Claimed by Noatak

by Tamsin Ley

  Noatak scowled right back at him. “She said she’s fine, Tovik.” His nose wrinkled. “Are you wearing perfume?”

  The younger man’s copper faced flushed blue-green, his gaze flitting to where Emmy and Marlis stood. “I heard ladies like flowers.”

  “Don’t make me laugh, it hurts,” Joy wheezed, her arms clutching her injured torso. “I think you’ve been getting some bad advice, my friend.”

  A third copper-skinned man arrived from the stairs, his clean-shaven face austere in comparison to Noatak and Tovik’s well-groomed beards. He strode forward with a med scanner, completely intent on Joy until he saw Emmy’s blouse. “You hurt, too?”

  Emmy shook her head, seemingly at a loss for words as she craned her neck to look up at his face.

  “Don’t be rude, Mek.” Tovik frowned. He turned to look at Emmy and Marlis. “This is Mek, our ships’ doctor. He’s not usually such a terpak.”

  Noatak released Joy into Mek’s care. “You got this?”

  Mek nodded, slipping an arm around the injured woman. He smiled tightly as he passed Marlis and Emmy on his way toward the stairs. “Sorry to be so abrupt. I look forward to talking to you later.”

  “Tovik.” Noatak picked up the suitcase Emmy had set down and thrust it toward the younger man. “Drop their bags in the bunk room then join us in the galley.”

  “Aye-aye.” Tovik took Emmy’s suitcase then held out a hand for Marlis’s rucksack.

  Marlis clutched her shoulder strap tighter. She didn’t like to let other people handle her weapons. “I can carry my own bags.”

  “Suit yourself.” Without preamble, Tovik bunched his legs and leapt into the air—if it could be called leaping. The move was more like a short flight, leaving the scent of perfume in his wake. He landed lightly on the catwalk above and turned to glance over his shoulder with a self-satisfied grin. “See you soon.”

  “Show off,” Noatak muttered before leading them toward the stairs.

  Marlis followed him up the steps, her boots ringing on the metal grates. “Are all of you so… nimble?”

  “No.” Noatak spoke without turning around, voice cold. “Don’t let him fool you into thinking he has superpowers. Our species—most of our species—have the ability to manipulate ionically-charged molecules in immediate proximity to us.”

  Marlis had never been good at school, and his vocabulary took some pondering for her to unravel. While she did, Emmy pulled ahead of her to walk next to Noatak as they reached the catwalk. “Like telekinesis? That’s fascinating!”

  Telekinesis. That word she knew. How was she going to keep up with a crew that could move shit with their brains? Maybe Noatak’d been serious when he’d said they didn’t need more hired guns.

  They reached the hatch and stepped through into a narrow corridor. Noatak led them past several doors into a galley where a large oval table surrounded by chairs took up most of the space. He gestured to the seats. “Now that you’re on board, we need to lay down some ground rules.”

  Marlis set her bags next to the nearest chair and sat, glancing around at the closed cabinets lining the walls. She wasn’t familiar with the layout of D-class ships, but if this tiny galley served the entire crew, no wonder Noatak was extra picky about who he hired. Crew members had to get along. A flare of pride glowed in her chest; she’d made the cut.

  Emmy took the seat to her left, hands clasped nervously in her lap as she watched Noatak move to the other end of the table. Marlis pulled out her polycom to take notes. Twerp recorded everything for her to review later if she wanted, but her therapist encouraged her to write things down for herself. She had to stay focused if she expected to prove to her new crew she belonged here.

  “You’ll both serve here on the Hardship until Captain Qaiyaan gets back.” Noatak powered up a wall screen between the cabinets, bringing up the ship’s data screen. “He and Kashatok may rearrange your assignments later, though.”

  While Marlis was jotting the names, the young Denaidan who’d taken Emmy’s bag burst in, chest heaving and eyes glittering. He yanked out the seat next to Marlis, looking over her shoulder at her polycom. She twisted her head to glare up at him. She hated it when people read over her shoulder. Her notes were none of his business.

  Pausing with his backside half-lowered onto the chair, his smile faltered. Still, the kid was incorrigible, and winked before pushing the chair back in and moved down several seats.

  Marlis swallowed, feeling a little guilty. She’d already forgotten the young man’s name, and when she glanced back to her notes, she’d also forgotten who Kashatok was. Dammit. She’d written it down, so it was important. She needed repetition. Lots and lots of repetition. “Who’s Kashatok again?”

  “Captain of the Kinship.” Noatak pointed to a K-class freighter on the screen. “Joy’s his First Mate.”

  “And his mate-mate!” The young man chimed in, green eyes dancing.

  “Enough, Tovik.” Noatak glowered at him.

  Tovik, Marlis repeated to herself, staring hard at him to ingrain his face in her mind.

  The young man beamed under her scrutiny and Marlis felt herself flushing. Fuck. She was going to give this guy the wrong idea if she wasn’t careful. She lowered her gaze to her polycom and put his name there with the words don’t shoot the puppy. When she shifted her attention back to Noatak, he’d started a video rolling.

  “You two have the honor of being among the first recruits for the resistance. Our fleet is comprised…”

  She wrote resistance onto the polycom. Had they mentioned a resistance during the interview? She could ask Twerp about it later. For now, she had to assume that since she was here, she must’ve been okay with it. Pay attention, Marlis.

  “I know the odds are against us, and the corporation is powerful. But more and more of their lies—”

  Marlis was getting the feeling that this crew wasn’t conducting the kind of legitimate business her sister’d had in mind. What had she gotten herself into? Throat tight, she raised a hand. “Are you talking about Syndicorp?”

  Wariness flashed through Noatak’s eyes. “Yes.”

  Emmy spoke up. “I was going to show her the video back in the cantina, but then the fight broke out. Maybe she could watch it now?”

  Noatak’s jaw worked as if he wanted to say no, but Tovik jumped up. “She hasn’t seen it?” He tapped the screen on the wall. “Joy did a great job putting all the facts together.”

  A RealTime News logo appeared, followed by Joy’s face.

  Marlis forced herself to focus on the screen. She refused to believe her dad had been right about her getting into trouble. Get all the facts, then decide. That’s what her therapist always urged her to do before she let her emotions get the best of her. Breathing in through her nose and out through her mouth, she settled back to watch.

  Joy described a planet called Denaida-daru, where Syndicorp had been testing a genetically altered virus. Marlis’d never paid much attention to technology that didn’t relate to weapons, and a lot of what Joy said didn’t mean anything to her. She gathered that somehow the virus had mutated and created a cancer that killed off all the women and most of the men on the planet.

  The emerald-green planet on the screen developed white spots, each spot widening and growing until the entire planet glowed like a small sun. “Rather than continue to work on a cure or make amends to the surviving population, Syndicorp sterilized the planet.”

  Marlis gasped out loud. She’d never heard of a populated planet being sterilized.

  “You may be asking why you’ve never heard of Denaida-daru, also called K-4H10,” Joy continued. “Because there would be backlash against the heinous act, Syndicorp started a war to divert attention. Remember Pulati?” The video cut to an all-too-familiar scene on what had been a lovely, tree-lined plaza. A plaza littered with bodies and blood and debris.

  The floor beneath Marlis’s chair seemed to wobble as she stared at the footage. Cut scenes from the war itself filled the room
, making the walls close in around her. She heard her mother’s scream cut off.

  “… Not only did the people of Denaida-daru suffer genocide at corporate hands, but tens of thousands of Pulati colonists died fighting terrorists. Terrorists who were funded by Syndicorp.”

  While the voice on the screen kept talking, Marlis was no longer in the galley of a D-class ship. She was a ten-year-old girl lying beneath her mother’s contorted body. Unable to breathe. Not daring to move. Gunfire sliced the air and trooper boots thundered against the earth.

  Adrenaline surged through her veins. She couldn’t breathe past the stench of blood or hear over the screams echoing in her ears. Flies tickled over her skin. Her wrist ached, and she had no idea why.

  “Marlis, lower your head to your knees,” a feminine voice floated through the chaos.

  Marlis forced herself to focus, expecting to be staring into the muzzle of a trooper’s rifle. Sure a hole would blossom in her head at any moment. I need a gun. She reached for her hip.

  A strong hand encircled hers, gripping her fingers tightly. Keeping her from moving. Panic once again made her vision swim.

  A woman’s round face took shape in front of her, brown eyes concerned. “Marlis, it’s just me. Emmy. It’s all right.”

  I should know this person.

  A disembodied voice chanted, “There is no danger.”

  The only important word in that phrase was ‘danger.’ Lurking danger. Marlis twisted against the grip still clamped on her hand and found herself looking into gunmetal blue eyes. Dark brows on copper skin. A beard decorated with metal beads.

  Noatak’s lips moved. “Cool your jets, soldier. You’re safe here.”

  For some reason, those words cut through her fog. His hand on hers was like a lifeline. She took a deep breath. “Safe.”

  Cautiously and still maintaining direct eye contact, he said, “Everyone out.”

  The round-faced woman and another copper-skinned man with ginger hair backed out of the room. Noatak relaxed his grip on her hand, but to her relief he didn’t let go. He settled into the seat facing her. “Now tell me what this is all about.”

  How many therapists had asked her that? She felt like a robot as she answered, “I was in that battle.”

  His eyes narrowed. “You were a child when Pulati broke out.”

  “Yes, sir.” For some reason, calling him sir made her feel calm. Like she was a soldier instead of a victim. “I was ten.”

  He raised a brow and slowly withdrew his hand. “You’re from the colony? I thought you said you were Legacy. Your family is with the troopers.”

  She let out a shaky breath. Her mind had started to clear a bit. “My mother and I went to Pulati on leave. The same day as the first terrorist outbreak.”

  Staring numbly at the screen, Marlis recalled her earliest memories; the ones that still, no matter how hard she squelched them, haunted her nightmares. Troopers with guns. Trooper boots marching through the plaza full of bodies. A trooper looking down the barrel of her gun straight into Marlis’s eyes. No one had ever believed her before. Now she knew her memories were true.

  The terrorist attack had been orchestrated by Syndicorp.

  She turned to Noatak, his name like a pinprick of sanity in her chaotic mind. “Troopers killed my mother.”

  Chapter Six

  Noatak swallowed against the unfamiliar feelings welling inside him as Marlis described her hours on Pulati. How she’d faced down a young trooper who apparently hadn’t had the stomach to finish the job and left Marlis half-dead beneath her mother’s corpse. How she’d been in and out of consciousness for an entire day and into the night before rescuers arrived. How the media had put her on display as a victim without ever letting her speak.

  “My first therapist said I misremembered the attack.” Marlis’s eyes were glassy, the scar on her chin a pale slash against her already pale skin. “Said my dad would lose his job if I told anyone and he’d be labeled a traitor. She blamed it on the damage to my brain, so I believed her. I changed my story. Troopers would never hurt innocents, right?”

  She met his eyes, and he felt as if he’d just been sucked into a whirlpool. On instinct, he opened his ionic power, letting the feel of her heartbeat reach him, the subtle rhythm of her breathing. Sweet, feminine warmth and the subtle scent of musk from her skin caused a sense of protectiveness he’d never experienced before.

  Uminaq, this wasn’t the time or the place for softness. He was still trying to make up his mind about keeping her on board. His gut told him she was genuine, but his ever-doubtful logic insisted this had to be a complicated ruse. Why else would a Legacy trooper end up in that cantina at that exact time?

  As he worked to get himself under control, Marlis rose, hands clenched into fists at her sides. The wrist band he’d noticed earlier was emitting a low-frequency vibration. “They made me lie to myself.” Her voice held outrage. Fury. Disgust. “I thought by joining the troopers I’d be protecting people.”

  “Most people think that.” He watched her pace the length of the table. His admiration for her strength grew with every word she spoke. “I know I did.”

  She turned and stared at him. “You were a trooper?”

  He nodded, leaning back in his chair. He wasn’t proud of his trooper days, but he found himself wanting to tell her everything. “Joined up the moment I was old enough. Good pay, worthy cause, exciting adventures. All the stuff the recruiter was selling.”

  “Where’d you serve?”

  “SNV Riley Blue, Galactic Ops.”

  Her eyes grew round, and she returned unsteadily to her chair, knees brushing his as she faced him. “What I wouldn’t have given to join Galactic Ops.”

  His thigh muscles tightened with awareness of her closeness, like a proximity alarm racing through his bloodstream. He had to focus. “Not all it’s cracked up to be, believe me.”

  The admiration in her eyes turned to distrust.

  Once more, he found himself volunteering more information than he usually felt comfortable giving. “Almost all the Denaidans still alive today were in the service. Joining up was one of the few ways to get off-world. The corp’ didn’t know much about our physiology and while they studied my ionic abilities, they had me on almost constant recovery stims. After I went AWOL, I nearly killed myself getting off the stuff.”

  “You went AWOL?” Her tawny eyes widened.

  He let out a sardonic laugh. Of course she’d care more about him going AWOL than she would about stim addiction. “Had to get away before Syndicorp could silence us.” His nostrils flared as he recalled how many of his trooper iluq had come to mysterious ends immediately following his planet’s Termination.

  “Silence you for what?”

  “They destroyed my home world, remember?” He frowned. Apparently, she’d been so engrossed in her own horrible memories she’d forgotten.

  “Oh, yeah.” The rosy flush on her cheeks was unaccountably appealing. She blinked several times, then put one hand over her forehead, gaze darting around the galley. “I need to call my sister.”

  That surprised him. Why this sudden urge for family? He crossed his arms. “Absolutely not.”

  Scowling, Marlis dropped her hand and leaned forward to look into his eyes, her heaving breath brushing his bare forearms. “She’s a trooper. So’s my dad and my brother. If I join your rebellion, what do you think might happen to them? I need to warn them.”

  He ran his tongue over his teeth. She had a point. Did this mean she was no longer a risk? Venturing another ionic pulse to test her sincerity, he asked, “You want to join us?”

  She nodded, her jaw set. “Definitely.”

  He could tell by the steady beat of her heart that she meant it. But he needed her to fully understand what she was getting into. “You should also know that we’re wanted for piracy.”

  Her delicate brows drew together. “As in, raping and pillaging?”

  “Not exactly, although there were a few Denaidans who went
that far. The bulk of us just wanted revenge against the corp’. Technically, I’d call us privateers.”

  She narrowed an eye. “Privateers, pirates, what’s the difference?”

  A feminine voice erupted from her wrist band. “Pirates attack anyone. Privateers only attack enemy ships.”

  She clapped her hand over her wrist. “Shut up, Twerp.”

  He’d been aware of the buzzing at her wrist off and on since meeting her, but this was the first time he gave it any real regard. Now suspicion blossomed inside him again. “Is that a Syndicorp AI?”

  “You may call me Twerp,” the muffled voice said. “I am a Wen—”

  “Shut up, Twerp!” Marlis lifted her hand and banged the wristband against the table.

  The AI emitted an indignant chirp but did not resume speaking.

  How could he have let himself be so careless? She’d brought a Syndicorp AI on board the ship. “Who does it report to?”

  She blinked, as if unsure what he was asking. “Just me.”

  Twerp spoke up again, its chirpy voice a cheery contrast to Marlis’s. “I have successfully connected to this ship’s communication array. Would you like me to send a message to your sister?”

  “Dammit! Not now, Twerp.” The flush he’d appreciated earlier returned to Marlis’s face. She unstrapped the thing from her wrist and offered it to Noatak. “Suppose I may as well tell you now. I have trouble remembering things and I get… frustrated… easily. Twerp keeps me in line.”

  “I don’t give an anaq about all that.” Noatak grabbed the band. “Tell it to disconnect immediately.”

  She stiffened, and he wondered for a moment if she was going to protest. Then she said, “Twerp, suspend all wireless connections, please.”

  The AI said, “If I am not connected to the ship, I will be unable to provide spatial data.”

  Marlis leaned forward to speak directly toward the device. “That’s an order, Twerp.”

  “Disconnecting now. Please be careful when moving about to make note of your location.”