Crux: A Sci-Fi Romance (The Jekh Saga Book 2)

by H. E. Trent

  The second choice was to travel to some unspecified location to fetch the senior Owen McGarry, who was apparently not only alive, but in stasis awaiting something the commissioner didn’t elaborate on. Retrieving him would require a trek through a region of space known to be thick with pirates and to do so in a vehicle that was easily identifiable as Jekhan. The craft would likely be stopped and inspected often—which the commissioner assured Eileen that Salehi would be able to handle—but there was a high risk of danger from traders and privateers who’d try to intimidate them and take their craft or whatever was inside.

  She rubbed her eyes with the heels of her palms and sputtered. “Momma said this sci-fi crap is gonna get me killed one day. Maybe she was right.”

  She jotted down some notes telling herself why she should accept the mission—that Owen McGarry could be an important player in emboldening the Jekhan population to take claim of their planet again. That his grandchildren were on Jekh, in part because they’d been searching for the truth about him. They needed to hear from him. Also, the old man could finally go home to his long-suffering wife in Boston.

  “Everyone should have a chance to go home.”

  She wasn’t yet convinced she was the gal who could get him down that road, though.

  She moved on to the third column, intrigued. The commissioner had compelling evidence that Jekhan women had, since very early on in the invasion, been ferried off the planet and sold to traders as slaves and concubines, which anyone who’d spent more than a day on the planet would have known was a stupid plot. The women were gorgeous, but not especially sexual. Amy certainly wasn’t. Eileen had never seen her give any man—or woman—more than a passing glance. Lillian suggested their genetically engineered hormones were to blame.

  Chances were good that the vast majority of Jekhan women were enduring incredible abuse for their unsatisfactory demeanors.

  “Assuming any are alive at this point.”

  Eileen stood and paced some more.

  The commissioner wanted her to travel to outposts with Salehi and barter for as many of the women as they could find and to gather intelligence about where others may have been. The work was important, and probably more dangerous than the mission to fetch Old McG, but in the end, it’d likely be the most satisfying.

  “But they could hold on just a little longer,” she whispered to herself. “What’s a few more weeks or months if they’re coming back to a fucked-up planet, anyway?”

  She understood why the women had to get home. The population was unbalanced—a dangerous prospect for the men, and there wasn’t a damned thing the Tyneali could do about that. They’d apparently stopped caring about Jekh, so it was up to others to fix the mess they’d made.

  “Can’t just let those folks die off. That’s not fair. They didn’t ask to be brought here.”

  She chewed on one corner of her cuticle and paced, and paced, and paced.

  “I could do both. Find Owen. Shepherd home as many girls as I can find. I can give this adventuring stuff a year, and then go back to Texas. What’s a year?”

  It was just a year out of what she hoped would be a long life, and she’d be doing something noble. She wanted to one day die knowing she’d done something good and that she hadn’t just sat on her hands when a world was crumbling around her. She wasn’t going to be oblivious to the distress her people had caused another group. She wasn’t going to walk away as if she hadn’t helped to make things worse, just by being there.

  “I’m gonna fix this,” she said, nodding. “I’m gonna fix this shit and then go home.”

  OMG first. Then the girls for a while.

  Then she could give some serious thought to doing Column One for a long, long time.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Headron had never personally witnessed the terrifying phenomenon of sideways rain, and apparently, the event was just as novel to most of the others on the farm as it was to him.

  They huddled behind the front windows of the main house, staring outside at the brutal pelting, and quietly chattering about how the rain seemed too violent to be real.

  “I guess this is why the first Jekhans tended to stay put in the cities the Tyneali constructed,” Fastida said.

  Murki passed by, carrying Kerry on one arm. “The weather here is peculiar, yes. We can blame being near the ocean and the mountain range. Creates all sorts of chaos this time of year, but Trigrian’s family always had ways of dealing with disturbances. As a boy, I was once stuck here for a week with my father while a system passed. I thought the crops surviving was a miracle.”

  “Don’t talk about crops not surviving,” Courtney called from deep within the house, perhaps the kitchen. “I’m already too stressed out.”

  On that note, Murki quickly turned away and headed toward Courtney’s voice. He was likely going to apologize for inciting her. Headron understood the urge. Jekhan males were generally wired to coddle their loved ones. That was why he broke away from the clump, too.

  He needed to check on the bread he’d started before the rains. He always liked to be prepared whenever there was threat of a natural, or other kind of disaster. If the storm knocked their systems offline, at least they’d have bread to make sandwiches with or to supplement their soups and stews. His quick thinking before the riots in Buinet was why half of Zone Seven hadn’t starved during the supply embargo. He’d had a sneaking feeling that, given the atmosphere of dissatisfaction and the shrinking raw goods shipments into the ghettos, that the Terrans were about to make some sort of move.

  Headron had hoarded all the food he could fit into the bakery’s storeroom. When the shipments stopped, he hadn’t panicked. He’d put kits together and delivered them at night, one by one to every home. That was how he’d learned that so many had been sick from some virulent ailment.

  They’d died.

  Allan had said there’d been nothing natural about it. Jekhans were easier to maneuver when they were sick and weak, and that was what the city planners had wanted. They needed the residents gone.

  “Never again,” Headron uttered, and decided to concentrate on his work and not of the sad plight of what had been a beautiful city.

  He was lifting the cloths on his dishe loaves when Amy dashed into the secondary kitchen and closed the door.

  “Been waiting to get you in a room on your own for a day,” she said in Jekhani, and then growled with exasperation. “Need to hurry before Trigrian or someone else decides we need to start dinner.”

  “What’s wrong?” He didn’t think Amy was whisking him away for a romantic tryst. For one thing, she knew whom his heart belonged to. For another, they’d known each other for a very long time—from back when she was Emania. Few people knew her as that. He’d never be able to see her as anything but a friend, and the chances of her feeling the same were quite high, given Jekhan females’ typically dispassionate natures.

  “I got a message from you.”

  He furrowed his brow. “From me?”

  “Uh-huh. You queried a matchmaker.”

  He nodded slowly. “I did, but what’s that have to do with you?”

  “I’m that matchmaker.”

  “You?”

  She shrugged. “I get around. I’ve been helping to facilitate introductions around here since about a month after we arrived. Easier for me than the locals because I know everyone who’s here from Buinet. I can put people together.”

  “Stars, that was meant to be a secret.”

  “I understand. I won’t say anything.”

  “I wouldn’t seek assistance at all if Erin hadn’t insisted I find a compatible third.”

  She furrowed her brow. “She said that?”

  “Yes.” He plied a small sphere of dough between his fingers and leaned back against the counter. “Drives me a bit mad, but I don’t know what else I can do. I want her, but she says I may change my mind once I find my male.”

  Amy groaned softly and fixed her gaze on the low ceiling. For a while she jus
t stared at it, chewing her lip and drumming her fingertips against the sides of her arms. “Pains me to say so, but maybe she was smart for insisting. She’s not like Brenna. Brenna would be easy, because she’s easygoing and pretty damn submissive. Brenna’s like matchmaker’s clay. She’s pliant enough that she could potentially be molded to fit anyone.”

  “But Erin?”

  “Erin’s a McGarry. I shouldn’t have to elaborate on what that means, except to say that she’s a matchmaker’s nightmare.”

  “No, you don’t need to explain. I know how she is, and that’s why I want her.”

  Amy nodded. “I like the idea of you two together. I think you’re pretty good at compensating for her…” Amy made a waffling hand gesture. “Turbulence.”

  “Good word.”

  She shrugged. “I don’t think just anyone could do it, as far as Jekhan males go. They wouldn’t know how to handle her.”

  “You don’t handle a McGarry. You just accompany them.”

  “I think that’s true most of the time.”

  “And the rest?”

  “I wouldn’t be so concerned with those times. Anyway, the question we have to ask is, who can we find who will be accommodating of the fact that you’ll bend over backwards for her and not necessarily him because you’re hostile to the match?”

  “I don’t particularly want a third.”

  “I get that, and you say that now, but you’re going to want children at some point, and you can’t have them without another male.”

  “I understand, but I don’t want to share.”

  “An uncommon sentiment, Headron. Our males generally share just fine.”

  “Yes. Generally. Our males tend to be more attuned to other men than females. I may be the opposite.”

  She rolled her eyes and let her head loll back “Ugh, get over yourself.”

  “What?” He’d never seen her so annoyed, and certainly not at him. He hadn’t known she had a temper at all.

  “Do what needs to be done.”

  “That was what I was trying to do when I sent out the query, woman.”

  “I mulled over this for three days, and I came up with one stinkin’ name, Headron. Out of the hundreds of people I could have chosen, there was only one who made sense.”

  “No need to keep me in suspense, Emania.”

  She picked up a tin of small seeds he sometimes used to decorate the tops of certain rolls and turned it in her hands for a few seconds. “Not obvious to you?”

  “Not in the very least.”

  “Because you haven’t been trying to see it, I suppose.”

  “For goodness sake, tell me who.”

  “He’s right there.”

  “Who, damn it?”

  She winced.

  He paced, running a hand over the top of his hair and controlling his breathing. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to raise my voice. But given the—”

  “Esteben,” she hissed.

  The word couldn’t quite adhere to Headron’s brain. It was a slick decal that couldn’t cling to a rough wall.

  Esteben.

  That was what she’d said.

  He gave his head a hard shake, and said “No” ever so softly. He wasn’t even sure she’d heard him.

  “I could help you, but I think this is something you can do on your own.”

  “No.” Headron gave his head a harder shake. “Never.”

  She pulled in a long inhalation, let out the air, and then closed her eyes. “Why the hell not, huh? Just why?”

  “Are you joking?” He started counting off on his fingers. “He turns his nose up at me every time I walk past.”

  Amy opened her eyes and slapped his fingers. “Stop counting. You have to not only consider who you might be compatible with, but also who’s going to get Erin’s rocks off.”

  “Rocks off? What does that mean?”

  She gave a dismissive shake of her hand. “Who she’s attracted to. Who she wants to fuck.”

  “You think she’s attracted to him?”

  Amy scoffed. “Aren’t you?”

  Headron rolled back his upper lip.

  “I mean, I have no strong opinions about them one way or another, but those Beshnis hold a certain appeal to a lot of people,” she said.

  “For masochists, perhaps.”

  “Courtney and Trigrian seem quite enamored with Murki.”

  Headron took the tin of seeds from Amy and plucked a knife from the stand on the counter to score the tops of the loaves. “Perhaps Courtney and Trigrian are hardwired to negotiate with him, whereas I’m…” He stabbed one oddly shaped blob of a loaf and smiled grimly as it deflated.

  “You’re what?”

  “Perhaps I’m too kind. When we first came here after the riots and had started trading with the people in Little Gitano, Courtney said that I let myself be taken advantage of. She said that I needed to negotiate more and get better recompense for my hard work.”

  “Well, I think she’s right about that. You disagree?”

  “At Spilled Milk, Uncle always set the prices, and he set them based on what the residents of Zone Seven could bear. We weren’t making money most of the time and, in fact, there were many days when we gave away more food than we sold. We had to gouge the Terrans to make up the difference.”

  “Things are different here, Robin Hood. The market is freer, and more people have things to trade. Courtney would tell you that having a soft heart is okay when it comes to some things, and I think she’s right about that, too. I’m not always the greatest at implementing her advice, but she’s a wise lady. I try to do things the way she suggests because I know she has the better perspective. But having a soft heart doesn’t mean you have to be walked all over.”

  “I don’t want to be second to him.”

  That made Amy cringe.

  Traditionally in Jekhan trios, one male—almost always the senior one—was more dominant. He got certain privileges, such as having the honor of siring the first child, and speaking on behalf of the trio in some public situations. While the arrangement may have made perfectly good sense for the Tyneali and their social structure, it didn’t make a man who was probably a little more human than Tyneali jump for joy.

  Headron brushed the tops of the loaves with beaten egg and then sprinkled on seeds while Amy looked on in silence.

  “Are you silent because you know he will be?” he asked. “Or because you’re plotting?”

  “Maybe a little of both,” she said quietly. “He’s older than you by quite a number of years, and him being her leading male would be logical and probably expected, but that doesn’t have to necessarily play out the way you expect. Negotiate.”

  He scoffed and shoved the tray into the oven. “Yes, that will go over well, I’m certain. Me telling him that I don’t give a shit about custom and that his claim on Erin won’t stop me from having sex with her? I’m not going to wait until he—or whoever—has been made a father to finally couple with her. Frankly, that’s a ridiculous proposition to make to me given the fact I don’t want to share in the first place.”

  “Negotiate, Headron.”

  “What is there to negotiate? Perhaps I don’t see in him what you do, but I think you’ve gotten this one wrong. We’d make an unsuitable pair.”

  “You need to talk to him.”

  “No. I refuse.”

  Amy threw back her head again, groaning, and then paced by the baker’s racks. “I don’t know what else to tell you. I mean, I could go back to the drawing board and make a list of every unattached Jekhan male in the area, and even some open-minded Terran ones, and see who might be a fit.”

  “Do that.”

  She shook her head. “No. I won’t. I don’t think it’ll make a difference. You say you don’t care about tradition, and I really do understand that. Maybe you’re not biologically motivated toward the degree of practicality as some folks, and that’s the problem here. Everyone on this farm is so unpredictable, and that’s why we’ve clumped
the way we have. And that’s the reason I’m telling you that there’s probably no one in a thousand kilometers who’s going to be better for you than Esteben Beshni.”

  “To quote Erin, ‘No fucking way.’”

  “I’m not going to argue with you. Just get in a room with the two of them and see what happens.”

  “I predict bloodshed, and I’m not so convinced the blood would be his. The Beshnis may be lecht-class like your fathers, but they’re built like farmers.”

  Esteben could probably slug Headron well into the next epoch without breaking a sweat.

  “Just do it,” she said.

  “No.”

  Amy sighed and gave her long ponytail a tug. “For the sake of a friend, would you please just do it?”

  “Why are you so insistent?”

  “Because I need fewer things to worry about. If you’re all squared away, I can worry about other things like whether or not all my family really is dead.”

  Damn it.

  Headron rested his hands on her shoulders and rubbed. “I’m sorry.”

  “Yeah.” She shrugged.

  So many of them were all alone with no remaining roots or connections. They could make new ones, but those would never replace the ones that had been lost. Entire families had been wiped out and, in far too many cases, there was only a person or two left to carry on the lines.

  “I understand that you want a pair and not a trio,” Amy said consolingly. “Maybe there’s some super passive guy out there who’d let you have your way and who is just happy to be included in a trio in the first place, but that’s not who you need. That’s not who Erin needs.”

  “What does she need?”

  “Men who aren’t going to take anything at face value. Men who aren’t afraid of disrupting the status quo, and you and I both know that in the Jekhan gene pool, that trait is in short supply. She needs men who are just as disruptive as the McGarrys. Maybe you’re not as loud or brash about how you subvert the system, but you do it.”

  “And I’ll continue to.”

  “I know. But you do need someone who’s shameless and aggressive to step out in front of you sometimes. And he needs someone to rein him back in when he acts to excess.”