Rendezvous With Rogue 719

by Kaitlyn O'Connor

  And they needed a pressurized cabin in order to take the suits off, or at least remove the helmets, to eat the supplies that would be in the wheel.

  No one wanted to say it, but it was starting to look like they might end up having to make a round trip.

  No one wanted to voice that because it was starting to look like they might not even make it to the wheel at all.

  They were already exhausted and nearly out of food.

  “We’re only a day out from the wheel,” Johnson said. “Why not mark the sleds with a beacon and leave them here?”

  “Because it’s all of our supplies,” Reyes said tightly.

  “And we can’t be sure we’ll find anything useable when we get to the hab wheel,” Commander Wilkes added.

  “I’ll hike back for it,” Johnson ground out. “We’ll make better time without them and then, once we’ve had time to rest, I can come back. We might even find one of the snowmobiles we brought for crossing the ice moon, Enceladus, that’s still working or can be fixed. Or the snow cat we were carrying.”

  Wilkes exchanged a look with Reyes.

  “It just doesn’t make sense to expend our energy on dragging the fucking sleds the whole way when we can probably find everything we need there.”

  “And if we don’t?” Reyes asked grimly.

  “I’ll come back … like I said,” Johnson snarled. “Fuck it! I’m leaving this one. I’ll come back for it.”

  Wilkes stared at him as he stalked ahead.

  Shelly, after casting several uneasy glances at the rest of them, rushed after him.

  “You gonna let him get away with disobeying a direct order?” Reyes demanded.

  Wilkes glared at him. “You suggesting I shoot him?”

  Reyes looked taken aback, but then his expression tightened. “It’s insubordination and the situation ….”

  “The situation is—we need everybody. I’ll deal with Johnson—when dealing with him doesn’t pose a threat for the rest of us.”

  Reyes glanced at Claudia.

  Claudia shrugged. She couldn’t stand Johnson, but she wasn’t sure she agreed with shooting him even though his behavior was beginning to suggest that he might be a danger to the rest of them.

  In any case, she wasn’t sure she was going to make it herself if she had to drag the sled the whole way.

  Which presented a hell of a dilemma since there might not be anything waiting for them, in which case they’d be in a hell of a mess, maybe no worse off than they had been but certainly no better.

  They might die faster.

  But it was beginning to seem unavoidable that they were going to die on the ball of ice.

  She’d known there was a chance that she was never going to make it back home, but she realized she had never really accepted that as a possibility. She’d believed she would make the trip and come home or she didn’t think she would’ve been able to get on the ship to start with.

  “Let’s leave the sleds here. Like Johnson pointed out, it’s a relatively short walk from the hab wheel. When we get there and get situated, we’ll see about retrieving them.”

  Reyes looked pissed, but he searched around until he managed to find a beacon and set it.

  Claudia waited for him.

  Wilkes headed out at a good clip to try catch up with Johnson and Adams.

  “You didn’t have to wait,” Reyes said when he’d finished.

  Claudia shrugged. “The best company is here, though.”

  Reyes didn’t laugh, to her surprise. “It may not be your healthiest choice to stick with me.”

  “Why do you say that?” Claudia asked.

  “You know.”

  She did. She was just hoping that it was just her imagination and/or Reyes hadn’t noticed. “They’re not happy with me, either. Outcasts should stick together, don’t you think?”

  “No. I don’t think,” he said almost angrily. “You’ll be better off with them.”

  Claudia hesitated. “I don’t agree. You have more knowledge and experience than all of the rest of us put together. And … I don’t like or trust Johnson. And I don’t think Wilkes is going to be able to control him.”

  Reyes stared at her for a long moment as if he was debating whether to argue the points she’d made. Finally, he seemed to dismiss it. “We need to hustle if we’re going to catch up to them.”

  If she hadn’t decided to hitch up with Reyes, she wasn’t sure when she would have noticed he was hurt, but she had and she did.

  They’d been walking for maybe two hours when she realized Reyes was getting slower and slower. “When were you going to say something about being hurt?” she finally asked accusingly, more angry and frightened at that moment than empathetic.

  “I’m fine,” he responded tightly.

  “You aren’t fine. You’re hurt.”

  He seemed to wrestle with himself a moment. “Maybe a cracked rib when we crashed. It’s nothing, really, and nothing to be done about it right now.”

  “We could’ve at least wrapped your ribs. We shouldn’t even have headed out with you hurt!”

  “Which is why I didn’t say anything. We don’t have time for injured people if anyone is going to survive. They would’ve thought of some reason to leave me at the ship.”

  Claudia would’ve liked to disagree but unfortunately she very much feared he was right.

  They weren’t slowing down now and she and Reyes were starting to have a hard time keeping them in sight.

  “You want to rest a few minutes?”

  He shook his head. “We can’t afford it. They’ve got the drones and the direction of the hab wheel. We’ll be lost if we don’t keep up.”

  “Maybe I should go back for one of the sleds so I can pull you?”

  “Too late for that.”

  “Damn it! You should have said something.”

  “Honestly, Nina, I can’t spare the breath to argue with you.”

  Fear clutched at Claudia then. Could she help him save himself? Or was he going to drag her down with him?

  Because she couldn’t leave him. She didn’t think she could make herself do that, even if she knew positively that she would die with him.

  Thankfully, they managed to catch up with the rest of the group when they stopped to rest. Unfortunately, it took them so long to catch up that they didn’t get the chance to rest. Wilkes eyed them for a long moment and then ordered everyone to take a few minutes more, but Johnson ignored the order and kept going.

  Fury flickered in Wilkes’ eyes, but he didn’t try to stop the man.

  A couple of minutes passed and Shelly got up to follow Johnson.

  Wilkes watched her go and then turned to Claudia and Reyes. “We can’t wait anymore.”

  “He’s ….” Claudia broke off when Reyes stomped her boot. “Older than the rest of us,” she finished weakly.

  “Yeah, I know, but physically fit. Isn’t that right, Reyes?”

  “Hell yeah,” Reyes agreed, getting up with the spryness of an eighty year old.

  Wilkes studied him and then looked at his instrument. “If we can make it over that rise by morning, we’ll be within sight of the debris field. Then you can rest and I’ll see what I can find in the way of transport while I’m looking for supplies.”

  It worried Claudia that Reyes didn’t argue.

  They’d crashed nearly a week ago and Reyes seemed worse, not better, and that wasn’t a good sign at all. Of course, he might just have been able to hide the injury better when all they were doing was moving around the ship—completely different from hauling a heavy sled for miles and then continuing the trek.

  She supposed he might have been healing from whatever injury he’d sustained and maybe pulling the heavy sled had opened it?

  It was just conjecture at this point, however. She doubted if Reyes had a lot better idea of what his injury was.

  And none of them were going to find out, either, unless the medical lab was intact. They’d had a working hospital on board
and what they needed to take care of pretty much anything that might arise, but there was no telling what had made it through the crash in one piece or working order.

  * * * *

  Torin struggled with the desire to unleash his fury when the woman disappeared again, but that was a waste of energy and he had none to spare.

  And beyond that, it was his temper that had chased her away to start with and he knew if he didn’t control his impatience the only chance they had would slip through his fingers.

  After a brief internal debate, he returned to his chamber and re-entered his body. It took less energy to rest within his form and he could still think.

  He’d thought her reference to a world she called Ert almost seemed familiar, but the images he had managed to capture certainly were not.

  Her people were an advanced race—well their presence here proved that. But he did not think that they were as advanced technologically—or in fact intellectually—as his own people had been before the great disaster.

  She had no notion, no understanding, of projecting her soul from the shell that carried it.

  She thought she was dreaming.

  Could he use that to his advantage, he wondered?

  Should he?

  Or would she hold it against him when the time came? Would she consider it a betrayal of trust when she realized he had manipulated her? Used her for his own ends?

  Of course he meant to use her. She was the only tool at his command—or that he might command. But if she felt used, if she felt like it wasn’t her idea, she might balk and then all would be lost.

  He’d examined the minds of the others, studied their behavior. They didn’t have the right temperament to be used.

  Claudia had strength, but she also had strong empathy toward others. Without both, she was as useless to him as the others of her kind that he’d detected. Without her, he would have to see if he could appeal to the fear and greed of the large black male and that path seemed rife with potential for disaster. The man was intelligent but blinded by his self-interest and lack of empathy for others.

  The brown man would see right through him, doubt his motives, and refuse.

  The white one would have no interest in doing anything that didn’t directly benefit his ‘mission’—and it seemed very possible that he would not consider the task Torin had in mind as beneficial.

  The other female was completely useless, too frightened of her own shadow to do anything but hover near the black male because she saw him as strong and fearless.

  It would have to be Claudia. Somehow, he must convince her that she wanted to help him and his people.

  Seduction came to mind. He wasn’t certain if it was because of the way she’d looked at him when he’d approached close enough to connect with her underdeveloped mind’s eye or because he, admittedly, found that she appealed to him a great deal on a purely sexual level.

  It worried him that she did, though.

  In the first place, his djinn was merely a manifestation of his energy and as such he didn’t recall that he had ever felt anything at all sexual while in that state—admiration of a female, yes, but only in the sense that he could appreciate beauty.

  In the second, he was as likely to get caught in that sort of trap as she was and he couldn’t afford to allow her to control him.

  He had to remain firmly in control of his emotions and his faculties. It was not just his life that hung in the balance. It was everyone who had survived the journey from their home system.

  Chapter Five

  The rise Wilkes had pointed out had begun to seem like a mirage long before they reached it. Claudia’s admiration for Reyes and her anxiety over the state of his health had grown exponentially the harder she struggled to keep going.

  Eventually, they reached it, but it was well past sunrise—maybe mid-morning.

  Claudia immediately dropped to her knees and then rolled onto her back, huffing for breath and struggling to regulate it for fear she’d deplete her oxygen supply.

  Reyes dropped, as well, but it almost seemed like he fell in slow motion.

  And something about it set Claudia’s heart to hammering fearfully. She struggled over and crawled to him to check his vitals. Thankfully, it seemed he’d simply fainted.

  “He ok?”

  Claudia shook her head. “His vitals don’t look good.”

  Wilkes turned to scan the wreckage in the distance. Neither Adams nor Johnson were to be seen so they’d either already reached the wreckage or gotten lost before day. “I’ll see what I can find and be back to help as soon as I can.”

  He frowned, looking up at the sky uneasily. “Is it my imagination? Or does it seem … lighter?”

  Feeling her heart jerk uncomfortably, Claudia looked skyward, too. She couldn’t tell that they were any closer at all to the sun. It was still a mere speck in the sky, but when she looked around she realized she could pierce the darkness much further, she was sure, than she’d been able to. “I think it is,” she said uneasily.

  Wilkes looked around again. “Well, that can wait—nothing we can do about it that I can see. We need to try to get Reyes seen to and made comfortable.”

  Claudia watched him go, scanned the distant landscape for any sign of Johnson and Shelly and then just lay down to rest. She was exhausted and there was nothing she could do at the moment but make the best of the situation and try to rest.

  Unfortunately, almost the moment she closed her eyes it seemed she summoned the alien that made her so uneasy. This time when he appeared, though, the setting was so different she was completely disoriented.

  She opened her eyes to discover he was crouched beside Reyes.

  “Do you know what is wrong with him?” he asked without turning to look at her.

  She stared at his bare, muscular back, knowing that alone indicated he wasn’t real. Most of the atmosphere was frozen. Unprotected in the thin layer of gases that remained, their bodies would have exploded. It was why they’d been so desperate to reach the hab wheel—in the hope that some part of it was still pressurized so that they could get out of their suits to prepare and eat the food that would be there.

  If none of it was, then the food would be of no use to them unless they could get back to the main ship with it.

  He glanced at her questioningly.

  She shook her head. “I don’t know. He must have been hurt in the crash. But he didn’t say anything and we didn’t know until we were halfway here.”

  “You and your people crashed here?”

  The question was spoken sharply. Claudia hesitated, but he’d suggested before that he’d probed her mind for information and already knew about Earth. And she didn’t believe he was real, for that matter.

  Of course, there was the possibility that he was, in fact, real. He was alien. She couldn’t know what he was capable of.

  But they were stuck. And he had only to look at the debris field to figure out what had happened.

  “Yes,” she responded finally. “We were caught in the gravitational pull before we realized there was anything out here.”

  He considered it. “You must bring him to us. We have a healer who can help him.”

  Claudia studied him with sudden suspicion, feeling a sinking, unhappy sensation in her belly that felt a lot like fear. “Why can’t you bring the healer to him? He isn’t in any shape to be dragged around. We need to get him stabilized and treated as quickly as possible.”

  His lips tightened. “If I could bring her to you we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

  Claudia stared at him, digesting that information, which gave rise to more questions than it answered. “Why can’t you?”

  He hesitated for so long she thought he wouldn’t answer at all. “I can … project to you, but even if she could it wouldn’t help you. She would need to be with him in her physical form to do what she would need to do.”

  That explained just enough to make her really uneasy. Clearly they were trapped somehow or t
hey wouldn’t need her to take Reyes to them. The question was why and how, and were they more interested in coaxing her to them because they needed her or in helping Reyes? “Why would you help us?” she asked bluntly.

  He looked taken aback and then angry. “Why do you help those in need?” he asked tightly.

  After a long moment, he seemed to set the insult aside. He moved closer … until she could feel the brush of his body along her length, staring down into her eyes.

  Although she tensed in sensual anticipation, though, felt a tingle of warmth travel all the way through her, she was too embarrassed about misreading his body language the first time to allow herself to accept that explanation.

  And it turned out that she was wrong again.

  This time instead of placing his forehead against hers, he dipped his head and matched his lips to hers.

  The contact was electrifying.

  The effect was instantaneous.

  Molten desire flowed through her like a river of lava.

  And then he vanished, leaving Claudia reeling and thoroughly confused, throbbing uncomfortably with arousal.

  As disturbed as Claudia was by the encounter, or the dream of an encounter, though, she was too exhausted to spend a lot of time picking at it. She passed beyond awareness. When she woke later she felt so rested she knew immediately that a very long time had passed—hours. Struggling upright, she stared toward the debris field for a long moment and then moved quickly to Reyes to check on him.

  He was still breathing but his vitals didn’t look good.

  Pushing to her feet she stared hard at the movement she’d detected until it resolved into a manned skimobile. Her heart leapt when she realized it had to be Wilkes coming for them.

  There must be a good bit of their supplies that had made it through the crash for him to find a working skimobile!

  It still seemed to take forever for him to reach them. Finally, though, he pulled to a halt and she saw he had a supply sled attached to the back.

  “Help me with him,” he said as he knelt to grasp Reyes’ shoulders.