"A few more days, depending," Chither answered.
"Depending on what?"
"On whether Tau's part of things goes according to plan," he replied, and Penny's stomach curdled at the concern in his dark eyes.
"What's his part of the plan?" Penny asked, frowning.
Chither gave her a look that said he'd rather not answer, but he could tell Penny wasn't going to back down about it.
"He intended to get the last of the parts I needed for this ship from the one you landed here, then destroy it so it can't be used by the hive-kind."
"Intended?" Penny's frown deepened, "Why the past tense?"
"He should have been back by now."
Chapter Thirteen
The rest of the team mingled with the mutants for a while, Cho taking notes in a froth of enthusiasm at finally being allowed to interact with the aliens the way she'd wanted to. The cave dwellers seemed to react well to her excitement. Penny imagined they'd never met someone so thrilled to talk to them.
They were lucky, Penny thought, that in so many ways Hive-kind thought models were very similar to their own. They could have encountered a species with a completely alien way of thinking. No amount of translation software would have helped with that. Though Cho did seem to have some trouble with the few Wasp-kind in the cavern, weird narrow waisted winged creatures who were just humanoid enough to be unsettling, and whose conversational skills suffered somewhat both from having no concept of plural pronouns and a certain difficulty in registering anything not Wasp-kind as being alive at all. Talking to them wasn't so much talking to a brick wall as it was being said brick wall and trying to convince someone to talk to you.
The Hive-kind mutants dined communally at midday, close to twenty four hours from when Penny had woken this morning. Though they couldn't eat the food, the team joined the aliens at their meal, watching them consume a strange kind of nectar they cultivated in flower fields in a valley down the mountain.
Penny sat near them but, as in the hours before, couldn't quite find the will to participate in the conversation. Her eyes were always turned towards the open cave mouth, waiting anxiously for Tau to arrive.
The team explained to Chither that humans were used to resting for the last six to eight hours of a twenty four hour day and Chither, baffled but amused, had led them to sleeping cells for their 'mid-day nap.' Penny hadn't joined them, though her eyes itched with tiredness.
She couldn't make herself rest with Tau still out there somewhere, potentially in danger. Any time she took her eyes off the sky the anxiety ate at her unbearably. Somehow she felt that if she stopped willing him back to her for even a moment, he would never make it.
Eventually, leaning against the wall near the cave mouth, looking down on the craggy gray stone of the range, crawling with blue velvet moss towards the valley far below where flowers grew in a riot of color by the Hive-kind's careful cultivation, Penny dozed off, too exhausted by the long and stressful day to keep her head up any longer.
She woke to the sound of familiar engines. Her eyes shot to the sky, her heart leaping as she saw the familiar shape of the Oshun descending towards the cave. She scrambled to get out of the way as it came in to land, hope a wild wind in her heart. Behind her the mutants were hurrying closer as well, anxious to see if friend or foe emerged from the ship.
Penny forced herself to stand still and wait as the ship, heavily damaged and smoking, limped to an unsteady landing in the cave mouth. She could hear her pulse in her ears and she'd never wanted anything as badly as for the hatch to open and for him to be behind it.
The engines wound down and for a moment there was near silence, the pops of metal cooling. And then a hiss as the hatch lifted and, finally, Aiten Tau stepped out.
"Tau!" Penny shouted before she could help herself and ran to him. Eyes wide, he caught her and embraced her tightly. She kissed him hard, trembling with relief in his arms.
"Friend, you were meant to bring part of the ship, not the entire thing!"
Chither was approaching, and Penny stepped back, taking in how injured and battle worn Tau looked for the first time.
"I'm afraid that's not all I brought," Tau's eyes were dark with the seriousness of the situation, keeping an arm tight around Penny, "Getting out did not go as planned. I did my best to lose the fighters that followed me in the mountains, but it will only buy us time."
Chither nodded, grim but not upset, and reached for another worker.
"Go and tell the others," he said, "Prepare to evacuate. There's always another mountain."
"I'm sorry to make you do this again, my friend," Tau's regret was clear, but Chither only shook his head.
"It won't be the last time," he shrugged, "This is the life of our kind. We were prepared to go as soon as we heard your plan."
"What about the Hermes?" Penny asked, "Is it ready to fly?"
"Not yet," Chither confirmed, "And this ship Tau has brought won't make it out of the atmosphere. We will need all the time we have to get the Hermes ready to fly. Either the humans leave before the fighting starts or they do not leave at all."
"Then we had better get to work."
The commotion had woken the rest of the human team, who were hurrying up now, Rivera leading them.
"I promised my wife I'd be home in time for my kid's graduation," she said with a smile, "So tell me what I've got to do."
Chither grabbed every worker he could spare from the evacuation to work on the rebuilt Hermes, ripping whatever parts they could salvage out of the wreck of the Oshun and moving it over. Penny worked with them, as familiar with both ships as any of her team. But there was much to be done.
A Wasp-kind scout flew in through the open cave mouth, chittering loudly in its strange, clicking language. A tangible wave of anxiety went through all the Hive-kind listening.
"The Hive city has sent a legion of drone ships," Tau translated for Penny, who looked up from pulling a pump out of the Oshun's inner workings, "They'll be here in less than an hour."
"But we're not ready yet," Penny felt like there was a lump of ice in her stomach, "We need more time!"
"You will have more time," Tau replied, his expression suddenly set in ferocious determination. He hadn't yet had time for his injuries to be treated and Penny watched him in worry as he limped rapidly away to find Chither.
A minute later, the hanger was literally buzzing with new activity as newly armed Hive and Wasp-kind mutants climbed into the small ships that filled the cave or else took off directly from the cave mouth on their own wings.
"Anyone who couldn't or didn't want to fight has been evacuated," Chither said as he and Tau hurried back towards to two human ships, "The rest will keep the drone ships away a little longer."
"But they'll die," Penny was horrified, "We can't ask them to do that for us!"
Chither shook his head quickly, reaching for her shoulders.
"They want this, human Queen," he explained, "It is the desire of all Hive-kind to fight and die defending Queen and hive. You have given them an opportunity they thought lost forever. Honor their gift by escaping and surviving this."
Penny couldn't argue with that. At least until she saw Tau strapping a stinger to his arm.
"Tau, no," she said as firmly as she could, "I need you here. With me."
"I can command the drones," Tau wouldn't look at her, focused on his armor, though his hands were shaking, clearly having difficulty just standing, let alone fighting, "They'll need me."
"They have others with the voice," Penny insisted, "Besides... I can't let this be the last time I see you. If we get away and my last memory of you is seeing you fly off to die..."
That stopped him for a moment, and he turned to look at her, his face lined with solemn regret.
"Then what should I do, Penny Allyn?" he asked, "Evacuate with the others? Live the rest of my life in a cave, a mutant outcast, without you?"
Penny's heart ached at the pain in his voice. She took his hand, pushing aw
ay the stinger to lace their fingers instead.
"Come with me," she said, her voice trembling, "There's a spare cryo pod. Come back to Earth with me. If I have to go back there anyway, give me something worth going back for."
Tau was silent for a long moment, deliberating, watching the other Hive-kind mutants taking off, going to fight. Then he looked at Penny, and she saw in his eyes the moment he made his decision.
"Alright," he said, a nervous tremor in his voice, "I'll go with you."
They rushed back to work on finishing the Hermes. The Hive-kind workers were blazingly fast, beyond anything Penny could imagine, their multiple limbs working in mechanical harmony so quickly they blurred together. Soon the human crew could only stand back and direct, realizing how outmatched they were.
"That's it!" Rivera said, going over the checklist one last time, "I think that's everything! God I wish we had time for safety checks. This is going to be terrifying."
"Nothing about this mission, from day one, has been anything but terrifying," Ian said as he ran past her with a box of food supplies from the Oshun. Tau had managed to load it not just with the remaining dehydrated foil packets, but with the reformulated hive kind nutritional supplements as well. They would be well stocked for their return.
"Alright everybody, strap in!" Rivera called, "Time for final checks!"
The workers cleared out, rushing to join the evacuees or the fight, which they could now hear just outside the cave.
Penny settled into her seat in the rebuilt Hermes bridge, watching as Ian, Salome, Cho, and Rivera all took their seats at the console as well. Finally, Tau took the sixth seat, added by the superstitious Hive-kind to satisfy their obsession. Directly across from Penny, he smiled at her, trying to be reassuring, though she could see the worry in his eyes.
Rivera called out the checks as she ran them, ensuring that all the critical systems were in order, testing everything she could to be as sure as possible that it wouldn't fail in the air. But the workers were as flawless as they were fast.
Soon, she was starting the engines and pointing them towards the cave mouth, getting a handle on the new alien systems that would let them fly out of here without rockets. The Hermes slowly lifted off the cave floor to hover just a few feet up.
"Everyone ready?" Rivera called one last time, "Taking off in five, four, three, two..."
The hive kind's magnetic engines kicked like a mule as they shot the Hermes out of the cave like a bullet from a gun and into the fiery dogfight happening outside. Rivera steered the bulky shuttle like a needle through the warring drone ships and mutant fighters as they clashed directly outside the cave.
"Up, up!" Ian was shouting as they flew through the flame and debris of an exploded ship. Rivera obeyed, turning their nose skyward, narrowly avoiding a burst of drone fire as they fled skyward with all haste. As the sky darkened to the blue black of space around them, the crew whooped with relief.
"We did it!" Salome sobbed, tears of relief in her eyes, "We're going home!"
"I wish we could have stayed a little longer," Cho said regretfully, "I was finally starting to learn something."
"I'm sure you'll get another chance," Ian laughed, "You just became the world's foremost authority on that planet. They'll probably try to send you back, once the misunderstanding gets cleared up and the planets start communicating regularly."
"Do you really think that'll happen?" Salome asked, hopeful, "We'll just figure out how to get along?"
"I don't want to consider the alternative," Ian replied, and Penny privately agreed. Interstellar war would be too costly for either species. They'd surely find a way to work together.
She smiled across the ship at Tau, who smiled back. There was definitely a way to understand each other.
Once they'd left orbit, Ian began plotting their course home. It was easier, he said, since they had a better idea now of what they would encounter. He still had the rest of the crew go over his work several times, not over his insecurity over what had happened to the Hermes crew. Penny wasn't sure he'd ever quite recover.
Penny helped Tau patch himself up in the meantime, glad Hive-kind were so hardy. Dangerous as those wounds looked, Tau assured her a hive kind drone could regrow whole body parts. With rest, he would be fine.
Once Ian had entered the course and Rivera had set them on their way, the crew prepared for cryo sleep as the ship accelerated towards light speed. Salome and Cho had put their heads together to figure out the best settings for the cryo pod to suit Tau's biology, testing it a few times to be sure they had it right before everyone else settled in to sleep.
Tau's pod was next to Penny's, and she kissed him one last time before she lay down.
"See you on Earth, Aiten Tau," she said as the lido of her cryo pod began to close.
"See you there, Penny Allyn."
Chapter Fourteen
Earth's satellites picked them up as they entered the solar system, and from there it was one long series of complicated explanations and official statements as the Oshun crew explained how they were returning in a ship that was not quite the Hermes, carrying a new crew member who was not quite human.
For a while, it was nonstop madness, dealing with the political and legal ramifications. Deciding how the Hive-kind would be dealt with. Deciding what would happen to the crew and to Tau.
Ian tried to claim responsibility for what had happened to the Hermes crew, but examining the data from its computer which Tau had retrieved for Penny's trial revealed it had been a mechanical error that had sent them off course. He had never been to blame at all. He had a hard time accepting that.
It had been more than a decade since they left, thanks to relative time, but one by one Penny watched her crew mates settle back into their lives, old and new. Rivera retired, well compensated, and returned to her wife and children happy. Cho became something of a celebrity scientist, talking about her experiences with the hive kind and planning proper research trips for as soon as the political climate settled.
Salome and Ian became heavily involved in breaking down and coming to understand the technology they'd brought back, adapting it to improve Earth's space travel capabilities. Ian never wanted to go into space again, or at least not out of the solar system, but Salome was eager to return to the stars, faster and safer than ever.
Penny threw herself into her diplomatic work. With Salome and Ian's innovations on the alien tech, they found a way to send signals to the other planet and opened a line of communication. Penny led efforts to reach a peaceful resolution to the Hermes Incident, as it was being called.
Tau was invaluable in explaining the Hive-kind's values and perspectives on things, and eventually understanding was reached. The Queen was infallible and thus could not apologize, but in diplomatic terms it was made clear that, newly pupated and unaware of the nuance of the situation, she had acted rashly, and regretted the lost opportunity.
Almost a year later, things began to at last calm down. Cho was leading a new mission, preparing to return to the Hive planet for a first formal diplomatic exchange. She'd begged Penny to come along, but Penny no longer wanted to run from Earth. She had something worth staying for now.
It was late fall, and the wind carried the taste of snow through the pine trees to the comfortable mountain cabin. Penny stood on the porch, looking up at the stars, and wondered what other, stranger life might be out there. Not that she was in any hurry to meet it.
Tau put his arms around Penny's waist and rested his chin on her shoulder. She felt him breathe deeply, his chest moving against her back. Convincing the government to let him stay on Earth as a citizen and live here unmonitored had been a feat, perhaps the hardest of Penny's career.
"You're sure you don't want to go back when Cho leaves?" Penny asked, a touch insecure. His hair brushed over her shoulders, a tickle of sensation. "Now that the situation is resolved, they might welcome you back as a hero."
He shook his head, hands sliding down to squeeze her hips
.
"That isn't my home anymore," he said simply, "In truth, it never was. The only queen I have ever wanted to serve is here in my arms."
Penny's heart soared as the wind kicked up the scent of pine and cold stone. All her life, she'd only ever wanted to escape this place. Now that she wasn't running anymore, she could finally see how beautiful it all was. The world was a brighter and more colorful place since she'd returned, and Tau was at the warm, beating heart of it.
Penny turned in his arms to kiss him hard, wishing she could convey beyond what any translator chip ever could just how much she loved him. He squeezed her closer, and then turned to press her against the cabin wall as he showered kisses down her throat.
His hands slid under her thighs, lifting her up, and she wrapped her legs around his waist, tangling her hands in his hair as his kisses moved down towards her breasts.
His touches were still just as passionate and curious as they had been the first time, patiently learning more about her every day, until he could play her body like an instrument, every graze of his fingers sending ripples of pleasure through her.
The door was still open and the cold air made her nipples stand to attention as he pushed her shirt and bra up above her breasts. He surrounded them with his hot mouth, teasing with his tongue, until Penny ached for him and whispered his name, quietly begging for more.
Rather than going to the bedroom, he snatched a coat off of the rack by the door and carried her outside. He spread it on the ground to make a rough barrier for them, and Penny laughed.
"Out here?" she asked, incredulous though she was already removing her top, "Really?"
"I've had enough of hiding in tunnels and caves," he answered, "I want to love you in the open air."
He set her down, but before he could follow her, Penny stopped him, settling on her knees before him.
"I want to show you another human trick first," she said with a playful grin, and tugged down his pants. He'd taken to wearing human clothing since he arrived, though he still tended to favor very simple things, like the black t-shirt and jeans he was wearing now.
The Warrior's Proposal (Celestial Mates Book 7) Page 17
