The Challenge (5 page)
Authors: Susan Kearney
“I’d like to speak to the secretary, again,” she requested, wondering if he’d try to talk her out of a second communication.
He didn’t. Kahn handed her a device that reminded her of a cell phone. The big man’s expression remained patient, yet contradictorily his shoulders tensed and a muscle tightened in his neck as if silently exhorting her of the urgency to keep this conversation pointed and short.
Kahn pressed one button and the secretary’s visage appeared as a three-dimensional hologram on the screen. Another technical marvel from the future.
“Mr. Secretary, thank you for taking my call. Kahn has convinced me that I am no longer in my own time, but I must refuse this mission. Earth should choose someone more suitable, someone who has a better chance for success, someone who has already shown adeptness toward developing psi powers.”
“You are our best hope, Special Agent Camen.”
If the wily politician sought to remind her of her duty to serve, he’d only reinforced her determination. “Kahn has told me that this Challenge requires psi ability. I have none. For the sake of our world, you must choose another more qualified candidate.”
The politician’s gaze went to the upper corner of the screen where he could view the alien in the background. “Kahn has assured us that every race can develop psi powers—”
“Suppose he’s wrong?” The panic that she’d held at bay surged back with a strength that had her interrupting a superior. “He’s an alien and may not be an expert on our brains or physiologies or wherever this psi power comes from.”
“Look. To be frank, we don’t have anyone else who fits the alien requirements.”
“
I
don’t fit the requirements,” Tessa countered.
“Do you know why we pulled
you
out of time?”
“Why?” She could guess. After all, she was a highly trained special agent who’d repeatedly proven her loyalty to her government, and she was a virgin—whatever that had to do with anything—but she wanted to hear the secretary’s reasons, so she could offer a counter argument.
“In our time, we couldn’t find a virgin—of either sex—over the age of sixteen.”
“What?”
“The trend of youthful sexual experimentation has made finding a candidate from our time quite impossible.”
“But you could have chosen anyone from our history. Surely you could find someone who exhibited psi—”
“It’s not that easy. We had to search for someone in prime physical condition, someone whose absence wouldn’t change the future if we pulled them out of the past. In other words, we needed someone who was about to die.”
“Oh, come on. You could have chosen from special ops teams from a dozen wars—one of them must have had psi—”
“We chose you. According to our computerized analysis, you are adaptable and strong, skilled in the martial arts and humanity’s best choice. Good luck, and know that our hopes and prayers go with you.”
The link went dead, and she handed it back to Kahn, feeling like a condemned prisoner. To give the big guy credit, he gave her a few minutes to reconcile with her fate. However, mere minutes wouldn’t be enough. She doubted months or years would be enough to fully comprehend all that she’d lost. All that rested on her shoulders.
“We are done here, yes?” he asked.
Before she could think to form a reply, before she could take another breath, never mind form a plan, they were back inside the shuttle. She’d felt no motion. One moment she’d been in the cemetery, the next she was inside the alien craft.
As if her sudden transportation wasn’t enough to deal with, she came simultaneously to three startling and disturbing conclusions.
One: Her suit was again transparent, leaving her naked.
Two: Something invisible had just pressed against her lips, as if she’d been kissed.
Three: She’d missed her opportunity to escape.
TESSA SHOT Kahn a glare of frustration and disapproval, but the alien was too busy instructing the shuttle’s voice-activated computer to lift off and fly back to the mothership to pay any attention to her. She used the opportunity to explore the tiny vessel. The shuttle was large enough to hold six people comfortably. Ignoring the console area, she strode to the rear of the saucer-shaped craft. Lockers lined the walls. Instruments she didn’t recognize dotted the ceiling. The floor, made of the same shimmering metallic gray metal she’d seen aboard the mothership, was smooth and bare.
Not even her exploration of the small spacecraft was enough to distract her from her tingling lips. What had just happened?
After she’d distinctly felt lips pressed to hers, she eyed Kahn warily. She hadn’t actually seen him come close enough to kiss her. During the time her mind had registered the touch to her lips and figured out what she’d felt, Kahn hadn’t appeared to change his position across the shuttle.
With any other man, she’d have confronted him outright, likely smacked him up side the head so hard he would have seen stars. But she couldn’t even prove Kahn had done it.
Yet no way had she imagined that kiss.
With a sinking sensation in her gut, she recalled how he moved faster than the eye could follow. Kahn had the ability to leave his chair, kiss her and return to his previous position before her eyes detected any movement.
The notion that she was more helpless and more vulnerable than she’d ever dreamed possible churned her stomach.
As a lost and lonely child, Tessa had needed to control at least one part of her world. That’s why martial arts appealed to her and why she’d focused on her training to the exclusion of almost everything else. She’d spent all her spare time after school enjoying Master Chen’s intense sessions in the dojo where she’d learned to strengthen her character from the outside in. First she’d mastered her muscles, performing ritual kata, then her emotions during kamite, open-handed fighting. After working for Daron Garner in the private sector, her superior skills had given her the confidence to face the rigors of becoming a Secret Service Agent, and later she’d attributed much of her success to her ability to assess, adapt, and fight with deadly skill.
Ever since she’d awakened on the spaceship, Tessa had counted upon her martial arts abilities to protect her. Kahn’s size hadn’t alarmed her. Neither had his muscles. Her martial arts training could overcome superior size and mass. But she’d underestimated her opponent. It was probably a damn good thing that she’d remained cautious. She was fast, but when he moved at speeds that her eyes couldn’t even register, that her brain couldn’t process, she was as helpless as a rookie against a black belt. Of all the losses she’d suffered that day, this one knocked her off her feet.
She slumped against a bulkhead, slid to her butt, drew her knees to her chest, and rested her forehead on her knees. She needed to think about what she could do.
Right now, she should be paying closer attention to Kahn’s piloting skills. If she ever intended to go home, flying this ship might be a useful skill. His voice-activated commands seemed simple enough. The ship must have automated navigation systems, because Kahn had simply ordered the vessel to go home.
On a forward viewscreen, the saucer-shaped mothership grew larger, the lights around the rim brighter. On the aft screen, Earth decreased in size until she saw dirty oceans and the orange-brown clouds that marred the beauty of the green and blue orb she remembered.
Despite the odds, her nature wouldn’t permit her to remain down for long. She would try her very best to succeed. She would work hard. Cooperate. Try to keep an open mind. If she was her world’s only hope, she vowed to give her all, and she would pray the alien knew her capabilities better than she did.
When she felt another distinct kiss on her lips, she jerked up her head. Kahn, his back to her, remained at the piloting console, seemingly in deep communication with his vessel. Even if he’d moved at the speed of light, he couldn’t have kissed her—not with her forehead propped against her knees—not unless he could shapeshift, too.
“How did he do that?” she wondered aloud.
And why?
“How did he do what?” the feminine voice of the computer answered from a nearby speaker.
Startled that the computer had spoken directly to her, Tessa rested her chin on her forearms, her head up. “You can talk to me?”
“I respond to voice command, radio signals, sonar, remote control, or preprogrammed audio-visual.”
Tessa’s position at the aft of the ship should have allowed Kahn to hear this conversation, but when Tessa glanced at him, his attention focused on the communications screen. “Can he hear us?”
“Not in the privacy mode I have engaged in order to avoid disturbing him.”
Tessa jumped at the opportunity to ask questions and fill the massive gaps in her new predicament. “Could you clarify, please?”
“No one can hear us unless Kahn issues a command code to override.”
“You will tell me if that happens?”
“Unless instructed otherwise.”
Was that a giggle that Tessa heard from the computer? Great, now not only was she feeling kisses that weren’t there, she was hearing giggles from a machine.
“Thanks.” She didn’t know if Kahn would have allowed her to talk with the computer system if she’d asked his permission. But he couldn’t forbid what he didn’t know about.
“Thanks aren’t necessary,” the computer told her through the nearby speaker system. “Nevertheless I am pleased—”
“Pleased?” The computer sounded friendly. And if Tessa had ever needed a friend, it was now. “You have emotions?”
“Of course.” Her tone sounded insulted. “I’m an advance 51J model. Every model since the 24A has an emotion chip.”
“So I insulted you by asking that question, didn’t I?” Tessa asked the rhetorical question in amazement.
“I forgive you.” The computer sounded quite chipper. “Tell me about your kiss.”
The computer sounded so wistful and dreamy that Tessa found herself breaking into a smile. “Do you have a name?”
“Computer systems don’t have names on Scartar.”
“Scartar?”
“The planet where I was created.”
So the machine hadn’t been built on Kahn’s world. “Have you known Kahn for a long time?”
“He came aboard less than ten days ago.”
Tessa didn’t understand. “Are you saying this isn’t his ship?”
“The starship belongs to the Federation and is lent to Challenge contestants for the duration of the mission. Now about that kiss . . .” The computer prodded her like a curious girlfriend.
Thinking of her as a nameless computer seemed ridiculous when she had a seemingly unique personality and character. “I’m going to name you Dora.”
“Dora. That’s pretty, feminine, and sexy. I like it. Thank you.”
“And we shall be friends,” Tessa said, sensing a loneliness in Dora that matched Tessa’s own need to communicate with another female.
“I’ve never had a friend,” Dora’s voice turned eager. “What am I supposed to do?”
“Be yourself.”
“I can most certainly do that.”
Tessa couldn’t help smiling at Dora’s attitude. “Dora, I don’t suppose you can fly me back home?”
Dora promptly went back into official computer mode. “My current orders are to head for the starship. Unless you have an authorization code to countermand Commander Kahn’s instructions, I must continue on this course.”
Another fleeting kiss followed by a slow series of nips down her neck caused Tessa to gasp. “Oh my.”
“What? Don’t tease me. Did you get kissed again?”
“Yeah. This time the kiss touched my lips then slid sensuously down my neck.”
“I wish I had a neck. That sounds absolutely delicious.”
Tessa might have agreed, if she’d hooked up with someone of her choosing. She might be a virgin, but she had once been loved and been in love. The sensations that bombarded her now brought back painful memories along with the pleasurable sensation, but this time she hadn’t indicated a willingness to . . . “Damn. It’s happening again.”
“In the same spot?”
Experimentally, Tessa held out her hands in front of her face, but met with nothing except atmosphere.
“He’s nuzzling my ear.” Frustration with the odd tickling sensation caused her voice to sharpen. “Dora, how in hell is he touching me?”
“I do not understand the question.”
“Every so often I feel lips pressed to mine. Since the only person aboard this vessel is Kahn, I assumed he’s the culprit.”
“Culprit? You sound as if you’re complaining,” Dora commented, with a giggle.
