You remember how their bodies reacted when we stepped out of our ship.”
My sisters started to laugh. Tania pulled out her blade with a smile. She proceeded to cut my pant legs off several inches below my hips, not being at all careful of my skin. I screamed out as her blade cut across my legs, and I tried harder to escape them.
“Be careful, those males will want her to have legs,” Sarsa remarked as she dragged my blade across my torso, slicing off a section of my shirt, leaving just enough material to barely cover my small chest. My blood wasted no time sliding down my stomach and Sarsa laughed happily.
I was breathing hard, wanting to kill all of them. “You’re insane if you think that I’m…”
“You will, or we’ll send you back to Omatha empty handed.”
I scowled at her. We all knew that we could not return home empty handed. If a sister didn’t return, Omatha would have you hunted down and returned to her. At which point she would arrange a slow and painful death. That was the catch of being able to leave our home planet. In order to return we had to bring a gift for Omatha - one that she would like.
Tania and Jazzia carried me to the edge of the camp. I stopped struggling as I looked out across the empty, brown land stretching out towards the stone wall of the mountain where the humans must be hiding.
“I don’t see anything,” I said through clenched teeth. “Perhaps you haven’t caught Omatha’s male because you’ve been wasting time sitting here.”
“They’re there,” Sarsa hissed with confidence.
Tania and Jazzia held my bloody body out away from them, as though they were showing the humans that they didn’t want me.
“Don’t worry you get to take your blades,” Sarsa informed me as she carelessly slid my blades into their sheaths that were hidden in the waist of my pants. I felt more blood running down my back before she was done.
“The male you’ll be looking for will be hidden in that mountain,” Sarsa stated. “He’ll be strong, smart, fearless…”
“If he’s smart and fearless, then what is he doing inside that mountain?” I interrupted.
“Even beings at this inferior level know that the strong must survive or their race dies,” Sarsa remarked, annoyed at my interruption. “Now remember, you need to find me the right male. They will take you inside because they will be curious about your female similarities.”
“I do NOT look like them!” I growled irritably.
Sarsa’s curved blade came up to my face as she glared into my eyes. A smile came to her lips as a thought entered her mind. “Your right. Let’s hope that they don’t kill you where you land because of your disgusting attempt to resemble them.”
All of my sisters started to laugh. Tania and Jazzia prepared to heave me through the air. I narrowed my sights on Sarsa, I wanted to rip out one of her misplaced hearts and shove it down her throat.
“Don’t get any ideas. They will only fail and I will make sure Omatha hears about it,” Sarsa said pleasantly, and nodded to Tania and Jazzia.
They launched me up into the nasty, oxygen filled sky, and the planet’s horrible gravity pulled me down quickly. I landed on the hard barren ground and tumbled uncontrollably. I could feel the brittle soil scraping into me until I rolled to a stop. It was like the planet was punishing me for being in the air.
If I survived this mission, I would be taking the male Sarsa had chosen and give him to Omatha myself.
