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

by H. E. Trent

  The last rough census conducted by the Jekhan government about two months prior indicated that there were hundreds of vehicles on Jekh with the capacity to fly at that altitude, though most people lacked the resources to use them.

  “Could be. Can you send them a hail?” Owen asked.

  “Maybe. It’d be a general communication transmitted to everyone in the area, but I don’t think we’ve got too many folks eavesdropping right now. No one lurks in this part of space anymore. Peacekeepers make the risk too high for the pirates. There were no better soldiers than Jekhans with grudges.” Jekh may not have had strong armed forces before the Terrans invaded, but they were getting up to speed fast, and had something would-be intruders didn’t—moral authority.

  Luke pushed the requisite buttons to send a hail and turned on the mic. “Hey, ship down there. Need any assistance? We’re flying about a hundred kilometers from the exosphere.”

  There were three clicks, as if a call was trying to connect on an old-fashioned phone line and wasn’t quite transferring the way it should.

  “Try again,” Owen said, reaching across Luke to take the ship into a lower orbit.

  Luke repeated the query to the other ship and waited.

  Only one click that time. “I do not require assistance,” came the deep, resonant, annoyed response. “May I ask who you are? Your accent sounds Terran.”

  “Yeah. American.” Luke shrugged. “Boston, specifically. That’s why my o’s sound like a’s and my r’s sound like h’s.”

  Owen snorted. He certainly knew the accent well. He had the same one.

  “Where are you from?” Luke asked.

  “Earth.”

  “Just Earth? Not gonna be more specific than that, huh?”

  Owen muted the mic. “There’s a limited number of Terrans who are allowed to be on Jekh or anywhere in jurisdictional airspace right now.”

  Luke nodded, getting his point. The guy might not have been so keen on revealing identifying details about himself if he wasn’t on the planet legally.

  Luke hit the mic button right on time to hear the man say, “I see no need for specifics.”

  The metal floor panel squeaked behind them and Luke turned to see Ais on approach with her brow furrowed and Michael cradled against her chest, asleep. Finally.

  “Who is that?” she asked.

  Owen pointed to the black speck way down below.

  “Who are you?” she asked, not bothering to look where her husband pointed. “I know someone who sounds like you. In fact, I spoke to him yesterday.”

  Furrowing his brow, Owen took the ship a bit closer to the planet. “Nah,” he muttered. “No fuckin’ way.”

  “Alex?” she asked.

  “Ais?” the man returned on a delay. The flatness that had previously resided in his tone had retreated, and the pitch of surprise replaced it.

  “What are you doing?” she asked. “Why are you here? You said everything was fine at home.”

  “Well, everything is fine. What the hell are you doing in space?”

  “Looking for my mother like I told you. Why are you here? You’re an illegal.”

  Luke sucked some air through his teeth. That seemed a nasty thing to call someone, but Alex was Ais’s half-brother, and coming from her, the word probably wasn’t intended to convey any nasty intent. Ais had to try hard to be nasty, and rarely succeeded.

  Alex cleared his throat and said nothing for a few seconds. The clicks and chirps from his ship’s controls practically echoed in the stillness. “I’m simply handling some business.”

  Luke cut Owen a that’s bullshit look.

  Owen massaged the bridge of his nose and shook his head. “How long have you been around handling that so-called business?”

  “Doesn’t matter.”

  “Yeah? Where’d you get the ship? I don’t think the last one you had had the capacity to fly at that altitude.”

  “Friends.”

  Luke snorted, and muttered, “Yeah, that’s exactly what I say whenever I had to use my five-finger discount.”

  “Who is muttering with such disrespect?” Hauge asked, his indignant, flat tone locked and loaded yet again.

  Luke rolled his eyes, hit a couple of buttons on the communications panel, and initialized a visual connection to Hauge’s ship. “See for yourself.”

  Seconds later, Alex initialized on his end.

  Thick black hair brushed back, green eyes that brokered no conciliation, wide mouth pressed into a tight line, and not even the shadow of hair on his chin.

  Luke scoffed and pointed at the guy for Ais’s benefit. “Who the hell shaves in outer space?”

  “Mr. Cipriani,” Alex said flatly.

  “Mr. Hauge.” Luke gave him a lazy salute. “Or should I call you your highness now? I heard there was a shakeup in the line of ascension. You’re what, now, tenth in line to be king?”

  Hauge ground his teeth, and said through them, “You can continue calling me Mr. Hauge.”

  Ais sighed. “Alex, you can’t behave as though the rules don’t apply to you. The temporary government put them in place for a reason. You have to respect them.”

  Alex’s bright gaze moved slowly away from where Luke must have been on his view screen and more in the direction of Ais.

  The knot of anger that had twisted into Luke’s gut unfurled, though he had no hope that he’d be able to breathe easy for long. Alex Hauge was someone Luke hated on principle. Sure, he was Ais’s half-brother and he generally had the best intentions in mind regarding Ais, but his morals were even grayer than Luke’s, and that sort of ambivalence made Luke uncomfortable.

  “I’m not trying to exploit anyone,” Hauge said to Ais. “I’m simply trying to remove personnel who don’t belong here before they create problems for our father. They went missing around the time of the Buinet Riots, and I need to either verify that they’re dead or that they’re off the planet.”

  “So, you’re trying to prove that something doesn’t exist?” Owen asked.

  Tenting his long fingers, Hauge shrugged. “I’ve verified three out of five. Number four is giving me problems. I’m close to locating number five. I’m waiting here at this altitude because my flyer operates most efficiently here. I’m anticipating a report from a friend on the ground.”

  “A Jekhan friend?” Luke asked. “Because any associates of yours should have been booted off the planet along with you.”

  Hauge’s emerald green gaze snapped back toward him. “What is your problem?”

  “You, obviously.”

  “I suggest you solve that. Your tone is impertinent.”

  “Fuck you, dude.”

  Hauge hitched up one pristine eyebrow, incredulous.

  “No, seriously. Fuck you. You tell your sister one thing, and the truth is another. You’re supposed to be on Earth, which isn’t near here in case you’ve forgotten, but maybe this explains why your mother is sending Ais harassing messages and no one’s around to smack her hand for it. That’s really shitty, man.”

  “What kind of messages?” Hauge asked Ais in a hurry. “She’s contacted you? You didn’t tell me.”

  “They’re nothing to worry about,” she said quietly.

  “Bullshit,” Luke said. “Of course she’s not going to complain because she rarely complains about anything at all, but if she’s not going to fuss, I am.” Luke leaned his forearms onto his knees and zoomed the camera in on his face so Hauge didn’t get distracted. “You gotta be completely lacking in forethought if you didn’t think your mother was going to play nice after your father acknowledged that he’s got a part-alien kid. Man, the fuckin’ scandal, right? Everyone thinks the prince has been putting his dick where it didn’t belong, and even if that isn’t true, there’s still the hint of impropriety, right? And there she is.”

  He indicated Ais behind him.

  “Living, breathing evidence that some quarter-Tyneali lady on Jekh who’s never even met the prince has approximately the same claim to the No
rwegian throne as your mother. Your mother seems really, really worried about that. I’d keep an eye on her if I were you, because my gut says she’s dying to be queen.”

  “She’s not going to be queen,” Hauge said, demonstrating for once that he could speak just as quietly as Ais. That didn’t endear him to Luke any, though.

  “Stranger things have happened, right? All you need is to have enough folks in the right place at the right time, and ka-boom.” Luke clapped. “Suddenly, there’s a hole in the line of succession and your branch of the family tree gets pulled closer to the crowns, right?”

  “Mother may be ambitious, but I don’t believe she’s as bloodthirsty as all that.”

  “Sure sounds like she is. Dude, I wouldn’t want to be in the same room with that woman, and I was a well-trained FBI agent.”

  “Ais, you’re not afraid of her, are you?” Hauge asked, trying to peer past to Luke to where Ais had been on the screen.

  Luke did him the courtesy of zooming back out so her brother could see Ais staring at the ceiling and slowly rocking Michael.

  “Owen won’t let anything happen to me,” she said.

  “That is not what I asked,” Hauge said.

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  He said nothing. He sat back in his seat and folded his arms over his chest, staring at her.

  “So?” Owen asked him.

  Hauge sniffed and rubbed his un-scruffy Ken doll jaw. “I will deal with her when I return to Earth.”

  “When’s that going to be?” Luke asked.

  “When I’m done.”

  Luke scoffed.

  “Where are you landing?” Hauge asked, unperturbed, and looking in Owen’s direction. “I would like to finally meet my nephew.”

  Owen gave his wife a searching look. Of course she nodded. She couldn’t say no, and probably couldn’t think of a good reason why she should.

  Luke could, but she hadn’t asked him, and he didn’t really want her to think he was a petty jackass. He might still need to take her up on the offer of letting him spend the night with his face in her cleavage.

  “We won’t be there for another few hours and the landing conditions may be very poor for a ship like yours.” Owen leaned in and typed in the coordinates.

  “I’ll be there.” Hauge disconnected.

  Luke turned off the signal booster and swiveled his chair slowly toward Owen and Ais, cringing. “Sorry. You know how my mouth gets sometimes. I’ll try to play nice.”

  “I don’t care if you play nice with Hauge,” Owen said, “though Ais probably finds the tension to be tedious after a while.”

  “Don’t like picking sides,” she said. “Who am I supposed to defend?”

  “Aw, honey, I’m sorry,” Luke said, reaching forward to hug her waist. “We’ll keep you out of our squabbles. I’m not gonna ask you to be my champion. I’m a big boy. Me and Alex will get over ourselves eventually.

  Ais looked doubtful.

  Yeah, she was probably right to be.

  They’d never get over themselves. Assholes like them rarely did.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  After lunch, Jasper leaned against the doorway in the kitchen, watching Sera stack dried dishes in the pantry. One of his greatest skills had always been disarming people and drawing them into casual conversations. The tool had been a beneficial one when he dealt with his abuela’s infrequent, but long-lasting, bad moods, and even more useful when he’d been working with the Buinet Police. In a city where the natives tended to run and lock their doors when they saw Terrans in the neighborhood, he’d managed to get folks to talk to him sometimes. Most were hostile, sure, but they talked. He did a much better job than any of his associates, including Salehi.

  But Sera wasn’t having it. She wasn’t giving him the time of day, and he’d either need to escalate his charm or back off to evaluate his investment in the wager pool. He wasn’t ready to give up, but he was definitely evaluating his strategy.

  Salehi was on the other side of the doorway, fidgeting with a wall-mounted computer server that had gone on the fritz the moment Owen left. As the computer controlled a number of household systems, including heat and air conditioning, correcting the malfunction was something of a priority. Due to the fact the main farmhouse boasted a bathing room with a body of water the size of Rhode Island, the domicile would be hot as a sauna within two hours if a mechanically-minded individual didn’t hop to.

  While Salehi worked, Jasper pretended to be assisting, but really—he was watching Sera.

  He loved the way she moved—the graceful strides and her sensual gesturing. She placed her body as if each action had been choreographed, and seemed to be doing that naturally with no intention. She was both primal and elegant, and those things shouldn’t have gone so well together.

  “How does she do that?” he murmured.

  “Do what?” Salehi asked.

  Sera looked up from the dishes then, so Jasper got the hell out of the doorway.

  “Move like she’s made of liquid,” he said quietly.

  “Ah.” Salehi tucked a bunch of wires back into their hole and sucked in some air, looking at the mess in the wall. “I hope that question was poetic and hypothetical, because my bailiwick isn’t biology.”

  Jasper laughed. “Yeah, hypothetical. Maybe I have goggle vision, though. Got so used to not seeing very many women, and now I’m fixating on one in particular and she probably seems more magical than the reality.”

  “Nah, there might be some truth to that.” Salehi grabbed a roll of electrical tape from the floor and bit off a length. “Any woman living on this planet right now probably does have to have a certain amount of magic. They’re survivors, the whole lot of them.”

  “I see your point.”

  Marco strode through the front door then, waving at them as he made his way around the circular gathering room. His clothes were even more wrinkled than the last time Jasper saw him, and there were little balls of dust clinging to his dark brown hair.

  Jasper suppressed a laugh. He looked like hell, but he probably didn’t need Jasper to tell him.

  “Did I…” Marco paused to take several shallow breaths, hand pressed over his chest as he forced air in and out.

  “You all right?”

  Marco put up a hand in a gesture saying “Wait,” then took a puff from the inhaler he extracted from his pocket. “Running out. Was trying to make the canister last.”

  “Dude. Don’t.”

  “Sounding like Owen now.” He tucked the inhaler away and knocked some of the dust out of his hair. “Did I miss lunch? Tacking that panel back up took longer than I expected.”

  “They’re cleaning up,” Jasper said, still on tenterhooks. He hoped the guy wasn’t going to drop dead from low oxygen saturation. Asthma was scary shit, and they lived in the fucking boondocks. There was no emergency care around there. “I think there was some about to be put into the refrigerator.”

  “Shit, I hope so. I’m starving.” He strode past them, and Jasper followed along as if the big man had his own field of gravity and Jasper was stuck in it.

  Sera, with a bloodless pallor, stared at Marco as she clutched a plate one-handed.

  Guessing the cause of her distress was easy enough. A powerfully built man like Marco had just been caught off guard by an asthma attack, and maybe she’d never seen one. Marco deserved the pity, but for once, Jasper wanted someone to look at him like they worried. Lil used to do it all the time, but she was like a revered aunt to him. Definitely not someone he wanted in his bed.

  “Anything left, Court?” Marco asked their ever-gracious hostess who was, at that moment, bending in front of a shelf in the pantry. “I promise, I won’t make a mess.”

  “I dunno. There might be enough left for a serving. What’s left is really more snack-sized than meal-sized, though. You might have to supplement.”

  “There’s plenty of dishe bread,” Sera told him. “Dishe tends to be more filling than the Terran grains.”


  “Why is there always so much left?” Marco pulled open the refrigerator door and quickly found the container of leftover stew. “There didn’t seem to be so much of it left last year, and I think Headron brings over the same exact amount every day.”

  “He does, but more of us are eating Terran breads now. We’re getting better at digesting gluten.”

  “Huh. You’ll regret that, probably. The Jekhan bread is probably better for you.”

  “Perhaps,” she demurred, gently setting the plate atop a stack on the dish rack. “But there’s something so satisfying about gluten.”

  Marco bumped the door closed with his hip, grabbed a spoon, and headed to the table.

  He was apparently going to eat the stew cold. Jasper had certainly done worse while working.

  He followed Marco to the table and had a seat, too. He couldn’t get Sera to talk, but apparently, Marco could. Jasper had no shame whatsoever about piggybacking. Fortune may have favored the bold, but every now and then, it also tossed a bone to the wily.

  “How is the food?” Sera asked.

  Marco stopped stuffing his face long enough to say, “Not even tasting it. I’ll taste the last bite, though, so I can give you an answer.”

  She laughed, turned to the counter, and pulled a half-sawn loaf of dark, grainy, díshe bread out of the breadbox.

  Jasper watched with abject curiosity as she used the elbow of the arm in the sling to hold the loaf steady while she carved thick slices off with the other hand.

  She deposited the slices at the edge of his bowl and retreated.

  “Thank you,” Marco said through a full mouth.

  “Mm-hmm,” she hummed, then continued to tidy up.

  Jasper pinned his gaze on Marco.

  “What?” Marco asked, likely weary of Jasper’s staring.

  Jasper drummed his fingertips on the tabletop and tilted his head toward Sera. She had her back turned.

  Marco turned briefly to look, and then repeated, “What?”

  Jasper opened a text conversation on his wrist COM and tapped out to Marco, “She said maybe three words during lunch.”