Don't Call Me Kitten! Read Free Page A

any of this. Kiana is the only other one who knows what you all
face. You must both hide your thoughts. Thex will be furious that
we have hidden it all from him but his need to protect his team is
too strong.”
    “We?”
    “Mum and Meta
know too”.
    “Shit, that
must be tough on Meta, knowing what his son goes to.”
    The
seriousness written on the boy’s face gave no doubt that it was.
“We all have sacrifices to make for this to work Zex. If we win it
won’t be just the world or even the dimension you seek to save that
will benefit. This will be a tipping point for the whole of
creation Zex. We just have to tip things in the right
direction.”
     
    on the outer
arm of a remote spiral galaxy...
     
    Zex sat beside
Orea, their communications officer. The appearance of an object on
his screen had him suddenly alert with alarm. “Sirs, something just
popped up on our screens and its right beside us.”
    Arion was also
getting a sensor alarm on his console. “Commander, a movement
sensor has picked up something in the cargo hold.”
    Thex’s brow
wrinkled in concern, there shouldn’t have been anything moving down
there. “Check it out but take the crew with you and take plenty of
weapons. I’ll hold the fort here.”
    Zex followed
as Arion sent Officer Kiana to scout ahead.
    Kiana returned
hurriedly, reporting to Arion “Sir there are Din in there, several.
They were still materializing into the hold when I saw them.”
    “Hell.” He
split his team into two units, to come at the enemy from two sides.
He took a moment to yell into his communicator. “Sir, we’ve been
breached, requesting backup.”
    Thex replied
through the comms system. “Shit...hold them off a bit longer, I’m
coming.”
    Zex thought it
would take more than the commander’s presence to sway things in
their favor. They were walking into a firefight. The Din were
fearsome lizard like beings with brutish lion-like heads and almost
impenetrable scales. The way they were tearing into them with tooth
and claw they didn’t stand a chance. Zex grimaced as Arion, who was
reaching for his comms to warn Thex, was grabbed by a six foot
lizard and swung to the ground, knocking him out. Zex fired at the
lizard as it bound Arion’s wrists in some kind of weird metal
constraint. Their damned weapons were having no effect on these
beasts but he kept firing anyway. Didn’t do him much good though.
The indifferent beast just matter of factly walked straight up to
him and banged some of the same wrist constraints on him too. He
tried to teleport away, via the non-local, as he knew the others
would be trying to do when they realized their situation was
hopeless but for some inexplicable reason he couldn’t.
    They’d caught
Thex and forced him to his knees before the leader of the Din.
    Zex took stock
of the others who were still conscious. Orea, Kiana, Zex, Trian and
Kaleem. That was all. The others all seemed to be dead which
shouldn’t be possible, nothing could hurt a Malakim. Their grisly
remains had been turned to stone. Zex knew of no weapon in any of
the dimensions that could do that. What would happen to the souls
of those killed. In theory the Malakim were those two legged beings
who had transcended mortality. Their evolution once they were born
into their immortal forms, was largely through their own efforts to
better understand the universe and their place in it. Each followed
his own unique spiritual path to that end. Some moved on to become
guardians of planets or other species of life while others, with an
even better grasp of the nature of things, became Meta beings,
freed from the illusory trappings of the lower dimensions and the
physical laws of the universe. No-one at their level knew for sure
but it was theorized that the final stage of development culminated
in union with something they called the all-spirit. That
inexpressible, boundless quality that was far more than any god. It
was beyond the gods, being everything that was and