Dzar-Ghan (Alien Barbarians of Vandruk #3)

1. Chapter 1

“So are you excited for tomorrow?” my mom asked.

“It’s a job,” I answered evasively, already regretting having picked up the phone. I hated video calls more so than regular ones. Interacting with others, especially my family members, was torture for me. I moved to college when I was fifteen years old and never looked back. Just happy to be away from home.

I skipped a couple of grades in grammar, middle, and high school, where I took any dual enrollment course I could, always driven to get away from home. The result was that at twenty-eight, I was the youngest, highest sought-after geologist, with three doctorates, in environmental science, geology, and cave exploration as well as a PhD in biology. The reason Doctor Weidenhof—the inventor of the wormhole portal and CEO of IC—Interplanetary Communication—hired me.

I had already delayed this call for as long as possible, but I was leaving tomorrow morning, and there would be no communication for a long time.

“A job?” my sister Lydia screeched in the background.

“Un-fucking-believable,” Josy, my other sister, muttered.

“Mind your words,” Mom chided, always ready to police what we said and did, no matter that we were all grown now and had our own jobs and lives. Josy was twenty-five, three years younger than me.

“She’s going to Hope One,” Josy pointed out. “She can be blasé about a lot of things, but not that, Mom, not that.” Why did they all have to play word games all the time? Of course I was excited to go, but that took second to having a job to do.

“It’s called Vandruk now,” I corrected automatically. Hope One had been the name the scientists had given the alien world, but Vandruk was the name the indigenous people called it.

“Whatever, it’s a big fucking deal! My older sister is going to an alien planet!”

“Josy!” Mom chastised her again. Making it sound like Joh-seee.

They started a long conversation about curse words and foul language while my eyes roamed from my phone to my laptop screen. IC had no clue I hacked into their system and was actually looking at a live feed from Vandruk.

Ever since I got nearly roped into working for a mafia syndicate, I made sure to know everything there was to know about my next prospective employer, which included hacking into their databases and making sure everything was kosher—something I had picked up from my assistant during our long travels. Joe didn’t like rocks that much, and we had been forced to find other topics we could talk about. It turned out that computer algorithms and programming were also right up my alley.

The view through the portal was the same as it had always been. That of a very alien and exotic-looking landscape, except what the public didn’t get to see was the landscape now filled with aliens, some of them wounded due to a violent altercation between them and IC workers earlier. I wasn’t thrilled IC was deceiving the world about what was truly happening on Vandruk and shaping public perception to their advantage. I nearly quit my job before it even started, but the temptation of going to an alien world and exploring rocks and formations untouched by any human was irresistible. I didn’t think much of anything would have stopped me from going, not even if IC had been another mafia syndicate.

“Anyway, we are so very proud of you, Jenna,” Mom chirped, ripping me from my musings.

Well, that is a first .

“I’ve told all our friends about your big adventure tomorrow.”

She has? Another first.

My family and I were so unlike each other that I repeatedly asked my mom and dad if I had been adopted. The question had not only hurt but offended them in equal measure because, truth be told, they didn’t know what to do with me, just like I didn’t know what to do with them.

There’s something fundamentally wrong with Jenna . Dad once said to my mother when they thought I wasn’t home.

Don’t say that, Paul, Mom had hushed him, but her tone had been agreeing.

“We’ll miss you, sis,” Connor, my brother, yelled from the back.

“Right,” I yelled back.

“Jenna!” It was my turn to be chastised by Mom.

“I should get some sleep.” I pretended to yawn.

“Oh, we don’t want to hold you back,” Mom said, with a sadness in her eyes I hadn’t seen before. “It’s just… you’re going to an alien planet.”

“Don’t say it’s only a job again,” Lydia hissed.

They had never cared about my job before. I had been to Egypt, Ukraine, the North Pole, Russia, Africa, you name a place, and I’d been there. First during my internships and later for jobs. None of my family members had ever called the night before my departure to wish me good luck or to say goodbye. Were they thinking I wouldn’t come back?

Now that was a thought I needed to ponder. Emotions were hard for me to decipher sometimes, but if they thought I was going on a one-way trip… that would explain this family meeting, and I should project some warmth and happiness for it. Assure them I would be okay. Before I had a chance, Josy asked, “Hey, is there any way you can get me on the waiting list?”

“Joh-seee!” Mom screeched again.

“You want to become an alien bride?” That surprised me. Most of the time, my family was utterly predictable, but this one? It sounded like Mom had been just as blindsided.

“Yeah, and while you’re at it…” Lydia made those big, begging eyes at me like she normally did with Dad when she needed money. At eighteen, she was the youngest in our family, a happy oops as Mom and Dad called her. We had all spoiled her so much that she was the only one who never took a job during high school. Which meant she was perpetually out of money.

“What? Why is this the first time I’ve heard about this?” Mom’s voice was pitched high, the way she got when she was flustered.

“Let’s face it, Mom, those aliens are hot!”

“Hotter than hot,” Lydia agreed with Josy.

“I’m out of here,” my brother announced.

My gaze moved back to my laptop screen.

“Oh my God, you’re looking at them right now, aren’t you?” Lydia shrieked.

“Letmesee, letmesse, letmesse,” Josey pleaded.

Hacking into IC’s computer system was a breach of contract. Sharing the images with my family would probably give me federal jail time. And we didn’t get along well enough for me to risk that. Besides, those barbarians were injured. IC most definitely didn’t want to let that get out. Unbeknownst to them, I had watched the entire battle, watched them fling FGGs—flammable gas grenades—at the Vandruks, and still, they had slaughtered the IC guards when they stormed through the portal.

There was no way I was going to share this with my family. This was highly classified, so classified, they’d probably lock me up and throw away the key if they ever found out I had watched this.“Jenna!” Lydia and Joyce cried in unison, bringing me back to the present.

“Sorry, no, I’m not staring at them,” I lied. To pacify them, I lowered my voice. “I can, however, send you a few more pics. And if you’re serious, I can ask Doctor Weidenhof to put you on the waiting list, even elevate your status.”

“Jennifer Angelica McKenzie, you will do no such thing,” my mother ordered me, using my full name to my sisters’ protests.

“What? Send pics?” I asked innocently.

A loud intake of air from my sisters was accompanied by a giggle.

“Did you just make… a joke?” Lydia asked, flabbergasted.

“I’m learning the human ways,” I added as another joke. Until we learned about Vandruks and real aliens, the going theory between my siblings had been that I was an alien who had come to Earth to discover all their secrets, supporting my earlier theory about being adopted.

“You know what I mean.” Mom sighed.

A knock on the door made me say a hasty goodbye to my family and shut my laptop down. They were used to abrupt phone call endings, and I figured they wouldn’t be too upset.

“Come in. It’s open.” I rose from my chair by the desk to greet my visitors.

“Doctor Weidenhof, General Keller,” I acknowledged the two men, noticing a small security detail staying out in the hallway. A small trickle of sweat moved down from the nape of my neck, afraid they might have caught my hacking.

“We just came to check on you to make sure you were ready to go tomorrow, Doctor McKenzie,” Weidenhof inquired formally, holding out his hand. This was one of the many things I had to force myself to endure over the course of the years. It was considered polite to shake hands and rude not to reciprocate an offered handshake, but I hated being touched by strangers. I had lost an internship I had coveted and worked hard to get because I hadn’t shaken the CEO’s hand. After that incident, I had trained myself to smile, shake the offered hand, and not wipe my palm right after. I still didn’t like it, but now, at least nobody was ever the wiser.

“Unfortunately, due to some misunderstandings, you and a group of women will be the only ones going on this mission. There won’t be any security guards,” General Keller informed me. “And your assistant also needs to stay behind.”

“Unfortunate misunderstandings?” I asked innocently, pretending to have no idea that Keller’s predecessor had sent guards to attack the Vandruk and attempted to kidnap a man named Matt—resulting in the death of all the guards. All this was information I shouldn’t have. It also gave me a moment to consider the consequences of Joe not coming on this trip. I bit the inside of my cheek as I reminisced about the time Joe stopped me from literally walking over a cliff, or how he barely stopped me from accidentally waking a grizzly bear in a cave. With no Joe around, I would have to be extra vigilant, something that didn’t come easy to me when I was excited over a new find.

“A breach happened a few days ago. General Connolly tried to send guards to infiltrate Vandruk. Regrettably, many men and aliens were killed, which is why General Connolly stepped down,” Keller explained.

That hadn’t been what I had witnessed on the screen, but I wasn’t naive enough that these men would tell me the truth about what really happened.

“I see.” I nodded.

“We want you to be as comfortable on Vandruk as possible, but if you’re afraid to go under these circumstances, I understand,” Weidenhof offered.

I pointed at my packed backpacks, three of them. “I’m good, and thank you again for all the special instruments you provided for me.” There wasn’t much that would stop me from going to Vandruk. I had tried to fit in with humans all my life, and it had been exhausting. Not only was Vandruk a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for any scientist, but it also offered me a new start with a new species, and I was hoping the Vandruks would be more like me. I knew the last part was probably wishful thinking. I had no indication that the aliens would accept me better than my fellow humans, but if all that failed, I still had new rocks to explore.

“A woman with guts. I like that,” Keller praised condescendingly.

“This is the chance of a lifetime for me.” I waved his words off, pretending not to have noticed his derision.

“Your work on Vandruk will be exemplary.” Weidenhof took in my backpacks. “Anything you need, just let us know.”

Before tomorrow morning, he meant, because once I was on Vandruk, I would be on my own, among a bunch of alien barbarians and horny human women who wanted to bang them.

The air on Vandruk was unlike any other. Metal disintegrated on Vandruk almost the moment it came in contact with the air there, which was one of my assignments to check into, among finding precious resources, of course. A challenge every fiber of my being accepted and yearned to fulfill. It would be a huge scientific breakthrough to figure out why metal disintegrated. I might even be able to figure out something as a metal replacement, which would go a long way in colonizing the new world. Either way, there would be no phone communication. If I needed something, I would have to return to the portal. With today’s technological advancements, I was surprised Weidenhof and his team hadn’t figured out other means of communication.

“I think I’m all set. Your team has been very helpful, Doctor Weidenhof.”

“Of course. You’re our most important asset.” Weidenhof nodded.

In my field , he meant. He had assembled quite an impressive group of scientists at his headquarters here in Denver. Notably all women and young. Under thirty. I’d met them in the cafeteria and lounges, and some I had met before at meetings and forums. Although calling them meetings was a stretch—my preference for solitude made interacting with others, including my own family, a constant challenge. Something I really hoped would change on Vandruk, even though I couldn’t have said why. I had been to so many places on Earth, got to know many cultures, and hadn’t felt as if I fit in with any of them. I wasn’t only looking forward to discovering new and exotic minerals and their deposits or the prospect of being the first to analyze possible meteor impact craters, new soil compositions, and unusual rock formations or exploring new caves no human had ever set foot in. No, I was just as much looking forward to getting to know the Vandruks and taking part in creating new relationships, with aliens!