MAR

I had this story up before, but I completely rewrote it. I'm not sure which version I like better, but I'm going to stick with this one.


:::Chapter One:::

The planet Amneri was home to one of the most beautiful creatures in all the known universes. The height of all the vegetation and landscape caused most of the dominate species to evolve into tall, slender creatures that lived off of fruit and leaves. I remember seeing such a creature when I first landed on the planet. Beautiful, so pale and frail looking. Slender in eyes, eyes that were as blue and deep as the sky, staring at me through the window pane of my bedroom.

I was young at the time, just barely out of my life tube. My bond mate had been in the bed across from mine own, sound asleep. I had woken up from a bad dream, startled by the strange sound of lightning and the pattering of hard rain. My home planet, Earth, never had such inconvenient weather, so it had been new and frightening to me. The movement out my window had caught my eye and I had raced over to catch a view of the creature in the strange rain.

In awe at the sight, I couldn't look away from such a beautiful vision. Regal looking even in the drenching rain.

Trying to explain what had happened to my bond mate had caused him to go to the adults, sending me to someone who could explain what I had seen. Because for one instant the beautiful creature had been looking at me through the window, the next it had knelt beside me, looking at me eye to eye. In my mind it spoke to me in a flowing language I couldn't understand. Just as suddenly, it had disappeared, and I knelt in the rain, looking into the room I had shared with my bond mate.

That was well over five hundred years ago, and thinking back upon that night, I still get a feeling of peaceful awe. No longer are those beautiful creatures inhabiting the planet of Amneri. No longer were the tall vegetation covering the land, no more crystal clear rivers and lakes. Such was the outcome of a conquered planet. At one time, I had felt sorrow at such a loss. But I had been young and naive, and had to eventually grow out of it. We were a conquering species, and there could be no room for sympathy towards the enemy.

As hard as I tried, I still couldn't stop thinking about that night, and that Amnerian. Which was why I'm still required to visit the doctor every quarter. Even now, whenever I look up at the night sky, or feel the patter of water on my head, I get flashbacks. My bond mate hates it when it happens. He says that I get a strange look, and become completely unaware of my surroundings. An inconvenience in our line of work. In order to conquer, you have to have all your wits about you, or else the enemy will never take you seriously. And we need for them to take us seriously, or else it's a ton more paper work for me to handle.

The sudden knock to my head caused me to become abruptly aware of my surroundings. I looked up at my glowering bond mate, and winced.

"Sorry, OAC, what were you saying?" I straightened my hat that he had nearly knocked off.

OAC sighed in disgust. "Will you ever learn to focus? I was talking about planet Gorianzt. Do you even realize the importance of the mission we're going to be operating? The United Planets Association specifically request our aid in assisting them in this." He turned from me and continued to stride down the pathway towards Higher Headquarters. "It means allot to our Quadrant if we get in good with the UPA. They have allot of power when it comes to the Galaxies, so we need to make a good impression during this meeting we're going to. Reassure them that they made the right decision in choosing us to support this mission. It's no time to slack off!"

"I realize this, OAC. I go to the same briefings as you do, and get the same information as you. There's no need to worry about my slacking off, you know that when it comes to important things like this that I'm not going to mess up." I hurried to keep up with his long legged stride.

Standing at 10'8 he was the tallest person I knew. He was several heads taller than my own 8'6, and often used it to his advantage whenever he was upset with me, which lately has been more often than not. Perfection was what he was. Intelligent, beautiful and strong were all dominate traits that he had and which I lacked. Two bond mates nearly incompatible with each other was unheard of. At creation we're matched with someone who's supposed to be a near duplicate of ourselves. The computer that matched us must have had some sort of glitch in it at the time I was paired up with OAC.

Intelligent: sure, who wasn't these days? Having the capability to hold unlimited amounts of information and knowledge was something that was engineered into every human. It was how well the person utilized that capability that caused people to stand out more than others. OAC was strong in all points of knowledge and information, except for one: languages. Something I was strong at. Perhaps the best linguistic abilities of our time, or so OAC claimed to make me feel better.

Like intelligence, beauty was given to us through science. I've seen only a few humans with the flame red hair of my bond mate. When in public, OAC wore it pulled back in a severe braid that reached the middle of his back. In our quarters, he would let me take it down and run my fingers through the soft, fiery strands of his wavy hair. His eyes were a light brown, almost yellow in color, and were as intimidating as his size. My own hair was straight and blond, and reached passed my waist. I never bothered to braid it, since it isn't wavy and uncontrollable like OACs is whenever it's down, a ponytail worked fine for me.

We were currently located on the freshly conquered planet, Fillur. The ground was moist from the dampness of the air, something the weather technicians were scrambling to fix.

The construction of Headquarters was currently delayed due to the fact that we were undermanned in the engineering department. Most of them were taken by the 4th quadrant for another, much larger mission somewhere in the 46th Region. Only a few buildings were up right now which included the Higher Headquarters and the barracks.

In my hurry to keep up with my bond mate, I somehow missed seeing the large rock that seemed to spring out of nowhere and trip me, right into the back of OAC. "Sorry," I straightened my blouse. "Stupid rock."

OAC didn't say anything, just shook his head and continued on.

Since our first success at the age of fifty, OAC and I have been one of the most successful bond mates in our line of work. Several promotions had OAC as the highest ranking official in the 33rd Quadrant Force, and I followed as second. All in all it took us only ten years to completely conquer a planet four times the size of Earth, and that was by peaceful means. To take a planet over forcefully, takes a year at most.

Already we were on our way to go conquer our seventh planet, Gorianzt. Though this time it was going to be completely different then what we're used to. Mission support for the UPA was something that only a few Quadrants had the honour of doing. The UPA was the largest organization in the planet building industries. They dealt with only the finest of planets for their customers. The cleanest air, the freshest water. Only planets that met their strict standards were chosen by them. And because of the freshness of the planets chosen, they had to be conquered in a peaceful manner. No contamination of any kind was allowed.

With our numbers and show of strength, we would support the UPA diplomats as they persuaded all the dominate species to hand over their rule to us. Only the quadrants with the fiercest and toughest looking troops were picked for these types of missions. The UPA is made up of short, frail looking humans, that intentionally looked older. In order for a planet to be conquered peacefully, the ambassadors had to look non threatening, with a strong army. It was engineered into them, and it worked perfectly. Since the time they were first engineered, the UPA have yet to fail a single mission they set out to accomplish.