Taken: Warriors of Hir, Book 2

by Danes, Willow

  She flailed blindly for R’har and for a single terrified instant in the silent blackness of that spaceship Hope reached for him, and found nothing.

  Then his warm hand wrapped around hers.

  “Hope! Are you injured, little one?”

  Her shoulder had been briefly, blessedly numb for a moment but now the pain made a grand entrance. It hurt like a bitch but it sure as hell wasn’t the highest priority right now. “I’m fine,” she lied. “Are you okay? What’s happening?”

  “We are under attack! I must—”

  Another impact slammed against the hull and cut him off. His grip tightened on her hand as the deck bucked under them.

  This time the lights came back on and the blare of alarms with them. The galley beyond looked largely undamaged. Most things on the ship were secured in sealed cabinets and cubbies but those few loose contents of the common room were thrown about but—

  “You’re hurt!” she cried at seeing R’har’s bloodied mouth.

  He shook his head sharply. “I have to get to the cockpit! Are you—?”

  “I’m fine! Go!” Not true, her shoulder was throbbing, but she was likely no worse off than R’har and he was already pushing to his feet.

  Hope made it to standing and into the corridor behind him before another impact rocked the ship. Either this one was a glancing blow or she was getting used to being in a spaceship turned funhouse because she managed to catch herself against the wall and remain upright.

  R’har had a g’hir’s speed; he was already through the door at the end of the hall.

  With hands outstretched to her sides, ready to catch herself in case the ship tilted again, Hope ran after.

  R’har sat in the pilot’s seat, his fingers flying over the controls, but outside the windows there was nothing but the usual stomach-flipping endlessness of space and the peaceful turning planet, Olari, below.

  “What’s happening?” Hope slid into the co-pilot’s chair beside him but another slam against the hull had her clutching at the armrests to stay there.

  “Why are we being fired upon in g’hir space?” he snarled, adjusting the displays. “There should not—” R’har went still and his face blanched. “Goddess, no. It cannot be here . . .”

  “What?” Hope demanded. “What cannot be here?”

  “A Zerar warship.”

  Eleven

  “The same people who infected your planet with the plague are trying to blow us to hell?” Hope tightened her hold on the armrests as the ship bucked again. “And hey, have you thought about shooting back at them?”

  “We are shooting back,” he growled shortly. “Or we would have already been destroyed by their weapons. The ship’s defensive systems and heavy shielding came online at their first volley.”

  Another blast from the Zerar ship slammed against them.

  “We must contact Hir,” R’har muttered, his hands moving like lightning over the controls. “We must warn them of this incursion.”

  “But the communication systems aren’t—” Hope bit her lip against a whimper as another blast hit the ship. “And maybe we should think about doing that from someplace else? Like maybe we escape first and text later?”

  His fangs were bared. “They have damaged the directional assembly I repaired yesterday. We cannot jump to Hir.”

  “Can we, uh . . . ‘jump’ anywhere?” Hope’s stomach clenched as the ship lurched again. “You know, somewhere where we’re not getting pummeled by these lunatics?”

  “We have enough power left for a short jump.” R’har shook his head. “It will gain us nothing but a moment’s safety and only drain our fighting capabilities further. We have little enough time as it is. It will not be long before our power is drained completely and we are left defenseless.”

  A burst of foreign lettering filled one of the display screens and although she couldn’t read it, Hope recognized that it didn’t look like the g’hir language.

  R’har gave a deep threatening growl.

  “What is it?” she asked. “What are they saying?”

  “They demand our surrender.”

  She wet her lips. “Is that an option?”

  “The Zerar have sometimes taken g’hir warriors prisoner. My people know to do anything to avoid capture by these monsters.”

  “But if we surrender . . . we’ll live, right?”

  His gaze snapped to hers.

  “Right?” she persisted.

  “Hope . . .” R’har shook his head again, his face tortured. “You cannot ask me to—I cannot let them take you. I will die first.”

  “Right. I forgot.” Her hands clenched. “The g’hir’s big human secret. If the Zerar see me they’re going want to know what I am, where I came from. They’ll want to know what I’m doing here with you.”

  “The Zerar will know immediately why you are with me. They will know they have all they need to extract that information from me.” His throat worked. “I will not be able to hide being bound to you. They will . . . hurt you to force the information they want from me, little one. And then I will tell them everything.”

  And if the Zerar knew that his people had a chance of survival they would want to destroy that chance as quickly as possible.

  Earth . . . Dear God, they would destroy the whole world. And R’har—

  Her eyes met his. “Would you consider surrendering if I weren’t here?”

  His hesitation gave her the answer.

  Hope looked across the cockpit at R’har, at his rippled brow, his startling eyes, and remembered the tenderness of his touch on her body. He wouldn’t surrender because he was protecting her. Just by being here she was going to get R’har killed.

  The hell I will!

  “Okay,” Hope murmured, scrambling to think. She nodded at the blue-green planet below. “Okay, what about the Olari colony? Can we land?”

  “That world has been stripped of its defensive capabilities. The Zerar will only follow us down and destroy us before we can land.”

  “But you said—a ‘jump’ opens a wormhole, right? They can’t detect us inside a wormhole, can they? You can do a short jump and they won’t know where we’ve gone.”

  “They will not be able to detect us during the jump but we do not have the power to go far. The instant we emerge in realspace they will detect us.”

  “Can you jump to Olari? If you could do that—” She gave the abandoned world an anxious glance. “We could hide on the planet, couldn’t we?”

  R’har’s luminous eyes widened. “Make a jump into a planet’s atmosphere? That would be insane!”

  “Good, maybe the Zerar won’t expect us to be as crazy as we really are.”

  R’har shook his head. “My Hope—”

  “They won’t know where we’ve gone! They might just think we scrounged up enough power to get away from them.”

  The ship bucked underneath them.

  “We can’t surrender,” she reminded. “We can’t let them capture us and if we stay here, we’re fucking dead anyway. We can’t even let them get ahold of us dead because that’ll start them wondering what I am. I might not agree with the g’hir plan to use human women like this but we just can’t—My whole world could be destroyed by the Zerar if they find out the g’hir are breeding with humans. So right now, R’har, we’re down to two choices to keep them from finding out about me—you destroying this ship with us inside it or,” she nodded at Olari below, “jumping to the planet.”

  “I cannot do this, Hope,” he said hoarsely. “I cannot knowingly risk your safety—your life—this way.”

  “My safety will be a whole lot more than ‘risked’ if we stay here much longer.” She rested her hand lightly on his arm. “You can land this thing, R’har. I know it.”

  He gave a humorless huffing laugh. “Then you are far more confident than I.”

  Another burst of alien language scrolled across the screen. Even the Zerar’s letters looked menacing.

  “Hey, if you’ve got a better i
dea—” She wasn’t sure what R’har had meant by the Zerar hurting her to get the information out of him but right now her imagination was in overdrive. “Believe me, I am all ears.”

  “I do not.” R’har’s jaw worked. “But even if we do survive this jump it will not be . . . pleasant.”

  “Probably still a hell of a lot more pleasant than being captured by the Zerar.”

  “Yes.” He gave a grim smile. “That at least I can promise you.”

  She glanced at the controls. “What do you need me to do?”

  “Do not die, my Hope,” he growled, his glowing eyes serious. “All else I can endure.”

  She gave a nod. “You got it.”

  He turned his attention to the controls and glanced at her. “You might also fasten your safety harness.”

  “Right,” she muttered, even through she had no idea how to do it. Now certainly wasn’t the time to ask for directions or help. He was fastening his own so she just copied his movements as best she could.

  “The jump will be short,” he said. “But it is unlikely this ship will withstand atmospheric pressure upon return to realspace. The controls will likely short out and we are low on power. I cannot be sure of how close to the surface we emerge. If we are lucky I will have time to land the ship in a controlled crash.”

  And if we’re not lucky? But she nodded anyway. “Okay.”

  “Are you ready?”

  For a moment the cockpit’s lights blinked out, leaving them in the utter blackness of space.

  R’har’s and Hope’s eyes met as the lights came back on.

  “Whether I am or not,” she said, gripping the armrests, “I think we just ran out of time.”

  Twelve

  “Jump will commence,” R’har said, his fingers a blur over the controls as the ship lurched again. “In three . . . two . . . one . . .”

  The cockpit view went from blackness and stars and Olari spinning peacefully below to a white that was too bright to look at. In the next instant it was like the whole ship had been dropped into a fiery hurricane.

  A scream tore from Hope’s throat as the ship bucked like a wild thing, spinning out of control. The safety straps dug into her chest to hold her in her seat, her head pressed to the headrest by the force.

  R’har roared, straining against the controls as they hurled toward the ground. The planet’s surface tilted at crazy angles through the cockpit windows as the ship spiraled downwards. Time slowed and in the last instant before they hit the ground Hope stretched her hand toward him.

  Then the ship bounced upward again, the metal shrieking in protest as it arced, the cockpit windows filled with Olari’s cerulean sky for an instant before the ship slammed into the planet’s surface hard enough to shatter the cockpit windows.

  The hull crumbled on impact; foliage exploded against the broken glass and torn earth splattered the cockpit interior as the ship tumbled over and over.

  Slowed in its roll by gravity and the drag of the landscape, the ship teetered for an instant on its side then slammed down to rest—right side up—on the planet’s surface.

  In the sudden silence Hope’s shuddering breath thundered in her ears. Trembling, dizzy and sick from the landing, her arm aching where she’d reached out to R’har only to have the limb slammed down when they hit, Hope blinked rapidly, dazed by the simple fact that she wasn’t dead.

  Through the ruined cockpit windows she could faintly make out the alarmed cries of birds.

  “You did it,” she whispered.

  The windows were shattered, the port side of the cockpit had been crushed, the ship’s controls were dark, and there was no telling what shape the rest of the ship was in—or if the rest of the ship was even still attached to the cockpit.

  But they had reached the planet’s surface alive so she was going to mark it down as a victory.

  “You did it, R’har. You landed the ship.” The tremulous smile she threw his way collapsed instantly. “Oh my God!”

  He was slumped in the pilot’s seat, eyes closed, and the whole left side of his face bloody.

  “Hold on!” she cried, her stomach clenching when he showed no sign that he’d heard her. With shaking hands she fumbled at the safety harness. It seemed to take a lifetime to free herself from its entanglement. Her legs were wobbly but she managed the two steps to reach him and caught herself against the pilot’s chair.

  “R’har!”

  He didn’t react to his name or her touch and under his lids his eyes didn’t move. The bleeding came from an injury to his temple and it looked bad.

  She was on an alien world with no knowledge of how or if she could survive here. There were more aliens in orbit above ready to torture her, with the means and will to destroy Earth. But looking at R’har, his slackened jaw and alien forehead bleeding, his glowing eyes shut, Hope knew only one thing mattered right now.

  “Don’t be dead,” she begged, pressing her hand to his chest. “Oh, God, please don’t be dead . . .”

  Under her palm his heart beat strongly and grateful tears stung her eyes. She reached to release his safety harness, then hesitated. It was likely the harness was all that was holding him upright in the pilot’s chair. R’har was a few inches shy of seven feet and solid muscle—there was no way she was going to be able to carry him or even catch him if he fell forward.

  She stroked his cheek. “R’har? Can you hear me? Come on, you need to wake up, okay?”

  His head was bleeding freely. Using her hands and eyes she did a quick cursory for other wounds. He wasn’t cut anywhere else that she could see but that didn’t mean he hadn’t suffered internal injuries.

  He hadn’t even stirred during her exam. Despite being the child of two doctors, she knew next to nothing about giving medical care to a human, let alone a g’hir. She didn’t know how to use any of the equipment in sickbay.

  “R’har? I really . . .” She swallowed hard and brushed his cheek with trembling fingers. “I need you to be okay.”

  Think, damn it, think!

  “R’har? Can you wake up for me? Please?” She cupped his cheek, warm against her palm. “Please, R’har, wake up. Please wake up . . .”

  She knelt beside him, tears wetting her face at the faint but terrifyingly wheeze in his breathing.

  “Please, R’har . . .” she whispered. “Please . . .”

  His eyelids fluttered a little and his lips drew back in a low, pained groan.

  “R’har?”

  His eyes opened, unfocused and dazed, to regard her.

  “Oh, thank God! I was so afraid—Oh, no, hold on,” she said quickly, lightly tapping his cheek when his lids started to droop. “You need to stay awake, okay?”

  “Hope?” His bewildered eyes took in the ruined cockpit around them, and he frowned at the green leaves visible through the cracked windows. “What—?”

  “We made it. We’re on Olari.” She gave him a smile, her tears overflowing. “You did it, R’har, you landed the ship.”

  “Landed—?” Suddenly his breath drew in sharply and his eyes snapped to awareness. “Are you hurt?” His hand came up to clasp her wrist and his worried glance went over her. “You are hurt!”

  She looked down and saw the blood on her hands and nightgown. “No, I’m—”

  He fumbled to release his safety harness. “I will carry you to the medical bay.”

  “That’s not my blood.” She nodded at his temple. “That’s yours.”

  “I am not . . .” He touched his head and looked surprised at the blood on his fingers. “It is nothing.”

  But his attempt to stand brought another pained groan and he sank down into the pilot’s seat.

  “Yeah,” Hope muttered, helping him ease back against the chair. “I’m not the one who needs carrying to the medical bay right now. But head wounds bleed like crazy so I don’t know how bad it really is. Do you hurt anywhere else? Are you dizzy?”

  “Hope—”

  “I’m fine,” she said impatiently. “We’re
focusing on you right now.”

  He looked distressed, uneasy, to put himself before her. “My head hurts,” he allowed finally. “I am dizzy. My body aches, my right side and shoulder especially.”

  “I don’t know anything about g’hir medicine so you’ll have to talk me through it. Is there a medical kit in here? Or one in the medical bay I can go grab?”

  R’har glanced to the crumbled port side of the cockpit. “There is a medical kit beneath the environmental controls station. It will contain a portable scanner to determine my injuries. I will—”

  She pressed her hand on his shoulder to hold him down. It didn’t take much effort either. “Let me get it.”

  Picking her way carefully across the cockpit to that station, Hope bent down and felt along the seam of the compartment beneath. The little cubby popped open only partway at her touch, but reaching through the crack, Hope was able—by twisting and pulling—to wiggle the kit out.

  She bit the inside of her cheek when she got a good look at it—the kit had been crushed completely on one side. She carried it over to the co-pilot’s seat and it took some doing on her part to pull the lid up.

  R’har accurately read her dismay when she got a look inside. “The scanner is damaged?”

  “More like pulverized.”

  The cylinder was practically flattened. Quickly she rifled through the case but everything in there had been rendered useless. At least there were clean bandages in the kit and she broke the seal on them.

  R’har gave a low snarl when she pressed the dressing against his temple.

  “Sorry, but I know enough to know we’ve got to put pressure on it. Can you hold this on?”

  His fingers replaced hers but with the way he was bleeding the bandages were going to be soaked through in no time.

  “That sure isn’t going to cut it,” Hope said. “Is there another portable kit in the medical bay I can go get? Or another portable scanner I can grab?”