Beyond the Next Star

by Melody Johnson

  “Just in cases the worst happen.” Delaney sighed and rubbed her eyes. “Same reason we agree to keep my secret from the crew during the ride from Earth to Lorien. Same reason we practice ways to make me seem more like an animal: peeing the floor, nuzzling your hand, biting you.”

  Torek scraped a hand down his face.

  “Same reason he teach me all he can about Lorien while in deep space. Because he knowing they send more ships to Earth before his communications reconnect, and he fear the consequences of misclassifying me.” Delaney squinted at him through the bars of her fingers, wrung out. “He was right to fear.”

  “He should have told everyone! An entire ship is harder to murder than one person. He should have—”

  She threw her hands up. “And then what happen to me? When I arrive misclassified, you think they just turn back around and send me home?”

  “Yes!”

  “No! I think they murder me instead and make it look like an accident. Or a suicide,” Delaney added pointedly. “To protect me, we plan for the worst and hope for the best. But of course, the worst happen.”

  Torek shook his head. “Keil wasn’t protecting you. He was saving his own skin, embarrassed at having misclassified you. Maybe he never had the committee meeting but presented his findings to one person instead, the Animal Companion Committee commander, perhaps. Or maybe our intergalactic flight commander! Knowing how much Javaek invests in companion trade—ha! Knowing Javaek—I could see him turning on Keil after seeing such findings,” Torek mused. “And Javaek is one of only three commanders with the sanction to authorize a private intergalactic mission. Maybe Keil had hoped to send you home quietly, without ruining his reputation publicly. He—”

  “Keil not like that. He never—”

  “He kept you caged.”

  Delaney sighed. “He only cage me sometimes. To follow the rules while in deep space.”

  “Procedure.”

  Delaney raised her eyebrows.

  “It’s procedure to keep animals caged while in deep space.”

  “Procedure.”

  Torek nodded. “Close enough.”

  “Procedure,” Delaney repeated. The Lori word for it sounded like “rakek” but each consonant, like all their damn consonants, was growling Rs and hacking Ks. Her throat was already aching from the pronunciation. And she probably sounded like a snob, using the formal address for most of their words, but their informal accents, like their past tense, required deeper growls than her human throat could produce and not bleed.

  Torek grinned. “Like I said, close enough.”

  “You try speaking English,” Delaney muttered.

  Torek’s gaze sliced to her face. “Is that your native language? In-klish?”

  Delaney froze in her seat, her chest vibrating from the force of her pounding heart. How was everything coming so unraveled so quickly?

  She nodded slowly, not sure how this was going to bite her in the ass—of all her confessions, it seemed the least likely—but sure it would somehow.

  “How do you say ‘Reshna’ in In-klish?”

  “Corkscrew, but Reshna is not my—” Delaney snapped her mouth shut with an audible clack of her teeth.

  Torek cocked his head, so his horns swept sideways. “Not your what?”

  She hadn’t thought it would bite back so soon, but there it was, her ass on the hot seat two seconds later. Complete confirmation that she was the person he thought she was.

  She wrapped her hands around her stomach and glared at him. “You never give up, do you?”

  “Give up what?”

  “Pursuit.”

  Torek’s mouth stretched wide enough to reveal a mouthful of fangs. “No, I don’t.”

  Oh, just give it up, Delaney chided herself. He’d known she was a person the moment he’d caught her holding that glass of water in bed and talking to his tablet. His daarok. There was never any coming back from that horror-struck moment, and any attempt to do so was just delaying the inevitable.

  She cleared her throat and spoke through the sudden constriction clogging her words. “But the English translation of Reshna is not my real name.”

  Torek nodded as if this wasn’t a revelation. As if she wasn’t blowing up his entire world.

  Guess she was just blowing up hers.

  “What’s your real name?”

  She squeezed her sides, hunching slightly.

  Torek reached out, brushing his soft, furry knuckles down her arm.

  “Delaney,” she said on a burning exhale. “Delaney Rose McCormick.”

  “Del-haney Rose Mic-or-mick.”

  She smiled slightly, despite herself. “Close enough.”

  He tried again, actually emphasizing the middle syllable in both Delaney and McCormick correctly. She sighed. He would be better at English than she was at Lori. Did he have to be master of everything?

  He frowned. “Was that not correct?”

  “No, it was.”

  “You sighed, as if disappointed.”

  “Yes.”

  His frown deepened, but then he shook it away. “What does it mean?”

  “What does what mean?”

  “What is Delaney translated into Lori?”

  She blinked. “Oh. I not know.”

  “Describe the words.”

  She shrugged. “I—I not have the words, not even in English.”

  Torek tapped his claw rhythmically against the chairback. “Do names on your world not have origins or deeper meaning?”

  “They do. My middle name is a type of plant. A romantic plant that people give to show their love.”

  “And your first name?”

  “I not know the meaning of my first name.”

  Torek seemed taken aback. His claws ceased their tapping, and he blinked several times, trying to come to terms with the underlying implication of someone not knowing the meaning of her name. She supposed it was a difficult concept to accept for a man with six names who knew the intricacies of each one.

  “All right. Delaney Rose McCormick. We digress. You were caged. Keil returned from his committee meeting. And then what happened?”

  “Just Delaney.”

  Torek stared.

  “Between friends, I mean. Like, er, similar to how you are just Torek to me. Because we are casual between each other.”

  “Informal.” Something passed over his face, a strain to his expression that she couldn’t quite read. Not pain, precisely, but nearly. “Because we’re friends.”

  Delaney nodded.

  “Understood. But don’t try to distract me, Delaney. Keil Kore’Weidnar entered the room following his committee meeting.” He stood up to his full height and crossed his arms. The mighty, powerful Torek wanted answers. “What happened next?”

  Nineteen

  Delaney’s face shuttered closed. Her eyes deadened in wary, stubborn resignation, and her lush, expressive lips compressed themselves into a thin, wrinkled line. Her expression reminded him of a young child refusing her medicine, and he had to compose himself against the sudden unwise urge to laugh. She might take offense, and that would only impede his progress.

  Intimidating her into submission hadn’t worked. Coaxing her with reason and assurances had only worked marginally better. Tricking the truth from her was more difficult and time-consuming, but effective, and he intended to draw out every drop of truth from her if it took all night.

  Delaney Rose McCormick.

  Just Delaney, he reminded himself. His heart throbbed. He actually lifted his hand and rubbed his chest, as if Zana’s death was a physical pain he could massage away. He hadn’t been “just Torek” to a civilian in six kair, and he hadn’t even noticed the lack until now, until this very moment.

  Rak, his only friend was his animal companion. It would be laughable if it wasn’t so depressing. What was worse, that he hadn’t had a friend in six kair or that he hadn’t noticed the lack?

  Zana’s absence was usually more serrated at night when he was alone
. Lately, his grief for her had been overshadowed by nightmares, and then, more recently, with concern for Reshna.

  Delaney.

  Like a wound he’d sustained and allowed to fester over time, his heart ached anew at Delaney’s familiarity. The grief was old, but the hope was new. What exactly that feeling of hope meant, he couldn’t begin to fathom.

  Delaney squirmed under the pressure of his stare. Good. Let her squirm. Staring took little effort, and if she thought a little squirm would discourage his pursuit, she was sorely mis—

  She growled.

  Torek shot upright, shocked. Her lips hadn’t moved. Her teeth weren’t bared. Her hackles didn’t appear raised, but they were so baby fine and hidden beneath her fall of head hair that he couldn’t truly tell.

  She looked down at her lap.

  He leaned forward cautiously, wondering if his ears had deceived him.

  Grrrrubrrrr.

  Torek recoiled.

  She’d growled again! Without moving her lips. Without even looking at him!

  He opened his mouth to reprimand her, but she glanced up, a wary grin spreading across her face.

  He hesitated, unsure what was happening.

  “Sorry if my stomach scares you,” she said dryly, obviously not sorry in the least.

  “Your stomach? Your stomach speaks too?” Torek had only just come to terms with a speaking animal companion. He was not ready to accept her speaking stomach.

  She dropped a hand to pat the offending organ. To placate it? “When hungry, it does. Not a problem I usually have with you, but we skip dinner, remember?”

  Torek peered at her stomach, feeling a strange, inappropriate urge to poke it. Would it protest?

  Now that her stomach had mentioned it, however, he realized that he was hungry too. And Delaney, being the delicate diva that she was, probably felt the complaints more deeply. Or just verbalized them more loudly.

  Well, it wasn’t as if food would hurt his objective. If anything, it could only help.

  Torek stepped away from the chair, opened the pantry, and reached for the bag of rainol.

  Something clanked behind him.

  He paused midreach, glanced back, and suppressed a shuff. In the two seconds he’d turned away, Delaney had unbuckled her tether and discarded it on the floor, and suddenly, he was suppressing a grin. He should have known that intimidation tactics wouldn’t work on her. She wasn’t one of his cadets to quake under his regard. In fact, the deeper he delved, trying to bare Delaney’s secrets, the more exposed he felt.

  “Can we eat something besides rainol e lokks tonight?” she asked, jarring him from the conundrum of his thoughts.

  “Why?” he asked.

  She shrugged. “Why not?”

  He narrowed his eyes on her. “You can’t tell me you don’t like it. You eat your entire portion every night.”

  “I like it, but something different would be nice considering I nearly die from it today.”

  “I don’t like different,” he muttered, but let his hand drop to his side. He stared into his pantry, willing something else to present itself.

  Delaney snorted. “I notice. The same meal every day. The same schedule every day.” She tapped a tiny finger against her pointy chin. “Other restaurants are in town.”

  “Yes, but we won’t be eating at any of them,” he said.

  “Why not?”

  Scanning his pantry was depressing. Most of his reserves were expired, and having been ill, he hadn’t bought fresh produce. “I prefer to cook my own food.”

  Delaney crossed her arms. “We eat at Grattao all the time.”

  “We don’t eat at Grattao for the food.”

  “Really? Because food is what we get there.”

  His eyes settled on the yarks, haekak, and the few unspoiled vegetables still thriving in the chiller. So decided, he grabbed a pan, flicked on the burner, and tossed on a fat cube to melt. “We also get conversation with Mairok.”

  Her nose scrunched. “The waitress?”

  “The owner. My mother-in-law.”

  “I not know that word.”

  Torek slid a knife from its wall sheath and began chopping vegetables. “The mother of my wife.”

  The harsh crack and pop of splitting keylak filled the silence.

  Torek looked up from his chopping and over his shoulder at Delaney.

  She shook herself free from the freeze that had overtaken her body. “You have a wife.” She looked around and then settled, for whatever reason, on the closet, as if Zana would jump out from within.

  He chuckled at the thought. Zana could barely stand for most of their marriage, but even after losing her health, she’d never completely lost her sense of humor.

  “You not allow her here?”

  He returned to his chopping. “When she was alive, we preferred to live in Aerai, our childhood town.”

  Her mouth opened in an O of understanding. She waited a moment, and when she finally spoke, her voice was overly hushed. “I am sorry for your loss.”

  He moved on to the jok. “She died six kair ago.”

  A frown puckered her brow. “That is…a long time.”

  “Yes.” He considered the jok with an intensity that chopping it didn’t require. “Somehow, though, the pain of her passing feels like she died just yesterday.”

  She nodded knowingly. “Grief is strange like that.”

  He glanced up and studied her a moment, mulling over that telling pause as she’d determined that six kair was a long time. “How long is six kair on Earth?”

  She shook her head, and her hair danced, each coil springing with a life all its own. “We count time in years on Earth. Six kair is equal to seven and a half years.”

  “What is the measurement of years?” Torek attempted to pronounce the In-klish word, but the enunciation tripped from the back of his tongue to the front of his lip without any hard consonant for grounding.

  Delaney grinned. His pronunciation undoubtedly needed practice.

  “A year is one circle of Earth around our sun. Our seasons are much shorter than yours; we have four in the time that you have a full Rorak and half a Genai.”

  Torek turned toward Delaney, his chopping forgotten. “Where do the extra seasons come from?”

  “From the tilt of the Earth. It rotate on an angle, but unlike Lorien, it only rotate on one angle.” She held up a fist and drew a line over her knuckles to demonstrate the rotation. “As the Earth circle our sun, different parts of the Earth receive the sun’s full light. If the sun is here”—she held up her left pointer finger apart from her right fist—“the part of Earth facing the sun receives more heat and light, causing a hot season.” She tapped her upturned fingers. “And the part of Earth that is tilted away from the sun receives less heat and light, causing a cold season.” She tapped the downturned back of her hand. “When the Earth is on the other side of the sun”—she swung her Earth fist around her sun finger until her arms crossed—“the seasons switch. And then we count the time between, when the ice thaws before it gets hot and the leaves fall before the cold, as separate seasons.”

  Torek waved his knife left to right. “But when your Earth is between suns, how do the seasons switch? At that point, even if spinning on a single axis, the entire Earth would be in its hot season.”

  She wiggled her sun finger. “Earth only has one sun.”

  “Ah.” His curiosity about her Earth nearly made him miss the implications of all her knowledge, but as he considered the differences between their two worlds, it struck him. “How do you know about Lorien’s many rotating axes? Or how she rotates around our two suns to create seasons?”

  Her hands dropped back to her lap, the astronomy lesson abandoned. “I, I telling you about Earth’s seasons,” Delaney hedged.

  “No. You know the differences between Earth and Lorien, which means you know about Lorien’s seasons and how they’re produced as well.”

  Her shoulders lifted and relaxed. “Maybe I overhear a c
onversation or—“

  “Lots of astronomy classes for you to overhear in deep space, were there?”

  Delaney’s entire face bloomed bright red, and although he’d been trying to tease the answer from her, he’d accidentally struck a nerve. There had been astronomy classes in deep space.

  Torek stepped toward her. “Someone taught you about Lorien. Was it Keil? Did he—”

  “Your pan is smoking. It catch fire soon.”

  “Don’t try to distract me. I—”

  Delaney’s eyes bugged. She pointed. “Fire!”

  Torek glanced back and cursed. His fat cube had indeed caught fire.

  He swung around, slammed the lid on its pan, and let oxygen deprivation kill the flames.

  “Does this mean we eat out now?” She asked, obviously hopeful.

  He glowered at Delaney over his shoulder. “Eat out?”

  “Yes, out.” Her pointer and middle fingers walked toward the door. “To a restaurant instead of eat in here.”

  She was nothing if not persistent. He shook his head. “No, that is not what this means.”

  She released such a long-suffering sigh in combination with her diva eye roll that Torek couldn’t help but grin.

  “For as much as you not want to eat out,” she said, settling her eyes back on him, “you must really love your mother-in-law.”

  “Not particularly. She’s a shrew who can’t cook.” Torek crossed his arms. “Why pay for food you can prepare better yourself?”

  Delaney glanced pointedly at the inedible char in his pan, returned her gaze to him, and raised the winged tuffs above her eyes.

  “You, little Delaney,” he chucked her under the chin, “are a distraction.”

  She wrinkled her nose at him, and a warmth spread across his chest. His heart throbbed, but not with the bruised ache of deep grief. It throbbed like it thought it could take flight.

  “If she a shrew who not cook, why eat there?”

  “She’s my last living link to Zana, and I’m reluctant to let go. No matter her runny lokks.” He gave a mock shudder.

  Delaney chuckled, but as her laugh faded, so did her mood. Her voice was subdued when she asked, “Tell me about her?”