Traveler: Planet Athion Series (Equinox Book 1)

by Lily Harlem

  “Mmm.” He tipped his head. “Funny that he thought it was me you wanted to hook up with. Why would he think that?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He chewed on his bottom lip, drawing my attention to its plumpness.

  “I’ve never given him the impression that I thought we could, or would ever,” I said. “Or that we…”

  He nodded.

  “Did you?” I asked.

  “No. I understand that Athions share women, needs must, there’s not enough to go around, but I never thought Mateo would be willing to.”

  “Seemed he would with you, Gavyn. You’re his captain, a man he admires with everything that he is.”

  Gavyn was quiet.

  I stared into his eyes and tried to figure out what he was thinking. But unlike Anki, he was a closed book. Gavyn gave nothing away.

  “I should go,” he said, releasing my shoulders. “A couple of last checks on the bridge, shower, and then call it a night, or whatever it is you can call it up here. Lights off, I suppose.”

  “Yes, okay. Goodnight.”

  “I forgot to ask, are the goats all okay?”

  “Yes, they’re fine. No casualties during takeoff this time.”

  “Good.” He nodded briskly then turned.

  I opened my door, but before I shut it, I watched him striding into the distance.

  ‘I never thought Mateo would be willing to.’

  What the heck did that mean? He never thought Mateo would share his woman so he didn’t ask?

  Ask me?

  No, that was crazy thinking. Gavyn wasn’t interested in me. He was here to do a job and nothing more. If anything else was on his mind, it was getting his sister back. Certainly not romance with me.

  Chapter Ten

  For the next week, I took a leaf out of Gavyn’s book and remained utterly professional with all four men aboard Equinox.

  Lost in my own thoughts, I cared for the goats and instructed Anki as necessary. I swam—without the surveillance camera on—ate my meals, talking only when spoken to, and read Macbeth to Magic who adored having so much of my attention.

  The guys pretty much left me alone. It wasn’t unusual for a crewmember to take some time out and become introvert. That’s just how it was up here. I was appreciative they all realized I needed some space…in space.

  Anki tried to bring up the subject of the fight while I was milking Dolly. Maybe he knew I was a captive audience. I replied that what was done was done, and a brawl hadn’t helped anyone.

  I felt bad because he was clearly confused by my reaction. He’d thought he was doing the right thing by saying he liked me and wanted me to carry his babies, but the difference between our two species had raised its head.

  On the ninth night at hyper-speed, I showered after a swim, then wandered back to my room listening to my favorite playlist. I was tired after hammering out an extra twenty lengths. But that was good, it meant I’d sleep—hopefully a deep and dreamless sleep that matched the abyss outside my window.

  Once in my room, I dragged on a pair of pale-blue cotton shorty pajamas. My hair was damp, but I pulled it up into a ponytail then rubbed a light moisturizer onto my face.

  Magic was munching on an orange, and as he tore at it, I picked up my scanner and checked the contraceptive implant in my hip. It read one hundred percent.

  Good, no babies for me—human or Athion.

  Not that I was totally against being a mother. Just not yet. It didn’t feel right. Not after…

  I frowned and shook my head. It had been a long time since I’d let nightmares about what could have become of me that night in London terrorize me. There was no point in dwelling on what-ifs. Mateo had said that to me often enough.

  I put the scanner away and sighed. I’d missed Mateo this week. I missed that he would come into my room in the dark sometimes and just hold me. I missed his kisses, his smile, his easy way.

  His cheek was healing. Hurin had tended to it. I’d been too angry to.

  “What am I going to do, Magic?” I reached into his cage and tickled his neck. “With these silly boys.”

  “Silly boys. Silly boys. Silly boys. Squawk!”

  “Trouble is, they’re not boys. They’re handsome men who’ve all decided to unleash their testosterone-fuelled macho-ness in my direction.”

  “Squawk!”

  I laughed. “No, I didn’t think you’d be able to repeat that.”

  A sudden bump jolted the room, and I reached out to steady myself.

  Magic adjusted his balance then carried on attacking his orange.

  I checked his water bottle then shut his door. “Sleep well.” I pulled the blanket over his cage.

  He didn’t reply as was usual after his blanket went down.

  A sharp shudder shook the floor, and I braced my knees and spine so I didn’t wobble.

  Bumps and shakes were not that unusual at the speed we were traveling. Likely it was some meteors or space junk passing nearby.

  I brushed my teeth, teetering on the spot when the judder persisted. The rattling shelf containing my shampoo and shower gel didn’t frighten me, it just irritated me. I wanted to get some sleep and cross another day off the long journey.

  The floor beneath my bare feet continued to vibrate as I made my way to bed and instructed the lights to dim.

  Lying down, my pillow seemed to hum.

  Then another sharp jolt which jarred my spine and neck.

  I sat. “Lights up.”

  The lights came back on, then flickered, dousing the room in flash-lit shadows.

  “Shit.” I flung the covers back and sat on the edge of the bed. “What’s going on?” I knew enough to know the electricity shouldn’t be interfered with.

  I stood but was immediately flung back onto the bed. A huge jolt had shifted Equinox. My stomach reeled, and a shot of adrenaline burst into my veins.

  But I didn’t hang about. I staggered across the room to the door and pulled it open.

  A thin row of red strip lights on the floor indicated the emergency lights were on. Which meant the backup generator had kicked in.

  “Why the heck has that happened?” I looked left and right. The walls were vibrating so much they blurred in my vision.

  I have to get to the bridge.

  I shut the door to contain Magic no matter what happened, and took off at a run. But within seconds I was being bounced from one side of the corridor to the other. My shoulder took a hit, and it jarred, the pain going up my neck and over my scalp.

  I grimaced and carried on running.

  Where are the rest of the crew?

  When I reached the bridge, Mateo and Gavyn were in the pilot seats. They were hunched over the gravity levers.

  I rushed in, holding on to whatever I could.

  “Get in your seat,” Mateo shouted.

  “Where are the Athions?”

  “They’ll be here. I just alarmed their quarters.”

  I sat and buckled up. Immediately, the seat sucked me into the security grip.

  “There you are.” Anki ran in wearing only a pair of Earth-style boxers. “I stopped at your door.”

  “We stopped.” Hurin was right behind him in his usual combats and black t-shirt.

  “But you weren’t there.” Anki dropped into the seat next to me and fastened himself in.

  “I just got here.” My jaw clattered, the juddering had increased. “Fuck!”

  “That was the best thing to do.” He clutched my hand. “To get yourself here.”

  I gripped his fingers. “Thank you for knocking for me…oh!”

  The ship lurched to the right. If I hadn’t been strapped in I would have fallen over. My stomach rolled, and I swallowed down the taste of bile. “Something’s wrong.”

  “It’s definitely not right,” Anki said, his voice strained.

  “What’s going on?” Hurin sat at my other side, his tablet clasped to his chest. “This is not good for the sleepers.”

  “This is no
t good for anyone,” Mateo said. “Uma, are you in?”

  “Yes. Yes.” I steeled myself as another jolt shook everything around me.

  “I think it’s Trads,” Gavyn said.

  “What?” If my heart had been thudding before, it picked up tenfold. “Why the hell would they be here?”

  “We have human females aboard, lots of them,” Gavyn said through gritted teeth as he flicked several levers overhead. “Which is what the bastards want.”

  I looked at Anki, fear washing through me. “They want the sleepers?” I paused. “And me?”

  “It’s okay,” he said. “Nothing and no one will hurt you, I promise. Or the other Earth women on board.”

  “No one is going near my charges,” Hurin muttered, his eyebrows low and his jaw tight. “Or you, Uma.”

  I managed a small nod. Despite being held tight in my chair I was twitchy, as if I needed to run away.

  There’s nowhere to go.

  “There.” Mateo indicated the radar screen. “Some kind of pulse coming toward us.”

  “We need to increase the magnetic field,” Gavyn said. “Tune it to three-eighty.”

  “You sure?” Mateo responded. “That’s high.”

  “Do it!”

  “Yes, Captain.” Mateo spun a wheel to his right until the screen before him flashed red and an alarm pinged repeatedly.

  Three-eighty was extreme, and as our magnetic field increased, my ears buzzed, and my stomach and legs felt heavy.

  “That should do it,” Gavyn said. He spun his attention to me. “You okay?”

  “Yes, yes.” I pointed at the controls; my arm felt like lead. “You just worry about flying this thing and getting us away from them.”

  “I hate these bastards with everything I am,” Mateo said, spinning to look at another screen. “They have no scruples, no care for anyone but themselves.”

  “Scourge of the universe,” Anki said, squeezing my hand tighter. “But you have no need to fear, Uma. We are all here, we all care for you.”

  The ship pitched, and my scalp prickled as if my hair was standing on end.

  “And I for one,” Anki said, “would die before I let a Trad put his hands on you.”

  He’d spoken with such fervency, such ardor, that my heart swelled. I believed him. Anki would protect me to the last.

  With his hands stretched to reach another control, Mateo glanced over his shoulder at Anki.

  For a moment their gazes connected.

  I couldn’t read what passed between them.

  “Three-ninety should do it,” Gavyn shouted over the rattling and the alarm. “Up it.”

  “Yes, Captain.” Mateo returned his attention to the magnetic radar screen. “Hang on to anything metal you have on your person, folks.”

  He turned the dial and my cobalt earrings heated. “Shit.” They were burning hot. “Fuck!”

  “What?” Anki asked. “What is it?”

  “These.” I quickly pulled them out but had nowhere to put them as I was wearing my shorty pajamas with no pockets and was strapped in tight.

  “Here. Give them to me.” Anki held out his hand, and I dropped them in it. He shelved them in a small storage container on the arm of his chair.

  “Argh!” Hurin grunted and shifted in his seat.

  “What?” My body felt so weird, as if electricity was stroking over me and tugging all the hairs on my body. And my stomach was lurching with each roll of the cabin, the movements compounded by the vibrating. “What is it, Hurin?”

  He dragged at the groin of his combat pants. “I have a zipper. The metal is reacting.”

  “Getting hot?” I grimaced. “Take them off.”

  He glared at me. “No.”

  “But you’ll get burned.”

  He yanked at them, trying to get the zipper as far away from his flesh as possible and muttered something I couldn’t catch.

  “Hurin, take them off,” I said again. I couldn’t understand his problem.

  “He’s probably not wearing underwear,” Anki said, having to shout over the alarms and the shaking.

  “So?” I said, my teeth clattering. “It’s not as if we haven’t all seen a male body before. Don’t get burned.”

  “No.” He closed his eyes. “I can’t.”

  “But that’s just—”

  “There they are,” Gavyn shouted, jabbing at a screen.

  “And they’re not gaining on us,” Mateo said. “In fact…”

  “They’re going the other way.” Gavyn blew out a breath. “We shook them.”

  “The magnet must have messed with their systems.” Anki said, a brief smile crossing his face.

  “That was the plan.” Gavyn continued to tweak dials and monitors.

  “Can I turn this down?” Mateo asked.

  “Yes, three-fifty.” Gavyn nodded. “So we’ll all be a bit more comfortable.”

  The moment Mateo turned the dial, my body started to feel like mine again. The alarm stopped torturing my ears, as did the vibrating that was juddering my teeth.

  I breathed a sigh of relief.

  “We need to keep this speed up and the magnetic shielding at this level,” Gavyn said. “For another twenty-four hours at least.”

  “I agree.” Mateo spun on his chair and faced a computer. He began to type. “And I’ll add in laser radar and a pulse detector.”

  “Good idea.” Gavyn also spun to a computer.

  “Can I go now?” Hurin asked.

  “Why?” Gavyn didn’t look at him.

  “I need to check the sleepers.” He was still holding the front of his pants away from his groin.

  Gavyn glanced at the radar again. “I’d rather you stayed in here, but yes, go.”

  Hurin didn’t answer. He unclipped himself and quickly left the bridge.

  “Uma,” Anki said quietly. He lifted my hand to his mouth and brushed his lips over my knuckles. “Are you okay? Can I get you anything?”

  “I’m fine.” I gestured to the screen. “Now the Trads are going the other way.”

  He nodded, and the softness in his eyes showed how much he cared about me. I’d been cold with him and Mateo for an entire week since their fight. Perhaps that was wrong of me. Maybe I’d been too hard on them.

  But as I’d said to Anki already, what was done was done.

  It was time to move on.

  Whatever that meant.

  Chapter Eleven

  After half an hour, Gavyn announced it was safe for Anki and I to leave our seats, though from the way he was still hunched over his computer, I guessed it would be some time before he left the bridge.

  But I would be glad to. I needed to check on Magic and the goats, none of which would have enjoyed the magnetic shield but should be unharmed by it. I stood and stretched, glad the danger had passed.

  As my pajama top lifted, exposing my abdomen, I caught Mateo watching me. His gaze roamed my body, and I recognized his heated look of desire.

  My nipples tingled, and my belly tightened. I wondered if he’d be up for hot make-up sex. It was time to put things right between us.

  Anki set his hand in the small of my back. “We’ll go and check on the livestock,” he directed at Mateo.

  “Yes,” Mateo said. “And then we’ll meet in the canteen for a debrief.”

  “Good idea,” Gavyn said. “And can one of you see if Hurin needs assistance. The magnet has been known to cause a few problems with calibration in the sleepers’ atmosphere regulators.”

  “Yes, I’ll go,” I said. I also wanted to see if Hurin was okay. I was concerned he’d burned himself.

  Anki and I walked briskly down the corridor, keen to check our charges.

  “About last week,” Anki said. “I just wanted to say—”

  “It’s okay.”

  “But we need to talk about it. About what I said.”

  “Do we?”

  “Yes.” He paused “When I said about you carrying my Athion child, for the sake of my planet, it was insensi
tive.”

  “It’s clearly how you think.”

  “Of course it’s important to me. Our species is dying, and we need Earth women to continue to exist. It’s my duty to add to the next generation in any way I can.”

  “So what you said is true. You are only interested in me for procreation.”

  “No.” He stopped and held out his hands. “That’s not the case.”

  “So tell me how it is, Anki.”

  He swiped his tongue over his lips and frowned a little. “You have to believe me when I say I’ve got this longing for you. This need to be with you, to see you smile, laugh, to hear your voice.” He tapped his chest. “It’s in here, that longing.”

  I was quiet, waiting for him to go on. It was the way I felt about him.

  “I’ve met other Earth women, but that longing wasn’t there. With you it is. I don’t know what it means, but what I do know is I like it when I’m with you and I’m unhappy when I’m not.”

  “Oh, Anki.” I took his hands in mine.

  “And when we kissed I felt like I didn’t need anything else ever but to have you in my arms, to taste you and to get that…” He glanced downward. “That hard rush of pleasure which ruined any chances of copulation.”

  “It did rather.”

  “I’m sure I’ll be better next time. If there can be a next time.”

  I studied his handsome face and remembered how he’d kissed me with such delicate passion and how his arms around me, and his hands on me, had been so good. “Yes, there’ll be a next time.” I nodded ahead. “But right now we should get to the goats.”

  “I agree.”

  We took up our quick pace again.

  As we passed my room, I stuck my head in to check on Magic. He was tucked safely under his blanket. The only evidence that anything had happened was some of his seeds had scattered onto the floor of his cage.

  We then headed speedily to the goats’ pens.

  After carefully opening the door in case any had escaped and were waiting to make a dash for it, I did a quick head count.

  Anki set straight to filling up the water containers.

  “All okay?” he asked when I placed my hands on my hips and sighed.