Alien Conquest: (The Warrior's Prize) An Alien SciFi Romance (12 page)

“I don’t know yet,” Nyssa said, folding her arms. “A favor. Whenever I ask for it. A big favor.”

Vega sighed. “Fine. I’ll owe you a favor. Now help me.”

He extended a hand to her, tired from having to stand there in the hallway on his own. The girl hesitated, then stepped close to him, slipping up under his arm to take some of his weight. She turned them towards the end of the hallway and helped him down the corridor towards the gate.

Alaina had settled on just staring at the ceiling, because that seemed safest. Every time she accidentally locked eyes with one of the aliens, it seemed to excite them beyond reason. Already some of the guards had had to step in and break up fights that got too violent instead of friendly, or pull cursii and slaves apart when their public lovemaking turned a little too rough. Like they were trying to prove their prowess in front of the donara when really all it did was frighten her. The idea of being given to any of these cursii frightened her. She had to get the hell out of this place.

Her eyes dropped back to the gathered crowd when she heard a joyful
whoop
of laughter. She blinked, watching with apprehension and surprise as one of the cursii shoved up from the table after winning an arm-wrestling match. He was Jiayi, tall and lithe and pale, with a pair of twisting black antlers. Well, they would have been tall, but one of them was broken, snapped close to the scalp and left jagged at the end. The Jiayi cursu strolled over to the dais and sank into a lean against it by Alaina’s feet, smiling up at her. Alaina was relieved to find he had a nice smile, not a lecherous one.

“Did you see me win for you, donara?” the cursu asked, grinning.

Alaina smiled a little back. “I don’t think you won for me.”

“No, I guess I won for my own ego,” he laughed. “But you were here to see it, so I’m after what favors I can get, if you know what I mean.”

“I think I do.”

The Jiayi had a nice face and kind eyes. Alaina started to relax a little, and he held up his cup. “Would you like some? I notice Gurun hasn’t left you with any refreshment. He’s a cock, isn’t he?”

Alaina smiled a little more and took the cup, sniffing at it. “You could say that.”

“I do say that.” The cursu put a hand to his chest. “I am Bathari. And don’t worry, donara, I’m not like these other oafs. I’m not simply after the key to your
clostrata
.”

Alaina blushed, and then blushed some more because she knew Bathari was taking in the sight of it, as all these aliens seemed to. “Well, that’s nice to know.”

“Not that I wouldn’t take it if it was offered,” he added, nodding. “But I prefer my women
willing
, you know.”

She thought of Vega, who had said essentially the same thing. “I can’t understand anyone who wouldn’t.”

Bathari glanced at the raucous crowd, then looked back up at her. “In truth, I saw you working at the Arena today. Very impressive. And I know that you were seeing to my friend Vega.”

Alaina’s attention narrowed immediately down to Bathari. “You and Vega are friends?”

Bathari’s smile turned slightly self-deprecating. “I like to think so, but Vega is complicated. And not only are we both cursu, but he is Errai and I am Jiayi. A very unusual pair.”

“Is it?” Alaina asked. “Really?”

Bathari shrugged. “Most people stick to their own kind. But if I’m honest, my people can be
very
boring. At least Vega is never, ever boring.”

Alaina smiled again. “No, I guess he wouldn’t be.”

Bathari arched his eyebrows. “So you saw him? After the...after the games, you did tend to him, then?”

Alaina nodded. “He’s going to be okay. He was pretty badly hurt, but if he rests and keeps his wounds clean, he should heal.”

Bathari frowned. “How long will he have to stay out of the games?”

Alaina shook her head. “I don’t know, I’m sorry. Awhile. He was
badly
hurt.”

Bathari sighed. “He’ll not like that. And he’ll get himself back onto the sands faster than anyone would like, I imagine.”

“Why?” Alaina found herself worrying for Vega already.

“Because he wants his freedom,” Bathari explained. “I mean, we all do. But Vega is more driven than any of us. He wants to make it to the top of the lists, to go home. And honestly I’ve never met anyone I thought could do it. But he could. If he survives long enough.”

Alaina looked down at her lap. She’d known, of course, that was what they were all after, in some abstract way. But the cursii, it seemed, had an actual, clear path to freedom. Fight for it. Win for it. Attain it. She wished it could be so simple for her, and she understood what drove Vega in that regard. There was nothing more important. There was no one more important. There
shouldn’t
be anyone more important than freedom.

“Ah now, donara,” Bathari said quietly, smiling again. “He will. He’ll survive long enough. He’s too strong not to. And even if he is slightly stupid, he has at least one good friend who’ll see he lives through the games.” He patted his chest. “And it only takes one.”

Alaina smiled for Bathari’s loyalty. She liked him immediately. She liked anyone with that kind of faith in people. And slowly, they were all becoming people to her. Antlers and scales aside, she’d seen too many of them bleed across the sands not to think of them as people. Foreign, strange people, but people all the same. Not so alien after all. Not monsters, not all of them. Some of them monstrous, perhaps, but they had hearts that beat and veins that bled and desires just the same as humans did. She wondered if she seemed as strange to them as they did to her, or if any of them saw her as a flesh and blood creature, too.

She started to tell Bathari that she would help keep Vega alive as well, but a sudden hush descended upon the rowdy room full of cursii. All the noise evaporated and Alaina looked up, startled, and immediately saw why. Standing in the archway to the hall, leaning heavily upon the cleaning slave Nyssa, was Vega himself.

And he was looking right at Alaina.

Vega realized, when the entire room went quiet, that he should have thought more carefully about this choice of action. Probably he just should’ve stayed upstairs, but his pride had been more important in the moment and a show of strength had felt necessary. He had too many enemies among the cursii to look weak, even if he was weak. And he’d wanted to see the donara, but now that he was looking at her —and she was looking back at him with disbelief and anger in her eyes— he realized perhaps he had no sense of what she might have wanted at all. He took his arm from Nyssa’s shoulders, standing a little straighter on his own for a moment before he had to plant a hand against the entryway wall.

Into the stark silence of the room, he said, “Haven’t I earned a damn cup of wine instead of all of your ugly faces staring at me?”

A ripple of laughter went through the crowd of cursii, until finally one of them bellowed back, “Get the champion a drink!”

Then more laughter, and slowly the rumble of noisy cursii began to reassert itself. Vega sighed, wondering how long he could hold himself up in the entryway when he saw a familiar pair of half-broken antlers working its way through the cluster of people towards him. Bathari emerged, swinging around one of the long tables, his face contorted by worry as he got close.

“You’re barely on your feet,” he muttered.

“But I am on my feet,” Vega muttered back. He glanced over his shoulder to Nyssa, who lingered, eavesdropping. “Girl, you can go.”

Nyssa nodded and went scurrying back down the corridor towards the stairs to the servants quarter. Vega would get himself back to his room later, somehow.

Another Errai cursu approached holding a cup out to Vega, eyeballing him dubiously. “Wine for the champion.”

Vega took the cup and lifted it. “To your health.” Then gulped down squarely half of its contents. The cursu moved off and Bathari came closer.

“You need to sit down. You probably need to lie down. Fuck’s sake, Vega.”

“They tried to murder me,” Vega growled. “I won’t have the entire barracks thinking I’m weak and easy to kill. They need to see me standing.”

“Well, they’ve seen it. Now go back upstairs. You should call that slave back to help you.”

“I don’t want to be helped.”

“You’re being a fool.”

Vega snorted, but he didn’t think Bathari was exactly wrong. “I’ll finish my wine and then go. All right? You’ll help me to the stairs.”

Bathari sighed, but nodded. “Fine. At least sit? Here.” He indicated an empty end at one of the tables.

Vega could feel the pain in his side turning into a throbbing ache, which had him nodding to Bathari and reaching for the table’s edge.

A flash of movement caught his eye, though, and he stopped, turning his head to watch the donara as she got up out of her chair and climbed down off the dais in her sheer dress, storming through the baffled cursii who scooted back and out of her way. They were afraid to touch her without permission, so they parted, some stumbling back with surprise, as she came marching across the dining hall and right towards him.

He wobbled, leaning back a little, and Bathari caught his elbow to keep him upright.

Alaina jabbed a finger right into his face. “What are you doing out of bed?”

Vega stared down at her. “Having a drink.”

She reached in and took the cup right out of his hand, and then poured it straight onto the floor. Vega watched the wine splash across the tiles of the floor and then lifted his eyes to look at the donara again, struck by her boldness.

“You finished your drink,” she said curtly. Then she reached over and pushed Bathari’s hand away, taking Vega by the elbow herself, and turned him towards the doorway. “Come on. Back to bed.”

Vega started to argue with her, but then thought better of it. He looked over his shoulder at the gathered cursii, and most of them were sneaking glances in his direction. It was better they thought that he’d been given the donara, he figured. Or that the donara wanted to be given to him. In either case, his status as champion was reaffirmed, and he was being rewarded for his wounds instead of babied and coddled.

He met Bathari’s eyes as the donara pulled him around the corner and into the corridor.

The Jiayi flashed him a tentative grin, and shrugged.

Once they were in the corridor, Vega took the risky liberty of settling his arm across the donara’s shoulders, leaning a little on her once they got to the stairs. She didn’t seem to mind, and slipped an arm around his waist to help him as they climbed.

“You shouldn’t have left your chair,” he murmured eventually.

“Well, you shouldn’t have left your bed.”

“You don’t understand our ways, donara.”

“Alaina.”

“Alaina.” He bit down on a sigh. “You don’t know what it could do to me to have them all think me weak.”

“You are weak.”

“That isn’t the point. My own brothers tried to kill me today. The rest of them can’t think that I’ll be taken down so easily.”

She frowned. “Aren’t you all on the same damn side?”

“It’s more complicated than that.”

“Well,
explain
it to me, don’t just sulk.”

Vega clenched his teeth, wanting to snap at her, but he knew that wouldn’t get him anywhere. Nor would it bring her any closer to understanding the nature of the giant machine she’d found herself in. This wasn’t her world. This wasn’t anything like her primitive little world, and as the true alien among them, it all must have been quite baffling for her.

Nyssa waited at the gate at the top of the stairs.

Vega noticed she looked very unhappy when she saw the donara helping him. But she keyed them through the locked gate and then disappeared deeper into the servants quarters as Alaina helped him down the hall towards his room.

“We are all on our own sides,” he explained finally. “Each of us fights for something different, something personal. Glory, freedom, the peace of our homeworlds. Cutting me down makes a place for the next cursu to rise in the lists. It’s unusual to have a champion like myself attacked by his brothers, but not unheard of. Alliances and enemies are made in the barracks just as they are made in the Arena itself. If my brothers think me weak, they’ll try again.”

“But the ones who attacked you are in the cells or whatever.”

“Yes, but their success could inspire others. I needed them to see that I was not defeated. I must maintain my position or it will take me a long time to get back to where I was.” He looked down at her, at her profile as they walked. “I’m only three games from earning my freedom. I need it.”

She nodded. “I can understand that part well enough. But you were severely hurt. If you actually want to be able to participate in the games again, you have to rest. You have to heal. Your impatience is going to get you killed.”

Vega arched his eyebrows, laughing softly. “It’s impressive that you’ve embraced this place.” He couldn’t help but look her up and down. Noting the shape of the
clostrata
beneath the gauzy fall of her dress. “And your role here.”

“I told you,” she said, eyes straight ahead. “I’m just trying to survive. Same as anyone.”

“But you’re not just anyone.”

Then she did look up at him. He watched that pink color climb into her cheeks. “What does that mean?”

Vega looked down at the floor as they walked. His steps felt slow and heavy. “You’re acting the part of the slave, but you aren’t one. I do the same. We have to wait for our moments if we’re going to get out of this place alive.”

He didn’t know why he kept saying '
we
.'

What did he mean, '
we
?'

They weren’t a '
we
.' She was herself and he was himself, and he wasn’t sure why he felt so attached to this woman suddenly, but he did. She’d saved his life, maybe it was that. She was beautiful and strong, and he felt some kinship with her, knowing they were both so quietly determined not to let the Arena trap them. He knew that he should not have had room in his heart for her, and it made him feel guilty as well. He needed his focus to be on the sands, on the games. But he couldn’t even close his eyes anymore without seeing her face. Her human, fragile, alien face. This was perilous. And yet, when they got to the door to his little room, he took his arm from her shoulders and grabbed her hand instead, to pull her with him inside.