“Who is this you’ve brought?” the bear-man asked as he stood, still laughing.
Enra took her kinsman by the forearm and led him to me. From what I could see, the two resembled each other. It was difficult to tell, but it didn’t appear that he had enough gray in his beard to be her father. I offered my hand, and we grasped each other’s forearms.
“I am called Jacob,” I said.
“Jacob,” he repeated, “you are welcome here. You have brought Enra back to her family. Now, you are family. I am her cousin and am called Timo-ran. Where did you find her?”
“It was near a village, I suppose you would call it. By a building with billowing smokestacks.”
Timo-ran’s brow furrowed at my words.
“At the refinery,” Enra interjected.
Timo-ran nodded solemnly. “We thought she might be there. But there are too many vrak in the area. We could not rescue her. We have scouted, but we found no sign of her. We thought her dead. Were you captured? Were you a slave?”
“No,” I said. “I’m not a slave. I heard her getting beaten and dealt with her captor.”
Several curses were expressed by the men, and each spat on the ground. “All the vrak will pay,” Timo-ran hissed. “When we are stronger, we will drive them from our lands. We will destroy their profane buildings and burn their bodies as an offering to the Lakunae.”
I tried not to show any shock, but the mention of the Void Gods surprised me. “The Lakunae?” I asked.
“Yes,” the man said. “You know of our gods?”
“I do,” I replied.
I knew them a lot better than I suspected Timo-ran, or anyone else in their village, did. If pressed, I’d explain what the big squid gods had done to me, but I wasn’t sure if the Ish-Nul would believe me or if they’d think I was insane.
“Good!” Timo-ran slapped me hard on the back. “Come with me. Cais-du and Neb-ka, another cousin, will continue the patrol. I will introduce you to the rest of the family.”
I shook off the tension of meeting the armed villagers as Enra grasped my left arm with both of hers and pulled me toward her village. A bright smile crossed her face as her feet skipped over the ground toward her home.
As we approached, seven women rushed out of one of the larger buildings and squealed excitedly when they saw Enra. Her kinswomen danced around her, hugging her, and they all nearly ended up as a heap on the ground.
One at a time, they began peeling themselves from the group to stare at me. I kept my expression neutral and professional. Their customs were alien to me, and until I knew more of them, I wasn’t about to offer anything that could be considered an insult.
I turned to Timo-ran, who had his arms crossed in front of his chest. I thought he was smiling, but it was difficult to tell through his thick beard.
“Oh, who is this?” asked one of the women, equally blond, older, and dressed in furs.
The few women halted their nonstop stream of conversation with Enra to join in the all-woman staring team. After decades of ignoring the interested gazes of women, I let them enjoy the view. It felt strange, but my time with Reaver had really broken down my walls.
I realized how much I missed the woman who’d been part of my team. She’d come aboard the Revenge only to be attacked by the Xeno when we’d met them in hyperspace. If she was on this planet, or some other planet elsewhere in the galaxy, I would find her.
I was broken from my thoughts when Enra grasped my arm again and leaned into me. “This man,” she said, “is called Jacob.”
The group of women repeated my name, almost in unison, with the same rolling accent.
The first woman, the older one, walked up to me and stopped only when her chest touched my belly. She was nearly a foot shorter, but I sensed the self-confidence of a woman twice her size. The others moved behind her to get a closer look at me as well.
I considered stepping back away from the women, a greeting on the tip of my tongue, and forced back a grunt of surprise when I felt a hand measuring my cock through my pants.
“Ohh,” Enra’s cousin said, “yes, we like this one.”
“I did.” Enra giggled. The rest of the women circled around me and whispered appreciation as I considered the best course of action.
A bellowing laugh from my right told me Timo-ran was in on the joke too. But the hungry eyes of the woman with her hand all over my crotch suggested it wasn’t a joke.
I’d been in more than 50 battles in almost as many systems. I’d personally killed more than 300 Xeno with nothing more than a vibro-blade. I’d helped destroy 16 of their starships. But this one woman had managed to catch me just a little flat-footed. Every one of the Ish-Nul women couldn’t take their eyes off me, and it took serious effort on my behalf to keep things professional.
“Get off him!” Timo-ran growled. He was trying to sound harsh, but I could hear the smile in his voice. “There is time for that later. For now, we must go see the elder, and Enra must get out of her slave-garb. She is free!”
The women cheered, then all tried to kiss me at once. I wasn’t sure how many were successful, but they reluctantly stopped when Timo-ran dragged me away from them by my arm. We left the group of women to huddle together while they whispered excitedly among themselves.
“It seems you will be popular here for a long time,” Timo-ran said as he guided me down a
