by H. E. Trent
“You could get to the bottom of that hole and they could snatch you before any of us could pull you back,” Owen said.
“And you would go after me.”
“You’re damn right I would. Woman, you’d be crazy to think otherwise.”
Luke shook his head. “Nah, I don’t like that. Sorry, hon. Everything I learned about being in the FBI has informed me on my decision-making in this, and even if you’re the person they’d most want to see, the risks are too high to you. We don’t have nearly enough information about what’s on the other side of that door. I’m going to go down there and gather some.
“But you can’t—”
Luke set a finger over her lips gently. “I know I can’t talk to them. We’ll link our COMs, okay? You do the talking through mine. Keep talking and I’ll keep moving.”
“No.”
Owen put an arm around her shoulders and nuzzled the top of her head. After a couple of days in the jungle, her hair was unkempt and had a few bits of vine clinging to the strands, but even that was pretty. She looked more like a goddess than ever.
“Ais,” Owen whispered. “You mean too much to us.”
“And Luke means nothing?”
“I don’t mean it like that. He’s my best friend. I love him more than almost everything, but he’s right. The risks are too high for you. Any one of us would be far more durable if anything happened.”
“But—”
“I’ll go.” Hauge held his COM in front of Luke and Luke stared down at his wrist, stunned.
Forgetting that a man with such a notable presence was standing nearby should have been impossible, but he’d still somehow managed to shock Luke with his volunteerism. “Do what you must to connect mine to hers.”
“You… Want me to…” Luke had forgotten English for a moment, or what Hauge said was so unexpected that he simply couldn’t process the words. All Luke could do was stare at the man. He suddenly had a good idea of what his political opponents must have felt when debating him. His demeanor was calm, his face a pristine mask of neutrality. That was what grace under fire looked like, and Luke had seen a fair share of that coolness when he’d been an FBI spook.
“Please.” Hauge shook his arm in front of Luke’s face. “Link them. I’ve never done that. I don’t know what commands to use.”
“But you can’t go down there,” Luke said, finally getting his wits back.
“Why not?”
Already one step ahead of Luke, apparently, Owen put Hauge’s COM over Ais’s and depressed a little knob on the side that made a thin stylus eject. He started to push the necessary ports to disable the security features that normally made the tethering difficult.
“You just can’t,” Luke said. “Your grandfather is a king.”
“And?”
“And you probably shouldn’t be volunteering to climb down ladders into holes except for ceremonial purposes.”
“Because that’s all I’m good for, right? Ceremony?”
Owen pulled Hauge’s wrist back down. Hauge was a gesticulator. He’d tried to move his arm while Owen was working.
Luke shrugged. “I don’t know what you’re good for, to be honest.” Beyond being one extraordinarily tempting bastard. “You did an okay job keeping up with us as we marched through the jungle.”
“So did Ais,” Hauge said dourly. “So what point are you trying to make?”
Owen plugged the end of the stylus into a special port in Hauge’s device and then moved Ais’s COM to take the other end.
“I’m saying that maybe you’re in okay shape,” Luke said. “That’s all.”
“Okay?” Hauge lifted one of his black eyebrows.
Luke shrugged again. If he kept up with much more of that, he could make all that jerking a new dance craze.
“I think you’ve seen enough to know I’m better than okay, haven’t you?”
Owen gave Luke a querying look.
Luke turned his gaze toward the sky.
Nope. Not going there.
Luke wasn’t one to keep secrets from Owen, but sometimes discretion overrode his desire to get heavy things off his chest. When he’d told Hauge that he wasn’t the kind of man who’d kiss and tell, he’d meant what he said. That shit was on Hauge. He couldn’t both antagonize and make poorly veiled innuendos in the same conversation. That was shit people who were dating did. At the moment, Luke would have gotten as much fulfillment fucking a hole in a tree trunk. He might get a splinter or two, but his pride would be intact.
“I will climb down, but I will be quiet,” Hauge said to Owen and Ais, blessedly redirecting the conversation. “Let Ais do the speaking. If they can even hear anything from this side of the door, perhaps they’ll be more willing to have a discussion with us before they do anything in a defensive capacity.”
Luke pushed his fingers through his hair and let out a breath. “Fine. What kind of weapons are you carrying? If you’re strapped, you’d better be discreet.”
“I’m always strapped. Where the fuck do you think we are, Disneyland?”
“Actually, yes, you princely prick. I figured we were standing here waiting for the cast member playing Tarzan to come back from his break so we can all take turns having our pictures taken with him.”
Hauge narrowed his eyes at him.
Luke gave him a discreet flash of his middle finger, but Owen saw it anyway.
“Jesus Christ,” his friend muttered and pulled Ais’s wrist back from the pin. “Do I need to send you two to separate corners for a timeout or are you going to behave?”
“Me behave?” Luke asked him.
“You’re right.” Owen hid the stylus into the compartment in Hauge’s COM body where it belonged. “I guess that really is asking for too much.”
“One of these days, I’ll grow up. I can’t make any promises for him, though.”
“You’re insufferable,” Hauge said.
“Deal with me, or fuck off.”
Try me. Luke cocked his chin and raised both eyebrows. Go on and fucking try me.
Hauge’s lips parted and eyes narrowed as if he were going to take Luke up on that dare, but before he could get the words out, Ais pleaded, “Please get along. You make my heart beat faster when you argue. I can’t help but to think chaos will come soon. On the rare occasion the Tyneali yelled, destruction happened next.”
Luke’s stomached lurched. The last thing he’d wanted was to trigger her. “Aw, hon, I’m sorry.” Luke chucked her chin. “I promise, we’re not gonna come to blows or anything.” At least, not in front of her. And if they did come to blows, the pain would probably be foreplay for one or both of them.
“Yes, we are sorry, Ais.” Hauge lifted his shirt and handed one of his guns over to Luke along with a long knife Luke wasn’t quite sure how he’d managed to keep hidden. “We will be more conscientious going forward. We don’t intend to stress you.”
“Going forward, ignore both of them,” Owen said.
Luke cut his friend a sour look, but the glare was lost on Owen. He’d never been especially easy to chastise. Standing there in a humid swamp and itchy from who-knew-what kind of environmental allergens, he likely wasn’t placid enough to turn over a new leaf then and there.
“Your COMs are connected,” Owen said to Hauge. “Your speaker should automatically start broadcasting the input from Ais’s mic once you descend past the two meter point.”
“Understood.” Hauge folded his tall body onto hands and knees and crawled backward to the opening. He lowered one leg into the open tube, and then the other, and climbed down enough ladder rungs that his shoulders were level with the ground. “Ready?”
Shit, he’s going to do it.
His expression had taken on that neutral mask again—the ceremonial blankness. He may not have been showing his fear, but he wasn’t a stupid man. He couldn’t have survived in space and on Jekh on his own without having some street smarts, and sometimes “street smart” meant “afraid at the right times.”
“Wide-range stunner. Can render everyone in a ten-foot area unconscious.”
“Adjustable?”
Hauge scoffed and continued his downward trek. “Of course. Do you think I’d acquire a one-setting weapon?”
“Yeah. Actually, I do.” Luke crouched at the edge of the hole and peered down at Hauge. His eyes glinted luminescent green in the dim light as if he were some kind of rare cat. Luke had never really liked cats before. “You don’t seem to be all that discriminating to me.”
“I would suggest that you stop underestimating me.”
“I’ll keep that in mind, Duke.”
“Stop calling me that. I’m not a duke.”
“Nah. I like that. You totally look like a ‘Duke.’”
“Enjoy your fun while you can.” Near the door at the bottom, Hauge paused. “Window there,” he said, his voice a calm rumble through Ais’s COM speaker. “No vents or speakers to communicate through, but there’s a slot in the door. I believe the cover is latched on the other side. I’m going to drop from the ladder and duck away from the glass.”
“Good plan,” Owen said.
Hauge’s booted feet hit the ground in a quiet thump and he immediately put his ear against the door, listening.
“Anything?” Ais asked.
“Footsteps,” he said naturally.
“Many footsteps?”
“More than two feet. Hold on. I believe someone is opening the slot. Ah, damn.”
Hauge moved out of the way of the wildly flying projectile a moment before the object could skim his cheek. Someone had shoved something outside the slot—some sort of crude slingshot or crossbow pistol—and angled it sideways.
“Shit, you gotta watch your ducal hide down there,” Luke said. “Are there cameras?”
“I don’t think so,” Hauge said with a sigh, pressing his body against the wall adjacent to the door. “They’re aiming widely.”
A raspy voice yelled something from the other side in a language Luke couldn’t make heads or tails of, but it made Ais step closer to the ladder and put her COM closer to her mouth. She spoke some rapid-fire phrases, her pitch peaking every so often, indicative of questions.
“That’s Tynealean,” Owen whispered to him. “Her Tynealean is actually much better than her Jekhani.”
“Ah. Is that what the person down there was speaking?”
“I believe so.” Owen tapped Ais’s shoulder, and she went quiet and stared at him.
“What’s happening?”
She covered her COM mic with the pad of her thumb. “They think he’s Tyneali.”
“Tell them I’m not,” Hauge shouted up, obviously having heard her anyway.
The people on the other side of the door began shouting at him again.
Furrowing her brow, Ais uncovered the mic, but didn’t speak. She listened for a minute, and then grunted softly. “Ah. They were hoping the Tyneali wouldn’t come back. They say they’ll die before they let them touch them again.”
“Tell them who we are,” Owen said, and then to Hauge, said, “Make sure they can hear what’s coming out of your COM.”
“Understood.” He held his wrist as close to the slot as he dared, cringing a bit, likely at the proximity to the homemade weapons the captives held.
Ais spoke again, taking no breaths to allow for interjection. Luke couldn’t make out the vast majority of what she’d said, but he did recognize her own name and the name of her mother.
When she stopped, there was silence all around. Even the jungle seemed to have gone quiet. Leaves stopped moving. The few animal inhabitants ceased their chittering and groaning. All Luke could hear from the chamber was the normal groaning of machine components settling after use.
Ais asked something else—speaking slowly, as if in a gentle query.
Again, quiet.
Hauge peered up and turned one of his hands over in a gesture of, “Well?”
Luke put a finger to his lip, cautioning stillness. The people probably needed time to think.
After a few minutes of murmuring from the other side, someone countered.
Ais grimaced. “They do not trust us.”
“But you said your mother’s name,” Owen said. He’d obviously heard the same thing Luke had. “What did they say in response to that?”
“They won’t say if she’s here. They ignored the question.”
He rubbed her back. “Ask again.”
Nodding, she raised her COM near her lips and spoke the query.
That time, the captives didn’t hesitate with a response.
“What’s happening?” Hauge asked.
“I told them I am Ona’s daughter and they asked for proof.”
“What kind of proof could you possibly give them?” Luke asked.
“Let me go down.”
“No,” the three men said in chorus.
“But, if they were to see me—”
“They’d snatch you inside, and probably shoot another of those projectiles at Hauge to keep him back.”
“We’ve got equipment on the ship that could do a genetic verification,” Owen said. “If Ona’s willing to walk with us.”
Ais narrowed her eyes as if in thought, and then said something in Tynealean into the COM.
Moments later, they barked something back—a long monologue that had Ais’s eyes wide and cheek twitching.
“Not very nice, huh?” Luke murmured to Owen.
“Can you blame them?”
“Nope.”
Ais put her wrist down to her side and gulped. “They say…they’ll trade. Ona for Alex. Until we bring Ona back, they keep him.”
Hauge mumbled something, probably vulgar, in his native tongue, followed by, “Fine. Ais, I will stay. Dearest, be sure whoever they send out actually looks like your mother.”
“I will try, but I have never seen her in person.”
“Do the best you can.”
“So noble,” Luke said.
“I don’t need your sarcasm,” Hauge quipped.
“I wasn’t being sarcastic, but if you want to play the martyr, feel free. And don’t worry, man. I’ll make sure your girls are doing okay when we get back to the landing pad. They’re probably worried sick about you.”
“What girls?” Ais asked.
Luke looked down the hole and found two bright green eyes, narrowed in malevolence. Payback was a bitch.
“Don’t worry about that, sweetheart,” Luke said, straightening up. “Just a bit of razzing from one asshole to another.”
“Oh,” she said quietly, crinkling her nose. “If you say so, I believe you.”
Luke sighed and shook his head. “You’ll go to hell if you corrupt her, Owen.”
“Probably. Surprised I haven’t already.” To Ais, Owen said, “Can you please tell them we agree to their terms?”
“All right.” She put her COM to her lips again and chattered excitedly into it.
At the resulting silence, Hauge looked up and shrugged. “The flap is closed. They’re walking away.”
“Maybe they’re going to get Ona,” Owen said.
Luke crouched at the edge of the hole and called down to Hauge, “Want to hand off any other weapons to me? Anything you might fear them taking from you and then using on you?”
Hauge’s hand went immediately to his belly where his stunner was likely sheathed.
Grimacing, Luke started down the ladder to meet him halfway. “Come on. Hand me the stunner.”
Hauge handed up the weapon.
Luke whistled low. It was a nice piece. Had a nice heft, and a shiny silver glint that would have made any space cowboy covetously wet his pants. “Where’d you get that?”
“I commissioned the piece.”
“Terran?”
Hauge grunted.
“I hope he’s not selling them.” Luke pocketed the gun and shifted on the ladder so
he could see Hauge’s face more comfortably. “He could get folks in a lot of trouble.”
“The maker was a she, and no, I don’t believe she has any intention of mass manufacturing them.”
“Who is she? Some scientist your granddaddy has in his back pocket?”
“Something like that. She’s my uncle’s bastard daughter. He won’t publicly claim her, but she’s probably the worst kept secret in Scandinavia. She’s brilliant.”
“The jury’s still out on that. I’ll let you know how brilliant she is once I’ve had a chance to discharge the weapon.”
“Fair enough.”
“Got anything else you want to hand over?”
Hauge’s brow furrowed as he passed his hands down his sides. “No. I think I should try to keep what’s left on me. They won’t find anything else unless they strip me.”
“You don’t think they will?” That would have been one of the first things Luke did, but most people didn’t have his training.
Hauge shrugged. “Doesn’t matter what I think. I would try to keep them anyway. There’s no way of knowing who’s inside that bunker.”
“The report from the Tyneali said that there were twenty women here,” Owen said via Ais’s COM, “but that data was several years old. There may be more or less, but as far as we know, there are no men in there. I doubt any of those women would be able to overtake you on their own.”
“On their own. That’s comforting,” Hauge said drolly.
Luke descended one more step so he could whisper, “You had to know that you would get ransomed eventually, Duke. Royals are good for that, right?”
Hauge covered his hot mic. “If you don’t come back to get me,” he said quietly, “I will claw my way out, track you down, and hurt you.”
Luke snorted. “Me personally, huh?”
“I’m certain that if you do not return, you’ll be the mastermind behind the scheme.”
“Probably.” Luke grinned at him. He liked seeing the arrogant asshole flustered. His eyes went all stormy and his muscles clenched up and strained the fitted cuts of his clothes. “I doubt Ais would let us leave you behind, though. She’s much nicer than me.”
“Yes, she is. She’d make a wonderful princess.”
“Yeah. Too bad she’s never going anywhere near Earth.” Luke started climbing. “The place would probably irreparably corrupt her and I’d like to keep her sweet.”
