Alien Overnight (14 page)

they were too misshapen to be called loaves—directly onto the tabletop. Plainly, refined manners weren’t a requirement for dining with the commander. It wouldn’t surprise her a bit to see the men toss gnawed bones and other debris over their shoulders, instead of discarding them on their plates—wouldn’t the biologic pad eat that stuff, too?

The medieval staging had tempted her to pound the table with the closest thing she saw to a turkey leg and shout, “Bring on the next remove!”

Restraining herself, she’d listened carefully and repeated after Kellen as he told her the Garathani names of the various dishes—the turkey leg was actually arm of firi—and fed her small samples with his fingers. The heavy breathing factor had put a stop to that after the third dish and she’d started picking out her own little pieces to nibble. Some of the foods were so grotesque-looking, she’d had a hard time touching, much less tasting them. Had they looked that bad before they were cooked? Hard to imagine they could look any worse, but she made up her mind never to raid the ship’s refrigerator for a midnight snack, just in case.

Fortunately, nothing had tasted as bad as it looked, and a few items had really tripped her trigger, particularly the sea quill. Kellen and Shauss had very kindly left most of that for her. In return, she’d divided her ale between their two rapidly emptying mugs, still gagging from that first—and last—bitter sip. Someone needed to introduce their brewers to the Germans.

“So impatient,” Kellen teased, holding a long, slimy pekki shoot over his mouth and sucking it down like a spaghetti noodle. After licking the juice off his fingers—

hadn’t these people ever thought of napkins?—he continued, “You must have been a trial to your grandparents before holiday exchanges.”

“I was a trial to my grandparents every day,” Monica replied, trying for a smile and not quite succeeding. Noticing the uncharacteristic seriousness of the face across the table, she prodded, “Don’t think so hard, Shauss. You might hurt yourself.”

“Don’t change the subject, Monica.” He reached over and picked up the piece of too-chewy bread she’d left on her plate and sopped up some sludge from the tray.

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When he offered it to her, she shook her head with a shudder that made him smile.

“Why do you think you were a trial to them?”

Entirely too fascinated by the muscles bulging in his jaw as he chewed, she looked at her plate, cursing her traitorous hormones.

“Because I was.”

“How do you know?”

“When someone who’s supposed to love you gives you up for adoption, it’s a pretty good sign you’ve been a trial to them,” she said evenly, picking up one of the quill bones and swirling it in the sludge pooled on her plate.

Kellen frowned. “You were adopted by strangers?”

“No, I was given up, but never adopted. Nobody wants to adopt a thirteen-year-old with physical and emotional issues.” Her palms were starting to sweat. She’d thought nothing could make her more uncomfortable than Kellen and Shauss seeing her naked, but apparently that wasn’t the case. “Can we drop this please?”

“When you’ve clarified the matter to my satisfaction.” God, the man’s arrogance knew no bounds! “Where did you go if you weren’t adopted?”

It was obvious he wasn’t going to let go until she’d spilled, so, taking a deep breath to steady herself, Monica launched into the tale with exaggerated patience.

“Into foster care. I stayed in a couple of private foster homes at first, but mostly I lived in a state-run home for girls.” She sighed at their blank stares. “Look. I was a problem child. It was hard being raised by grandparents who were almost seventy when I was born. It seemed like I was always too noisy or too clumsy, always breaking things and getting in trouble, and I acted out a lot because it didn’t seem like they loved me.”

“I’m certain that wasn’t the case.”

She looked at Kellen, exasperated. How could a man feel enough bitterness to blow up a planet and still have such a Pollyanna view of life?

“Actually, I think it was. They came from an era where an illegitimate child was considered an embarrassment, and the fact that no one had any idea who my father might be was even worse. Honestly, now that I think about it, I’m surprised they ever took me home from the hospital. If my mother had died a little faster, they probably wouldn’t have.”

Kellen and Shauss were both frowning now. “Punishing children for the sins of their forebears is barbaric. A child is a gift to be treasured and I can imagine no circumstance under which any Garathani would relinquish one,” Kellen commented.

It occurred to her that he’d had no qualms about punishing the children of Narthan, but she thought it would be imprudent to say so.

“Well, they sure as hell relinquished me. And really, I can’t blame them,” she admitted. “As naughty as I was as a young child, it was nothing compared to how I acted once my other shortcomings became obvious.”

73

Robin L. Rotham

“Shortcomings?”

She raised her eyebrows at Shauss. “Remember me, your bloodthirsty little Sparnite?”

“Sparnism is a matter of physical immaturity, not deficiency,” Kellen dismissed.

“Yeah, well, Sparnite differentiation isn’t included in most junior high school curricula,” Monica said wryly. “And even if it was, the kids still would have treated me like shit. At that age, different equals bad. Period. That’s when I started fighting. I fought with the other kids, with my grandparents, with my teachers…” God, now that she’d started, she couldn’t seem to shut up. “Eventually I worked my way up to fighting with the authorities, and when the state stepped in, my grandparents took their chance to bow out of my life forever. End of story.” She forced a smile. “On the bright side, they left me enough money to pay for medical school and a nice house, so I think I came out ahead of the game.”

Kellen’s expression said he still wasn’t about to let the matter drop, so she squared her shoulders and stuck out her chin.
To hell with prudence
. “It seems like you guys know everything there is to know about me now, so how about we shrink your head for a while, Commander? Tell me, how does it feel to know you wiped out millions of women and children who probably had nothing to do with the bio-war attack on your planet?”

Although she maintained her belligerent pose, her heart kicked a little faster with every second that passed. Kellen took a leisurely swallow of his ale as he watched her with something that began to bear an uncomfortable resemblance to compassion and she finally had to look away.

“Is that how you think of me, Monica? As nothing more than the mass murderer of innocents?”

The mild, almost reflective tone of his inquiry was baffling. If someone had asked her a question like that, she’d have gone off the deep end, ripped them a new one in defense of her duty and honor and righteous outrage. But instead of being offended, he sounded almost like he felt sorry for
her
, like she was the one who had something to learn here.

Unable to help herself, she glanced at him again and was immediately sucked in by the velvety blue magnetism of his eyes. Jesus, he looked like he actually cared what she thought of him, like the idea of her viewing him as a murderer pained him. And the hell of it was, she
didn
’
t
think of him that way and never had. In fact, the more time she’d spent around him, the harder it was to believe that he could be so…heartless. Kellen was many things—funny, arrogant, astoundingly intelligent and sometimes downright infuriating—but he’d never struck her as heartless.

“When I became a fleet officer,” he said without releasing her gaze, “I swore an oath of allegiance to Garathan. I vowed to protect the lives of her people and to obey my leaders in the furtherance of that objective. Even had I not been required to assist in the final disposition of over two million corpses, even had I not watched while my mate 74

Alien Overnight

writhed in anguish upon her deathbed…” His eyes narrowed. “Even had I not held my beloved daughter against my breast while she cried her final, bloody tears, I would still have done my duty. I am a man of honor, Monica, because without honor, a man is nothing.”

Monica’s vision clouded with tears of her own as she nodded, unable to speak.

Jesus. It was one thing to read an impartial account of a global disaster years after the fact, but to hear it fresh from the lips of one who lived through it was…unbearable.

Her voice was husky when she finally asked, “How old was she?”

“Three years and one quarter.”

Monica swallowed, drawing a shaky breath.
Three years old
. God, she probably would have launched the attack herself, if it had been her daughter. “What was her name?”

“Keleschi.”

“And your wife?”

“Mate,” he corrected. “She was Dendriin.”

Something about the way he said it made her ask, “Did you love her?”

Way to sound jealous
,
Monica
.

“And how would you define love, little Terran?” He leaned farther back in his chair, still watching her with calm, inquisitive eyes. “If by love you mean fulfilling my vows to her, then yes, I did. Our union was arranged by our mothers, with satisfactory results for all parties involved.”

Monica blinked and then choked off a laugh. “Wow. Okay.”

“Does my answer displease you?”

“No, no. That’s just…how things are on Garathan, I guess. I’ll get used to it.” So why did it make her chest ache, and not just for him?

She looked at Shauss, almost afraid to know about his background. “What about you?”

“I lost no one.”

She frowned as he stared back impassively.
I lost no one
. What did that mean? No one he loved had died or he’d had no one to lose?

Dessert arrived at that moment and she lost the nerve to ask. The rest of the meal passed in a pregnant kind of silence, like something sweet but fragile had sprung up between them and no one wanted to ruin it.

“Well, that was interesting,” she finally said, pushing her plate of…something very
brown
away almost untouched. She hoped to hell it wasn’t their idea of chocolate cake because she was in for some really shitty birthdays from now on if that was the case.

When they finally stood, she did too, and the steward hurried in, offering warm, damp cloths. Kellen watched her as he wiped his fingers, and the obvious compassion 75

Robin L. Rotham

in his probing inspection set her teeth on edge. Why in the hell did he feel sorry for her?

He’d probably suffered a thousand times worse than she ever had.

Turning away, she used her towel with excessive enthusiasm, scrubbing at her hands ‘til they glowed pink and swabbing any remaining traces of sea quill from her lips and chin. Then she dropped it on the table and faced them with her best
let
’
s get
down to brass tacks
look.

“I’m ready for my surprise now.”

*

It wasn’t the surprise Kellen had planned for this moment, but it seemed appropriate somehow. Taking an impromptu detour from their destination, he led her through several of the outer corridors, her revelations still roiling in his mind.

She’d had no family, no protection. None. The fact made him angry, while the knowledge of her lonely early existence made him ache in ways he hadn’t thought to experience again after the deaths of Dendriin and his beloved daughter. It was no wonder she’d grown such a prickly exterior.

“Oh my God!” Monica gasped beside him, her eyes wide and luminous as the floor-to-ceiling view field opened in front of them, revealing the swirling blue and white surface of the planet below. “Is this a window?” she asked, reaching out but not quite touching the membrane.

“It’s a molecular flare. There are no true windows on the
Heptoral
, but the view field reflects exactly what you would see through a window in the same position.”

“Can I touch it?”

“Your touch will distort the image, but it will cause no harm.” Shauss was standing behind her, looking down on her head with a subtle concern that matched his. He made no move to touch her, no doubt recognizing as Kellen did that any display of affection, coming so close on the heels of her personal disclosures, would probably be construed as pity and rejected accordingly. And no doubt loudly. Possibly violently.

“Wow,” she breathed, her eyes following her own index finger as it traced over the field. “I’m in space. I’m really in space.”

“Technically, you’re in orbit,” Shauss corrected.

“Could I breathe on the other side of this wall?”

“Of course not.”

“Then I’m in space.” Her sigh this time was one of utter contentment and Kellen felt oddly compelled to echo it. To impress her further, he sent a cerecom command to Empran and Monica gasped as the field’s view suddenly magnified, in one-second increments, drawing them closer and closer to the Earth’s surface. When the desired magnification was attained, they were looking at an image of the Beaumont–Thayer Compound, an image so clear that he could see the tops of several heads as people 76

Alien Overnight

walked about the grounds. “Oh my God, I can’t believe it! That’s the compound, isn’t it? Jeez, talk about spy technology! That’s frickin’ amazing!”

“I’m glad you’re pleased.”

She turned to look at him then, and his chest stilled at the sight of the first truly warm smile she’d bestowed on him. “Thank you, Commander. This was the perfect surprise.”

Commander
. Kellen knew better than to think she’d used the formality as a sign of respect. Even in her delight, she distanced herself from him. “Ah, but this wasn’t the surprise. That awaits you down the corridor.” Turning, he offered his arm and waited.

After a long hesitation, she slid her fingers carefully into the crook of his elbow.

*

He should have known her mellow mood would be fleeting.

Despite the detour, they’d arrived at the Council chambers nearly a half-hour early, and if the wait hadn’t soured her disposition, Shauss’ irrepressible manner would have.