Atu's Education Read online

  Atu’s Education

  by

  Alyssa Hope

  Text copyright 2017

  Alyssa Hope

  All Rights Reserved

  Is it necessary to say that any resemblance between aliens (blue or otherwise) and any living people (real or otherwise) is purely coincidental?

  All beings engaged in sexual acts are over the legal age of consent in their own particular universes.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1.

  Chapter 2.

  Chapter 3.

  Chapter 4.

  Chapter 5.

  Chapter 6.

  Chapter 7.

  Chapter 1.

  Atu had many talents, and one of them was making himself invisible in the shadows. He might be very large, and a striking shade of cerulean blue, but he was also first and foremost a warrior, and part of being a warrior was to be seen only when you wanted to be seen. Right now, being invisible in the shadows was what he wanted.

  He was here on this dying planet to carry out an investigation, not to wipe out all the miserable scavengers that passed for sentient beings, and he had to keep reminding himself of that. His mission was to find out if there were any groups of abandoned children of war here, determine whether or not they needed help and how his people might be able to assist them.

  The ship Atu was a crew-member on, the Crusader, had set out on a long-term mission to find the Lost Children of their own people. Somewhere along the way it had become clear that they couldn’t just walk away from other children in need just because their skin was a different color. The ship’s clever map-maker was constantly up-dating their star maps, factoring in wars, famines, and other catastrophes which tended to put groups of orphaned or abandoned little ones at risk. This planet hit high on all of the risk factors, and now he had an answer to part of his question.

  “With the last of the guardians out of the game, we’ll have all of those fucking brats in chains and cages by tomorrow night. Prime stock they are, we’ll get a good price for them.” The dirty being who was talking smirked. “Although a few of them might be a bit banged up by the time they change hands.”

  The others who were gathered around the fire with him laughed.

  “Not broken”, he defended himself. “Just broken in. Don’t want to lower the prices too much.”

  They laughed again.

  Atu surveyed the motley group. There were no more than fifteen of them, and they could be dead in minutes. He didn’t have all the information he needed yet, though, so he restrained himself.

  “What are we going to do with that thing?” One of the others gestured towards the shadows on the far side of the fire from Atu. These idiots weren’t even smart enough to keep their prisoners close so that they could keep an eye on them.

  “If he lives long enough we’ll sell him, too, but you can have him if you want. He won’t be worth much, so it don’t matter what happens to him.”

  That was their leader, the leader in the same way that the first piece of slime was the leader of the whole stinking puddle.

  One of the more sober ones laughed. “Nah, too fucking skinny, and a sick color. Rather have a nice healthy young one, and there’s plenty of those inside those walls.”

  They were passing around bottles of something that looked disgusting, and the talk got raunchier, and a few started looking off into the shadows where their prisoner was.

  “Drink enough that it looks good, eh?”

  “Yeh, whatever. A hole is a hole.”

  They all laughed again, and one fell backwards off the log that he was sitting on. No-one moved to help him, and several made rude comments about him being nothing but a hole himself now. He swore at them before he passed out.

  Atu backed away, fighting back repulsion. These men were vermin, not soldiers, but he could be an exterminator if that was called for. He had a variety of skills, and as far as he was concerned he had already gone from being a scout to being the main invasion force. That was alright with him. He was trained and equipped for many roles, and a long way from needing to call for back-up.

  He still didn’t know where the children were or how much help they needed, but maybe the skinny odd-colored one that these creatures had captured had some answers for him. And he would be happy to get that one away from these maggots before one of them got drunk enough to try and violate him. He was already feeling protective of this unknown being.

  He worked his way quietly around the fire, wondering why he felt so drawn to the figure who was slumped over against a tree in the shadows. He pushed away an uneasy feeling that this was some kind of triad bond making itself known. He was fully physically mature, and had been for years, but still androgynous and far past the age of expecting to find a triad. Any strange feelings he had must be just disgust from hearing these sub-human maggots talk. He managed to keep telling himself that until he was right behind the bound figure, and found himself whispering, in his mind, ‘beloved’.

  This was not a good time to be meeting one of his triad lovers.

  It took him only seconds to cut the unconscious one loose, and to quickly check him for wounds. Any hope that he was wrong passed when he realized that the one now in his arms was indeed one of his own people and his beloved. He didn’t look too badly hurt, but it was hard to tell in the dark. His pulse was still good, though, and he didn’t seem to be bleeding very much. There were wounds, too many wounds, but they were all shallow, thank the gods.

  Atu rolled some branches up in a blanket to look like a body, in case any of the fools looked back over this way. He had a pleasant thought of one of the drunken maggots trying to hump a bundle of branches, and made sure to get some prickly stems woven into the lot. With the decoy in place and his beloved in his arms, he eased carefully back and out of sight of the fire.

  Once he could move freely he cradled his beloved against his chest and began to move rapidly, putting distance between him and the men so he could call for a transport to the ship. His beloved would be in Medical and taken care of within minutes.

  ‘No.’

  Atu looked down and smiled into the dark eyes of his newly found love. ‘It’s alright, beloved, you’re safe now, I’ll get you back to the ship …’

  ‘Beloved, yes, but who are you, and what ship?’

  Ah. ‘I am Atu. How long have you been here, sweet one?’

  ‘Tied to that tree, maybe an hour or two. I was careless. On this planet, I don’t know, many years. Their year is a different length than at home, I think. I am Holi, I was brought here as a child.’

  ‘Praise the gods. You’re one of our Lost Children, Holi, as well as my beloved.’

  ‘That’s nice, but there are many children here, that I and my other beloved, Zeda, have been taking care of, protecting from these vermin. We can’t leave them.’

  ‘I will take you back to the ship and come back for them …’

  ‘No, you don’t understand. A lot of children. Many, thirty-eight of them altogether. I’m not going to abandon them, beloved.’

  Atu had not expected to find a beloved at all after all these years, and if he had thought about it, he would not have thought that his beloved would be such a stubborn skinny one as this who ordered him around. This was not anything that his many years of rigorous training as a warrior had prepared him for.

  And he had an uneasy memory of his Captain saying “We cannot save all of the children in the universe.” Would Captain Oki think that thirty-eight was too many? Hopefully not. It was a lot, but still fewer than “all”.

  He sighed. ‘We won’t abandon them, beloved. I am here to help them. Maybe we should go to where these children are, and we can talk there? And our other beloved? Our third? This Zeda? Is he one of our people too?’

  It didn’t surprise Atu a bit when Holi smiled up at him and eliminated that hope. ‘No, he is an alien, an earth human, he is pale, with green eyes and dark red hair on his head. You will love him.’

  Well, of course he would love him, it was just that he had gone from being a single warrior to being part of a triad and a parent to thirty-eight children in the course of just a few minutes. He needed a little bit of time to adjust, that was all.

  Holi began to give him directions to their compound, but then collapsed unconscious again.

  Damn.

  ‘Zeda? Zeda?’

  ‘Who are you?”

  “I am Atu. I have Holi with me, he is safe now, but hurt. Stay with the children, I am coming to you.’

  ‘I am in town, we needed some supplies.’

  Damn, again.

  ‘Can you get back to the children?’

  ‘Yes, I … no, I can’t. They have guns.’

  Atu sighed. Of course they had guns, violent idiots always had guns.

  ‘Can you keep from getting shot until I get there?’

  ‘I think so. I know this part of the old town well. They’ll have trouble cornering me. How will you find me, though?’

  ‘You are my third. I will find you.’

  Now all he needed was some of the children running around in the dark shooting at everything that moved.

  ‘Atu? One of the older boys, Tomas, may have followed me. He does not have a gun, but he is very good with a knife.’

  ‘Can you talk to him in your mind?’

  ‘No.’

  Of course not.

  ‘Try not to get shot.’

  Atu picked his way through the sparse and dying trees until he got to the main road, and found a shelt
ered place off to one side, in between some large rocks, to leave Holi. He checked his wounds once again, and wished he had time to nurse him. His beloved was far too thin. Then he sat and opened himself up to the night, to the noises and the movements, and to his sense of where his other third, this Zeda, was.

  He heard the small person sneaking up on him long before he was within range, but still had to admit that the young one had some potential. The child moved stealthily, taking advantage of small rustles made by the wind in the grass and bushes around him, and one less talented than Atu would not have heard him.

  Atu got to his feet and stretched casually, then moved around behind a large rock. It took no more than a fast arm movement for him to grab the wrist of the one he assumed to be Tomas, when the young one got too close. There were already too many players here, though, so he thought it best to ask.

  “What’s your name, child?”

  The child kicked him in the shin and bit his wrist, and a lesser man might have let him go. Atu shifted his grip to the back of the boy’s neck and held him up like he might have held a small angry pet.

  “Name?”

  ‘Atu, put him down! This is Tomas, don’t hurt him!’

  Atu wiped the blood from his wrist and wondered if he was ever going to be allowed to make any decisions for himself again. At least Holi was conscious again.

  “Thomas, stay here with Holi, or I will …”

  “Atu!”

  “Please stay with Holi while I go get Zeda. Please? I need to know that Holi is safe until I get back.”

  The child glared at him, but made a show of putting his knife away, and then curled up on the ground next to Holi and stroked his head.

  “Are there any others who are on our side out there who I shouldn’t kill?”

  “No. The others are barricaded, and safe.”

  Atu didn’t bother telling them that the others probably weren’t at all safe. He reached out mentally once again.

  ‘Zeda?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘How are you doing?’

  ‘Not great.’

  ‘Hold on, I’ll be there soon.’

  The ground was rough, but he had played on rougher as a child, and with his triad third calling to him like a beacon he made good time to the dilapidated wall at the edge of town and through one of the many holes in it. The town inside was disintegrating, with deserted buildings and piles of garbage everywhere. He wound his way through the abandoned streets until he found the only signs of life, and the only one he cared about.

  Even if he hadn’t been able to target in on Zeda, his beloved, the noise would have caught his attention. He came around a corner to find a defiant human backed into a dead-end alley, trapped there by six dirty hairy savages who were armed with an assortment of guns and knives, all taunting him rudely. Zeda was only armed with a short sword, and bleeding from several shallow wounds, but apparently they wanted him alive.

  Atu noted with satisfaction that a few of the attackers were bleeding from fresh wounds, too, but then he heard what they were saying.

  “Come on, you let that blue thing give it to you up the butt, why won’t you let us? Come on out and play, little man, and find out what a real dick feels like ...”

  They all laughed as the speaker made a show at grabbing his crotch.

  “You’re going to be somebody’s whore once that ship gets here, pretty boy, so you might as well get used to bending over …”

  This was his beloved that they were talking to, and it had to end now. He pulled out his second favorite fighting sword, long enough to kill efficiently but still short enough to fight in these close quarters, and apologized to the gods for the lives he was about to take.

  “Why don’t you turn around and play with a big boy, you maggots?”

  He let the anger rise up in him, a fine berserker fighting rage that blended seamlessly with half a lifetime of training, and left no doubt as to the outcome. They all came at him at once, but he barely remembered the sequence of events. Thrust and parry, slice and chop, blood spilling, bodies falling, the screams of the dying, and then only silence.

  He shook his head to bring himself back to the present, and found himself staring into the greenest eyes he had ever seen. His Zeda opened his mouth to say something, but then slid down the wall to lie unconscious at Atu’s feet.

  Atu wondered if all romances went this well. He wiped the blood from his sword before sheathing it, slung the human over his shoulder, and set off at a brisk trot to rejoin Holi and the boy. To his delight, given how the night had been going so far, they were both still where he had left them, and Holi was still conscious.

  With Zeda still unconscious over his shoulder, and taking some of Holi’s weight with his other arm, he let Tomas guide them back to the compound where the children were. It was slow going. The main road was wide and left them too exposed, so they kept to the edge of the woods, picking their way over boulders and fallen trees until they reached the turnoff. It was a bleak landscape, with not even a bird moving in the night sky.

  ‘Is it all like this, Holi?’

  ‘All that I have seen. We have trouble foraging for enough to feed the children now. Every year it gets worse.’

  The side road to the compound was narrow and sheltered, so he took a chance on walking on the smoother part where they could make better time. Tomas assured him the compound was only an hour’s walk down this road, but Atu wished that it was actually many hours away. Those who would be following them would make even better time. From the talk around the campfire they had obviously known where the compound was, and what the walls protected.

  Atu wasn’t even close to getting tired, but both Holi and Zeda needed some care and nursing, and so in the end he was glad when the compound finally did come into view. It was no fortress, but in the early dawn light it looked solid enough. He breathed a sigh of relief that they would be able to regroup here and make a plan to evacuate the children to the Crusader.

  Zeda regained consciousness just as they came up to the walls, and he struggled until Atu put him down, and glared at him as though he was the enemy. He hugged Holi with obvious relief.

  ‘I shouldn’t have let you go out. Did you get the wild herbs?’

  ‘No. The medicine?’

  ‘No. I couldn’t find anything, and then they found me.’

  ‘Damn. At least we are all safe, and now we have Atu.’

  Zeda looked at Atu suspiciously, as though he wasn’t sure that having Atu was a good thing.

  Atu’s ship was going to get them all off of this miserable planet, and he would take care of his beloveds forever, but he thought he’d leave the argument about that for later. At least they were all safe for now.

  Chapter 2.

  The compound was well enough built that a couple of well-armed men could easily hold off the poorly armed rabble that seemed to constitute the attacking forces in this part of the world. It was built on a bit of a rise, enough that no-one could shoot down into it, and the earthen walls were tall and looked thick enough to stand off anything short of heavy artillery. Whoever had built this had known what they were doing.

  The main doors were solid and well reinforced, and sharp rocks and broken glass decorated the top of the walls. Gun portals near the top suggested an interior rampart low enough to protect the defenders while they fired down on any attackers. A well-disguised door around one side behind a tower and some low trees gave them easy access to the interior – especially since it was wide open.

  “Don’t panic.”

  No-one listened to him. While his beloveds used what energy they had in excited talking and searching the obviously empty buildings, Atu scouted around the compound, admiring the skill of whoever had designed it. There was a well that still held clear cold water, and thick-walled buildings that would serve as secondary barricades should the main walls fail. Then he decided that maybe he would have to take up wood-carving or something to keep him busy while his beloveds argued around him.

  “Why don’t you say something, do something?” Zeda finally demanded.

  “There is no blood, no sign of struggle, and they appear to have taken whatever supplies they could carry. Therefore I conclude that they evacuated in an orderly manner. When you are ready we can follow them.”