Kicking Ashe (5 page)

“How could a female be wise enough to choose anything?”

Ashe blinked a few times, her gaze fixed on Cadir in a way that caused him to shift from one foot to the other. Then her gaze swung Shan’s way, not unlike the descent of a large, heavy object on track for his head.

“So, if the girls aren’t strolling down the streets, then where are they?”

“Each strata has an enclosure for the safety and protection of their females.”

“And when does a female get enclosed?”

“Upon attaining thirty-two seasons of life.”

“Four seasons in a planet rotation?” Her tone appeared to make Cadir uneasy. “So they’re eight rotations when they make the move?”

He nodded as her gaze narrowed to knifepoints and she appeared to take several breaths.

Finally, in a tone not quite calm but not as dangerous as her eyes, she managed, “Different strokes for different folks, I guess. But dang, you people don’t like the middle ground, do you?”

Shan was not clear what this comment meant, so he said nothing. Amusement filtered back into the clear gaze, making him fight a need to shift in place like Eamon.

“So you’re probably not around girls much.” Her mouth twitched. “Explains a lot.”

This he did understand. He fought a need to defend, though he was not sure what he wanted to defend.

“Your gene pool must be pretty shallow, too.”

It was a concern his father mentioned often. The push into space might have helped widen the genetic pool—and the number of available females—if not for the xenophobic nature of most of the Council of Elders. Not even his father’s position on that Council could save him if he tried to partner claim Ashe—assuming he survived an arrival with a partner-claimed alien in tow. And as Ashe had divined, she’d disappear into a research facility and he’d just disappear. Not possible, so why did he think of it?

“Your people are not concerned with genetic diversity?” If she could ask questions, why should not he?

Her laugh was worth the risk of exposing his ignorance about her people. “No, my people don’t worry about that.” Her grin did strange things to the region around his heart. “How do you think I got this lavender skin?”

He arched his brows in lieu of the question he did not quite know how to ask.

“My people do something called alliance mating. When our Leader wishes to form an alliance with another world, part of the treaty is a mate. It can be symbolic or not. The Leader and the Lady get to choose how much or how not the mating will be. My people have been pretty good at persuading the mates into saying yes.” She grinned again. “And when the children arrive, it creates a bond between our world and theirs. Even without kids, it promotes trade and the exchange of ideas. We’re big on learning, exchanging ideas, trading…interacting.”

Shan’s throat closed as interactive thoughts breached his inhibitors like flames licking through a damaged ship. Thoughts clouded with the smoke of desire challenged his control as he groped through memory for what he’d been told about her people. Some revered the Garradians as the fathers of their science, the beginning of the Enlightenment. He could see why they were liked if they’d arrived to interact. Her teasing smile invited reciprocation and more. He tugged at the neck of his gear, but the constriction wasn’t about attire. Others—he pushed doggedly through what thoughts remained, hoping to cross paths with reason again—many within the Authority and on the Council of Elders considered it near treason to credit any but Keltinarians for their scientific advancement. They also blamed the Garradians for the female problem. He could see why some would consider Ashe a problem. No question she hampered clear thinking. Looking at her seemed more gift than problem though. He sensed disconnection between what he’d been told and what she claimed. He couldn’t sniff history for truth, but he knew Ashe believed her words, even if her tone was edged with provocation.

“We’re also huge on choosing. Boys and girls get to choose who to…interact with.”

So approved history was correct when it claimed it was the Garradians who insisted women could and should be equal with men in all areas of life, that they could and should be able to choose whether to partner or not. That this was what led to scarcity, not the desire for sons, or a disdain for females. Her words should have cleared his thoughts. Both Cadir and Eamon looked troubled by her words. What made him uneasy weren’t the words, but his sense he’d heard them before. Believed them before? He frowned.

“Our ways are about duty, doing what is best for our world, our strata, our families. Choice must mesh with duty. Both male and female know their duty and they do it.”

Both young men’s expressions cleared as duty anchored their thoughts once more. They were young. Their thoughts were easy to anchor.

If his protection of Ashe went wrong, he would fail his father, his family, his strata. He would fail in his duty. The coming requirement to choose a suitable partner loomed over him, a dark cloud he chose to ignore for as long as possible. If not for the
Zalistria
going missing, he’d be home claiming his partner, settling into a life without space travel. Even as he’d felt relief at the reprieve, he also knew it was wrong. Wrong for him. Wrong for his brother. His family. His team.
Wrong
.

And if his instincts proved true? They were isolated from other teams operating in system, under orders to maintain the blackout except in the most extreme emergency. He felt the loss of Timrick even more as he thought about this. His brother delighted to circumvent the rules of engagement. Had he hoped against hope his brother would find a way to contact him, once they arrived in system?

It was his brother he should be focusing on, not Ashe. With Timrick missing he had no right to get involved in a situation sure to bring down the wrath of the Authority on them. If his brother was gone, he was his family’s only heir. And he needed to take care not to put his men at risk of retaliation. They were all too eager to protect her. Against his own instincts, he’d remind them again of their duty, explain the risks, the dangers not just to them, but to their families and stratum. It might work. And Ashe? When, he wondered with an internal sigh, had he shifted to naming her in his thoughts? She seemed to believe he would protect her, though he did not see how it was possible
.

The impossible just takes longer.
Where had he heard this? The voice in his head was familiar—but not.

She looked back, as if she felt his scrutiny and grinned, shaving tired off her face and several seasons off her age.
Needed a rest.
He almost snorted. She was lost or perhaps betrayed, and yet she walked with the confidence of someone who knew exactly where she was and why. She walked—he felt a jolt of shock—like a warrior. It was clear the Garradians had little care for their females, but to outfit them as warriors? Only women past childbearing years moved beyond home and hearth. His own father’s sister had deployed with Calendria, though the team was all female despite their advanced ages. The sexes were still, for the most part, separated.

Shan had a feeling it was not Ashe’s genetic material or her lavender skin that his people would fear, but her ideas. Time had almost erased the memories of those times when females were freer—and at risk of extinction—but he’d heard rumors that not all females were happy with the protections enacted to preserve the survival of their people. Shan frowned. Could this be the real source of their leaders xenophobia? If the Garradians were the source of the prior female rebellion, then it might make later leaders wary of further contagion.

He stopped just outside the perimeter of the camp. Should he take her inside? With the dampening measures in place, she couldn’t betray their position. She stopped next to a boulder, propping a hip against it with an air of casual unconcern belied by the exhaustion blurring her determination.

Could she explain the artifacts? Did she know the secret of fallings that created craters without heat? That appeared and disappeared without warning? Might she hold the key to finding the
Zalistria?
She’d been shocked at the sight of the automaton. Shocked so deeply, her skin had turned almost white. Her scent had altered, too, her reaction activating his fight or flight instincts. Why? What did she fear about them? If they were a threat to his team, he needed to know.

“What is it?” he’d asked as she touched the strange falling as if unsure it was real.

“An automaton.”

“What’s an automaton?” he’d persisted. What did she do? Pointed at the artifact. Almost he’d asked again, but the gleam of humor in her odd eyes killed that impulse. And replaced it with a new one. He’d almost smiled at her. She’d known it. How could she know? Worse was the jolt of recognition he’d felt, as if this was not the first time they’d shared a joke. That in some life he had not lived, they’d laughed together as friends. As more than friends?

Now she looked around, the way a warrior would who expects trouble. He knew that manner, lived it even at home, because safety was an illusion. His gaze intersected Ashe’s. Her lips parted and then closed on the question. What one didn’t know revealed as much as what one said. He knew this, was surprised she appeared to know it, too. The few women in his world tended to reveal what they knew whether one asked or not. Moisture and dust coated her skin, and tired tugged harder at the edges of her eyes and mouth.

“You are not here—” he paused, but it must be said, “to rest.”

She half grinned, the movement tired. Rubbed her face. “Not my best explanation. This isn’t much of a tourist destination.”

As if Designation 023456 wished to agree with her, the ground shook, though not from an impact this time.

Her eyes widened. “That was a harmonic tremor, not a meteorite impact.”

How could she tell the difference? Was she also a scientist? “The surface of Designation 023456 is unstable.”

She stared for several seconds. “And yet here we all are.”

He didn’t ask the obvious. She would not answer. Which brought him back to a question only he could answer. Did he take her inside his base or not? And if he didn’t, what did he do with her? The sluggish breeze stirred the edges of her remarkable hair, then moved on, leaving the air more still than before. As if they’d followed the wind, the rest of his team emerged from the forest, all of them stopping and watching. Wary altered their stances when they sensed the tension coursing between him and Ashe. She broke gaze lock long enough to scan the area, a slight frown pulling at her brows.

He arched one brow. “What do you look for?”

Her eyes widened. “Trouble.”

“You expect trouble.”

“Always.” Her other brow rose. “Don’t you?”

He had no answer for this, not when every cell of his body was on alert. His gaze narrowed. He sensed she dug deep to keep her back straight, to meet his gaze without flinching. Admiration stirred, an uncomfortable companion to worry and distrust.

“I’m no danger to you or your team, Vidor Shan.” Her tone was almost gentle, an odd contrast to her dangerous aspect.

According to his father, all women were dangerous, this one perhaps the most dangerous he’d met. He felt a tremor strike deep, as if he had met one this dangerous before, dangerous in just the same way, but how was that possible to know something one did not know? To meet any dangerous woman when he had hardly been around women?

“You’d be wise,” he paused, “to not be.”

“Despite the evidence,” an oblique reference to the crater, perhaps, “I do try to be wise.” She half shrugged, the move sending a mini shock wave through his men, even as weary moved back into her expression.

“If you are truly Garradian, you are very far from home.” From safety he didn’t need to add.

Her lips twisted into a half grimace, her gaze turning bleak as a Bromardian desert. “No kidding.”

He fought a sudden compulsion to comfort, to reassure, to promise. Instead he activated the access portal to their camp. Like a curtain parting, an opening appeared in the forest ahead. Her brows arched, bleak vanished like a puff of smoke as her lips curved up.

She smiled at him like he’d given her a present. “I did not see that coming.”

He scowled. “Did not see what coming?”

“The tech. Not with the whole Conan the Barbarian vibe you’ve got going on.” Her hands waved in a pattern, as if tracing his form from top to bottom.

“Barbarian?”

“Do you prefer buccaneer?”

He should be offended. Because he wasn’t, because he liked her sassy grin, he grabbed her wrist and turned, towing her through the portal, fighting back the urge to grin for the first time since they told him his brother’s ship was missing.

He didn’t. But he wanted to.

* * * *

The energy bar’s boost ran out about twenty clicks from where she ate it. Ashe had thought the time tsunami had been hammer-to-the-Ashe bad, but Shan made a tsunami seem like a brisk breeze. He might look stoic, but titanium was malleable metal compared to him. Even when he wasn’t pinging on her there was no relief. He sucked up all the oxygen, spreading out his my-way-or-the-skyway vibes like self-replicating granite. And when he did ping on her? An echo of her mother saying, “Sometime that man just wears me out,” made so much more sense now. If there’d been a neutral corner to retreat to, she’d have gone there, which was not like her at all.

You do not kid.

Don’t start.
She did not have the energy to fight two fronts. Though with Shan, fight might be optimistic spin for maybe holding her ground. Or a modest retreat.

I was thinking “mowed down.”

He couldn’t help himself. She knew that. That left the high road, which thankfully did not have gravity and wasn’t actually high. Even the boost from the sight of the cool tech vibes faded just inside the camp perimeter. Ashe didn’t collapse into a heap when Shan stopped, but only because she had enough pride left to stiffen her spine as all available eyes homing pigeoned her way
. It’s not like they haven’t seen purple skin before.

I’m not sure it is wholly about skin color.