Ties
Chapter One
She lay on her side in bed, her cheek resting
on the upper portion of her right arm as the first rays of Third Earth's dawn
glowed through the lace curtains of her window. From this position, she watched
the broad orange back of her bedmate move lightly to the rythm of his
breathing.
Tygra was not constructed like the males of
Cheetah Clan. They were lank and tall, with graceful movements and eloquent
speech. They were a race of poet warriors, artists in both life and love. Tygra
was broad shouldered and large, designed for power. His keen intellect was
imminently sensible, with no space in it for artistic endeavor.
She had taken him into her bed and her body
yestereve, and she had moaned and writhed and cried out in all the right places
during the act. It was a performance, to her mind, so tranparent that she was
forced to question the tiger's "keen intellect" for not seeing
through it. Either that, or he had not cared she derived no pleasure from their
lovemaking.
She chose to doubt his mind; she did not believe
she could bear it if it were the latter.
Cheetara slipped from the bed quietly,
leaving the tiger to rest. She took her clothing and equipment to the washroom
and dressed there. She slid quietly out of the chamber and out of the Cat's
Lair. It was barely a mile from their doorstep to the edge of the desert. She
strolled along slowly, struggling to keep her mind on her exercises, and off
thoughts of...other things.
She came to the region where the vegetation
began to thin, the earth to become harder and dryer. The summer sun beat
harshly down, warming her body. She stood silently, eyes closed, gathering
herself, then began an easy, loping jog, letting her blood flow, her pulse
gradually rise. She proceeded thus for about ten minutes, moving further into
the wasteland where Mumm-Ra's pyramid lay. There she stopped, turning away from
the rising sun. She stood for a moment, finding her focus, and began to run.
Forty miles per hour. Her enlarged heart
began to beat more slowly, but with greater force, allowing the maximum cargo
of oxygen to be absorbed at her lungs and delivered to her muscles.
She remembered the sound of him groaning
into her ear as he'd spilled his seed within her. She felt the tips of his
fangs penetrate her shoulder, not deeply, just enough to break the skin, to
draw blood. He hadn't asked her to receive his mark, had just assumed she
would. Damn him.
She remembered Panthro, at work on the
Thundertank as she'd walked through the vehicle bay on her way to the front
entrance. He was not as direct or forceful as Tygra, his clumsy advances mainly
taking the form of favors: hers was the first water hookup, the first room
equipped with electric lights. All the while, she'd told herself she wasn't
using him, that his gifts were his responsibilty, not her own.
He' d seen the mark; she'd seen the hurt
in his eyes. He'd turned his attention back to the 'tank, slamming the tools
around loudly, as unable to vocalize his pain as he was his desire.
She knew she'd been lying to herself. She
was the only breeding-age female among them, Wilykit being still two years away
from sexual maturity. How long would it be before they were killing each other
over her? Or would they want to pass her from bed to bed like a borrowed
pillow? How much of her dignity and pride would she have to surrender to keep
peace among them?
Fifty miles per hour. A clear nictating
membrane slid reflexively across the surface of her eyes, preventing both
injury and vision-obscuring tears.
She had always wanted children, from the
time she had been one herself. Thundercat races could not cross-breed, the
genetics of each subspecies were too specific. She would never know the joy of
feeling her cubs growing in her belly, the pride of delivering her offspring to
her mate for their naming.
She been walking through the lair at
night, once again unable to sleep. As she'd passed by the hall leading to the
kittens' chamber, she'd heard muffled cries. There in the hall stood Wilykit,
framed in silver moonlight from the window, leaning heavily against the wall.
Her face was buried in her hands; her small shoulders shook.
Cheetara had reached for those shoulders,
had tried to gather the grieving kitten to her. But Kit had pulled away,
striking at her hands, screaming "Don't touch me! You're not my mother! I
hate you, I hate you!" The kitten had turned and raced down the hallway to
her room, slamming the door behind her.
Cheetara had returned to her own room
then, and wept for hours.
Seventy miles per hour. Glucogen stored in
her liver was converted to simple glucose, delivered and burned at an
incomprehensible rate. The oxygen load was supplemented by the alien
nanotechnology that flowed with the blood in her veins, Jaga's Gift of the Red
Eyes.
She was standing on the bridge of the ship
at his side. The aged Lord Defender of Thundera took no notice of her, his
unwavering gaze locked on the spectacle outside the viewport. His stony face
remained impassive as his homeworld and everything he'd dedicated his life to
preserving was annihlated by the traitorous earth.
She looked up at the tall Puma, this hero,
this living legend who, alongside Lord Claudis, had broken the Mutant
stranglehold on the Thundercats. Veteran of a thouand battles, hero of a
hundred campaigns, his name was a by-word among his people, spoken with awe and
reverence.
Now he stood and watched as everything he
loved was consumed, first by the exploding world they fled, then by the Mutant
armada waiting in ambush. She watched the tears that flowed down his regal
face, and realized then that no amount of struggle, no effort, no trial is ever
so completely successful that all progress could not be swept away by cruel,
mindless, merciless chance.
Ninety miles per hour.
The Lair's computer system was finally
operable. She'd taken on the task of transferring the records from their vessel
to the new system. As the data scrolled along on it's way to electronic cold
storage, she'd sat lazily by the monitor, watching the text on the screen with
half an eye.
Ninety-One miles per hour.
Any other Thundercat might have missed it
completely, but a Cheetah's nervous system functioned differently, more
reflexively.A phrase sprang out of the blur of characters, lodging in her
conciousness like a vision seen during a thunderstorm, illuminated and burned
into the retina by the flash of lightning. She struck the keys, halting the
passage of data, then scanned backwards up the screen. After a moment, she
found what she was looking for.
Ninety-two miles per hour.
"Secondary Long-Range Navigational
System" it said. She read down the list of instructions, uncomprehending,
then read it again. After the third reading, she began to understand.
Ninety-three miles per hour.
The escape ship had possessed a backup
system to the one destroyed in the Mutant assault.
Ninety-four miles per hour.
Jaga did not have to die piloting them
most of the way to Third Earth.
Ninety-five miles per hour.
He'd chosen to.
Ninety-six miles per hour. It was not
exhaution that would stop her; Cheetah endurance was legendary. Rather, it was
heat, building up in her body faster than she could disperse it. Just over two
miles at top speed, a limit she'd already crossed. Now, each additional second,
every step more, increased the odds that when she did stop, her temperature
would spiral out of control, sending her into shock and heat stroke. Brain
damage. Death.
And there it was again, in the back of her
mind, that voice that urged her not to stop, to keep running until her blood
boiled in her veins, her nervous system failed, and her body fell across the
desert in a spray of blood, torn flesh and broken bone...
Ninety-seven miles per hour.
Her people were dead...
Ninety-eight miles per hour.
Her world was dead...
Ninety-nine miles...
And then she was slowing, stopping, dropping
to her knees in the desert sands, her breath burning her throat as she drew and
expelled it in great sobbing gasps. But when the gasping stopped, the sobbing
continued for a long, long time.
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