Maddison, Karly - Time Slip [The Xephon Alliance 1] (Siren Publishing Classic)

TIME SLIP

The Xephon Alliance 1

KARLY MADDISON

Copyright © 2012

Chapter One

A hand flashed out to catch Tinny as he walked past the rec room on his way to the medical bay.

“Junner, what is it?” he asked with a chuckle.

“One game,” his friend insisted. “Come on, Tinny, you haven’t played in ages.”

Tinny pulled back, gently stretching his coat sleeve as he glanced down the long passageway.

“Hmmm, one game,” he responded.

Junner’s face lit up as he slid over in the booth and passed his friend the virtual goggles.

Tinny adjusted them over his eyes and rested his hand on the control pad, feeling a small rise of excitement kick in. Immediately, he found himself in a frosty night on Xephon, struggling for a moment to balance on his plunging ice-dragon. The beast spat a stream of fire into the night with a loud hiss as its wings beat round his head and stirred his virtual hair. He glanced at the bright stars and thought this feels so real. His momentary lapse in concentration made his dragon hit the ice, its claws skating along, scratching for a hold. He heard Junner laugh next to him. “Shame you weren’t closer,” Tinny remarked, “could’ve really taken me out there. It’s the last chance you’ll get.” He zoomed upward into the inky night sky again, gripping the ice-dragon hard with his knees, one hand wound deep in its slippery mane as it tossed its head and snorted fire balls. A soft wind stirred the high branches of the virtual trees as he turned his beast back to the last place he’d seen his opponent.

Far on the horizon, volcanoes exploded. The blackness of the night made the orange streaks of lava glow brightly, lighting up the slopes of the rugged mountains
. I miss this landscape
. Wasn’t much he could do about that. His home world had been poisoned by war, and it would be decades before the surface was hospitable to higher life forms again. Were the Tarourke still there, or had they gone underground?

The sister species that dominated his home world, along with his own kind, were so much tougher than any other hominid he knew of. If anyone could survive the state of the land right now, it would be them. They would be hunkering down in hidden pockets of survivable terrain, maybe even forming small defensive armies, preparing to claim territories that his own kind, the Xephons, could not defend right now. Rumors suggested all his people were off world now, in great ships, or being hosted on distant worlds or space stations by their new human allies.

These same allies were on board his ship right now. Strange, small hominids with little round ears, beige skin, blunt nails, and absurdly colored eyes and hair. Yet for all their strangeness, they were a disturbingly attractive bunch of females. Captain Zeba had found them genetically compatible enough to start assigning them as mates to his all-male crew. This had alarmed and frightened the Earth women at first, and one of them had even taken the drastic step of overdosing on medications. The Earth medic had been unable to revive her, and the incident had created an uproar amongst the Earthlings. But things had settled down again after a while, and most of the women assigned to Xephon mates seemed to be agreeable to the idea now.

Suddenly, Junner appeared to his left, charging hard, shattering his thoughts and pulling him back into the game. Tinny’s heart rate soared as he dodged his friend and plummeted toward the glacier below again, widening the gap between them so he could do a quick turn. His dragon responded well to his commands. Next to him, Junner hissed with displeasure, and he chuckled when he discovered he was not as rusty at this as he thought. He urged his ice-dragon into a tight turn and surged toward the descending enemy for a show down. The air battle made his body jerk a little as if he were really performing some of the maneuvers.

“Too busy playing games to remember your shots, boys?” a crisp voice interrupted their revelry. Tinny flung the goggles off and blinked in the bright light, releasing his controls. The Earth medic, Kash Ryder, was staring at him like he was an idiot, two needles in her raised hands.

“I was on my way,” he answered. Why did she make him feel guilty, as if gaming or having fun was suddenly forbidden?

“Well, I don’t have all day to wait around for you two,” she said smoothly. “Take your coats off, and roll up your sleeves. I’ll do it right here. Wouldn’t want to delay you from any more dragon slaying today.”

Was she being sarcastic? He wasn’t sure. Just being near her made him quake a little. She was so beautiful, so remarkably exotic, drenched in mysterious Earth-female scents that nearly drove him wild. He peeled his coat off and rolled up his sleeve. She held the needle like it was an ice pick as she uncapped it. His eyes widened as she thrust it into his shoulder as if she meant to climb the last three meters of an ice cliff.
Yow
. He kept his mouth shut—barely. Junner looked a bit pale all of a sudden as he offered his arm in turn. Tinny watched her deal out the same treatment to his friend. She sure had it in for males, he thought, or maybe just Xephons.

“Thanks,” he said brightly. Too brightly maybe. She gave him a withering look, cocked the needles downward like weapons and sauntered off.

Junner nudged him after she disappeared, trying to stifle a laugh. Tinny fumbled for the goggles again and strapped them over his eyes with unsteady hands.

“Kill you this time,” he mumbled. But his mind wasn’t entirely on the dragon battle that loomed into focus. He kept thinking about the beautiful medic who had just jabbed them viciously in the shoulders then wandered back to her medical bay as if she’d just dealt with two wayward children.

The after image of the way her hips had swayed in time with the bounce of her long, pale hair kept interfering with the images in front of him, making him wonder briefly if such a distraction would make him lose this round. He shook his head and tried to concentrate, but half his brain was still analyzing the length and shape of her goddess-like legs as they had disappeared down the corridor several minutes ago. They were the kind of legs any hot-blooded male would dream of having wrapped around him in a dark room. Would her thighs be warm and satin soft against him as her arms held him close? Would she whisper to him in that mysterious Earth accent?

He was such a fool… a dreamer. So far Kash had hashed her way through two men on the ship, and now nobody would go near her. And her amazing eyes had bored right through him whenever he was in her presence. So what was he thinking? He was better off chasing virtual dragons than spinning amorous fantasies around her.

* * * *

Kash felt stressed enough to tap into her dwindling coffee supply. One day soon, she would completely run out, and the idea worried her greatly. Would she then take to drinking that weird concoction the Xephons took, the one that left one’s tongue blue for some time after consuming it? What a strange bunch they were, and yet in many ways so bizarrely similar to her own kind that it amazed her.

Their clothing, their day-to-day rituals, and the interactions that occurred between them, were all similar to Earth norms and mores. However, something unexpected would usually occur each day, to remind her they were not from the same world or even the same solar system. When that happened, she would pull herself back, feel a little ashamed, and remember their situation wasn’t easy for anyone, and she ought to be more grateful for all the Xephons had done for her crew, rather than sit round making unfavorable comparisons.

She had spent quite a bit of time at her computer each night, studying the Xephons’ history and culture. They came from a world that had evolved two dominant technological civilizations, unlike Earth, which had only one. This fact couldn’t help but make her wonder how different her own world might have been if humans had not been the only species to become advanced enough to master their own environment and rise above every other creature that shared the planet. Oh, there was intelligence on Earth besides humanity—dolphins, elephants, primates, but it didn’t compare to the relationship between the Xephons and the Tarourkes. But, she acknowledged, considering that those two species warred against each other, perhaps it was a good thing her own kind came from a world with only one advanced and dominant species. Hell, even the one species of Earth-bound humans couldn’t get along with each other when one examined human history, with all its wars and conflicts over territory and resources.

From all the information she could gather, the most recent wars on Xephon had poisoned it badly, and almost every surviving Xephonite had left the planet on some ship or another after forming an alliance with Earth. Whatever the Tarourke were doing was a mystery, though it was hinted that they were still hiding out on the planet’s surface in a few remaining habitable zones.

Kash had taken the time to view a few images of the Tarourke, and while they shared some evolutionary history with the Xephons, it was obvious that had been a long time back in their shared history. The Tarourke peoples seemed even more alien-looking to her eyes than the Xephons did. She had been amazed to discover they had once been a winged species capable of flight, and on rare occasions a child was born amongst the Tarourkes with wings and considered to be a godly creature.

The remnant wing ridges made the Tarourkes’ shoulder bones look extremely odd and gave them a scary looking silhouette that was almost…she searched her mind for the right word…
demon-ish
. Yeah that was it.

The Xephons, tall and powerful and resembling fierce elven lords, and the Tarourke, pale and almost jagged in appearance like demons, reminded Kash of old folktales and legends. She couldn’t help wondering if indeed her own kind had met them before in the distant past. It had to be a possibility, what with geneticists saying the DNA matches with humans were almost identical. Perhaps the bigger mystery, considering the genetic similarity, was the distance separating their two worlds. Kash started wondering about strange anomalies such as time-space portals when she thought of this. Could there be a link there? It wasn’t so far-fetched, considering that the
Windfleu
r and the
Xenxaphan
had both recently been victims of a mysterious wormhole.

She rested her coffee cup on the bench, padded over to the tiny shower cubicle, and switched it on. A pathetic drizzle oozed out, totally uninviting. She watched it cough and sputter for a moment.

“I would kill for a real shower.”

She stripped and jumped under the water. At least it was nice and warm, even if there wasn’t much of it. She shampooed and rinsed her hair, switched the shower off, and quickly dried herself with a thick, fluffy towel.

After a brief examination of her sparse wardrobe, she decided to don a simple, dark wool tunic and warm black tights. The Xephons liked to keep the ship a little cooler than the humans were used to because they were from a cooler world with a more distant sun. Sometimes, as she walked around the decks and passageways, it felt like winter.

She grabbed a finely knit shawl and headed down to the medical station, opened the door, and flicked on the dull blue lights. Another thing the humans had been forced to get used to—the different lighting that the Xephons used. Most of the time it felt soothing, though sometimes she wanted everything to be more reminiscent of Earth ships, especially the lighting. She continued to miss home comforts more than she ever thought she could have in the past. She missed brighter lights, warmer rooms, and familiar foods on her plate. It would be a miserable day when the last of her coffee and chocolate bars ran out.

Kash stood by her bench
and s
orted her supplies just as one of her shipmates, Sharnie, came in for her shots.

“You doing all right?” she asked the younger woman.

“Couldn’t be better.” Her friend smiled, and Kash wondered at the contentment that had settled over her. Could it stem from the fact she had a good man now? Or maybe she was so emotionally balanced because Sharnie came from a warm supportive family. A little spurt of envy lanced through Kash, surprising her, since she thought she’d put such past grievances aside.

A few stars swept by the viewer window as her thoughts pulled her back through time. She could still hear her mother screaming at her and her twin sister Kelly down through the years.
You’re nothing, and you’ll never amount to anything.
Then the woman had backhanded her across the face and thrown a half empty bottle at the wall. Kasheena had watched the liquor explode over the grimy surface for a second before running from the room.