The Lereni Trade (3 page)

He turned back to her and a light
glimmered in those green eyes. He said something in his
language.

Before she could say anything, a voice
from a speaker said in a dull monotone, "Speak now. We will
understand each other."

Krissa blinked while he returned to
working on her ankle. All her questions tumbled over the fact that
they had a way to communicate. She didn't know what to
say.

Torik finished on her ankle and set it
down gently and spoke.

"You will walk on it soon," the
computer said.

"Wha—"The seat pushing up into her
startled her from the flood of questions demanding answers. It drew
her eyes to the movement outside the glass. The trees slid away and
the moon and stars shifted out of view. They were lifting off. A
small thrill raced through her in light of the situation—going into
space with aliens, which really existed. However, the fear of the
unknown tempered that excitement. Who they were, what they wanted
with her, why they had taken her, where they were going…

She finally found her voice to ask,
"What is this?" The monotone computer voice spoke in their
language.

The others spoke but not in answer to
her. Rather, the translations blended upon one another; they came
too fast. She caught bits about camouflage on and having clear
passage. Torik sat at her feet. She dug her fingers in the metal
underneath her while the ship angled up and away, but with no
indication of the G-forces involved. At some point, the faintly
purple night sky transitioned to deep black.

"Clear," the monotone voice translated
from one of the two aliens at the fore consoles.

"Korr, set our course." The original
command had come from Karik.

Fuzzy fingers flew over the console,
strange symbols scrolling at the bottom of a star chart on the
clear screen before the crewman. "Done."

"
Neirash'kay'anur
engines."

She could only guess that a word
didn't exist in the English language for whatever the translation
was. How did they even have an English translation?

Outside the forward view, the stars
streaked. At the same time, her stomach lurched, although she felt
no hint of the movement. The streaks transitioned to stretched
blurs sweeping past, and the room spun for a moment, distracting
her from the thought that they must have entered some sort of
faster-than-light travel. After the sudden upset of her stomach,
the nausea brought on by the dizziness threatened to make her lose
her last meal.

Breathing slowly to calm the nausea,
she crawled to the floor and lay down on her side.

"You will adjust soon," the computer
translated with none of the sympathy in Torik's voice. But the
brush of soft fur of his fingers against her cheek
compensated.

"Why are you doing this?" And when
would she adjust? She couldn't take much more. The threat of
vomiting grew every second. She couldn't fight it much
longer.

Torik looked back at Karik, who
displayed nothing but contempt and a slightly curled lip drawn away
from points of teeth.

"To save our world," Torik
said.

Krissa closed her eyes and focused on
breathing to settle her insides. "Why me?"

"You are the one we need."

She peered up at him, expecting some
joke to be revealed, if aliens had a sense of humor. "Because I was
out there alone," she summarized.

"No. Because you are the one we need.
We tracked you to that location."

Me?
She studied that alien face, searching for something of a
human expression. Maybe a teasing or mischievous glint in those
eyes, a crooked grin, anything. Either they didn't emote the same
as humans or he was serious.

"What's special about me?" She closed
her eyes as another wave of nausea swept over her. "I'm nobody,
just a freak who can't even get through college without being
harassed."

After the translation ran, Karik said,
"Torik…"

Heavy steps thumped several times and
stopped nearby. The sound of fabric scraping and ruffling made her
open her eyes again.

Karik dragged Torik away with a claw
dug into his shoulder. They disappeared through the door, which
opened before them and closed after.

Krissa sighed and breathed easier with
the fading nausea.

The spinning slowed and finally
stopped, but the warmth of her coat made her stomach worse. Trying
not to upset her stomach but needing to cool off, Krissa managed to
unzip her coat and wiggle out of one sleeve while fighting against
the urge to vomit.

In the movement, her hand briefly slid
over the bracelet from her birth mother on her wrist. At least she
still had that, but it never came loose, staying with her as she
wished her real mother always had.

Not again. She refused to let the
grief of being abandoned get to her and proceeded to remove her
coat to relieve the warmth that fed the nausea.

She lay on the ground until her
stomach and head agreed. By the time she sat up, the door to the
short corridor—the airlock she supposed—hissed open and the two
aliens returned. Karik stood aside while Torik knelt down to her
and laid his head on the floor facing her.

"Are you better?" he asked.

She tried to smile but a touch of
nausea made her grimace. "Not yet."

"The transition is difficult for
some."

"What transition?"

He pressed thin lips together, his
eyes searching elsewhere. A few seconds later, he refocused and
said, "The change in drives, in…travel mode."

"You're not affected."

He grinned, displaying the catlike
teeth. "We are accustomed to it."

"Will I get used to it?"

"Unknown."

If she was going to have to travel
with them, this could be a problem.

"Torik." The deep voice lashed from
the other creature.

Torik closed his eyes briefly and let
out a heavy sigh.

"Get her off the command
deck."

"And risk her vomiting?" He lifted his
head and turned. "I don't want to clean it."

And she didn't want to deal with
it.

"Then carry her," Karik
said.

Torik's eyes peered at her with a
question before the computer translated: "Will you let me take you
to the lounge?"

She licked her lips and took a breath.
The room wasn't spinning anymore, but she didn't want to risk
sitting up. "Yeah." A lounge sounded more pleasant than the cold
metal floor, even if it was the main area behind the
airlock.

With the same care he had shown all
along, he slid his hands under her shoulders and legs and held her
close to the comfort offered by his warm body.

Like a child, she curled up next to
him, feeling confident that he would take care of her, and pulled
herself close in small to pass through the airlock corridor to
avoid hitting her head or catching her feet in the short, narrow
passage.

Once he cleared the airlock into the
larger hold area, she relaxed and let him set her gently on a
cushioned seat to lie down.

She held Torik's sleeve to keep him
near in case they decided to take offense with her.

"What's going to happen?" She looked
up as he sat near her head.

With his free hand, Torik reached
towards the table behind him where the bench curved around
two-thirds of it. Above, a three-dimensional image
appeared.

He touched a series of symbols and the
air over the table lit up with pin-pricks of light. After several
motions of his hand, the familiar image condensed and rotated, and
she recognized the swirl of an arm of the galaxy, where a blue dot
blinked steadily.

"Is that Earth?" Interested in
touching the hologram for herself, she pushed herself up. When she
bumped into him, Torik slid away behind the table, giving her room
to move in to satisfy her curiosity.

But at her touch the image shifted.
"What did I do?" It didn't work the way he had made it
work.

He fixed it without comment, but she
dared not touch it again. Rather, she studied the stars and the
blue dot. "Where are we going?"

Torik opened his mouth but closed it
upon looking up through the hologram, a grim expression on his
face.

Krissa blinked and realized that two
of the others stood over the table, cold gazes on their
faces.

"You can't tell her," the computer
translated from the steel voice of one.

Torik faced them with unflappable
calm. "And if I don't, how will she trust us?"

"It has only one purpose and doesn't
need to think!" The one who spoke slammed his hands on the
table.

Krissa jumped into Torik and the armor
that reminded her he wasn't like her.

"She does think, and she
feels…frightened." He peered down at her with a soft smile. "She
deserves to understand."

"You would put us all in danger!"
Although the computer didn't inflect the words with anger, she
heard it in the alien's voice and cringed.

She wasn't dangerous. What could she possibly do to
hurt
them
? They were the ones who had taken her from
Earth.

Krissa looked from the pair to Torik
and saw him as one of them and slid away. "What do you want with
me?"

"Torik!"

The voice barked from the direction of
the command deck.

She cringed and tucked her knees to
her chin in defense. With nowhere to run, she could only hope to
protect herself. While she wanted to believe she had an ally, when
she saw them together, Torik was another threat.

His cheek twitched and eyes closed,
and the real threat stomped across the floor to stand with the
other two.

A furred hand slapped on the edge of
the table and the images hovering above disappeared.

Krissa shrank from green eyes glaring
at her. She buried her face, afraid of the threat in Karik's body.
Her insides trembled and her eyes burned.

No escape. She sniffed, wishing she
was home. At least she was mostly ignored there. Here, she had
three aliens ready to hurt her, and she was sure they
would.

Not even when the attention shifted to
Torik did she relax.

When Karik growled several words, no
translation came from the computer.

Torik's answer was equally mysterious,
until his finger tapped a key on the table.

"She must learn the
customs."

Karik curled his lip back, exposing
sharp teeth. Narrowed eyes shifted from Torik to her. Krissa slid
away, afraid of what he might do but mostly sure that Torik would
protect her. She had no way to escape in that trap in
space.

After a couple seconds, Karik slammed
his hands on the table, startling her. "You know the stakes!" He
stormed off in a huff.

Though her eyes were blurred with
tears of fear, she swore the hair on his head stood on
end.

The other two drifted away, leaving
only Torik.

She choked on a sob and sniffed,
confused, alone, and scared more than ever.

At a touch on her shoulder, she jerked
away. "Don't! Don't pretend to be my friend. I didn't ask to be
here. You forced me and won't even explain why."

The tear-blurred shape backed away.
She inched to the farthest edge of the cushion and curled up on her
side to cry.

"Why are you doing this? I wa…want to go home." And pretend
that this was all a bad,
really
bad, dream.

The scrape of fabric and soft movement
opened her eyes again in curiosity to see the mostly dark shape on
the floor near her feet.

"I'm sorry," the computer translated
the soft-spoken words that came from that dark shape. "I cannot
make this easier and you cannot return to Etras Three."

"Earth. It's called…Earth!" She
snapped the words amid the choke of her tears and rolled over to
turn her back to him and all the rest of the ship and its
occupants. Torik might be nice, but he was still one of them. Maybe
she could at least pretend this wasn't happening, that she was back
in her dorm room ignoring her roommates being obnoxious.

Or that she'd excused herself from a
party, preferring time alone to too many reminders that she didn't
fit in.

That's what had lured her out into the chilly night;
rather, what had
pushed
her out into that hiding place at the small barn. No matter
how much she tried, she never fit in. She was an oddity, feeling
like everyone stared and pointed, whether they did or
not.

Instead, she studied languages,
memorizing and learning half a dozen in high school and picking up
at least four more in her first two years of college.