Paradise 21 (12 page)

She hissed under her breath. “He’s coming right at us!”

“Trust me.” Striker squeezed her hand, and a wave of emotion rolled through her. How could she not desire a man who looked out for her? Who kept her safe?

The snake plunged into the sand, and Aries peeked from under the tarp, watching the lizard-child climb the dune and dig for it, grit flying up and raining down upon their tarp. It made a hollow sound when it hit and Aries cringed, thinking for sure the young raider would hear the difference.

The lizard boy ripped off his bone mask to get a better look, exposing rainbow scales around his eyes, like a gecko. The iridescence in his skin changed color in moments to blend with the dull hue of the sand. Black eyes with no pupils scanned the top of the dune as his head turned almost all the way around like a bird’s. She wondered what thoughts flitted behind his big, dark eyes. Did he feel pain or sorrow? Would he ever fall in love?

He dug closer, his webbed claws reaching for the sand above the tarp, and she held her breath. Striker shook his head ever so slightly, telling her not to move. They lay inches from the lizard boy’s reach. Aries grasped Striker’s hand and held on tight. Together, they waited for whatever might come.

The exhalation of her uneven breath moved the edge of the tarp and she forced herself to breathe out her nose. The youngling snapped his head in their direction and stuck out a blue-black, two-pronged tongue. He licked the air as if he could taste her sweat and fear. Aries’ heart thumped heavily in her chest.

Clicking sounds came from behind the lizard boy. One of the adult raiders pulled him off his feet, lifting him by his crude woolen shirt, and tossed him back to the caravan. With one look back at the dune, the lizard man returned to his kin. Aries let out a sigh. So many dangerous things lived on this planet. Death waited for her at every dune.

She turned her head toward Striker. “I would have died out here without you. The first day.”

He touched her cheek. “I’m glad you chose my planet to crash on.”

Aries held her breath, hoping his touch would turn to more, as it had before, but Striker looked away, watching the last stragglers of the caravan disappear on the horizon.

Aries studied his profile as the wind crept under the tarp and tossed a stray wisp of his thick, dark hair. She wanted to touch his hard-edged cheek, run her fingers along the stubble on his chin. Lying next to him filled her with an anxious energy, as if his body gave off fuel for her soul. The label “pirate” melted away to reveal a man struggling to survive, like everyone else in a cruel and harsh world. She truly saw him for the first time.

The clicking sounds of the raiders faded away, leaving only the sound of the tarp as it shifted in the wind. Aries had so many things she wanted to say, but her tongue felt numb and tingly in her mouth. She reached out and placed the stray piece of hair behind his ear.

Striker looked at her in question.

She’d been thinking all day of the kiss they’d shared. So tentative, and hesitant, the brief moment of contact had left her wishing for more. Now, his face rested so close, luring her toward him like a magnet. She bent forward to kiss him, but he turned his head away. Aries pulled back in a sheepish retreat.

“Might as well stay here and make camp for the night,” he said.

His casual tone stung her composure. How could he talk of such mundane things when they’d almost been captured, when she’d touched him so tenderly?

“We’ll let them get farther away,” Striker explained, reasonable as always. “We’re going in their direction tomorrow.”

The sting of rejection grew, burning a hole in her heart. “Why?” Her voice came out as a plea.

“Why what?”

Her lips trembled. “Why not kiss me like you did before?”

“I can’t.” He shook his head, and the air cooled between them—so much so, Aries wondered if the desert had turned into deep space.

He’d teased her with such affection before, it was cruel to take it away. “I don’t understand,” she said, wishing she didn’t care, wishing she could stop all the emotions he’d started in her heart.

Aries caught a glimpse of pain etched in the wrinkles around his eyes. Striker turned away and started pulling supplies out of his backpack. “I can’t do this.”

“Do what?”

Striker shook his head and Aries prompted, “Can’t kiss me, can’t trust me? What?”

“I can’t allow myself to get tangled up with someone. Not again.”

The thoughts of Striker with another woman confused her. On the
New Dawn
, everyone had one lifemate and that was it. “You mean you loved someone before?”

Striker’s hand tightened on the backpack. “I trusted someone a long time ago, allowed myself to love, if you will. She hurt me so much I lost my entire life and ended up here. I can’t experience that kind of pain again.”

“What did she do?”

“She marooned me here. She stabbed me in the back.”

Aries clasped her hand over her heart. “I’m so sorry.”

He waved her apology off as if it meant nothing. “It’s a tough world, Aries. And it’s dangerous to love. If I were you, I’d keep my heart well-guarded, because you never know when it will affect your decisions, when it will make you weak.”

Aries couldn’t take his advice. Watching him talk about his past made her realize she’d already given up her heart.

He had it.

Huddled under the propped-up tarp in the blazing heat of the desert, Striker allowed his thoughts to roam to places he hadn’t visited in a long time, places he’d quarantined in his mind like the wastelands of old Earth. His mind wandered back to the decision that had changed his destiny, the day he’d hired Tiff.

A light techno beat had charged the air, pulsing and buzzing in a retro syncopation. The heater over the ship’s bay sputtered out and an edgy chill descended throughout the space station. Striker worked up a sweat to keep the cold from settling in his bones. He screwed in bolts until his fingers ached and his sleeves dripped oil, fixing up an old family antique.

The ship hadn’t flown in over two generations, and he was determined to make it soar. Like any young man trapped on a pirate spaceport full of poverty and crime, he craved breaking free to explore the vast universe around them. Although his father lingered day after day in the same room where his mother had withered away, Striker yearned for a better life. He didn’t believe the stories of barren worlds and empty space. Somehow, deep down in his gut, he knew there were places like Earth had been before mankind, bounteous worlds untouched by squandering hands.

Boots clanked on the corridor above the ship’s bay, echoing off the thick glass separating him from the void of space. The footfalls sounded light, the gait as quick and bouncy as a deer’s. Striker looked up from his work to see a small young woman, barely five feet, with blond, pixie-cut hair spiked around her face and a waist tiny enough to hold in both hands.

“Greetings, Pirate.” She leaped off the walkway and landed on her feet in front of him like a ninja come out to play. Her gaze traveled over the metal hull and settled on the engine hanging over her head. “Nice ship.”

Striker rubbed a grease stain off the engine shaft the way someone would caress their loved one. “It belonged to my many-greats grandfather before me.”

A spark of interest lit her eyes. “So, you’re the descendant of Captain James Wilford?”

“Yes. Funny how everyone had a last name back then.” The sound of Striker’s ancestor’s name always flowed oddly off his tongue, like another language of a time long past. Striker had a picture of the man hanging in the three-room cell he shared with his father. In the picture, James Wilford peered out the window of a ruined building, looking both arrogant and courageous. He’d had the gumption to steal one of the last freighters, saving five hundred people from the wastelands of old Earth. He would be appalled at the living conditions now, especially all of the orphans.

“Yeah, and now all we have is shit,” she said.

Striker laughed, not expecting her comment or the edge in her tone. “So what brings you down here?”

“I hear you’re looking for a crew.”

Striker stared with mild interest. “What is it you do?”

Her gaze scanned from his head to his black-booted feet. She must have liked what she saw because she grinned, narrowing her black-lined eyes. “I’m a navigator. Learned it from my brother, before he blasted himself up in space.”

“I don’t need a navig—”

“Oh, yes, you do. I hear you’re looking for some paradise planet. A hefty task. People have been scouring the galaxy for hundreds of years.” She rose up on her toes to meet him eye to eye. “Give me a set of coordinates and I can get you there.” Her eyes widened, daring him to deny her.

Striker put down his wrench and wiped his hands on a rag. “Listen, honey, I’m sorry to hear about your brother, and I understand you need another ship, but this mission isn’t for you. I’m going out there to an unknown destination. No coordinates involved.”

The young woman was clearly struggling to mask her disappointment. He could see her hopes crashing down on her, her last chance at a better life. A pang hit his heart. He spoke softly, as if warning a child. “You may not make it back.”

“Don’t care.” She exhaled, looking around. “There’s nothing here for me. I’d rather die on a spaceship going nowhere than sit around and watch humanity decay.”

How she could fit so much attitude into such a small body, Striker couldn’t begin to guess, but he liked it. “All right. You’re in.”

She nodded with a jab of her head, her spiky hair unmoving, like the plastic grass lining the more expensive suites in the space station. “Just show me what you want me to do.”

“Over there.” Striker pointed at the far end of the ship’s bay to a metal desk. “I’ve collected a bunch of maps and circled a few of the least-explored quadrants. See what you can find.”

“Yes, sir.”

“The name’s Striker.”

She extended her hand. “Tiff.”

Striker blinked, squeezing once and letting it go. “As in an argument?”

Tiff narrowed her eyes. “Perhaps, if I don’t get my way.”

Before he could react, she pushed by him, skipped to the end of the room, and ruffled through his collection of maps, throwing the ones she deemed useless over her shoulder. Striker wondered in that moment if he’d gotten a bargain, or made the biggest mistake of his life.

Looking back on it today, he still wasn’t sure.

The desert breeze rustled over the tarp, pulling him back to his senses. If Tiff had never found this desert planet and abandoned him here, he would never have been there to save Aries. The auburn-haired woman lay beside him, her chest rising and falling in a deep sleep. He studied her high cheekbones and the perfect bridge of her nose, sprinkled with freckles in just the right amount over her porcelain skin. She reminded him of a sleeping beauty, preserved from a past time on Earth, when people had lived in opulence under a fairy tale blue sky. He knew the scientists had never perfected the stasis sleep, but looking at Aries and her flawless facade, he could have believed she had.

She shifted, turning over and pressing her back against his side. A familiar yearning stirred in Striker’s gut. The sexual attraction grew stronger with each moment they spent together, becoming harder to ignore. He moved away, disciplining himself to leave her alone. To not cross that line—no matter how much she’d indicated she wanted to cross it.

Questions swirled around in his head, but one pressed into his heart, demanding to be answered: could he bring himself to love again?

…

Parsecs away, Tiff leaned over a lap screen in the
Morphic Marauder
’s control room, surrounded by glowing monitors. She drew circles and lines with a barely-lit light pen. Just as she charted their current path from the mouth of the wormhole, the screen flickered and went blank. Frustrated, she broke the pen in half, the plastic cracking like a toothpick between someone’s teeth. Like everything else in her life, the energy cell had died, outlasting its usefulness.

Drifter sat with his feet on the table, twirling a wire that had frayed at the end.

“What’s the matter? Can’t find the place?”

“No, it’s not that.” Tiff shot him a baleful glance. “When we emerged from the wormhole, our sensors picked up a band of asteroids blocking our path. An alternate route would take seven more days.”

Drifter sat up, chewing his historic piece of gum. “I don’t remember no asteroids the last time we flew to Sahara 354.”

She shrugged. “They must be new, some waste from a meteor collision or floating debris that moved over time.”

“Well, can we go through them?”

Tiff tossed the light pen away and attached her last operational keyboard to the screen, then entered the rest of her data. She paused and looked down at her fingers, as if they’d typed a lie. “The computer says we should go around.”

“There’s your answer, sweetheart.”

“The computer is wrong.”

Drifter almost spit out his gum. “What?”

“We can make it through. I see a path right here.” She pointed to the screen and then consulted her maps. “If we go around this big one here, there’s a clear corridor of space leading out of the conglomeration.”