The Lereni Trade (6 page)

Certain she wouldn't be going
anywhere, he hurried through the hold and up the stairs to the
medical bay to retrieve a scanner.

A few minutes later, Torik knelt over
her with a satisfactory reading on the medscanner in his hand and
breathed easier. But she could still be wounded.

Carefully, he scooped her into his
arms. Through the maze of supplies, he maneuvered with her, mostly
sideways, and then had to hang her over his shoulder to climb the
steps.

From the table in the lounge, Theen
looked up but said nothing. Karik and Korr were gone, likely to a
private area where Karik could express his thoughts freely. Whether
he would give Korr instructions to beware of her or not wasn't
important. She would survive to free their world.

After adjusting the
Seres
into his arms, Torik carried her to the cushioned
bench and laid her on it to rest.

Sooner than he expected, her eyes
fluttered open and she inhaled sharply.

"Torik?" She focused on him, her eyes
clearing.

He knelt to her level. "You are well,"
he said slowly.

"What of you?" she said in
Lereni.

"He could not hurt me. You were brave
to try to stop him."

A smile flashed and twisted into a
grimace, her hand going to the back of her head.
"I…hurt."

"Yes. I'm sorry. Korr is…dedicated."
He wanted to say something worse but censored his words.

"He scares me. The others scare me.
Thank you for…kindness."

Uncertain what to say for the
double-edged knife cutting through him, he could only smile weakly.
"You are welcome, Krissa."

The guilt about what they were intending for her twisted,
driving him to want to leave rather than face that this
Seres
was different than
what he'd been taught. She was not arrogant or manipulative, unless
her gratitude was fake; but she seemed sincere and had every reason
to be when not understanding what she really was.

A loud huff came from Theen at the
other end of the booth. The others probably expected she was acting
to win them over and ensnare them in some sort of plot. That was
overthinking. Even if it was true, that didn't mean one couldn't
show compassion.

The touch of a warm hand on his arm
stopped him from rising fully.

"Stay. I…not alone with them." She
would learn more words in time, but for now, he understood what she
meant and would stay to keep her safe from the vindictiveness and
distrust of the others. With nothing else immediately requiring his
attention, he sat down on the cushions near her head.

"This is good?"

"Yes." She smiled at him. "Keep
them…gone."

"They will not hurt you."

With that, she breathed deeply and
closed her eyes.

Krissa swallowed the water, feeling
better in the lounge after the medical care Torik once again
provided, this time to her head and neck. Of course, the full
night's sleep, or what passed as nighttime on a ship in space with
no sunrise or sunset, had helped revive her.

Only one of the others sat nearby at
the table, examining images and symbols—some form of writing, she
guessed.

To her relief, Karik only walked
through the hold with a dark glower sliding over her. He didn't
slow down but continued his tromping steps to the forward command
center. She breathed easier when the door closed behind him and set
her metal cup on the floor by Torik, her only friend on that
ship.

"Why he not like me? Is he…" Damn the
lack of words yet! From what she did understand, she made a guess
to finish, "…Mad at me?"

Torik's eyes twitched in astonishment.
"Karik thinks about our world, his duty."

"Because of me?"

He fell silent and she looked into his
face, studying it. Despite his silence and turning to stare across
the room from where he sat on the floor near her legs, it didn't
take long to interpret the debate taking place within
him.

"It is me. Why do they not like
me?"

"You…frighten them."

"Me?" She didn't believe that. How could
she
frighten
them?

"Yes. You are…" He paused, his eyes
lifting away with a look of indecision crossing his
face.

"Yes? What am I?"

The other Lereni paused in his work at
the table to watch them. Torik's jaw stiffened and he turned to her
and lowered his voice, "You are…not human. What you are can be
dangerous."

"Why?"

"I am forbidden."

"Forbidden?"

"From telling you. I said too
much."

After a pause in which the truth hit
like a blow to the head, she said, "Karik."

"Yes. And his reasons are
sound."

"You agree with him?" Just when she
thought Torik was different. She should have known—same coloring,
same species, same uniform, same mindset.

"No, but I do what I must to protect
my world."

What could be so threatening to their
world about her? She was a nobody. The logic didn't fit in her
mind.

When she could think of nothing
reasonable, another disconnect surfaced. "Why are you nice to
me?"

The hand with the spots on the fuzzy
back fell upon her arm. "You are different, innocent of those like
you."

"Like me? But I'm…" Krissa sat up and dropped her feet to
the floor as his words sunk in fully, slamming her into
disbelief.
Not human…

There must have been a mistake. How
could she not be human? She had grown up on Earth, looked
human…

No. There were oddities. Was that why
they avoided her? Was there something about her that repelled real
humans?

This was too weird to think she wasn't
human. How was it possible?

How was all of this
possible?

Aliens existed; they were proof. What
if she really was an alien herself?

She looked down at the human body she
had worn for twenty years. It had never changed but for its
size.

No. She was different. She had never
had the normal female problems of other girls.. How odd that her
adoptive parents had never questioned any of it. Had they
known?

"You will learn," Torik
said.

"When?"

"Soon."

She hated that answer. How soon would
be soon?

She followed his eyes to the scowl on
the face of his crewmate, whose hatred chilled her to her core, and
realized what he was saying.

"Are they so afraid?" What could she
possibly do to them? They were bigger and stronger than her. What
threat could she possibly pose to these aliens?

"Yes."

She blinked at Torik, startled by the
straightforward answer.

"Why?"

"I…am forbidden to say."

Krissa huffed her indignation. Not
even Torik would give her an answer of what this was about. How
long would he stand by her and defend her from the others before he
too decided she was a threat?

"How I prove…truth?" She hoped he
understood what she was trying to say in her still-limited Lereni
vocabulary. They had to see that she wasn't going to hurt them. She
just wanted answers.

He shook his head and his fingers
tightened briefly around her arm and released as the one known as
Korr curled his lip back in a hint of a snarl. Hair flattened on
Korr's head and his eyes narrowed. Without a word, Korr rose and
marched past them in the direction of Karik.

Oh, no.

After he disappeared through the same
door, Krissa exhaled and slumped on the seat. "This is worse than
home," she muttered in English.

Torik frowned and rose from the floor
to sit next to her. "I don't understand."

"I am…lonely on Earth. Like
your…friends—" If they were friends. "—they not like
me."

He sat in silence a while before
saying, "I like you."

Although she breathed easier to hear
him say it, she still had trepidations; it couldn't be that easy.
"Then tell me why I am here." She turned on the seat to face him,
searching his face for an answer.

But he didn't give her an explanation
and only dropped his eyes. As she expected—he wasn't truly a
friend.

She turned away, his silence in
response to her request stabbing through her with
betrayal.

"Krissa…"

She shrugged off the touch on her
shoulder. "If you were a friend, you would tell me." She didn't
need the false pity or any pity. Whatever they intended for her,
clearly he wasn't the ally she had hoped he was. She wasn't going
to fall for his kindness if it was just a way to win her trust so
she would cooperate with whatever they had planned.

After some time, he let out a breath
and departed. Not even an apology.

She turned her head slightly and saw
Torik striding to the rear corridor. Between them, Theen paused in
his analysis of the figures over the projection table to give her a
cold look.

The table and their writing sparked an
idea. She turned away from it and studied the few signs about the
hold area, warning signs she'd guess. If she could read, she might
be able to assess what they did at that table.

But that meant convincing Torik to teach her to read their
language, a tough task when he wouldn't even tell her
what
she was.

I thought you were my friend.
He'd been considerate since the
beginning, the only person in her life besides her adoptive parents
to ever truly seem to care, to show her the kind of respect she had
always sought but never fully appreciated. Torik wasn't like anyone
she'd met before. He wasn't even human, but maybe that's what made
it easier. The people she had known had all been human and none
seemed to really care.

Funny that. It took an alien to make
her feel appreciated for who she was.

But he still kept a secret from her.
And that hurt more than anything, because she had wanted to trust
him. His mannerisms inspired that in her.

Why can't you just tell
me?

Was it that bad? Didn't she deserve to
know? After all these years of wondering who her parents were and
why they'd given her away with only a pretty bracelet to hint of
who they were, she was with aliens who knew. Her parents must have
cared. She finally was close to the truth, had only to reach out
and grab it, but it still eluded her, because they felt it would
bring some disaster on their world if she knew.

Damn them all! She had to know. What
was wrong with her?

The thought rang through her skull to
strike a chord that rattled her to her core. Torik's refusal to
tell her left her shaken on that realization.

Am I a monster?
Was he protecting her from a horrible
truth?

No. She couldn't be.

On the cushions of the bench, Krissa
tucked her knees up to her chin. It couldn't be true. She'd always
been good, studious, making her parents proud.

But others, after initially friendly
greetings, always made excuses to leave her. She'd learned to be
guarded and wary of the encounters with strangers, all the while
hoping for that special connection that she saw in other kids and
classmates. It's why she had agreed to that party—an attempt to
expand from the two or three regular somewhat-friends, and because
her college roommate had said it would be "rocking".

Maybe no one wanted her because there
was something awful that they sensed in her.

Tears burned in her eyes and she
buried her face in her knees. What kind of monster was she? What
kind of alien was she?

A moment of humor elicited a small
chuckle and passed. She would be alien. It explained the weirdness
in her life, and maybe her innate ability to learn any language
almost without effort and to alienate everyone she came in contact
with before she said or did anything.

On her wrist, the labradorite pendant
with its iridescent rainbow in black pressed against her skin. She
twisted her wrist to relieve the pressure but then thought again of
it and lifted it to her eyes. At the right angle, the pointed oval
shimmered its colors in the low light of the hold and she sniffed
away the tears.

A gift from her mother, but her
adoptive mother had worn it every day since she could remember.
When Krissa was older, her mother revealed that it had been
Krissa's all along and she had simply been keeping it safe. The
wire band twisted in swirls and twinings like something as delicate
as a dragonfly's wings, but it was far stronger than she imagined
and had adjusted to fit her wrist perfectly, something she had
attributed to the heat of her body. Impressive jewelry making;
definitely not human-made.