No Words Alone (6 page)

Ryven’s smile was cold. “Confiscate their
painkillers. From now on, they must come to us for this medicine.
You may leave the antibiotics and such.”

Xera felt dizzy. The Scorpio commander was
going to let Khan suffer as punishment, and Khan would never forget
it. Nor would he forgive his men being disarmed. He’d want
revenge.

Ryven turned his back on his enemies as his
men followed orders. Xera had to wonder if this was just the
opportunity he’d been waiting for all along.

He stopped in front of her but addressed his
men. “There is heat in her ankle again. Take her to the balcony and
ice it. Check her feet as well.”

Delfane swung Xera into his arms and headed
for the stairs. She didn’t bother to protest, knowing she’d waste
her breath. Most of her crew’s attention was on the Scorpio going
through their packs, but one or two glanced her way with accusing
eyes. Khan was one of them.

Once up the stairs Delfane sat her down on a
woven fiber mat on a bench set along one wall. It seemed luxurious
compared to the stone bench that had been ruining her back. There
was even a boxy pillow to accompany it, and a brown blanket that
looked like rubber folded at the foot.

Brirax appeared with a cold pack for her
foot. “Do you need help to take off your footwear?”

Xera stared at him a moment, then slowly
reached down and unfastened her boot. Shock had rendered her
momentarily docile. She didn’t know what would happen to her now,
but she would choose her battles.

It seemed clear as time passed that nothing
bad would happen. The men treated her with courtesy, tended the
healing blisters on her feet and then left her alone. As the
evening wore on, the lights were dimmed and she could see out
through the thick glass that separated this bunker from the
outside. The black shapes of fliers traced across the unfamiliar
stars, searching for food.

The stars. Somewhere out there, up in that
sky, was her family. It took a long time for her to turn her back
on those winking lights and fall asleep.

Chapter 5

She was not permitted to speak to her
companions. It might have been for her safety. It might not.

Xera stood on the balcony level and watched
as the other humans went about their business under guard. The
bottom level had been turned into a prison, and the top tier was
the command center and Scorpio living quarters. She saw several
Scorpio males with laptops conversing over headsets. It wasn’t hard
to tell they weren’t talking with each other.

A ship was coming. A Scorpio ship. Xera
closed her eyes and tried to ignore the rush of fear. She hadn’t
been harmed since coming up here, but she still didn’t know what
the future held.

“You did a good job of defending yourself
last night.” Ryven Atarus paused nearby at the railing of the
balcony and looked down.

“I wish I hadn’t had to. This will make my
life difficult if I ever get back home.” She slid a look sideways.
“I don’t suppose you have plans to return me there.”

He looked at her almost curiously. “I have no
such plans.”

The full force of those eyes left her
breathless. She looked back at the lower level. “What are your
plans, then? What will happen to them?”

“Do you care?”

Startled, she said, “Why wouldn’t I? I spent
a long time on board with them. They are my crew.”

“Who left you to your captain’s mercy.”

“We don’t know how that might have played
out.”

“You are overly optimistic.”

“It beats being negative.”

The Scorpio commander’s answer was silence.
He gave her a slight nod of his head in farewell and went about his
business.

It was a long day. Xera hobbled to the ray
shower, listened to her music and occasionally walked around the
balcony, holding the rail. The Scorpio seemed to hum with
anticipation.

Finally she went to bed. The fliers were out,
but they seemed a lot less threatening with a thick sheet of glass
between her and them. She had no desire to venture outside to play,
though. Once had been enough.

She slept.

Someone shook her arm almost as soon as she
fell asleep, it seemed. “What?” she asked groggily.

“The ship is here.”

That got her up. Still fuzzy, she let Delfane
hand her boots. Scorpio were already moving past her bed, armed and
carrying packs. Brirax and Delfane hustled her along with them down
the stairs. She could see her crewmates being escorted down the
long tunnel. There were a few protests at going outside
unarmed.

“What about the fliers?” she asked, feeling
anxious herself.

“We won’t let you get eaten,” Delfane assured
her. “The ship is here, and there are more men outside providing
cover. The fliers don’t have a chance tonight.”

They stepped outside into a chill night wind.
As promised, there were no fliers in the sky. Maybe they’d been
frightened away by the flood of light bathing the nearby rocks and
surrounding plain.

The stairs would have been difficult if
Delfane and Brirax hadn’t helped. Xera let them steady her and
hopped as best she could, determined to walk on her own.

They reached the flat top of the rock
outcropping and moved to one edge. Her first view of the ship stole
her breath. Sinister black and monstrously big, it glowed with blue
lights through the many portholes and the bridge. The ramp was down
and also lit. Many Scorpio were on the plain, and the air hummed
with sound of the ship’s massive engines.

Xera shivered in the cold wind as fear of the
unknown hit her. What would happen now?

Ryven Atarus showed up at her side. “Follow
me.”

The four of them walked up the ramp and into
the ship, down a busy hall and took a lift to the bridge.

“Atarus!” a male Scorpio greeted them as they
stepped out of the lift. “Trust you to survive a crash on the most
hostile planet in the galaxy!” He clapped his friend on the
shoulder and then looked at Xera. “What’s this? You managed to come
out of it with a beautiful woman as well? Am I the only one who
crashes with flatulent, snoring men?”

This new Scorpio was tall and
broad-shouldered, with brown hair cut very short. One of his ears
was pierced with a golden starburst, and there was a hands-free
communication set around his ear. He was obviously this ship’s
counterpart to Ryven.

Ryven smiled. “Shiza. You deserve to crash
with only men. This is the translator to the alien ship, Lieutenant
Xera Harrisdaughter. She is injured and would like to rest.”

“Of course,” Shiza said, instantly
solicitous. “Is a doctor needed?”

“After a rest. My men will escort her to her
room to finish her sleep cycle.” Ryven paused and looked at her, as
if giving her an opportunity to speak. But what did he expect her
to say; thanks for the ride?

He nodded to her and her escort, and then
turned to Shiza. “How proceeds the recovery team? Our ship was not
too badly damaged....” Xera missed the rest as she was led off.

She was happy to see her room had a real
padded bunk, not a steel slab or something equally obnoxious. Rock
had been bad enough.

Sufficiently tired that the lack of a
porthole didn’t distress her, she listened as Brirax gave her a
brief rundown on the lavatory and water dispenser. She was
surprised that there were even a few supplies left inside for her:
a new hairbrush, for one. A glance in the mirror told her she
needed it desperately. He left her with a pouch of rations and
wishes for a good slumber.

Sleep be hanged, she dove into the ration
pack before the door was closed. There were various food bars, a
pouch of dried fruit and some kind of sweet dried vegetable that
she instantly loved. It sure beat the pants off slug soup.

Maybe it was the endorphins of actually
having real food choices again, but she was able to lie down after
that and nap.

She woke to the sound of an electronic tone.
Wondering what it was, she sat up and looked around, then
remembered. Ah, yes. She was hitching a ride on an enemy starship.
Lovely.

The tone ceased as soon as she got out of bed
and stowed the blanket and pillow. She used the lavatory and the
ray shower, wondering idly if it were possible to do both at once.
It didn’t take long to brush her pageboy, and she smiled, amused to
think some women spent hours in the bathroom. They wouldn’t last
long around here.

A new tone sounded at her door. It was
Delfane, and he was there to escort her to breakfast.

They entered a galley full of males, and Xera
had to take a breath to steel herself against their curious stares.
It helped that the room smelled wonderful enough to make her
salivate. Delfane handed her a tray and then helped himself. She
didn’t ask what anything was, unwilling to ruin it. Instead, she
just dished up a tiny bit of everything.

He grinned at her overflowing plate as he
juggled his own. “I don’t like slug soup, either.” He then found
them a quiet table off to the side, and she saw that most of the
men were filing out of the room. They must have arrived at a shift
change, and she wondered if that was deliberate. She quelled the
natural urge to ask what time it was: it hardly mattered on a ship
that operated on an artificial clock.

The food was good, for the most part. There
was one odd-tasting purple vegetable, but she quickly removed it
from her mouth. It was metallic and bitter, and she couldn’t
imagine anyone willingly eating it.

“Very like my daughter,” Delfane said dryly.

She made a face at him. “Will you be seeing
her soon? I bet she’ll be excited to see you.” Her mouth started to
tingle and go numb, and she frowned, wondering if it was something
she’d eaten, and if so, was it a normal reaction?

“I talked with her and her mother last
night,” Delfane said with a relaxed, satisfied smile. “We will
reach our home planet in two days. I hope I will not have to leave
again for a long while.”

She nodded politely, not really listening.
The numbness had spread to her throat, and she was having trouble
breathing.

Delfane looked at her sharply. “Are you
well?” It took only a moment of observation to answer his question.
He stood up with a spate of rapid-fire speech into his headset and
hauled her up by one arm. By that time she was seriously fighting
for air.

She was a little fuzzy on what happened next.
Maybe he carried her to the med lab. She did notice when she was
laid down on a padded table, but spots danced before her eyes,
distracting her. There was a sharp poke, and slowly faces above her
started to resolve into individuals. Delfane she knew, hovering in
the background, but the others above her were strangers. Glad she
could breathe, she decided she didn’t care and closed her eyes, the
better to suck in sweet gulps of oxygen.

“Severe pulmonary distress,” she heard
someone explaining.

“Yes, we can see she’s not breathing; what I
want to know is why.” That was Ryven Atarus’s curt voice.

“Let them do their job, my friend. See? She
is breathing better now,” came Shiza’s voice.

Instead of answering, Ryven began to grill
Delfane.

Which was all very interesting, but Xera’s
back hurt from all the wheezing. She decided it must have been
something she ate; maybe that awful purple thing.

“I think it was breakfast,” she croaked out
in her native tongue. She still wasn’t thinking clearly.

“What?” Ryven came to stand over her.

She frowned in concentration and repeated
herself in his language. “Yucky purple vegetable. My mouth started
to go numb right after I tried it.”

“Yucky?” he repeated with a frown.

“She called the slugs that,” Delfane put in
helpfully.

“What did she eat?” the medic wanted to know.
“This could be an allergic reaction. We’re still downloading the
medical information recovered from the alien ship’s wreckage, and
it hasn’t all been translated. I don’t know what else this might
be.”

Delfane rattled off a list of foreign
objects. “The only purple thing we had was yur root.”

Yur root. She was never eating it again, she
decided with a grimace.

It turned out she
was
allergic to the
alien root and one or two other foodstuffs she’d have to take care
with. The medics ran a full diagnostic on her, which took quite
some time. They even had the audacity to kick Ryven and their
captain out at one point, as the pair was getting in the way.
Delfane was allowed to guard the door.

The medics also sent a team to test the other
humans for allergies, just in case.

On the bright side, the medics had a healing
accelerator for her foot, and they promised it would be as good as
new in a day or two. They also gave her a special wrist bracelet
with a medic alert symbol and patches that would deliver medicine
to her bloodstream if her body went into allergic shock again.

Ironically, she was cleared to leave sickbay
just in time for lunch.

“I’m not sure I’m hungry,” she said warily to
Delfane as she walked out of the chamber. She was barely limping,
thanks to the healing accelerators, and not looking forward to
facing the cafeteria line.

“Don’t worry. Lord Atarus has instructed us
to join him and the captain for a private meal. Your food will be
carefully selected to eliminate potential...misfortune.”

“Who knew my most dangerous enemy on this
trip would be the food?” she muttered in her native language.

Ignoring Delfane’s curious glance, she looked
around. The hallways here were quieter than they had been when she
first entered the ship. There was some kind of non-slip surface
like rough rubber underneath her.

“Why is he so interested in me?” she asked
after a moment. She didn’t really think Ryven’s underling would
answer, but she wondered. She hadn’t been interrogated or sexually
importuned, for which she was profusely thankful, but she was also
confused. Was she remaining braced for something that would never
materialize? “He treats me like a guest. Am I not your enemy? Does
he have a family?” She couldn’t help adding after a moment.
A
wife, for instance?