“An understanding of your people is needful, and help in determining if the one in power here begins to behave in an abnormal manner.”
She frowned. The one in power here? Did he mean the mayor? She turned around to glance at the platform, to see that Sullivan was wrapping up his speech. Standard political jargon. Nothing unusual in that. Abnormal? What the heck did he mean by that?
Brittany turned back to ask him, and found herself alone. She turned in a full circle. He was nowhere to be seen. People passed her. Shops were nearby. He wasn’t. That gorgeous hunk of foreign masculinity had pulled a perfect disappearing act on her.
Crushed, she fell into the foulest mood imaginable. She didn’t buy any jeans that day. She went home and broke a few things.
Chapter 7
“WHYDID YOU REMOVE ME FROM THE FEMALE’Spresence?” Dalden demanded the second he materialized in the control room on board the battleshipAndrovia.
The question was asked of Martha. Though Shanelle was there as well and might know how to work the Molecular Transfer that could move people from place to place instantly, since she had learned how to fly spaceships during her time in Kystran, Martha was in control of every aspect of their ship and wouldn’t relinquish any part of it to human error.
“Just listen to yourself, warrior, and you might figure that out on your own.” Martha’s placid tone drifted up from the huge computer console in the center of the room. “Or is so much emotion coming out of you a normal occurrence?”
“Are you blushing, Dalden?” Shanelle asked with some surprise.
Most blushes wouldn’t be noticed with their identical golden skin tone; they had to be severe to show up at all. But Sha-Ka’ani warriors, who rarely blushed in the first place, had such natural control of their emotions that they wouldn’t allow something so mundane as a blush to reveal emotions they maintained they didn’t possess. Theycouldfeel embarrassment; you just had to know a warrior really well to guess when they might be experiencing it. Shanelle, as Dalden’s twin, qualified for knowing him well.
But Martha had a whole list of complaints on her own agenda, and wasn’t waiting for Dalden to answer insignificant questions from his sister. “You were supposed to be giving me a tour, not taking one yourself,” Martha reminded him. “You were supposed to make contact with their leader.Sheisn’t their leader.”
“I did not initiate contact with her.”
“You didn’t try to end it, either.”
“She wanted me.”
“Sooooo…what!” was stretched out about five times longer than the words would take to say normally, just to stress how little that mattered in the scheme of things to Martha. “Women want you all the time, Dalden. Since when do you go haywire over it? And don’t try to deny it when I am monitoring your vital stats.”
“You’re blushing again, Dalden,” Shanelle pointed out, trying to keep from grinning.
She’d been there all along, and had been listening to Martha rant and rave about everything Dalden was doing wrong on the planet before she lost patience completely and brought him back to the ship.
They had arrived yesterday. Since Dalden was determined to hold himself responsible for retrieving the Altering Rods, Tedra had finally given in and supported his decision. Her support meant that Martha had to go along, though, as well as all the warriors who had escorted them to Kystran. Brock could have handled it and was already in control of theAndrovia,but with one of her “babies” going into deep space without her, Tedra would only trust Martha at the helm.
So the two Mock IIs had traded ships, with Brock taking Tedra home to Sha-Ka’an in the Rover, a short enough trip so Challen wouldn’t complain too much that she’d made it alone. What hadn’t been expected was that Falon would insist on going after Jorran as well, especially when he so disliked space travel.
Martha had expected it, though, pointing out that Falon hadn’t gotten anywhere close to evening the score with Jorran after the High King tried to kill him. He had simply had more important things to deal with first, like chasing after his lifemate. But now he’d like to get his hands on Jorran to finish that long-ago fight more properly.
Of course, with Falon going along for the ride, Shanelle insisted on going, too, and although Tedra had objected most strenuously, Falon didn’t, so that settled that. But understanding the Sha-Ka’ani way of life, as well as Martha’s advanced and unique nature, Shanelle was the perfect buffer between Martha and the warriors aboard the ship. The warriors might get along well with Brock, who had been created for theirshodanChallen, so he was one of them. That couldn’t be said for Martha, who had a tendency to provoke a warrior’s placid nature without even trying.
It had taken two months and twenty-three days to reach their destination, the no longer rumored planet in that sector of the universe a verified fact now. But because the humanoids on the planet were advanced enough to have equipment that could see their ship when it neared them, even disguised as it was to look like a common piece of space debris, albeit a big piece, they couldn’t remain hovering over the planet for more than a few seconds.
This was gotten around by Martha taking the ship down to the surface of the planet at incredible speed, halting it just before impact, and lowering it into a large body of water where it wouldn’t be discovered. If it had been seen, it would be assumed a meteor had fallen and disintegrated before reaching the surface.
This was the planet that Jorran had come to, though his ship didn’t remain near it for very long. His first impression was that this planet wasn’t suitable for his purpose, and he left to find another. Martha didn’t deal just with first impressions, however, and as it turned out, Jorran’s ship had merely moved to a place of concealment behind the planet’s single moon.
It had been easy to track and keep up with Jorran’s ship, and theAndroviawas designed to avoid being tracked, so Jorran wouldn’t know that he had been followed. Concealing his ship in the area was a clear indication that he had gone down to the planet himself. Scanning his ship proved it had fewer bodies on it than it had arrived with. And having sneaked the android Corth II onto it to install a one-way data probe was keeping Martha apprised of Jorran’s men’s positions on the planet, as well as giving her other pertinent information that Jorran was sending back to his ship.
Fortunately, the captain of Jorran’s ship was proving to be a nosy sort who insisted on being kept apprised of the situation, and from a few choice words dropped during a communication, Martha was able to determine that the ship and crew were merely hired, and there was a time limit remaining on their employ, and most of that had been used up getting here. But Jorran wasn’t going to dismiss them until the very end, in case things didn’t go as he planned. It did, however, force him to make his move within a month, or give up and go home.
The rest of the time since their arrival yesterday had been spent gathering information about the planet and its people, and creating the Sublims necessary to speak the language. Corth II had come in handy for that as well, being sent to the planet’s surface first to find an unused computer terminal that Martha could be connected to, and even Martha was impressed at the wealth of information she was finding.
“They might not be advanced to high-tech standards, but they are excellent recordkeepers and have at least mastered global computer connections, so that only one terminal is needed to access everything I require. But it’s still in the primitive stages, which is why it’s taking so long to access their vast stores of information.”
That had been Martha’s remark yesterday. By last night she had been complaining, “Did I say they were advanced? I have never encounteredanythingas slow as the machines those people call computers.” She was still collecting data.
“Okay, we’re going to take it from the top again,” Martha said now. “And see if it sinks in this time. They are an aggressive, war-minded people up there on the surface. Their history is filled with violence from their very beginnings, and they think nothing of wholesale slaughter. And although the concept of life on other planets fascinates them, it also terrifies them, so Probables tell me that while there might be some of them who would greet off-worlders with open arms, most of them will go out of their way to destroy any visitors. They just aren’treadyto be discovered yet. Have I made that clear enough yet?”
