Alcor sighed beside me. “Go. I’ll cover for you.” He was on the same team as Gavin and me, and he must have felt some sort of camaraderie, some urge to help.
Gavin shuffled toward me on his knees and took both my hands. “Please, Lyra. Please help me.”
Hmmm. Let me see. Argue over ions with Alcor, or flirt—I mean, talk—with Asteran. What a decision. Fortunately, I’d decided to take a shower that morning and moussed my hair.
I batted my eyelashes at Gavin and pretended to be annoyed by placing my hands on my hips. This was too good to be true. “If you need me that badly...sure, I’ll try to help.”
Chapter Seven
Time Bomb
“Dr. Catcher, I have some interesting test results.” Alcor spoke a little too loudly as he presented the senior scientist with a screen.
Gavin and I crawled underneath the lab tables toward the portal.
Dr. Catcher dropped crystals into the top of her grinding machine. The room buzzed as they turned into dust. “Where’s your counterpart, Ms. Bryan?”
I stiffened, and Gavin grabbed my sleeve, pulling me forward. We hid with our backs against a shiny metal container that was colder than the floor.
Alcor cleared his scratchy throat. “She’s in the middle of a three-hour test on electrical conductivity spikes. We wouldn’t want to interrupt her, or she’ll have to start the process all over again.”
Would the senior scientist buy his story? The moment of silence stretched forever. I pulled at a stray curl, straightening the strand as Gavin put his hands together and prayed, whispering under his breath, “Oh, Mighty Lab God, let her believe it.”
The grinding continued. “Very well. Show me what you’ve found.”
That was our cue! Gavin and I darted toward the portal. I chanced a glance over my shoulder. Alcor had conveniently turned Dr. Catcher’s back toward the far wallscreen, talking about the way the electrical currents of the alien ship responded to rising temperatures.
Using my locator, I signaled the portal, and the particles dematerialized. Thank goodness the machine she was using was loud enough to cover the swish of sound. Gavin and I shot into the corridor and sprinted toward the elevators.
Adrenaline rushed through me. “I thought I’d never get out of there.”
Gavin caught his breath beside me, slicking his red hair behind his ear. He had more mousse on his head than I used in a week. How he got that many rations, I had no idea. “What are you guys doing in there, anyway?”
“Analyzing the arachnids’ metal composite.”
“Wow. Fascinating.”
I couldn’t tell if he was truly intrigued or if he was being sarcastic. When the computer chose your job for you, everyone else’s job seemed more exciting. Back on Old Earth, people followed their dreams and picked the jobs they wanted. That was how the lucky ones got to be singers, artists, and writers. On the New Dawn, we only had logical, practical assignments given to us by the computer based on our aptitudes.
Maybe someday, when we’d established our colony, we could return to more personal freedoms. The first step had already happened with the canceling of the life-pairing system. Thank the holy mother of the universe.
The elevator arrived, and we entered. I pressed the button for the level of Asteran’s cell.
“Thanks for giving it a try, Lyra.” Gavin leaned on the back wall, crossing his arms. He reeked of too much aftershave and sweat. He must have been working out again when he should have been studying his linguistics.
I couldn’t blame him. I wasn’t exactly the most diligent student. Only recently, on the arachnid ship, had I realized knowledge could save your life or the life of someone you loved.
“No problem. It’s not exactly like I hate spending time with a gorgeous alien guy.”
He regarded me with interest. “That’s why I came to you. You two seem to have a special connection.”
Special connection? Gavin saw it too? The elevator stopped halfway to Asteran’s floor.
“What the—”
Gavin uncrossed his arms and stood in the salutary position in case a higher officer hailed our elevator. “Someone else must be going in the same direction.”
The portal dematerialized and Tauren stood before us in a wall of muscle with his uniform pressed to perfection and his head shaved down to the glossy skin.
I almost gagged.
“Lyra, I’ve been looking all over for you. Where have you been?”
Maybe he hadn’t known where I was all along. Maybe he hadn’t complained about Asteran to his father.
“I was reassigned.”
He scoured Gavin as though he could choke him on the spot. Even though Gavin worked out, my unfortunate lifemate was twice his width. “With Gavin?”
“No. In the science lab, with Alcor.”
“Oh.” Tauren stepped in the elevator between us.
Gavin gave me an uneasy look.
I widened my eyes and pursed my lips, warning him to keep quiet and play along.
“So, where are you headed?” Suspicion edged Tauren’s voice as he eyed the floor we’d pressed.
Tauren hadn’t pressed a floor number. We’d end up on Asteran’s floor and Tauren would catch me red-handed. I stalled. “You didn’t press your floor.”
“Oh, I forgot.” Tauren touched the panel and I held my breath. His floor was one stop after ours, the workout deck. Of course.
He stared at me with his dark, unforgiving eyes as if he could see right through me. “You didn’t answer my question.”
I placed a curl behind my ear to buy time. If I said the wrong thing, he could report me to his father, and bye-bye Asteran. Think, Lyra. What else was on Asteran’s floor? Containment cells, the upper levels of the biodome, and...“I’m headed to the supplies depot. We need more syringes in the science lab. Gavin’s here to help me carry them down.”
Tauren winced as if my words stung. “You could have asked me.”
“I’m sorry. Gavin was passing by, and I didn’t want to bother you.” A flicker of remorse came over me. Poor guy. He’d spend all those hours working out with nothing to carry.
I stomped out my unwarranted compassion. Mustn’t lead him on. Any kindness would make it all that much harder to let him down, once I worked up the courage.
Stepping toward him, I narrowed my eyes and dropped my voice to a whisper. “Aren’t you involved with something important right now with the upper command?” There. He couldn’t speak of his orders. They were most definitely confidential.
Tauren adjusted the award patches on his uniform and gazed warily at Gavin, then me. He stepped back as if my question crossed the line and he didn’t want to get into trouble.
Paranoid? Like the computer mainframe listened to every word we said.
“We’ve been very busy.” His lips pulled into a tight frown.
We rode the remainder of the way in silence. The elevator beeped and I sighed with relief. “Looks like our floor.” The portal dematerialized right in time.
I stepped into the corridor and breathed the fresh air of freedom. Gavin followed, making sure to skirt around Tauren’s oxen body.
Tauren stepped off the elevator, even though it wasn’t his stop and grabbed my arm. “Will I see you later?”
“I’ll be working late, so I won’t be at dinner. Lots of tests to run.”
“Okay.” Tauren didn’t sound convinced, but he released me and stepped back into the elevator. His beady gaze stared at Gavin as if he could melt him with laser eyes. The portal re-materialized, and the elevator took him away.
“Geez, Lyra. You’re not even my type, and he’s breathing down my neck for helping you.”
We turned away from the supplies to the right, toward where Asteran waited for me in his cell.
“I’m sorry.” Tauren was a ticking time bomb, waiting to go off and take out whatever guy stood around me at the time.
“You’re going to have to tell him sometime. He can’t stalk you forever.”
/>
“I know, I know.” Procrastination was my middle name.
Gavin pulled me aside. “What’s stopping you?”
His blue eyes held me in place, unyielding. He wasn’t going to settle for a half particle of an excuse. I dug deep inside my heart. Why was I putting it off? I’d made up my mind the second Commander Barliss destroyed the pairing system. Standing there with Gavin, the truth hit me like a shivery ventilation burst from the unheated corridors of the New Dawn. “I’m afraid.”
His face softened in wonder. “Afraid? Of what? Hurting his feelings?”
“No.” Tauren had as much feeling as a biodome toad. “Afraid of what he’ll do.”
Gavin pursed his lips and nodded slowly, scratching his chin in thought. “I see.”
Voices echoed down the corridor, and he gestured for me to keep walking. “I don’t think you have anything to worry about. Crophaven can’t reinstate the pairings. Commander Barliss destroyed the entire system.”
“Yes, but mine was already chosen. He could try to revalidate the last round of predestined matches.”
“There’d be too much upheaval. People have already broken it off with their predestined mates and chosen new ones. I have my eye on a girl from the construction team.”
I laughed. It suited him to choose a girl with just as many muscles.
Gavin shrugged as if the answer was easy. “Tauren’s got nothing over you.”
“Thanks.” I didn’t want to tell Gavin I was more afraid of Tauren snapping and going crazy than his father trying to reinstate the pairings. His jealous edge was a subject for another day.
We turned the corner and Gavin used his locator to open the portal for the med bay. The scientists glanced at me warily as we passed. Yaric scowled from his desk, clutching his ID badge around his neck.
“Don’t worry. Just look like you’re with me.” Gavin grabbed the lapscreen from his desk.
“Hey, guys. Just a few more routine procedures.” He nodded to the scientists and took my arm. “This better work,” he whispered.
My heart beat wildly, and my arms and legs tingled with excitement. Had the previous encounter with Asteran been a fluke, or would we still have the same connection?
Gavin used his badge to open the thick portal. He pulled the handle down, revealing the heart monitoring screen and the corner of the bed. “Ladies first.”
I took a deep breath and stepped in. Asteran rose from the bed like a gladiator meeting his fate. I hadn’t seen him in bright fluorescent light. His skin shimmered a pale gold, and his cobalt hair shone like rippling ocean waves. His eyes glowed aquamarine. He looked at me as if I was the only thing that made sense in his new world. “Lyra.”
Oh, God. He remembered my name. I wanted to say something bright, witty, and fabulous, but then I remembered he wouldn’t understand it anyway. “I told you I’d be back.”
Asteran walked toward me in bold strides. Every step he took quickened my pulse.
He took my hand and placed it on his chest, where his heart beat slow and steady. Staring at me intensely, he covered my hand with his rough, calloused fingers. His touch sent shivers across my shoulders. “Lyra. Tilor yulen thorida ken.”
I melted into a pool of warm, fuzzy bliss.
Chapter Eight
Warning
Gavin walked in behind me. “Um, am I interrupting?”
Could Asteran hear my heart somersaulting? Did he think my erratic spatter was normal for humans? Or could he tell I was reduced to a flurry of light atomic particles in his presence? “No. I think this is how his culture says hello.”
“He didn’t say hello to me that way.”
“Maybe you weren’t as nice.”
Gavin sat in a plastic visitor seat across the room and pulled up a table. “All the more reason why you should be here and not me.”
Asteran was still holding my hand against his chest, and I wasn’t about to pull it away. You know, bad for diplomacy.
“I guess I tested higher in chemistry.”
Gavin turned on his lapscreen. “I can’t imagine how.”
I turned and gave him a mean stare. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
He held up both hands. “Whoa, only that you’re excelling right now in linguistics.”
As much as I liked to think Gavin was right, and I did have a hidden talent for linguistics, I knew there was more to my connection with Asteran than my language skills.
I studied the alien’s angular face, watching the spirals twist up his hard-edged cheek and around his arched eyebrow. Perfection. “We’re here to help you.”
Asteran spoke again in a lilting musical phrase of beautiful words that could be gibberish, for all I knew. I shook my head and bit down on my upper lip. “No clue. Sorry.”
His gorgeous face tightened, and he pulled away, speaking more lyrical nonsense at the back wall. Grabbing his long hair with both hands, he collapsed on the bed.
“Did you get all that?” I turned to Gavin.
“Yup. The computer has been analyzing his speech patterns all day and has come up with nothing.”
“Have you tried single words?”
Gavin smiled sadly. “I’ve tried everything. Watch.”
The so-called linguist picked up a plastic cup with blue and green stripes and held it to Asteran. “Name this.”
Asteran held his hand out as if it was the easiest question in the world. “Polafaris.”
“Okay.” Gavin typed the word on his lapscreen. He held up another cup, this one clear glass. “Now name this.”
Asteran nodded. “Luitenway.”
Gavin held his finger in the air. “That sounds nothing like the last word he said even though it’s clearly the same object. The syntax is all jumbled.”
“Which means?”
He massaged his temples. “For instance, in English, we’d say striped cup then clear cup. Both answers would have some part of the same word. But his language is too mercurial to pinpoint.”
Asteran pointed to the lapscreen and raised his eyebrows. “Kuluhara.”
Gavin sighed. “We’ve been over this before. It’s a lapscreen. It’s helping us communicate with you.”
Asteran shook his head and made some sort of sign with his hands twirling in the air. For an instant, he reminded me of Leo playing his imaginary piano. It was a practiced gesture that looked crazy, but was really a highly complicated and evolved talent.
Realization hit me in the face. “He knows what it is. Just because he’s an alien doesn’t mean he’s of a primitive culture. He’s asking you if he can use it.”
Gavin’s mouth dropped open. “How can you be so sure?”
“Give it to him and see for yourself.”
“I don’t know, Lyra. Commander Crophaven ordered me specifically not to show him any of our technology in case he posed a threat.”
“He’s not an arachnid.”
Gavin turned off his screen as if talking about giving it to Asteran would blow it up. “Yes, I can see that, but danger comes in all shapes and sizes. What if he’s playing nice to get out of here and hit some button on a faraway spaceship to disintegrate our planet?”
“You’ve been reading too much about Old Earth. Now, do you want to establish communications or not?”
Behind me, Asteran must have guessed what we were arguing about, because he started up with another train of beautiful words and pointed adamantly to the lapscreen.
“Enough arguing.” I grabbed the screen before Gavin could protect it and held it away from him.
“What are you doing?” Gavin rushed up from his chair and swiped at me to take it back.
I whirled around, hiding it behind my back. “I’m doing your job. Crophaven told you not to give it to him, but he didn’t say anything to me. You can blame me when Armageddon hits.”
Before he could protest any more, I handed the thin screen to Asteran. “Do your stuff.”
Asteran took the screen and bowed ceremoniously in front of me, makin
g me blush. “Ingatar, Lyra.”
He held the screen in front of him, and the device flashed on without him even pressing the key. His long fingers wrapped around each side. The room brightened. I checked to see if Gavin had played with the wall panel, but he sat unmoving in his plastic seat with his eyes bugging out. Azure light emanated from Asteran’s hands, engulfing the computer, growing stronger with each second.
The supposed linguist picked up his chair. “If this isn’t the biggest I-told-you-so of the century, then I don’t know what is.”
“Wait. Don’t hurt him.” I grabbed his arm. “Give him a chance.”
Gavin placed the chair down but didn’t let go. I circled Asteran. Gavin wouldn’t throw the chair at me. I peeked at the screen. Images from our history, the demise of Old Earth, the voyage of our ship, the landing ceremony here, and the arachnids in containment cells flashed by in milliseconds.
Asteran’s eyes traveled over each image as his face reflected our joy, triumph, and pain. After several minutes, the blue light faded, and he placed the screen on the table and turned to me.
“You must listen. Your colony is in grave danger.”
Wait one nanosecond. “Did you just speak English?” It wasn’t awkward, halting English, either. The words flowed, smooth and purposeful, off his tongue.
His eyes changed from aquamarine to amber with glowing sparks of red. “There is no time to explain. You must alert your leaders of the coming threat.”
My nightmare came back to me, leaving a sour taste in my mouth. He’d spoken in English then too. Coincidence? My stomach clenched. “What threat? We crashed the arachnid ship. The only survivors are the ones in the containment cells.” Had I seen the future in my dream? Would the arachnids escape and terrorize the ship?
“That ship was a scout ship. It is one of many.” He gazed at the ceiling. “There will be more.”
Gavin finally found his voice. “What do you mean more?” He still hadn’t let go of the chair. His fingers had turned white.
“An entire fleet will come to harvest the crystals on this planet. Now they know you are here, they will harvest your people too.”
Alliance Page 5