Descend- Seeing Stars by Sean Oswald (the ebook reader .TXT) 📕

applause burst out. It wasn’t exactly clapping which Jay supposed made sense for beings with claws in each finger. They slapped their chest and howled out his name. It was definitely exhilarating.

      Namur-san looked from Eesa to Jay and said, “It would seem as though a race or climbing contest are pointless. I love you daughter and you make our people proud, but who can compete with what our husband can do.”

      Eesa’s eyes were darting all over as though she was desperately trying to find a solution. “Very well, I will concede the foot race and climbing challenges if my lord husband will agree to allow me to set the prey for our hunt.”

      Jay couldn’t let her win, but he also didn’t want to crush her spirit. Her performance so far had been amazing. It wasn’t her fault that she never really had a chance. “As my wife wishes.”

      “Then I name the quarry of this hunt to be the Forlorn. The first one back here with a slain Forlorn will win, but extra points may be earned for bringing back more than one.”

Chapter 25- Refining Eesa

Jad-bal-ja stepped up at that point as did Jay’s other wives. Amelia said, “That is insane. This was fine as a way for you to show off but neither Eesa’s pride nor your desire to impress her are worth risking both your lives over.”

      The lion man looked at the much smaller blond human and then said, “I must agree with your wife. The Forlorn are not a game.”

      “Nor are the challenges. This is a serious matter. This marriage is bonding two peoples together for the primary purpose of destroying the Forlorn. If I am to give myself to this fully, then why should we not hunt Forlorn?” Eesa demanded.

      “You are this man’s wife, and so not part of my house, but I am still an elder of the Tamoori people and will not be spoken to in such a manner,” Namur-san said.

Then he turned his back to Eesa and said to Jay, “We try to understand that your culture is different than ours, so we allow your other wives to speak freely, but this wife was of the Tamoori before she became one of yours. I would appreciate it ally to ally if you kept her under better control.”

      Jay was torn between wanting to explode on Namur-san and trying to understand their culture. The issue was resolved though as Eesa knelt next to him and grabbed his leg. He could hear her thoughts as they were so intense. She felt shame that her husband had been called out because of her. Oh, and threaded through that he could feel her terror that Jay would do something to her father.

      Her emotions helped Jay control himself so he simply answered, “I may have a way to make her stronger. If I can do that, will that put your mind at ease?”

      Namur-san was thinking but Trina answered, “There is still no point to this.”

      “Actually I think that Eesa has a good idea. We really don’t know anything about how our abilities or the Tamoori ships will hold up against actual starships. From the data the scans show, all the Forlorn ships are working their way through defenses to the A’snkarnt planet. Wouldn’t that leave them vulnerable to a hit and run attack on their flank?”

      From there they had a great deal of discussion and ultimately it was decided that Jay would try to refine Eesa. They had no idea how it would work on a Tamoori, but it was worth the effort. He arranged to set up a Tempus Fugit field for their scientists and Jay’s people. The next hour would give them thirty days to work on as much improvement of the fighters.

      It took a little explaining to go over the time dilation, but the elders were understandably excited about the potential and sent their best fighter pilots, other than Eesa and their brightest scientists to participate. The alliance was already bearing fruit. Now though Jay had to set up a private area for him and Eesa to train and refine in.

      His first thought was that she wasn’t like the humans. From the little that he had learned about the Tamoori, they liked the outdoors and large open spaces. That was confirmed by the way that the A’snkarnt had set the spaces up inside this leviathan. There were a number of huge open savannah or jungle-like areas.

      With that in mind he had several of his combat fuses form a circuit with him. Once his PSI was doubled three times in a row by Trina, Meikiyo, and Bong-Cha, he had enough to create a Tempus Fugit field that was a mile in radius. That should give Eesa plenty of room to wander. What he didn’t tell them was that he enhanced the field to make it a 1:4320 time dilation. That would give him six months alone with Eesa.

      Jay knew that any of his wives would have called no fair, but he figured that he and Eesa had far less in common than he had with his other wives. If it went badly, he could always cut it short. Beyond that, refining her might be much more complicated since she wasn’t human.

      Not knowing what to say now that they were cut off from everyone else the first lame line that came to his mind popped out, “I’ve finally got you alone.”

      Eesa looked at him. One of her ears arched up higher than the other and her body language seemed defensive. It was yet another reminder of how much communication was done through non-verbal means but that was difficult with a race that had different body language.       Lately, he had become dependent upon telepathic communication