by H. E. Trent
“Courtney,” Trigrian warned.
“Turn. That. Off,” the man with the gun shouted.
Courtney shook her head slowly. “My sister turned hers off. That’s the best you’re going to get from me until you give me some fucking information. You’re messing with people who have the capacity to chase you, and who have ships with sensors far better than the ones your flyer has. Give them a few hours to catch up.”
“You really have no idea what you’re getting tangled in.”
“No, dude, you don’t. Why the hell were you on my farm?”
Growling, he canted his head toward Reg. “Following him.”
“Why?”
“Obviously, for the woman he was supposed to retrieve.”
“Okay, but why?”
“Do you understand what she is?”
“Probably better than you do, asshole.”
“I don’t think so, lady. You may think you know, but not like I do. My father sent me out looking for her right after he found out she hadn’t been exterminated.”
Ais pulled her limbs in close and tried to make herself very small.
Exterminated?
If that had been what the lab runners intended for her, she might have endured far worse than Reg did to her if she’d remained.
“Why?” Courtney asked through clenched teeth. “Tell me now before this fucking flyer leaves COM range of the farm. If my men aren’t certain I’m safe, they will follow you.”
“Men?”
“Obviously, English isn’t your first language, but yes. Plural.”
He furrowed his brow. “You have more than one? But you’re Terran.”
Courtney took a deep breath.
The guy with the gun edged slowly to the back of the flyer and sat carefully on the edge of the bunk near Ais.
He floated a hand horizontally across the surface toward her, but pulled it back when Court took a step closer to him with her gun extended.
“Can’t you see the resemblance?” he said. “I wouldn’t hurt her. I just wanted to take her home.”
Ais shook her head hard. “No. Not the lab. I won’t.”
“No,” he said softly. “Home to Earth. There’s a ship that can get us off this planet. That’s where we’re going. Father wants you on Earth.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
“That’s fucking it,” Owen said tightly, and then rubbed the bleary eyes he’d had open for too many of the past twenty-seven hours. “That has to be the place.”
They were approaching a dark station at the far reaches of the sector, the third of similar trade stations they’d visited during their scouting mission. Luke was pushing the experimental ship to its limits trying to get them to the most likely locations quickly before the handlers caught word that there were people looking for them.
“My gut agrees with you,” Precious said, leaning over the back of the navigator’s seat.
The chair was empty. Marco had been sitting there, but had finally thrown in the towel and staggered off to his bunk for rest.
Luke, in the captain’s seat, was still awake, but barely. He was rubbing his red eyes with a vigor most men reserved for body parts lower down. “Lot of traffic around here, huh?” he asked.
“Is the computer able to read the origins of any of the ships in the area?” Owen asked.
Luke grunted and hit a few lights on the panel. “Yep. This info is from the data that Lillian fed in. I don’t recognize most of these species names, and I have no idea what these aliens would even look like. I guess we’re all going to have a little shock when we step on the station.”
“We’ll be cool.”
“We need to scout,” Owen said. “Someone needs to go into the station and make some inquiries to verify what we’ve found. We need to look around.”
“I’d love to go,” Precious said, “but if they’re enslaving women, I’m probably just as likely to get snatched as a Jekhan woman.”
“They wouldn’t keep you long,” Luke muttered.
Precious sneered at him and rolled her eyes.
“We’re obviously not gonna send an undisguised McGarry in there, either,” Luke said. “All of them probably have face recognition software scanning non-stop for them. Comes down to me and Marco.”
“Heard my name,” Marco called groggily from the back.
“You wanna play secret agent?” Luke asked him.
“Yeah, sure. Whatever. When?”
Luke turned his wrist over and looked down at his COM, likely at the time. They’d synchronized time across the other ships. “Salehi said at last check-in that they and the The Tin Can were about six hours from us.”
“So what do we do until then?” Fastida shuffled in socked feet toward the back, rubbing sleep out of her eyes. “Fly in circles?”
Precious grunted. “Nah. Too suspicious. We need to either pull back and park in a dark alley, in a manner of speaking, or we need to go ahead and dock at the station. When we dock, though, we need to be ready to answer questions about why we’re not exiting the ship just yet.”
“Let’s not do that,” Owen said. “Go with Plan A. I don’t want anyone to get too good a look at this ship or to start asking questions about its origin. Pull us back, Luke.”
“All right. I saw the perfect little spot on the navigation map about fifteen minutes back.”
He got the ship moving. When the console light signaling an incoming message flashed, he turned his head toward the far right console.
“I’ll answer,” Precious said. She tapped the light. “Yo.”
“Precious?”
“Who’s this?”
“Trigrian,” Owen said. Immediately on edge, he squeezed between the two front seats and sat in front of the console. Trigrian wouldn’t have gotten in touch unless something had happened at the farm. Running the communications equipment took a lot of fuel that Trigrian rarely wanted to spare.
Barely just fucking left. Don’t tell me something happened to her already. If that woman went out exploring on her own again…
The transmission was breaking up, but the message was deep space band. It’d only gotten that far out because more of the most powerful satellites nearest to Jekh were back online.
“Trigrian!” Owen snapped. “What’s wrong?”
“They’re gone,” Trigrian said.
“What?”
“The women. There was a fight, or…an abduction. I don’t know what you want to call it, but they’re gone.”
Owen’s heart was about to beat through his sternum, and he scratched it, and forced a swallow down his constricting throat. “Who, Trigrian?” he ground out.
Maybe not her. Not Ais.
“Courtney, Erin, and Ais.”
Owen didn’t respond. He’d heard the names. He certainly recognized them, but more than that, he recognized the significance of the women who owned those names. One being abducted would have jarred him. Two would have rocked his world, but three?
Two plus Ais?
Precious squeezed his shoulder hard and said, “Tell us what happened. We can turn around and head back that way. We’re just waiting to dock at a station.”
Trigrian let out a long, ragged exhalation, and Owen imagined his brother-in-law tugging at one of those careful knots in his hair as he was prone to do when he was trying to be calm. “I don’t know if that’ll be necessary. What you’re doing is important.”
“My sisters are important,” Owen said, “and my…”
My what?
He didn’t know what Ais was to him besides someone he didn’t want to lose. Someone who made him feel like something close to human again after so long.
He didn’t know any word for that, except his, but he couldn’t speak the claim on her. His throat had apparently closed.
“I last spoke with Courtney ten minutes ago,” Trigrian said. “She’s safe, as is Erin, but Ais was shot.”
“Shot?” Owen shouted hoarsely. “By who?”
“Reg Devin.”
/>
“Are you fucking kidding me? How the hell did he find her? And is anyone trailing him right now?”
“He’s not the one who took them. A man named Alex Hauge took them.”
“Hauge?” Owen knew that name, Hauge. There was Hauge money tangled up in all kinds of dirty investments on Earth, including the one that had turned part of the US-Canadian border into an icy wonderland.
Trigrian grunted, and the transmission crackled again.
Precious knelt in front of the console and opened the transmission adjustment panel.
“Talk fast, Trigrian, in case this transmission drops,” she said.
“Fine, then. I’ll speak items in order of importance. You may be tempted to turn around and return before you’ve completed your mission, but I’d ask you to continue your engagement. As much as sitting here at the farm while knowing that Courtney is on the way to some undisclosed area disconcerts me, I believe she and Erin will be safe.”
“What about—”
“They’re not going to let anything happen to Ais. You know that.”
Owen did. Still, he was twenty-seven hours away and had his hands tied. He had to be doing something. He didn’t give a shit about nameless, faceless Jekhani women. He worried about the little hybrid who couldn’t see colors worth a shit and who somehow managed to sleep comfortably atop his body.
He’d gotten so he could only sleep if she were sprawled haphazardly atop him with her hair in his face.
“Trigrian—”
“Hauge wants to take Ais to Earth,” Trigrian said.
“Why?” Precious asked. “That doesn’t make sense.”
“I don’t know their motives, but I do think this Alex guy is being genuine when he says her father wants her to join the family there.”
“What does Reg Devin have to do with any of this?” Luke asked.
Owen pinched the bridge of his nose. He was glad someone was asking the right questions, because he couldn’t think straight. He was too close—too invested in the outcome of the ordeal.
She’d been shot.
“She got shot?” he asked over Trigrian’s plea of ignorance about Devin. He needed them back on-topic.
“Erin said she was conscious,” Trigrian said, “and that she would probably be fine if she didn’t lose any more blood.”
“I shouldn’t have left,” Owen said, shaking his head. “I let myself get too comfortable thinking she’d be safe at the farm as long as she didn’t leave her room. I should have been there.”
“It’s easy to get caught up in should-haves and could-haves,” Trigrian said, sounding far too reasonable for a man whose woman was missing, “but I didn’t want to get this information to you because I wanted you to hurry back. Obviously, my motives are quite split. There’s a chance you may locate my missing sisters amongst those women, and I would like them at home as much as I’d like my mate safely back. I’m informing you because had I been in the same shoes as you, I would want someone to tell me.”
“Where’s Murki, Trigrian?”
Trigrian didn’t respond.
“Trigrian.”
Court’s lover sighed. “He and Headron are following the flyer’s path in the farm truck. They’re at a lower altitude and trying to stay out of sight.”
“Why doesn’t that make me feel any better?”
“Because you, like me, have your hands tied and all you can do is wait. And Owen? That’s all you can do now. You’re more than a day away. We hope to resolve this situation before the day’s over.”
“And you’ll retrieve all three women.” If Ais wanted to go, he had to let her. She had the right to finally explore her options. He just wanted to be able to talk to her face-to-face before she did. She needed to know that he’d follow her if she wanted. Someone had to keep her safe. She didn’t know those people—those Hauges.
“All three,” Trigrian said. “This power cube is running hot and is about to self-eject. Any messages you send to the farm until it cools and recharges will be received on a delay of several hours.”
“Yeah, I know. I’m the one who maintains the system.”
“Be careful, Owen, and good luck.”
The COM panel stopped flashing.
Owen drummed his fingers atop the back of the seat and ground his teeth.
“I don’t like that face you’re making,” Luke said. “That’s the face you used to make before you got me into trouble as a kid.”
Owen scoffed. “You find it so familiar? Because if memory serves me correctly, you Ciprianis got McGarrys in trouble more often than the other way around was the case.”
“Maybe that was the case, but the thing is, when McGarrys courted trouble, the trouble was big, bad stuff. You guys didn’t play around.”
Owen cracked his knuckles.
“I understand,” Luke said.
“Do you?” Owen asked through clenched teeth, turning to his lifelong friend.
“I’ll just…leave you two to it,” Precious said. “Let me just get this message out to Salehi about our plans and…” She hit a light on the COM panel and stood. Then she squeezed between the seats and grabbed Fastida by the arm.
They headed toward the bunks.
Luke input a course that would put the ship out of visual range of the station.
Owen sat.
Once stars were streaking past the windows once more, Luke slumped low in the captain’s seat and rubbed his eyes with the meat of his palms. “Maybe he shouldn’t have told you.”
“Fuck you, Luke.”
Luke shrugged and dropped his hands. “I’m just sayin’. He can’t know where your head’s at, not like I do.”
“And where do you think my head’s at?”
“Look, man, I’ve seen how much more level you’ve been with Ais around. She means something to you. She’s someone you want to take care of, and that’s good. You need that. But I also think you’re still at risk of punishing yourself for shit that was beyond your control. Maybe you’re thinking to yourself that if you’d been there, she wouldn’t have gotten taken, but that’s dangerous thinking. That’s the same kind of thinking that has you all torn up over the way Mike left the world. He didn’t want anyone there when he passed. That was his choice, and if you want to be angry at him, that’s okay. Shit, I’m angry sometimes, too, because he was my friend and I loved him. But the thing is, he was a grown man and he had his wits about him. He made his choice, and I’m sure he thought about you, and Ian, and Erin, and Court when he did. He did what he thought would be best for everyone. You know that.”
On some level, Owen did. The truth hurt, but he knew.
“Ais is a grownup, too, okay? Sometimes bad shit happens to people, but that doesn’t mean you need to immediately assign yourself blame. You can’t be at her side all the time, and you can’t beat yourself up when she gets hurt and you’re not there.”
Owen tightened his grip around the armrests. Though he found little satisfaction in watching the foam pucker and retract, he kept pressing his fingertips into it anyway. He needed to be moving something. Doing something. “She’s so…”
“What? So not like Court? So not like Erin?”
Owen grimaced.
She wasn’t like them, and that was why she was good for him. She was the missing element in their clan—long-needed softness to balance all the rough edges and sharp angles.
“You’re right,” Luke said quietly. “She’s not, but that wasn’t what you needed. And really, who’s gonna care that she doesn’t have the same kind of guts?”
“No one.”
“Exactly, man. No one but you.”
“I don’t care.” Owen released the armrests. “I mean, not as far as liking who she is. I just…I just worry.”
“No one ever said that loving someone means the worrying stops.”
Love? Is that it?
Owen cut him a chastening look, and Luke laughed.
“Hey, that’s all right. You don’t gotta get gushy with me. You don
’t have to tell me what I can already see, and don’t worry.” He reached across the aisle and punched Owen’s arm. “I’m not gonna go sob into my pillow. I’m a big boy.”
“Whatever, Luke.”
“Seriously, man. I’ll help you out. I know you suck at this ‘be a decent human being’ stuff, but I’ll be your tour guide. I’ll make sure that lady doesn’t run screaming from you when she realizes you’re not the fairytale prince she thought you were at first glance.”
Owen cut him a sidelong look. “I thought you were trying to be helpful.”
Luke’s grin was charmingly predatory, as always. “I am. You’re just not seeing the big picture.” He leaned his forearms onto his knees and squinted at the navigation console. The steering program wanted some input from him. He put in changes.
“What’s the big picture?” Owen asked when Luke finished.
“You shacking up with a lady who’s actually polite—within walking distance of your two meddling sisters, at that—”
“The two meddlers who I hope are keeping Ais from bleeding to death?” Owen groaned and, slumping, put his booted feet up on the console edge.
“The very same ones. You’re setting up a life for yourself on a planet you didn’t even know existed when you were ten with a quarter-alien lady and a best friend you’ll toss a bone to on occasion.”
Discerning when Luke was actually joking wasn’t an easy thing. He could smile when he was being serious and sound completely deadpan when he was talking about light things, like the cost of rocky road ice cream. He sounded like he was in jest, but his expression was pained. He’d never been quite as good at hiding his feelings outside of work as he did when he was on the job.
“Luke…”
Luke put his hands up, and then ground them against his eyes.
“I’m not leaving you behind. You know that”
“Nah. Maybe I just feel like you are, and I don’t know if I’m going home, you dig me?”
“What do you mean?” Owen didn’t think he was just talking about how he admired the Jekhan requirement of two lovers.
“Think about it. They’ve gotta know by now who stole this ship. I could be thrown into jail for a very long time if I ever go back to Earth.” He crooked his thumb toward the back of the ship. “I guess those two assholes knew what they were getting into, and I guess Ma had a hunch as well. Maybe they can go back, but for me, I’m kinda short on options.”