She did a summary check of her discussant panel, whose job it was to say useful things about the working paper. There were three. She guessed, based on age and tenure, that maybe one of them had read it ahead of time.
The normal thing was to shred through it fifteen minutes before; she could guess what each would say based on their research areas. There was no sign of her dreaded conjuncture, and Rae breathed easier.
“What are you thinking?” asked her former advisor, Dr. Ravi, seated to her left.
“That Midwestern superstition loses again,” Rae said with a grin.
“Pardon?”
But it was too late to explain. The moderator introduced her paper topic to the audience: “Defending the Earth from Extra-Solar Threats: Lessons from the K-T Extinction Event.” It was an awful title, but Dr. Ravi had insisted and Rae had finally acquiesced.
She’d wanted to title it, “Were the Dinosaurs Killed? Or Murdered?” She’d discovered, after all, that materials she’d collected near the Chicxulub crater—the impact site of the asteroid that zapped the dinosaurs—had residue from ancient, foreign materials that didn’t exist in nature.
Talking about aliens in astrophysics was dicey. It brought press attention, but not much professional esteem. A lot of Rae’s graduate colleagues snickered behind her back—including Reese, who she noticed in the audience, a possible conjuncture that knotted her stomach.
He was picking at lint on his tweed jacket, a young man with a boyish face who liked to dress up like the real professor he planned to become one day. The disdain in the gesture was obvious. He picked at it the same way he’d picked at Rae every time they’d talked since their break-up.
The competition for tenure-track slots was fierce, and Reese too professionally jealous for their relationship to work. Since then, he’d mocked Rae’s research as either “methodologically flawed” or “kooky.”
Rae shut down her fear instinct and focused, instead, on how good it would feel if he finally mocked her to her face. If, instead of sniping, he attacked her theories in a public forum, she could finally have it out with him.
The moderator signaled her. Time to talk. She stood, took to the microphone, cleared her throat, and began: “I’ll level with you. There are two types of people in this room right now. One, the journalists, who get to write a punchy story about aliens killing the dinosaurs.” Rae’s aside had them in the palm of her hand, and she gave them every watt of her smile.
“The others, of course, are the scientists who hate the fact that the public only cares about space when it’s full of aliens who we imagine to be hilariously like us.”
Just then, her eye caught someone strange. He stood at the room’s edge, a head taller than the professors and scientists around him. He wore what looked like a black kurta, a sort of long jacket that hit knee-level, and white pants beneath that.
Black-eyed with charcoal hair, he seemed to project a bubble of space in the crowd on all sides. Though he had his hands in his pockets, there was something dangerous in his stance. She couldn’t put her finger on what, but the intensity of his stare set her fine hairs on end.
She fumbled her next line and her words stalled.
For two heartbeats, she tried to breathe. The man hadn’t moved. There was no logical reason for him to even draw her gaze, other than his size and that unrelenting, fiery-eyed stare.
Forcing herself to look away, she focused on Reese and reminded herself: If I mess this up, he wins. It put just enough iron in her backbone that she could ignore the kurta-wearing giant.
He hadn’t disappeared, though. She dove into her lecture, acutely aware he still watched her; with heart in throat, she had the strangest sense she was putting on this performance for him.
***
He’d come halfway across the quadrant on the whim of his domé, whose dreams had been disturbed by meddling on this side of the spiral arm; but now that he saw the troublesome female in person, Garr knew his own needs and his goddess’s would align.
Even with domé Kaython translating in his ear through her linguistic microbes, the aliens were hard to comprehend. The problem was their culture. He gathered that he stood in some primitive war council, though they were too backward to have a prime.
He’d noticed they permitted mating-class females to participate. Folly, surely. And they listened to the female at front, whose dangerous tampering had brought him to this world.
Garr could see her pulse race in her throat—smell the faint traces of floral perfume on her body through the crowd. He repressed the impulse to stride up and peel open the collar of that stiff, primitive shirt near her throat and inhale.
What insane male permitted a female so exquisite to head a war council? She was just standing there, publicly, no protector in sight. At any moment, he expected someone to issue a challenge and claim her.
Can you believe that’s her? messaged Vaya from her position in the seats. Kaython’s microbes didn’t just translate: they also let he and his soldier communicate silently. Vaya couldn’t stand among the aliens without them gawping, because this species lacked the bioform diversity that characterized his own. Vaya would… stand out among them. Those scouting reports I showed you didn’t really get it across.
No, Garr had known from the moment he’d seen those reports that this human was special. He’d announced his interest in her then, to the obvious dismay of Vaya. Now that he saw her in person, he wanted her that much more.
I can’t believe someone so soft and small is causing Kaython so much distress, Vaya complained.
Garr wasn’t certain Kaython was distressed. Like all domé, she could be damnably obscure in what she desired. Certainly, Garr didn’t want this alien to be his enemy.
He surveyed the way those trim, primitive fabrics clung to the curves in her hips, body, and bust—she’d be softer than a Ythirian female. She kept her golden hair in a tight braid like a warrior, and he wanted to comb it out with his fingers.
Are you seriously still interested in her? Vaya asked, distaste obvious. You won’t claim a 98 percent match, but you’re interested in the one whose genetics are twenty cycles behind ours?
I do as I will, Vaya.
Fine. But mark my words, boss. The short ones are always trouble.
Hold position. I want a closer look. He needed one, really, and soon had the opportunity: the female’s gaze had shifted elsewhere during her talk, and he crept toward the stage.
There appeared to be a debate now, between her and a tiny male near the front, who Garr had momentarily mistaken for a child.
Apparently, these aliens would let anyone into a war council.
***
Rae kept her lecture short, explaining the mathematical model she’d used to locate the asteroid debris, then the analysis of metals that supported her conclusion. In its essence, the paper was simple.
The most complex part of the task had been calculating the best location for harvesting intact materials from the region surrounding the impact crater.
Naturally, Reese interrupted her roughly halfway through. “I’m sorry,” he said. “But are you really standing in front of your peers and arguing that aliens smashed an asteroid into our planet?”
It wasn’t the critique she’d wanted. He didn’t go after her methods. She would have had numbers for that. No, Reese’s whole objection amounted to a scoff and a roll of his eyes.
He turned to the audience, addressing them directly, as though Rae weren’t even in the room. “Are we honestly having this discussion about extraterrestrials based on the findings of one overeager researcher?”
“See here,” Rae said, enough invective in her tone that Reese spun immediately.
He smiled at her like he’d won something. “The heart of science is replication. If you can’t stand the heat…” Because he had won something. He’d baited her.
Rae took a breath and counted to three, bringing her riotous pulse under control, lowering the temperature of her glare to freezing. “S
o out with it.”
“Pardon?” Reese asked, smiling at first.
“Your critique. I’m certain you have one.”
The smile continued, but now it was plastic. “I’ve said my piece.”
“Have you a substantive critique? I’m always looking to improve my work, Reese. Do you have something to contribute beyond, ‘she’s talking about aliens! How dare she!’ ”
Reese worked his jaw and shrugged. “I do question the analysis. All you’ve determined is the elements don’t match anything from Earth. The question of—”
“They’re not elements,” Rae insisted. “They’re complex molecular structures which, after careful review, appear to be assembled using nanotechnology not available anywhere on Earth, and they’ve been carbon dated to approximately the crater’s era. Not only are they not natural, but they’re beyond the capacity of mass manufacturing.”
Reese went to speak, but instead, someone stepped forward from her peripheral vision.
It was that man in the kurta, and he was closer. She could see his face, broad and with perfect bone structure, and she noticed how his shoulders would have made a fully padded linebacker look small.
The scientist in her knew these were signs of high levels of testosterone through puberty and—likely—still today. The woman in her knew she’d get a thrill out of feeling the hard line of his jaw with her fingertips.
Still advancing, he seemed possessed of a graceful confidence. “I have a question.” His voice rumbled and he was focused entirely on her.
She wasn’t sure she could speak, her throat tight and lungs nonresponsive. So she nodded.
He took his time asking, and it gave Rae a chance to notice a female tech journalist nearest the stranger gripping tight to her seat, as though the turning of the Earth might toss her from it. At least Rae wasn’t the only one.
“The materials you found,” he said, his attention entirely fixed on her. “Did you expose any of them to electromagnetic radiation?”
“Of course. It’s part of a battery of tests we performed.”
“I see.” He watched her with stony eyes, and it made her stomach flutter, unsure what his intentions were. “Explain these models to me.” It was an order.
“They’re statistical models that extrapolated the location of ejecta based on the crater’s size and the force applied. We got lucky and found samples at our second dig site.”
“Explain more.” He took a step forward.
Rae fought the urge to retreat from his advance. He didn’t seem like a typical scientist, and certainly not a reporter. Just who the hell was this?
Reese took that opportunity to butt back in: “And for another thing, how are you certain you sampled actual fragments from the asteroid impact?”
“For that, we’ll need to look at some math,” Rae said happily. She forced her attention from the gorgeous man working his way closer, instead going over the formulas until Reese’s eyes glazed.
Before she’d finished, though, Reese interrupted her again: “So let me get this straight. Because your math says you got the rocks from the right place, you think aliens blew up the dinosaurs. Let’s talk a minute about the discussion section of this paper.” He narrowed his eyes.
“You use the phrase ‘defense against extraterrestrial attack.’ As in… defending ourselves from E.T.?”
Rae bristled. “If E.T. is lobbing asteroids at our pale blue dot, sure. If my models are accurate—and, spoiler alert, they are—these extraterrestrials have already eradicated Earth’s dominant life forms once. That kind of radical, callous disregard for biodiversity is a sign we’re dealing with technologically advanced, morally degenerate beings.”
“Morally degenerate?” shouted someone in the crowd.
Rae turned and blinked. She ended up looking at a woman with close shorn hair, wearing a seafoam green pea coat. She seemed absurdly tall, even from her sitting position, and in spite of being visibly upset, she didn’t stand.
Tired of being interrupted, Rae stared the woman down. “What would you call destroying most of a planet’s biomass in one fell swoop?”
The woman huffed. “First of all, the asteroid maybe wasn’t launched to destroy your planet. It might’ve been there to seed portal technology so aliens could come here, portal technology that maybe turns on when you expose it to electromagnetic radiation, Ms. Smarty Pants!” She nibbled her lip nervously. “Uh, as a for-instance, I mean.”
“So the aliens missed?” Reese scoffed. “I’m not sure which of you is crazier!”
The tall woman jabbed a two-fingered point at Rae’s ex. “Have you ever fired a projectile from across the galaxy, you little suck worm?”
The male stranger made a gesture with his fingertips, which immediately shut up the tall woman. As though chastised, she sank further into her seat, and the huge man nearly cut Rae in half with a glare.
“Whatever the cause, watch your tongue. Humans have seen their share of moral degeneracy.”
“O-kay,” Rae murmured, wondering who let all the crazy people into her lecture.
Reese had spotted it too, and he scowled up at her. “Did you plant these people in the audience? This whole thing reeks of a publicity stunt. How much did you pay this washed-up, community college actor?”
“What?” she shouted. By now, murmurs had broken out through the audience and all semblance of professionalism had evaporated. The day—her great moment—blew away like dust in the wind.
“Why does it always have to be personal with you, Reese?” She realized it had always been this way. He’d treated dating her like he was doing her a favor—like she was this lonely flower who needed him.
The more she outperformed his mediocrity, the more she’d shattered that illusion, and the more scorned he’d become. She all of a sudden saw him, the real Reese, in how he grasped wildly for some way to undermine her work.
“Personal? Typical, hurt little girl,” he sneered. “Making it about our relationship and not the science.”
It was exactly the reverse, and having him turn it back on her obliterated her pity. She opened her mouth to give him a piece of her mind.
“Relationship?” boomed the enormous stranger. He glanced between Rae and her ex. “With this undeserving whelp?” He sucked in a breath, as though mortally offended, the first strong emotion she’d seen break the hard lines of his face.
“What chicanery could allow this creature to claim any female?” he muttered, casting a disdainful gesture at Reese.
Okay. Rae hadn’t hired him from a community college, but if she found out later he was an actor, maybe she’d hire him to wander in and mock all her exes.
Watching Conan belittle Reese was the sort of thing she’d have liked to scrapbook—that made her want to get into scrapbooking so she could scrapbook it.
But then, Conan took it a step further, marching for Reese. There were four rows of people and foldout chairs blocking his path, but his expression scattered the crowd and he kicked his way through chairs, fists tight in a way that made the fine hairs on Rae’s neck buzz with alarm.
Reese tried to shrink back a row. “Now, now.”
“I am Prime Garr domé Kaython and I challenge your claim to the golden-haired female on the dais.” He ripped a buckle from inside his kurta and tossed it onto the floor at Reese’s feet.
Reese had toed back as far as he could go. “Is this a prank? Is there a…” He glanced around. “Is there an anime convention nearby?”
The kurta now parted, revealing the stranger’s smooth muscular flesh beneath: it showed the hard ridge of his rib line and a torso built lean and powerful at once, like a cat.
“My primacy will be collateral. You are small. You may surrender without shame.” He glanced back at Rae. “Unless she prefers I break you.”
This had gone well beyond amusement for Rae. She did not like the way this mentally deranged barbarian threw around terms like “claim.” She set fists to hips. “Just who the hell do you think you are?”
He glanced back at her. “Did I not introduce myself once already, female?”
Rae set her jaw.
“I am Prime Garr domé Kaython,” he said, staring right into her when he said it. His voice and intensity terrified her.
But she was not about to be upstaged, either. “And I am Dr. Rae Ashburn, whose name is on the sign. So get the hell out!”
Just then, Reese had found his taser. He gripped it a moment and let out a shout while plunging it at Garr’s bared chest.
A rapid clicking filled the air. Garr glanced down at the object set flush to his chest. He snatched Reese’s wrist and examined it. “I am going to feed this trinket to you,” he growled.
That’s not right. That’s impossible. Rae knew how a taser worked. The electrical signal mimicked the same one in the skeletal muscles of a human, forcing them all to contract at once.
Against someone who was all muscle, it should have worked better instead of not at all. She stared, stunned, at something she knew shouldn’t have happened. What was the explanation? Had it misfired? Was his nervous system different somehow?
It got stranger. The offended female from before stood from the audience and wandered closer. And she was at least eight feet tall, lean and wearing a pea coat that didn’t make it past her hips.
Rae might have actually guessed an anime convention cosplayer, except she’d have had to wear stilts, and Rae could clearly see where the woman’s knees bent. The biomechanics were… impossible. She was actually eight feet tall. That was four inches higher than the tallest woman in the world.
The tallest human woman in the world.
“Oh holy shit,” Rae breathed. For six full seconds, she watched Garr and the giantess seem to communicate with a silent stare. There were security officers coming down the aisles.
Garr glanced sharply at Reese and squeezed his wrist until the taser fell from his limp fingers. “Surrender your claim and I leave your bones intact.”
“I— I surrender!” he shouted. “Take her! She’s yours, buddy!”
The Warrior's Proposal (Celestial Mates Book 7) Page 39
