THE BARBARIANS:
Stolen Bride
By
Angelique Anjou
( c ) Copyright by Angelique Anjou, January 2019
Cover art by Jenny Dixon
ISBN 978-1-60394
Smashwords Edition
New Concepts Publishing
Lake Park, GA 31636
www.newconceptspublishing.com
This is a work of fiction. All characters, events, and places are of the author’s imagination and not to be confused with fact. Any resemblance to living persons or events is merely coincidence.
Chapter One
It was probably the most bizarre reason to volunteer for a mission in the history of the Star-Troopers, but Charlotte Black needed the job and, like a lot of people—well women—getting the chance to drop a few pounds without a lot of effort and misery had a definite appeal.
She certainly wasn’t a big woman because she wanted to be!
Nature had conspired against her.
She’d inherited all of the traits that led to a lifelong battle with her weight.
She’d had treatment—what she could afford to pay for—for all of it, but with indifferent success.
When she’d heard about the plan for the newest Earth colony, she’d decided it was her destiny. Even if she never lost weight and got down to that dream size, she would at least be in the same boat as everyone else who was going. At least she wouldn’t have to put up with the insensitive assholes that were always commenting on her size perfectly audibly—and that was the polite ones! There were way more that almost seemed to see it as their duty to harass the fat, depressed woman!
Hey! Was it her fault that she was way more efficient than the skinny assholes?
Because that was what it boiled down to. Efficiency.
Her body worked more efficiently than theirs and she worked more efficiently than they did.
Finally, a group of scientists had agreed.
This mission to colonize a super Earth required that the colonists had reached adulthood carrying around at least twenty percent to thirty percent more weight than was considered ‘average—desirable—healthy’ for their height. Their bones would be far denser to carry around the additional weight and even their organs would be accustomed to moving a heavier mass so, less strain.
That had been the theory anyway and, as it turned out, it seemed to be sound.
It did suck a big hairy one that she’d lost forty pounds in stasis and still weighed, on this planet, the same thing she’d weighed on Earth. But she looked thinner and she felt great!
She didn’t think it had worked out quite as well for everyone as it had for her—some of the colonists were having a really bad time adjusting to the heavier gravity/air density. But, for once in her life, it seemed she had landed in the Goldilocks zone. She’d been just the right weight to maximize the effectiveness!
Of course, she was way taller than average and still stood out wherever she went, but at least she knew the criticism was aimed at her height rather than her mass.
And in sixty years they calculated she would settle three inches from the weight of the gravity in her new home! Whoopee!
A shift in the pitch of their engine and the sensation of dropping jerked Lt. ‘Charly’ Charlotte Black out of her reverie. They were approaching their destination. The cruiser was descending.
Instantly, Charly tensed with a combination of fear and excitement. Her hands tightened on her rifle.
Their mission was a tricky one—politically speaking.
The quarry they’d tracked to the doorstep of the planet Bacsheer was suspected in the murder of the governor of the planet Athena in the next quadrant over. And not only did they not have an extradition treaty with the Oloote of Bacsheer, they barely had verbal agreement of friendship and cooperation.
In point of fact, she thought it would be safe to say that the Oloote just hadn’t slaughtered any human visitors yet because they weren’t convinced they could pull it off and not face total annihilation.
They weren’t likely to cooperate with their team—which had been assembled specifically for their current mission to extricate their suspect without, hopefully, creating an ‘incident’.
The rangers had point—jurisdiction—but nobody, even them, had thought it would be a good idea for a pair of rangers to show up on the barbarians’ doorstep and demand they hand over the culprit, Ginko Nldick. Her team, which was a specialized group of investigators for the Star-Troopers, generally only investigated crimes in connection with the military, but since they were soldiers and they were investigators, they made the perfect backup for the prima donnas—uh—the rangers.
They at least had a better chance of fighting their way out of a violent disagreement with the Oloote if it came to that.
And it easily could.
In the first place, Ginko Nldick, their suspect, wasn’t human and didn’t look human and the Oloote might object to them taking him for that reason alone—since he didn’t look like anyone they should have dominion over.
In the second—well they were barbarians. They might not see his murder of the governor as a murder, or punishable by law—particularly since the governor was human.
There was just, unfortunately, way more they didn’t know about the Oloote of Bacsheer than they knew.
In some ways the aliens were frightening—their penchant for violence, for instance. In other ways not so much.
Physically, they were very human-like. In fact they might almost have been mistaken for humans—except for the skin and eye color.
They were very similar in size, as well.
But, like the gorilla on Earth that appeared to be about the size of an adult male, the size of the Oloote of Bacsheer was deceptive. Scientists guessed them to be two or three times stronger than humans—even the females—due to the fact that they were native to a significantly denser world than humans had come from.
Fortunately, humans had technology.
The suits they were wearing made them equals.
More or less.
Without surprise, they discovered when they had landed and disembarked that a party of the king’s guardsmen was there to greet them. They had announced their arrival, after all, which seemed the safest route to take since the Oloote looked upon subtlety as sneakiness and sneakiness as treachery, and they were violently opposed to that sort of behavior, by circling the castle before they’d settled on a landing spot in the cleared pasturage between it and the river that fed their fields and very likely supplied the castle itself—with sewage removal if nothing else.
The castle was actually a pretty amazing accomplishment, to her notion, for people known to be pretty damned primitive. Built mostly of stone and enormous timbers, it rose up from the rocky soil several stories high and was surrounded by an inner and outer wall for defense that was nearly as tall.
It looked ancient.
And it looked a lot like the castles that had been built on Earth.
How they’d constructed such a mammoth structure with nothing more than blood, sweat, and hand tools—well possibly animal labor, as well—was almost unbelievable.
Except there it stood, defying disbelief.
They stood at attention once they’d descended the gangplank, staring back at the primitives … waiting to see if they would be welcomed.
Or attacked.
Not that they could fight off a whole damned planet, but they were carrying enough firepower to make the Oloote deeply regret taking on soldiers of the Confederation of Planets—win, lose, or draw. That comforted Charly somewhat. She was still tense and alert, but that came with the job, and the certain knowledge that no technology guaranteed success in th
is kind of situation.
In any case, the Oloote of Bacsheer were tentative allies of the Confederation. They might be barbarians in the eyes of most of the Confederation and more inclined to settle disputes with physical violence than diplomacy, but they hadn’t met a delegation from the Confederacy with violence … yet.
One member of the group, clearly the leader, advanced when they’d formed up at the foot of the ramp and spoke.
Unfortunately, this is when Charly realized her damned translator wasn’t working.
The urge to race back inside and get a replacement hit her, but she quelled it.
The Oloote were liable to see such an act as a prelude to attack and then all hell would break loose. Even if she could explain, she couldn’t. The Oloote were technologically challenged—didn’t have a clue about the technology humans had—which, she supposed, was why they called them ‘gods’. They wouldn’t understand if she tried to explain and it was strictly against policy to introduce them to technology in any sense.
So she was screwed.
Forced by circumstance to rely on her other senses, she discovered something really disconcerting.
The lead barbarian was a total knock out.
He was wearing a helmet, of course—fully decked out in armor—which concealed a good bit of his face, but the square, clean shaven jaw was impressive and the finely etched lips made her belly execute flips, leaps, and twirls.
It would have been helpful if she could’ve focused on something else—anything—but he was speaking and that drew her attention.
And then she couldn’t drag her gaze away.
No damned clue what the guy said, but it seemed to be a greeting of some sort and when he’d finished speaking he turned and led the way toward the Oloote castle in the distance and Charly merely followed everyone else.
Released from the strange effect of being caught up in admiration of male beauty, Charly reverted to her training.
It may have been the fact that she was operating ‘blind’ that made her feel something that wasn’t actually there, but she had the sense as they progressed that there was a good bit of tension in the alien warriors around them, almost a sense of dread, and that made her uneasy.
Tense enough she jumped when someone touched her arm and whirled toward them.
She relaxed fractionally when she saw it was Neal. He touched his helmet above his ear and looked at her questioningly.
Evidently, he’d noticed she was having technical difficulties.
She shook her head.
He let it drop so she wasn’t certain of whether he’d realized she was flying by the seat of her pants or if he interpreted the shake of her head to mean she had no problem, or if he was waiting, she hoped, for a better time to address the situation.
Because they had to be damned careful about their behavior around the Oloote.
They might refer to them as sky gods, but that wasn’t a sign of worship or trust. They were deeply distrustful of the humans and only, she suspected, tentative allies because they knew they weren’t in a position to annihilate them.
They damned sure weren’t stupid regardless of how primitive they might seem to most people.
Charly wanted to dismiss the sense that something was very wrong, but as they reached the gates of the castle the pall over the place only seemed to deepen. There were people sprinkled here and there inside the walls, but only a smattering when she knew from her Intel that there were some five to ten thousand souls within the walls of the castle and keep. That was enough to create a bustle.
That just wasn’t there.
She struggled with the urge to rest her hand on her weapon, wondering if something had happened that had turned the Oloote against them and they were walking into a trap, but she didn’t want to trigger an incident if her imagination was playing tricks on her.
The moment of truth came when they left the bulk of their escort behind in the keep and entered the Great Hall of the castle.
They had to remove their helmets or risk looking as if they were expecting an attack.
Which Charly saw they clearly did since everyone hesitated significantly before they pressed the retractors that collapsed their helmets into the neck rim of their suits.
Charly discovered when she had removed her helmet and turned to Neal that the leader of the men who’d escorted them in was staring directly at her.
Actually, she wasn’t convinced of that at first, but when she’d cast a quick look behind her and found no one, she decided that he must be staring at her.
Particularly since he looked amused when she glanced back at him.
She supposed the stare was because it was the first time he’d been able to see her face and, hopefully, detect that she was female. Because she was sure that must be a shock to him.
For her part, she felt the jolt deep in the pit of her belly.
Maybe lower.
She’d thought he must be handsome from the view she’d had of his face.
Without the helmet ….
He was extraordinarily handsome for his species—which was saying something when his species tended to be well above average in looks. Unusually tall even for an Oloote, his features were well formed, pleasing, and symmetrical, his jaw square and manly, his physique impressive.
Her kegels went haywire. Despite her best efforts to ignore the force of attraction, she discovered she was fighting a losing battle between intelligence and raw animal attraction.
He looked like a noble—must be since he was clearly the leader of the soldiers who’d greeted them when they’d arrived.
Which only made him more off limits.
Disconcerted, she looked away before she was tempted to smile back at him.
It wouldn’t do to encourage any of the bad old barbarians to think she was interested in being dragged around by her hair, thrown to the ground, and ravished.
And that seemed to be their concept of romance!
Not that that thought didn’t titillate—especially when paired with a hunk of male like that! But she had business to take care of.
She couldn’t afford to play.
Damn it!
Not that she thought for a second that he was actually attracted to her!
He was probably just wondering if she really was a woman since she was damned near as tall as the men in their group.
“Problem with the com unit?” Neal asked quietly as he moved up beside her.
Chapter Two
Charly’s lips tightened. “Yeah. Can’t hear a damned thing. What’s going on?”
Neal shrugged. “Sickness. They suggested we leave, but you know the rangers. Hallie insisted that we were immune to anything they could throw at us—or words to that effect. And that we were seeking audience with the high king.” He shrugged. “So—here we are and I don’t know what’s going on. The high king doesn’t seem to be here, though.”
Jurisdictional arrogance.
They were military police and so that made them inferior because they were jarheads.
The rangers were the real investigators.
And they weren’t going to let a little thing like the possibility of a political shit storm deter them from getting their man.
Not that she was willing to turn tail and take off just because of a little bug that seemed to have everybody on edge!
But it seemed to her that the rangers were all about grabbing the glory of solving the case and relegating the military ‘escort’ attached to their team to the realm of grunts.
They stood around for what seemed a very long time to Charly—waiting. She wasn’t even sure what they were waiting for and she was fairly certain nobody else did either. Finally, an older, very self-important looking man approached Hallie and Lee, the rangers, and spoke to them.
The conversation was low voiced and under ordinary circumstances no one would even have expected to hear what was being discussed, but the rangers were still wearing their communicators in their ears and they hadn’t though
t to close the channel.
“Uh oh,” Neal muttered under his breath a few moments later.
Charly sent him a questioning look, but he shook his head fractionally and she had to wait with what patience she could muster until the conversation had concluded and the alien turned away.
Her heart leapt into her throat when she saw that Hallie and Lee obviously had every intention of leaving with the man. She pushed her way through the crowd and caught Hallie’s wrist. Hallie’s lips tightened, but her irritation didn’t color her voice. “We have an audience.”
“You know damned well we’re supposed to stay together.”
“Well, it didn’t work out like that,” Hallie said tightly, twisting her wrist to free it from Charly’s grip. “We have our weapons and our communicators.”
Charly had no choice but to let the stupid bitch go. She had no way to communicate with the Oloote herself since her damned translator was on the blitz.
Neal joined her after a moment. “The king is indisposed. That guy is taking them to speak with the king’s advisors.”
“Great,” Charly muttered, but there was nothing she could do about the situation. She had no idea where the rangers were being taken or what danger they might be in—or if they could do anything to help if they got into trouble. That being the case, she focused on the investigation and directed her people to see what they could do about collecting information from the Oloote—not by questioning—which probably wouldn’t go over well, but by listening.
Fortunately, the beautiful man followed the rangers as they left and Charly was able to focus on her job.
* * * *
“The king isn’t ‘indisposed’,” Hallie said bluntly when she’d joined Charly in the room assigned to her after their group was finally escorted upstairs. “He’s dying—some illness that no one has seen before. The physicians, naturally enough, haven’t been able to improve his situation at all. And the two people they know of that came down with it before died. So the king isn’t expected to recover.
“And, of course, it isn’t just the state of the realm that has everyone on edge. They’re terrified of the disease. A good portion of the people that were living here have already sneaked off to other parts.”
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