Adira's Mate Read online

  “I won’t hurt you. I know you have no reason at all to believe me but I will not hurt you,” she assured him. “It’s not who I am. I’m a healer,” she told him quietly. “Oh this is not good.” She paused the scan over his knee and bit her lower lip. “It looks as if they have dislocated your knee. I can set it and that will ease much of your pain.”

  The Craegin gave her a grunt, but didn’t move. Adira was going to take that as acceptance of the help she was offering. He also didn’t shoot her, so that was a huge plus. “Apparently not all your healers have the same beliefs as you do.”

  “I can’t speak for them, only me. I can’t believe that they did this. We have laws in place for a reason.” She was muttering as she spoke to him. “No one is supposed to ever be subjected to the pain and suffering that you were submitted to. For that I am so sorry. I want to kill my people for doing this.” Especially in her facility. She was not pleased at all.

  The look on his face said he didn’t believe her. “If you plan on fixing my leg, sooner would be appreciated. I’ll need all the time possible to heal before we reach our destination. Especially since it won’t be in friendly territory, for you.”

  “You aren’t going to put me off at a neutral planet?” she asked with a frown and sat back on her heels on the floor in front of him. “Oh stars.” She was so totally screwed. She was never going to live through this one. “Okay.” At least she could set his knee and help him heal, that was what she could do.

  “There are no neutral planets anymore,” he said. “There are only ones slightly less hostile than the others. The one we’re aiming for is the least hostile around. But if your brethren weren’t so determined to exterminate us we wouldn’t have this problem. Would we?” he asked with a hard look at her.

  Sadly he had a point there, but she didn’t say anything. Instead Adi worked on his leg, then passed him a medical hypospray. “You should give this to yourself to help you with your healing. It’s only vitamins, it shouldn’t harm you.”

  He took the hypospray, looking it over a moment, then tossed it aside. “No drugs, nothing from an Imarian. I’ve been given more shots since my arrival than I have in my entire life. No more. Especially something I didn’t load myself from supplies I trust. Fix my leg, or move so I can get up.”

  She nodded and put her hand on his knee. “It’s going to hurt,” she told him only a moment before she popped his knee back into place. “So sorry,” she said once more and moved back. Standing, she looked over him. “No drugs, then. Sorry I offered them to you.” Maybe she should drug herself and be done with it.

  He hadn’t even flinched. Either his pain was already so great he hadn’t felt what she’d done, or he was so well trained he’d been able to hide the reaction. She had a feeling it might have been a little of both. Easing to a sitting position, he swung his legs over the side of the bed and slowly put weight onto his leg. “Better,” he muttered. “You really shouldn’t be apologizing to anyone, especially your enemy. It leaves you in a weakened position, more so than you currently are in.”

  “With everything that you’ve gone through, someone needs to apologize to you. Besides, my future seems to already be set for me, doesn’t it?” she asked with a frown as she moved back toward the door and watched him. “We can relax on the flight deck.” Not really a deck so much as a large space, but still. “The chairs should be comfortable enough for you.”

  “Were you the one to cause me this harm?” he asked. When she shook her head he lifted one of his brows. “Then your apology is meaningless to me. Only those that caused me harm can tender an apology that would hold any meaning. Not that they would get much opportunity as I plan on killing them all as soon as I lay eyes on them again, but they are the ones at fault, and the ones who must apologize. Lead the way,” he said.

  She nodded and moved to the flight deck and looked at the seats. “Do you want the pilot or co-pilot seat?” She wanted him to be as comfortable as he might be able to get.

  “Co-pilot. It affords more space to stretch my leg out.” He waited until she’d settled in to a seat she couldn’t do anything from, then eased into the other. He’d turned it so he could keep his leg stretched out toward the additional space behind her seat.

  Leaning the seat back, she watched the stars as they flew by the screen in front and finally asked him, “Your people, are they going to kill me on sight?” If he said yes, she would have to do all she could in order to get free. She would have to try something, anything. “If so, you could jettison me in the life pod before we get to your space,” she suggested. “I really don’t want to die.” She was a coward like that.

  “Anything is possible, but it is highly unlikely. Unlike your people, we don’t kill Imarians for no good reason. Depending on what the situation is when we arrive at the outpost, I’ll decide how best to explain your presence, should it be required. As I’ve been out of touch for a time I have no idea what the current climate is like between our two peoples.”

  “I had thought that we were at a tenuous peace, but obviously I’m very wrong in my thinking,” she muttered. “I had begun to study Craegin healing methods with one of your Medical Ministries advisors. We had been exchanging information all this time, and I never knew that you were being held,” she whispered in horror. “What you must think of my people.” The ones that held him were monsters, pure and simple.

  He was watching her closely while she spoke, and grunted at her last words. “Our governments claim that peace still holds, but the soldiers know the reality. Imarian cruisers becoming more and more bold to invade our space. Then limping back when they are beaten, only to return with more ships in a desperate attempt to take what is not theirs. It was during one of those skirmishes I was taken. I’d been on an outpost, assisting our medics in getting medication to the needy, when the Imarian cruiser attacked the world. We got everyone onto our tramps to take them back up to the destroyer. The last one was caught in crossfire, and we crashed. They stormed the outpost to take me and several others. Some they killed where they lay. Others, mostly women, were drug away behind their crawler to be used first.”

  “That’s not good,” she said with a frown. “I don’t understand it. The only woman in the facility was the one who had given all that information on your people, and you were the only male. I had checked all of the other facilities and the two of you were it, unless they are being held at a military base instead of a science and medical facility.”

  He shot her a look. “The women never made it onto the crawler, Doctor. They were left where they were, used and disposed of. Tell me you are not that naïve?” he asked with a growing frown on his face.

  “By the gods.” She went pale; she knew she had, because she had felt the blood leave her face. “I. Oh my.” She guessed she really was that naïve, because she hadn’t believed her people were that bad. “They’re even worse than I thought.”

  “Nothing compared to how they behaved in your facility. How is it you run the place, if the markings on this crawler are to be believed, and yet you had no idea of all they were doing there? Do you never go there?”

  “The last time that I visited was eight months ago. The woman that was in one of the cells with you wasn’t there, and nothing seemed out of place. I run the Imarian medical facilities, so I oversee all of them on the planets. The facility where you were, they were supposed to be testing vaccinations against an illness that plagues our people.”

  “Uh-huh,” he grunted. Shifting in his seat he let out a breath, took a look at the console, then returned that suspicious gaze to her. “Do you have a name? Or should I continue to call you Doctor for the balance of our time together?”

  “Adira. Most people call me Adi.” Well, those that weren’t her subordinates. “So you can call me whatever, I suppose.” As long as he didn’t call her bad names, that was. He was already putting her race to her as an offensive name.

  “Adira,” he said slowly, like he was tasting it. “Pretty name,” he told
her. Leaning his head back against the seat, he crossed his arms over his chest and let out a breath. He really didn’t look all that comfortable.

  “Thank you,” she said as she watched him. “We will be on autopilot for another two hours. If you want you can go and catch a nap in the bunk. You have the controls locked out, so you might as well get comfortable while you can, right?”

  “This is only the first leg of the trip. We’ll be making a turn in two hours to continue on for the balance of our trip together. I’ll need to unlock the controls for the adjustment before resetting them back to autopilot. The turn needs to be made manually, though, because it will be through an asteroid belt, another tactic to lose anyone that may or may not be following us.”

  “Smart.” She had to give it to him, the man was exceptionally intelligent. “Well, then, if you don’t mind I’m going to close my eyes for a bit.” She needed to try to figure out how she was going to survive this. Or at the very least try to survive.

  When he didn’t say anything, she took it as a sign that he didn’t mind if she dozed off.

  Chapter Four

  She woke at the brush of skin to her arm. “I’m taking the lock off,” he said. “You need to move to the other seat unless you think you can navigate this field.” Pulling back, he looked down at her with his unusual eyes and waited for her answer.

  Her arm tingled where he touched her, and again she had the oddest sensation of something just out of reach. She was missing something but, at the moment, there wasn’t time to examine the thought. “No. No I can’t navigate this field. I’m a decent pilot but I’ve never been able to handle asteroid fields.” She shifted slightly so that she could rise. “How are you feeling? Any better now that your knee has been popped back into place? By the way, what is your name? I’ve told you mine, but I didn’t ask for yours.”

  He moved back a step to allow her to switch seats. “It’s swollen to twice its normal size, throbbing with every beat of my heart, and aches like I’ve been on a twelve day hike uphill.” He eased into the chair she’d vacated, and adjusted it for his longer legs. “Fintan, Fintan Daykin,” he said with a look her way before he took the controls. “You may want to buckle in, as the crawler’s artificial gravity may not always keep up with what’s needed.”

  “Do you want a cold pack for it? And I’m fine with the grav shutting off. It’s not the first time I’ve been banged around my craft. Give me two minutes and I can bring back a cold pack for your knee. That should help a bit with the pain, Fintan.” His name flowed like honey off of her tongue; she liked the way that his name sounded as she said it, liked the way that it felt to say it. Odd. Very odd, indeed.

  “Be quick about it. There are satellites around here that I really don’t want spotting us sitting on the edge of this field.” He was making some other adjustments on the panel and buckling himself into the seat.

  Once she got his acceptance she moved quickly, grabbing a cold pack and an additional one to put in the console cold keeper for later. She passed him one and explained to him that the second one was for later. Once she was buckled in, she looked over to him. “Are you sure that you’re going to be okay with the flight through this field? Is there another way?”

  He set the one pack aside and looked to her. “Do up your safety harness,” he said, not a request that time around. “I’ve trained in this asteroid field numerous times. Usually not in something as slow and clunky as a crawler, but at least at the speeds we’ll be going the chances of crashing are greatly diminished. Hold on, and try not to throw up all over the controls if the need arises.” Reaching out, he hit a few buttons, then shoved the speed controls into the fully open position. She was pressed back into her seat as the artificial gravity lost out for a moment.

  Adira let out a yelp. She couldn’t help it. Her hands clenched the arms of her seat and she watched the view panel closely, until the first near miss. She closed her eyes. Oddly enough she was trusting this man to keep them safe, another clue for her already overtaxed mind, something she was missing.

  An odd sound had her peeking over his way. He was laughing, actually laughing as he manned the controls to dip, swerve, and roll through the field. It sounded rough to be sure, like he hadn’t laughed in a long time, but the joy on his face was nearly as big a shocker as the laughter had been. He was enjoying himself. She took in the intense gleam in his eyes, the excitement, the sheer joy in his laughter. He was in his element.“I can’t believe that you are enjoying this,” she blurted. She paused and cocked her head to the side. “Wait, you said you trained in this field before. I can’t believe your people were this close to our borders.”

  “It’s been a long time since I was here personally, but we all train in this field. Because the asteroids move and shift around it’s the best place to learn to anticipate the absolute worst possible thing in battle. We’ve been using this field as far back in our history as I could find for training. It’s been moving steadily closer to the Imarian border, though, so soon enough we’ll lose it until it comes back around. According to records, it’s on an eighty year loop. It spends about fifty years in our system, and thirty to thirty-five in yours. No one has any idea why, or how it’s been pulled along, or what causes it to turn on its path, but it does. Unfortunately we’ll lose it for a time, so our newest pilots won’t gain the very up close and personal experience of this.” He sent them into a roll that dipped under a big asteroid before he sent them up between two that were coming together much too fast for her liking.

  She frowned thoughtfully. “So there are times when our worlds are closer together than they are currently, right?” When he sent them spiraling, she let out a cry of shock and put her hand on the console before her. “Mercy.” She was shaking slightly. “Please tell me that we are almost out of the belt, Fin?” She shortened his name without even consciously thinking of it.

  “Every forty years our worlds synchronize up for about a month when they are furthest from our suns. It’s the only time that the satellites can pick up the glow from the planet in the opposing galaxy. To you or I it’s still many weeks of travel, but in the grand scheme we’re close enough to touch.” He sent her a look right as he did another maneuver that had the artificial gravity going out. “We still have another fifteen minutes in here. We’re going through at the smallest point of the field. The widest is over two hours to get through. You should try and relax,” he told her. Another quick push to the controls had them skimming along one of the asteroids as he finally returned his gaze to the monitors.

  “I’m trying.” She let out a breath and nodded. “I’m trying, I swear I am.” She began to try to calm her own mind. Forced herself to go to that tranquil place inside of herself and finally did just as he instructed, soothing herself.

  “Better, but I’d recommend keeping your eyes closed for this next part. If that upset you, you won’t like what’s coming next.” She heard him flicking switches. Then they were swaying, the only word she could use to describe the way her body was rocking slightly side to side. Again he was testing the extent of the artificial gravity of the crawler. Then came more loops and spirals, and there went the gravity with her upside down in her seat. Or so it felt, given her arms wanted to lift over her head.

  “You are having a blast with this, aren’t you?” She asked him as they flew through the asteroid belt. When there suddenly were no more twists and turns she opened her eyes and looked to him. “Fin?” She realized what she did and added, “Fintan, are we done?”

  He was looking at the monitors, and after a moment more he nodded. “We’re clear of the field.” He punched in a new set of coordinates and waited a few more minutes, then reengaged the autopilot.

  “Thank the spirits we are done with that,” she muttered. “Because I’m not sure if I would have been able to continue without throwing up.” She was proud of herself for not doing just that before they got out of the field.

  “You survived the asteroid field better than most new pilots d
o. Their first flight through it is with a seasoned pilot in the front seat while they ride in the back. Not one has ever made it ten minutes without throwing up. I’d say that says something about you, Doctor.” He pushed the seat back as far as it would go, lifted the cold pack from where he’d set it, and put it on his leg with a curse.

  She winced in sympathy. “I know what you’re feeling. I crushed my arm when I was a child and had to have the bone replaced.” She showed him the back of her arm. “I still remember how painful that was. As for making it.” She shrugged. “I’ve spent a great deal of time on crawlers.” And other ships. With a brother like hers and a father like the one they had, she’d practically grown up on a ship.

  That earned her another look, one she couldn’t read. He gave a shrug and relaxed into the chair. At which point his stomach decided to make its demands known. Loudly. Very loudly in the enclosed space. Fintan put a hand over his gut and rubbed, but didn’t say anything.

  “How about I make us something to eat? I have a kitchenette as well as cold storage. Come on. You’re hungry and so am I. Or you can remain here and I will bring you back food? That way you can continue to rest your knee?”

  He sat up, shaking his head. “I’ll come with you. Just to ensure you don’t make something that will kill me. Your people seemed bent on seeing what foods would send us into shock, or on the edge of death.”

  “That’s them. Hopefully one day you’ll see that they are not me.” She rubbed at her chest. She didn’t know why, but his constant references that lumped her with her people made her hurt. She didn’t care for that at all. “Come along, then. I’m starving and you are as well.”

  He grabbed her wrist in a firm, but oddly gentle, hold. “I didn’t say that to upset you. I was merely stating the obvious. They were feeding us things to see what we could and couldn’t tolerate. They are Imarian, and therefore they are your people. You say you didn’t know about it, and I’m willing to allow you didn’t, since you seemed genuinely horrified by their actions. Though you need to know, I have no clue what the Imarian meant by three dead. I knocked two men out, and left them tied up in a closet, but I didn’t kill anyone.”