“While you were sedated.”
“Where’s Earth?” she asked, proud that question came out almost calmly. “Where’s my world?”
He raised an eyebrow. “Likely still in orbit around your sun.”
Not panicking, just breathe, absolutely not going to freak out here . . .
“Listen to me carefully, R’har—I really, really need to know how far away Earth is right now. Will you tell me that please?”
He tapped a few of the ship’s controls. A holographic scrolling alien script appeared over the cockpit window, superimposed over the stars. “Thirty-nine parsecs from our present position.”
“Okay.” She gave a nod. “Okay, that doesn’t sound too far.”
He looked back at her.
“Um . . .” She swallowed hard at his raised eyebrows. “How far is that again?”
He thought for a moment. “Twelve hundred and nine trillion kilometers.”
“Trillion . . .?” She sank down into the co-pilot’s chair. “Just how long was I knocked out for?”
“Three hours.” He glanced at the hologram. “Perhaps a little longer.”
“Three hours? We traveled trillions of kilometers in just three hours?”
“Yes.”
“Okay . . .” She nodded. “So three hours here, that means three hours back. You can just turn this thing around now and take me back home, right?”
He turned away, his fingers working the controls again and the hologram vanished. In profile his cheekbones were high, his jaw strong, his rippled forehead heavy and profoundly alien.
“Right?” she persisted sharply. “I want to go home, R’har. You are going to take me home, aren’t you?”
“The ship was badly damaged during the exit jump from your world. That is why we are not on Hir now. That is why we hold position here.”
“Damaged?” Hope sent a quick glance around the cockpit. Everything looked fine to her, not that she would know. “What happened?
“When I generated a wormhole for the jump,” he said, his fingers never pausing over the alien equipment, “a feedback loop occurred.”
“Okay,” she said, nodding. “All right. No idea what you’re talking about. How about this—Tell me what you mean by ‘badly damaged.’”
“There are numerous critical systems that must be repaired before we can attempt another jump. The directional assembly has been fused. Power to the auxiliary engines is off-line, the secondary couplings are—”
Hope’s brow creased as the list went on. “It sounds like we’re going to need to be towed in.”
“If you mean assistance, we must expect none. I have no way of contacting the homeworld.”
“No—? We’re on a fucking spaceship!” she burst out with a wave at the control board. “Your people are so advanced you’ve got brain implants, you can travel across lightyears like it’s crossing the street! You can’t tell me you haven’t got a radio—or whatever you use to growl at the other big scary aliens—on this thing.”
He gave an impatient huff. “We are twelve parsecs from Hir and the communication array is damaged. If I send a signal at sublight speed it will not reach Hir until you and I are long dead of old age.”
“What about the planet? What did you call it? Olari?” she asked with a glance at the spinning world below. “Can’t the people there help us?”
“The Olari colony was abandoned decades ago. Only an automated signaling post remains now.”
“You mean we’re stuck here with no way to call for help?”
“Yes.”
No help on the way, no way to call anyone and on a ship that sounds like it’s about to fall apart?
“What aren’t telling me? You’re hiding something, aren’t you?” Hope clasped her now shaking hands together. “Are we—are we going to die up here, R’har?”
His bright gaze met hers and his face softened a little. “No. This is g’hir territory and our borders well patrolled. I will bring you safely home to my enclosure, little one, you have my vow.” He gave a rueful smile. “Although clearly it will take longer than I expected.”
“But you’re sure you can fix this thing?” she asked. “You can take me home?”
“I possess the skills needed to repair all equipment on this ship,” he rumbled. “But I am only one man. Repairs to so many systems will take time.”
She frowned. “Wait, just how long are we going to be stuck here together?”
“I do not know. Days. Perhaps several days.”
Hope’s gaze was drawn back to the cockpit window, to the vastness of space, to the majesty of creation beyond.
“I think I’m gonna be sick,” she said.
“That is a common reaction to seeing open space for the first time. It will pass.”
“Well . . .” She cleared her throat again and turned her gaze back to R’har. Even he was less terrifying than the frozen, airless vacuum on the other side of that window. “I guess we don’t have much choice anyway. At least you know how to fix the ship and we’re okay here for now . . . I mean, I lost my job and Brian is—Well, I don’t think anyone’ll even notice if I’m gone for a few days more—”
He gave a snort. “If that is so, then what reason is there to take you back?”
“I don’t have any interest in living on another planet, R’har,” she snapped, more than a little unnerved at his casual dismissal of her wishes. “And, flattered as I am that you dig gingers, my life plan doesn’t include being your sex slave.”
“A pity.” His gaze dipped to her mouth. “Your earlier response proves you are ideally suited to the task.”
Her face went hot. “If you even think about ever—” Suddenly she broke off, blinking. “You’re joking.”
R’har laughed, the deep huffing sound filling the cabin.
“Oh, that’s just fucking great,” she grumbled, her cheeks warmed by embarrassment now rather than outrage. She folded her arms. “I had to get kidnapped by the funny alien.”
“If you do not wish to be my pleasure slave then I offer myself to be yours.”
The smile still tugged a bit at his lips but there was sincerity in those otherworldly eyes and her breath quickened.
“This appeals to you, little one?” he rumbled softly. “To know I will pleasure you at your command?”
Oh, man, if he starts that purring thing again I’m a goner . . .
Hope tossed her head. “Don’t you wish?”
“Yes,” he growled. “I do.”
The feel of his mouth against hers flashed through her mind and Hope blurted, “I don’t have casual affairs.” She cleared her throat. “And that’s all this could be. There’s no point in starting anything or anyone getting hur—in us even talking about it.”
“I will not hurt you, Hope.” His gaze was serious now. “I will never hurt you.”
Damn but he looked like he meant that . . .
Her throat tightened. “You won’t get a chance to. What Brian did—I’m never going through this again.” She lifted her chin. “So the sooner you get me back home, the better.”
R’har turned his attention back to the console, checking readouts, making adjustments. “Once the repairs are complete we will jump to Hir.”
“Hey, you said Earth was—”
“It is a far closer jump to Hir,” he interrupted sharply. “And from this sector it is a much safer journey than to your planet.”
“And what about taking me home?” she demanded.
His glowing eyes met and held hers.
“If you do indeed choose not to remain on Hir,” he rumbled finally, “I give you my vow, Hope, that I will return you safely to your world.”
Five
Hope sighed and shifted to a more comfortable position against the wall.
“You do not need to sit here with me,” R’har said, not raising his eyes from the component he was working on.
“I don’t have anything to do but sit here. I’m a gazillion miles from home and even if I had
my cell, which I left back at the cabin—a cabin I won’t be getting my deposit back for, by the way—I’m pretty sure I’d be paying roaming charges. I don’t even have a book to read.”
“Rest in the bedroom, then. Or observe the stars from the cockpit.”
“Well, the upside to having been knocked out twice since we met is I can probably skip my naptime today and looking at the stars make me nauseous. Besides, you might need my help with something.”
In his large hands, R’har rotated the component—about the size of a pencil case—to peer at it from another angle. It was a transducer, he’d explained when he first removed it from behind a panel in the corridor wall—not that she’d know a transducer if she fell over one—a vital but badly damaged part of the directional assembly. And this transducer was a small piece in only one of many systems on the ship that had been fried when he’d opened a wormhole and took them away—or “jumped” as he called it—from Earth.
The panel he’d removed two hours ago leaned against the corridor wall beside her and around them both, neatly organized on the deck, were other pieces of the spaceship that he had methodically disassembled.
He spared her a glance. “I thought you would wish to keep as far from me as possible.”
“You’re the only other person on this thing. We’re going to be stuck together in here for days and my first apartment in Georgetown was bigger—although this place has it beat as far as backyards go. There’s no point in trying to avoid you.”
“There are entertainments available to you in the common room. There are holodramas and games. You may utilize them to pass the time.”
She sighed. “I don’t know how to work any of that stuff and this implant apparently doesn’t enable me to read your language. I don’t want to risk breaking something when you already have so much to do. You’d probably have to come help me every five minutes. That means stopping this work, which means drawing out the repair time even longer.”
He didn’t reply, his focus on his task. He changed his grip on the component and lifted the tool again.
The hardest thing about sitting here was ignoring the amazing warm cinnamon smell of him. Every time his work had him leaning closer to her she had to beat back the impulse to press her cheek to his neck and breathe him in.
She hadn’t ever wanted to do that with Brian.
Hope rested the back of her head against the wall and looked up at the corridor’s ceiling. “How long have you been on this spaceship anyway?”
The tool made a soft whirring sound as he worked. “I boarded this vessel and departed Hir twelve days ago.”
Hope drew her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around her legs. “So you don’t actually live in space?”
He gave a deep huffing sound— a g’hir chuckle. “I live at my clan’s enclosure.”
“Okay, ‘clan’ is making it through the chip—” She rapped her knuckles on her temple meaningfully. “But ‘enclosure’ isn’t. What is that? Is it a house?”
“The word’s meaning extends to far more than just a structure now. For our ancestors, ‘enclosure’ was just the clanhall—a longhouse made of wooden beams with mud walls and a thatch roof, a simple building where those of our blood would gather to shelter from the winter storms. In the spring, our males and their mates and young would depart to live in the forests in portable shelters. Only those with members too elderly to forest—” From the way he said that she realized it was a term encompassing the whole seasonal nomadic life. “—or families with females close to their birthing times would remain to live at the clanhall during the warmer months. Our people would return again to gather as the days grew shorter. In time the building became more advanced, larger, with private rooms, then private quarters, the land surrounding was cultivated and crops grown. Clans made claim to territory to hold against other clans. Now to say ‘enclosure’ means not only the clanhall and the homes at the center of the territory but the territory itself.”
“So for the spring, summer, and fall your people travel around?”
“Not as they once did. Most live nearly year-round at the enclosure’s permanent housing but we g’hir have a powerful instinct to explore, to learn, to hunt.”
“Hunt women you mean?” she asked sharply.
R’har gave a sigh. “The g’hir hunt beasts of the forest but yes, females too. Unmated males would venture alone to hunt a mate and return with her to his clan’s enclosure for the cold season. Marriages are made in the winter at the gathering. It is a time of great joy for the clan.”
“So what the hell are you guys doing on Earth anyway? Why not stay at home and get yourself a local girl?”
His shoulders tensed but he didn’t raise his eyes from his work.
“R’har?”
“We are a civilized people but at our core we are warriors,” he said brittlely. “When we began to expand beyond our homeworld and undertake space travel we made allies, but we made enemies as well. The greatest of these”—his lip curled—“are the Zerar. They are devious creatures, beasts without soul or compassion. Their attacks on our territories were vicious and unwarranted. Our fathers retaliated and were days from victory when—”
She could see his throat working. “When . . . what?”
“The Zerar unleashed the Scourge on us.”
Hope’s brow creased. “The Scourge? What’s that?”
“A plague,” he growled. “One that has devastated my kind.”
“Wait—there’s a plague on your planet?” Her gaze went over him quickly, her heart speeding up. “What about you, R’har? Are you all right? I mean—are you sick?”
“Males do not contract the Scourge. It affects . . . it kills only females.” He raised his bright gaze to meet hers then. “You need not fear, Hope, I gave you the vaccine when I brought you onboard. I will never lose you to the Scourge.”
“You just went ahead and—” But the outrage of it paled as the implications of what he’d said came clear. “Wait . . . How many women are we talking about? How many has it killed?”
“The Scourge came through when I was six summers old and it swept through the enclosures like wildfire. The fatality rate was nearly ninety percent.”
Hope’s mouth parted. “Ninety percent? But that means—”
“Billions of our females died in a matter of weeks. There are very few g’hir females now.”
If he was only six . . .
“Your family?” she asked, already knowing what the answer must be.
“I had five sisters, all older. The first case of the Scourge was seen at our enclosure at midday; my sisters—” His face was haunted. “I was the youngest, the baby, and spoiled by them all. But by the following day only I was left to hold my mother’s hand when she died.”
“I’m sorry.” It was so small, so little to offer in the face of all he’d lost that she felt ashamed.
R’har met her gaze then and in those alien eyes she could see the little boy who had sat all alone at his dying mother’s side.
“A handful of females in my clan survived. The other enclosures did not fare any better. And our warriors . . . many simply stopped trying to live. My father was one such; he joined my mother and sisters before the next gathering. The younger males, like me, grew into adulthood knowing we would live our lives out alone, that for nearly all of us there would be no mate to protect. We will be the last generation to fully populate our worlds and when we are gone it will take centuries, perhaps millennia, for our species to recover . . . if we ever do. We can hold against the enemy for now but there are not nearly enough young to replace us. Now the Zerar need only wait. In a generation there will be too few of us to mount even a rudimentary defense and the Zerar will sweep through and level our worlds like a storm.”
He let his breath out slowly as if reaching for inner control, his shoulders trembling a little with the effort. He lifted the component again.
That’s why you couldn’t get yourself a local girl. There aren’t
any to be gotten. Me and my big, stupid mouth . . .
“But,” she began awkwardly, “you said you had allies, other species, I’m guessing. I mean, aren’t there any females that your people could, uh—?”
He paused in his work, his hand hovering over the component. “None are compatible.”
“But human women . . . we are?”
“Yes.” His head came up and he met her gaze. “Ra’kur, of the Erah enclosure, ventured far from our space, seeking a mate. He was gone years but he found your world, and his Jenna.”
“And that’s why you came to Earth. Why you hunted a wo—uh, me.”
“I fought in contests, competed in tests of speed and strength for the honor to go. The competition to be selected to travel to your world is fierce. Of those few chosen I was the first.” He gave her a faint, bitter smile. “And I will return with a mate who does not want me.”
Hope swallowed hard. “It’s not you, I—”
“Yes,” he growled, turning his attention to his work, his shoulders hunched again, his grip tight on the tool. “You are promised to another. One who now couples with your friend. But he is human.”
“What did you expect?” she demanded. “That you could just show up on another world and steal yourself a woman? That she’d be happy to be yanked right out of her life?”
His head came up, his eyes flashing. “I did not steal you!”
“Really? What would you call just grabbing me off my planet?”
R’har’s fangs bared. “And I have taken you from so much joy! From a male who promises you himself then bonds with a different female. From a trusted friend who would take your promised for her own!”
Hope folded her arms, glaring at him.
“Well?” he snarled. “You do not deny it is so?”
“Oh, hell, no,” she snapped. “I’m just waiting for you to remind me how the company I’ve worked for since college threw me out on my ass too. I mean, we don’t want to leave that out, do we?”
Taken: Warriors of Hir, Book 2 Page 5