“Where is the rest of my team?”
“You were the only one left.” The young man stepped forward and uncrossed his arms. He spread his hands out in an apology. “The Lawless spirited away the rest. You’re lucky to be alive.”
She thought of Litus, Tank, and even Mars. Her heart clutched. “Taken them where?”
“To their hideout. For interrogation.”
“Who are the Lawless?” The name sounded so foreboding, it sent a shiver across her shoulders.
The young man frowned as if their name dropped a bitter taste on his tongue. “Another tribe; people who refuse to live by our rules.”
The room swam around her. The heat from the firelight pressed in, and the blankets itched. Vines thrust through the cracks in the floor.
She put both hands on the bed to steady herself. Her team was gone, and she was alone in what looked like one of the thatched tree huts Commander Grier had shown her from the control deck. Her gaze dropped to her locator. She had to contact the commander and tell her to send help. But not yet. She needed privacy in case Delta Slip came up.
The old woman’s kind voice brought her back to reality. “What’s your name, child?”
It was in her best interest to be friendly. “Eridani Smith, but my friends call me Eri.”
“Nice to be together under the twin moons, Eri. I’m Nutura, Striver’s mother. This is Striver.”
Striver. What a strong, dedicated name. Perfect for such a gorgeous human being. Eri reminded herself not to stare.
Wait a second!
They spoke with a strange bumpy accent and weird poetic expressions, but it was definitely English, and she understood it. “How is it you speak English?” The question came out as more of a demand or accusation. She’d studied too long and hard for her only mission to be this easy.
Striver stared her down with his green gaze. “Why do you?”
“It’s my native tongue, from Earth.”
The older woman turned to Striver. “Just what I thought. She’s from one of those colony ships, the ones the
S.P. Nautilus
told us about.”
Striver’s face brightened with recognition before another deeply guarded emotion passed. He crouched down by her bedside, his face inches from hers. “So you’ve come to colonize our planet?”
Eri’s heart broke. How was she going to tell them?
Yes, we’re here to steal your home.
She changed the subject instead. “Where did you learn English?”
The older woman patted the back of her hand. “We’re from Earth as well, dear.”
Eri shook her head, backing up against the bedframe. “That’s impossible. We’ve been traveling for five hundred years to get here, to Haven 6.”
Striver’s face softened, as if he understood her confusion. “My ancestor found a worm hole, and he transported those remaining at Outpost Omega to this place, which we call Refuge.”
She shook her head, trying to absorb all of the information.
There goes my job; no foreign languages here.
“So you’re no more alien than I am.”
Striver shrugged. “Let’s hope not.”
Eri tried to hide the disappointment sinking in her stomach. She’d trained her whole life to decipher foreign languages. Everyone considered her job to be a dead end. When the commander appointed her to the exploratory team, she felt needed, important. It turned out she wasn’t necessary at all.
Aquaria’s words flooded back to her:
Your job is much greater than you think. You’re going to have to find out if these creatures are peaceful, and if they are, you’re going to have to decide.
Looking into the kind face of Nutura and the handsome face of Striver, she wondered if maybe she ought to stay around. Did these people deserve to be obliterated? Have their home taken away?
“Eri, are you all right?” Nutura put her hand back on her forehead. “You look peakish.”
“I’m fine. This is a lot to absorb.”
“I’m sure it is. We’d be happy to answer any of your questions if it would ease your discomfort.”
“Not right now. I need some time alone to inform my commander of the status of the mission, if you don’t mind.”
Striver’s jaw tightened, but Nutura nodded. “Of course. I need to go back to my bed and rest. Let Striver know if you need anything.”
Eri glanced at Striver. She didn’t think she could even speak to him alone, never mind ask for his assistance. But if it assured Nutura enough to leave her be, then she had to play along. “Okay. I will.”
Nutura dragged up a cane from the floor and hobbled to the doorway, parting ferns with her free hand. Striver helped her balance as she left.
Eri realized she hadn’t even thanked them for saving her life. “Wait.”
Striver turned in the doorway, his face impassive.
“Thank you. For…for saving me, I m-mean.” Eri stumbled on her words, feeling like a fool.
“You’re welcome. I only wish I’d come sooner and saved your friends, as well.” He gave Eri one last melancholy look before he disappeared behind the ferns.
Wasting no time, Eri brought up her locator and pressed the hail code. She squeezed her fingers so hard her fingernails stuck into her palms as the transmitter blinked, trying to find reception. The bar grew longer, then shorter, and then disappeared altogether.
No, no, no.
She tried again, pressing each number with emphasis. Maybe she mis-keyed the code? Holding her arm up over her head, she brought the signal as close to the source as possible.
This time the bar appeared and stayed. Commander Grier’s face fizzled above her locator, broken up by static fuzz.
“Ms. Smith. Thank goodness you’ve made contact. I haven’t heard from the team in hours.”
Eri struggled to collect all of her thoughts and form cohesive sentences before she lost the transmission. “The team is gone. Everyone but me. Humans from Outpost Omega found a wormhole and colonized Haven 6 before we got here. I’m with a friendly tribe right now, but the rest of the team has been captured by a hostile group.”
The commander’s lips tightened. “Humans? From Outpost Omega?” Disgust soured her features before she blinked her real emotions away. “This does complicate things. How many are there?”
Eri tried to think of all the people flooding into the campsite. “I don’t know. Hundreds? A whole civilization? Please, you have to dispatch help right away. I’ll send you my coordinates.”
“Negative.”
“What do you mean? Some of the team may still be alive.”
“I cannot compromise more of our DNA pool. Not until I have further information. What weaponry did they use?”
Eri nervously tugged on a thread from the roughly woven blanket. Part of the weave unraveled and she blushed, glancing at the door. She hid the loose strand underneath a fold. “Arrows, I think, and darts that put you in a coma.”
“They don’t have the same technology we do?”
On second thought, Eri did find it odd that people who came in spaceships now lived in tree huts. “Apparently not, but I can’t be too sure.”
“Why didn’t the lasers work against them?”
“They were camouflaged, and they ambushed us. They know the terrain and were able to use it to their advantage. Please, you have to send help.”
Her image flickered and Eri’s heart skipped.
Not now.
Commander Grier’s face solidified, her beady eyes cold. “Stay where you are. Learn as much as you can about these tribes. Report to me in six hours with accurate numbers and detailed descriptions of their weaponry.”
“B-but…you’re not sending a rescue party?”
“Ms. Smith,” the commander snapped back. “You must befriend this welcoming tribe, get them on our side. We may need them before the time for Delta Slip comes. You are only to report to me. I’m blocking any further transmissions to others on the
Heritage
. I cannot allow widespread panic.”
Blocking her locator? But what about Aquaria? How would she let her know about Litus? The image flickered out and Eri couldn’t tell if the commander had ended the transmission or if she’d lost it. But one thing was for sure. No help was coming, and Litus, Tank, Mars, and the others might still be alive.
Using her locator, Eri searched for the members of the team. A weak signal came from Northwest, showing the life signs for Litus and Mars. Hopefully the others were just too far away to register. She refused to believe the rest of the team was dead.
Eri stood up. The floor pitched underneath her, but she regained her balance and took a deep breath. She’d have to ask that gorgeous man for help.
…
“Do you think we can trust her?” Striver whispered as he led his mother into her thatched hut. The dim glow of the dying torch made the rings under her eyes darken with shadows. She shouldn’t have left her bed, but he could only bring so much of the world to her. She wanted to meet the girl who’d descended from the stars. Her enthusiasm gave him hope that her own battle wasn’t yet lost. Besides, he needed her advice.
“I looked right into her eyes. She has a good heart.” His mother lowered herself into bed slowly and waved away his help. “You know I have a good gut instinct when it comes to people.”
“Of course.” He resisted the urge to roll his eyes at the mention of her psychic tendencies. No one had shown powers like that since the last generation on Outpost Omega. Either those old fortune-tellers were bogus, or those with the gift chose to stay behind.
Maybe they were right.
He shrugged off his doubts. Their colony hadn’t lost anything yet.
His mother settled underneath the blankets. “She’ll do the right thing.”
“Yes, but for her people or for ours?”
“Gut feelings don’t answer specifics, Striver. All you can do is spend time with her. Get to know her.”
Impatience bubbled inside him and he clenched his fists. “I don’t have time for that. There’s a whole mother ship hanging up there in the sky, the Lawless seized who knows what from the colonists, and they’re probably interrogating the rest of them as we speak. Our relations with this new faction are chancy at best, and I have to decide what’s best for our people.”
She gave him the same look she used when he cursed bad weather or couldn’t wait until twilight to hunt—the look that told him he couldn’t save the world all by himself. “Whether you have the seconds to spare or not, only time will tell.”
Striver calmed his frustration by focusing on his mother. He took her hand, the bones thin as twigs, and squeezed her fingers gently. “Rest now. I’ll come if I have any more news.”
She smiled and closed her eyes. Her voice sounded sleepy, her mind already drifting. “The way she looked at you…”
The way who looked at me? The girl?
He opened his mouth to ask, but she’d already fallen asleep and he didn’t want to wake her. She’d had a long day. Rarely did she leave the bed, never mind venture from her hut. The fatigue must have weighed on her, making her imagine things.
Shrugging off her comment, Striver parted the ferns and walked into the crisp morning air. He hadn’t slept since they dragged Eri home, and the sleepless night had pulled on his muscles, making him feel like he had stones tied to his arms. Rest was not possible, though, because the young beauty lay in his bed.
He slumped against the outside of his own tree hut, trying to remember what he’d learned about the ships from his ancestors who’d founded their colony, Striker and Aries. Striker had been a space pirate from Outpost Omega, but Aries had escaped a colony ship called the
New Dawn
. Their strict rules of lifemate pairings and job assignments based on test scores had been too much for her. Aries had met Striker after she escaped, and with his help, they reclaimed his map to Refuge and transported the rest of the space pirates.
Those colony ships had strict objectives, and he doubted they’d change their plans to include descendants of the very space pirates who took over their space station and severed their communications with the other ships. Especially when the Lawless had already fired the first shot.
He rubbed his forehead, the situation worsening in his mind.
The ferns rustled behind him and Eri stuck out her head. “Excuse me, Striver, could I speak with you?”
His name sounded foreign on her tongue, like she’d found a different way to accent the syllables that he wasn’t used to. At least she remembered it.
“Of course.” He stood and gestured inside. “For privacy.”
She ducked her head, and he followed her into his own room, feeling as though he were the intruder.
Eri paced, her small boots walking the same planks of wood he’d paced himself many times. She wrung her hands, worry creasing her pretty face. “I’ve spoken with my commander, and she’s hesitant to send down any more teams.”
He nodded, unsure what this new development meant for him and his people. Would these people just fly away, find another planet that was habitable?
“What are you going to do?”
“I need your help. Some of my team members are still alive. I’ve tracked their locators with my own, and they have steady life signs.”
“Are you sure?”
“The locator wouldn’t work if they didn’t. It’s embedded in our arms, a part of us. Our electrical energy drives it.”
“I see.” He cast a glance at the locator on her arm and stifled his usual distrust of technology. If she had such a fancy device, why did she need him? “What do you want me to do?”
“We’ve got to rescue them before something happens.”
He shook his head, running his hand through his hair. “I don’t know. We lost many good men and women just trying to get you.”
“You don’t understand. They took our weapons as well. Once they figure out how to use them, the combination of their camouflage techniques and our technology will be unstoppable. I mean, they already pummeled us with just bows and arrows. Imagine what a gallium crystal void ray would do in their hands.”
She had a point. A gallium crystal void ray sounded pretty dangerous. It only meant one thing: these people came to conquer. “How many weapons did they take?”
Eri shrugged. “I’m not sure. Maybe twenty laser guns? Maybe more? How many did your tribe recover?”
“Counting yours?”