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  She scowled. “This is an Alliance mission. I will report to them before anything else.”

  “Fine. We will leave the surface and dock out of orbit. The planet is becoming far more unstable than we anticipated.” Eckhar seemed to have taken charge and the planet rumbled under their feet in agreement.

  Razi could smell the newly tumbled rock, felt the electric discharge in the air. The new senses her body was exercising were distracting. She wanted to get back into pristine and cleaned space where there were no moments of impending death at the hands of the planet you were standing on.

  “Fine. We will discuss this off planet. Send that message to the Alliance first thing, or you are going to hear about it.” She was about to stomp into her shuttle when Eckhar grabbed her arm and pulled her in for a kiss.

  Her lips parted and she tasted him for a moment.

  Ailan spun her away and overrode Eckhar with his own mouth.

  She was breathing hard and fighting to stay on her feet when he let her go. Leaning up against her shuttle, she glared at them both. “Seriously?”

  They raised their eyebrows in surprise at her irritation.

  Eckhar straightened and asked the question that both of them were thinking, “I beg your pardon?”

  “I am about to pilot a ship off a planet in gravitational flux and you just overloaded all of my senses. Jerks.” Snorting, she minced into her shuttle and did a quick inventory. Aside from the destroyed instruments, everything was in place.

  Her systems check showed everything was green and she lifted off the surface of Nala’s damned planet before the shuttle could change its mind.

  The controls felt a little odd, but she attributed it to the gravitational variance. She was able to lift from the surface and exit the atmosphere with only a few smooth moves. Once out of the grasp of the planet’s gravity, she waited for her companions.

  The Oefric ship had a lot less difficulty than she had in separating from the planet. They locked onto her signal and came straight for her without hesitation.

  “Razi, we have sent the signal and are preparing to dock. Don’t move.” Eckhar’s voice came clearly through her system speakers.

  “Fine. But be gentle. You haven’t even bought me dinner yet.” She set the systems to passive access and waited.

  The Oefric shuttle glided into position, silence ringing through the air in her ship until the moment they made contact. The ships clunked together, the magnetic seals intimately connecting as the grapples fixed to her shuttle.

  Razi smiled as she got a travel bag together, tucking it under her bunk.

  A polite knock at the door got her attention. The seals were green and she opened her shuttle to her visitor.

  Make that visitors. She stood aside to allow them in.

  “Your shuttle is very…functional.” Ailan was peering into cupboards while Eckhar went straight for the console.

  “You can say it. My apartment is ugly. I am used to the idea already. It has been my home for months at a time at different digs. It is hideous, but it gets me where I need to go.” Razi shrugged.

  Eckhar finished what he was working on and turned to them with a bundle of wires in his hand. “I have her.”

  “What did you do to my ship?”

  “Nala jumped your systems via your communications terminal. She downloaded herself into your steering systems.” He waved the circuits and connectors in the air. “She trapped herself in a closed loop and when you went passive, she was stuck.”

  Razi was amazed. “How did you know?”

  Eckhar grinned. “You are not that clumsy a pilot. Your trajectory was off, your steering sluggish…and when we contacted you, she tried to jump our systems.”

  “That would do it.” Razi examined the object in Eckhar’s hand. “Hold on a moment. Did you just rip out my steering?”

  “Our shuttle is locked to yours. We can and will do the piloting for you.” Eckhar put the bundle in a small case.

  Ailan found her bag and put it on her bunk. “She may have affected your life support, so we should be going now. Come along, Razi. There is a warship on the way to pick us up.”

  “Good. I can hardly wait to debrief on this one.” She stretched and grabbed her notepads. “Let’s go. I have some questions to ask.”

  Ailan bowed with a formal wave to his hand. “We will answer anything that we can. The first change is a time of adjustment for everyone. Normally we are at home and have our families around us. You don’t have that luxury, so we are at your disposal. Now move your ass, it’s getting cold in here.”

  Glaring at him, she lifted her chin and moved through the hatch. Her shuttle was behind her and her future followed on her heels.

  Chapter Five

  When the warship arrived, she didn’t have the answers that she wanted. They had shared a meal and all climbed into one of the large bunks to sleep in a tangled heap.

  Razi had squirmed around to get comfortable until Ailan pinned her shoulders with one arm and Eckhar draped his legs over hers. Surrounded by warmth and the steady beat of their hearts, she slept.

  When her back got cold, she woke. Eckhar was at the controls and they were approaching a huge ship. Ailan had her cuddled against him and she really didn’t want to move.

  Eckhar turned and spoke to her. “They are prepping medical teams. We all need a good going over and Ailan isn’t in any condition to do it.”

  She looked at the man who had her in his arms and noticed the pallor of his skin. There was a fever in his flesh and she couldn’t see the cause.

  “What is wrong with him?”

  “The bots worked us over while we were trying to get to you. I am fairly certain that they did some internal damage to Ailan, but he insisted on carrying you out of that crevice.”

  She stroked the dark hair away from Ailan’s forehead as the twined shuttles parked in a brightly lit hangar. The emergency hatch was blown from the exterior and a swarm of medics charged in.

  “Please let him go, miss. We need to care for him.” The kindly faced man had the scent of a feline with feathers.

  Razi nodded her head and reluctantly released Ailan into their custody. She sat up and a kindly older female was sitting nearby.

  Eckhar joined his own batch of medics and that left Razi with the stranger.

  “Hello, Razi Nelson. I hear that you have just had your first shift.” The woman’s face was concerned as was her posture. Everything about her was calm and nurturing.

  “Yes. It was…” A blinding welter of impressions and memories jammed into her mind in one shot. “Memorable.”

  “What form did you take?”

  “One from my planet. A bobcat. Large feline with fluffy tufts of fur.”

  “How did it feel?”

  “Comfortable. Natural. I really wanted to run.” The words came out in a rush and she felt that it was a confession of sorts.

  The woman smiled in relief. “That is natural. I am Matron Hailial. I act as a counsellor on the ship and am glad that you had a relatively easy change.”

  The welter of fangs, fear, arousal and the strange energy that she had felt played back in her thoughts. “That is not how I would categorize it.”

  “Trust me, the amount of tangled first shifts would astonish you. Most of our folk have been trained since childhood to prepare for it, but they still panic at the moment of the shift.” Hailial smiled. “Please, Razi, come with me to medical and we will find out how a transformation from Terran to Oefric happens.”

  Razi got to her feet and put her hand in that of the counsellor. “I can tell you how it happens, you accidentally turn on an ancient AI and she carries out her protocols on any non-Oefric life form.”

  “I still can’t believe that you found the original factory that created our race.” Hailial tugged her out of the ship and into the shuttle bay.

  The men on duty lifted their heads as she passed. A light scenting of her that she found unnerving. “Why do they do that?”

  �
�Do what?”

  “Scent females when they pass. I noticed my companions doing the same the first time we met.”

  Hailial chuckled. “Masculine nature. They are genetically programmed to pass on their bloodlines. Any likely candidate merits further study.”

  Razi snorted. “How flattering.”

  “You get used to it. At least they fight their more base nature and do their scenting from a distance.”

  The interior of the ship was not like standard Alliance vessels and it suddenly struck Razi that everyone she had seen was an Oefric. “This isn’t an Alliance ship, is it?”

  Hailial smiled. “We are affiliated, but your males judged that we could do a better job acclimating you to your new situation than an Alliance crew that would study you before helping you adapt.”

  “You don’t plan to study me?”

  “Of course we do. We just will do it as you learn and adapt. You are the first first-generation Oefric that most of us have ever heard of. This is a valuable opportunity for us to learn how our people came to be the society we have today.”

  They were moving at a steady pace, but it was still unnerving for Razi to have men turn their heads before she came into visual range. The air channels on the ship had to be sending the pheromones ahead of them.

  Medical was bustling with personnel. Each of her men had a swarm of physicians and assistants around them. Ailan was receiving surgery while Eckhar was being hooked up for supplements.

  A separate room was set aside for Razi. She lay on the scanning bed and waited.

  A female physician came through the doors with a smile on her face. “Please remove your Masuo. They will interfere with the scan.”

  Razi sat up and pulled her boots off, allowing the Masuo to turn into a boot-shaped slumping mass.

  “Thank you, now please lay back, miss.”

  Shrugging at Hailial, Razi lay back and relaxed as the bands of light cascaded over her. It took a few minutes and the physician made amazed noises a few times, but when it was finished, the doctor was at her side with a full-on grin.

  “Your body is amazing. I have your pre-assignment scans and you are a completely new woman. An Oefric woman. Are you aware that the program altered your sexual organs?”

  Razi sat up with a grimace. “Yes. She mentioned it.”

  “That configuration has not been seen in my people for generations.”

  “Wonderful. Now I feel like even more of a freak.”

  The doctor put a hand on her shoulder and gave her a serious look. “You are not a freak. You are an Oefric woman who was raised on Terra. There is nothing odd in that. Many of your folk have been redesigned to suit mates of different species.”

  “I know, but this is different. I am not a Terran who got tweaked to make breeding possible. I was changed into something that could change shape! That is not a normal human activity. Ever.” She let a few fat tears fall. Her frustration at the change finally came out and Hailial was there to put an arm around her.

  Razi snivelled. “You were waiting for this.”

  “I was. I know that the Terrans are an admirable race, but no one is that well-adjusted. Let it out. You have a right to mourn the loss of what you once were.”

  With the permission out in the open, her companions in medical care and her frustrations at her new status as something completely different, she wailed like an infant.

  The doctor and counsellor waited until she was done and then they hauled her out into the main chamber to face her doom.

  Chapter Six

  Eckhar was sitting up, but Ailan was still unconscious.

  A peculiar trembling hit Razi and she heard a tearing sound as she ended up on all fours, her feline body a welcome refuge from the emotional storm she was feeling.

  She jumped up on Ailan’s bed and carefully lowered her body against his, purring and rubbing her face against his jaw line.

  The physicians moved toward her, but Hailial and the female doctor stopped them.

  She felt fingers in her fur, stroking and rubbing at the muscles of her chin and neck.

  “Hey, Razi. Nice shift. Next time, take your clothing off first.” Ailan’s tired voice came to her pricked ears.

  She let out a low purr and he chuckled.

  When two strong arms pulled her off her mate, she yowled and clawed the air. It was horrifying to be awkward and helpless, all four feet flailing in the air.

  Eckhar was making calming noises. “Shift back, Razi, bring your body back to normal.”

  She yowled again and flailed, making angry noises.

  “Come back to yourself, Razi. Ailan is going to be fine. I am fine and you are fine. Be yourself again.”

  She huffed and stared at her paws. They shifted quickly to fingers and hands and she was left in Eckhar’s embrace wearing the shredded remains of her clothing.

  “How come you can shift in clothes?”

  “Our clothing is designed for it, pet. I promise to get you a set of clothing that will shift when you do as soon as we get back home.”

  A medical assistant came forward with a shift and Eckhar helped her out of her shredded ship suit and into the tunic. Ailan was grinning at her from his bed and she asked him, “How are you feeling?”

  “Waking up with you over me was just the tonic I needed. They managed to correct my internal bleeding and now it is just a matter of time before I can enjoy the feel of you against me again.”

  Eckhar put his hand on his friend’s shoulder. “I am glad you are better. You had me worried.”

  “You and me both, old friend.”

  One of the doctor’s cleared his throat. “Ailan needs to rest and the captain is waiting to debrief you. The discovery of our origin world is an exciting time in Oefric history.”

  Razi grumbled. “I have had quite enough of the excitement of the discovery. I could happily go back to not knowing how your folk came into being.”

  The entire room quieted and Hailial took her by the hand. “She has her reasons, folks. Doctor Xishgar will explain.”

  Razi was hauled out by the counsellor. Eckhar followed and Ailan was held back by the physicians.

  Hailial whispered. “The Oefric are very sensitive about their origins, Razi.”

  Eckhar grumbled. “I used to be. Since meeting the AI that shaped us, I am a little more inclined to believe that there are some myths and legends that should remain just that.”

  They walked down the hall until they ended up in the captain’s boardroom. He was sitting and working on a data pad, his face focused and intense. When Hailial cleared her throat he looked up and smiled.

  To Razi’s surprise there was a wealth of affection in his expression. Hailial walked to his side and pressed a kiss to his cheek. “Hello, darling. Is everything well?”

  He stood and gave his mate a kiss. “The Alliance is demanding that we hand over Ms. Nelson.”

  “Have you informed them of her condition?”

  “Yes, but they want to see it for themselves. Ms. Nelson, I am Captain Althoush. Welcome to the Necorinna.”

  Razi inclined her head. “Pleased to meet you. Call me Razi.”

  “Razi then. You have met my mate, Hailial?”

  “Obviously. This is one of my companions. Eckhar Minkoss.” She finished the introductions and took a seat at the table. There was a case in the centre of the table and Razi just knew that Nala was in there, circling in the circuitry.

  Eckhar sat next to her and she would have been lying if she didn’t admit that it felt right.

  “Good afternoon, Captain. I served with your nephew, Wasser. He’s a good fighter and a better enforcer.”

  Captain Althoush looked pleased and took a seat across from them, his wife at his side. “Thank you. He does his parents proud.”

  “He does indeed. Where would you like us to start?” Eckhar poured water and placed the glass in front of Razi. He poured for himself second, his large hands dwarfing the glass.

  Althoush turned on the recorder a
nd inclined his heat to Razi. “Ms. Nelson, please begin when you found the information that led you to the origin world.”

  Razi took a sip of water and began.

  “The unsorted stockpiles at the Alliance Archive are a treasure trove of information that no one has had time to look at. Those of us in the realm of ancient Alliance studies go diving in frequently to find what we can.”

  “A document bundle caught my attention on one of my many trips to the archive. The ribbons that bound it together bore seals that were reminiscent of Oefric symbols. I removed them in one of the study labs and started to go through the information that was in the notebooks and data packs.”

  “The notebook was written by a man named Daklin Orbic. He was a third generation Oefric who wanted to record his family’s history and early struggles.”

  “He outlined the original creation of your race for war, and when the wars ended, the need for females became apparent. Because the designers had created a new race built on existing abducted citizens, they could not simply kill your ancestors.”

  The captain interrupted her. The other two simply stared in amazement as their history was exposed.

  “Abducted citizens? This is the first I have heard of this.”

  “The notes explained that his grandfathers had been stolen from their homes because of their existence as Class Zeros.” Razi saw their confusion and filled in the blanks.

  “A Class Zero is a person who is born with completely malleable DNA. Some small alterations to their physiology and you can create any kind of creature you wish. They are the ultimate in building blocks for a new race, but they only occur in a one in ten thousand births in the average species.”

  She took a slug of water. “May I continue?”

  Hailial leaned forward. “In a moment. What do you mean, grandfathers?”

  “I am not the only female to be altered by Nala for multiple partners.” She felt Eckhar jerk next to her.

  “To concentrate the population and create a maintainable genetic line, the first gen Oefric were designed for two males minimum to every female. The males’ genetics would combine to create a stronger multi shifter, a solid line that could breed true across time.”