Awakened by the Giant: Brides of the Kindred Read online

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  “What’s this? What in the Seven Hells are you all doing here?” Calden demanded, glaring at the huge Mentats who were standing there. Maddy saw with a shiver that Grack-lor was among them and he looked extremely pissed off. The pouch beneath his chin was bulging oddly—maybe because it was hugely swollen—and dripping black, oily liquid which might be the Mentat version of blood.

  “We’re here for you—or should we say we’re here for that little cunt of yours,” the big Mentat snarled. “So send her out now, Calden, if you don’t want to get hurt!”

  Calden seemed to grow even larger and Maddy saw his topaz eyes flash red.

  “You have no right to Madeline—she is mine,” he growled. “Now just step aside and let us pass. We are leaving this place so you’ll never have to see us again.”

  “I’m afraid we can’t let you do that, Calden.” Kro-thur stepped forward, cawing self-righteously. “Not with your work, that is. You know that you promised anything you worked on while you lived here with us would belong to the Mentat station. FATHER has sent us to collect it before you go.”

  “All right, fine.” With jerky movements, Calden reached in his bag, grabbed his data disks, and threw them at the Mentat. They bounced off Kro-thur’s scaly chest and clattered to the floor like shiny, silver coins. “There—satisfied?” he demanded.

  “By no means, Calden.” Kro-thur frowned. “You see, your specimen’s DNA still contains traces of the nutrient bath she was grown in. You know that is a proprietary formula which must never leave the station.”

  “Which means you’d better turn her over now,” Grack-lor snarled. “So we can dispose of her.”

  Maddy felt like her blood had turned to ice in her veins. She wasn’t sure what Calden was going to say but her stomach clenched like a slick fist when she saw the angry gleam in Grack-lor’s eyes.

  He’s going to kill me, she thought, feeling sick. Going to get his revenge. I’m going to wish I was already dead by the time he gets done with me!

  She looked anxiously at Calden again, seeing that the big Kindred’s eyes were now completely blood-red. But strangely, he didn’t say a thing. He shook his head and reached under his lab coat.

  “Calden, as you know—” Kro-thur began self-importantly but he never got to finish what he was about to say because Calden shot him right between his black, oil-spot eyes.

  After that, everything was a blur. Maddy watched as the other Mentats’ eyes grew wide and they stared with incomprehension as the tall, thin Kro-thur began to sag where he stood, his eyes blank, his mouth slack and drooling oily black blood.

  Calden didn’t give them a chance to react. Even before Kro-thur’s scaly body pitched forward and hit the floor, he was shooting the rest.

  Grack-lor gave a huge bellow of pain as he went down with three blaster-shots to the chest. Jong-tar, Calden shot right in his big mouth, as the Mentat started to protest. Even old Nusper-veis took a blast to the heart and never got up again. A few of the Mentats got away but all of their accusers fell dead, leaking oily black blood on the metal floor.

  Then Calden was grabbing her by the wrist and they were running—running as though their lives depended on it and FATHER was calling over the intercom as the lights in the corridor flashed from pale yellow to warning orange to angry red.

  “Calden, come back. You have committed several egregious violations of the oath you took when you came to us. Calden—”

  There was a small door off the side of the corridor, near the airlock which led to the parking area. Calden paused for a moment and threw it open. Inside, was a glowing bank of computers, the lights blinking off and on like a Christmas tree.

  Maddy watched in surprise as Calden pointed the blaster and fired straight into those blinking lights. There was a hissing and sputtering and then a small fire broke out among the ruined remains of the machinery.

  “Calden…Caaldeen…Caaaaaldeeeen…”Abruptly the AI’s calm, even tones ground down to silence.

  The big Kindred glared at what he had done.

  “Goodbye, FATHER,” he growled. Then he grabbed Maddy’s wrist. “Come on—my ship is this way. We have to get out of here while we still can.”

  Maddy followed him—what else could she do?

  Chapter Sixteen

  The Mother Ship wasn’t answering. In fact, as far as Calden’s long-range instruments could tell him, it was nowhere near. It might as well be nowhere at all, since apparently the vastness of space that separated them was so immense his sensitive ship couldn’t pick up even a trace of his Kindred kinsmen.

  For the first time, Calden really began to panic. He tried not to look at the chronometer on the ship’s instrument panel—tried not to think about how they now had less than twenty-four hours to save Madeline…or remember 6how the littlest brantha, which she still clutched to her chest—had died in his arms the first time he had cloned it.

  “So where are we going?” Madeline asked at last, breaking the silence. She was sitting in the passenger seat, completely dwarfed by the Jor’gen Kindred-sized chair, her legs dangling like a child’s. She had been staring straight ahead, not speaking to him, from the moment they’d gotten into the ship and Calden had set a course to get away from the Mentat station’s orbit. Now she finally turned to face Calden, her eyes cold. “Where can we get help to get this thing you put in me out of my neck?” she asked.

  Calden took a deep breath.

  “I…don’t know,” he admitted. “The Mother Ship of my people isn’t answering my calls and…there are no other inhabited planets anywhere in this sector.”

  He thought that Madeline would shout at him—or maybe break down and cry. But she did neither of those things.

  “Is there a bathroom on this ship?” she asked after a long, long silence. “Or anyplace I can go to be alone?”

  “The back of the ship is the living quarters,” Calden answered through numb lips. “But Madeline,” he protested as she unbuckled the harness that held her in place and started to leave. “If you’d just give me a chance to explain—”

  “Let me tell you something my mother taught me, Calden,” she said, rounding on him, her green eyes flashing. “If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all. Right now I can’t think of a single civil thing to say to you. In fact, I don’t want to be anywhere near you. So I’m going.”

  And she left, still clutching the littlest brantha—who whined unhappily as though he knew something was wrong—to her chest.

  After she was gone, Calden sat mutely in the captain’s chair, staring at the vast expanse of cold, unfeeling space in his viewscreen. There was nowhere to go—nothing to do—no help to be found. Madeline was going to die—die hating him—and there was nothing he could do to stop it.

  He thought of her parting words, “Let me tell you something my mother taught me…” and gave a low, desolate laugh that sounded more like a sob. He remembered the last thing his mother had taught him—that people you love die. That you shouldn’t let yourself feel or love or care for anyone too much because they could be taken from you at any minute.

  The way Madeline was about to be taken away.

  His mother’s death—when he was only eight—had also been the death of his faith in any kind of higher power—the beginning of his reliance on logic and reason and science as the only things that made sense in a cold, uncaring universe. But now he thought back to the time before she’d died—of her insistence that he say his prayers every night because the Goddess was always watching, always listening…

  Of course he knew it was ridiculous—there was no supreme being who loved and cared for and watched over all her children. There was no mysterious figure who could swoop in and save the woman he loved. But despite his skepticism and doubt, Calden opened his mouth and heard a prayer come out.

  “Oh Goddess, Mother of All Life,” he said, hearing the hopelessness in his own voice. “I know you’re probably not there and if you are, you probably don’t c