Hearts of Ishira (Hearts of Ishira Saga) Read online

  Hunter hated the necessity of man-handling the creatures, but he couldn’t think of any other way to make it happen than to just do it. The two groups needed to be able to communicate, but with only two instant translators which were back at the colony, the neuro-trans would have to do. The tiny chips would take several hours, at least, to assimilate both languages and sync them. The full benefits of the neuro-trans wouldn’t take effect for another day or so, longer if the species didn’t interact enough. But the instant translator would go to the women’s leader, or their Reader, if they were two different people. It inserted a probe straight into the language center of a being’s brain, giving it a much quicker working time. But it was not a permanent solution, its use intended to branch the time it took for the neuro-trans to become operational. The neuro-translators were a long-term solution.

  As he watched, Trey’s little blond hurried over to the group and spoke to them. For a moment, he held out hope that she had managed to persuade them to work with his men, but when the girls started crying and trying to get away once more, Hunter sighed. The tall, skinny shrill one flung acidic words after the blond, but Trey stepped up, offering his arm to the small blond, his countenance showing nothing but concern. Pride struck Hunter in the chest, bringing out a smile. Trey had not only effectively shown his protection of the woman, but had also negated whatever vile things the shrill one was screeching.

  Hunter didn’t have to see any more to know that his men had the situation under control. They would tend to the girls whether the females liked it or not. But he really needed their Reader to wake up so that he could get them all safely back to the compound. He lowered his gaze back down to ‘his’ woman, leaning forward to carefully brushing her dark hair from behind her ear so that he could inject her, as well, when one of his men tossed him a kit.

  “Jace!” he called out, signaling his brother back to his side when he saw that Jace seemed to be done with immediate trauma victims. The medic Jace was talking to nodded then bent over the woman they’d been treating, clean bandages in his hands. Jace strode through the milling soldiers toward his brother but kept getting stopped by one team or another. Hunter couldn’t fault him for doing his job, even if it was frustrating at the moment.

  As he waited, Hunter tried very hard not to notice the sweet curve of this woman’s body. He’d already covered her with a fresh blanket, protecting her from the rain as much as he could, but he’d seen enough as he tried to calm her down. Even dirty, muddy, bloody, scraped, bruised, and broken, she was a beauty. Her body was curvy, with enough meat on her bones to make him think that perhaps cool nights might not have to be quite so cold the next winter. She seemed healthy and mature, unlike many of her companions. The girls appeared to be barely out of adolescence and far too thin for his comfort. They would have to find out what their people considered a healthy weight, then make sure each of them reached it. Some of them appeared to be downright starved.

  Not his lady, though. She was rounded in the best of places, her breasts heavy and more than a handful, just as he liked them. A moan tore through his observations and he chastised himself roundly for even noticing her body in her vulnerable state. Such was not the behavior worthy of a Thorsani warrior, much less the Commander of the entire group. He was more controlled than that. But gods help him, he was also a man who’d been long denied. It was only biologically sound that his body would notice a female’s of seemingly compatible form. Clearing his throat, he reined in his wayward libido and fought for control.

  “Hunter, wake up, man!” Jace reached them, dropping beside the woman and bringing up his hand-held scanner. Their top medical officer and Hunter’s second-in-command, Jace was also Hunter’s younger brother, and the last surviving member of their ‘team’. Running a scanner over the woman’s body, Jace scowled up at the commander and spoke as though rank wasn’t an issue at this moment. Which it wasn’t. It rarely was between the two men. “What the hell were you thinking, moving her before I verified that she could be moved?”

  “She was trying to get away,” Hunter growled back. “She seemed to have forgotten that we were communicating right before our group got here. She could move, so I knew she didn’t have any major damage to her spine, and she’d backed herself up to a creeper-bug’s nest. I had to get her away from the tree before they swarmed.”

  Jace shuddered at what a creeper attack might have added to her injuries and wordlessly acknowledged his brother’s wisdom. His eyes rapidly scanned the screen, his fingers flying over the surface to bring up other information at a pace that made Hunter’s head spin. The Commander was a medic as well, but no one was as good as his brother. Battalion ships across the fleet had fought to have him join them for their tours in the war. Jace had been offered all kinds of things, legal and illegal, to get him on board, but he was part of their family team and hadn’t entertained any of the other Commanders. He would be on Hunter’s ship or he would stay on the planet to help the wounded there. Now, though, he set his scanner aside and looked up at Hunter.

  “I want temporary bracing on her neck, just in case she has an injury we don’t know about. Her leg is to be braced for traveling. She has a concussion, which could explain the momentary memory loss. Of course, trauma could be doing that, as well.” He scrubbed a hand over his face wearily. “There may be other injuries, so be careful when you’re treating her, but those are the big ones. I don’t think she’ll need the stretcher, though, and I need it for one of the others. Your Reader can ride with one of the warriors, like most of the other women will.”

  He handed Hunter two inflatable braces from his pack then quickly depressed the button on the stretcher that deflated and retracted everything into one neat tube. Clapping his brother on the back, Jace rose and moved back to the main group.

  “I’m going to finish with the others. Keep her as calm as possible.”

  Hunter worked on the little Reader, wondering how she had managed to be with the group. She was older than the others by a good ten, maybe even fifteen years. He had felt her frustration with the brunette who’d been so very bent on fighting his men, felt her capitulation just a bit ago, when she realized that her group was outnumbered. His Commander’s mind had to admire her pragmatism and how quickly her brain switched from trying to flee to figuring out what to do next. He smiled to himself, thinking that she was likely to be a handful when she was healthy and conscious.

  As she began to stir once more, he wondered if she’d remember him this time. He hoped so. He needed her awake, but more than that, he needed to get her safe and healthy. He wanted to know so much about her, about her people, where they had come from… everything. Her mind had been so bright, so full of life and spirit, and he longed to touch that energy again, to absorb it and let it fill the cracks in his soul that had grown over years of battle, loss, and the abandonment of his world.

  He could feel her spirit gathering energy, trying to rise through the pain and the blackness of unconsciousness. He laid his palm on her bare shoulder, sending gentle waves of energy into her, helping her through the fight. Her mind latched onto his power, drinking it in to fuel her ascent into the real world. Hunter had to shake his head at her strength of will.

  Such a strong, determined little warrior.

  As she blinked her eyes open once more, he decided that she had to be their highest ranking lady, possibly in charge of the gaggle of younger women. No one else in the group gave off such a determined, willful aura. Bravery, authority, and the ability to Read were how his people chose their leaders, so it was plausible that hers did as well.

  He felt drawn to her in a way he hadn’t felt toward a woman in nearly thirty years. He would see to her safety personally, sure that she would be the one the girls looked to, when she was finally healed.

  Satisfied with his conclusions, he took up the braces and began to assess the multiple scrapes, gashes, and bruises on her lush little body.

  When she came to again, Arianna’s head was still doing the who
mp-whomp thing. She was lying face-up once more, but on a blanket instead of on a stretcher. She remembered enough to know better than to try to move this time. Not only was it futile, since the huge warrior would only catch her, but she would probably hurt herself even more than she already had.

  Before she could truly take stock of where all the pain was coming from, she felt large hands on her body, quickly exploring her legs and arms, gently running over her tummy and testing her ribs. She froze, terror rushing through her anew. The hands were not threatening, nor did they try to restrain her in any way. Something nagged at her sluggish memory, something that told her she was safe, guarded. But she was still in an unknown situation and that was enough to scare her, memories or no.

  She tried very hard to hide her pain, in case the hands belonged to someone that intended to harm her if she was deemed too weak. Try as she might, though, when the hands hit particularly tender areas, she could neither keep still nor quiet. She gasped when a deep male voice spoke, close to her ear. His words were exceedingly odd, but his voice was pleasant, even soothing. She managed to cut wide, frightened eyes toward him without moving her head.

  It was the ‘man’ from before, the one who had been reaching for her as she passed out. He was leaning over her, his face close to hers. She could look right into his deep, intelligent, green eyes. Trying hard to fight through her mental fog and figure out what he was saying, she automatically opened her senses to him. His touch and tone were too gentle to be threatening, which allowed her to relax a bit. She sensed the lessening of some of his tension, as though he was just as relieved as she was. He said something else, his eyebrows and inflection going up at the end. A question, then?

  She closed her eyes and whimpered against a shaft of pain that impaled her head, then blinked up at him once more. Frustration was coming off of him in waves. She could sense his urgency and wished she could let him know she was hurt but could not understand him. When their thoughts touched, his eyes widened and he lowered his face closer to hers, touching her cheek tentatively with a calloused fingertip.

  She stared at him, her brain suddenly presenting the details of their earlier mental contact. She felt his thoughts a bit more clearly, reassuring impressions of safety, help, urgency, danger. They weren’t words, but the concepts behind the language. And his was definitely the mental touch from before. She relaxed with genuine relief and offered a weak smile to acknowledge the images and impulses he was sending to her. He smiled with fierce satisfaction when the tension left her body and he went on with his exploration of her injuries.

  She had no clue what was happening or why, but she knew that there was an incredibly handsome man with very large hands feeling her up, presumably to help her, and she was hurting too badly to protest. He had such kind, intelligent eyes and big, gentle hands, and he was sending her reassurance through their mental bond, to augment the tenderness of his touch. Sensing absolutely no harmful intent from him, Arianna relaxed as much as she could and just let him help her. She was truly too tired to do much else, anyhow.

  His hands moved up her shoulders, to her neck, and slowly explored her skull. She cried out when his fingers hit the lump on the left side of her head. She felt rather than heard the meaning behind his spoken words as he urged her not to move on her own, then he leaned back to kneel next to her, bringing his face fully into her line of vision. She blinked in surprise when she focused on his face, instead of just his eyes.

  Humanoid, but definitely not human. He waited, giving her a few moments to accept and adjust. The intelligence and compassion in his eyes was enough to almost make her cry. He opened his mind to her, allowing her to explore him inside and out. She took him in, her mind surrounding and delving into him for a long moment, reading his intentions and his emotions, and there was one thing she knew, without a doubt, to the depths of her soul, within that moment.

  She trusted him.

  It was idiotic, it made no sense, and she would never be able to explain her feelings, should anyone ask, but she could touch his mind and she somehow just knew that he would do all he could to help her, to protect her and the young women with her, with his life and those of his men, if need be. The conviction in him surprised her more than the fact that he wasn’t human. Her breathing hitched, but she had the presence of mind not to try to move, more than that first twitch of surprise. His mind wrapped gently around her probing energy, adding his own formidable power to it and strengthening her.

  He smiled warmly at her when he caught her thoughts, sensed her utter trust. Holding her eyes with his, he touched her mind again, and this time she saw a space ship tearing through incredibly tall teal-leafed trees, crashing. An explosion, wreckage, and bodies all over the place. Female bodies, naked, tumbled from the ship and strewn in the mud.

  Then he blinked and she saw a picture in her head of a large building of stone and wood nestled against a high cliff face, with many large windows and openings, balconies, hanging plants and neat little gardens. He ‘thought’ that his men needed to take her there, to get them to medical help and shelter. Then his eyebrows rose and he sent an image of her talking to the girls, explaining to them what had happened, what needed to happen next. Would she do it?

  She blinked once again in surprise at his rather eloquent, if wordless, request. He and his men may look like half-naked barbarians from some medieval planet, but he was obviously highly intelligent.

  “Yes,” she breathed. She couldn’t speak very loudly, she found, nor breathe very deeply. Her chest hurt, her ribs were stabbing her, and her head was moving from nauseatingly throbbing into excruciating migraine territory.

  The man spoke a command to one of his warriors, who took something from him. Looking back at Ri, the leader showed her the strip of thin material, sending a mental image of what he wanted to do with it. She held very still as he gently worked the brace under her neck and secured it, then did something that made it inflate. The device was really remarkable, actually, because it formed to her flesh, supporting her neck perfectly without giving her the strangled feeling a regular neck brace did. The man sent her a questioning glance, and she tentatively responded that she was fine. He seemed relieved. She smiled once more at him before the other warrior murmured something and the black-haired man moved to help hold her leg steady as they put another of the inflatable braces under her calf. The pain was incredible. Her back arched in reaction when the men gently straightened the limb enough to put the brace on. Her mouth opened in a silent scream, but she held her lower body still, clenching her fists in the grass beside her.

  Another man approached, his voice irritated as he spoke to her warrior. The new arrival, a man with chiseled features, furrowed brow and tawny hair, knelt beside her, taking her leg in his big hands. Ri sensed that the new guy was a physician, and one that her black-haired guy trusted implicitly. Her warrior moved away from the doctor, taking Ri’s hand in his, silently urging her to grip it if she needed to. This time the pain nearly sent her into oblivion, as the newcomer nodded to the other warrior medic and they quickly straightened her leg enough to wrap the brace around the break. Panting shallowly through the agony, Ri allowed herself to relax. Once the brace was supporting it, the break felt much better than when the leg was just hanging there. The handsome young doctor watched her with dawning approval as she calmed down, then nodded to her and went back to whatever he’d been doing before.

  “Who are you?” she asked softly, when she caught her breath and the leader was looking at her once more. He cocked his head to the side in curiosity and she pointed to herself, saying her name. “I’m Arianna.”

  His face mirrored his understanding.

  “Hunter,” he said succinctly, pointing to himself.

  “Hunter,” she breathed. Narrowing her gaze on his, she sent him an image of him creeping through the woods, a bow and arrow in his hands, searching for food to take back to his people. “In my language, that is what ‘Hunter’ means.”

  He smiled, cocking h
is head to the side. The image he sent her in return was of him standing on the bridge of a space-ship, calling orders to his men and directing them to follow something in the distance.

  Another space-craft? she wondered. He caught the picture and sent another back, this one of him and the doctor, among others she could feel nearby, wandering the stars, visiting other planets and collecting samples from dirt, flora, and fauna.

  “You’re scientists?” she breathed. He thought about the concept she sent him, then shrugged. She got the impression that he was much more than just a scientist or a warrior. He touched her face, sending her a rapid-fire series of images. She saw many, many space vehicles, chasing his ship from a lovely planet that looked much like Earth, but with different continents. For a long moment, she simply stared up at him, her mind joined with his, both of them exploring each other with curiosity and a good bit of wonder. She sensed in him the same deep need to understand, to know everything he could about an alien species, a new friend.

  As though he’d forgotten, just for a moment, that he was the leader of these huge warriors, he held her gaze and sent her gentle questions. He wanted to know where the women had come from, so she sent him the image of Earth, her Solar System, her sun, and some of the constellations and stars she knew of. He sent her a picture of his home planet, a lovely ball of blue and green. She sensed that his world was smaller than Earth, but much less polluted and ravaged.

  A call from one of his warriors snapped Hunter out of their fascinating, lightning-fast trade of information. He gave her a sheepish smile before turning toward his man. They both heard the renewed weeping of the women then, and Ri sighed, remembering that he wanted her to talk to her women. This was going to hurt, but it needed to be done. She let him know that she was ready to speak to them.