land offered. To whom do you belong? And how did your transport get up in the sky?”
I swallowed, trying to think about what he’d just said to me. Truth was, I didn’t understand a lot of that. My transport? He must have meant spaceship. I didn’t know what a City-State was. Did he just mean city? Or was that the name of his city? My father had been insistent that all the colonies speak the common language, and my brother had certainly pushed that even further since he’d been in office. I’d never before encountered someone whom I didn’t fully understand. And yet this man, Nox, was gentle, easy with me, and I didn’t mind listening to him. He’d asked me a question.
“Um…I don’t belong to anyone.” This was a source of discomfort in my family. Betrothal was still a thing among the upper crust, although the lower castes did get to marry for love, something Brent scoffed at as ridiculous. Who cared about feelings when there were political alliances to make? He’d had three different fiancée arrangements that had fallen apart thanks to shifts in the socio-economic climate. If she couldn’t hold the planets Hadlock and Rosin for him in elections, she wasn’t worth his time. We’d officially canceled three weddings. I’d never been betrothed because of the heart issue. I was not considered an appropriate wife at this point. After the heart transplant, maybe. I shook my head. My savior hadn’t said a word since I’d spoken.
I blinked. That was because it had been a two-part question. He waited on my response. By the Holy Ones, had I hit my frickin’ head?
“My, ah, transport flew because it’s a space vessel.” That was the best I was going to be able to do here. I didn’t understand the mechanics of space flight any more than I could explain how carbon-pulsion worked. Nope. Not my thing.
Nox tilted his head slightly to the side. “I’m not familiar with that term. If you belong to no one, and that seems unlikely—I find it more believable you wish to just not tell me for some reason—then I will bring you back home and our leader Torrin can decide to whom you will go.”
To whom I will go? “Hold on. What I need is the closest Union ambassador. They will reach my brother. I’m sure you even know who he is…Brent Cervantes.” Usually, I hesitated to tell people who he was right off the bat. That was awful and I’d never deny him, but he wasn’t beloved everywhere. Sometimes, it was simply easier to leave his name out of conversations. Now was not one of those times. Not if I wanted to get home.
“I don’t know what either of those things are. Come.” Nox held my arm. “My transport isn’t far.”
I dug in, refusing to move. “That isn’t possible. There is an ambassador on every planet affiliated with the Union.” And at last count, everyone was affiliated.
“You speak words I simply don’t know. What I do know is the Reamers may soon return to the wreckage, and if they find us, they will attempt to kill me—and likely will succeed since I am alone—and take you back to use in the most deplorable ways.”
His words brought out images that made my head spin. Yes, I knew what those ways were.
His long legs ate up space better than mine, but he slowed so that I could keep up. That part wasn’t odd at all. People had been slowing down for me and treating me with kid gloves all my life. No, the strange thing was that this time, I didn’t mind it. He didn’t seem inconvenienced or begrudging, and his preternatural patience soothed some of my worry.
Not that I was going to lollygag. I couldn’t quite stop my brain from imagining those deplorable uses by…Reamers, was it? I had no idea what a Reamer was, but the way Nox had said the word made me never want to encounter one.
He pulled up short next to a hunk of heat-welded metal that at first, I thought was just another piece of wreckage. But the closer I looked, the more I could discern this wasn’t part of just one wreck. It was a soldered-together vehicle with metal bits from at least three distinct sources, and instead of landing gear, it had tracks, like a robot server at a cocktail bar. Only, well, bigger than a cocktail bot.
Nox lifted an overhead accordion-style door and pulled out a short