Page 41 of Her Alien Mercenaries
“Hisanrik!” Torren said. “Supposedly he works on the platform. We need to get him before he gets away.”
“The platform and all vessels are already locked down. We’ll find him.”
Zanyr slammed his fist against his thigh in fury. “And then we need to look for others. What if they weren’t the only ones here?”
Denz’s expression turned stormy. “Then we find them, remove them, and send a message to these bastard Shadow Men to leave us, and our colony, alone.”
That was a message Zanyr could get behind.
17
“Will you stop fussing!”Jenna protested as Torren tried to fluff her pillow again.
“The healers said you needed to rest for at least another day.” Torren finished what he was doing and then sat down next to her on a couch bigger than most of the rooms she’d lived in during her time on Earth.
“That’s what they toldyou. Jodi said I was the best judge of when I was ready to be up and around. This is me, telling you, I am more than ready.”
Two days at the med-clinic and another day sitting around her new home was enough to drive her to distraction. She’d never spent this much time sitting around, doing nothing. Even on the voyage here she’d kept busy studying languages, taking classes with the other women, and exercising to help her muscles prepare for Liberty’s higher gravity.
“Why would they give us different instructions?” Zanyr stood by the window, his body highlighted by the rays of the setting sun.
“I thought that would be obvious. We were only in the second day of thesharhalwhen I got sick. Sure, the transfusion you did eased my symptoms, but there wasn’t much they could do for the two of you. They were concerned your needs might make you rush me.”
Torren growled. “They lied to us to make sure we didn’t bed you too soon? Do they think so little of our control? I’m going to tie thatbakaffahealer to a post and show him what it looks like when I lose control!”
“No, you won’t, because I was always the one who had the final say, and I say I’m done waiting.”
Both males straightened, their scales tightening in response. “You’re sure?” Zanyr asked.
“Yes! Very. Totally. Utterly. Completely certain.” She threw off the blanket she’d been nestled under since lunch. Zanyr had only come in from the fields a little while ago, which was why she’d waited this long. Now that they were both here, she was done waiting.
“You heard ourana-thi. She doesn’t want to wait any more.” Torren swept her into his arms so quickly she barely felt her feet leave the ground.
“Thank the ancestors.” Zanyr had one foot up and was pulling off one of his socks while also attempting to undo his pants one-handed. It seemed they were done waiting, too.
Torren muscled past him and carried her up the stairs. They hadn’t flown with her since the incident, but they had insisted on carrying her everywhere. Flying was something else she wanted to do again. Soon.
She really was recovered. In fact, she’d never felt this good in her life. It had taken the nanotech a full day to repair the damage done to her heart, but after that, her recovery had been amazingly swift.
At first, the healers thought she’d been poisoned. The truth only came out when her bloodwork revealed minute traces of a type of medi-bot no one had seen before. It was very similar to the ones the corporations used on their cyborgs, but it had been modified in several ways.
For one thing, it was so close a match to the standard technology that normal medi-bots wouldn’t have recognized it as a threat. Even if she had taken the medi-bot treatment already, it wouldn’t have saved her.
For another, it appeared the tech had a single purpose. Once activated, the miniature swarm attacked her cardiac muscles, starving them of blood flow and oxygen until the cells died. If Torren and Zanyr hadn’t found her, she’d have died from what would have looked like a sudden heart attack. While uncommon for someone her age, it wasn’t unheard of. Sanjin could have killed her, and no one would have realized it. Everyone assumed that was his plan. If things had gone the way he intended, he would have returned to the body and continued as usual.
The investigation was still ongoing, but they now knew at least two of the cloned abominations were in the colony. Sanjin was one, and Kabar, the one he referred to as hisanrik, was the other. Kabar worked on the orbital platform, but records indicated he hadn’t been down to the planet for several months. He met with Sanjin on his last trip to the planet. They had undergone the bonding ceremony, and then they’d never seen each other again.
Kabar’s cabin had been destroyed with an acid bomb, denying investigators the chance to go through his things. He’d wiped his files, too, scrubbing them so well that not even Phaedra and her cyber-team had been able to recover anything. The body, or what was left of it, was sprawled on the floor in a tangle of limbs.
The digitized consciousnesses in control of the two clones had escaped, leaving Haven’s citizens with more questions than answers. What little they did know did not bode well for the colony. They had been infiltrated by the enemy. Haven was under attack in the same way Sanjin had tried to kill her—from the inside.
Torren’s kiss pulled her out of her thoughts and back to the present. “Come back to me, blossom.”
“I’m here.” She cupped his face in her hands and kissed him back. It was the same thing she’d been trying to say while she’d lain on the floor, fighting for her next breath. She’d heard them calling her, asking her to come back, to stay with them. She’d tried so hard to answer, but she hadn’t been able to say it then.
“Good.” Zanyr joined them. “I’d hate for you to miss this next bit.”
She laughed and reached out to swat his shoulder. “I don’t think this would work without me here.”
