“How’s he doing?” Tessa ducked through the hatch. Kahn fought with his back to a wall. Two men closed on him from opposite sides, one from above.
For the moment, Tessa had the edge of surprise. She fired, killing one Endekian with the weapon. Kahn kicked his null-grav into super-fast mode, and he and Jypeg slashed, bounced, zoomed, attacked, and counterattacked at a pace so ferocious it stole her breath. However, that didn’t stop her from engaging the other Endekian.
With Kahn zipping around the shuttle after Jypeg like a ricocheting bullet, she focused on the second Endekian, who’d rolled behind the console to take cover. Tessa kept him pinned, firing to prevent him from helping Jypeg.
“Behind you,” Dora warned.
Tessa spun, took down an Endekian who’d entered through the hatch. But that gave the man who’d hidden just enough time to launch himself into her back. Slamming into the bulkhead, she dropped her weapon. Although her shields had been up, her arm went numb. Her head snapped back and for a moment she couldn’t see.
“Duck,” Dora warned.
Slow to shift, Tessa took a second blow to the shoulder. But her vision began to return. The Endekian must have sensed her injury and closed in for the kill. She remained deliberately clumsy, letting him come to her. And when the Endekian lunged at her, he slid right onto her blade.
OUT OF HIS peripheral vision, Kahn saw Tessa and the Endekian go down, but he couldn’t help her with Jypeg keeping him engaged. Concerned for her safety, yet confident she could protect herself, he’d allowed her to join him in battle, a decision that had been necessary to their survival. As Jypeg drop kicked at Kahn’s throat, Kahn shifted and blocked out concern for his wife. Her strong psi told him that she still lived.
And he wanted Jypeg’s attention on him. Finally, Kahn faced his enemy, the man who’d killed Lael. The man who’d tried to murder Tessa. The man who’d invaded Rystan and was responsible for much of his people’s suffering.
Tessa shoved the dead body of Jypeg’s man away and straightened.
“Take cover,” he ordered, and she dived behind a hatch and out of sight, leaving him alone to focus all his attention on Jypeg.
“Your woman can’t run so far that I won’t find her.” Jypeg somersaulted off the wall and shot a fist at Kahn’s kidney.
Kahn shifted and with a spinning back kick caught Jypeg’s shoulder with a glancing blow that sent him reeling. “She won’t have to hide after the Federation locks you away.”
“Locks me away?” Jypeg shouted, “Not in your luckiest fantasy. Your ship will be crushed. Your wife raped, then slaughtered. I look forward to hearing her screams in my ears, her begging for her life.” Jypeg taunted, feinted, then struck with an elbow that just missed Kahn’s sternum.
Refusing to let the Endekian’s taunts faze him, Kahn noted that the man appeared to be sweating too much, breathing too hard. But was it a trick?
Kahn tested him with a right punch followed by a fake downward with his left fist, then from above, he planted a two-footed kick into his foe’s stomach that knocked Jypeg into an out-of-control roll. Kahn didn’t wait for the man to strike the ground before following through with a killing blow to the heart.
Tessa peeked around the corner, her eyes narrowed, a stunner steady in her hand. “I was afraid to shoot for fear of striking you.” Her gaze centered on Jypeg. “Is he dead?”
Kahn checked the body and nodded. “I would have preferred for him to stand trial to publicize to the rest of the Federation that the Endekians want Rystan.”
“I’m glad the son of a bitch is dead.” Tessa finally lowered the gun she’d kept steady on Jypeg. Kahn had never seen her look more beautiful. With her eyes serious, her mouth compressed, and her pulse beating at her slender throat, her femininity had never seemed more in contrast with her cool green eyes.
Kahn opened his arms to embrace her. “You okay?”
She grinned and embraced him. “I am now.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
KAHN CLOSED his arms around her, kissed her until she was breathless. Since the Challenge had begun, Tessa had tried to focus on the current problem at hand. But with his powerful arms around her, with the fresh taste of him on her mouth, with the familiar musky scent of him rousing emotions of how much he meant to her, she didn’t want to ever let go.
She should thank him for coming to her rescue, but she couldn’t summon the words past a throat choked with love. When Kahn broke their embrace and stepped back, she wanted to cling because she sensed what was coming. She hadn’t completed the Challenge. She still had tasks to finish.
Kahn held her shoulders as if he didn’t want to release her, either. “You must go on as if I’m not here. Dora will send the shuttle for me as soon as repairs are completed, and I will return to the ship. Since the Endekians were not supposed to interfere, I’m hoping the Federation Council won’t nullify your Challenge. But the less time we spend together, the better our chances of their seeing our side.”
“I understand.” She turned away and fled from the shuttle before he could see the tears brimming in her eyes. Stumbling to the beach, she chastised herself. They’d defeated the Endekians. She would complete the Challenge. Everything was fine.
Yest, she missed Kahn with a dreadful tearing inside that left her battered and bruised. Knowing she was reacting like an emotional yoyo didn’t mean she could stop the aching. All her life, she’d been alone, but now that she’d found someone to love, being alone again was much more difficult. She had so much to lose.
But as Helera was so fond of saying, she could do hard things. After a few sniffles of self-pity, Tessa pulled herself together. Emotionally and physically exhausted, she decided that despite the bright light of day, she needed sleep. She found a spot in the sand on the beach above the high-tide mark and slept, awakening once to note the darkness but not rising until the day had arrived once more.
Her last day. She would finish the Challenge today or not at all.
Walking down the beach and searching for another boat, she practically stumbled over the flitter she’d wished for earlier. Without hesitation, she climbed into the flyer, which had a simple stick control similar to the one on the shuttle. As she lifted into the sky, her hopes soared. The sooner she finished her task, the sooner she could be reunited with Kahn.
She flew straight to the golden obelisk and circled from the air. The golden monument extended from a two-hundred foot high base, a pyramid of colored bendar. With no place flat to land the flitter upon the steep pyramid, she had to set down in a nearby clearing, next to the pyramid’s only entrance, an archway through the bendar.
All she needed to do was find the second key, walk through the archway, and open the doors to win the Challenge.
But when Tessa arrived at the archway, it was no longer an open passageway. Zar blocked the entrance with his enormous body, his tentacles waving. When he’d given her a ride between islands, she had only guessed at his enormous girth. Now, with his entire body out of the water, she estimated he was as long as four school buses.
Tessa pretended to ignore the fact that he’d told her that the next time they’d meet, one of them would die. “Hello, Zar.”
“Greetings, Earthling. You have done well to come this far.”
“Thank you. Looks like I could use your help again. Can you lift me over your body so that I may enter the archway?”
“I’m sorry. I’m not permitted to help you, again.”
“Would you object if I gently climbed over you?”
“No. However, my tentacles will not allow you to pass.”
“Okay.” She should have known getting past Zar wouldn’t be that easy. She had less than a day left to figure out how to pass by him and find the second key. Perhaps Zar would weary of his spot in front of the entrance. A big guy like him had to feed frequently. “Zar, how often do you eat?”
“My body doesn’t require sustenance during the Challenge. I do not sleep either. Your only way through is to kil
l me.” He spoke matter of factly, as if his death meant nothing to him.
“I don’t kill creatures who aren’t hostile. And you helped me.” She sat in the shade, thinking. “Can you tell me where to find the second key?”
Zar didn’t answer.
This time he was no help to her, but a hindrance. No way could she budge Zar’s enormous girth. She had to convince him to move.
The first hour, she tried bribery. But Zar didn’t want anything she offered. Not food or wealth or companionship.
In the second hour, she hiked around the pyramid, searching for another entrance and the missing key. She found nothing helpful.
During the third hour, she began digging a tunnel under Zar, but his weight collapsed the sand.
In the fourth hour, she tried to collect enough driftwood to build a bridge over him, but she ran out of materials.
In the fifth hour, she stopped her attempts to get past Zar to search for food, hoping a meal would revive her and help her thinking process. She zapped several fish with her stunner then cooked them. With only Zar for company, they’d formed an odd friendship, had several long conversations, but nothing she said convinced him to budge. And she wondered if she had to first get past Zar to find the missing key.
In the sixth hour, she tried begging.
Hour seven she reserved for insults.
In the eighth hour she ignored him. Perhaps she had to find a new way to use her psi. The bendar walls were too high for her to use null-grav. She couldn’t manage enough height to clear Zar’s double-decker high body.
In the ninth hour, Zar insisted, “If you wish to win the Challenge, you must kill me. I am prepared to die. One lethal zing of the stunner to my brain will cause no pain.”
“Don’t make me do this.” Tessa yanked the stunner from her suit, pointed it at Zar. “Why don’t you just go back into the sea?”
He didn’t move.
And she couldn’t bring herself to pull the trigger.
HIS HEART JAMMING up his throat, Kahn watched the drama between his wife and Zar. She didn’t have much more time to make a decision. While he admired her stubbornness and her ingenuity, Tessa didn’t like to fail. All of this stalling made the decision so much harder for her.
“Calm yourself, Kahn,” Osari slithered beside him. “Have faith in her character.”
“No one should be asked to make such a dreadful decision.” Kahn seethed, paced, his gaze never leaving the screen.
“Your father made the right choice, and so will she.”
Kahn didn’t want to think about Corban. Seeing him with Azrel rubbed him wrong. Although the love between them shined through their every glance and touch, Corban’s subservience to Azrel’s wishes irritated him.
He needed a distraction. At least the Federation Council had agreed to let the Challenge continue. The Endekians’ interruption would be dealt with through diplomatic channels. So if Tessa made the right choice, they could return to Rystan and help his people oust the Endekians. And Tessa would win the trading status for Earth.
Or she would choose wrong and die, be lost to him forever. His stomach rolled with nausea. He didn’t know the correct answer to the puzzle. Even if he’d wanted to help her, he couldn’t. And if he had to change places with her right now, he didn’t know what he’d do.
One burst of the stunner would kill Zar and allow her to complete the Challenge. Could the life of one creature be more important than millions of Terrans and Rystani whose lives would be enhanced by Federation membership?
Heart aching, head throbbing, Kahn stared at the screen.
THE TENTH HOUR arrived like all the others. Hot, sunny, a gentle breeze that mocked Tessa’s bad mood. Zar blocked the entrance like a beached whale. “You must either kill or be killed.”
“By whom?” she asked.
“Those are the rules.”
Exceedingly tired of games and rules, quests and challenges and puzzles that couldn’t be solved to her satisfaction, Tessa jerked the stunner from her side and stomped it into the sand and then kicked more sand over it. There was no point in shooting Zar when she had yet to find the second key. “I’m not killing you.”
“Temper tantrums will not get you what you want.” Zar’s placid tone pricked her already spiraling bad humor.
She bent down, dug through the sand and retrieved the stunner. “I kill only in self defense or to protect others. But damn it to hell, I will not kill an innocent being to win this Challenge.” Tessa ran toward the ocean and flung the stunner.
Spinning end over end, the weapon splashed into the sea where it could stay for the rest of eternity.
Tessa could accept failure. She could even accept death. If the Perceptive Ones had left machinery behind to kill her or if that was Zar’s task, she was ready.
“Do it.” She shouted at Zar. “Kill me now and be done.”
Nothing happened. Zar didn’t so much as blink. The sea didn’t rise up to swallow her. The sky didn’t shoot a lightning bolt at her. The sun beamed down, and the waves lapped at her feet.
She turned around to yell at Zar, but he had disappeared. In his place was the second key.
He’d given her a clue, but she hadn’t figured it out until now. Finding the second key had been a decision she’d made with her heart.
Joyful, humbled how long it had taken her to make the right decision, Tessa picked up the key, walked through the bendar archway, unlocked a double set of doors. She stepped inside a tiny room that reminded her of an elevator. The moment she entered, chimes rang and a hologram of the Perceptive Ones greeted her with psi warmth and smiles. “Congratulations. You have passed the initial stage of the Challenge. Enjoy the fullness of your life, knowing that you have succeeded.”
That was it?
After all the buildup, she’d expected fireworks, a marching band, a parade. Feeling silly and happy, she left the tiny room which must have been soundproofed. She’d never heard the boom of the shuttle, but when she exited the archway, Kahn was there. He swept her into his arms with a proud smile, and she realized that she didn’t need the parade or the fireworks or the marching band. She had everything she’d ever wanted. She had Kahn.
DURING A celebration feast on the starship, during which many toasts had been raised to one another over the dining table, Tessa was feeling especially mellow. She’d come to care for Shaloma and Miri as sisters she’d never had. Etru, Zical, Mogan, and Nasser accepted Tessa as Kahn’s wife. The Osarian was the best of friends, and their partnership would be one that lasted a lifetime. And Tessa couldn’t wait to see Kirek grow up—with his psi potential, he was headed for great things.
During the Challenge, Helera and Azrel had become friends, and Kahn had mellowed just a little toward his father’s marriage. All in all, she had no complaints, except that she really wanted some alone time with Kahn.
“Tessa.” Kahn lounged beside her, his hand on her shoulder. Ever since she’d returned, he couldn’t seem to stop touching her or grinning.
“Yes?” She exchanged a long, heated look that she hoped would tell him how much she wanted him.
“Tell us about this bet you made.”
Uh-oh. She looked at Osari. He might not have been able to see her glance due to his blindness, but since he and Dora had been the only ones aware of her wager, one of them must have spilled the news.
Osari spoke up as if on cue. “When the Endekians attacked, Kahn wanted to know their motivation. I felt it necessary to share a few details. If I have revealed information that I should not have done, I apologize.”
“There’s no need to apologize. My wager put all of you in danger and for that I am sorry.”
“What wager?” Shaloma asked.
“At four hundred to one against me, I couldn’t resist the odds,” Tessa admitted.
“How many credits did you bet?” Kahn asked, the grin never leaving his face.
She sensed his approval and couldn’t wait to get him alone. “One million.”
; “Stars!” Kahn rolled his eyes at the ceiling. “Woman, are you telling me that you’ve won four hundred million credits?”
“Yeah.”
“We’re rich!” Shaloma laughed.
“We can buy a fleet of spaceships to defend Rystan,” Kahn added.
“Uh . . . Um . . .” Tessa bit her lip and the room grew tense and silent. “We aren’t exactly rich.”
Kahn frowned. “What do you mean?”
“I instructed Osari and Dora that if I won they should spend the credits.”
Kahn’s lower jaw dropped. “You and Dora and Osari . . . spent . . . four hundred million . . . credits?”
“Yeah. At the time it seemed like a good idea, there was a bargain—”
“What did you buy?” Kahn approached her and took her hand, squeezing it gently.
“And if I didn’t make a bid—”
“What did you buy?”
“We would lose out.”
“Stars, woman. What did you spend four hundred million credits on?”
“A nice warm planet. With a great location—not too far from Osari’s world. Much like Earth before we polluted it. The planet has four blue oceans and snow near the poles. It’s rich in metals and natural fuels. I thought we could all go there and make up laws that pleased us.” Tessa took a deep breath.
“You bought a planet?” Kahn sputtered.
“Yeah. One where we don’t have to follow any laws except those of our making. Azrel and Corban can live the life they choose. And so can we. No one there will shun Osari or his people. We can start from scratch and . . .”
Kahn sighed. “My wife bought a planet.”
Zical chuckled. “Apparently, she’s quite the bargain hunter.”
“What about our people on Rystan?” Etru asked.
“Those who wish to join us will be offered transportation, but they’ll have to accept new ways. And those who want to stay behind will be free to do so,” Tessa replied.
Helera spoke up. “I can’t imagine anyone will want to stay on Rystan.”
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