She'd been completely honest and aboveboard with them! She'd told Baen anyway, and she knew men talked, regardless of what they said to the contrary! She supposed, after a while, that she wasn't being completely fair. She didn't know that Baen had told him that she wasn't looking for a mate, or even a hook up.
And she had hooked up with him. Maybe he'd decided when she had that she was alright with just recreational sex?
It didn't matter, damn it! Kiel and Baen had behaved as if they wanted something meaningful, damn it! They'd led her to believe they actually meant mating!
Ok, so she had gotten the impression that none of them understood it the way she did, but wasn't that natural, too? At least some of it?
Maybe not. Maybe she was the one that was screwed up in her thinking. Maybe she'd been right all along and they'd honestly never had any interest at all beyond spreading their seed? Baen had indicated otherwise, but Kiel certainly hadn't and she hadn't bothered to set any ground rules with him.
Stupid!
She discovered she was crying, actually crying! She couldn't even remember the last time she'd cried! It felt like something she needed to do, though, and she discovered she couldn't regain control anyway, so she indulged until she had a headache and her eyes felt like they were swollen shut. When she ran out of tears and physical misery began to overcome emotional, she got up and moved to the wall Kiel had indicated. Fortunately, it took no more than proximity to activate the door and the lights. When she'd finished blowing her nose and dabbing at her face with cool water enough to take some of the swelling down, she headed back to the bed and sprawled out to sleep the after effects off.
* * * *
Baen looked so pleased at his expression that Kiel was tempted to put his fist in his face. "She would not let you mate with her?"
Kiel narrowed his eyes at him. "I did not try. I did not need to. I have already mated her once. I am certain I have planted my seed."
He barely managed to finish his gloating speech before Baen bounded out of his chair and swung at him. "That is not true!" Baen snarled.
Kiel ducked the flying fist and drove his own into Baen's belly. "Sit down, fool! You will damage the equipment!"
"Then we can go to the hold!" Jalen snarled. "There is nothing there to be damaged beyond the supplies!"
"Fine!" Kiel snapped. "If you need for me to kick your ass, then we will go to the hold!"
Baen checked the console. "I will go also. This has been set."
Turning on his heel, Kiel stalked from the bridge and bent down to open the hatch located in the corridor just beyond the bridge. Baen planted his foot on his ass the moment the door opened and shoved. His last thought as he tumbled into the dark hold was that he had been too furious to think straight or he would never have given Baen the opening. He managed to twist his body as he went through the hole, not enough to land solidly, but enough to avoid landing on his head. Baen landed at the foot of the ladder even as he was struggling to regain his balance and slugged him in the jaw. He flew backwards, slamming into a pallet of supplies and they tumbled around him. By the time he had waded out of the debris, Jalen had positioned himself, braced to throw a punch. Baen knocked him sideways and flew at Kiel again.
The quarters, they soon discovered, were a disadvantage. As large as the hold was, it was pretty well filled with supplies with only a little room for moving between the crates and by the time they had slung each other back and forth a few times, most of it was littering the floor. As surefooted as they were, they discovered it was just about impossible to navigate the debris on the floor without tripping over it. Regardless, they persevered doggedly until they'd managed to exhaust their tempers.
After settling on the floor to rest for a short time and surveying the damage, Kiel finally decided he had proven his point. Getting up, he climbed the ladder to the main level. Baen took issue. Following, he grabbed Kiel's foot and tried to drag him into the hold again, but Kiel was at an advantage that time. Gripping the rails firmly, he kicked Baen in the face until he let go and then climbed out before he could recover and grab his foot again, slamming the door to the hold when he'd emerged.
After a moment's consideration, he decided not to lock it and headed back to the bridge. Baen and Jalen followed him a few moments later and dropped into their chairs, glaring at him.
"We had agreed that we would utilize the time on the trip to convince Danielle to mate with us," Jalen said accusingly. "Except that I am the only one who waited!"
"He did not mate her," Baen snapped. "He is lying."
Kiel studied Baen for a long moment and finally shrugged. He did not particularly give a fuck whether Baen believed him or not, he realized. Clearly, he had taken first position with Danielle and that was all that mattered to him. They would know soon enough that he had not lied. When she gave birth, his would be the largest and strongest.
"She said that we were not compatible for mates," he said after a moment. Not that he particularly wanted to share. They had all agreed that they would so that they would better understand the process, however, and as little as he liked the idea of sharing personal experiences with his mate, she would clearly not be happy until they did understand.
"What the fuck did she mean by that?" Jalen demanded angrily. "Manuta said we need not concern ourselves with it. We are not only much the same, but the nanos will ensure it!"
"Do not tell her about the nanos!" Baen growled. "I do not know why it bothers her, but it does."
Enlightenment dawned. "She does not know about the nanos!" Kiel exclaimed.
"I just said that!" Baen said testily.
Kiel shook his head. "She does not know, so she does not realize that the nanos will ensure that we are compatible!"
"I just said that!" Jalen snapped, and then glared at Baen. "You have hit him too hard on the head! His logic circuits have gone haywire!"
"There is nothing wrong with my logic circuits!" Kiel growled. "She has no grasp of logic, however. I will tell you that! I could not understand half of what she was saying and I have a firm grasp of her tongue!"
Baen looked at him curiously. "What did she say?"
"She told me to shove my cock up my ass for one thing!" Kiel snapped. "And not only do I know, positively, that I do not want it there, but I also know it was not designed to fit there!"
Jalen looked horrified. "Do you suppose theirs are?"
"Well, of course they are!" Baen snapped. "It is only logical that they would. Why else would she suggest it?"
"Well, I am damned if I know why she would suggest it at all!" Kiel snapped. "I do not want to mate with myself!"
"Clearly, they can," Baen said, nodding wisely.
Jalen looked repulsed. "That does not make sense, gods damn it!" he said after a moment. "They have male and female! Why would they have male and female if they can self-propagate?"
Kiel scratched his chin thoughtfully, considering it. "I believe it was an insult of some kind," he said finally. "Jalen is right. It would be completely illogical to shove their cocks up theirs asses unless it was possible to self-propagate and we know that cannot be the case."
They mulled that over for a while, but since none of them could think of another explanation, they finally dismissed it. "Why did she insult you?" Baen asked suspiciously.
"I do not know that she did," Kiel hedged.
"You suspect she did!" Baen snapped. "Why do you think so?"
Kiel's lips tightened. "She was angry."
"Why was she angry?"
"If I knew that I would have realized sooner that she was trying to be insulting!" Kiel said irritably. "I thought that she was upset. Her eyes looked … sad."
"What did you say to make her unhappy?" Jalen demanded angrily. "Why did you say something to make her unhappy? I will allow that I know nothing about this mating thing … beyond where to put my cock, that is, but I do not think making the female unhappy is a very good way to convince her to allow it!"
"I did not say anyt
hing!" Kiel snapped indignantly. "It was Baen who told her of the time that Manuta had been terra-forming and then that we had been created a thousand years ago. I did not even know what was going through her mind until she informed me that we were not compatible for mating because her people do not live nearly as long."
Baen stared at him blankly. "But … she has nanos now!" He narrowed his eyes. "I should have known the moment I saw them that you had given them to her!"
"You did know!" Kiel said pointedly. "In any case, she does not know and if she will be upset to learn it and we cannot tell her for that reason, then she will remain convinced that we are not compatible!"
"What the fuck does that have to do with it?" Baen demanded.
"I do not fucking know!" Kiel snapped. "Did I not already say that she has no logic? I cannot figure it out. I thought you might be able to."
Baen glared at him a long moment and then settled to turning it over in his mind. He threw up his hands in disgust after a few moments. "Well, it gods damned well does not make any sense! That is why you cannot understand it!"
"You think?" Kiel asked, feeling a mixture of relief that Baen had agreed and a niggling of doubt that, mayhap, neither one of them had managed to figure it out and it actually did make sense to her. It had certainly seemed to and, in the end, what did it matter if they did not understand if she saw it as a problem?
"We do not have enough problems," Jalen said irritably, "that she must throw in another that is completely incomprehensible?"
"Jalen is right," Baen said after considering it a moment.
"I am?" Jalen asked blankly.
"Yes. We have enough to deal with. I think we must focus on learning her ways and what she expects of mates-not Kiel. He has already mated, but you and I."
"Now, wait just a fucking minute!" Kiel growled. "She has already said that there is more to it than planting the seed, gods damn it! And I cannot be certain with one time that it is planted, as far as that goes!"
"You said that you were certain," Baen said pointedly.
"Well, I am not one hundred percent certain beyond the fact that I seeded her, gods damn it! I do not know that her body took the gods damned seed!"
"You said you were sure of that, also," Jalen pointed out.
"I may have misspoke," Kiel muttered. "The urge is still there. I must consider the possibility that it would not be if I had succeeded. In any case, I am not done, gods damn it!"
"Well you had first chance," Baen snarled. "And that should have been mine, gods damn it! You said that you were not even certain that you were interested in her as a mate and I said that I was certain that I was! It was a complete fabrication to lull me into thinking you would not compete when you had every intention of doing so! I should have beat your head in while we were in the hold!"
"Dishonorable!" Jalen agreed.
"This is not war, gods damn it!" Kiel snapped.
"Which makes it all the more shameful!" Jalen growled.
Kiel narrowed his eyes at his friend. "I believe I will call you on that insult! Let us go back into the hold."
"That is an excellent notion," Baen agreed.
Both Kiel and Jalen turned to study him speculatively and settled back again. "I withdraw the insult," Jalen muttered. "I misspoke."
"Accepted," Kiel growled. "In any case, I do believe we must consider this in the light of a war now that I have thought on it. It is a competition, and that means the rules of combatants apply. There is no dishonor in taking whatever advantage presents itself."
"That applies to all of us and not just you?" Baen asked tightly.
Kiel glanced from Baen to Jalen and finally forced a shrug. "Naturally. Information is shared, however. That was agreed upon before we ever left. We are all bound to honor that part of the truce."
?
Chapter Fourteen
Danielle still felt heavy with fatigue and depression when she awoke after a brief nap, but she got up, determined not to dwell on it. The men were still on the bridge when she arrived but it was patently clear that they hadn't been there the entire time. All of three of them bore the telltale signs of a battle. She stopped abruptly the moment she noticed and studied them more intently.
None of them would meet her gaze, but she couldn't decide if it was because their disagreement had anything to do with her or not. It might be nothing more, she realized, than discomfort at her own outburst.
"Where are we?" she asked of no one in particular.
"We are nearing the wormhole that I utilized to remove you from harm's way," Gertrude responded.
Danielle felt her pulse leap. "I guess I didn't sleep as long as I thought. Is that the wormhole it shows on the star chart?"
"Affirmative," Gertrude responded. "That is the first one."
Danielle frowned. She hadn't even noticed the course took them through one wormhole, let alone more than that. She was tempted to rush over to Baen and demand to see the chart again, but she dismissed the urge and took her seat instead, fastening her harness. "You mean to say we'll have to go through more than one to get there?"
"Affirmative. Two."
She supposed that explained why the chart hadn't looked familiar and why Gertrude hadn't been able to match it with anything she'd had. The chart had to be multi-dimensional if their course would take them through two different wormholes.
"Approaching wormhole. Harnesses should be secured. Entering in … mark twenty EST," Gertrude announced.
Baen, Kiel, and Jalen exchanged an uneasy glance, but they fastened their harnesses.
"It shouldn't be too rough," Danielle said soothingly. "It didn't seem that way when I came through the first time, anyway."
"The wormhole is dormant," Gertrude agreed.
Danielle grimaced. "Interpretation-mildly turbulent as opposed to dangerously unstable."
Her stomach clenched with fear anyway when Gertrude ended the count and the ship dropped into the hole. The ship began to spin. She could feel it spinning and it made her dizzy and vaguely nauseous even when she closed her eyes. Clearly dormant or not, there was a good bit of gravity within the hole. The ship creaked and moaned with the increased pressure the hull was taking, as well. She was vastly relieved when Gertrude announced that they would be leaving the hole shortly.
Kiel, Baen, and Jalen all looked a little green when the ship shot from the hole but, to her surprise, none of them leapt up and tore off toward the facilities to puke. Apparently, they were acclimating a lot faster to gravity shifts than she had, she thought wryly.
"Correcting course," Gertrude announced.
Danielle felt her heart sink as she stared at the viewer, at the small glimpse of even remotely familiar space, and watched it dwindle with distance. So close! She could see her home star and impulse to seize control of the ship and head for home was so intense that for several moments she actually visualized doing so in her mind. Reason reared its ugly head.
She knew she didn't have any chance at all of seizing control and even if she managed it for a handful of moments, she couldn't maintain it.
Throwing her harness off, she got up and left the bridge. She was sitting in the gathering room, sulking over the lost opportunity to go home, when Baen and Jalen joined her.
"You are hungry?" Jalen asked pleasantly.
Danielle glared at him. How could he think about food at a time like this? Couldn't he see she was in mourning, damn it? Insensitive bastard!
Regardless of her determination to suffer, however, she discovered she was hungry. She sighed. "I guess so."
He moved to the locker and opened it to study the contents, reeling off the names of foods she didn't have a clue about. "Just pick something. I'm not especially hungry."
"You said that you were."
She glared at him. Before she could jump up and flounce to her cabin to sulk, Baen intervened.
"She does not know one from the other. She said to choose for her."
"But I do not know which she likes," Jalen obj
ected.
"Kraken," Danielle said tightly. "Kiel fixed that for me and I liked that."
"You did not like the one that I chose for you before?"
Danielle struggled with her impatience and finally decided she was being completely unreasonable and it wasn't right to take it out on him just because she was miserable. She sighed. "I did. But that's about all I ate for a while. I'm sort of tired of it. Maybe I should just let you pick something else?"
She was glad she'd made the effort. He seemed to relax, the first she realized that he had been tense, which was probably a reaction to her foul mood. She decided it was a good thing. Even if she was depressed over the entire mating thing that was no excuse for behaving badly and it was just plain stupid to set herself against them from a survival viewpoint. She needed to make friends with them, not enemies.
She was just going to have to get her head on straight! It wasn't their fault-any of it! She knew they didn't understand her ideas of mating. It wasn't reasonable to be angry with them because they didn't. It wasn't even reasonable to be angry with them if she'd explained it if they didn't feel the same way. They were aliens-not humans. They might want to adapt, but that didn't mean they could.
She had no one to blame for her misconceptions but herself, she realized. Even she couldn't help her way of thinking, learned behavior, or her natural instincts.
Baen settled beside her. She glanced at him and then moved a little to give him more room on the bench.
"You are angry?" he asked tentatively.
Danielle sighed. "Just homesick, I suppose. It was easier not to think about it as long as I was in Manu, but seeing familiar things …." She shrugged.
He frowned. She didn't realize he was going over his vocabulary until he looked at her curiously and asked her to explain.
She discovered there were some things that were really hard to define, especially to someone who had no grasp of the concept. "Yearning for people and places familiar," she said finally. "Love."
"That word is not in the data banks either."
Danielle felt her throat close. "I'm not surprised. Which one?"
The Forgotten Seven Page 2