Barbarian Lover

by Ruby Dixon

  Nice to see we matter to them. “Gone. Infected as well.”

  More hushed whispers. Then, the alien guard speaks, his tone angry. “My masters are out a great deal of money with nothing to show for it. You have destroyed their property.”

  A gasp escapes me. “Property? They’re not property. They’re people! You can’t just take them against their will!”

  “And what of the animal skin you are wearing?” the alien growls at me. “Did you ask its permission?”

  “That’s different.” I have a sinking feeling I’m losing this argument.

  “The shipment my masters deposited here has been stolen from them,” he says again. “They are out a great deal of money and have many clients waiting for their purchases. My masters are honor bound to return their property to them.”

  I grip the laser cannon tighter, a sinking feeling in my stomach. The aliens stare at me with black, calculating eyes. I notice one of the orange ones keeps eying my gun.

  “Your ship is very old,” one comments. He takes a step forward, his own gun held casually in hand.

  “Stop or I’ll shoot,” I tell him, my voice wavering.

  “I think you are lying,” the one guard says, still approaching. The other two aliens watch him calmly, weapons in hand. “I think your ship is not armed. I think we will take you, and then you will lead us to the others.”

  “You can’t! We can’t be removed from this planet,” I say desperately. “Look at my eyes! Our symbionts—“

  “You lie,” it says, and strides forward.

  I lift my laser cannon to fire again, just as the alien in the distance lifts his gun. Something hot zings my hand, and the gun goes flying out of my grip. I’m smacked to the ground with a forceful blow, the air knocked out of my lungs.

  “Kira,” Aehako bellows behind me, and I hear the sound of feet slamming into the snow.

  “No,” I gasp as one of the aliens kicks my gun away. He steps on my wounded hand, pinning me to the ground. As I watch in horror, he raises his gun and fires, and I hear two shouts of pain. “No! Aehako!” Ignoring the brutal pain in my arm, I twist around to see.

  The two men are flat on the ground. Haeden’s lying in a pool of blood, his leather tunic smoking. Aehako is face down and unmoving.

  My chest constricts with agony. “Aehako! No!”

  The birdlike Little Green Man chirps a question. Are they dead?

  The basketball head tilts his head, and as I watch, I see Aehako twitch and lift his elbow, trying to rise up off the ground. There’s no sign of Harlow. I’m relieved. She’s hiding in the ship like I told her to. “Not dead yet,” the guard says and lifts his gun again. “I will fix that.”

  “No, wait!” I scream in the alien language. “I’ll go with you. I’ll take you to the others! Just leave them alone!”

  The guard lowers his gun and looks over at his master.

  An irritated chirp sounds. They don’t matter. Just bring her.

  The boot lifts off my hand, and a strong arm hauls me off the ground.

  AEHAKO

  I fight off unconsciousness as wave after wave of crashing pain moves over me. The intruders moved so fast. I barely saw them raise their strange weapons before Haeden and I were flattened on the ground. I hear Kira’s cry of worry, and her frantic jabber in the strange language.

  Then, silence. I try to sit up, but my body won’t obey. It’s like an invisible net has been cast over me. The blackness I’ve fought against so hard claims me.

  One thought rings through my mind even as I succumb: they’ve taken my mate.

  • • •

  “Aehako?” A small, cold hand taps my cheek. “Wake up. Please.”

  Pain blazes in my side. I’m still face-down in the snow, and my entire body aches as if I’ve drank three skins of sah-sah. With effort, I push against the earth and roll myself onto my back, squinting at the late afternoon sunlight.

  A face swims into view. Pale, freckled, with a bright orange-red mane. Not Kira. I struggle to sit up, and her weak human hands try to assist. “Are you okay?” she asks in a tremulous voice.

  “I am not dead,” I grit out, though my ribs might complain otherwise. I run a hand down my side and pain stabs through me again. Punctured with one of their strange weapons, but not a fatal wound. It aches and bleeds but will not kill me. “Where is Kira?”

  The girl’s eyes fill with tears and she sniffs hard. “Gone. They took her.”

  Agony pounds in my chest. No. Not Kira. Not my sad-eyed, soft mate. I’m helpless and filled with rage all at once. “I must save her.”

  “Your friend…he’s not doing so well.”

  I look around. Off to one side, Haeden’s body is slumped. There’s a dark stain under him that makes my chest clench with new worry. “Is he—“

  “He’s breathing, but I can’t get him to wake up, and I can’t carry him.” She wrings her hands. “I don’t know what to do. Kira told me to take you guys back to the cave—”

  “She what?” I get to my feet with great effort, sending another wave of sheeting pain through my body.

  The red-haired one – Harlow – wrings her hands again and paces. “She said that if they took her, I need to take you back to the cave so you can be safe. She doesn’t want anyone coming after her.”

  “She is my mate!” I roar. I won’t leave her. I’ll get my spear, take off after their ship, and demand—

  “They have guns!” Harlow cries. “And Haeden is dying!”

  Haeden. My old friend. My truest friend. I stagger over to his side, clutching my wound, and roll him onto his back. His breathing rasps shallow in his chest, and the wound is in his gut. I can see the white of his innards in his wound, and there’s blood everywhere.

  He needs to get back to the healer, soon, or he will die.

  I’m torn. I need to go after my mate, but it’s clear that if I leave, Haeden will die. With a snarl of helpless fury, I turn to Harlow. “Why are you just standing there?”

  “I don’t know what to do!”

  “Get something to bind his wound! Quickly! Or get poles for a travois!” With a travois, maybe even Harlow can take him back to the caves. I grab her arm before she darts off. “I must go after Kira. Can you take him back to the tribal caves if I make you a travois?”

  Her face is pale but resolute. She nods. “Tell me the way and I will do it.”

  My heart sinks. She doesn’t know the way to the caves. One slight storm, one wrong turn, and she will drag Haeden into the wild where he will die. I press a hand to my forehead. The stink of blood is everywhere. We must do something soon, or predators will come after it to investigate.

  I…cannot go after Kira. Not if it means leaving these two helpless ones to die. I close my eyes. Forgive me, my mate. I will come for you as soon as I can.

  Then, I turn to Harlow. “Take a knife and cut two poles for a travois from the trees. I will find something to bind Haeden’s wound.”

  “What about the ship? We can use it—“

  I shake my head. I don’t trust it. “We’ll take him back to the healer. Hurry.”

  She nods and darts away.

  KIRA

  One of the basketball head guards hisses at me as he hauls me up the ramp to the alien ship. “Walk faster.”

  “I’m walking as fast as I can,” I mutter. Actually, that’s not true. I’m dragging my feet deliberately. I don’t want to go on the ship. I want to run for the hills, but I have to be brave. I knew this was coming if we couldn’t scare them off.

  And I have a Plan B, the contents of which are still safely tucked inside my mouth, between gums and cheek.

  I’m still terrified.

  Nothing’s in my control anymore. These things would just as easily take back my dead body as they would my live one. And I don’t know if Aehako is even alive or dead.

  I can’t think about that right now. If I do, I’ll totally break down. I have to think about my plan.

  They drag me into the hold of the
ship despite my deliberately slow steps. Instead of flinging me down into another hold like they did before, I’m taken to a sterile white room and dumped onto a narrow white board of a bed. Oh God. This looks like an operating room.

  The guard that has taken me as his personal hostage looms over me, fingering his weapon. A few moments later, the door opens and another one of the Little Green Men comes in. He speaks, and his voice has a different timbre than the others.

  This is the infected one that was mentioned? It tilts its head toward me, curious.

  “Yes,” the guard says in his growling language.

  I try to chirp back to it, to let it know I understand its words.

  Its head tilts again. Is it trying to speak?

  “It’s stupid,” the guard says, and smacks my arm with the butt of his gun. “Want me to kill it?”

  “I’m not infected,” I say in the guttural language of the szzt. “I have a symbiont. A creature living inside me. But it can’t be removed without killing its host.”

  A parasite? How very curious. I wonder that I can remove it anyhow. I should like to study this and see how long it can survive in an artificial environment, if at all.

  They want to kill me just to see what happens? These guys are dicks, as Liz would say. “You can’t do that,” I say quickly. When they simply stare at me, I cast about for a logical explanation as to why they can’t. “I’m worth more alive than dead.”

  The Little Green Man tilts his head and then reaches out to touch my ear. Even though I want to slap his hand away, I have to force myself not to react. This is the one we implanted the translator in, yes? Her aural cavity shows markings of one, but I confess all these things look alike to me.

  “I had a translator,” I tell him.

  Where did it go?

  “I had the ship remove it.”

  The ship on the surface? The creature’s head tilts again. If it weren’t for the fact that my life was in danger, all the head-tilting would be kind of hilarious. It is not functioning.

  “It’s not completely functioning. It doesn’t fly, but I have a secret code,” I bluff. “I know the access codes to the computers. I can give you the ship if you return me to the surface and never come after me and the other women ever again.”

  The thing chirps repeatedly, and somehow, I know he’s laughing. Why would I want an old ship that does not fly?

  “You can tow it,” I tell him, staring into the enormous black eyes of the alien with what I hope is a confident expression. “I’m sure you have a way. And people always pay good money for…” I struggle to find the alien word for ‘antique’ and settle for “…very old and special things. That ship has lots of valuable equipment, plus all the valuables its passengers left behind when it was stranded several hundred years ago.”

  The aliens exchange a look.

  We can simply take it with us, along with you, the one alien says. You know both of what you speak.

  “But if you take me from here, I will die. My dead body is of very limited use to you. Your employers won’t pay as much for a dead girl as they would for a live one. I know this.”

  I don’t know this. I’m guessing.

  The black eyes of the Little Green Man blink slowly. We will discuss this.

  I look over at the computers blinking on the wall. “Cool. You want me to just wait here?”

  Put her in one of the holding cells.

  The guardsman grabs me with a brutal hand, his rough skin tearing at my arm. I fight against him, but it’s only playacting. It’s what I think they expect me to do. In reality, a holding cell will work just as well as anything else for my plans. So I struggle and fight against the guard as he drags me down one of the narrow, metallic halls of the alien ship, and flings me into a dark hold. This time, there’s no cage, just what looks like a storage room. Good. I skid to the floor and huddle against the wall, doing my best to look frightened. Granted, it’s not that hard because I’m scared out of my mind, but I’m also thinking hard.

  The guardsman looks down at me and curls his thick lip. He says something that I have no translation for, but is probably an insult, and slaps a panel on the outside wall. The door closes, and I’m alone in the dark.

  Panic flutters in my chest. I have to remind myself that this is good news. This is what I want. I need to be alone.

  Oh God, I need this to work.

  I run my tongue along my gums, searching for the small packet I pushed there. Still there. I pull it out and rub it against my tunic to dry it, then press it between my lips to hold onto it while I look for the air filters to this room.

  I’d noticed on the elders’ ship that it’d had air vents much like my old apartment back on Earth did. That had got me thinking about a game plan and what I could do against the Little Green Men. They have more technology than I do. They have guns and they have the numbers, so I have to be sneaky…and fearless.

  I find a vent near the edge of the floor and dig my fingernails into it until I locate what feels like a fastening of some kind, and then rip it off. I tear a few fingernails, but that is a small price to pay. With shaking hands, I peel the thin layer of plastic off of the packet and remove half of the contents.

  One part is a computer part, much like a USB drive, that will allow the elders’ ship to access this ship, provided I can find a compatible slot to plug it into.

  The other part is a small square of filter that I’ve pulled from the elders’ ship. After hundreds of years of being in the atmosphere, it’s filled with concentrated nalium. I know that there is an element in the atmosphere of Not-Hoth that makes it impossible for humans to survive for long. There are trace elements of it in the atmosphere, and within a week, we succumbed to sickness, our bodies growing weak and our minds disoriented. Our khui adapts us and allows us to live planet-side. Of course, planet-side, there’s only trace amounts of nalium in the air. But after hundreds of years, the ship’s filters are full of the element. And if I add it to the air supply in my room, I’m hoping it’ll poison my guard.

  The computer assured me that the tiny amount that I drop into the air filtering system is enough to do it, but the computer’s also three hundred (and some change) years old. It could be wrong. This ship could be more self-sufficient than I hope.

  A million things can go wrong. All I can do is cross my fingers.

  I replace the filter cover and sniff the air. I don’t smell anything. The air doesn’t taste weird. I have no idea if it’s working or not, if the poison is seeping into the air of my small chamber or throughout the ship.

  I tuck my body against the wall and wait.

  • • •

  Hours later, I’m in a frenzy of worry. There’s no difference in the air that I can tell, and all I have left is the small bit of computer I’m supposed to somehow interface to one that’s three hundred years younger.

  This is the stupidest plan ever.

  Despair threatens to overwhelm me. I ignore it, because there is no Plan C. This has to work. This has to.

  A mental image of Aehako’s fallen body flashes before my eyes, and I clench my fists, determined not to cry. He’s not dead. He’s not.

  I’d know if he was, wouldn’t I? But we’re not connected by khui. We’re only connected by heart and mind and choice. We don’t have that deeper bond. We never will because of my body—

  Someone fumbles at the door.

  I jerk to my feet, my stiff muscles complaining. My body’s instantly on alert, my heart hammering in my chest. Did they decide to take my offer after all? The broken ship for our freedom?

  Then again, what is to stop them from taking the ship and us? Or taking the ship and then coming back and snaring us at a later date? If they’re into slavery, it’s not as if they’re upstanding people anyhow. They can’t be trusted.

  The door slides open, and the guard walks in.

  No, he staggers. His steps trip, but he manages to catch himself, and he raises the gun. “Come on,” he says. His words sound slurred.<
br />
  My hands fly to my mouth.

  Oh my God.

  It worked. He’s sick. I’m immune to it because of my khui, but it’s affecting the guard. Maybe it’s affecting everyone.

  Hope flowers in my chest like a sunburst.

  I get to my feet. He stumbles forward again, and I dart behind him. He turns groggily, and I kick the back of his knee. The guard falls forward, weapon clattering to the ground. I grab it, and race to the other side of my cell. There’s a place to put the hand that’s similar to my laser cannon, and I aim it at my enemy and fire before I can think twice about it.

  The gun blasts, shooting forth a bolt like liquid flame. It slices through the guard’s head like butter, and he slumps to the floor, dead.

  My throat closes and my nostrils flare as the hot smell of charred flesh saturates the room. I did it. I killed him. I’m not even sorry. These monsters don’t care if I live or die, so I’m not going to waste a minute on regret.

  I step over him, clutching the gun, and head for the door. It’s slid shut again, and no amount of me slapping my hand on the panel will open it. Shit. This wasn’t something I considered.

  I turn and look back at the fallen guard. His arm is extended out to one side, his rough palm face down. Oh, man. Swallowing hard, I lock the gun under my arm, aim, and shoot again.

  The dismembered hand flies across the room.

  Ugh.

  I swallow hard and move to pick it up, then lay it across the panel. The door opens a moment later, and I step into the hall.

  I’m one step closer to freedom. You can do this, Kira, I tell myself. Just find the bridge, find a place to wire the two computers together remotely, and you’re golden.

  There are two doors on one side of this narrow hall, and a door at the far end. I have no idea where I’m going, which means checking every door. I move quietly toward the first one, slap the dead guy’s hand on the panel, and hoist my gun, ready to fire, as the door slides open.

  It’s a small room that looks like a storage closet. Of course it is.

  Breathing a little easier, I pick up my extra hand and move down to the next door. This door leads to a cargo bay that makes me shudder with bad memories. It reminds me too much of my first time here.