by Mina Carter
Stephens shot him a look of surprise, then smiled. “Yeah, I guess you could say that. Although your gal there? She’s a marine, right?”
Xaan nodded and the human carried on. “Yeah… thought I recognized the attitude. Your conversation just confirmed it. She’s as hard as nails then, so she’s not looking for protection.”
“Her military training,” Xaan nodded. That made sense. Even though he wanted to protect her, she didn’t need him for that. She could take care of herself.
“Yes and no…” Stephens shrugged. “Some women are like that even without the training. Some women have the training and still look for a man’s protection. It’s not physical. It’s a mindset thing. We have a saying… the female of the species is more deadly than the male.”
Xaan folded his arms over his chest. “How does that work? Typically they’re smaller and weaker than males. How can they be more dangerous?”
Stephens shrugged and then winced, holding a hand to his ribs. “It’s not always about physical strength. We got loads of creatures where the female is deadly. Praying mantis—they’re an Earth insect—they eat their males after sex. Bite their heads right off. And octopus? If the female doesn’t want sex and a male bothers her, she’ll screw him and then throttle him and keep him in her den for food. I think our women took a few lessons from the animal kingdom.”
Xaan blinked in surprise. “I don’t think I’d like your planet much. Sounds violent. How the draanth did your species even survive?”
Stephens grinned. “Because we’re as stubborn as fuck. Tell us we can’t do something and we’ll trip over ourselves to prove you wrong.”
A groan rolled up from the center of Xaan’s chest, borne of memory and frustration. “Yeah. Dealing with your women, that sounds familiar.”
Stephens laughed at that, a short bark of amusement. “Well, you lot were the idiots who took a load of fleet women. They’re the most independent of the lot. You deserved everything you got. We had bets running, you know? That you’d probably bring them back and demand money or something. Like a reverse ransom.”
Xaan’s face split into a broad smile. “Yeah, we probably did. But you’re not getting them back. Half of them are already bonded to our warriors, the others… well on the way to it.”
His gaze slid sideways to the bot slumped in the corner next to Stephens.
“Okay, so what’s the deal with that?” he asked, shaking his head and holding up his hand as Stephens went to speak. “Yeah, I know what you said. But it doesn’t make sense. That’s a worker model. It doesn’t think on its own. It would have saved your life, yes. That’s hardcoded into their subroutines. But it wouldn’t have trashed the escape pod. The only reason it would have done that is to conceal its origins landing on a new planet not under Latharian control. But, that’s an avatar action, not a worker one.”
He moved to stand in front of the bars, looking down at the human male. “Then there’s the obvious question. What were you doing on a Latharian vessel in the first place?”
Stephens watched him for a long moment and then sighed. “Because I was fucking dumb. That’s why.” He lifted a hand up to run through his close-cropped hair. “Saw something on long-range sensors while we were on patrol in the Clusters. It’s an area right on the limits of Terran space, well away from you guys. Or at least I thought.”
His expression shuttered over, the blankness of controlled grief in his eyes. “One of your ships picked us up. Weapons just sliced through our shielding like it wasn’t even there and then they were in the ship. Four of my guys bought it there and then they dragged the rest of us aboard. Tortured us for days.”
A chill ran through Xaan at the measured tone of the male’s voice. He knew what torture was like, especially the Latharian kind. The fact that Stephens still had his mind said a lot about the guy. But what had he given up to save it?
“Thought I was a gonner, to be honest,” the human male continued, only the slightest waver in his voice. “The others… they didn’t make it. I knew I had to. I had to get back and warn command that there were more of your kind out there.”
Xaan blinked. “Okay, having gone through all that, why are you even talking to me? I’d have expected you to try and get through these bars and murder me in my sleep.”
Stephens laughed, a sound of amusement that became a rattle and then a nasty cough. “Yeah, right… in this condition? You could flick me and I’d fall over dead. Besides, just because I ran into one Latharian that was an asshole doesn’t mean you all are. Does it?”
He sat upright, obviously trying to ease the pain in his side. He needed medical attention and soon. “I’m a professional soldier. Been in uniform since I was a snot-nosed teen,” he revealed. “But I’m not stupid. Soldiers don’t make wars. We just fight ‘em. That asshole, D’Corr, he was the type who causes wars.”
Xaan’s gaze laser focused on him. “Wait, did you say D’Corr?”
“Yeah. Asshole with a big scar across his face. Why? You know him?”
Xaan nodded. “He’s not Lathar.”
“Sure looked it to me. Big, all that leather, those snazzy hair braids you all wear.”
“No, no… I mean he’s not Lathar now. He’s what we call dishonored. Not one of us anymore.”
Stephens began to chuckle but stopped himself in time. “You mean you threw him out of his own species for being a twat?”
“Yeah,” Xaan replied. He wasn’t sure what a twat was, but it sounded derogatory. “Pretty much. Okay, so you were on D’Corr’s ship. Then what?”
Stephens blew out a sigh, looking confused. “That’s where it gets hazy. There was a ruckus somewhere. Things started to go boom. Then she—” He nodded toward the bot in the corner. “Tore the front off the cell and hauled me out of there. I remember coming to in the escape pod and she told me it was going to be okay. Then waking up on the surface here with her and the trashed shuttle. That’s it. Dex and his assholes got ahold of me then and I’ve been here ever since.” Anger filled his voice as he looked toward the doorway they’d seen Dex last disappear through. “I kinda hope D’Corr lands here and wipes them all out. Would serve them right.”
“Nice thought but not gonna happen.” Xaan squatted down next to the bars to study the bot. It was motionless. No sign of life at all.
“Yeah? Why not?” Stephens argued. “They can’t be far from here.”
Xaan glanced up and fixed him with a look. “D’Corr’s ship exploded halfway across the galaxy from here. I know because my son blew it up. Which begs the question as to how you ended up here with a Latharian bot that doesn’t have a gender, but you say is female…”
12
“I’m sorry, but I can’t break this.”
Kenna pushed the small computer away from her across the canteen table, leaning back to shove her hands through her hair in frustration. It was keenly felt, but not due to the numbers she’d been shoving around on one of the settlement’s hand-held computers all morning.
She had no intention of even trying to break Xaan’s code lock on his ship and every need to figure out how to get into the colony’s main office on the other side of the compound. Unfortunately, it was locked, the only key on Dex’s belt. Which meant if she wanted to get into the office and to the working radio it contained, she needed to get the key from Dex.
The trouble was, even though he was trying like hell to charm her, he wasn’t stupid. And he was very wary about those keys. She hadn’t been able to get anywhere near close enough to lift them.
“Hey, hey… it’s okay, love,” Maggie dropped a hand on her shoulder in reassurance. “I’m sure you’ll figure it out soon enough. Perhaps take a break, come back to it fresh?”
“Thanks, Maggie,” Kenna murmured, squeezing the hand on her shoulder. Of them all, Maggie was the one she couldn’t work out. She really wanted to believe the woman was on the level, was really the jolly, friendly grandmother figure. But here she was working with Dex and his lot—scavengers that had kil
led and looted. It just didn’t jive in her brain.
“She ain’t gonna do it,” a harsh female voice announced from the other side of the canteen. Kenna let her eyes flicker half-closed, a look of frustration on her face. Bull-dog again. She hadn’t liked Kenna from the get-go and had been getting steadily more vocal in her dislike. Mostly Kenna had tried to ignore it, but she knew she was going to have to deal with it and soon. Especially as the woman had taken to following her every movement. Which, given she was trying to sneak into the office, presented somewhat of a problem.
“Aislinn, you leave the girl alone,” Maggie chided, her lips pursed. “She’s got enough on her plate with that spy ex-husband of hers. Don’t need you adding to her troubles, now does she?”
“Don’t trust her,” Aislinn muttered, glaring at Kenna again. “She ain’t tryin’ hard enough.”
Kenna sighed, pushing away from the table and surging to her feet in a burst of movement. “Yeah, right? You got a problem wi’ me, bitch?” she snarled, going from nice to street in a heartbeat.
Stationed on the lunar colonies of Tet-four early in her career for populace control, she’d seen enough of street gangs to last her a lifetime. But, it also meant she could mimic their hard-ass attitude like she’d been born there. So she channeled her inner street-hoe as she stalked toward Aislinn, getting all up in her face as the other woman stood, the chair clattering to the floor behind her.
“Because if you do,” she snarled, “let’s have it out here and now, shall we? Or are you too much of a yellow-belly?”
The other woman’s manner had shut down, her expression blank and her eyes expressionless. She threw the first punch without warning, exactly as Kenna had expected her to. She blocked it and threw a punch of her own, slugging the woman across the jaw. Not as heavily as she could but just enough to sting and make Aislinn mad.
Bulldog stumbled back a few steps, her expression screwed up in hatred again. Good. Kenna needed her mad, not blank and emotionless. Mad people slipped up and made mistakes. Not that Kenna could win this fight, she mused as the two women prowled around each other.
Oh, she could easily beat Aislinn. She already had the other woman’s measure and knew in a hands down fight she could take her apart in seconds. But… she couldn’t afford to win. Aislinn already suspected her and to display that sort of fighting ability would ping too many people’s radars. So she shut down her ego and concentrated on the fight.
She had to lose. But convincingly.
Aislinn moved in, and Kenna threw another right hook, catching the other woman across the jaw again. She ignored the fact Aislinn was wide open on the left side, instead dancing back as the woman staggered back a step or two, wiping her mouth on the back of her hand. It came away covered in blood.
“Oh, you’re gonna pay for that, you little bitch,” she snarled and moved in for the kill.
The fight became a flurry of blows and slaps. At one point Kenna got her hand in Aislinn’s hair and gave it a good yank, only to be rewarded with a solid knee to the stomach. She doubled over, pretending to be winded, and caught an elbow to the back of the head. The blow was just off target to drop her but she went down to her knees anyway, pretending that it had. Aislinn needed to believe she’d won the fight easily.
“HEY! WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON HERE!” Dex’s bellow stopped any further blows raining down on Kenna and she grabbed at the nearest chair to cling to, making a show of being dazed as the scavenger leader stormed across the canteen.
“What the fuck are you doing, Aislinn?” he demanded, reaching Kenna and pulling her upright. Settling her on the chair, he checked her appearance with a swift look. His arm around her supportively, he glared at the other woman.
“Suzie is a guest here. What the fuck?”
“She’s a bitch,” Aislinn’s defiant attitude started to crumble under Dex’s hard look. For a moment real fear showed in her eyes. She was scared of Dex. Interesting. Kenna would have put her down as one of his core people. “She ain’t who she says she is. I seen her before. She’s one of them women the aliens took.”
“W-what?” Startled, Kenna’s reaction was genuine. How the fuck did she know that? Quickly she laughed, looking up at Dex. “She’s off her rocker. How can the aliens have taken me if I’m here? Don’t they put women they take in those evil breeding factories?”
It made her feel sick to even mention that vile lie but she had no option. She needed them to stop thinking along those lines. Right now. If Dex so much as suspected she was one of the Sentinel women, this would get a lot harder very quickly.
“Yeah.” Dex’s voice was hard as he looked at the other woman. “Those women were all marines, Aislinn. You know that. Does Suzie look like a marine to you? You just about beat the crap out of her. Would you be able to do that to a battle-hardened veteran?”
Aislinn shuffled her feet, her gaze flicking between the two of them. “No, I guess not,” she admitted, a hard flush riding high on her cheeks.
“Good. Now get the fuck out of my sight.”
The scavenger woman fled at the harsh order but by the time Dex turned back to Kenna, his manner had softened. Concern filled his face as he studied her, focusing on the cuts on her cheek and by the corner of her lips.
“Come on. Let’s get you cleaned up. I would apologize for Aislinn, but I think I’ll make her do that herself. Publicly.”
Kenna shook her head, her hand soft on his arm. “Please. Don’t do that. She already doesn’t like me. Humiliating her will just make it worse… especially if I’m going to stay,” she added, playing her trump card. “I’d like to get on with everyone here.”
He smiled, his manner relaxing as he helped her up out of the seat and led her toward the medical bay. “You really are too sweet. You know? You’re gonna have to toughen up if you’re going to survive out here in the colonies.”
This asshole really had no idea. Kenna hid her amusement, playing up the injured and shocked woman as they left the main hall. If they knew the truth, they’d already have executed her. She’d be in a shallow grave someplace. Normally, she’d have grabbed whatever she could and shanked him on the spot, but… she needed him.
She’d been all over the settlement on a “walk” earlier. Security had been upped, so there was no way to get out to Xaan’s ship and send a message. Her only option was to get into the main office and send a message to the fleet from there.
But… it was locked. All. The. Time.
She’d watched it for a while, thinking she could slip in as someone left it. Not an unreasonable assumption; a colony’s main office was the hub for everything. It usually had more foot traffic than an intergalactic space station. Problem with the hydropumps? Head to the office. Little Arnold had a boo-boo? Get yourself to the office to call for the doc. Planet-wide emergency like assholes attacking the colony? Get to the office. It was the hub that everything revolved around.
But no one came and went. The only person that seemed to have access was Dex himself. She’d watched as he’d locked the door carefully behind him as he left, sliding the keycard into his back pocket.
She had to get that key. But he kept turning away from her so she couldn’t slide her hand into the pocket of his cargo pants without alerting him.
“Have you made a decision about joining us then?” Dex asked. He left her sitting on the main examination bed as he moved around the room, collecting supplies to bring back to the trolley next to her.
That was one notable absence she realized, sitting still as he cleaned up the cuts on her face. She even remembered to flinch as a civvie would. There was no doctor. She’d only seen Dex or one of his men in here, and none of them struck her as the medical type.
Of course, she could be wrong. Don’t judge a book by its cover and all that, but in her experience the willingness to kill people and the Hippocratic Oath didn’t jive well. Nor did doctors often carry assault weaponry.
A quick image of Laarn, and the other Latharian healers sprang to mind,
going about their duties in combat leathers and armed to the teeth, but she squashed it down. Human doctors often didn’t go about armed…
“Yeah,” she nodded, looking away from him. “I’m staying. Got no place else to go, and why would I want to leave here? It’s beautiful.”
“That’s wonderful news. I’m so pleased to hear that!” His smile was wide, genuine pleasure in his eyes. If he wasn’t such a murdering asshole with a hard-on for stealing other people’s shit, like their godsdamn planet, he would actually have been handsome.
He finished cleaning her up, tilting her chin up with a finger. “There we go, good as new.”
“Thank you,” she smiled as he half turned to deal with the blood-streaked dressings on the trolley. There, right in front of her, the key card peeked from his back pocket. Holding her breath, she reached out, quick as a flash and slid it from its fabric confinement.
By the time he turned to smile over his shoulder at her, the card was safely concealed up her sleeve. She smiled so sweetly she was surprised her teeth didn’t rot on the spot.
“You’re good to go, love. Are you joining one of the work parties this afternoon? Some of the ladies are working in the mill today. You could learn that part of the harvest if you like?”
She wasn’t surprised at the suggestion, and the fact it kept her safely within the main walls. Despite all his pretty words about her joining the colony, she was a prisoner. Poor Suzie Renner hadn’t realized it, but Kenna Reynolds knew exactly what was going on.
“That sounds interesting,” she confirmed as she slid from the bed. Then she paused, faking hesitation to leave the room as she looked at him shyly. “Will I see you at dinner?”
“Wouldn’t miss it for the world. Save me a seat?” he said, dumping the waste from the trolley into the recycler.
“Will do,” she chirped and left the medical bay.
