Erstwhile: A Sci-Fi Romance (The Jekh Saga Book 1)

by H. E. Trent

  “Lo. Gi. Cal.”

  “But, then she said some of the products in the meet-shop were unusual.”

  “How?”

  “They were made of Jekhan materials but with Terran styling. Take a close look at the blanket she brought back. That’s not a Terran fiber.”

  “They…don’t…know—”

  “Right. They don’t know how to manipulate our crops. They’d have to be taught. I studied up on their systems when we were still in Buinet. Their farming cycles and methods are a lot different than ours. Something’s not right.”

  Seemed like an understatement to Murk, and at the moment, there wasn’t anything he could do to find out more. Court was right that they were all out of touch.

  They followed Court into the house, and Murk found her in the bedroom. She sat cross-legged on the bed, picking bits of lint off the blanket. She didn’t even look up at him, but she had to know he was there. He was a big man and hard to ignore.

  Grunting, he sat on the edge beside her and skimmed his finger along the blanket’s soft edge. Trig was right. The material was made of a Jekhan fiber. Soft as wool, but reaped from the ground and expertly carded. That was no beginner’s project, and he would have known. His family had been involved in high-end trade for centuries, and that soft material had once been a very desirable product to their off-world trade partners. He scoffed. The same ones that didn’t bother coming to our aid when the Terrans came.

  “You’re either in here to yell at me or apologize,” she said. “I’m crampy, so pick wisely.”

  He furrowed his brow. “Why…cramps?”

  “Common at this stage of pregnancy, supposedly. They’re painful, but not debilitating. Baby is still moving around, so I guess I’m okay.”

  He set a tentative hand on her belly and his body nearly fell over with relief when she didn’t knock it away. No Jekhan woman would have allowed such touch, and of course, no proper Jekhan man would have made the attempt.

  Maybe that was his mistake—trying to be proper for her when he knew damned well that he wasn’t and never would be. And like Trig said, she wasn’t Jekhan. There should have been no expectations of propriety between the three of them.

  At his touch, the baby swiped some limb under his hand. Hello, my little one.

  Court groaned. “Running out of room for that. Before, I thought all the gymnastics were cute. Now they just hurt.”

  “So…rry.” He pulled his hand back only for her to put it back.

  “You can do that. A little counter-pressure seems to help. If you want to be useful, you can put a little pressure on the base of my spine. My lower back is killing me.”

  He trailed his fingers down her back and drew a small circle at the bottom. “Here?”

  “Yeah. Press hard.”

  He did what she asked, though he couldn’t see how that would possibly help.

  She let out a little sigh and closed her eyes. She obviously liked that.

  “Rest.” He helped her onto her side and tucked a pillow under her knees. With her being so small, he couldn’t fathom how she hadn’t come apart at the seams yet.

  He settled himself behind her, rubbing her back and fondling her unsheathed hair all at once. She hadn’t exactly gotten lazy, but in the past several months, she didn’t seem to have the excess of energy or the toiletries required to tame it. Most days, she pulled her hair back into a ponytail and he’d find her in bed at night with a few twigs or bits of straw caught in the tangles. Her hair looked coarse when left loose, but was as soft as the finest fiber.

  Nudging her hair away from her neck, he brushed a kiss across her shoulder, pulling a giggle from her.

  “That tickles,” she whispered. “Everything is so sensitive.”

  He kissed her again, but more firmly—this time pressing his lips into the dip of her neck and gliding his tongue over the salty bend.

  “You’re killing me. Are you going to get me all hot and then disappear out into the fields for a few days again?”

  Pulling back, he let out a breath. He couldn’t push out the words fast enough, and even if he could, what did she expect him to say? That the separation wasn’t his fault? That they’d assumed that Terran women would be just like their Jekhan counterparts once they settled into their permanent homes? That they lost what little lustiness they had the moment they were with child?

  She had the right to accuse him. She didn’t have to keep giving them chances, but she did, and he was grateful for every one because he suspected she could get on just fine without them.

  He didn’t want to get her hot, though. She had to be uncomfortable, and he couldn’t work out the logistics of having her without hurting her.

  Perhaps I could…

  He let the thought fall off when Trig stalked into the room gripping Court’s handgun. He crouched in front of the window and nudged the room darkening curtains aside an inch.

  “Trig, what’s happening?” Court struggled to sit up.

  Murk’s instinct was to push her down and bid her to stay there, but he didn’t think that sort of dominance would go over well at the moment.

  “There’s someone here.”

  “Cops or land prospectors?”

  “I don’t know. They haven’t gotten out of their flyer yet. Looks like two people.”

  “They’re in a flyer?”

  “An old one, yes. Six-seater—the kind used for farm hauling. Those are easier to start. They’re not limited to just two pilots.”

  “I’ll go deal with them.”

  Murk grabbed her wrist. “No.”

  “Murk, I have to. My name is posted on those bills. I’ll see what I can do to make them go away, and if they want to push the issue—”

  “We’ll deal with them,” Trig said.

  “Exactly. I won’t get close enough to them to let them grab me. Stay in the shadows in the gathering room and come out if there’s trouble.” She groaned as she stood, pressing her hands to the small of her back. “If they don’t kill me, all these early contractions will.”

  They followed closely behind her and positioned themselves on either side of the front door as she opened it.

  “Huh.” She stepped outside.

  Huh? Murk cast a glance over to Trig who gave the barest shrug.

  She moved far enough away that he could hear the cadence of her voice and discern its tone, though not make out any actual words. She didn’t seem stressed, but she was a cop. She may have been good at faking calmness. She hadn’t sounded stressed when that bucket of excrement Tim had assaulted her, either, and Murk knew how that had turned out.

  Trig muttered an archaic Jekhan expletive under his breath, and pushed away from the door. He kept to walls of the round room and headed down the hall back toward the bedroom. He was likely returning to his window. He returned soon after, but didn’t stop. He ran right through the door, calling out, “Court, stand away from that murderer.”

  Murk wouldn’t have stayed in place even if his feet had been tarred to the floor. He ran outside after Trig to find Court standing near two men—one Terran and one Jekhan—and she didn’t look frightened. If anything, she looked annoyed at the interruption.

  The Jekhan man was older. Sixty years of age, perhaps. He clutched a leather satchel beneath his arm and cast a wary stare at Trigrian.

  The Terran man put his hands up in an obvious consoling gesture. “Hold on. Murderer? That’s a strong claim directed toward a Jekhan.”

  “A truthful one.” Trig leveled the gun at him. “Who the fuck are you?”

  “My name is Allan Rowe. I run the meet-shop.”

  Run, he’d said. Not own. Words mattered.

  Trig eased up beside Court, wrapped his arm around her waist, and made her step back a few paces. “That man”—he pointed with the gun toward the Jekhan man—“left my baby sister to die.”

  The Jehkan man shook his head hard. “I did no such—”

  “Shut up.” Trig looked at the Terran. “Why are you here? T
his is my land.”

  Allan nodded. “I don’t dispute that, in spite of whose name is posted on the notices. You being here…well, that wasn’t that hard for me to put together. I’d passed the property last week on my way back from the summit.” He pointed to the tall mountain in the distance. “We go up there to get a high view of any new activity in the area. We saw the bills posted here, and when Courtney came into the store earlier, I put two and two together.” He scoffed. “A McGarry right here. I can’t believe it. Here, of all places.”

  “And what, thought she’d be an easy target because she’s pregnant?”

  “No, I came because I thought she might need some care. I saw her dress. It’s a Jekhan style. I made an educated guess the child’s father might have been Jekhan, too.” He crooked his thumb at the Jekhan man. “That’s my father-in-law.”

  His father-in-law. That means…

  Trig gave his head a hard shake. Allan’s allegiances obviously didn’t matter to Trig. “Your father-in-law is a murderer. Did he tell you that?”

  Murk walked over and put his hand on Trig’s shoulder. Murk was usually the one who got hot under the collar. Trig tended to reserve his passion for more salacious things. Either his dose of Marscadrel was starting to wear off, or he truly believed the man had done him some ill. Jekhans were generally a forgiving sort, but then…Trig was from Little Gitano, and less Tyneali than most. Likely more like their erstwhile forebears from Earth before they’d been abducted. He didn’t know what that could mean.

  “What…happened…” Murk eked out.

  “My sister was dying, and he abandoned her.”

  “That was not what happened,” the doctor objected. “You were young. You’re not remembering clearly.”

  “I remember well enough. She was begging for relief, and you gave her a sip of some concoction, packed up your bag, and left.”

  “That’s right. I left her to die in peace at your parents’ request. There was nothing I could do for her. She was either going to die with my help and some of her pain taken away, or she was going to suffer for days or weeks. She wasn’t meant to have lived as long as she did. From the day she was born, she was on borrowed time. She had a deformed heart and lungs. Did your parents tell you that? That there was no cure and no donor for her?”

  “You’re a liar.”

  “Try to hear me through your cloud of anger, and you’ll know my words are truth.”

  Allan put his hands down slowly and bobbed his head toward the old flyer. “Look, I’ve got my kid here. We really didn’t come out here to cause trouble. We’re a peaceful bunch, I swear we are. We fight off the occasional band of land prospectors and mercenaries coming in from the cities who are looking for fugitives we don’t want to give up. That’s all.” He pulled open the flyer’s back door, and whispered, “Come on out.”

  Trig, still on high alert, swept his gun toward the door, only to stand down when the little boy—probably eight or nine—walked ahead of Allan.

  Obviously, unquestionably mixed. He was paler than Emania Mauren, but had the telltale eyes of a Jekhan. More burgundy than brown. His hair was short and blond like Allan’s, and his clothes were like Terrans’. What they called a “T-shirt” and “jeans.” His shoes were of the Jekhan style, however.

  “For the most part,” Allan said, “Jekhans here keep themselves hidden. It’s easier for them to let us run the town so people think we took over. They have less trouble that way.”

  “That’s why you didn’t change anything,” Trig said. His voice wasn’t exactly cheerful yet, but the tone was a large enough step away from hostile that Murk thought there might be some hope of conciliation, even if Trig didn’t trust the man.

  Allan nodded. “Little Gitano isn’t our town. The Jekhans took us in when we deserted, and we try to do what we can for them. The population here is still very small—smaller than it was when you last lived here, I bet, but we’re thriving. We’re trying to make the best of things. We want to help you make the best of things.”

  His gaze tracked over to Court. “Messages came in for you about twenty minutes after I turned the relay on. I transferred them to a card…” He patted the pockets of his vest. “Ah.” He plucked the small square out from a top pocket and handed it to her. “I didn’t listen past the computer-generated metadata. Do you have a compatible device for that?”

  “I think my wrist com is equipped to read it.” She turned, cast a wary gaze at Trig and a searching one toward Murk and, without another word, headed toward the house. Left standing with their visitors, Trig shifted his weight and stared at Murk. What now? his gaze seemed to ask.

  Allan scoffed. “Courtney McGarry. Wow. Do you guys have any idea who she is? Why the hell did she come to this place? She’d have to be a masochist.”

  Murk often thought the same thing.

  “Her name is what brought her here,” Trig said reasonably.

  “She would have been better off moving to New Zealand or someplace like that.”

  “So, why’d you come?”

  Allan shrugged. “I didn’t really have a choice. I was an enlisted officer in the PanTerran United Forces. I couldn’t exactly present myself as a conscientious objector after ten years in the service, you know? But, they lied to us. Told us we’d just be protecting the embassy and escorting dignitaries from one far-flung colony to the next.”

  “There is no embassy.”

  Allan gave a slow nod. “Of course there isn’t. Why would Earth’s own colony need an embassy to itself? And they told us the Tyneali were vicious—that if they got anywhere near the planet, they’d wipe us all out in a blink.”

  “The Tyneali don’t dwell anywhere near this part of the sector, and they believe in non-interference for the most part. Their scientists come here every five or ten years to check the stability of birthrate, and that’s about all they do.”

  “Yes, we’ve become quite well acquainted with the Tyneali. They were here about a year ago. They brought us some medicines and supplies.” Allan draped his arms over his son’s shoulders. “Helped us fix a couple of dams. That kind of thing.”

  “The Tyneali have technology far superior to what the Terrans have. Why didn’t they stay to help?”

  Murk had always thought the Tyneali had abandoned them. After all, the Tyneali were who Jekhans had inherited their passiveness from—their unwillingness to fight, even when justified.

  “The Tyneali don’t wish to interfere more than they already have,” the doctor said. “They are confident we can work this out on our own.”

  “What…end…goal?” Murk asked.

  The doctor shrugged. “Same as always. We’ll thrive here in spite of our hardships, but just like the Tyneali, we need to keep our gene pool robust. Wasn’t that one of the reasons we went to Earth in the first place? Yes, humans and Jekhans get along just fine when their goals are the same.”

  “What are your goals?” Trig asked. There was only a hint of derision left in his voice, and the doctor didn’t seem offended by it.

  “To see my grandchildren grow up. I only have two. Like you, Trigrian, I have lost much in the past twenty years. Not a dear sister, but a great deal just the same.”

  “Children?” Trigrian asked.

  The doctor nodded. “I’ve lost three of my children. The ones who moved to the cities. I assume they are dead and I have no way of knowing if that’s the truth. I do hope it’s not.”

  At the sound of Jerry’s long nails clicking against the stone in front of the door, they all turned.

  A pale-faced Courtney, holding the bottom of her belly as if she thought their child would fall out, let out a doleful moan. “One…” She stopped and caught her breath. “One of those messages was from my mother. Messages to my sister Erin are getting forwarded to her. Apparently, Erin and my brother are on the way to Jekh. They took a shuttle heading here because they were worried for my safety. My friend Brenna…was…” Breathless, she stopped again. She seemed to need an unusually long tim
e to fill her lungs.

  Four ragged breaths. Five.

  Murk went to her and pushed her hair back from her sweaty brow. “Court?”

  “I’m all right. Pre-contractions. Hell on my back.”

  The doctor appeared in Murk’s periphery.

  For the moment, though, he wisely kept his distance.

  “Brenna…” Court started in that same winded rasp. “Brenna got in touch with Erin when I went off the grid. Apparently, things are…are a mess in Buinet right now. Brenna did a lot to help me, and she was being accused of tampering with files and passing confidential police information, neither of which she did. She may have helped me look at my records, but she didn’t change anything. She didn’t show me anything I couldn’t have accessed myself if I’d gone through the right channels.”

  “Did they arrest her?” Allan asked.

  “Yes. She’s already been tried and convicted. There was no one to testify on her behalf, and it sounds like her own brother threw her under the bus. Erin thought someone might have been pressuring him, and I believe that’s the case, too.”

  “Who? And why?”

  “For…” She took a deep draw of breath and let out a gasp. “God, this kid has sharp elbows. Shit. For one thing, Brenna’s father works for the government in Jekh. She described him as a hard man, and I imagine he’d be the sort who’d make an example of her to save face. Also, it seems that my…” She winced. “Well, Reg is raising hell. Apparently a lot of people reneged on promises regarding not only our match, but of some auxiliary things relating to it.”

  “What do you mean, your match?” Allan asked.

  “There’s a match agency that coordinates marriages for settlers. Obviously, there are more men than women in the registry at the moment. He’s not angry at the fact that an eligible female slipped through his fingers, but that I did. This is political.”

  “Explain,” Trig said.

  “My mother explained. She and my father muddled a lot of the facts about what happened with my grandfather because they didn’t think we’d be able to digest the truth as kids. We were always told he was dead, but…”