Seething, she stalked into the habitat and flounced down on the couch to sulk. "Well! That truce didn't last long!" she muttered. "So much for trust!"
They'd trusted her enough to, basically, give her command of the robot forces but now they didn't?
What the hell was going on? Beyond the fact that it appeared that they'd come to some sort of terms, she didn't have a damned clue!
* * * *
Kiel realized he should simply be relieved at the alacrity with which the others had fallen into their plan, but his uneasiness lingered. It had been bad enough, though, when they had had six hundred deprived males lusting over Danielle. To have ten times that was ten times worse!
Granted, they had fallen to working with a will. With the addition of the men from the other colonies, it seemed likely that they would have the building finished and Danielle's redesigned ship ready in a matter of days, but would that be soon enough to prevent bloodshed?
He realized that he would not truly be easy in his mind until they had removed Danielle from Marchet and the potential for disaster that still hung over them all.
After some discussion among the captains of each of the platoons, it had been decided to send a portion of the soldiers of each colony back to protect their interests and another portion to fetch supplies for those who would stay to work on the fleet of ships that everyone had agreed they needed-the majority, Kiel mentally amended. There was still a faction that preferred the idea of repairing Manuta's production facilities, at the very least, so that they could produce female counterparts with the DNA samples Manuta had, using their new understanding of the female attained from examining Danielle.
The argument had been heated but fairly brief. They had been given the go ahead to begin repairing Manuta with an eye to producing female colonists that were as they were-cyborgs but Danu.
Kiel surveyed the men surrounding him and waited for a lull in the discussions. "Manuta has redesigned Captain Danielle's ship to accommodate a crew of four. I will take Jalen and Danielle and go to the home world to negotiate for mates for the colony. From there, we will return to Danielle's home world and discuss the possibility with her people."
The statement produced a profound silence.
"I will also go!" Baen said tightly. "Danielle has indicated that she will be receptive to being my mate. I will accompany her."
Kiel slid an assessing glance at him. He was almost certain it was pure falsehood, but he decided it would not be in anyone's best interest to challenge him in front of the others.
His hope that his plans would not be challenged went unrewarded, however.
"Why the three of you?" Nail of Otoua demanded after a brief pause.
"She is more accustomed to us. We have befriended her-and she has indicated that she is willing to consider all three of us as mates. It will be far easier to achieve our mission in this way. She would be willing to cooperate with us whereas she might feel threatened by others she does not know as she does us."
Baen reddened with anger and looked like he might explode, but he was not so far gone as to challenge the lie that Kiel had told.
In any case, it was not a lie, Kiel reminded himself. She had allowed him to mate with her. True, he had not asked. He had taken, but she had not become angry and shunned him. That seemed close enough to acceptance to him.
Not that he had intended to include Jalen. He had simply chosen Jalen to accompany them because he trusted him-not so much with Danielle-but more than the others.
"The objective," he said pointedly, "is to remedy our situation with as much dispatch as possible, yes?"
"Her people are at war, however," Jarl of Nissa pointed out.
"Yes. As I said before, we must ally ourselves with her people in order to negotiate for women-which means that we must fight a war. This is one of the reasons that the fleet is necessary. We might also find ourselves at war with our own people. Another possibility. We have no idea how they might receive the news that Manuta decided to create us from the gene pool entrusted to it. They may simply refuse to have anything to do with us. We will know nothing until we have gone to Chab, the mother world."
"Even if it is true that she has accepted the three of you as mates, I do not see why she would not accept others," Nail growled.
Kiel's anger rose, but so, too, did his uneasiness. "This is because you do not understand the way of higher beings in mate choosing. It is different from what we have understood because we have had nothing to base an understanding upon beyond the breeding of beasts. This is more complex because we are more complex!"
Most of the men looked skeptical.
"Exactly how are we to learn this with no females? Which is what we will have if you take Captain Danielle and leave!" Nail snapped irritably.
"She offered to teach me the ways and the mating customs," Baen responded tightly. "I will learn and then I will forward the information to the data banks where all may learn."
"We will learn," Kiel corrected him in a low growl.
Baen narrowed his eyes at him, but he did not argue. "There is no other way that would be practical or that would allow all to learn quickly. We will want to be prepared to entice mates as soon as they are available."
They at least agreed with that, although Kiel could see they were far from happy about it.
"Trust," Baen emphasized, "is essential. This is why it is critical that I go with her. She has formed trust with me. Beyond that, the number one rule is that they must consent. If they are forced, then it destroys trust and if trust is destroyed then they will not allow mating."
Kiel had been ready to argue that he had also formed trust with her until that comment. A wave of cold followed by nausea went through him then. Exactly what, he wondered, constituted force?
She had not fought him-he did not think. He certainly could not recall that she had. She had also clung closely to him when she had been frightened of the others. Did that not mean that she trusted him to protect her?
He realized that he was not as certain as he wanted to be, but he sure as fuck was not going to ask Baen!
Mayhap he should ask Danielle?
He considered that for a few moments and discarded it. She might say that she had not agreed and that he had broken her trust and refuse to allow him to accompany her and he was damned well going with her!
"We have waited many years even to reach this point where there is some chance of attaining mates. We will have to remain patient until we can resolve the issues standing in our way," he said finally.
No one seemed inclined to, but, to his relief, they accepted what they realized they could not change.
* * * *
Danielle didn't know what to think when the army that had arrived stayed, but she was unable to see enough to satisfy her curiosity from the viewers. All she could tell was that they seemed to have made peace and were working together.
She couldn't ask Baen, Kiel, or Jalen, even if she'd felt inclined to-and she was still pissed off with Kiel! They were conspicuous by their absence. She decided after her nerves had settled a little to take a stroll and see what she could find out, but the moment she stepped outside she encountered so much attention it was all she could do not to whirl around and flee back inside. Every man within sight, and there must have been a thousand, at least, stopped in their tracks and stared at her like pointers.
Just to prove they didn't scare the pure piss out of her, she made a great show of walking around for all of ten minutes and headed back to the habitat. She was shaking all over by the time she got back inside, though, and she decided she would just wait for an opportunity to talk to Baen-or even Kiel.
Nearly a week passed before any of the three showed up. She didn't know whether to be relieved or sorry that it was Jalen, but she finally decided it was a relief. She still wasn't comfortable about what had transpired between her, Baen, and Kiel and she had a bad feeling that both of them were pissed off at her. Besides that, she was still insulted that Kiel had beh
aved as if he actually trusted her and then took her communicator back!
"We are in the process of testing. Kiel sent me to ask if you would like to help in this."
"Testing what?" Danielle asked blankly.
Jalen stared at her in confusion. "The ship."
Danielle blinked. "My ship?" she gasped after a moment. "They've got it repaired? Already?"
"Modified," Jalen corrected.
A jolt went through her. Danielle frowned. "What sort of modifications?"
"It has been modified to accommodate a four people crew."
Danielle bit her lip. "Person," she corrected. "I'm confused. Does this mean you still intend to return to the home world of the Danu?"
"Yes. We will go there and then we will go to your people and offer to fight as allies against …. Who are you fighting?"
"The Nubiens."
He nodded. "We will kill them and then we will negotiate for mates … for the others."
Single minded! That was a big surprise, Danielle thought dryly. Actually, she supposed it was understandable given their situation.
She was too excited at the possibility that the ship was nearly ready to allow that to bother her, or the stares. In any case, it wasn't nearly as bad, she discovered, with Jalen escorting her as it had seemed when she'd gone out by herself. Either they weren't drawing nearly as much attention or she just couldn't see that many staring in her direction because Jalen blocked the view.
She was still relieved when they'd reached the city gate until she discovered there were more outside the gates than inside. "Good god! There must be thousands of … uh … Danu!"
"Yes. Though many returned to guard the other colonies. They must be protected for the mates all would soon have."
Well, they didn't lack for confidence! Not that they had any reason to!
A shockwave went through Danielle when they finally reached the hanger the Danu had built and stepped inside, and it wasn't just because the ship she saw bore almost no resemblance to the one she'd crashed. There were two more ships being built to match the one they'd apparently finished. Uneasiness slithered through her. "I didn't realize that you were building more."
Jalen looked at her in surprise. "We cannot ally ourselves with your people against their enemies without ships."
Danielle gaped at him. Discounting the off-handed reference Jalen had made about the possibility, they hadn't said they meant to. In fact, although it had been Kiel she'd discussed the possibility with, even he hadn't mentioned it since, let alone indicated that he had decided to … or they had decided to.
She supposed she should have realized just from the way Jalen spoke of it that it was settled as far as they were concerned but it was still a shock to walk right up on the discovery that they were already building a fleet-when they hadn't even yet had contact with anyone but her!
She frowned as a thought suddenly occurred to her. "Is this why Manuta attacked? Because you had decided to become our allies?"
He looked confused. "Manuta attacked because it believed we meant to destroy it. Did none tell you that?"
She was pretty sure she'd heard that even if they hadn't told her directly. However, no one had bothered to explain that it had anything to do with her and yet he seemed to be saying that Manuta had opposed helping her and that was what had brought on the entire battle. In point of fact, she'd been under the impression that Kiel, at least, still didn't especially trust her.
Did it matter? It looked as if they meant to take her back and that was the important thing, wasn't it?
Well, that and the fact that they seemed to have decided to ally themselves with the Federation forces.
Considering none of them had made it a point to tell her, though, how much could she trust them? And what could she do about it even if this was some ploy to get her to lead them back home so that they could attack?
It occurred to her rather forcefully that they didn't actually need her to lead them to her home base. That information would have been in Gertrude's memory banks and they'd clearly accessed everything she knew.
How much did they know, though, about navigating space when they had never even been in space?
It didn't seem to be anything they were particularly worried about. When she'd climbed the gang plank, she found both Kiel and Baen inside the ship inspecting it. Both men glanced at her when she reached what had been a tiny cockpit and was now a sizeable bridge with stations for a pilot, co-pilot, and navigator. They seemed focused on their work, however. There was no lightening of their intense looks of concentration in greeting.
Gertrude was chatting with them when she arrived-in Danu.
Danielle blinked, struggling with an odd sense of betrayal. "You programmed Gertrude to speak Danu?"
"The men who installed the computer did so," Kiel responded a little absently. "Not all have learned your language … or wish to."
"What do you mean by that?" Danielle asked, immediately suspicious.
Baen, Kiel, and Jalen all looked at her with a mixture of surprise and speculation.
"Those who expect to find mates among our own people see no need for the information," Baen said simply.
Danielle thought that over, trying to decide if it was just that simple or if he was saying some of them had no intention of allying themselves with the Federation. "So … they don't mean to be allies?"
Baen and Kiel exchanged another look.
"Not at this point," Kiel said finally.
She frowned, still confused. "They're against us?"
"They do not mean to set themselves as enemies," Baen said. "They are simply more interested in an alliance with our own people."
Which meant that they would be enemies if the Danu decided humans were some sort of threat, right?
She tried to shrug it off with the reflection that she was nothing but a soldier herself and not competent to handle any sort of political alliance, but it was hard to do when she had to worry about whether it was even safe to take them back to Meridie with her or not. The only thing that she really knew about them with any certainty at all was that they were more dangerous than any Nubien could hope to be-many times stronger, more intelligent, and virtually indestructible, which made them completely fearless.
They didn't seem especially aggressive, though, she told herself. Until she'd arrived, they'd seemed perfectly content to stay where they were.
Of course, she knew that was because, before she arrived, they'd been following Manuta and Manuta's primary function seemed to be to prepare a colony for the Danu-which became theirs when Manuta created them.
They'd shut Manuta down, however. They were operating entirely upon their own desires now. On the surface, that seemed more of an extension of Manuta's directive than anything else-except their natural instincts-but she had a bad feeling that would change the moment they met any sort of opposition … or not. Actually, the bad feeling was that they wouldn't tolerate any opposition. They were absolutely focused on finding mates to reproduce and she was afraid that anyone who tried to stop them would become an enemy.
It was almost as bad, she realized, as the fight they already had-territorial-except this was going to be on a much more personal level. They didn't want the land. They seemed satisfied with what they had. They wanted women and that was liable to touch off an even more ferocious war than the one they were currently engaged in.
Kiel got up after a moment and offered her the pilot's seat, which he'd been occupying. "You will want to check the systems."
Surprise flickered through Danielle, but she settled in the seat he had vacated. It was warm from his body, made her feel almost as if she was wrapped in his embrace and that was oddly comforting-probably ridiculous, but she still found herself relaxing fractionally. "Gertrude, give me a run down on systems' check."
"I have just given Captain Kiel of Manu a report."
Danielle narrowed her eyes at the console. "Don't give me any lip, damn it! I don't understand Danu. Just do it!"
As irritated as she was that Kiel had not only already run a system's check, but Gertrude had copped an attitude with her, Danielle listened intently while Gertrude gave her a rundown on the ship's status. It was dismaying to discover that the ship bore little resemblance to the one she'd crashed. She supposed she should have expected it given that it had been altered so radically in appearance, but she hadn't. She'd actually expected that everything would be pretty much the same, only bigger. They'd changed even the drive, however, and the fuel the ship used and made modifications that she had no idea what they were, let alone how they worked.
"You should learn the Danu language," Gertrude added when she'd finished the systems' check.
Danielle's lips tightened with irritation but it occurred to her after a moment to wonder if it was some sort of cryptic warning. "I expect I'll have time to learn. Are we ready for a test run?"
"Affirmative."
Danielle glanced at Kiel instinctively for approval, feeling anticipation surging through her. "You game?"
He frowned, confusion flickering in his eyes.
"Shall we take it out for a test flight?"
His dark brows rose. "This is unnecessary. Everything has been checked and found to be functioning as expected."
"I'll feel better to test it," Danielle retorted irritably.
Kiel studied her a long moment and then glanced at Baen. Apparently Baen didn't object. Nodding, Kiel strode from the bridge. She heard him bellow from the open hatch that everyone should stand clear and then the sound of the gang plank being retracted.
Her good humor restored, Danielle focused on the instrument panel. "Bay doors."
"There are no bay doors," Gertrude responded.
Danielle gaped at Gertrude's optical. "You are shitting me? No fucking doors? How the hell are we supposed to launch?"
The Forgotten Six Page 3