Wager: A Sci-Fi Romance (The Jekh Saga Book 4)

by H. E. Trent

  Grimacing, Marco stepped into the barn, but not toward the chickens. He tried to avoid agitating those feathered demons at all costs. There was a crate of tools he’d left in there a week prior, and he’d been missing a certain scanner. “I don’t have the best ear for languages,” he said. “Salehi would probably be able to tell the differences, though.”

  “You speak only English?”

  He snorted and wriggled the scanner out of the container of junk. After blowing off the coat of dust that had settled on top, he said, “English, Italian, and a very little bit of Slovenian. My nonna was from Monfalcone. She never bothered learning English. I think she wanted to punish us.”

  “Punish?” Her nose crinkled, and the line in her forehead deepened again. When she was interested, she was fully interested, and didn’t pretend otherwise. He wasn’t used to getting that from women. He was used to polite disinterest, or interest only long enough for them to figure out he couldn’t give them what they wanted.

  “Why?” she asked.

  “She never wanted to move to the US.” Standing, he tossed the scanner from one hand to the other and rolled his gaze to the ceiling. “I guess she had a happy little life in Monfalcone, but Granddad said they had to go, and that was that.”

  “Oh.” Her forehead smoothed and she shifted her weight again. “Perhaps she…felt like I did when we had to leave Little Gitano.”

  “That could be true. At least you had Trigrian and your sisters, though. Nonna left her whole family in Italy. Your English is very good, by the way.” Realizing how that must have sounded, he looked down at her, and put his hands up in a conciliatory gesture. “Okay, that’s not a compliment. You didn’t really have a choice but to learn, I guess.”

  She shrugged the shoulder of her good arm again and looked at her feet. “I suppose speaking English is no worse than speaking Jekhani. Our language is bits and pieces snatched from our human forebears muddled together with very basic Tyneali. Our language has no real identity. You’ll never find anyone here who has any particular pride for speaking it.”

  “Huh. I haven’t noticed that, but I guess I’m not sensitive to that kind of stuff until folks tell me what I’m not seeing.”

  “I’m boring you.”

  “You kidding me?” He laughed, and the echo through the barn made the hand-pecking demons squawk, and Sera’s lips twitched into something that almost looked like a smile. “You’re not boring me at all. I love trivia.” Loved learning in general, really. He’d been overwhelmed by new information since arriving on Jekh, but even when he felt as though he were drowning in minutiae, he was also genuinely in his element. Information was one of his currencies.

  “I’ve heard there have been some small movements toward introducing older tongues into cultural education programs, though I imagine that’s not much of a priority right now with everyone working to rebuild the society.”

  “Which tongues?”

  “Mmm.” She swayed some more and looked down at her feet. Jekhan dress, Terran boots. Mrs. McGarry must have sent them. They were blue rubber boots printed with pictures of cherries. “Hindi, mostly, though there were a few others.”

  “Why did they pick Hindi?”

  “The largest groups the Tyneali abducted from Earth were migrants from India that became your Romani. And when they went back over the centuries for more breeding stock, they took people of similar genetics from what became Spain and France, I believe.”

  “Ah, that’s right.” Marco scratched his head and leaned against the support column next to him. “Like I said, I’m not so great with the languages. I forgot that Romani wasn’t a language that came out of nowhere.”

  “You can’t overlay modern Romani languages with the Jekhan tongue and find an extraordinary number of equivalencies anymore, but many of the sounds are the same.”

  “Do you want to learn Hindi?”

  “I…” Her brow furrowed again, and he wondered if he was frustrating her with the conversation. He’d never tried to hold one with her before, and she wasn’t much for talking to men in general, but he was never quite sure how to behave around her. The usual rules of politeness didn’t apply.

  “Listen, you don’t have to answer that,” he said.

  “No, the question is fine.” Adjusting the strap of her sling, she walked toward the barn door. “I don’t know the answer. I’m curious, but I don’t know if I have the time. There are so many other things I’d like to learn. I wouldn’t be averse to Elken learning in school, however.”

  “Maybe by the time they expand your school here, they’ll have a bunch of languages for you to pick from.”

  “There’s supposed to be a meeting,” came her muffled voice as she rounded the doorway.

  He counted to five to give her some space, then followed. She was heading toward the house, sans egg. “A meeting where?”

  “At the meet-shop,” she said without looking back. “About the school. I’ll go.”

  “When is the meeting?”

  “Tomorrow after dinner. I hope that Amy or Trigrian won’t be too busy to drive me. It’s a very long walk to Little Gitano.”

  “I guess if push comes to shove, you could go early and spend the night.”

  “I could, yes, but that would disturb my routine and I…don’t like that.”

  “Oh.”

  She was more than halfway to the house, so he stopped there on the path and let her continue on her way. He watched her, though, until she stepped into the house and closed the door.

  Then he turned to head back toward The Tin Can, dissecting the conversation in his brain as he went, and wondering if he’d said too much or not enough of the right things. He hated feeling like the Jehkhan women were afraid to talk to him, but he didn’t know what else he could do except treat them like aloof cats and wait for them to be comfortable enough to come to him.

  Luke was tossing his full duffel bag down the corridor when Marco stepped into the parked ship.

  Cocking an eyebrow, he hit the hatch button. As the door cranked closed, he watched his brother retreat into his cabin, and then emerge with another bag.

  “Do you really need that much shit?” Marco asked.

  Luke winced and passed a hand through his short hair. He’d grown out the crew cut he had when they’d arrived on Jekh, but still preferred to keep his trim crisp and tidy. He may have left the FBI, but it would take a while for the FBI to completely leave him.

  “Hard to know what we’re gonna end up needing,” Luke said. “This is the first time we’ve done a trip like this, so I’m trying to cover all the bases. I’ve got clothes, weapons, some paper maps of the rainy region that some travelers in Little Gitano helped us compile, technological odds and ends…”

  “Snacks?”

  Luke shrugged. “Okay, maybe there are some snacks. Sera makes a mean trail mix.”

  “For real? I haven’t had any.”

  “That’s ’cause Court locks the carton away. We don’t eat any except for in emergency situations like this.”

  “What’s in the trail mix? I thought Jekhans weren’t partial to nuts.”

  “It’s not that they’re not partial to them, but rather that they can’t digest certain ones from Earth. The mix has some little crouton-donut things made from some of Headron’s dishe bread, plus shredded coconut, raisins, dates, almonds, and I think there’s a bit of honey, too.”

  “That sounds amazing.” Marco gave his growling belly a pat and rolled his eyes. “You’d think I didn’t just fuckin’ eat.”

  “Your appetite always did have a hair trigger. Maybe if we stop talking about food, you’ll forget you’re hungry.”

  “Not likely.” Marco edged past his brother in the narrow hall and headed straight to the galley. They didn’t keep the little kitchen particularly well stocked, but there were usually some grab-and-go items in the cabinets that they could eat when they were too busy to stop working, or when they were too famished to last until breakfast.

  In
a low crate, he found a box of granola and took two of the bars. He grunted. “Speaking of Sera,” Marco called back to his brother, “I saw her a few minutes ago in the barn. She’d dropped an egg. Wanted it for Elken’s breakfast.”

  “Did she get another?”

  “No. Was probably the last one. You’re getting up early. Can you check the nests before you take off? See if there’s any other in there? I guess Elken wakes up before the sun.”

  “Damn. Still?” Luke leaned against the doorway with his arms folded over his chest.

  “What do you mean still?”

  The hatch door creaked down and they both paused and listened.

  “Just me,” Salehi called out. “I’ll lock up. I’ve got Escobar with me. His ride’ll pick him up in the morning.”

  “Ah.” Luke waved down the hallway, then looked at Marco again. “You don’t remember that when the Merridons first arrived how much of a problem Sera had getting Elken to sleep?”

  Marco shook his head. “No. And why would you?”

  “I guess I’m more observant than the average asshole.”

  Given his former occupation, that probably went without saying.

  “For two or three weeks, I think, every time I went into the main house, Elken would be awake. Didn’t matter what time. She was way off-schedule. I guess that’s a consequence of her being born on a spaceship and spending most of her life on space stations.”

  “But, so did Ais.” Marco peeled back the foil wrapper on the first of the bars and took a big bite. “Owen never said anything about Ais having those kinds of problems.”

  “I think Ais had a little more time to acclimate before she came here, or maybe the problem is worse for kids. I don’t know. Sera had to work really hard to get her on any kind of schedule. Like, she would purposely try to wear the kid out right before dinner, so that after she took her bath, she’d pass out.”

  “I guess that’s working now?”

  “Kinda. She’s on a schedule, but she gets up at four. That’s gotta hurt.”

  No shit.

  Marco grimaced and ate the second half of the bar. “No wonder I never see Sera at night.”

  “What about Sera?” Escobar lingered in the corridor behind Luke.

  “We were talking about how she keeps grandma hours because Elken has a disrespectful sleeping schedule.”

  “Ouch. That must hurt. That was one of the things I hated most about being in the military.”

  “Me, too. I hated getting up at dawn everyday,” Salehi called out from somewhere-or-other. The resounding echo of his voice, however, made Marco suspect that he was in the cargo hold. There wasn’t much back there, but the space was used to store construction materials in between projects. Since Erin, Headron, and Esteben’s house had been completed, the space hadn’t been used nearly as much, but there were other projects planned for the near future. Owen and Ais needed a larger house, and Marco hoped they got one soon so that he could have their cottage. He’d probably have to fight Luke for the little, one-room house, but he was reasonably sure he’d win. Luke fought dirty, but Marco had thirty pounds on him.

  “Maybe she’ll grow out of it soon,” Escobar said. “I can’t really speak from experience, neither having kids nor spending much time around them. My abuela made sure to train me into a great sleeper as a kid.”

  “I know what that was like. That was the only way our mother could get shit done,” Marco said. “Backfired, though. I always slept through the garbage trucks coming every Monday morning. Used to drive my ma nuts.” He peeled back the wrapper on the second of the bars and broke off a piece. Not very satisfying, but he’d survive until morning, even if he did now have eggs on the brain. It’d been forever since he’d had cheese eggs.

  Could tuck some into one of those flaky pastries Headron makes…

  Marco’s stomach growled again.

  Escobar strode into the room and pulled out a chair at the narrow table. “So. What’s the skinny on Sera, anyway.”

  “Hmm?”

  “Tell me stuff about her.”

  “Why?”

  Escobar grinned. “The usual reasons a guy would ask about a lady.”

  “Don’t get yourself in trouble, man,” Luke called out from the hall. Marco could hear things being tossed around again. He was probably packing more stuff.

  “How’s that trouble?” Escobar asked him.

  “Trigrian may seem like the reasonable, laid-back type most of the time, but trust me—he can get angry the same as anyone else. Threaten his kids, his lovers, or his sisters, and I’m pretty sure he’ll dig a hole and bury you in it while you’re still breathing.”

  Escobar whistled low and crooked his thumb in Luke’s general direction. “I wanna say he has a flair for the dramatic. Tell me that’s all.”

  Marco grimaced. “He can be pretty dramatic. That’s a pretty well-established Cipriani trait, but usually the drama is only there to disarm you before a really shitty truth.”

  “He’s really not gonna let anyone near his sisters?” He added in a murmur, “Maybe the guys in town were right.”

  At that curious statement, Marco shoved the remnant of the snack bar into his mouth and shrugged. He considered Trigrian to be his friend, but Marco didn’t ask the guy about his sisters except on the most benign subjects possible. Had he given thought to pursuing one or another? Sure, but he wouldn’t go about any pursuit aggressively. He’d probably miss out, but at least he wouldn’t lose friends in the process. He couldn’t afford to be friendless on a frontier planet like Jekh.

  “If you’re really interested, I think the up-and-up thing to do would be talking to Trigrian first,” Salehi said.

  “Is that a good idea if she’s not even gonna give me the time of day?” Escobar asked.

  “Good point.”

  “Maybe what you need is for someone to be your intermediary, then.” Marco filled his cup with water from the filter tank and bumped the chiller unit door closed. “Get one of the ladies to talk you up or whatever and see what happens.”

  Nodding, Escobar rubbed his chin. “Which lady, though?”

  “Anyone who isn’t Precious,” Luke shouted. “Unless you want Sera to give you an outright no, because that’s sure as shit’s gonna happen if you send her out to sing your praises. That shrew would have better luck selling a shit sandwich.”

  “That’s cold.”

  “He’s telling the truth.” Marco walked to the door. “She’s a saboteur. That’s why Luke and I keep her out of our business for the most part.”

  “Why would she do that?”

  Marco waved a dismissive hand and started for his room. “Payback. Shit goes back years. Maybe ask her about it someday. I’m sure she’d love to tell you everything, and probably in lurid detail.”

  Everyone else knew the sordid details about Marco’s failed hookups—about how he’d missed an overt advance from the most infamous cougar in Boston. Or about how he’d unintentionally declined a proposition from a supposedly famous pop singer because even if he’d known who she was, he didn’t know what giving someone a “pearl necklace” meant.

  Most of Boston probably knew what a dud he was. One more person knowing wasn’t going to break him.

  CHAPTER SIX

  At around four the next morning, Sera turned herself out of the narrow bed in the small bedroom she shared with Elken and stood beside it for a minute, rubbing sleep out of her eyes. The movement triggered a sort of recurring déjà vu. That bedroom had been hers and Ara’s when they were children—when they weren’t piled into bed with their mother, anyway. Mother had been so patient with them, and Sera wished she could do the same for Elken, but having anyone in her bed was triggering. The movements in the middle of the night scared her—made her think she was going to be grabbed and forced to submit to yet another stranger who wanted her body and gave no care for the fact that there was a brain within it.

  Elken, the sweet child, was still asleep and half sprawled over the edge of the
bed with the top of her head pointed toward the floor. Sera didn’t know how she could sleep with her blood pooling in her head like that, but Elken did so often. She carefully nudged the child into a more horizontal position and said a prayer of thanks when Elken didn’t budge.

  Like every other morning, Sera positioned her sling over her body. Pulling air through her clenched teeth, she grabbed her limp left arm by the wrist. Pinning the forearm against her belly, she fitted the sling. She gave the fingers of her left hand experimental wriggles and gasped at the cascade of pain that seemed to ricochet through the bones of her wrist and forearm.

  Dorro had said that she needed to keep exercising the muscles. She needed to move them, even if doing so hurt. The therapy would only work if she did her part, but the therapy hurt almost as much as when her arm got crushed. The shoulder was so weak that her back always ached from the weight of her arm. That was why the doctor had put the sling on her—to better distribute the weight. He’d feared the sling would turn into a crutch of sorts, and perhaps it had, but she couldn’t deal with the pain of exercise. Not yet.

  Soon, she promised herself.

  She crept quietly out of the bedroom, shut the door, and padded to the kitchen.

  Soon, she promised herself again. If she made exercise a part of her routine, she wouldn’t be able to ignore it. She wouldn’t be able to go to bed having left anything undone, and she did miss being able to use both arms. She wanted to be able to hold her little girl tighter, and to not clumsily drop eggs that could be Elken’s breakfast.

  Hoping the chickens had laid a few early gifts, Sera moved like a ghost into the dark kitchen and stepped into the backless shoes she kept by the side door.

  Her sisters and Courtney kept the floors immaculately clean, though probably for different reasons. Courtney’s fastidiousness had to do with there always being young children in the house who practiced a floor-to-mouth observation of things. Sera’s sisters kept the floors speck-free because doing so was a very Jekhan thing. They preferred to be barefooted in their homes, and the practice was one she’d missed when her existence had been space stations, dirty internment camps, and holding cells she could never determine if they were in space or on land. Sex slaves were moved around so much that after a while, they stopped keeping track of their whereabouts. Where they were didn’t matter because no one was going to rescue them.