Stolen - Nhys Glover Page 0,35
mother knows our Earth terms?”
“My mother is Gaian. Charsus’ mother, not so much. I’ll explain once we’re away from here.”
Sitting back, I allowed everything to slip away. I was so exhausted it was hard to keep my eyes open. Only adrenalin from the danger had kept me awake. But now the immediate danger was over the weight of exhaustion pushed me deeper into the seat.
When I opened my eyes again it was to a completely different scene beyond the viewing screen. We’d landed on a planet. A rather lovely looking planet, if you could get used to the colors being all wrong.
My gaze sought out my hero and found him doing something behind me. He looked over his shoulder and smiled.
“Ah, good, you’re awake. I was just getting us something to eat and drink. I imagine you’re starving. I hope you didn’t eat anything down there. Who knows what toxins you could have ingested.”
“Water. Or what passed for water. That’s all. I feel okay, so maybe it was bug free.”
The tall male nodded and a strand of silver hair escaped the ponytail and fell around his face. I had the strongest urge to brush it back. But he was too far away, and it would have been totally inappropriate.
“Is this planet safe?” I asked curiously, turning to look outside once more.
“For the most part. There are predators. But they’ll only be a problem at night. We can stay locked in here then. Let’s go outside now to eat, and I’ll explain the situation.”
After unbuckling the seat harness, I followed my rescuer from the ship. It seemed too small to travel through wormholes. I remembered someone saying that a ship’s exterior had to be very thick to handle the pressure of a wormhole. Smaller crafts tended to have a more lightweight fuselage.
It was like a picnic! My companion threw a blanket across the yellow grass and then placed the box containing meal packets and water in the middle of it. I dropped down on one side of the blanket and stretched out on my sore back, staring up at the pale yellow sky, barely aware that my legs were naked and what was left of my kaftan was a shredded mess.
It was bizarre. Yellow shouldn’t have looked good as a sky color. But it did.
My friend sprawled out across from me and started removing our picnic from the box. I greedily devoured the first food pack and half my bottle of water before looking for more. My companion smiled in amusement and passed me another packet. This disappeared as fast as the first. I was starving!
After the third pack I finally felt full. I collapsed onto the blanket and stared up at the sky once more.
“I don’t see any sun,” I pointed out.
“On the other side of the planet. The atmosphere here allows light particles to remain long after the sun sets. It’s day until those light particles fade.”
“Like twilight,” I mused.
“But brighter than normal twilight. The morning takes longer to brighten.”
His voice was so serene and calming I could listen to it forever.
“How do you know all this?” I asked, looking his way.
“Database. I can find almost every planet in the habitable belt of the galaxy in it.”
“Is the planet inhabited by sentient beings?” I asked, wondering if I could expect the locals to come visiting with a casserole in hand.
“No. The predators make it impossible. There’s only wildlife.”
I was surprised. Even dangerous planets were seeded with humanity’s offspring hundreds of thousands of years ago. The Danans, for instance, were created specifically to ensure the continuation of their species in an extremely dangerous world.
“I’m going to tell you how I come to be here,” he went on before I could ask.
My questions flew out of my head, and I looked at him intently.
“Your friend Marissa went with her two podmates to find their missing pod-member, Raesus. It should have been an easy retrieval, so the rest of the Danans returned to Varga to deal with the disaster caused by the rogue storm. A storm, which it turns out, was created by the Darkness as a distraction so Marissa could be stolen away.”
I went to speak, but he held up his hand. “Please, let me finish before you ask me questions. It’s a fairly complex story and we could easily get sidetracked.”
I nodded and mimed zipping my lips. He grinned for a moment before becoming serious again. When he spoke again his voice had changed again.
“The Darkness did not know Marissa