The Smuggler's Radiant (Renegades Book 2)

by L P Peace

  Rhona nodded.

  ‘I expect she grew up at a decent gravity,’ she said. ‘We come from the third planet in our system, Earth, but we colonised Mars three hundred years ago. Mars gravity is a third Earth-normal, so—’ she stretched her limbs out. ‘—we’re taller. Slimmer. Less muscle density, less bone density.’

  ‘How are you dealing with this gravity then?’ Devorak asked. He was watching her like she might dissolve into a pool of exhaustion at any moment.

  ‘The Audrey Hepburn, my ship, is set to Earth normal,’ she said. ‘The people who live on Mars all the time are more your height. But they’re weaker than me. I’m a combination of Martian height and Earthen strength.’

  Devorak nodded. ‘Is it cold like Cealis?’

  ‘It’s dead,’ she said. ‘So, yeah, it’s freezing.’

  ‘You colonised a dead planet?’ Devorak’s voice went high.

  Rhona laughed. ‘Yeah, but we’re terraforming it.’

  Devorak frowned. ‘Terraforming?’

  ‘Yeah, you know, when you take a dead planet and make it alive again.’

  Devorak scoffed. ‘You can’t be serious,’ he said. ‘That’s impossible.’

  A thought occurred to Rhona. ‘Has no one ever terraformed a planet out here?’ she asked.

  ‘No,’ Devorak said. ‘Because it’s impossible.’

  Rhona sat back in her seat. It was like Devorak’s words had dropped a predator in the bison of her thoughts and now they were scattering and converging.

  She stared at the door—it led to the room she and Makios had fucked in a week or so earlier.

  She took in a deep breath and let it out again. ‘The hardest thing to overcome was the lack of a magnetosphere. Mars lost its magnetosphere a long time ago, so the planet’s been bombarded with solar winds since then.’

  ‘There you go then. That alone will stop it,’ Devorak said.

  ‘So we placed a magnetic dipole midway between the sun and Mars to protect it from the radiation.’ She looked at Devorak. ‘The dipole tracks Mars orbit around the sun, and Mars sits in the dipole’s magnetotail. The atmosphere is thickening and we’re getting warmer.’

  Devorak frowned. ‘That can only be a temporary solution.’

  ‘It is. Scientists are working on a way to heat up the planets liquid core to create dynamism, which would allow the planet to create a magnetosphere. They’ve been working on it for a long time, but they’re getting closer. I was taught it in my online classes, but I don’t understand it. In the meantime, the rising temperatures melted the carbon ice on the northern pole, and the carbon is building in a layer around the planet and trapping heat. Waters beginning to melt and we have a few lakes now.’

  ‘Really?’

  Rhona nodded. ‘We’re a long way from being done and there are many steps to go, but we’re getting there.’

  ‘How warm will the planet get?’ he asked.

  ‘Not very warm,’ she admitted. ‘But we’re constructing space mirrors and magnifiers to relay the sun. We’ll never be as warm as Earth, but we’ll be able to walk outside in a warm jacket.’

  ‘This could work with Cealis,’ he gasped after a long minute.

  Rhona nodded. ‘You could do with some engineers with pre-existing knowledge. Maybe an exchange of scientists and information?’

  Devorak smiled at her. ‘This could change the way my people see yours,’ he said. ‘Establish a new kind of relationship.’

  Rhona smiled. ‘It could,’ she agreed. ‘With the right king in charge to lead his people.’

  Devorak leaned back in his seat and stared directly in front of him. His eyes took on a faraway look.

  ‘A green Cealis,’ he murmured. ‘That would be a sight.’

  After a few minutes of silence, he looked at her, a curious look on his face.

  ‘You didn’t come up here to tell me about terraforming,’ he said.

  Rhona shook her head. ‘I wanted to thank you for looking after Kenian,’ she said. ‘Leaving him behind was really hard. But it felt a little easier knowing you’d look after him.’

  Devorak’s curious expression didn’t fade. ‘Strange,’ he said. ‘You couldn’t bear to look at me when I boarded. Now, I believe we’re friends.’

  Rhona leaned back in her seat. Her mother would have a fit. Even her father would raise his bushy eyebrows for a moment.

  ‘I believe we are,’ Rhona agreed.

  Rhona lay with her head on the foot of the bed and stared at the viewscreen. She lay in the dark, the streaking stars the only light in the room.

  Makios was handing over the bridge to Vanoor. They’d cleared the room next to theirs and put the boxes in there into storage below. Daris had taken it as his room for the night, leaving Devorak to continue sharing with Sidha. The two of them had formed an unlikely friendship.

  Rhona was thinking about her life—about her family and Makios and how the two worlds could possibly mesh together.

  She knew her father would love Makios and the feeling would be returned. They were two of a kind. Their families were everything to them; their extended family were people they fought with and fought for. Plus, if Makios was right and they could have a baby, Rhona could only imagine the look of delight when her father realised her children might have horns. She chuckled low in her throat at the thought. He would call it fate and praise long-dead gods ignoring the fact that Vikings never had actually worn horned helms.

  Her mother would need time. But the moment she saw her grandchild, alien or not, every doubt would melt away, and the Scots woman would claim her kin.

  Rhona wanted children. It had been something that she’d never really thought about before, but when she imagined pale children with small horns running down the hall of the ship, the thought left her yearning.

  Clearing the room earlier, all she could think about was putting a door in to make it an adjoining room to theirs.

  Rhona put her hands over her abdomen and wondered, with all the times they had been together, was it possible? She thought about her last period, which ended a couple of days before she left Mars. She mentally counted and realised she had breezed past her fertile time and they had done nothing about protection.

  Her breath caught in her throat. It was a slim chance. But if they could, it was possible.

  ‘What are you thinking about, little human?’ Makios appeared in her vision. He looked down at her, his face upside-down from her perspective.

  ‘I was thinking,’ Rhona swallowed. ‘About what you said earlier.’

  Makios knelt down and began stroking her hair and cheek. ‘What did I say?’

  ‘About me being pregnant a hundred times over.’

  Makios huffed out a laugh. One hand slipped down and into her pants. He found her clit and ran small circles around it.

  Rhona gasped, and her eyes fluttered closed. ‘What will you do if I become pregnant?’

  Makios sped up his rhythm a little. ‘Hmmm,’ he said. ‘What would I do if the female I love and intend on spending the rest of my life with were to catch with my seed and link our blood together for eternity?’ His voice sounded both contemplative and amused. Makios bent and kissed her. It was a lazy kiss that made filthy and exciting promises.

  ‘I would sing,’ he whispered against her lips. ‘I would dance. I would bend between your legs and worship the place our child will enter this world.’

  Makios sped up his rhythm again. Rhona gasped as she felt the beginning of a wave build throughout her lower body. She undulated her hips and felt the wave building higher.

  Makios drew her top over her breasts and rolled one nipple. Sensation dripped from her nipple to her pussy, and when Makios slipped a finger inside her, still making circles with his thumb, her pussy gripped greedily onto it.

  All the time, he was kissing her, his tongue spearing into her mouth, their lips locked until the kissing stopped and all they were doing was sharing their breath back and forth.

  Her whole pussy convulsed, and
Rhona cried out into his mouth. When her orgasm had passed its peak, he lightly rubbed two fingers over her, teasing and prolonging the sensation until she was gasping shallow breaths into his mouth.

  He grabbed her chin with the same hand, smearing her on her cheek, and turned her head, kissing her deeper, slower. When he was done, he licked the wetness from her cheek, then his fingers and growled.

  ‘Taste so good,’ he murmured before standing, rounding the bed and picking her up. He undressed her, then himself and sat down, settling her slowly onto his hard cock.

  ‘Keep me warm until you’re ready to go again, my love,’ he smiled.

  Rhona laughed. ‘Won’t be long,’ she gasped as she felt every textured inch of him slide inside her.

  She caught him looking down at her pussy with regret.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  He looked up at her with a grin. ‘Should have licked you clean first.’

  Rhona laughed and shook her head.

  ‘You just taste so damn good,’ he hissed when she raised up his length and slammed back down.

  She closed her eyes and savoured the sensation. ‘You feel so damn good,’ she whispered.

  She felt his hand slide over her skin, from her hips to her waist and settle on her breasts.

  ‘So do you,’ he growled. He thrust into her. ‘Can’t wait much longer.’ His voice was rougher now. Rhona recognised it. It was the voice that told her he was losing control.

  ‘Me neither,’ she gasped, sliding up and down him, then up again at a slow, teasing tempo.

  His hands shot to her hips, and he hissed again.

  ‘Rhona,’ he gasped. A hand shot to her head and he guided her, meeting her halfway for another kiss. He began thrusting into her. Already his rhythm was all over the place. Rhona pressed her hands to his hips to stop him and took control.

  ‘Makios,’ she whispered, looking into his molten silver eyes. She skipped soft and slow and went straight to hard and fast, feeling every inch of him slamming inside the full depth of her, their skin slapping together, creating a beat to their lovemaking.

  Makios cried out. His hand tightened, and his lips kissed at hers in the same broken rhythm as his thrusts.

  ‘My goddess,’ he gasped. ‘I’m not going to last.’

  ‘I’m going to cum!’ she cried out. A moment later, she did. Only this time it wasn’t a single crest—wave after wave lashed over her body. Rhona’s eyes closed, damn the competition, all she could do was cry out and experience something her body had never experienced before.

  She felt Makios shaking, gripping, breathing and gasping. Groan after groan erupted from his mouth and then he was expanding inside her. His thrusts began anew and Rhona could feel his hot cum spurting inside her. She cried out at the new sensation and felt her body buckle against him.

  Her hips were still meeting his thrusts, but slowly, moment by moment, their climaxes subsided until they were both left hot, sweaty messes in each other’s arms.

  Makios had turned the viewscreen off and turned on a dim light for them to see by.

  It was a couple of hours before Makios’s alarm went off. They slept some. Made love more and were lying in each other’s arms, breathing heavy, thoroughly sated.

  Rhona’s head lay on his chest, and she traced the red lines of his tattoos with a finger.

  ‘Do these mean something? Or are they just a nice design?’

  ‘Why would I get a “nice design”?’

  Rhona shrugged. ‘There are human tribes that have tattoos that mean something, and then there are people that take those designs and wear them because they think they look cool.’

  ‘Hmmm,’ Makios said. ‘Strange.’

  ‘A lot of our people are disconnected from their culture,’ she said. ‘They borrow.’

  ‘I already knew humans were strange,’ he said. ‘Why not just reconnect with their cultures?’

  Rhona shrugged.

  ‘What is your culture?’

  ‘Erm, complex,’ she said. ‘My dad’s family is Norwegian originally, which is quite close to Scotland, where my mum’s family were from. But they have different cultures. Though the British as a whole owe some of their culture to the Vikings.’

  Makios frowned at her.

  ‘Erm, Scotland is a part of Great Britain,’ Rhona explained. ‘And Vikings were a people the modern Norwegians used to be a part of. So Scottish and Norwegian,’ she said. ‘And Martian. Which is a new culture, made of a mix of the first peoples on Mars.’

  ‘And who were they?’

  ‘Mostly white Europeans and North Americans to start,’ she said. ‘Then the Arab nations commissioned a couple of ships and settled into domes already built. Asians did the same. It’s a bit of a hodgepodge of those.’

  ‘Hodpoje?’

  Rhona smiled. ‘Hodgepodge,’ she said slowly. ‘A mix.’

  She swallowed and continued tracing the path of Makios’s tattoos. ‘But we’ve created a lot of our own culture as well.’ She smiled up at him. ‘Martians are a work in progress.’ Easing herself out of his arms, Rhona sat up and slapped Makios on the chest.

  ‘Tell me about these.’

  Makios slipped an arm under his head and set the other at her back, his fingers tickling over her skin.

  ‘They are, my clan, my family, my accomplishments, my vows, my plans, my future.’

  ‘So they’re kind of a language?’

  Makios nodded. ‘We don’t use it anymore,’ he said. ‘For a long time, it’s been ceremonial. Religious. It is our history and our art.’

  Rhona looked down at the pattern. It was beautiful. Elegant. Red lines tapered to thin curves. They swept, branched, curved and doubled back. It was hard, but she made out a pattern, a repetition. She refamiliarized herself with each line on his chest until she got to the blank spot in the middle of his chest. There was a branch from each side of his pectoral muscles that met in the middle and crossed before coming to two blunt ends.

  ‘What’s this mean?’

  Makios stared at her for a moment then placed a hand over the pattern on one thick, ropey pectoral. ‘This represents my innu and her clan,’ he said. He indicated the other chest muscle. ‘This represents my adiff and his clan. Each dot represents children other than my direct line. These three each represent the siblings of my mother. These the siblings of my father.’

  ‘So this,’ she traced the two branches that crossed over, ‘represents you?’

  Makios nodded.

  He reached out and took Rhona’s hand and placed it over the empty space.

  ‘This will be where I mark you, and the children we will have together.’ His voice was quiet and solemn. ‘Over my heart, where you belong.’

  Rhona stared at the blank spot on Makios’s chest. The rest of her life was represented by that patch of skin.

  ‘What will it look like?’ she asked.

  Makios watched her as he drew a line with his finger. It continued from one blunt end and made a curving U-turn before connecting to the other. It seemed as though it were embracing something. His heart?

  ‘Then the children we have will branch from our joined line and connect back to my parents,’ he pointed at the marks representing his parents, ‘and through them, to my clan as a whole.’

  Rhona placed a hand over the clear skin and smiled. She looked up at Makios and placed a hand over his cheek, rubbing her thumb over his mouth. He kissed it as it caught on his lips. Rhona pressed it to her own, then leaned over and pressed her lips to the blank space. She turned her head and looked up at Makios, who was watching her closely. Rhona reached her hand out, and Makios laced his fingers through hers. Their hands rested over his chest, and they stayed like that for a while, watching each other.

  ‘Well I certainly got what I asked for, didn’t I?’

  Devorak watched Rhona as she stepped into the galley.

  ‘The whole ship got it,’ Dabin grunted before he disappeared back to the Medbay.

  ‘What do you…
’ Rhona felt her face heat up. ‘We really need to soundproof our room,’ she said.

  ‘I’m not sure that would help,’ Daris said as he stepped around her and sat down at the table. ‘You’re very loud.’

  ‘We’ll be arriving at Olidus in a couple of hours,’ Rhona snapped, heading to the table. ‘At least then I’ll be rid of one of you.’

  ‘You’ll be rid of both of us, Rhona,’ Devorak said. ‘I’m getting off with Daris and he’ll be taking me through the gate to the Amaran station. I’ve arranged transport to the Amaran homeworld from Dahnus Ascent where a Tessan ship will see me back to Tessa.’

  ‘I can’t believe I’m going to say this about a Cealin,’ she said. ‘Oh no. Why?’ Rhona was surprised by how disappointed she was at the idea of Devorak leaving.

  ‘These last few rotes with you have been very informative.’ He smiled at her. ‘You’ve sparked some ideas, and I would like to get on with making them a reality.’

  ‘Well, I’m glad I helped, but I’m going to miss you,’ she said honestly. ‘I hope I’ll see you again soon.’

  ‘You will,’ he promised her. ‘I’m sorry I won’t be going through the gate with you,’ he smiled.

  ‘Oh, God,’ she said, feeling anticipatory bile rising. ‘Why did you have to mention that?’

  Devorak’s smile widened to an evil grin. ‘Just so I could see this reaction,’ he admitted.

  Tala moved into position towards the airlock near the ship docked at Olidus station.

  ‘Are you not going to call my ship any names?’ Daris asked Rhona.

  It was white and red, instead of orange, and the shape was different, but it had the same feel, the same spirit as the Audrey Hepburn.

  Rhona choked up and shook her head.

  ‘What’s wrong, little human?’ he asked. What was it with aliens and that nickname?

  ‘Reminds me of my mum and dad’s ship,’ she said.

  ‘And they’re still in your home system?’

  Rhona nodded. ‘My mum’s pregnant, so thankfully they were on the ground when we were taken.’