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“That would endanger their hostages.”Why was she like this?I had never held a lengthy conversation with a female Earthling before, let alone gotten into a debate with one. Did they always leave this much to chance when faced with an emergency? Or was it merely the exhaustion and the nightmare she had been through? Likely that second one.
“Amara.” I sighed. I loved saying her name, loved the exotic sound of it and how undeniably yet unfamiliarly feminine it was. But right now I couldn’t enjoy it. “This is not your world. You are a powerful warrior, and your aim…”
The hollow thunk of the blaster going off again interrupted me. One of the whipvines collapsed, its trunk chewed through by three carefully placed shots.
She relaxed a little and actually smiled, a little lopsided and even a touch cocky. “Told you.”
“Yes, you did. And I’m happy to see you prove it.” My smile faded, and I looked at her earnestly. “But even with such prowess, you cannot reliably expect to win with just us against all of them.”
“Dammit,” she snapped, the word not translating. I guessed it was a curse. She got up, set down the canteen, and stood there, anger and discomfort in her eyes. “I cannot desert them.”
“I appreciate your debt of honor. But late help is still better than ineffective help.”
She still stood there, rigid, suddenly looking conflicted. I practically held my breath as I watched her. Was I getting through to her? Did she understand that no matter how urgent her feelings were, she had to rein them in before they caused her to make a dangerous mistake?
She took a few deep breaths and then unclenched her hands and blinked slowly. She looked over at me, her face smiling but her eyes unreadable. “Okay. Maybe it is too dangerous to go without backup. But couldn’t they just respond to the emergency before you end up in all these meetings about your position?”
My throat went completely dry. I swallowed hard, reining in a flare of temper. “I cannot expect help from my pack until I once again establish my place with them. This is our way.”
She rubbed the side of her head, right in front of and above her ear, where her head dimpled in slightly on each side. She squinted as if a headache was coming on. But then she just nodded and changed the subject.
“Okay, so tell me more about this gun. How many more shots do I have on this thing before it runs out of power?”
“The force pulse it generates can be fired up to ten times in close succession before it needs some charge time. Its internal generator can charge up its battery within several seconds, but by then the firefight may be over. For this reason”—I handed her both a second blaster and a makeshift holster belt I had put together for her—“I think you should carry two.”
“Ah, okay. I get your reasoning.” This time her smile reached her eyes, and I relaxed a little. “That way I can keep firing and just switch off. How do I know when they’re charged?”
“Here.” I showed her a small blue light on the gun’s butt. “It’s dark when empty, white when charging, blue when full.”
“Dark, white, blue. Okay. And ten shots.” She licked her lips. “Effective range?”
“Not great. Twenty spans, no farther.” I watched that translate into whatever her language used as a measuring system and then saw her eyebrows rise.
“Impressive, actually. Especially for a firearm that uses a coherent force blast instead of any kind of projectile. Is there a rifle version?”
“There is, but I do not have one. Nor did I see one on the slavers.” I reached to adjust her grip slightly. Her hands were tiny and warm, and I had trouble letting go afterward. “Here, your hand will grow less fatigued if you change your grip like this.”
I took a shaky breath while she grumbled something about “guns built for gigantic people.” I rubbed the palm that had touched her until I could think again, forcing a chuckle.
She fired, and another whipvine went into convulsions across the clearing.
“Good,” I said needlessly.
She had given up working on me about rescuing her fellow Earthlings fairly quickly once certain matters were explained to her. That was a relief. I sometimes felt as if the translator was failing us miserably, because she would say something that made absolutely no sense to me, or I would say something and find her staring at me incredulously, or skeptically, as if what I had said had made absolutely no sense to her. Perhaps it was a translation malfunction. Or perhaps we simply needed more practice.
Earth females were strange beings from what I could see.
Or perhaps she was just an unusual example of them. She had opened up to me significantly during my care of her, but I still felt she was hiding something. There was so much more to know about her, I was certain of it—hidden depths. Likes, dislikes, habits. But there was a lot of road between here and there, and I knew it.
“Your people are unaware that other intelligent beings exist in the universe, aren’t they?” I asked as she completely cut down the writhing plant with another shot.
“That’s right. We’ve had a lot of speculation, especially in the past few years. But this situation is the first actual proof I’ve ever seen. Everything else has been just rumors, vague photos, and unidentified radar blips.”
I tried to imagine what that was like. An entire planet that was blissfully ignorant of not being alone in the universe despite other species having contact with them for decades. So many females had disappeared from their world thanks to the slavers.Why hadn’t anyone noticed?
“I’m surprised,” I drawled. “Survey teams from our world were scanning yours for many moons.”
“Well, that explains a few things.” She ran a hand back over her hair and then resettled it back on the grip of the blaster. “One question. Did these slavers do a bunch of weird experiments on Earthlings before they started abducting us?”
