NO WORDS ALONE Read online

  NO WORDS ALONE

  AUTUMN DAWN

  LOVE SPELL NEW YORK CITY

  NEGOTIATIONS BEGIN

  Ryven smiled, but there was something else in his expression. “Do I repulse you?” he asked softly.

  There it was again, that tension. Xera tried to be careful with her words. “I’m not comfortable with this subject. Our people are at odds.”

  “I was speaking of us.”

  It was hard to look at him. “I don’t want to have a relationship with you.”

  He looked thoughtful rather than offended. “It’s like a council for peace talks, isn’t it? Neither side wants to give away their concessions too early. The pace is slow and drags on for days. Sometimes a man can go mad from the tension.”

  She glanced up, surprised at his admission. Saw those amazing eyes.

  He stepped forward. “I’ve never had much patience for delays, so I’ll see if we have one goal in common right now.” He took her in his arms and kissed her.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Negotiations Begin

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Acknowledgments

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  “Looks like they want to talk.”

  Xera’s gaze followed the engineer’s to the cadre of silent aliens. The shifting tones of their black and gray uniforms made them hard to focus on, almost as if the cloth itself repelled the eye. She didn’t see any wounded among them, but they’d probably left their injured aboard ship.

  She wiped at some ooze above her left eye, smiling grimly as her black and tan uniform sleeve came away smudged with blood. Two ships had crash-landed on this planet, crippled from the battle they’d just fought, but Xera’s craft had done more crash than land. Her ship’s crew’s casualties were heavy, and they were down to less than twenty able-bodied personnel. She counted sixteen men in the enemy group.

  “Why don’t they do something? They’re just standing there,” the engineer, Cort, muttered. Stocky, more comfortable with machines than men, he gazed at the aliens with distrust.

  The captain of Xera’s group said nothing, just stood there in a sweat. She knew better than to mistake the fierce frown on his face for courage under fire. The man was a coward.

  “Captain Khan? Do you want to talk to them?” Cort persisted.

  Captain Khan’s bulldog face contorted with rage. Vietnamese, with a round head and meaty body, he’d clearly worked his way to the top by intimidation and bluff. It certainly hadn’t been because of his massive intelligence. “Shut your mouth, Cort! I’m still captain here.” He looked back at the aliens for a moment then gestured to one of his officers. “Genson. Go see what they want.”

  Genson gave him a wild look. “Sir, perhaps the translator—”

  Xera, the translator, braced herself.

  Captain Khan sent her a scathing look. The two of them had butted heads often enough that he didn’t trust her to slide under his thumb on command. Those he couldn’t dominate, he pushed to the side as useless. “You’re an officer—they’ll recognize that. Get moving.”

  Xera looked away to hide her disgust. Genson didn’t know a word of Scorpio, which she herself had been learning for the past two years since graduating from the academy. Whenever the Galactic Explorers uploaded new findings on the language and customs of the race known as Scorpio, she’d been on top of it. So little was known about the alien race, and she’d been fascinated. Unfortunately, the GE didn’t share her curiosity—or at least not her professional reasons for it. It hadn’t taken long for Xera to realize her employer was a planet-hungry entity bent first and foremost on keeping the worlds it discovered under its control. In the Scorpio, they’d found a powerful race intent on maintaining their liberty and the privacy of their territory.

  The humans had named the Scorpio for their home planet’s position in the sky, in the belly of the human constellation of the same name, but also because of the alien race’s stinging reprisals. Scorpio were known to shoot first and not bother with questions. Everything known of Scorpio language and customs had been decoded from damaged ships and survivors of small clashes. The fates of these captured prisoners rarely came up, though the GE maintained that they were traded back to their people in return for certain concessions. The two groups weren’t involved in a full-scale war yet, thanks to the Interplanetary Council’s diplomatic intervention, but this little skirmish might change all that.

  Not that the IC had much control over the GE’s actions, no matter their official position as peacekeepers. Officially a forum for government representatives from different planets to work toward peace and harmony, it lacked the funds and support to accomplish much. The governments and cultures involved rarely agreed on anything for long, which made it ineffectual in controlling conglomerates like the GE.

  Genson walked reluctantly across the dun sand, probably swearing to himself with every step. He halted about two paces from the leader and spoke. The leader shot him down.

  Xera’s group jumped and pointed their guns at the aliens, who looked back at them with arrogant unconcern. A few bursts of gunfire bounced harmlessly off some unseen force field. The Scorpio made no move to return fire.

  “Hold! Hold!” Captain Khan shouted, waving his hands. “We don’t want to provoke them.”

  “But sir—,” someone protested.

  “I said hold it! Let me think.” His thoughts must have been rapid, and full of self-preservation, for he turned to Xera. “You. You’re the translator…you go talk to them.”

  She looked at him for a moment. Voicing the thoughts in her head would get her thrown in the still-smoking brig. This wasn’t the first time he’d queered a deal then sent her in as translator to try to salvage it. Unable to quell a trace of mockery, she asked, “Any special messages for them, sir?”

  Khan’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t screw this up, Harris-d, or I will bust you down to kitchen help. Find out what they want.”

  “Yes, sir.” She gave him a jaunty salute and strode toward the alien line with her usual high energy. Fully expecting to die, she figured she might as well look proud doing so.

  As she got closer, though, her stride slowed in surprise. She hadn’t expected the leader to look so, well…

  He was tall, his black hair cut close with military precision. One of his ears was pierced with a golden starburst, and there was a hands-free communication set around his ear. This close, his uniform ceased shifting colors, remained dull, gray-black combat attire.

  Coldly handsome, he had a strong face, a piercing expression. His eyes were what threw her, though. Three paces away from him, she could see his irises were flame orange, tinged with gold at the edges.

  Brimstone eyes.

  Genson’s body was in her way. She spared him a brief look, enough to see that he was very dead, then stepped around him, refusing to talk over his body. Since that brought her face-to-face with the man at the leader’s left, she raised her brows inquiringly and glanced between them.

  The leader finally growled in the Scorpio tongue, “Why do you look to my second? I am
the leader here.”

  She adopted a polite expression and answered him in his language. “I don’t know your customs. It seems you kill those who speak to you first.” She contained a flash of rage at Genson’s death. Of course, her captain was as much to blame as this man. If he’d followed protocol and sent her in first, this might not have happened.

  “I will not speak to an underling. Bring your captain back or don’t come at all.”

  She inclined her head, then bent her knees and grabbed Genson’s wrists. He outweighed her by fifty pounds at least and was deadweight besides, but she managed to drag him twenty feet before some of the guys from her side broke ranks and ran to help. She would have liked to drop him right at Captain Khan’s feet, but knew she’d have to settle for letting the men help. By the look on Khan’s face as she walked up, she’d made her point anyway.

  “Sir,” she drawled, adopting her mildest expression. “He won’t speak to underlings.”

  Her captain’s face turned red. “He spoke to you!”

  She shrugged. “That is what he said.” She could almost see Khan’s mind work: Stuck on a barren planet, half his crew dead, finite supplies and no way of knowing when or if they’d be rescued…They knew nothing about this place, except that the GEHQ wanted it. If the aliens were willing to make some kind of alliance, they needed to accept.

  He stared at the Scorpio. “You’ll need to translate.”

  At last, a sensible command. After all, she didn’t want to die, either. “Yes, sir.”

  They crossed the sand halfway, then stood and waited. The alien leader and his second approached.

  The leader glared at Khan. “What is your name and rank?”

  Xera translated, then waited. Khan surprised her with a nudge when she didn’t volunteer the information in return. The word for captain escaped her, so she said haltingly, “He’s the leader of those in our ship—Captain Khan. My name is Lieutenant Xera Harris-d.”

  “He has no other rank?”

  She frowned over that, then asked her captain, “You don’t happen to be a prince or something among your own people, do you?”

  Khan moved as if he’d like to hit her but thought better of it when he saw the alien leader tense. “Just ask him his name!”

  She looked back at the Scorpio. “He asks your name.”

  The alien didn’t look satisfied with this reply but said, “Commander Ryven Atarus, of the High Family.”

  She passed this on, then spun out her captain’s curt, “What do they want?” to “Commander Atarus, you wished to speak to us?”

  The Scorpio’s eyes narrowed. “This planet becomes a death trap after dark. There are nocturnal creatures here that would feed on all of us if we stay. The ships are not strong enough to safeguard anyone. The danger is great enough that we will ally with you long enough to reach shelter. If all go, some will survive.”

  Captain Khan didn’t like that news. “What kind of creatures can get inside a closed ship? Solid steel should keep them out.”

  “We need to seek shelter anyway, sir. If there is water where—”

  “Your job is to translate,” Khan snarled at her. “Do it!”

  Xera sighed and faced Atarus. “What kind of animals can get inside a sealed ship?”

  The commander’s eyes traveled to their damaged spacecraft. “What’s left of that will not keep them out.”

  She rather liked his tweaking Khan’s tail, but she needed an answer that would move her captain, so she guessed, “Small winged creatures, and very large animals…I’m not sure how to translate.”

  Now Khan looked worried.

  “We must leave now. If you are coming, come. If not, stay and die.” Commander Atarus walked away.

  Chapter Two

  Commander Ryven Atarus watched the aliens arguing with a jaded eye. They had about five minutes until he took his party to the shelter and left them to their stupidity, but he hadn’t been lying: the greater their numbers, the better their chance of survival. It was the reason he’d allowed them to remain armed. This upped the risk to his men, but they would all need weapons if they were to survive long enough to get to shelter. Until then, he’d let the humans maintain their fragile taste of equality. Once they reached the fortress, things would be different.

  “They don’t like each other,” his brother Toosun murmured. “See how the woman stands? She is defying their leader.” There was a note of satisfaction in his voice. He’d clearly found the human captain stupid, too.

  Ryven had to agree with his brother and second in command—he hadn’t missed Captain Khan’s move to strike the translator, though perhaps he’d been provoked. The woman had certainly seemed cocky enough while striding up to them earlier, neatly sidestepping her fallen comrade. It was her act of courage in dragging away the body that had reluctantly impressed him, though. Not many males would dare such a thing, putting their back to an enemy.

  Odd, too: from what he’d seen she was angrier with her captain than she was with him. Not that he regretted killing the man; he and this woman’s people were at odds, and he would use every advantage to intimidate his enemies.

  Toosun absently rubbed his left bicep, probably trying to build heat. The planet’s atmosphere had been cool to start with and was getting colder. By nightfall, the desert would be dangerously cold. Toosun’s dun-colored hair was short like his brother’s, and it allowed an unwelcome draft.

  Ryven turned to his men. “We’ve waited long enough. The antigay sleds are loaded—let’s move.”

  They hadn’t crossed two dunes before the aliens caught up, many of them breathing hard. Ryven kept his gun loose in its holster but said nothing as they joined the column, following two lengths back with Khan and the woman in the lead.

  She was attractive, in an exotic way. Even with the blood smeared on her skin, she showed well. Short, black curls framed a determined face. He’d never seen blue eyes before, and they’d take some getting used to, but her body…the height and strong shoulders hinted at stamina. He hoped the trimness meant she’d conditioned her muscles—she was going to need it.

  It was just after noon and they had five hours of hiking through sand ahead of them. His men had plenty of food and water, but he didn’t know about the humans. The men he didn’t care about, but the woman…

  “Brirax, Delfane,” he said softly over his crew’s communication network. “You will keep an eye on the woman. She’ll tire by the time we are done, and there are the other dangers to watch for.”

  “Yes, sir,” they responded at once. Covertly, he watched them slowly drop to the rear of the group. By the end of the march, they’d be walking next to her.

  Satisfied he’d met the demands of his conscience, he turned his mind to keeping his men alive.

  They’d been walking half an hour when the first man went down. Xera watched in horror as their galley master sank out of sight, sucked down a sinkhole. Screaming, the man begged for help until the sand closed over his head—too rapidly for them to save him.

  “Avoid that spot,” Atarus called out, and walked on. Too stunned to translate, Xera stumbled forward when the guy behind her prodded her.

  “B-but shouldn’t we…” she began, trying to look back.

  “No time,” one of the aliens said. Their two groups had slowly closed the gap between them as time wore on, and now there was barely any space between them. Like Atarus’s second, this Scorpio had brown and gold eyes and dun hair. “Here, take this rope. Tell your people to pass one among them, too, if they have it. If another goes down, we may save them.”

  May save them. She wasn’t sure if this was just the Scorpio way of speaking, Scorpio idiom, but she would have been more comforted by a will save them. This didn’t stop her from grabbing the cord the aliens had strung amongst themselves, however. They had more than one, she saw, which kept them from being forced into a single file. She began to especially envy the ones pulling antigravity sleds: as long as they held on to the tethers, they would be safe from s
inkholes.

  “Your name?” asked the alien who’d passed her the rope.

  She drew a breath. “Lieutenant Xera Harris-daughter. Harris-d for short.”

  He repeated the name, mangling it. “Brirax,” he said by way of introduction. He gestured to another alien, a red-eyed one, who’d dropped back beside them. “Delfane.”

  “What do they want?” Captain Khan asked suspiciously. He’d stayed in Xera’s vicinity, an unusual move for him.

  “They suggested we pass around a rope.” She held up the end she’d been given in illustration.

  Captain Khan grunted and immediately barked out an order, only to find his men had already found a rope and were forming a line. He growled in annoyance at that sign of in de pen dent intelligence, but took hold himself.

  Xera looked around at the desert. Other than a few dun rocks scattered here and there, she could see no danger—but that meant nothing. “Brirax, besides sinkholes, what other perils do we look for?”

  “Biters,” he said, looking grim. “Our eyes can see them, but yours will not. Even we can be caught if we crest a dune and come right on them. It is almost too late then.”

  She looked at his bright eyes and asked, “How is it you can see them when we can’t?”

  “Camouflage, for you see only colors. We see heat and colors.”

  “Heat and colors? Infrared?” she mused aloud in her own language. That information had never made the GE intel website. Maybe no one had ever noticed.

  “What’s that?” Captain Khan demanded sharply.

  She blinked at him, then explained. His eyes narrowed, and he muttered something under his breath.

  “What’s one look like?” she asked the aliens.

  Brirax’s eyes shuttered. “Small, like a man’s fist. They travel in families and attack at once. Flame or laser spray is the cure, but one bite will paralyze a man for hours. They eat him alive. And quickly.”