And yet, if it had been from him, if it was authentic, if he had gotten a friend with access to Echelon technology to help him, I couldn’t leave him hanging. What if he was waiting for me? I had put us through enough. I had to respond.
But I decided that I had to be cautious in what I said. Nothing that could draw any attention to the truth.
Calder:
I can’t tell you how much I miss you. I never should have left, and I am sorry that I did. I am here with my family and I am in good health, positively glowing, and I am trying to find out when I can come home to you. Please wait for me, I am coming.
Love,
Lorelei
It seemed cold, and distant, but I didn’t want to be more detailed than that. It felt like such a huge risk. If Mireena found out her daughter was trying to help us all get off the Atria, there would be hell to pay.
But still, I sent off the e-mail and rushed out the door of my tiny apartment, headed toward the opulent Mafaren quarters. I all but ran through the halls, and when I neared the Mafaren quarters, I almost ran smack into Tierney.
“Watch where you’re going!” Tierney shouted, before she had a chance to register it was me.
“Sorry,” I shouted back, “sorry. I just needed to talk to you.”
“What is it, Vauss?”
“I’ve had an e-mail from Qetesh.”
She stared at me wide-eyed. “They have e-mail?”
“No. I mean, yes, somehow. Apparently.”
“All right. And?”
“And I need to know how we’re going to get off planet! It’s been weeks. Have you had any luck yet?”
Tierney glanced over her shoulder and hooked her arm through mine, leading me away from the front door of the Mafaren living quarters. “Seriously, you are the pushiest human I have ever met in my entire life.”
“I honestly just think that you Mafarens are used to having everything go precisely your way at precisely your pace,” I countered, but she kept dragging me around the corner, down a main hall of the Atria.
“Look, I’ve already secured our passage. But I wasn’t going to say anything to you until 24 hours beforehand.”
“What?” I balked.
“It gives you all less time to make a slip that will ruin everything,” she hissed. “You know the saying, two people can keep a secret if one of them is dead.”
I blinked. “Intense, Mafaren.”
“Whatever. Just…hang tight, okay? It’s happening. I’ll give you more details in the days to come.”
I didn’t mention anything to my parents about my encounter with Tierney when I saw them for dinner that night. I let them chat happily about what their new lives on Qetesh would be like. What were the houses like? They wanted to know. What about the market? The villagers, were they nice? What about the food? Did they have wine on Qetesh? And what was the government like?
I answered all of their questions to the best of my ability, pushing my food absently around on my plate. My mother made roast ham, but the last few days had put me off my appetite. Something about the doctor mentioning my baby in the same sentence as the words “specimen” and “funders” made me feel ill, right alongside the anticipation of Tierney getting us passage off of the Atria entirely.
I wanted to tell them about it all, have them assuage my fears, but Tierney had a point: It was safer for all of us if I kept everything under wraps.
That night that I received a call from Tierney indicating that my parents and I should meet her in the hangar bay at 0200 hours. “With minimal luggage,” she amended via the video chat, “and, er, an…open mind.” The video cut out before I had an opportunity to ask her what she meant by that.
But we did as she asked. I dressed myself in jeans, a tee shirt, a black leather jacket and combat boots — my preferred uniform before I’d become a slave, a runaway, and a queen. I packed a few prized possessions as well, and a change of clothes in a duffel bag. My parents packed considerably more, and I forced them to downsize before the three of us headed off to the hangar bay, each of us carrying only one bag.
Though my heart raced in my chest, no one stopped us, no one asked us where we were going in the middle of the night. No one bothered us because no one cared, and no one had any reason to assume we were doing anything we should not be doing.
We reached the hangar bay without incident, and I spied Tierney some fifty meters off and walked directly toward her. In all of my excitement, in the rush of packing, in all of my day dreaming, I never bothered to consider that I might not like how she got us off the Atria. But when I saw Garrick Thassian, leader of the Quarter Moon Slavers, standing next to her, all of the blood drained out of me and I nearly toppled over.
“Lorelei,” she said, her tone full of warning, her hand held out in front of her as she approached me, “don’t say anything yet. Let me explain.”
“Explain?” I echoed, breathless. My parents came up behind me, and I felt somewhat sturdier knowing they were there.
“What’s the matter, Lore?” my mother asked, even as my father placed his hand lightly on the small of my back, almost to help keep me steady.
“It seems,” I managed to eek out through clenched teeth, “that Ms. Mafaren has enlisted the assistance of the enemy in order to get us back to Qetesh.”
“Enemy?” Garrick Thassian said, grinning wryly from behind his mandibles. He must have been the ugliest creature in existence. “We are not enemies, surely. Not when there has been such magnificent cooperation between us, on both sides.”
“What an absurd notion,” I shot back. “You kidnapped us. You set this whole awful saga in motion, you disgusting—”
“Lorelei.”
“—repulsive—”
“Lorelei!”
“—overgrown insect!”
“Lorelei!” Tierney grabbed me, begging me to stop. “You have to stop! He’s agreed to help us. He’s the only one that has. He’s it, all right?” She turned me bodily so I was forced to face her. “He’s it. If you want to get to Qetesh, this is it. This is our chance.”
“I don’t understand, Tierney,” I said, casting a glance to my father, who stared Thassian down like he’d like to murder him with his bare hands. “Why did you call him, Tierney? Why him?”
“Because it dawned on me,” she said, “that he was the only man maybe in the entire galaxy who could actually get me back to Ho’ruan.” I blinked as she spoke the unfamiliar word. It was a name, I knew immediately, by how gentle she was with it in her mouth. The name of the man she loved. “And he agreed to help me. Apparently Ho’ruan has agreed to pay my sum a second time if it means getting me back. So, you see? He does love me, Lorelei. He does.”
“And I have kept my word to you in the past, have I not, Lorelei?” Garrick Thassian interjected, his hands out to the sides, that stupid smug grin on his stupid smug face.
“My name,” I said, “is Lorelei Fev’Rosk nee Vauss, Qulari Queen of Qetesh. You shall not address me so informally, sir.” At this, Thassian grew cold, but he dipped his torso into a half-bow all the same.
“Come, then. The hour is late, and we’ve a pretty distance to close between ourselves and the planet in question.” He glanced between us, and heaved a sigh. “Have it your way. Make your decisions, Ms. Mafaren. I’ll be on the transport vessel.” And with that, he turned on his heel and headed toward the back of the hangar bay where his ship waited to take us off the Atria.
I looked back at my mother and father, who looked precisely as uncertain as I felt, and I knew everyone was waiting for me to make some sort of decision.
“Please,” Tierney said, “this is the best way. For all of us.”
I rubbed my eyes with the heel of my hands and gave a sharp nod of my head. “Fine,” I said at last. “Fine. We go.” And I picked up my bag and marched off in the direction Thassian headed, with my parents and Tierney left to march behind me.
Garrick Thassian waited for me by the
gangway leading to his ship, a small shuttle large enough to carry maybe six or eight passengers. It was considerably smaller than the transport vessel Teldara had taken me out on the last time I left the Atria. It was red, like the Quarter Moon uniform Thassian himself sported, with a shining, chrome crescent symbol on the side. I slowed my pace as I neared him, and I must have been scowling because he was wearing his brightest, mandibled smile.
“Your Highness,” he said, sibilant and snarky, “I am so pleased to be of service.”
“Save it, Thassian,” I shot back. “I want you to take the fastest, most direct route back to Qetesh. Are we understood?”
“Your wish is my command.” Tierney and my parents walked up into the belly of the shuttle, and Thassian held his hand out, indicating that I should join them. But when I didn’t move, I could see a flash of irritation across his green and yellow eyes. “You, Your Majesty, are far more trouble than you’re worth. I’ve no intention of absconding with you and your…” He sized up my parents. “…aging familial units. I am here for Ms. Mafaren, who will fetch such a sum the likes of which my organization has not seen before. And part of her deal was that you reach your destination unharmed.”
“How do we know you’ll keep your word?”
“She has insisted that her buyer will be meeting us on Qetesh itself. So, there you have it. Nothing to worry about.”
I eyed him dubiously, and watched with disgust as he extended his hand to me. I could do nothing but give it a limp shake and climb aboard the shuttle that would take me back to Calder.
“Wait! Wait for me!” a voice half-yelled from behind us. I turned to look and saw Sara running down the gangway, a small bag in her hands. “I’m coming!”
“Sara? What are you doing?” I asked, but I already knew. I smiled at her, but I was torn between joy for her happiness with Waelden and fear that another person’s blood would be on my hands if Thassian betrayed us again.
***
I didn’t ask questions. I didn’t ask Tierney how she got a Quarter Moon shuttle clearance to dock on the Atria, or how she was able to get us off again without calling any attention to ourselves. I just didn’t ask.
But when we were safely off the Atria and en route to Qetesh, my parents had some questions of their own.
We sat in the passenger bay, a spacious and comfortable seating area. We sat in two pairs of chairs facing one another, Tierney to my right, my mom across from me, and my father across from her. We sat knee to knee, huddled together so that we could talk in low tones.
“These were the…the men?” my mother asked, using the word ‘men’ very lightly. “The men that took you?”
I sighed through flared nostrils and nodded my head. My father furrowed his thick brows. “I just don’t understand it. Why would you call them?”
“Because they only care about one thing,” I said, trying to defend Tierney, who sat with her arms wrapped around her torso, not looking at anyone. “Money. And right now, Ms. Mafaren here is worth a pretty penny.”
“To whom?” my mother wanted to know. But I didn’t really know. All I could do was shake my head, and cast a hopeful glance to Tierney that she would provide some of the answers they were seeking.
“Ho’ruan,” she said quietly.
“Ho’ruan,” my father repeated. “What, ah. What does that mean?”
“Ho’ruan is a name,” Tierney went on. “Ho’ruan is the name of the man I love. I happened to…” She swallowed hard, and cleared her throat. “I know that I was abducted. Or I know that’s how it looked.”
“How it looked?” I demanded.
“I’m sorry, Lorelei,” she whispered. “I didn’t know you were going to be on that transport vessel, and I didn’t know they were going to take anyone else. And when we were all captured together I thought…well, if they did get away, I needed it to look like I had been abducted by chance along with everyone else. But think about it: why would I, a Mafaren, be traveling on a transport vessel?”
That was an excellent question that had simply not occurred to me before. She had all the money in the galaxy, and yet there she was, a stowaway like me, headed for Earth. Why? Why hadn’t she flown first class on a passenger shuttle, in style, in the manner to which she was accustomed?
“I think you owe us a bit of an explanation, Ms. Mafaren,” my father said, and my look echoed his insistence. Tierney nodded. She picked at her nail beds, not looking at any of us.
“I am not what my mother hoped I would be. She wanted me to participate in the family business, as it were, but I have no proficiency in business or public relations. So, she thought she’d…treat me like we lived in medieval Europe, and set up an arranged marriage, basically, between me and— gods, who even knows. All I knew is that I wanted to live my life as I chose.” She ventured a glance up at me then, and I found that I was more empathetic to her than I even expected.
“Anyway, I had been on this…site.” She looked up at us then, and I saw how pink her cheeks had become. “I met someone. He was far away. So very far, and I knew that I could never get to him through the normal channels. And he couldn’t exactly just come get me, either.”
“Why?” I found myself asking. “Why not?”
She gave a shake of her head. “It’s difficult to explain. But my mother got wind that something was going on between us and she had everyone in the galaxy tracking him. Honestly, it was absurd. But you’ve seen firsthand what she can be like.”
“I’m sure she only had your best interest at heart,” my mother gently offered.
“No,” Tierney insisted. “She had the best interest of the Echelon at heart, sure. And by extension, most of the living creatures in the universe. But not me, not specifically. So, Ho’ruan and I came up with a plan to be together. He worked out a fee with the Quarter Moon, and they took us all. So you see,” she said, turning to me, “I was never really brainwashed. This really is a man I love. It’s just how we came together, I know I should have told you sooner. But I was ashamed.” She glanced at me, then, contrite. “I’m sorry. You were collateral damage.”
I nodded slowly, and I tried to find it in me to be angry. But I wasn’t. I understood completely. My parents’ faces concealed what I imagined must have been a litany of mixed emotions, but they hid any contempt they might have felt for putting me into this situation in the first place.
But she hadn’t really, had she? I asked Tel to put me on the transport vessel. I got myself into this mess. Tierney got herself into her own mess, but I was responsible for mine. I reached out, and took her hand, giving it a squeeze. She looked up at me, startled, her eyes watery. And she smiled.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE: CALDER FEV’ROSK
“Did she write back yet?” I asked, pacing where I stood by the open door of Anesh’s rover. The sun had begun to set, and with it, the temperature dropped by degrees every passing moment.
But she had written to me, my Lorelei. She had written to me to tell me that she regretted leaving me and that she would come back. So Anesh would take me to the rover each day and we would read Lorelei’s message, and I would write one in response. Sometimes we would catch her where she would write back straight away. But today’s message had been different, somehow. Cryptic.
Dearest Calder,
We have enlisted the aid of unlikely compatriots as we move forward. You won’t have to wait long now.
Love always,
Lorelei
So I sent one off straight away:
Lore, does that mean I can expect your arrival? When?
But she had not responded. “Not yet, Your Highness,” Anesh said, and crossed her arms tightly in front of her. “But the day is drawing to its end. Perhaps we can go back inside now?”
I was about to protest, to ask her to wait a few more minutes, but then I saw how she trembled where she sat, and my expression softened. She was my friend, doing me this great favor. I would not have her suffer for it. “Yes,” I conceded
, “let us return to the Spire.”
We walked in companionable silence until we reached the dining hall, which was a bustle of activity. The village had gotten into the habit of gathering for the evening meal, the way they had when my mother ruled. It was a habit I encouraged, as it staved off the loneliness that often set in at the onset of the Winternight.
Anesh joined me at my table, and she poured me a cup of Panyan liquor, which I sipped in as tempered a manner as I could muster. My soul did not feel rested; there was an anxiety that accompanied the unknown. When would Lorelei return to me? And how might I help her? I felt useless, impotent, unable to participate in the reunion of my family.
Never before had I given our relative disadvantages a second thought. I knew that our ancestors had come from a place of much more technological advancement, and that the relocation efforts had necessitated a bit of a setback. And many of the Qulari priests who had trained me in the spiritual world of my people claimed that it had allowed us to get back to the gods, now that we were not so distracted by the glitter of science.
But now, my mind was a roiling sea, and it was impossible for me to catch one thought before being overtaken by the wave of another.
“Your Highness seems ill at ease tonight,” Anseh remarked as the meal drew to a close. The dining hall smelled of snuffed candles and roasted meat, and the members of my tribe were heading for home before it got too cold. “Would you care to unburden yourself?”
I pursed my lips and looked up at her. She wore an expectant expression, and I felt so grateful for her newfound friendship. Even still, I was not certain I could put what I was feeling into words. “I was a priest before I was a king,” I said instead. “Did you know that?”
“Yes, sire,” she said. “I was informed of that prior to my arrival here. It was one of the things that drew me to you.”
I leaned forward with my arms on the table. “Is that so?”
“Yes,” she confirmed. “Prior to my coming to Qetesh at all, I was interested in Qeteshi religions. They are beautiful, your pantheon. With some of the most dynamic stories in the history of the universe.”
Alien Prince: (Bride of Qetesh) An Alien SciFi Romance Page 20