Sahvin's Mate

by Clarissa Lake

  "Is Nalina ever going to get better?" Lanimer asked on the third day as Orin sponged her face yet another time.

  "I hope so," Orin answered in a grim tone. How the hell should I know? He was no physician. He had been a farmer before the Tregans dragged him from the only home he'd ever known.

  "She can't die. Mother told me that she would take care of me before she died, and it was Father's wish, too. It came to me here." He pointed to his head. "... Before their essence left their bodies. Nalina has to be all right. She just has to."

  "I'm doing the best I can," Orin told him. "But I don't have much medicine in my pack, and what I have isn't much good to Nalina. All we can do is wait."

  Lanimer nodded thoughtfully. "Do you have parents, Orin?"

  "I did once." Orin frowned and sadness filled his eyes. "I wasn't supposed to. Laboratory-bred fighting stock aren't raised like other children. Only my host mother ran away from Tregas and the project before I was born. She settled on one of the farm colonies inside Federation Territory. The Tregans seized control of that system a few months ago, and they found me. The authorities hauled me away, but my mother and father escaped. I don't know where they are or if they still live." Orin sighed.

  "They tried to make me a soldier . . . Tried to make me forget they tore me from my home. But all of their training and brainwashing couldn't make me forget or make me like the others ...." Orin stopped suddenly. His eyes narrowed, and his mouth tightened at the unspoken memories of torture that clouded his thoughts.

  He remembered being hung naked by the shackles on his wrists for hours while his tormentors took turns using pain sticks on him until he screamed in pain.

  Or they would flog him with a whip that delivered an electric shock every time they struck him with it. He tried to resist until he realized that they would just kill him if he didn’t swear allegiance to the Tregan Empire. So he did, but only to save his life.

  "Why?"

  "I don't really know." Orin shrugged and slowly came back to the present. "The brainwashing didn't work. They couldn't make me a killer for their reasons---and it makes me sick to watch the others kill for pleasure. Killing isn't fun at all---not even when you think you have a good reason---I know that now."

  "You killed the other Tregans, didn't you?" Lanimer asked suddenly.

  "Yeah. It was the only way. I just couldn't watch them kill you and Nalina. "They had no right ...."

  "I wish you had killed them before they killed my father and co-mothers. I wish they didn't die ...." Lanimer's eyes grew bright with tears that he blinked away, trying to hide them from his new friend. He wasn't a baby anymore.

  "So do I, kid," he murmured huskily against the sudden tightness in his throat. "So do I."

  THREE

  Late afternoon the fourth day, Orin and Lanimer left Nalina asleep in the pump house while they went to forage for fresh fruits and vegetables in the fields. They found enough food for several meals---some starchy tubers, nuts, and a kind of juicy, mango-like fruit from some cultivated bushes on the far side of the agricomplex.

  When they returned to the bunker, Lanimer stopped Orin as he was about to go inside to check Nalina.

  "Don't go in, Orin" Lanimer whispered urgently, tugging at his shirt sleeve. "She found your laser, and she's waiting to shoot you when you open the door. She thinks you came to kill us."

  Orin hunkered down to the boy's level and looked the precocious little fellow in the eyes. "Do you believe that?"

  "No! I told you I didn't before," Lanimer scolded.

  "Then will you help me get the laser from Nalina, so she won't hurt me with it? I like her, and I don't want to hurt her." As he said it, Orin knew it was true. He did like her. He more than liked her; he wanted her.

  Lanimer nodded, and Orin told him his plan.

  Orin crept toward the opening from the side and stood with his body flattened against the warm concrete beside the metal pump house door. Then he signaled Lanimer. The child screamed to Nalina for help. Without thinking, she lunged through the opening. Orin seized her around the waist and snatched the laser from her hand as he caught her.

  With a terror-stricken shriek, Nalina clawed and kicked him desperately, trying to get away. Orin was nearly sixty kilos heavier and at least twenty centimeters taller than she. It took little effort for him to quickly end her attack. Her screams died, and she sagged against him, trembling with fear. She expected him to do something terrible to her at any moment. But he didn't. Instead, he held her gently but securely in his arms and turned her around to face him. Nalina shrank back from him, cursing his Tregan heritage. She raised her dark eyes to his, cringing, waiting for the blows she was sure would come after her attempt to kill him. Tears glistened on her thick, dark lashes.

  Through gentle hazel eyes, Orin stared into her nearly black ones. "Don't look at me like that!" he flared in Aledan and gave her a little shake. "I'm not like them! I won't hurt you. Believe me; I'm trying to help you."

  She knit her brows and cocked her head to one side, uncomprehending, suspicious of his deceivingly gentle tone. Lanimer's family had all spoken Zevian to her, and she never bothered to learn more than a few words of Aledan.

  Orin arched a tawny brow and made a wry face, sighing as he realized she didn't understand. He looked down at her for a moment, holding her firmly with one hand, and then he pressed his other palm to her forehead. Her brow was cool for the first time since he had found her. He nodded in satisfaction and smoothed her tangled hair almost tenderly with his massive hand.

  Lanimer, who had been watching the exchange, came to his aid once again. Chattering in Zevian for a moment, he fell silent. It then occurred to Orin that the little boy was talking to his nurse by sending images directly into her mind through telepathy. Though still wary, Nalina looked up at Orin again, through different eyes so to speak. Seeing the change in her attitude, Orin loosened his grip on her arm and gently coaxed her to come inside the bunker out of the hot sun.

  Sitting on the cool floor, they shared a simple meal in silence with Nalina still watching Orin through suspicious eyes. While Lanimer gathered up the left-over food scraps and carried them outside, Orin rummaged through his pack until he found a plastic hairbrush at the bottom.

  Nalina watched nervously as he came over and sat down beside her. Orin gave her a sad smile as she cringed from him. Slowly, he reached toward her with a clean, stiff bristled brush and started to brush her tangled ebony hair, murmuring in Aledan, hoping to soothe her. It took quite a while to straighten out her matted hair, but he didn't mind. He had no place to go and nothing more pressing to occupy his time.

  Finally, Orin leaned back to survey his work with a grin. Nalina's hair was a lot longer than it had looked before he'd brushed out the tangles. It hung thick and straight just past her shoulders.

  "Beautiful," Orin told her.

  She squinted curiously, not understanding, and turned to Lanimer for interpretation.

  "He thinks you're pretty," Lanimer giggled.

  Nalina flashed Orin a fearful look and searched his face anxiously.

  Without even being a mind reader, he knew what she was probably thinking. "Damn!” he swore under his breath and shook his head. "No, Nalina," he chided gently. He patted her shoulder reassuringly, got up and walked out of the bunker, heading toward the desert.

  What could I expect her to think? He asked himself as he sauntered aimlessly in long easy strides toward the edge of the lush greenery. He was a Tregan in her eyes, however, misplaced. The Tregan Empire controlled a rogue dominion that was hated everywhere in the seven sectors of the Galaxy under Federation control.

  On Zevus Mar as on a hundred other worlds they’d raided, the Tregan soldiers had raped and murdered more than one woman since they landed. Orin shuddered at the memory of what he had seen Damon do to a Zevian girl in Elran before he finally killed her.

  Orin stopped walking at the edge of the complex where the desert began. He kicked a rock with his heavy boot and looke
d out across the barren wasteland. Shimmering heat waves rose from the hot sand.

  No, he didn't blame Nalina for being scared of a big, hulking brute like him. If his looks and size weren't enough to frighten her, his shirt and trousers still carried the Tregan insignia and rank patches. Viciously, Orin reached for the patch on his right sleeve and tore it off. He tore all the other Tregan markings from his uniform as well. Dropping them into a small pile on the sand, he aimed his laser and turned them all to ashes.

  Orin Hart was not and would never be a Tregan Raider again. He was his own man once more, and he had just discovered something really worth fighting for...

  FOUR

  About sixty miles from Elran a small desert mining village, life in the abandoned pump house fell into a daily routine for the odd threesome sheltered there.

  Nalina still treated Orin with wary aloofness, but she didn't seem as frightened of him as she was fifteen days ago. Maybe it helped that he took the trouble to learn some Zevian from them. Now Orin could talk directly to her without needing the little boy to translate.

  Their days were busy. They foraged for fresh food from the cultivated fields and tried to coax some scrawny bushes to bear fruit by carrying water to them. The previous bombardments had knocked out the automated irrigation system, the house and the other outbuildings. Many of the plants were dying for lack of water in the scorching desert heat. So the three watered as many plants as possible to keep them producing the food, they needed to survive.

  During the evening meals in the darkened pump house, they each talked about their past lives. They never dared to look toward the future because it didn't seem very promising for any of them.

  At barely twenty, Nalina was orphaned during the bombardments at Lake Lessat. The village had been razed while Nalina was working at Mikal's agricomplex. She lived there with him and his two young wives, serving as governess for Lanimer. Mikal's two wives worked---Lania as an interpreter at Medrin Starport, and Merris worked in the mine outside of Elran. Mikal had been a Master Technician at the Elran Medical Clinic. He'd been hoping one day to complete his physician's training so he could become a physician like his old friend Hankura.

  "All those dreams are gone now," Nalina's voice was thick with emotion. "He and his wives were all I had left. I think Mikal was beginning to care for me---maybe enough to make me his third wife. I could have been housemate for all their children. Merris' baby would have been born just before the winter solstice. Maybe next year I could have born a third child for Mikal." She sniffled. "Now they're all dead. No one even buried them."

  "I buried them---side by side," he told her. "I'm sorry they died. I thought they would make it, I wanted them to make it."

  "So you buried them to salve your conscience?" Nalina's tone was sarcastic.

  "I'm not like them! I hate them!" Orin asserted.

  "If you hate the Tregans so much, why do you wear their uniform? Why do you look like them? What makes you different from those murderers?"

  "My genes may have been strung together in the same pattern as theirs, but Nalina, I wasn't raised as an animal and conditioned to become a ruthless killer from childhood as they were.”

  "I grew up on Veldis Lar before the Tregans took it. My host mother and her mate raised me with the same love they would have given a naturally conceived son. We were warned in time for my parents to escape, but the soldiers found me. Because I looked like the other soldiers, the Commander General had me dragged from my home in chains. They tried to break me on Tregas. Two months of brainwashing and survival training and they thought they could make me into a soldier. Ha! That kind of brainwashing only works with the young ones before the mental shield is fully matured. They figured pain would work instead."

  Orin shuddered. "I pretended to be like them so they wouldn't kill me. I didn't want to die. Then, they sent me here to kill people who never did anything to me. But, they're the ones who made my life hell, so I killed them."

  He fell silent for a time, staring out into the darkness through the doorway of the bunker. The things he had seen since he came to Zevus Mar gave him many sleepless nights. He could still hear that Zevian girl screaming in his dreams as Damon tortured her. He should have killed Damon then---before he had the chance to hurt anyone else. But then, they would have killed him on the spot.

  Orin wished he could stop feeling guilty. At least he had saved Nalina and Lanimer. They were safe now, and they could take care of themselves.

  "You won't have to worry about me anymore, Nalina. I'll be gone by sunset tomorrow," he said abruptly.

  She gasped. "You're just going to leave us here?"

  "Do you want me to stay?" Orin's eyes mocked her, and he laughed. "It's been two weeks, and you're still terrified of me. You've been scared so long; you see only a soldier---not a man. You'll be glad to see the last of me."

  Even in the darkness, Orin could see that she wasn't glad at all. But she was too proud or too stubborn to say so.

  "Do you want me to stay, Nalina?"

  "I don't know," she murmured with a defensive shrug.

  She gave a sharp cry as Orin seized her arm and forced her to look into his eyes with his other hand. "Don't you, Nalina," he demanded in a hushed whisper? Her eyes went wide with fear, and she shrank from his grip.

  Orin let her go before his emotions took control of him. He jumped up and stalked out of the bunker into the cool night air. What had he expected? He might as well face it now as later. That's how they would all feel about him.

  As a deserter, he was a lost man with nowhere to belong and no one to care.

  FIVE

  Nalina looked up at Orin, he thought, somewhat contritely when he came back to the bunker the next morning. Maybe it was relief he saw in her eyes as she searched his face. He wanted to hold her in his arms and cuddle her head against his chest. He would do anything to protect her, even die if that’s what it took. How could she not know that?

  She could see it in his eyes if she only looked, but then maybe she didn’t understand.

  Orin shook his head and sighed, lowering himself to the floor against the opposite wall from where she was sitting. He'd come back to say goodbye. That was a mistake. It would have been easier to walk away if he hadn't looked into her soft dark eyes again. Orin gave Nalina a sad smile and reached into the plastic bucket beside him for one of the last pieces of fruit there.

  He tossed it to her, and she caught it, offering him a shy smile. She bit into it as Orin watched intently. She looked good in the red suit he had found in the wreckage of the house. Her gown was in tatters, and he had nothing that would fit her small frame. With a couple of cuts and tucks, Nalina had made the boy's tunic, and pants fit with some ornamental pins from her gown.

  Orin hadn't thought her pretty at first, but she was soft and feminine. In her own way, she was very attractive. At times, she was almost beautiful---especially when she smiled at Lanimer. If only...

  He shook his head and got up. There were no if-onlies in his present, only reality. "I'm leaving now. You'd better go out to the orchard tomorrow and see if any more kwashes are ripe." He bent to pick up one of the sweet red and yellow globes for himself. "There's plenty of food. You two will be fine here."

  Nalina nodded but did not meet his eyes. Disappointment stabbed Orin. She wasn't going to ask him to stay.

  Lanimer watched them both, sensing the undercurrent between them. Even Orin's strong mental shield couldn't entirely hide his emotions from the young telepath. Sometimes, adults were just too dumb to see what they should do. It wasn't their fault they weren't mind readers like him. He wanted to tell them a thing or two. But, he knew from experience that it wouldn't do any good. Adults didn't care that he was a telepath. He was just a kid. What did he know?

  Zev was in its yellow morning phase as Nalina and Lanimer watched Orin pack his gear. When he finished, they followed him out of the bunker with murmurings about picking some fruit before it got any hotter.

  Orin stop
ped short, barely two meters from the doorway as a whining sound filled the air around them. Nalina and Lanimer bumped into him.

  "What is it, Orin?" Nalina asked in alarm.

  "A military transporter," he told her grimly. "There could be anywhere from six to twenty men inside. Back in the bunker, both of you! If they start looking around, they'll know someone is living here. They won't stop looking until they find us."

  Orin didn't add that he doubted they would take any prisoners. By now, the military would have figured that he had killed the other soldiers at Mikal's agricomplex. He would be lucky if they killed him on sight. Otherwise, he would wish for death many times over.

  Inside the pump house, Orin took out all their weapons and put a fresh power pack in his ion rifle. He gave Nalina his military issue laser, which was more powerful than hers then put hers into his pouch for a backup weapon. Then, he strapped on his canvas pouch belt and put several extra power packs for his rifle inside it.

  "Nalina, stay here and keep Lanimer inside with you. Don't come out for anything until I tell you to. If they come, shoot them . . . And if I don't come back stay inside until morning. Maybe they'll think I was the only one here."

  As Orin turned to go, he felt her hand on his arm. There was fear in her eyes, but it was a different kind of fear than he'd seen before. She was afraid for him not of him.

  Mother of Life! She was so small and vulnerable. He hated to leave her unprotected. But what else could he do? His best chance to protect all of them was to second guess the other Tregans and try to draw them away from the bunker before they got close enough to see it.

  They were already too damn close to suit him. He didn't dare think what they could do to Nalina and Lanimer before he could stop them. Orin looked away from her dark eyes as the vision of Damon torturing that girl shook him again. He shuddered as he saw Nalina in her place.