Chapter 5

A second Arcadian entered the room and roared a challenge as he saw the pale-skinned alien crouching near the far wall. Elaine raised her head at the commotion, barely conscious enough to be aware of her terrible danger. Drawing his blaster, the Arcadian fired without hesitation, blowing a hole in the bulkhead that obliterated most of the room on the other side. As attentive and battle-honed as his senses were, however, he failed to observe that the alien vanished a fraction of a second before the energy beam would have struck and vaporized her.

Elaine watched from the teleportation zone where she'd just fled, her body pumped with adrenaline, eager to reform into the physical universe and 'have it out' with the hated xenophiles. The Arcadians had warred with her own ancestors, the Viragoans, another space-faring race whose biggest fault was their eagerness to 'improve' the survival potential of every species they encountered by mixing the DNA of the new species with their own to create new species with the same physical characteristics of the original, but with unusual abilities, like fast-healing, incredibly slow aging, the ability to split the bones of the forearms and upper torso (if that species had those) to form wings, giving them the ability to fly. There were also mental changes the Viragoans performed to increase the telepathic abilities of each newly created species.

Unfortunately, few of the species encountered by the Viragoans appreciated these genetic alterations, and the result was many wars fought to expel the Viragoan influence from whatever region of space the newfound race considered theirs.

The Arcadians took their war one step further, and chased the Viragoans all the way back to their home planet, which they proceeded to bombard until the entire planet broke apart. No life forms of any sort survived on the broiling, radioactive, magma-covered surface. A few Viragoan ships escaped, but they fled in all directions, and, so far as Elaine knew, no Viragoan ship had been heard from for over four thousand years. The Praetor from her father's ship, which she managed to recover several years ago, confirmed that several of the escaped ships had been hunted down and destroyed – all but the one that had brought the Viragoans to Earth.

That great ship had been destroyed also, but Elaine didn't know exactly how it was accomplished; an ancient weapon, perhaps a thinking machine similar to a Praetor, but with the purpose to destroy itself along with its target, which it evidently sought out over a period of thousands of years.

Before the great ship was destroyed, however, it was instrumental in creating an artificial planetoid that orbited around Jupiter. New Eden, as it was named, was the last refuge of humanity, as well as the last of the aging Viragoans and the handful of genetically enhanced humans they had created, of which Elaine was one.

Now Elaine was here, wherever 'here' was, light-years from New Eden. Having discovered a teleportation device the Arcadians had stolen from another exterminated species (they're xenophobic, and genocide was the standard practice when Arcadians encountered any form of alien intelligence), she had determined to 'rescue' the device from their possession before any of them figured out what it was. Unfortunately, she had set the controls on the device and sent it to New Eden (she hoped), but had overlooked the fact that she should have been inside it when it jumped away. Elaine could teleport to any location she could envision, but New Eden was so far away that teleporting without mechanical assistance would use up so much of her body mass that, even though she was 'enhanced', the trip would most certainly kill her.

As she watched, the vile Arcadian savagely searched the tiny room, finally deciding that he had completely vaporized the alien intruder with his blaster. With a grunt of disgusted satisfaction, he turned and exited the same way he'd come in. Elaine could see in his mind that he would have been delighted to 'play' with the alien for a while before it died. Blasting it was decidedly too quick for such vile abominations. He would have to work on his temper and keep himself from killing too quickly.

Elaine followed, keeping to the safety of the teleportation zone even though doing so was using up a lot of energy. She would be starving once she emerged, and she realized she'd better find a food source before she popped back out into 'reality'. The Arcadian sludged its way to a control room, where others of its kind resided. The language they used was unfamiliar to Elaine as it had been thousands of years since she'd last heard it, but she could follow the conversation in Roth's mind (Roth was the self-identification the Arcadian used, though Elaine could see other identities were used when conversing with other groups).

'The youngling is still missing, ' Roth explained. 'There was an alien snooping through the youngling's possessions, but I vaporized it. I did not recognize the species, but I suspect it was responsible for the youngling's disappearance.' Roth continued, describing Elaine in some detail, which surprised her as he'd only viewed her for the second or two it had taken for him to draw his weapon and fire. Evidently, and despite the xenophobia of his species, he had no difficulty noticing details of the 'vile abominations' that were not Arcadians. To Elaine, all Arcadians looked identical, and she couldn't see any differences even among those in the room.

'I don't recognize that species from your description either, ' a different Arcadian replied. 'Too bad you vaporized it; I would have enjoyed learning where it came from before we dined on its appendages.' Elaine shuddered as she received the image of Arcadians 'dining'. It included the separation and consumption of body parts while the food was still wriggling. In fact, if the food made noises while they sucked the meat off it, their dining pleasure would be greatly enhanced.

'Fucking cannibal slugs!' Elaine thought, then cringed as her stomach informed her that she was starting to get very hungry herself. She wondered what an Arcadian would taste like. Escargots had been a delicacy in France when humans still lived on Earth. Elaine decided she'd have to be a lot hungrier before she considered actually taking a bite out of one of those slimy creatures.

For a change, Elaine regretted not undergoing Phoenix training. A Phoenix girl had an unlimited amount of energy at her disposal and a few had even learned to feed off it and not need to consume food to stay alive. 'If I was a Phoenix, I wouldn't have any trouble teleporting home. I'd just draw the energy out of ... wherever... '