She wasn’t amused.
She was scared.
“I had already guessed from the reception we got and the attack as we left that they were not especially friendly,” Kadin retorted dryly.
Emma felt the blood leave her face. “That was us that nearly shot us down?”
“Us as in your fellow Earth people? They certainly tried.”
“But … we’re ok? The ship’s ok?”
Hauk and Kadin exchanged a long glance. “Nothing that cannot be repaired,” Kadin responded coolly. “The question is, will your people send more? Can they come after us? Will they?”
Dismay flickered through Emma even as she stifled the immediate impulse to say Earth didn’t have the capability. It wouldn’t just be disloyal to admit they had nothing like these people did. It could be very dangerous. “I think it must have been in the nature of a warning against attack from your people.”
Again the two men exchanged a look that made Emma uneasy.
She didn’t think they believed her.
She shrugged inwardly. The military had attacked them already and they’d done nothingsheknew of to provoke it, so they had a point.
She told herself she didn’t care if they didn’t believe her and that it didn’t matter anyway, but she knew that was a lie even as she struggled to comfort herself with it.
“So …,” she changed the subject. “I guess it didn’t really do any damage?”
The look they exchanged that time made herreallyuneasy.
“Is that a yes or a no?” she demanded sharply—because she was scared and that slashed IQ significantly.
Kadin gave her a look she found hard to decipher, but it was unnervingly like someone contemplating violence.
“There is damage,” Hauk responded. “We are working on repairs.”
Well! Thank god it could be repaired, Emma thought with relief.
* * * *
“I do not think this is something we can repair,” Hauk told Kadin and Gaelan when they joined him a short time later.
Consternation crinkled Gaelan’s features.
Kadin compressed his lips into a thin, hard line. “Did I mishear you then when you assured the female that we were affecting repairs?”
“Emma,” Gaelan and Hauk corrected him at the same time.
“I believe I said we are working on repairs,” Hauk retorted.
“Which suggests we can do them,” Kadin snapped irritably.
Hauk shrugged. “I had not had time to thoroughly assess the damage then.”
Gaelan glanced from one to the other. “There is no point in growing angry over it. It is no one’s fault.”
Hauk narrowed his eyes at Kadin.
Kadin shook his head. “I am not trying to blame anyone. I am trying to decide what we should do now.”
“Contact Merrik and tell him to come for the young king immediately,” Gaelan said promptly. “The longer we drift here, the greater the danger to him.”
Chapter Six
A vigorous discussion followed that suggestion but in the end neither Hauk nor Kadin could argue with the logic of it.
They had managed to capture only three Sheloni ships that were still capable of flight, and hopefully battle, and their value could not be calculated—especially since they had lost one already and that one had been carrying the High King and his family back to the home world.
But neither could the life of their High King—the last living male in direct line of the succession since his father had been killed.
He might be no more than a baby, but he represented generations … and unity. The Hirachi had been seriously weakened when the tribes had scattered in an attempt to survive the raids of the Sheloni. Together they might be strong enough to defeat the Sheloni once and for all.
Without a concerted effort by all of those being preyed upon by the Sheloni, the outcome was less certain.
Physcially, there was no comparison of strength. The Sheloni were as weak as babes beside the physical superiority of the Hirachi, the Satren, and the new mixed breeds.
Technology was the problem—even the Satren, who were more technologically advanced than the Hirachi, were generations behind the Sheloni in that arena—but they had new weapons to counter that failing—the ships of the Sheloni themselves and their weaponry.
“There is a risk here that we had not counted upon,” Kadin said finally.
Gaelen nodded. “Or planned for, but I do not see that we can do anything else if we have no hope of making the repairs.”
Hauk could see their point. If they called out for help, there was always the chance that their enemies might intercept it and arrive first. “We can afford to devote a little more time, I think, to attempting the repairs ourselves.”
Kadin considered that and finally shook his head. “Time is our enemy, as well. I think we must risk it and prepare the best we can if this does not go as we hope.”
The three headed to the bridge. Once there, it was Gaelen who settled at the communications console.
It had been modified and therein lay their best hope that they could summon help without alerting their enemies. It was adapted to work as an amplifier for the Hirachi telepathic abilities.
Gaelen spent the better part of three days struggling to reach help before they received a response. “We come.”
* * * *
Emma had never spent a good deal of time—or in fact any—trying to imagine what space travel must be like, but she doubted she would have imagined anything even approaching reality.
Or at leastherreality.
She didn’t suppose what she was experiencing was anything like a trip in an Earth ship.
There was gravity and there wasn’t supposed to be any in space.
Evensheknew that much.
When she finally calmed down enough to spare some wayward thoughtsthatflickered through her mind as questionable. She wasn’t prone to paranoia or even particularly suspicious minded and it still crept into her mind to wonder if she could simply accept everything at face value. Was she really on a space ship built by an alien race and bound for another world? Accompanied by an alien baby and three very different, giant alien men?
Because she had never seen other than the three and even that circumstance seemed strange.
And the three really looked like they would
