Was someone on the way?
Would no one at all come if she didn’t manage, somehow, to get back to the wreckage to report?
The plans for a colony would not be canceled or delayed. She’d dropped the buoy to mark the site for the first. Construction bots would arrive and begin building sometime in the next few months. But the first wave would only be construction bots. It could be a year or more before the first colony ships arrived with people.
How would she survive in the mean time? Assuming no one responded to the call for help, or they did, but they didn’t know about her because she wasn’t at the crash site, how was she going to live long enough to get home?
What would her family think? Her mother and sister?
That she was dead, naturally. Of course they would.
It would hurt them and she didn’t want that. But what could she do? Was there anything that she could do? And what if she did manage, somehow, to let them know she was ok and they thought she was but then she didn’t manage to survive for pickup?
She shook that thought. There was no sense in going down that road. None.
She had to focus on herself or there would never be a reunion.
Zhor seemed to think she belonged to him.
And she knew what that meant.
She wasn’t sure of how she felt about it, but she knew what it meant.
Or thought she did.
She knew she had to face it and mentally prepare herself for what would be an eventuality unless help arrived from the company before that.
But if all else failed her, could she survive with his help until someone arrived to rescue her?
* * * *
Annika had no idea of how much time passed before she became clear-minded enough for rational thought but several days, she was certain, and by that time she nearly gave herself away and ruined one potential solution to her problem. Quite possibly the best.
When she was finally able to set aside her anxieties for long enough to begin to consider solutions to her dilemma, she realized fairly quickly that she really only had two choices.
She could escape and try to make it on her own until rescue came—possibly help felicitate a speedier recovery by contacting someone that could help if there was anything still working or that she could fix on the ship.
Or she could take advantage of the situation—seduce the alien male if he was open to the idea and rely upon his good will to stay alive until help came.
Escape appealed to her more than seduction many times over.
That wasn’t because the alien had an ick factor she didn’t think she could overcome. On the contrary, he was very appealing physically. Mentally—well physically was really all that counted because she wasn’t thinking about anything more permanent than what it took to survive until she could get back to her own kind and there was really no ‘getting to know’ someone you couldn’t even communicate with well enough to manipulate them with words.
The problem with trying seduction was that it seemed to have more potential for danger and or complete disaster.
She didn’t have a hell of a lot of experience ‘handling’ men of her own kind. She was pretty sure he was way out of her league. And if she tried and just ended up pissing him off … well, he was a barbarian. There was no telling what he might do to her.
She thought she probablycouldseduce him.
She thought, from the way he looked at her, that Zhor wasn’t particularly bothered that she was an alien—not his species. She was female and he clearly didn’t have one.
And men generally wanted one unless they were in to men—in which case he probably wouldn’t have worried about rescuing her to start with. He would’ve tried for the captain or Phillips.
Of course, he might not be all that particular where he stuck his member. There were plenty of human males who weren’t.
He could have taken her because she was the only option, the only survivor.
But although she had no reason to believe the rest of the crew had survived as she had, she also had no reason to think they hadn’t. She’d survived. She thought that meant the odds were in their favor.
