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

by H. E. Trent

  “I’ll be here for a while yet, love. Edgar said he’d call ahead when he got close, and we haven’t heard from him.”

  “Do you really have to go now?”

  “I won’t be able to rest easy until I know my uncle is fine. I shouldn’t be gone so long. With Edgar’s connections and his ability to move around on the planet without harassment, the trip should be an efficient one. Besides, I should go now and allow Esteben his time with you. I’ll have mine when I return.”

  She knew, deep down, that he was right. She didn’t have to like the truth to recognize it. “Don’t do anything stupid.”

  “Of course I won’t. I’ve got to get home and feed my sourdough starter.”

  “That’s not funny,” she said.

  “Sorry. I just wanted to make you smile.”

  Sighing, Erin swatted his shirt off her face and sat up.

  He immediately touched her cheek, and her chin. He was always touching her as if he were trying to fulfill some quota before she got fed up and left or something. Just like they couldn’t convince her that they could never be interested in any other woman, she couldn’t convince them that she wasn’t going any-damn-where. Their trio was still a work in progress.

  “You’ll go nap now?” he asked softly.

  “I’ll try. Wake me up the moment you hear anything from Salehi.”

  “I will, but I doubt he’ll want to turn around and leave as soon as he gets here. The journey from Buinet isn’t a short one.”

  “Yeah, and Eileen says that he must be half wizard or something because of his knack for getting around, so I’m not going to underestimate him.”

  “Fair enough.”

  She dropped a kiss onto his lips and then shuffled toward the steps up toward the ground-level part of the room.

  Esteben hooked an arm around her waist as she passed and pulled her in close. “Where are you going?”

  “I thought I’d try to take a nap. I’ll get up in a bit to check those sensor wires in the northwest fence. They’ve been acting funny since the last thunderstorm. One of them probably needs to be swapped out.”

  “You’ll go into Little Gitano and pick up the ordinance packet later?”

  “Yep.” She pushed up onto her tiptoes and let him kiss her forehead. “You’ll have two days to read it all and give whatever input you deem fit.”

  “You should read it as well, Amy,” Murki said. “Politics are your birthright. No one would understand the nuances in the language better than you.”

  Amy pressed the heels of her palms to her eyes and let out a tittering breath. “What’s wrong with the way things are?” She dropped her hands, and her shoulders fell along with them. “You Beshnis would be able to make the laws most favorable to Jekhans even without my assistance. Your family may not have dabbled in politics, but you sure as hell knew how to work the system.”

  Esteben folded his arms over his chest and shrugged. “In our line of work, knowing how to stay on the right side of the law was more critical for us than for others. There was more scrutiny from the finance agencies. In order to do what we did legally, we had to know what the laws were.”

  Erin narrowed her eyes at him. “I thought your family did perfectly legal trade.”

  “We did,” Murki said. “The gray area was in how much we traded and the prices we sold goods for.”

  “There were very strict rules about pricing,” Esteben said. “We weren’t allowed to significantly undercut our competitors, even on goods that were quickly losing value. At times, we had to resort to creative measures to keep our balances in the black.”

  “For instance, often we’d do bulk trades rather than settling up with cash value,” Murki said. “There were no rules against that.”

  “See,” Amy said. “They know how to read that crap. Let the people who want to do the job do it.”

  “You have the brain for politics,” Esteben said.

  “But not the passion. I’m not my father or grandfather. I may have been born a Mauren, but at heart, I’m just a maid like my mother. I want to keep my head down and not get yelled at.”

  The Beshnis started quibbling with her yet again, with some added assistance from Granddad, and Erin slipped out of the conversation.

  As much as she liked being in the thick of things, she liked the idea of sleep more. She was so tired that her face was starting to go numb.

  She walked past Owen in the doorway without a word only to stop just outside the house, her gaze pinned on the black aircraft rapidly descending in that damned northwest corner.

  “Owen.” She reached inside and grabbed his sleeve.

  “What?”

  She tugged him outside and pointed to the landing craft. “Your sensors didn’t pick up on that?”

  “Fuck.”

  He ran back into the house, and returned quickly, tucking a gun into his waistband and closing the door behind him. “Just wait here. I can usually scare off anyone who gets too close with a few potshots.”

  “Like hell I am.” Even without her trusty mop handle, Erin was convinced she’d be the victor in any scuffle she found herself in. She was tired and pictured herself flying into a berserker rage against anyone who dared interfere with her quest for rest.

  “You can’t just—”

  Whatever Owen was going to say fell off when Eileen yanked the door open and cast her gaze all around. “Salehi’s here?”

  “Was that him?”

  “I just got a ping on my portable COM. That’s either him or someone’s got his damn device.”

  “I doubt he’d let that happen,” Owen said. “Here.” He turned Eileen’s wrist over and tapped in a rapid string of commands into her wrist COM. “I’ve got our COM network here dampened so it’s not detectable to people who don’t already know how to ping us, but I may have accidentally suppressed our ability to receive local messages. That was the whole point of all that fucking work in the first place. Try now.”

  Eileen gave the tiny computer on her wrist a double tap. “Salehi A49.”

  “There you are!” came Salehi’s voice through the speaker. “Computer was reporting that all my messages were bouncing.”

  “They probably were,” Owen muttered.

  “Safe for me to bring this thing closer? This is a little more maneuverable than The Tin Can. I can park near the house.”

  “Go ahead,” Eileen said.

  “We’ll be there in one minute. I’m pivoting around now.”

  “Who’s we? Find yourself another sidekick already?” Eileen asked in a shockingly shrill tone. In the weeks since she’d taken up residence on the farm, Erin had never heard her voice to be anything but perfectly modulated.

  Salehi didn’t answer. Apparently, he’d already let the connection drop.

  Erin cringed. Eileen wouldn’t admit that she was interested in Salehi as anything but a friend, but all the signs were there and obvious to anyone with two eyes. She was into him the way ants were into picnics.

  “Maybe he brought that cop he works with who works with Lillian, too?”

  “She’s got Escobar working on other tasks. Why would he come here?”

  Erin didn’t have an answer for that, but she didn’t need to.

  Salehi set down the sleek, black flyer in front of Trigrian’s waiting crates of ripe fruit and popped the doors.

  He climbed out with a huge smile on his face as always.

  Eileen growled softly and kept her feet rooted into the dirt as she jammed her hands into her jumpsuit pockets.

  Then the other person got out—a woman.

  Bobbed silver hair, eyes that looked to have seen too much, and mouth set in a tight line.

  Lillian.

  She put her hand to her heart and pulled in a long, deep breath. “I hate flying in these things,” she said as Salehi toggled the doors down. “The big shuttles—those I don’t mind—but being in these is like being in a car on Earth, and I have no problems telling you I got carsick being in the passenger seat of
those, too.”

  “The flight wasn’t all that bad,” Salehi said.

  “You were flying higher than manufacturer’s specifications for this particular make of vehicle!” she spat.

  Unchastened, he shrugged. “Can’t get detected that way.”

  Lillian closed her eyes, balled her hands into fists at her sides, and breathed out a long, ragged exhalation.

  Eileen patted down her hair and cleared her throat.

  Erin suppressed a snort. So obvious.

  “So, we weren’t expecting you just yet, Edgar,” Eileen said.

  Erin turned her head subtly toward Court, and mouthed, “Edgar.”

  Court nodded sagely. They’d figured out Eileen’s code pretty quickly. “Be right back,” Court said. “Gonna call Allan and let him know Salehi is here like he asked.”

  “Needed to get her out while no one was paying attention to her,” Salehi said. “She’s supposed to take mandatory vacation next week, and that’s exactly when she shouldn’t leave Buinet.”

  “That whole ‘when the cat’s away’ thing,” Eileen said.

  “Exactly. If the boys in uniform know she’s around somewhere, they’ll behave themselves as much as they usually do, which isn’t saying much. They know that in spite of the lax legal system in the Terran-occupied cities, the agencies still report back to the guys on Earth with the money. They don’t want to do anything so risky that they’d cut off their most reliable source of income. Folks are starting to figure out that vice isn’t profitable here except for the players at the top of the pyramid. They’re pulling out.”

  Lillian chuckled and studied her nails. “A certain police sergeant was groveling to admin this week and begging for overtime hours. I guess Reg flaked on him like he does on everyone else.”

  Erin grinned wide. “Court’ll be glad to hear about that. That dude made her work life miserable when she was in Buinet.”

  “She’ll probably be glad to hear that his wife left him, too. Found out he’d knocked up the maid and, given the circumstances, she was able to finagle special transport off the planet. She’s headed back to Earth with her kid right as we speak, and a bunch of other ladies, too.”

  Eileen whistled low. “They couldn’t stand the heat in the kitchen, and I guess I don’t blame them.”

  “I know how much you wanted to go home,” Salehi said. His smile fell off. “The call went out for that transport too quickly for me to come fetch you.”

  Eileen shifted her weight. Shrugged. “It’s all right. There’ll be others, I’m sure. Besides, I’ve still got work to do here. I promised Lil I’d help figure out where the Jekhan women went. Momma can wait a little while longer to see me.”

  “And I still need your help,” Lillian said. “The Jekhan women, though, are actually the reason I came out here.”

  “What do you mean?” Erin asked.

  “Edgar told me about Ais, and I’ve got to tell you, her presence unsettles me.”

  “You think she’s dangerous?” Owen’s voice dripped with incredulity, and Erin didn’t blame him. Ais was afraid of her own shadow.

  “Not specifically her,” Salehi said. “Lillian always has access to information I’m not privy to, so she’s seeing things at a higher level than I am.”

  “I looked at the medical profile Doc worked up for her and, on a hunch, I hacked into the DNA database to see if I could find a familial match,” Lillian said.

  “With Jekhans?” Erin asked.

  “No. My hunch told me to check the colonists. I got a half-sibling match with someone on the planet, which led me back to who her genetic father is.”

  “Let me guess,” Owen said. “Something’s rotten in Denmark.”

  “Norway, actually. There’s a trail of rot all the way from Earth to here,” Lil muttered. “Unless that system got compromised—which I sincerely doubt given it has got one of the highest security levels on the planet—Ais’s father holds some of the moneybags for the settlement project.”

  “He’s one of those fuckin’ liars that had us all thinking Granddad got shot in the back?” Owen asked.

  The lady’s jaw tightened. “Is your grandfather here now?”

  “Yes. Inside.”

  She nodded. Looking back at the flyer, she shoved her hands into the pockets of her slacks. “I don’t know what any of this means, and I don’t like that. He could have been aware of her and complicit in her laboratory conception, or his hands might be clean on that one thing. That would mean that the Tyneali got a genetic sample from him in another way, and I’ve never thought they were capable of that kind of subterfuge.”

  “So what you’re telling us,” Eileen said, “is that while the population here is waning, more hybrids are being created in a whole different scheme.”

  Owen rubbed his chin. “For all we know, the two things are related.”

  “The legendary McGarry skepticism strikes again.” Erin joked, but she’d been quietly wondering the same thing.

  “What a fuckin’ mess,” Eileen said.

  “I’d like to ask her some pointed questions,” Lil said. “Eileen, will you sit with her so she’s comfortable?”

  “Yeah. Sure. I get the feeling she doesn’t know much about anything, but maybe we just weren’t asking her about the right things.” She gestured to the door and let Eileen and Salehi pass in front of her.

  Erin didn’t miss the flush of Eileen’s cheeks as he passed, and she grinned at the budding of new love.

  Is that what I look like, too?

  She certainly felt she did.

  And then she stopped smiling, because she realized the Jekh mess had even more layers than any of them had realized, and the McGarrys were up to their necks in it.

  “Shit,” Owen whispered.

  “Yeah,” she said. “I bet you’re wishing you’d stayed in frigid Montana.”

  He didn’t respond.

  But he never did when he thought she’d be frightened by his answer.

  “Owen…”

  “Just give me some space, Erin. You’d think that be so much easier to come by here.”

  “Fine.”

  She got out of his way, though she didn’t really want to. She didn’t like when her brother withdrew at the drop of a hat, and neither did Court. They worried.

  They wouldn’t have worried so much if he’d always been that way, but he’d only been so reclusive since Michael died. Erin knew what losing a brother felt like, but he’d been Owen’s twin.

  Headron and Esteben joined her, and they silently watched Owen walk toward his house.

  Erin pressed her face to Esteben’s chest, closed her eyes, and breathed.

  Being a McGarry was hell on the heart, but McGarrys persevered.

  She wasn’t even going to try to do it alone anymore.

  She doubted her men would have let her, anyway, and that was why she was theirs.

  “Nap,” Esteben whispered to her. “Rest for my child.”

  “Okay.” She took one last look at her brother’s retreating figure, and then smiled at her men. “I’m going, but I’ll be back.”

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Two McGarrys down, one to go!

  Keep clicking through to read a sneak peek of Owen and Ais’s book, Salvo, but before you go, be sure you’re subscribed to my science fiction romance mailing list so you don’t miss future Jekh Saga releases.

  Want to catch up on my main backlist under my Holley Trent name? Visit my website, holleytrent.com. There, you’ll find all of my currently available books listed by subgenre. While you’re there, click on the “In Progress” tab and see what series I’m working on at any given time.

  SALVO

  Owen McGarry’s plan to isolate himself on planet Jekh in hopes of escaping survivor’s guilt about his identical twin’s death drastically backfires when the newest inhabitant of his sister’s farm proves she can’t be trusted with independence.

  Raised in an alien lab and designed to be a “better” Jekhan hybrid, lo
nely Ais is actually nearly blind and can barely communicate. While her hostesses bend over backward to make Ais feel welcome, their brother Owen treats her like a petulant child who lacks common sense. After enduring a quarter century of experimentation on a cold Tyneali space station, Ais wants to feel useful and wanted, but Owen thinks she needs to be locked away for her own good.

  Lust and affection bloom in close quarters when gutsy Ais shows she’s more than a problem for Owen to solve. His gruffness doesn’t deter her. She soothes his wounded spirit and can actually put a smile on his face, but love on Jekh is never simple. Ais is being hunted by three entities with competing agendas, and they won’t stop until they have her.

  Owen didn’t move to Jekh to play hero, but if he doesn’t want to see true love slip away, he’ll have to quickly learn to be one.

  ___

  FROM CHAPTER ONE

  2037—NEAR THE BESHNI FARM, PLANET JEKH

  “Dammit.” Owen McGarry swung his dull machete through the dense foliage and vines near the base of the mountain. The path was overgrown after decades of neglect. Obviously, Ais—his quarry—hadn’t taken that route, but Owen was already so deep into the murk that retreating would have taken nearly as long as soldiering onward. If his recall of his brother-in-law Trigrian’s area map was correct, there should have been a clearing ahead.

  Lightning streaked across the ominous, green-tinged sky, and Owen swore under his breath. According to Trigrian, the seasonal rains had been worse than typical in the farm country near the village of Little Gitano. Normally, Jekh’s fourth season—the peak of the agricultural year—was mild with the occasional heavy rainfall, but the Stele weather phenomenon altered the cycle every five or six years. Because of the disruption, there were numerous critical construction projects on hold at the Beshni farm. The ground was still sodden from the last big rain, and the sky hinted that even more precipitation lay in wait. Owen’s little sister Erin would be pissed. One of those halted construction projects was a house for her and her lovers.

  He put his shoulder against a spindly, soft Jekhan tree and, grunting, pushed the trunk aside to squeeze through the thicket. Close to the mountain, the trees practically entwined and made passage that much more difficult. Difficult or not, he had no choice but to press on. He wasn’t playing a game of hide and seek. A foolish woman had gone off to explore the dangerous backcountry alone.