Star Kissed (19 page)

“I have a special surprise for you, Hichele,” Helen said. “A journey to the planet for you to see the progress the Nakis are making at curing the disease.”

Hichele appeared about as impressed as Mandy felt. Her façade changed dramatically when Helen emerged from her closet.

“Oh, my queen, that has been a dream of mine!”

Mandy rolled her eyes, not caring if the Naki psycho saw her.

“My ship is waiting for us,” Helen said, moving towards the door.

“We will have an escort, my queen?” Hichele asked uneasily.

“Of course. Subakki and Kadi will be with us as well.”

Great.
Mandy anticipated seeing the two who wanted her to marry them about as much as she wanted to visit the planet again.

She trailed the women to a part of the station whose floor markings were completely unfamiliar. The halls were wider, the lighting lower. Large doors were opened into bays of smaller starships. Mandy stared at the vehicles, astounded to be seeing something she’d only seen in science fiction movies. The crafts came in all sizes and shapes. Beyond them, invisible windows blocked them from being sucked into space.

They entered one bay. The craft was small and sleek in appearance. Mandy hesitated. The last time she got on an aircraft of any sort, she ended up ten thousand years in the future. This space ship was about the size of her airplane, without the wings.

The two noblewomen were lifted into the ship by an elevator that dropped from the ship’s underside to the ground. The guard waited. The empty elevator dropped again, and the guard motioned for Mandy to approach.

She went. Her pulse was racing, her hands clammy at the thought of traveling through space. The elevator took them up, and she stepped off the platform into an open area. It wasn’t cramped like she expected.

“Sit there,” the guard told her.

She sat the suspended chairs and crossed to one, guessing the slaves rode in the cargo bay instead of up front with the important people. She braced herself for a takeoff similar to being in a plane. Nothing seemed to happen.

She sat for over an hour. Mandy rested her head against the wall behind her. The guards were perfectly, inhumanly still. Not for the first time, she wondered what they looked like beneath their robes and hoods. If the lizard men she met on the planet were any indication, she didn’t want to know.

The guards stirred and rose. Mandy watched one go to the platform of the elevator. He stood and was lowered to the ground. She breathed a sigh of relief at the idea that they hadn’t gone anywhere. Perhaps there were engine issues or the Naki-queen changed her mind.

The other guard motioned her up, and they walked together to the platform. Mandy was anxious to get back to Cesar to see if he knew any more than she did about a means of going home.

Dread filled her suddenly. Even before she could see the planet, she smelled it. The heavy metal scent washed over her, and black fog clung to her clothing.

Mandy moved off the platform. They were on top of a building high enough that she couldn’t see most of the city through the fog. She looked up, but the blue skies she yearned to see were covered by steely clouds.

There was another ship at the other end of the blocky building, and she recognized Subakki striding towards her, surrounded by four guards. Guessing he wasn’t there to greet her, she trailed Helen’s guard into the dark interior of the building. The hallways grew lighter, and they entered a corridor that resembled the one she had awoken in.

A pang of longing hit her. Mandy stopped in the middle of the hallway, almost expecting to see Gonor. No one was there.

“Come with me.” The guard’s whisper made her hunch her shoulders.

She went, trailing him through hallways and a lift to another hallway with doors more widely spaced. There was activity on this floor, Nakis in silver uniforms moving swiftly through hallways with handheld medical instruments.

Mandy passed the first doorway then stopped and backpedaled. Patients rested on circular beds lining one wall. They all appeared to be sleeping. She saw nothing that resembled the machines she expected to see in a hospital: no heart monitors or IVs or breathing apparatuses. Each had a tray beside them with two familiar tools – the same that had been beside her when she awoke.

Shuddering, Mandy entered the room. She picked up the tool that looked like a Pez-dispenser then the double-barreled pen, unable to figure out what they did. Did one of them keep the people sleeping?

What was wrong with them?

She walked along the beds, struggling to understand. The patients appeared to be mostly human. A couple of them had random scales or patches or fur or in one case, translucent skin like Hichele’s. If they had some kind of plague, she didn’t see any sign of it.

“Mandy.”

She turned. Kadi was approaching. In his late twenties, the cousin of Akkadi had dark eyes and hair, and his family’s regal bearing.

“We feared you lost,” he said in a cool tone.

“Not the way you think,” she replied. “I don’t understand. What’s wrong with them?” She motioned to the patients.

“The healers placed them in comas while we test another potential vaccine.”

“They have the disease?”

He nodded once, eyes traveling over the still forms.

“Why can’t you stop it?” she asked.

“It’s a blood-borne pathogen. We have a unique immunity to it, but the majority of those in our galaxy do not.”

“It’s not genetic.”

“No.” The way he said it made her think there was much more to the story. She wasn’t certain what.

“Oh.” She frowned. “How many people have this disease?”

“On the planet? One in five. Off the planet, four out of five.”

She gasped, stunned by the numbers. Kadi met her gaze. Her heart was pounding, not from his information, but from the idea that she was getting a front line view of the disease Akkadi was expending resources trying to stop.

“Word has spread that the humans have a higher immunity,” Kadi continued quietly. “Soon, we and the Ishta will not be the only ones fighting over the planet.”

“You can relocate them, can’t you? Somewhere where no one else can find them?” she asked anxiously.

“It’s a last resort. We are not yet convinced that the vaccine isn’t part of the planet itself. One theory is that the atmosphere or earth or some other environmental factor is preventing the spread.”

“It’s not human blood?”

“While it is true that the purer the human, the higher the tolerance to the plague, we don’t yet know why.”

“So you can’t move everyone, in case you need the planet,” she murmured.

“The humans may not be willing to anyway. There’s been a rebellion for over a thousand years meant to drive us invaders all away.”

Urik, she knew. She studied him, wondering if he knew, too. Akkadi said there weren’t many secrets among the royal family members. She didn’t ask for fear that this was one.

“If we can find the vaccine, we can sell it to other race that might be affected and move their attention away from the humans,” he continued. “If.”

“Akkadi … you all spend shards to create a cure so you can leave the humans alone.”

Kadi hesitated. “It’s a bit oversimplified but yes. We fight the Ishta for command of the planet and the rebellion for the ability to develop a cure.”

It was hard to hate Akkadi for wanting to take care of her people.

Our people
, she corrected herself.

With the power his family seemed to have, they could use their wealth and influence elsewhere. But they used it here, to help the humans that were fighting them.

Something felt … off about Kadi’s explanation. She wasn’t certain what.

“The plague kills most before they reach the age of twenty one,” Kadi said. “The people in this room were chosen to test the newest vaccine. There are about a hundred billion on the planet, about twenty billion of which are infected.”

“Twenty
billion
?” Her jaw dropped open.

Kadi was amused. “You don’t want to know how many more are infected throughout the galaxy.”

“No,” she agreed. Mandy swallowed hard, unable to imagine so many lives affected by the virus. Her respect for Akkadi’s ambition to find a cure grew. How many billions of lives might he save? “If other … races try to take the planet, is that when you would evacuate the humans?”

“We would try to take all we could. We have seen how the Ishta conduct their medical experiments. The Naki founded the humans many thousands of years ago. They are our people; to leave them to their fate unprotected would dishonor our entire race.”

It was a lot of responsibility on the shoulders of the Naki royalty. She had thought the family large, but knowing that their efforts determined the fates of so many made her think the family needed about a billion more people.

“Come. Hichele is being offered a tour of the facility. Since you are to become Vekko’s mate, you may wish to learn as well.”

She raised her eyebrows, startled by his words. Kadi turned away and strode from the bay. Mandy trailed, her eyes drifting back towards the unmoving patients.

Twenty
billion.

Tell me how you can ask me to open the star gate when I am trying to save your people.

She felt selfish and shallow, begging him to send her home when he had the lives of so many on his mind.

She also felt homesick. Living here, in the future, with a man who didn’t even want to touch her …

Being ejected into space had never looked so good.

Mandy took up her spot near one of the guards at the end of the long procession, followed only by Kadi and one other guard. She was too far to hear what Subakki and Helen were telling Hichele, but she peered into every room they passed. One more was filled with sleeping patients while others contained massive bays too long for her to see the opposite wall. These were filled with half-human creatures that appeared to be near death, if their pallor, coughing and plethora of Naki doctors was any indication.

She paused once more to witness what the plague did to those afflicted by it. Lesions, disability, deformities. It looked beyond painful. Horrified, she backed away from the doorway. Her head swam from the images, and her ears buzzed.

The drone of aircraft engines, the rattle of a beverage cart.

Mandy shook her head to clear it. She leaned against the wall, until certain she wasn’t going to pass out. The others had moved on, except for Kadi.

“Are you well?” he asked.

“Yeah, thanks. Just a little overwhelmed.” She straightened.

“They are visiting the children’s ward next.”

Oh, god.
Mandy drew a deep breath, no part of her wanting to see what the plague did to children.

She went with Kadi. They rejoined the group, and she was surprised to see she wasn’t the only one experiencing issues. Hichele was fanning herself, staring glassy-eyed into the doorway through which Helen had gone. Two guards were stationed halfway across the room while the rest flanked the door-less hallway.

Mandy drew nearer. Helen was regal and elegant, walking with a couple of Nakis in silver through the neatly lined aisles of smaller beds, each of which contained a half-human child. The kids ranged in age from toddler to mid-teens. Some slept while others sat huddled on beds, talking quietly. Still others ventured nearer Helen.

Mandy glanced at Hichele. For the first time since meeting the Naki woman, she almost felt a glimmer of respect. Hichele was clearly affected by the sight of the ill children, enough so that she appeared frozen in place.

“The children are contagious,” Kadi said for Mandy’s ears only. “But we have nothing to fear. You should go. You need to meet those you will help cure one day.”

“Me?” she asked.

“When you become part of our family. Our victories and defeats are shared. Yes, you will help cure them. We are so close.”

Mandy hesitated. His words settled into her with clarity and intensity.

This was what Akkadi and his family worked towards. Helping children. And no member of his family doubted they would find the cure. They didn’t view the children as losses but as the generation that would make it through the plague.

If she stayed, their cure became her victory, too. Mandy didn’t know what to think of the powerful words. They made her want to run. But she didn’t. She started forward.

Hichele snatched her arm and shoved her back, darting ahead. Mandy snorted, not caring what the Naki woman did. Hichele’s jealousy seemed so petty compared to the enormity of what was before them.

Mandy entered the ward. She almost expected to feel some sort of attack from the plague then realized how silly it was. She was the most immune person there, aside from Helen. Even if she wasn’t, she doubted she’d feel the disease any more than she might a cold coming on.

Either way, she was already exposed. Feeling out of place – a perceived slave among the Naki royalty – she was surprised to find the crowd of children gathering around her. It was larger than that around the others, and she soon understood out why.

“Do you think I can be a Naki slave?” one girl in her early teens with scaly patches asked.

Perplexed, Mandy bit back her initial response. From what the slaves had told her, their lives were far better than those of the people left to survive on the war-torn planet.

“I think so,” Mandy said. Towering above the kids, she sat on the edge of one of the beds. A few of the younger kids climbed onto the bed behind her, their smiles turning shy when she glanced at them.

“Who are you?” another asked.

“Mandy.”

“You’re beauuuuuuutiful.”

She laughed, surprised. She expected to draw the attention of any male in the vicinity. The younger kids in front of her were soon surrounded by a ring of older teen boys whose wide eyes were either on her breasts or elsewhere on her body.

“Will I be as tall as you?” one of the youngest girls asked.

“Maybe,” Mandy answered. Unaccustomed to dealing with kids, she wasn’t at all certain how honest she should be with them.

“They’ll find a cure soon and I’ll be twice as tall,” another boy declared.