Claimed by the Zandian Read online

  Chapter 12

  Tarek

  “Arrg!” I grunt and pant, forcing myself to finish the tenth set of one hundred one-armed pushups. “Got it.”

  I flop over on the mat and pant, letting the sweat roll into my eyes as my muscles quiver with aftershocks. This nav training dome is my home, and I feel more at peace here than in my formal domicile, an austere dorm fit only for sleeping and dressing.

  “You work harder than any of the warriors.”

  Captain Drayk enters the dome. I sense his three-dimensional shape approach and hear his footfalls.

  “Strong body helps with a strong mind.” I leap to my feet and wipe my forehead with an absorbent cloth. “Keeps me focused.”

  “On that matter, we’ve got a critical mission—if you give the approval.”

  “Oh?” I turn to face him out of respect, even though I can hear him perfectly well. “Since when am I the deciding factor?”

  “The build team has completed SpySAT1 and we want to drop it in Sector Alpha9.”

  “Veck, the spysat is ready?” I toss the cloth down on the mat and step forward. “This is incredible. This would be a game-changer. Get us secret Ocretion communication.” My pulse quickens with excitement.

  He nods. “Our team perfected the masking technology, but it will only work if we can put it close enough into Ocretion airspace near their capital planet Ock7. It will be a risky trip.”

  I nod, calculating in my mind. “Just getting into their airspace will be difficult now that they’ve perfected their anti-masking drones. Heard that the Midraioans lost two top starships even though their masking is as good as ours.”

  “It’s dangerous. Need you to plan out our insertion point and how to get there. If we can get there without risking the craft.”

  I close my eyes to focus. Sighted or not, there’s something about shut lids that seals me into myself. “Give me a few hours and I’ll give you my honest assessment.” I link into my e-display and begin running simulations in my brain.

  “Got it. Let me know.” He turns.

  I hear him walk away, but stop tracking his movements, as I’m already fully immersed inside my mind. Numbers spin and tumble, manipulated by my neurons. This is my domain, where I’m master and creator, a place where my lack of vision doesn’t matter. Even my confusion about Zina disappears.

  Zina

  “You know, I’d really like a chance to try out some nav stuff on a real ship.”

  “If I let you near a real ship, you might destroy it,” Tarek snorts. This planet rotation he smells peppery, and a bit like cinnamon. I don’t know if it’s his normal scent, but I like it.

  I step closer and feel the heat of his body. Immediately the tingles start.

  “But remember, I improved twenty-seven points last time,” I remind him.

  “But remember,” he mimics me, “You started at an unprecedented low level. So… while the increase is laudatory, it’s too incremental a change to allow you the chance to test on a ship.”

  “How about the training simulator? I know you have one.”

  It’s hot this planet rotation, and the wind is dry and unforgiving. Coupled with the burning sun, I started to sweat just walking to the nav dome. I wipe my forehead and then brush my hand across my gauzy gown.

  “The existence of such an object in no way grants you free access to it.” His eyes study my body. Can he sense the moisture I wiped onto the fabric? The other moisture between my thighs, the dew created by just thinking about him?

  I sigh and try to push those thoughts away.

  “You’re interested in simulation? Maybe you should simulate an ideal trainee. We’ll start there.”

  He’s on a roll this planet rotation with the dry humor. I’d almost think I was conversing with a human friend, except that he towers over me, all muscles and purple skin and those tantalizing horns. And, of course, I don’t want my human friends to toss me down on the training mat and fuck me senseless. Maybe spank me a little for good measure.

  I touch my cheek. “I wasn’t implying that I deserve special attention.” I do want some, though. “What are we doing this planet rotation?”

  I don’t want to assume that pleasure is on the menu, except it happened both times we met. My heart pumps fast with the tension between us. The unspoken expectation. “The program again?”

  He hesitates. My heart sinks. I know I’m no good at this, not really, and soon enough he’s going to have to cut me off. I know it, he knows it, probably every being on the planet knows it. Just not this planet rotation, Mother Earth, I beg the universe. Give me just one more time with him.

  Luck must be on my side, because he sighs. “I did have a cancellation, so if you really want to see the simulator”—he tilts his head, like he’s considering a big decision—“I can show it to you.” He puts up a hand. “If you promise not to touch anything. Is that clear?”

  “I won’t touch a thing.”

  Mirelle was so enthusiastic about how well it works, and how it made her feel like she was really in space, that I was wistful to see it myself. Even if I have zero skills in that area.

  “Then follow me.” He points across the dome to a door with red lettering: “Authorized Access.”

  He taps his comm and the door glides open, leading into a vast open space, all gleaming white and silver. Various build stations dot the area, like small oases in a sprawling desert, machines that look high-tech and streamlined and complex beyond my comprehension.

  I catch my breath. “Oh stars.”

  “It’s really something, isn’t it?” He looks down at me, as if checking my expression.

  He slows his pace to wait for me. “We’ll check in with Drayk and the team.” His brow wrinkles. “Looks like they’re doing a tour. Master Seke is here.”

  “Oh.” My stomach flutters. “I understand if we need to not do this.”

  He pauses. “It might be better if we do this another time. Oh, they’ve seen us. Veck.” He mutters something under his breath. “Come. It’s only respectful to greet him.”

  He leads me up to the group and raises his hand. “Master Seke, greetings. I believe you know Zina, the new human female. She is, ah…” he speaks the next part a little faster, “doing nav testing.”

  I swallow hard and manage to meet Master Seke’s eyes. The only other time I’ve interacted with him was during my application interview—when he approved me to stay on planet. He’s high up, a top advisor to King Zander, and I’m a little terrified of him.

  “Zina, I hope you are acclimating well.” Master Seke speaks with a deep, powerful tone. His expressions is pleasant, but his eyes are sharp, assessing me. “I’m surprised you chose to study nav. How did you do on the initial placement test?”

  There are five other Zandians with him. They seem interested. One steps closer and looks me up and down, almost with new respect.

  “Ah.” Panic surges in my body. I can’t tell Master Seke that the program thought I was stupider than a rock. What if he looks at me, my sterility that might not reverse, my bad leg, and my clear lack of technical aptitude, and decides that it was a mistake to allow me to stay? What if he sends me away? For sure he’d at least tell me to get the veck out of this training dome.

  But with all the eyes on me, I lock up. The only thing I can do is make a strange, pathetic sound. “Ewp.”

  “Pardon?” Master Seke steps in. “Tarek only takes the best.”

  “So I’ve heard.” Oh, there’s my voice. I managed to say something. Look at that. I clear my throat. “Well, my score…”

  Thank stars that there’s a commotion across the floor, a series of fast beeps and a shrill tone.

  “Sorry!” A lanky Zandian sticks his head out from behind a partially assembled wing. “Testing the interlinks alarms for an upgrade.”

  “Is that the new simulator?” Seke’s attention is caught. “You’ve made improvements?”

  “Yes…” The tech wipes his hands on a cloth and trots up. Bows his
head. “With permission, I’d love to demonstrate.”

  “Please.” Master Seke raises his hand and the group follows him over.

  Tarek and I join them, and I peer at the machine on display.

  “If you watch what I’m doing...” The tech taps the side of the small bubble, and the lid glides open, soundless and smooth. “There’s a fully equipped cockpit here complete with nav chair, screens and charts. Everything you’d have in our latest starship. A trainee can sit here and run the test programs, and it will feel and look exactly like space.”

  “Impressive.” Seke leans in. “Who designed the sim mods?”

  “I did.” Tarek’s voice is full of pride. “I created replicas of the journey through the Beltran-3 asteroid belt to test a navigator’s use of the equipment, as well as reflexes in the very rare case that all of our backup systems fail.”

  “Excellent.” Seke beams at him.

  Tarek’s comm beeps. “Excuse me.” He addresses Master Seke. “It’s my commander with a work question.”

  “Please.” Seke nods, and Tarek strides away, out of earshot, and talks into his headset. I watch him for a few seconds until he disappears behind another pod of equipment, then I turn back to the group, feeling a bit lost. Unsure of myself.

  “Soon you may be training on this.” Seke addresses his group of Zandians, then turns to me. “And you, as well, since you’re in the nav program.”

  “Mm hmm.” I nod, face burning. “Thank you.”

  “Can she give it a try right now?” Seke turns to the tech. “With your approval, of course.”

  “Um, I don’t…” I step back.

  “Mirelle’s been here a dozen times already with her trainees. It’s bulletproof, as long as you have the basic flight concepts down.” He steps out of the cockpit.

  “Perhaps some other being is better suited.” I choke out the words. Where in the stars is Tarek?

  “You're perfectly suited. If Tarek is training you, we have the utmost confidence in you.” The tech nods encouragingly. “Just step up here and show Master Seke how excellent our human training program really is.”

  “I—”

  “Don’t want to disappoint Master Seke,” the tech says, glancing at the seasoned warrior, a look of slight discomfort on his face. His eyes dart from the commander to me and back again.

  “Definitely no. I do not want to do that.” I gulp some air.

  I need to tell them something. Like, NO. Like, it’s a mistake, I can’t do this. I’m not qualified. I have a stomach ache! I need to use the bathroom. Anything!

  But instead, when the tech beckons and points, I slowly step up the gleaming silver slats and sit in the chair that conforms to my body. Put on the headset. Soft beeps play, and the headset lights up. The screens come alive in front of me, and I gasp. “It’s so real,” I whisper to myself.

  I’m going to just look at the screen. Then I’m going to take off the headset and tell them, I’m so sorry, I can’t do this. I’m not ready.

  I put my hands up to the headset and say it, “I’m so…”

  “Start program one.” The tech’s voice is faint through the noise-cancelling of the device on my ears, and then I hear the rush of engines as the pod thrums into life.

  “No, wait…” I start, but he either does not hear me or ignores this.

  “Program initiated. Flight progress is a go.” The shuttle hums and beeps and shudders lightly, as if it’s an actual craft taking off.

  It’s exactly what it felt like on the rescue mission. I’m amazed and can’t believe this isn’t real.

  But when the pod pulses and I feel sudden g-forces pushing me back into the chair, I realize it is very real, in a sudden and unpleasant way.

  “I’m your on-site captain.” The tech’s voice is clear in my headset. “You’ll do the navigation as if we’re on a real trip. And go.”

  In front of me, asteroids swirl and disappear into their own orbits, some of them ringed with cirrhic gasses, fluffy and light, others occluded with thickets of ice crystals. I grab the arms of my chair. Oops, those are lined with controls and buttons. Did I press something?

  The pod shudders as if hit and we lurch to the side.

  “Oh, we took a hit from that anthracite asteroid!” The tech’s voice is panicky. “Zina, did you take us off auto already? Are you—”

  “No, I didn’t do anything!” I tap on the screen in front of me. Where’s the off button on this thing?

  The pod lurches to the other side, even harder, and swings around in a crazy circle. “It’s like you’re aiming for them. Are you, Zina?”

  “I can’t do this.” I try to do something with the controls, but I have no clue. It's not even like the practice program I did with Tarek, although it’s not like I mastered that. But I have no blasted idea of how these controls even work.

  I push a button in front of me.

  The pod screams, metal on metal, a bearing turning somewhere in its guts, and the chair locks me into a soft stranglehold as the ersatz ship does a full roll. And another one.

  “Zina! What in the veck?” The tech shouts and an alarm blares. “Abort. Zina abort now!”

  “I don’t know how!” I bend down to peer at the armrest. “You do it for me!”

  “Warning. Hull breach imminent. Warning. Pull up. Pull up.” An automated voice resonates in my headset.

  “Zina, come on! Get ahold of this.” The tech sounds pretty pissed. Does he not understand that I don’t know what in the stars to do?

  “I need help!’ I shout, but it’s buried in the sound of some kind of blast.

  I tap wildly at the screen, and then I see an odd red button at the bottom of my console. It’s under a little glass dome and it has a hazard sign on it. It looks sort of like the “stop” signs that I’ve seen in the training driving dome.

  Well, this feels pretty hazardous. And I want to stop.

  I flip the lid, fighting nausea, as the pod rolls again, and hit the button.

  There’s a sudden pause and we drop back around, my stomach sinking into my pelvis. For one brilliant second, I think that it’s over. The sim has stopped.

  But then there’s a ferocious groan, like a storm is ripping huge metal pylons from hard-baked earth, and the chair hugs me even more tightly.

  “Executing eject pod sequence,” intones the voice. “Launching emergency life support pod with partial masking. Three, two one.”

  And then my vision goes black as an egg-shaped shell closes around my chair and screen, and the whole thing hurtles out of the pod.

  Tarek

  I’m talking to Drayk when I hear the simulator thrum into life. Someone must be doing a demo for Seke. Good. I hope he’s impressed with my software.

  But then the sounds change. Instead of the soft engine thrum, I hear the unmistakable tone that indicates craft damage. What the veck? Obviously, it’s a sim, so the craft isn’t actually damaged. But the sim employs realistic sounds to replicate the full experience. But whoever is navigating must have messed up pretty badly, because—

  “I need to go.” I tap my comm and race over, only to see the whole pod spin on its axis like a giddy wheel about to fly off a child’s cart.

  “Override the program,” I shout at the tech. “Shut it down this instant.”

  “I can’t, because she’s pushed the eject button. I don’t have override for that.”

  “The eject button is activated? Who authorized that?” She? Who the veck is inside that pod? It better not be...

  Before I have a chance to parse this, something terrible happens. The whole training pod shudders and twitches, then the emergency escape mini-pod crashes through the hull and rolls to the ground beside our group.

  As we watch, the lid glides open.

  And Zina stumbles out.

  She coughs in the acrid blue smoke caused by the grinding of metal on metal.

  “Hi,” she says. A beat goes by. “I was just demonstrating my skills to Master Seke,” she explains, and cou
ghs again.

  No being speaks. I think we’re all shocked still, like statues. It’s silent but for the pings and creaks of the twisted metal, and the tones and beeps of the program. “Fail. Fail. Fail. Fail.”

  Then I finally respond.

  “Zina!” I grab her into my arms, my heart racing. “Are you all right?”

  I touch her face, her arms. Run my hands over her shoulders. “Are you injured? Fetch a medic.” I turn to the nearest warrior. Now!”

  Someone taps a comm. “They’re already on the way.”

  “I’m fine.” Zina’s voice is tiny and teary. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know what I was doing in there. And I was scared to tell them I didn’t know how to do it, so I just sat there, and it just… started before I had a chance to say anything.”

  Master Seke’s face is stone. Zina takes one look at him and her whole demeanor crumples.

  “That was terrifying.” Her voice wobbles. “I’m sorry. I should have said something.”

  “What in the veck possessed you to get into that cabin and pretend you could navigate it?” I crush her to my body. “If anything had happened…” I can’t even contemplate it.

  “Well, the tech said I should, and I didn’t want to disappoint”—she sneaks a glance at him, then at the wreckage of the sim, and winces—“Master Seke.”

  “Stars, Zina.” I’m beyond myself. “You might have internal injuries.”

  I scoop her into my arms. I know I’m going to have hell to pay with Master Seke over this, but I don’t give a flying veck. I need to get my female to the med bay right away to make sure she’s not injured.

  Master Seke hasn’t said a word. I know he must be beyond angry, but he’s got the self-control of a galaxy. Later, I’m sure he’ll tell me exactly how he feels about me… and my ill-conceived training of Zina.

  I run from the dome to the med bay near the palace. Clearly, I can get there faster than the medics will arrive on site.

  “Tarek, I’m so sorry,” Zina says in a tiny voice.

  “Not a word.” I sound gruff but I’m not angry with her; I’m frantic to make sure she’s not hurt. And I’m mad at myself for putting her in a position where this could happen.