Wager: A Sci-Fi Romance (The Jekh Saga Book 4)

by H. E. Trent

  This thinking isn’t productive. You’re home now.

  Stepping outside, she forced herself to stop and take a deep breath. To curl her toes in her shoes and know that beneath them was Jekhan soil on her family’s farm. That the air she was breathing was fresh and not recycled and blown from vents. And that people would rescue her, or try to, if she were ever taken again.

  Jekh looked a lot different than it had twenty years prior, but there were still people who cared about her—people who’d never stopped caring.

  Footsteps on the gravel path made her open her eyes and reached for the door pull behind her.

  “Just me,” came the whisper.

  Familiarity came slowly. In the dark, so many of the men looked alike. If she’d had her wits about her, she would have recognized the height and athletic build as Luke’s, but her wits were a hit-or-miss proposition lately.

  Should have turned on the light, silly.

  She rolled her eyes at herself and reached around the doorway to hit the sensor.

  Luke, dressed for his trip in grass green cargo pants and a long-sleeved Terran-style T-shirt that had Trust me, I’m with the government printed on the front.

  The words made her scrunch her face in concentration. There was probably a joke there she was missing. Murki might have understood it. He had more education on Earth cultures than most people on Jekh.

  Luke held two slick, white ovaloid objects on his palm.

  Eggs, she realized after a moment of staring.

  “Marco said you needed those,” Luke said. “Told me to bring them by before I took off.”

  “Marco did?” She took the eggs gingerly in one hand and furrowed her brow. They were still warm from their nests. “But, why?”

  “Didn’t you say you needed eggs for Elken’s breakfast?”

  “I did, but I didn’t—”

  “I know, I know. You didn’t ask, but Marco’s like that. He remembers stuff. Now you won’t have to hustle out to the barn and antagonize the chickens before most have laid.”

  She cringed with worry. “Did…they peck you?”

  His grunt was answer enough. “Better me than you, I guess. Hey, tell Elken to enjoy her eggs, okay? How’s she taking them nowadays, anyway?”

  “Yesterday was hardboiled. The day before was scrambled. Who knows what she’ll ask for today.”

  “You have the patience of Job.”

  “Who is Job?”

  “Biblical figure. There’s probably a little synopsis about him somewhere in the database. Be careful not to fall down that rabbit hole. You could be reading about obscure figures all morning and won’t realize how distracted you were until someone shouts your name and you’ll look up to see four hours have passed.”

  “You sound like you speak from experience.”

  “Oh, yeah. Marco yells at me all the time for getting distracted.” He shrugged and turned on his heel. “Tell everyone we’ll send a message as soon as we clear orbit.”

  “I will.” She turned toward the kitchen, and then back around, forgetting her manners that quickly. “Oh! Thank you for bringing the eggs.” Because her fight or flight instinct never completely settled, she was constantly getting overwhelmed in conversations with the Terran men.

  “Not a problem at all.”

  “Can I do anything for you in return?”

  Luke gave a dismissive wave of his hand. “No need.”

  He might have said that there was no need, but Sera couldn’t believe that. All the Terrans she’d encountered before her rescue didn’t do nice things unless they expected to reap payment later. She couldn’t take Luke at his word, but she’d try.

  After the household had awakened and eaten, and they’d cleared the breakfast dishes, Sera gathered up Elken, along with a satchel of paper and drawing chalks, and went into the fields.

  Trigrian was growing one of Sera’s favorite root vegetables. Hanat was hard as a rock unless baked for hours and then boiled, but the resulting product was starchy and smooth, and naturally salty. Many people fried little divots of the prepared hanat and ate them as snacks. She couldn’t wait for Elken to have her first taste of them.

  She counted up eight rows and turned left to continue weeding where she’d left off the day before. Reaching the middle, she stopped and set Elken on her feet.

  She handed the child the bag with the drawing tools. “Stay on the side of the tree where I can see you,” she said in Jekhani, and pointed to the big drelt tree.

  Elken stared where her mother pointed, but didn’t move. Slow compliance wasn’t unusual for her, especially when Sera spoke in Jekhani. Elken was still learning the tongue.

  Still, Sera looked up and determined quickly that language hadn’t been Elken’s only issue. There was someone beneath the tree.

  Marco was seated with his back against the trunk and with a crate at his side. He was peering down at something in his hands and bobbing his head up and down rhythmically. He must have had music on.

  She stared, uncertain.

  Engage? Ignore? Run?

  She flexed her weak left fingers and let out a breath.

  You are a coward, Sera Merridon.

  He’d been so kind to her, sending Luke with the eggs. She could say hello, and that would be enough.

  She smoothed her hand on her apron, cleared her throat, and started moving up the row. “Stay there, Elken.”

  “Why?” the child asked.

  Sera didn’t respond. She was learning that where three-year-olds were concerned, the response often didn’t matter. Sera walked with purpose, dragging her tongue across her dry lips and pondering if the tree was holding the big man upright or the other way around.

  Marco didn’t look up until she was very near him.

  His arresting gaze forced her back a step. The curiosity in his eyes was intense and focused.

  She suspected her harried smile looked more like a cringe.

  “Oh.” He yanked one of the receivers out of his ears and dropped it into his shirt pocket. “Hey. Hope I didn’t scare you.”

  “And I you.”

  “You didn’t.” He chuckled. “Figured I’d work outside today. With Ais and Owen gone, I don’t like doing my tinkering inside their cottage, and The Tin Can’s cargo bay feels claustrophobic after a while.”

  “I see.” She tugged her lip between her teeth. The man had the right to be wherever he wanted on the farm, the same way she did. Of course she would eventually run into him away from the living quarters. The little divots in his cheeks flattened and the gentle smile he’d been wearing waned.

  Cause and effect. Somehow, she’d done that.

  She closed her eyes and gave her head a clearing shake. “Wh-what are you doing?”

  She sounded unsocialized and ignorant, and wondered if she truly was.

  Open your eyes, fool.

  She did and saw him hold up some sort of small square piece of technology.

  “Tedious chore. Sorting through these sensor chips we scavenged and testing them.”

  “What are they for?”

  “Different things, but most in this crate help with steering and altitude control in flyers. We’re trying to find one with the right number of pins for the console we’re building.”

  “I see.” She tucked her right hand into her pocket and suppressed her urge to look at the time on her wrist COM. She was uncomfortable, trying so hard not to botch what should have been a simple conversation, and she genuinely was curious. She wanted to know the things Terran men did on Jekh, if they were not destroying the place.

  But she also needed to finish her weeding and add a new row of root cuttings before the sun started to scorch. Her father had planned on having four times the amount of hanat than had been in his field by the fourth month of 2038. Unfortunately, due to the family’s long absence from the farm, they were starting from almost nothing. If she had her druthers, she’d get them back up to the Merridons’ typical yield in one year’s time.

  I’m not b
ehind schedule. Not yet.

  She clenched her weak hand again, using the ensuing shot of pain through her arm as a mind-clearer.

  “I hope I’m not disturbing ya,” he said.

  “Oh. No. I was going to work out here for a few hours while Elken colored, but I guess I can—”

  “How’d you have your eggs today?” Marco called over to the child.

  Elken danced up the aisle. “Scramboomed!”

  Marco’s shoulders shook with barely restrained laughter.

  Puzzled, Sera relaxed her hand. “Well, thank you, by the way, for sending Luke with the eggs.”

  He smiled and nodded. “You’re welcome. I figured sneaking out to get them would be hard for you.”

  “I was very nearly out the door.”

  Elken plopped onto the ground near Marco and pulled her pad from the bag, singing to herself a song with words that sort of rhymed but that didn’t make a whole lot of sense when put together.

  Marco furrowed his brow.

  “Elken, why don’t you stay near—”

  “This one’s pink.” Elken shoved a piece of drawing chalk toward Marco in the look-at-in way of three-year-olds before her mother could finish suggesting that she give the man some space.

  Marco took it from her. “I dunno. I think Precious would say that’s more of a lavender.”

  “Lavder?”

  “Lavender.” He leaned over to make a scribble on her page. “Kinda purple. Kinda pink. Little bit of blue, too. That’s one of those odd shades that’s really a bunch of colors put together.”

  His hand dwarfed the chalk. Big, brute hands Sera had actually never seen him clench in violence except for that one time. She shouldn’t even have been watching then.

  Closing her eyes, she smoothed her palm against her apron and tried to chase away the memory, but it played out anyway.

  When Owen, Luke, Edgar, and Marco had liberated her and the other sex workers from the station, she wasn’t meant to see the violence. Owen had scooped up Sera and her sisters along with Elken in one transaction before the brawl took place and guided them to The Tin Can. Eileen and Fastida were feeding them, finding them places to sleep, asking them questions about how many women were there, and where other Jehkan women might be held. They wanted to take them all home. But they had to get the rest on that station first, and wouldn’t save those women with money like they had for the Merridons and few others. They were going to save them with force.

  Sera wasn’t supposed to see, but she’d sneaked back out to the promenade to be sure no one was left, and she saw Marco. Men were trying to kill him with fists and guns, but he was a rock. A placid, unflinching destroyer who could lay a man out with a single blow, and she’d watched him do just that, over and over again.

  He’d knocked them out, then dragged them up onto their feet for Luke to take away to…somewhere.

  Once, he’d turned and looked up toward the promenade. His clothes had been ripped and there were smears of blood on his face. He’d looked like a barbarian. She didn’t know if he saw her because his stare was so distant and cold, but she’d run then. Back to The Tin Can before her sisters could notice she was gone—before Elken could decide that her mother had been taken yet again.

  “I think that one’s gold, not yellow.” Marco’s deep, but quiet voice nudged Sera out of the gory movie replaying in her brain.

  Elken had handed him another chalk.

  “Gold?” she asked.

  He grunted and held the little stick in a patch of light. “Yep. Like jewelry, and some people’s hair. Yellow and orange put together.”

  Elken held up another one.

  He tutted and narrowed his eyes. “Mmm, that’s another one that’s hard to put a name on.” Leaning toward Elken, he scribbled a swatch onto the pad. “Kinda like your mommy’s hair. No idea what to call that.”

  Reflexively, her hand went to her head, but there was nothing satisfying about the fondling. Her hair was tightly pulled back, braided, and twined into a knot, courtesy of her sister.

  His assessing gaze on her was unnerving. Made her smooth her restless hand against her apron again.

  “It’s not really brown, is it?” he asked Elken. “I guess we’d call that color auburn on Earth, but that doesn’t seem quite right, either.”

  He narrowed his eyes at Sera and held the chalk up as if to compare it to her coloring. “Purplier.”

  “Purplier?” Elken asked.

  Marco nodded. “Yeah. Auburn is supposed to be some mix of red and brown, but I think your mommy’s hair is more like…blue-black and red. Has a bit of a purple tinge.” He put down the chalk and looked pointedly to Elken. “Not really a word for that. We could call it black cherry, maybe.”

  Elken scrunched her face. “What’s that?”

  “A fruit.” He plucked up a dark piece of chalk and scribbled a crude drawing onto Elken’s pad. “Kinda looks like that. It’s sweet and tart, and folks on Earth use them to make jams and cookies and stuff.”

  “Fruit. I’m surprised Trigrian hasn’t tried to grow any,” Sera muttered to herself, rubbing her temple. Trigrian was like their father in a lot of ways. If there was fruit to be grown, they’d grow it. Every food meant something in Jekhan culture, and fruits had the sweetest connotations of all. They were like another language, and Father had always wanted to have a complete vocabulary.

  “Hmm?” Marco looked pointedly at her, his brows high and dimples creasing his cheeks in a churlish sort of way. He looked harmless.

  But he wasn’t, was he? She blinked at him, his damned dimples and his soft grin.

  “Sera?”

  “Yes?”

  “You said something.”

  Blathering again, probably.

  She smoothed back a flyaway wisp of her hair and cleared her throat. “Aloud? Not purposely.”

  “What’d you say?” His stare may have been unnerving, but his soft grin really was positively undoing. He looked as though he didn’t know how he appeared—what effect he had on people.

  That can’t be.

  She’d never met a man who didn’t know how to manipulate the people around him in subtle and not-so-subtle ways.

  “You said something about Trigrian,” he said.

  “I was thinking uncharitable thoughts, and that’s not fair.” She sighed and nudged that damned hair again. There was always one falling out and teasing her. She hated that feeling of having something loose and being unable to properly fix it because only one of her arms worked. “He’s like our sire in a lot of ways.”

  “Sire,” he murmured, handing Elken back her chalk. “When Jekhans say sire, you’re referring to the male in the trio who is your biological father?”

  “Yes, mostly, we don’t differentiate between one man and the other. They’re both fathers. They don’t treat the children differently, no matter who was responsible for their conception, but Trigrian and I did share a sire, and he looks like him and behaves like him at times.”

  “Is that hard for you?”

  “Hard?”

  “Sorry. I suck at knowing when to back off from conversations. I don’t mean to get too personal.

  She wasn’t offended. She was simply stunned that anyone would ask about her emotional state. That wasn’t done on Jekh.

  And why not? Do our women not have feelings?

  “I’m…” She shook her head and tried to gather the right words together in her brain. She wasn’t sure she could describe how she felt in any language, but she wanted to.

  No, needed to.

  “It’s…comforting?” Yes, that’s the word. “Comforting somehow. I’m happy that Elken will get to know him and the farm, even if she decides not to stay when she’s older. Farm children often choose not to stay.”

  She swallowed and looked down at her feet.

  “Don’t get ahead of yourself, Mommy,” Marco said. “She’s not even four yet. She’s not going anywhere for a long while, are you, Elken?”

  “No-o-o,” Elken
drawled, shaking her head. And then just like that, she picked up another piece of chalk and danced the end over the page. She sang another nonsense song as if she didn’t have an audience. Childish, or perhaps she was fearless because she didn’t know any better yet.

  Sera had once been like that.

  Marco hooked up a brow. “See? You’ll have lots of mommy-Elken time, at least until she starts school.”

  “What do you mean, school?”

  “You know. You’ve got them to yourself all day, and then they start kindergarten and they’re under someone else’s care from like eight to three for five days a week.”

  “Is that how your schools are?” Sounded dreadful, even to a woman like her who craved routine.

  “Yeah.” He scratched at something stuck on one of the sensors he held. “How are yours?”

  “Well, I suppose, compared to yours, they’re far more unstructured. The children attend the modules they need, whenever those modules are offered.”

  “So, classes aren’t held the same time everyday?”

  “In cities like Buinet where the population is much more dense, yes, but that’s due to necessity. Here in the farm country, there’s no way for us all to synchronize our schedules so precisely. We can’t get into town that often.”

  “Tell me how the system works.”

  “Are you really so curious?”

  “Yeah. I guess I hadn’t given any thought before now about how things might work, and I don’t think I’ve heard anyone else talk about the education system here. I guess there were too many other figurative fires to put out for that to have come up.”

  “There are always plenty of fires.” She sneaked a peek at her COM and noted the time. She’d have to hustle if she were going to meet her quota. The world wouldn’t end if she didn’t, but she’d be so frustrated if she didn’t. The disappointment was hard to shake off once it’d settled in. After all, her goals were so small and unimportant. Other people were risking their lives to make things better on Jekh. If she couldn’t meet small goals like pulling weeds and putting tubers into the ground, what good was she at all?