“What is it? What troubles you?”
She circled the idea like a vulture, afraid it would move if she settled in too fast.
“I can’t figure him out, I can’t predict what he’ll do and plan for it.” Her words were as careful as her thoughts.
“Perhaps it is because your cultures are so different.”
Doc frowned. “But our people contaminated their culture. There are things we do have in common, things we should have in common.”
Hel looked thoughtful, but what he thought was not clear on his face. “You believe they should be…less alien than they are?”
Doc half-smiled. “Sounds a bit whacky when you put it like that but yes. Even taking into account the lack of contact as both our societies developed and evolved, I’d have expected more points of contact than we have.”
“This troubles you.”
“Because it feels wrong. It feels like I’m missing something.” She met his gaze, felt her concentration fracture and reform into something different. She smiled at him. She could because she’d taken them off the video feed again. She did it because she needed to smile at him. It was more fun than the endless circling of her thoughts. “I hate missing things.”
She’d missed him. It hadn’t been two days since she passed out on his ship and it felt like forever.
A smile formed on his mouth as he processed the shift in her focus and followed her into the subject change. “As do I.” He smoothed a strand of hair off her face, tucking it behind her ear. “I expected to miss you, but—” He finished with a rueful shrug.
Doc matched his rueful and raised it a grin. “I know. It’s crazy. It’s hopeless.”
“Yes.” The word suggested agreement, but the tone, the look in his eyes didn’t.
She wanted him to kiss her again, but she didn’t know how to make that happen. And then she didn’t have to do anything. Hel did it. He stepped in, bringing them together. The cool press of the wall at her back reminded her of the kiss on his ship and her blood heated in anticipation. The sense of the peeps watching was a bit unsettling, but she forgot about them the minute Hel’s mouth settled onto hers. She sank into the kiss, sank into sensation without a whimper. This was what she needed. This was what she wanted. She wanted him, not just for this moment but for always.
She’d only wanted one other thing in her life and she hadn’t got that one either.
* * * * *
Doc requested a medic to assist because she wanted to be able to work fast. Conan was a primitive man to his toenails, but she would not make the mistake of underestimating him. Everywhere they went, primitive man had managed to survive and thrive. Primitive didn’t mean stupid. When the Hel-induced fog faded she realized she needed to be unexpected, too. When did she forget that? He might think he had her figured out. She needed to show him he never would. She did a mental flip through her various personas. Which one would he hate? She stopped at one. Considered it. She didn’t do it that often, it was a bit too close to who she was, but in this case, that might be a good thing. She was so wrong for him.
“What?” Hel’s voice broke into her thoughts.
Doc realized she was smiling and it wasn’t a nice one. She made it nice for Hel. “I need to change. Tell the General I’ll hurry.” He looked uneasy—which made her feel more right about her decision—but let her go, left with the medic.
Doc didn’t have a lot of wardrobe options, but she could work with what she had on hand. She always did. She stripped down to her military drawers and pulled out the borrowed scrubs. Not as severe as she’d have liked, but they’d work. He’d seen soldier, might be expecting that. She used water to plaster her hair back off her face and found her computer glasses. A little makeup on her mouth took the pink out of her lips. She didn’t have time for contacts, but the peeps popped in to dim the intensity of her eye color. She let her inner geek seep out, added a stethoscope around her neck to complete the bland ensemble.
She booked it double time to the secondary landing bay, flashing her ID to the men flanking the door. She took it as a good sign that they both winced at the sight of her. She removed all signs of girl from her walk as she entered. Her peeps extended her view in interesting ways, allowing her to see and assess her impact on everyone waiting inside the shuttle bay. As impacts went, the ratio of output to reaction was well within the satisfactory range.
Predictably, Briggs looked amused without indulging in a lot of muscle play on his face.
The General blinked. For him that was like a dead faint.
Hel, well, he was himself. Inscrutable on the surface, but she felt his amusement as if they had a personal Internet connection.
It took Conan a few seconds to recognize her, to ping on her like radar on a target. He surged to his feet, his injured hand cradled against his chest. As amazing as it seemed, he had come here for her. His body language screamed it, and just in case she didn’t get the memo, his eyes telegraphed it. Her hackles rose and her peeps went on full alert, but none of it showed on the outside as she minced in his general direction, no sign of recognition on her face.
Conan scrubbed up pretty well, though he still favored leather in his ensemble. He’d done everything but shave. The guy could have walked into any bar on Earth and gone home with a threesome. Maybe they ought to offer him a free subscription to match.com. Give his email to Russia or the Philippines.
The next thing she noticed, he’d lost that simmering frustration that had ruled on Feldstar. This man knew his next step, knew his purpose and felt ready to embrace it.
She’d have to do something about that.
She paused by Briggs.
“Doc.”
It didn’t surprise her he didn’t ask her what the hell she was doing. He didn’t blink when she gave him a prim smile. He might have winced. The General saved her having to approach him.
“Doctor.” The tone had a question buried in it.
“General.” His lips twitched, but from humor or ire, Doc couldn’t tell. “My patient?”
She saw him decide to trust her. It felt good. He stepped back, gesturing toward Conan. Doc directed her attention to the male medic waiting by a medical setup. He winced, too, though he was too nice to look openly horrified at her androgynous geek from hell ensemble. Conan didn’t frown. Didn’t move. Just watched her approach from under hooded lids.
“What seems to be the problem, corporal?” Her tone was devoid of inflection of any kind. She held out her hand for gloves and got them. She used the explanation time to yank them on, her body language oozing dull and brisk.
She added safety glasses and then moved in for a look at the laceration. Even as her attention shifted to Conan’s injury, she could see their tableau through the security cameras in the bay. The General had kept security to a minimum. Both Hel and Briggs were armed and at full alert. She looked a bit like a dumpy blob standing in front of Conan, thanks to some slight padding around the waist. She could have done it without the padding. People saw what you wanted them to most of the time. She held out her gloved hand for his injured one. Her silence did not appear to bother him. She knew he studied her with an intensity that might have been unnerving to someone not locked in stolid. Doc lifted the temporary bandage applied by the medic and eased his fingers back so she could see the injury better.
She did her doctor thing and he acceded to each question without comment. “You’re lucky. No tendon damage.” She looked at the medic, giving him a cow blink before saying, “You’re right, corporal, he needs stitches.”
He had the equipment already set up. Doc lowered Conan’s hand to the tray with its sterile field at ready. She did the job with the fussy precision of an old man. When they finished, Doc squeezed out a “thank you” for her assistant as she stripped off the gloves and tossed them on the tray. He seemed relieved to step back. He gathered up the medical debris and rolled it and himself out of the bay with an eagerness he couldn’t conceal. Doc waited until the doors hissed closed to turn bac
k to Conan. She pushed her stool back enough to put space between them. She planted her feet wide, resting her hands on her knees, careful to make her pose unfeminine. When she looked at him, her expression was more neutral than Switzerland. Channeling her dullest professor, she lifted both brows in a mute question.
His mouth twitched at the edges, but in a smile or frustration, she couldn’t tell.
“You look well.”
She didn’t know how to take that. “Well” hadn’t been what she was going for.
“Plumbing and chocolate on tap. I’m blooming awesome.” The contrast of bored tone and the sassy words got a choke out of one of the men watching her.
His rueful smile was charming. “I have plumbing.” He gestured toward the ship at his back.
Doc took her time studying the ship. She redirected her gaze to Conan, and said, still in her flat, professor tone, “I believe I mentioned before that size does matter?” She paused, giving him a chance to mention his big ship. He didn’t, so she added, “As does the truth.”
He stiffened. “What have I told you that is not true?”
Doc arched her brows again. “That you didn’t have a ship.” Her gaze drifted past him to his ship. “Looks like a ship. Flies like a ship. You just called it a ship. That would make it…a ship.”
“It is true I did conceal certain information from you when we were on Feldstar. I had no reason to trust you.”
“You still shouldn’t. Not after shooting me, kidnapping me and taking away my plumbing for four long days. And nights.”
He gave a look that bordered on frustrated. “You are very attached to plumbing.”
Having to sit to pee made most women that way. “So?”
“There are other things that are important.”
“True, but decent plumbing makes everything important better.” While it was fun to torment him, the plumbing causality loop wasn’t getting them where they needed to go. She shifted gears without losing her flat tones. “You went to a lot of trouble to talk to me.”
His gaze narrowed. “It was no trouble.”
“If you’d gone any deeper, you’d have lost the use of your fingers.”
He tried to look puzzled. Didn’t do it very well.
“When you cut your hand. On purpose.” He opened his mouth, possibly to deny it, so she arched her brows. “Please don’t insult my intelligence by pretending that was an accident.” She smiled the prim nasty smile. “You’re lucky I didn’t order some tests into places you didn’t know you had.”
His eyes widened. His lids hooded his gaze. His sigh was pointed. “Is your General the leader of your people?”
“He is the leader of our people here.”
“I wish to negotiate with him.”
So what? Time to sweep the woman aside and let the real men talk? He wasn’t even good at making third contact with her. Or was this fourth? She didn’t know whether to count the near Dorothy moment as contact or not.
“I’ll get him for you.”
His nod didn’t border on arrogant. It owned arrogant.
She did boring walk to the General, felt Conan’s gaze hooked into her ass every step it took to get there, the way it had been on Feldstar. She hadn’t like it then, didn’t like it now. She paused by the three men, made sure her voice was pitched low and asked, “Can I kick his ass, sir?”
“What did he do?”
“Everything he could to annoy me.” She took a deep breath. It wasn’t that calming with Conan still in sniffing distance. “He wants to talk to you.”
* * * * *
Vidor watched her walk away, saw her stop by her General, knew they watched him as she spoke. Was her General wise? He was a soldier. It was there in his bearing, in the authority he wore as easily as his uniform.
She respected him. That was clear. Her relationship to the other two men was less clear, though he sensed connections between them both. The big one, the older one was protective. The other soldier felt something, too. She had not looked at him, nor had he looked at her, but there was something about him that made antagonism prickle on the surface of his skin. Next to the three of them, she looked small, and absurdly fragile. He’d taken her captive, but these men had sent her out alone, had put her at risk of capture and still she gave them her loyalty. Perhaps it was a female weakness.
Her aspect, her clothes, everything about her irritated, which is what she’d planned. She tamped out all that was female, hoping to provoke him. He would not be provoked. She was strong. He knew this, but despite her strength, he’d been able to tag her. He could track her. She would not be able to leave this ship, except with him, and to a destination of his choice. He would not be able to go home, but she would not trouble his people.
It was a fair trade. They both lost something, gained something.
As predicted, their technology was more advanced than anything here. He did not desire to go to war with any of them. If he could accomplish his mission, he’d be happy to leave this galaxy behind. The past year had been long and tedious.
Her General approached now, with the two men flanking him, their demeanor protective. She did not come with them. Perhaps she did understand some things.
She can’t be forced.
Bana’s words echoed in his head. He must persuade her people that she must leave with him. It was the only solution. Her General’s gaze bored into Vidor in a way that reminded him of his father. It took effort to meet it.
Vidor recognized the power play. He crossed his arms, arched his brows in an unspoken request to be introduced to his companions.
Her General ignored it. “I understand you want to talk to me.”
Vidor nodded once.
“Then talk.”
“I want my wife.”
The stone face changed not at all. “Your wife?”
Vidor hesitated, then his gaze shifted to hers. “My wife. Delilah.” No one moved, but he felt tension in their stillness, an infusion of menace filtering into the air around him. “Oliver.” He paused. “Clementyne. Doctor Clementyne. Though she prefers to be called Doc.”
Despite the risk, it was a relief to name her.
Her General knew how to use silence. He waited many long moments before lifting a hand, crooking one finger. Delilah came, though in no great hurry.
“Are you married to this man, Doc?”
She let her bored gaze trail over him, from top to bottom. “No.”
Vidor ignored this byplay. “I have named her my wife. If you withhold her from me, I will destroy your ships.” He looked at her, hoping to catch her unaware. “The ship that carried you from Feldstar scanned my ship. You know I can do this.” He expected threats. He got silence. He answered as if they had threatened him. “My ship does not require a pilot to attack. If I do not return within the designated time, it will carry out my final orders.”
“You will die with us,” her General said, his voice almost indifferent.
“Everyone dies.”
Delilah’s brows arched. “Original.”
He ignored her. “In addition to my wife, I require two more of your females.”
“Two more females.” The tone was flat, the menace in the air spiked again.
“Young. Comely. Fertile.”
“Can I kick his ass now, sir?”
She had not moved and her tone was calm, not unlike the calm before the storm that had ripped Feldstar apart.
“I’m tempted to let you.”
“You can choose to save your people, or die with them.” He looked at her now, ignoring the others. He held the power position. Surely they could see this? “If you attempt to leave this ship, if you try to transport to the outpost, I will know it. My ship will also know it and attack.”
“I’ll bet there’s a deadline. He likes deadlines, sir.”
“Is there a deadline?” Her General sounded calm, looked calm, but he wasn’t calm. He couldn’t be calm.
“I will give you four hours to identify the females and contac
t me to arrange transport.”
“Hours.”
Delilah’s tone was odd, the look she exchanged with her General different as well. He sensed currents, but he had them cornered. They had no room to move. Their currents, how they felt did not matter. What they did, that was what mattered now.
“Why don’t you want me to go down to the outpost, Conan?”
Before this day finished, she would say his name.
Chapter Seventeen
Doc felt the three of them staring at her as they left the bay. She tried to ignore it, but it wasn’t easy. When she couldn’t stand it anymore, she turned and glared at them.
“What?”
“You started a war?” The General sounded more dazed than surprised.
“You’re taking his word? An alien from another galaxy? I do stealth. I am covert. There is no way I’d start a big, noisy war. If I went to his planet, which I also dispute.”
Briggs arched a brow. It was very Spock of him.
“Okay, if I went there—which I didn’t—I might—might—have given them a nudge if I thought it would help me.”
Hel blinked.
“I said I was sorry.” She put her hands on her hips. “Is it my fault he can’t forgive and forget?”
Hel frowned. “Why would someone exile Delilah to Keltinar?”
“I don’t know.” Halliwell turned his attention on Doc. “I thought Smith went to Keltinar. How the hell did you end up there?”
I didn’t, she wanted to say, even when the peeps weighed in on Conan’s side. Okay, so the evidence was compelling. “He did go to Keltinar.”
“You both went to Keltinar, but somehow failed to meet? Hell, maybe we’ve all been to Keltinar.” He rubbed the top of his head, but his hair wasn’t long enough hair to ruffle. “I feel like my head is going to explode!”
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