Star Bright (Big Sky Alien Mail Order Brides #22)

Chapter 5

Vash woke with a strange fever. The prickling swept through his body in waves. More aftereffects of being ejected from cryo before he’d returned to equilibrium.

At the same time, he felt a little stronger, and he flexed every muscle, testing. The effort made his nerves burn, and he gritted his teeth against the pain. Maybe better if he had forgotten how to feel.

Though he yearned to free his fledglings, he would not subject Yadira and Atsu to this hurting. The pods would wake them gently.

Like a loving mother would.

Where was Shanya? Why did he remember his last moments with his fledglings before cryo—ah, curse the fire, how had he forgotten them at all?—but not his mate?

“Shanya,” he whispered. “Where are you?”

“Vash?”

The query pitched like a lifting thermal, soft and feminine. Not his mate calling to him. Darcy.

Why had he come here, to the Intergalactic Dating Agency? Why had he put himself and his fledglings in cryo?

“I’m awake.”

Someone—Darcy?—had replaced the white fabric over his makeshift bed, giving him privacy in the big, empty room. But at his response, she peeked around, nudging a tray toward him. “The main commissary is still locked so all we have is supplies for me and Ug. But according to IDA guest handbook, you should be able to eat any of this, unless you have personal dietary restrictions. It should all be easy for your stomach even after a hundred years in cryo. Definitely no caffeine.”

Sitting up, he eyed the food. Some sort of porridge and small, dry carbohydrates, plus she’d refilled his water. “I am grateful for your help. Especially considering that I almost crashed on you.”

“I’m sorry there isn’t more we can do right now. Hopefully we’ll have more options soon.” While he ate, she explained what she’d heard from her friend. “So, what exactly is a void viper?”

“Noxious vermin that jump from ship to station, infesting everything. They chew through plasteel, even bulkheads.”

She shuddered. “Like bedbugs, except they can eat your car. Nasty. I have to say, between interstellar storms and void vipers, space seems too dangerous for me.”

Chewing a handful of the salty carb nuggets, Vash glanced toward the windows. From this angle, the damage his ship had done wasn’t visible, and a single sun had risen high enough over the tall, darkly spiked vegetation to cast a warm yellow light, shining on every silvery scrim of frost across the rolling yard and patio.

“This place is very peaceful,” he observed. “You must be happy here.”

She followed his gaze. “I’m actually only here for a short-term gig over the holiday. You might not’ve heard Kong call me a closed worlder, but I actually didn’t know about aliens—until you.”

He stiffened, the salt drying in his throat. “Unauthorized exposure to a closed worlder is—”

She held up one hand, stopping him. “Yeah, yeah, so I’ve been told. But Brin released some of the history of this IDA outpost to me, and let’s just say, as far as exposure goes, more than one innocent Earthling lady has seen a lot more alien stuff than any reputable first date advice column would recommend.”

He wanted to be amused, but… “Darcy, why would I come here, to this place of dating? I have a mate.”

She let out a slow breath. “I don’t know, Vash. Apparently, this outpost was much different until recently, and Kong said the contract you signed had no useful details beyond your scheduled arrival—a hundred years ago.”

One hundred years. If Shanya hadn’t gone into stasis as he and the fledglings had…

Darcy touched his clenched fist, summoning him back. “One thing at a time. If you’re done with the oatmeal, Kong said moving around will help with the reanimation aches. Do you want to walk out to the ship and check on the cryo pods?”

He wanted to smash his head until the memories poured out. Instead, he accepted her hand up. Together they made their way out to the ship.

The yellow sun was not as warming as it looked from within his shelter of cushions. Their breaths curled upward, joining then dissipating in the chill air. In the light of day, the damage to the ship was more apparent. Not just the impact to the earth but the myriad tiny scars of one hundred years in space. With no maintenance in all that time and no conscious hand at the helm, they were lucky the ship was able to land even semi intact.

The heavy hum of approaching machinery distracted him. Kong was rolling toward them in front of a flatbed hover cart. “The machinery garage has unlocked,” the droid informed them. “The stasis units may be moved to the lobby while the ship is relocated to a secured hangar.”

“Wouldn’t want any oblivious closed worlders in on the secret,” Darcy muttered.

Since the hover cart had articulated graspers, it was able to lift and load the pods without effort from any of them. Just as well, Vash thought morosely, since the Earther female didn’t have the musculature, the droid didn’t have arms at all—and he could barely hold himself upright.

Darcy must’ve noticed the distress he was poorly hiding, because once the pods were loaded, she pointed at the corner of the cart. “Sit down,” she told him. “Before you fall down.”

He wanted to decline, but she’d brought him porridge, she’d seen him tremble with weakness and fear. What did he think he was hiding from her?

At least he was able to oversee the placement of the pods beside his cushions in the lobby. While outside a multi-armed crane eased the ship from its crater, Darcy pulled one edge of the white curtain over the ends of the pods so he could watch the lights while he rested.

He needed to start the revival transition.

“If you’re ready,” Darcy said.

Had he said that aloud? Or maybe she’d just known. “But what if…?” He couldn’t go on any more than he could’ve lifted the ship out of the dirt with his teeth.

She was silent a moment, considering, though not with an expectant air, as if once again she already knew what he was thinking. “Whatever you find out, would you not want them here?”

He glared at her. “My fledglings are the light of my flame.”

She just tilted her head meaningfully.

And yet despite his angry claim, his hand shook as he reached for the control panel. He still didn’t remember everything, but his fingers punched out his private code by rote: a sequence from Yaya’s natal chart. His fiery first born.

The lights blinked in unison to accept the code then began to flash a countdown. “It will be at least three local days before the waking protocol is complete.” With one hand lingering on his son’s pod, he sagged back.

Darcy eyed him. “Maybe you should rest some more.”

“I slept for too long already. I want to view the ship once it’s connected to diagnostics. Presumably this place has a connection to transgalactic finance institutions, and I need to check my credits. Also I need to contact my family.” Murky anticipatory grief curdled in him. “Those still alive who might know of me.”

She put a hand on his shoulder. “All right. One thing at a time. Let’s see what we can do.”

Leaving the pods blinking away, they went back out. She took him to a small, open-sided, earthbound vehicle and guided it manually along the paved pathways toward a more distant part of the grounds.

“I’ve only been to the garage once when I first got here when I was checking out the place,” she told him. “Of course it was locked and I’ve never really cared about cars anyway.” She let out a little snort. “If I’d known there might be a spaceship in there, I might’ve been a little more curious.”

“You would’ve wanted to meet outworlders alien to you?”

“I mean, yeah? Who wouldn’t?” She slanted a sideways look at him, her lips quirking. “Maybe that’s why Brin offered me this gig as a sort of test run.”

“To find an alien mate.” More of that nebulous grief leached from the confused knots remaining inside him. Apparently he’d signed a contract for an alien mate.

Ah, by the eternal fire, Shanya … He struggled to focus on one thing at a time, as Darcy had suggested.

But she seemed caught up in some internal distraction of her own, her brown eyes shadowed despite the glimmering sunlight.

He observed her for a moment. The Earther female did not express the kind of quicksilver temperament or natural volume that his mate had—passed undiluted to his daughter—but there was a presence to her. Even unfamiliar with the complexities of the universe, Darcy had been willing to dive in. Shanya would like her.

Or maybe he was being condescending. Just because a planet was primitive, closed, and far along an outer arm of a lesser galaxy didn’t mean it lacked complexity. Certainly Darcy seemed to be as lost in her own thoughts as his ship had been lost in time.

“But you said you were working here,” he recalled. “Not that you were a patron yourself.”

She glanced at him, blinking away her reverie. “I had no idea intergalactic dating was a thing. And even without the intergalactic part, no, I was not looking for any dates, alien or otherwise. I was just looking for a place to spend Christmas by myself.”

“Christmas?”

“Oh, a winter holiday, partly religious, partly economic, shared in various parts of this planet and very social.” She shook her head. “You speak my language so well, it’s easy to forget you are, um, not from around here.”

He touched the back of his head, behind his ear. “A translation implant allows me to hear and speak and mostly understand. It’s not perfect. For example, you said Christmas is a social holiday but you also said you wanted to spend it by yourself.”

“Yeah. That’s not a glitch in your implant. I was actually supposed to be spending the holiday with friends but…it fell through.” When she let out a hard gust of breath, the wind moving through the vehicle whipped the visible plume away. “Or I guess a more accurate translation would be, my boyfriend dumped me to go party with his friends a long way away.” Her lips twisted again, and Vash thought she meant to convey amusement but it looked false. “Not as far away as you came from though. Where is your planet anyway?” She winced. “Unless you don’t want to talk about it.”

He appreciated her consideration even when she was clearly not wanting to talk about herself. “I could show you the drakling homeworld on the ship’s astronavigation chart, but I suppose that doesn’t really mean much. We call our planet Skyearth, or at least that’s a synonym for our name.”

She laughed, more genuinely this time. “I suppose a lot of people—or sentient beings or whatever—end up with similar words for their home.” She glanced around them. “Although I’ve never really thought about how we call our place Earth when it’s mostly water and sky. Kind of self-centered, I guess.”

“Draklings fly.”

“Hence the spaceship.”

“That too, but I mean we fly on our own wings.”

She whipped around to stare at him, her hair flinging on the cold breeze. “Wings? But you don’t… Uh, not that I was checking out your shoulders. Or maybe you tuck them away somewhere else.” An odd wash of red brightened her cheeks. “Never mind. I’m being rude.”

“Some beings who have different shapes or souls have different practices and taboos about how they present themselves. But draklings just…are.”

“Different shapes? Wait, are you saying you’re a shapeshifter?” She shook her head. “Aliens are one thing but… Okay, now I’m being silly. If aliens exist, then you being able to sprout wings shouldn’t be that hard to wrap my head around.”

Watching her process was fascinating—and it made him feel a little less alone in his own mental struggles. “Maybe at least as hard as how I wrapped myself around the occasional obstacles when I was old enough to fly.”

She laughed. “Flying under your own power. Wow. That’s a dream Earthers have always had.”

He looked up at the blue sky where some soft puffs of gray had started to gather. “Really? I wonder why.”

“We swim too, even though we can’t breathe water.” She followed his gaze to the sky. “Maybe we just always want what we don’t have.”

He considered. “If your species is inherently curious, that might explain why the Intergalactic Dating Agency set up this outpost on a closed world. Some of you are ready for the stars.”

“Maybe. Well, let’s see if your ship will ever go back there.” She parked in front of a spacious hangar. “Kong said the IDA tries to keep obviously alien equipment to a minimum. Less chance of awkward encounters if the various security measures aren’t enough. And since the outpost was closed and there’re no other ships here, repair can focus on you.”

By “you”, of course she meant his ship. But he knew he needed these next few days to get himself back in working order too.

Inside the hangar, the ship looked surprisingly small. An army of fist-sized reno-bots crawled slowly over the surface, popping in and out of the various rents and dents, and a long, flexible plasteel printer was even more slowly rebuilding the bulkhead. The equipment was clearly intended for minor repairs, not suitable for long-deferred maintenance, not to mention an actual crash landing.

He sighed. “I hope the ship rental insurance coverage didn’t lapse.”

Darcy glanced at him. “Can I say I’m a little disappointed to hear that the space age still needs insurance? Are there also interplanetary lawyers who can sue the rental company for giving you a ship with inadequate radiation shielding?” She shook her head. “These questions are like the least fun version of a choose-your-own-adventure fantasy game ever.”

“The universe beyond your planet isn’t so different,” he noted. “Whether the fantasies or the realities.”

“Yeah. I guess that’s why the universe still needs a dating agency.” She sighed too.

A thick cable of wires twisted from the ship’s crumpled nose, connected to a console. With Darcy at his side, he went over to check the diagnostics.

She peered over his shoulder. “I’ve played some flight simulators, which probably doesn’t count, but I’m guessing a checklist that long isn’t great.”

“It’s not.” But somehow even with all the damage before the crash, the ship had protected them through the years. He turned his attention to another interface connected to the ship’s data and logs. Parts of those were corrupted too, like his own memory. “I need to see if I can contact Skyearth, get in touch with my people.”

“I was reading all the IDA handbooks this morning and making Kong tell me everything. We don’t have official interplanetary embassies on this Earth, just an overseer office staffed by transgalactic authorities who enforce the closed world protections. But we can request that they relay your message. Although Kong says they can be slow to respond.” She wrinkled her nose. “Apparently bureaucracies are the same across the universe too.”

From the console, he paused the repair bots. “I need to retrieve some belongings. When my fledglings wake, I want them to at least have their things around them.” His breath caught painfully. “Since I don’t know what else we’ll have.”

“You have each other.”

That was true, so why did he suddenly feel as if the air had vanished from beneath his wings?

They went to the open hatchway, but Darcy paused at the base. “Do you want me to wait here or…?”

“Do you mind helping me carry a few things?”

“Happy to.”

Still, she hung back a bit as he went through the cramped quarters. Each step brought another hazy memory into clearer focus. From storage, he collected two small coffers inscribed with his fledglings’ names, which he remembered packing full of various necessities and treasures that couldn’t be left behind, even for a short trip. Which had turned out to be not so short. Atsu’s favorite moons-cake would be very stale by now.

When he filled a larger container of extra supplies for himself and the fledglings and nudged it out into the main aisle, Darcy hustled up. “I can take that one out to the hover cart.”

“Thank you.” He found the large, plain satchel in which he always carried his datpad, idents and vouchers, plus a carved sheenwood box where he kept his own private valuables, because draklings loved their treasures.

Without conscious thought, his fingertip found the latch on the lid, and the box unfurled. A tiny hologram flickered to life: projected photons in every hue along the spectrum shimmered into long, flowing hair and the twirling hem of a diaphanous gown, and before his eyes could absorb all the details burned into his memory, the figure blossomed into her beast, even more beautiful and endlessly beloved.

The being of light— Shanya —went black as he closed his eyes.

Darcy’s almost inaudible exhalation was like a plasma knife through him. “Your mate?”

Eyes still clenched tight, he closed the box. “Yes.”

“Vash—”

“I need to get back to the fledglings.”

They drove back in silence, the treasure box an almost unbearable weight in the breast pocket of his tunic, as if the specific gravity of this world would crush him.

“I took my most precious treasures across galaxies to this place,” he whispered. “And I fear why.”

“You’re already stronger than when you woke up this morning. My friend is sending more help. Your ship is being repaired, and we’ll send your message to the planetary overseer.” She glanced at him, though both her hands stayed wrapped on the wheel of the cart, as if she could control the outcomes of her checklist just as deftly as she steered the earthbound vehicle. “But I can’t imagine how hard this is for you.”

“I might break free from what blocks me,” he said slowly, “if I shifted to my beast.”