The Challenge (3 page)

Sincerely,

Ron Capella

President, United States of North America

“Yeah, right.” She chuckled, wondering if her Secret Service bosses with their oddball imaginations had thought up this bizarre hoax to determine if she’d fully recovered from whatever had happened to her.

“You may not refuse,” Kahn told her, as if he expected her to take the letter seriously.

“One always has a choice.” She turned her head and inspected his strange amber eyes. “Great contact lenses. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen them in that exact shade of—”

“The language translator in my suit doesn’t always work properly. What is this contact—”

“Artificial lenses that correct vision or change eye color,” she answered, giving herself a moment to digest his offhand comment about a translator. His language was stilted but unaccented ,and that made reading his emotions difficult. Was it her imagination, or was he sincerely sympathetic to her predicament?

“We do not have contact lenses on Rystan.” He dismissed the subject.

“Oh, now I get it. Rystan is your planet. You’re an alien, and I’ve traveled through time.” She chortled. “Great scenario. Tell me more.”

“At the request of your government, Federation technology pulled you through time.”

She rolled her eyes.

He kept explaining. “You should have awakened slowly in the warming chamber, instead of on your own and in my arms. For that startlement, I am sorry.” He narrowed those amber eyes on her, and all traces of any commiseration he might have harbored instantly vanished. “Most candidates are volunteers.”

“So that disqualifies me? I’m free to go?”

“Coercion is not forbidden. Just highly unusual.”

“Yeah, no doubt that would skew the chances of success.”

“We won’t let that happen.”

“Really?” She sighed. “Not that I’m buying your story but suppose I don’t cooperate?”

“I do not understand why Earth picked you. Most worlds chose a volunteer, a respected thinker, or a great warrior. But, you will accept the Challenge, woman. “

“My name is Tessa. And if I don’t meet your standards, you can just send me home.”

“Mental strength and the ability to adapt are more important than physical strength. Although you are smaller and more delicate in appearance than the women of Rystan, I understand you have had physical training.”

Damn. She’d been hoping he was unaware of her martial arts background.

When his gaze strayed from her face to her breasts, she jerked the paper back up to block his view. “Where are my clothes?”

“You won’t need them.”

She bit back an impatient snort. “Why not?”

“Because the Challenge requires you to develop your psi abilities—”

Oh this story just kept getting better and better. “Psi abilities?”

“Using your mind to adjust the suit I’m about to give you.”

Her frustration escalated. “Look, even if I believed this,” she shook the paper at him, “I don’t have psi abilities, so there’s no point in me taking this Challenge. I don’t want a suit, either. Just give me back my own clothes, thank-you-very-much.”

He continued with almost robotic patience. Yet, a gleam in his eyes told her he wasn’t quite as composed as he pretended. “Every humanoid has the potential to develop psi abilities—even females.”

She pounced on that remark. “
Even
females?” She narrowed her gaze. “You aren’t holding my sex against me, are you?”

“First contact with other races presents a multitude of complications, but it’s unusual for a world to choose a female.”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

“To prepare for this mission, I have studied classified Federation reports depicting a variety of beings. Quite frankly, I’m thankful that you haven’t found my appearance so repulsive—”

She laughed. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“When humanoid Rigellians were contacted by the Osarians, a highly intelligent race of eight-tentacled creatures covered with slime, the Rigellian candidate went comatose. But if the Osarians could succeed against such odds, then so will I. And no matter your sex, it’s still my job to train you for the Challenge.”

He didn’t sound happy with her. And he certainly seemed determined to convince her of this far-fetched scenario. So she’d play along some more. “What’s the Challenge?”

“According to the Federation rules, I’m not allowed to give you any information except about how to develop your psi powers.”

“Seriously? How convenient. “Especially since she couldn’t poke holes in his story if he wouldn’t elaborate.

He perused her with those alien eyes, as if judging her and finding her lacking. “Most candidates are not as sarcastic as you are.”

She frowned. “If I have to live with your rules, you can live with my sarcasm.”

He raised an eyebrow. “We have good reasons for our rules. For example, candidates are not permitted to have any living family.”

“Why not?”

“When an Oxdonite candidate failed to return to his world after failing the Challenge, his relatives waged war on the Federation seeking revenge for their loss.”

At his explanation her stomach curled in a hard knot. His explanation was elaborate, detailed. Outrageous. Yet, it hung together in a way that was too bizarre to have been created just to make her reveal presidential security protocols. And if his story wasn’t a lie . . . no, she wasn’t that gullible.

“What are the other candidate requirements?”

“No contender may be a scientist.”

“What do you have against scientists?”

“Nothing. But when Parse of Dandmere stole alien technology and sold secrets to his people, scientists were banned from taking the Challenge.”

“Let me get this straight, “she muttered.

“That would be good.”

Because she could have sworn he was teasing, she took a little of the bite out of her words. “Look, mister. You try stepping in front of a bullet and waking up naked in a stranger’s arms, and we’ll see how amiable you are to swallowing some insane science fiction story.”

His lower jaw dropped. “You don’t believe me?”

She rolled her eyes at the strange metallic ceiling. “Can a politician talk?”

“Excuse me?”

“Can a gun shoot?”

“If it’s loaded with a projectile. “

She sighed in exasperation. Sarcasm was no fun when he took everything she said literally.

Apparently he’d drawn his own conclusion over their failure to communicate. In the space of a heartbeat, Kahn stood, took her hand, and yanked her to her feet.

He hadn’t sat up, but he straightened his legs like a normal person. One moment he’d been lying on the platform, the next he’d been upright.

“How did you do that?”

“What?”

“Go from prone to vertical so quickly that I didn’t even see a blur.”

“You ask a lot of questions, woman.”

“Tessa,” she corrected through gritted teeth.

“We need to talk to your people.”

“Really?” He’d said
we
. That implied she wouldn’t have to deal with Kahn by herself. Although she didn’t want to get her hopes up, she’d love to let her superior know she’d survived. “That would be awesome.” Tessa took a step and ignored her stiff muscles. “How about my clothes? “

“You look fine the way you are. “

Fine
? Fine was one of those wishy-washy words like nice, and she didn’t know whether or not she’d been complimented or insulted.

I don’t see you running around butt naked.” She frowned at him. “Didn’t you mention that you were supposed to give me a suit?”

The infuriating giant ignored her comment and tugged her, protesting, over to a wall. She’d thought he’d been big when he’d been lying down. But now that he was on his feet and looming over her, she had to crane her stiff neck to see his face. He had to be close to six feet six inches, with muscles on his muscles. Not an ounce of fat marred his powerful frame, and she could see a lot of it, even with his vest and trousers that clung low around his hips.

But his graceful walk, with no excess movement, impressed her the most—until the wall that had previously appeared a shimmering gray metal transformed into a communications viewscreen that would have made Captain Kirk jealous.

How had Kahn activated the mechanism? She’d watched carefully, and he hadn’t touched anything. Nor had he spoken. She’d never seen technology so advanced, and fear spiked as she wondered exactly who had captured her. “How did you—?”

A woman’s face appeared on the screen.

“Get me the president,” Kahn requested.

Oh God
. The viewscreen could be two-way. “Can that woman see me?”

“Only your head.”

The woman on the screen looked directly at Kahn. “The president is currently in the middle of a press conference. Can the secretary of state be of service instead?”

“Yes, please.”

She’d been abducted by an alien with manners. The ludicrous thought almost made her laugh.

Only a moment lapsed before a distinguished gray-haired gentleman’s face filled the screen. Tessa had met the secretary of state, and that man most certainly wasn’t him.

He nodded to Tessa. “I hope you suffered no ill effects from your journey.”

Kahn broke into the conversation. “She doesn’t believe that we pulled her out of time or that she’s on my spaceship and that we’re orbiting Earth.”

Pulled her out of time? Spaceship orbiting Earth? Sheesh
. Next he’d be telling her that he was God and about to issue the Ten Commandments, all of which she should obey without question.

“Look,” Tessa tried to keep her aggravation from her tone, “I’d like to go home and return to duty.”

“That isn’t possible,” the so-called secretary spoke gravely. “Alien technology pulled you and the bullet out of time, right before the bullet would have killed you.”

“The president?”

“Your brave actions saved her.”

“How?” she asked suspiciously.

“When you threw yourself in front of the president, it gave the police extra seconds to rush in. The assassin didn’t have time to pull the trigger twice.”

“Thank God. She’s alive.”

“She didn’t die that day, but she has been dead for over two and a half centuries,” the politician said with a perfectly straight face.

Two and a half centuries?
Right. The time travel thing again. And he’d mentioned aliens.

“The Federation technology didn’t alter our history, but it saved your life, “said the fake secretary of state. “So in a way you owe us.”

“Oh, really.”

“Absolutely. We saved your life because you fit all of the alien requirements.”

She’d never expected anyone to take this ridiculous story to such extremes. She frowned at Kahn. “Because I’ve no family and I’m not a scientist?”

Kahn’s lips twitched. “And because you’re a virgin.”

“My sexual status is none of your damn business.” She glared at the fake Secretary of State. “And the government had no legal right to check my private medical files, either.” That she’d been too busy working to have much of a social life should have been no one’s concern but her own. Master Chen had strictly forbidden personal contact inside or outside the
dojo
, claiming the students’ minds must be clear to concentrate on his teachings.

Eventually, she’d found love . . . but he’d died before they could . . .

And later, the people in her detail had been like a surrogate family, the men her age like brothers. She’d been content.

Now these strangers wanted her to believe she’d been uprooted once again. Tessa clamped down hard on a very real, very scary burning in her gut. “Mr. Secretary, can you offer me any proof that you are who you say you are or that you pulled me out of time?”

“Yes.”

She jerked her thumb at Kahn. “Or that he’s from outer space?”

“Yes.”

“Or that I’m on a friggin’ spaceship?”

“Mr. Secretary,” Kahn interrupted. “I will answer those questions to her satisfaction. We won’t take any more of your time. Thanks for your help.”

All of a sudden the viewscreen went blank, and Tessa floated upward. She didn’t struggle, but noted that when her motion ceased and her breasts leveled off at the height of Kahn’s face, his eyes glinted in satisfaction or appreciation. She didn’t want to think about which.

“A neat trick. I suppose you turned off your spaceship’s artificial gravity.”

Kahn nodded. “I used my psi abilities.”

Despite the churning in her stomach and a strange tightness in her throat, she didn’t believe a word he said. NASA had come up with a simulator that nullified gravity.