She glanced away, grateful that it wasn’t entirely her fault that she was ignorant of it. “I was to start learning the written part of the language next year. It’s not considered a priority to my people. But I am literate in Qillaq.”
Caillen backed off criticizing her over that. Since her people were so reclusive that made sense and he could tell by her sudden reservation that she was bothered by the lack of education. Hell, he wouldn’t have known it either but for the fact that the more languages a smuggler knew the less likely he was to be caught. “Well be glad you can’t read it.”
“Why?”
“Because it says we’re heading toward an Andarion planet.”
She cocked her head. “Is that a bad thing?”
He laughed low in his throat. Is that a bad thing? Yeah… “Do you know anything about them?”
“No. Not really. My people don’t interact with them. Why?”
Lucky them. Then again, the best course of action with Andarions was to keep your head low and put as much distance as possible between you and them. “Simply put, they make your people look like frilly-dressed pansies.”
The fire returned to her eyes. “You are shardridden if you think that.”
He didn’t know why, but he loved the way she looked when she was riled. It made her eyes sparkle and added a becoming blush to her cheeks. “I am so not full of excrement, dearest. It’s the truth. They stand around seven feet tall on average,ave fangs, night vision and train from birth to kill any and everything that gets in their way. Oh and lest I forget, their favorite delicacy happens to be human meat. Lucky us.”
She scoffed at him. “You’re just trying to scare me.”
He pulled up an encyclopedia in her language and showed it on the monitor. “See for yourself.”
Desideria had to force her eyes not to widen as she read words that confirmed his dire prediction. He was right. A warring race in the purest sense of the word, the Andarions did make her people look like pansies. Normally she’d be more than ready to take them on and prove her worth. But the two of them had no weapons that she knew of and suicide didn’t appeal to her in the least. “Can we not divert?”
He leaned back in his chair and narrowed that cocky stare at her that she was beginning to loathe. It didn’t help that the lights of the console highlighted his arrogant smirk. “See the problem with escape pods… they’re designed to run even if you’re completely incapacitated. Once you’re in it and you hit the magic orange button that you so nicely discovered, it takes care of everything for you. It summons help and steers you to the nearest habitable planet that matches whatever breathing mixture is in the pod.”
“But it’s stupid to not have an override of some sort.”
He scratched the side of his mouth while his eyes silently laughed at her. “I suggest you take that up with the designer when next you see him. That is if we survive long enough to be rescued.”
“We will be rescued.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Because I won’t allow my mother to die. The traitor happens to be part of the Head Guard. My mother trusts her implicitly. If I don’t get to her and warn her about Pleba, she’s as good as dead.”
Caillen started to point out that he really didn’t care about her mother who had intended to subjugate an entire race when his attention was drawn to the display. His stomach hit the floor as he recognized their next obstacle. “Yeah and we have another problem.”
“That is?”
He enlarged a portion of the star chart that showed the area where the Arimanda had vanished. He pointed to the glowing orb that was quickly getting larger. “I’m really hoping I’m wrong, but judging from the size and speed, that looks like a fighter to me.”
Her entire face lit up with hope. “Is it coming to rescue us?”
Wow, he’d sell his soul to be that naive. Without responding to her question, he slid out of his chair and ducked underneath the controls to open a panel so that he could access the wires. “It’s a fighter,” he repeated.
Desideria was baffled by his single obsession with that one statement. To her, this was a good thing. “Meaning?”
“It can’t hold more than two people and it’s flying so.” His deep voice was muffled by the metal he was underneath. “They’re designed to kill, not rescue. And unless I miss my guess, which I never have yet, I’m pretty sure that one’s headed this way to finish what was started in that hallway.”
Pah-lease…
There was no reason to think that. It could merely be a scout. Especially if, as he’d said earlier, they thought this might be a trap. It made sense to send a single fighter to see if they were hurt or needing rescue. It might be nothing more than an escort for them. Could the man never be optimistic? Must he always see the worst in every situation even when it didn’t warrant it? “You’re being paranoid.”
Those words had barely left her lips before a blast of color shot across space, straight at them.
They were under attack.
And they were completely defenseless.
11