Salvage Rights (Distant Worlds Book 2) (2 page)

The captain spoke up
then, clearly trying to set his surprise on the back burner.

“What do you remember?”

She looked back at him,
her face scrunching up in confusion.  She didn’t answer at first, clearly
trying to find something inside herself, but all that she found were silent
tears.  “Just seeing you,” she said, breathing hard, and then she glared at
Mac, who had just tossed down his bloody rag, his lip puffy but no longer
bleeding.  “And him.”  It was said with such venom that Sera laughed, it was a
throaty sexy laugh that brought a smile to the girl’s face despite her turmoil,
the doctor finding his own smile when he saw it.

Remarkable, he thought,
continuing to scan.

“I see you made an
impression, Mac.”

“Not yet,” he said, his
gravelly voice a clear warning, his eyes hot and hard on the girl, “but I will.”

“Belay that,” the captain
said, making Mac’s eyes snap to his with a curse.

“But Captain . . .”

“You have something to
say, Mackenzie?”  The voice was a clear warning and soft for all its deadly
bite.  Mac gnashed his teeth, but didn’t respond.  “Good.  Doc?”

“I need to do some
tests.”

“So what else is new? 
Is she a danger?”

“You might have thought
of that before beaming her over and throwing her at me.”  Mac’s voice was gruff
but lacked the hard edge from seconds earlier.  The captain ignored him.

“No danger, but I have
questions.”

“Fine.  Mac, take over
the bridge for Lore and have him meet me in medical.”

Mac went, giving one
last baleful look at the girl sitting beside the crouching Doc on the floor. 
Sera smirked at him as he passed her.

“Poor baby.  The little
baby girl get you?”  Her voice was a gruff bite behind the laughter.

“Keep it up, Sera, just
keep it up.”  She laughed at his warning, and kept up her teasing until they
separated, him to the bridge and her to the engine room.

When Lore joined the captain
and the doctor in sickbay, the woman was already in the deep sensor booth and Doc
was practically hyperventilating with excitement.

“I’ve never seen
anything like this.”  Doc studied the sensor readings like they were the cure for
space dementia.  Lore joined him while the captain watched them both.

“Fascinating,” Lore
said, watching the read-outs that looked like a lot of gibberish to Tyber.  He
rolled his eyes when the doctor started to hum in excitement.  Doc stopped abruptly,
turned to Lore, and then they both turned to eye Tyber like he was the lab
experiment.

“Captain?” the doctor
asked, his face as expressionless as he could make it, “are you feeling
anything special towards the girl?”

“Special?”  Tyber’s
eyes narrowed.  “What?”

“What the doctor needs
to know is if you are feeling the urge to mate with the lady?”

“Mate?  What the hell
are you talking about?”

Lore reached over and
grabbed the trim ankle that was just now sliding out of the long tube.  “Does
knowing I am touching her bother you?”

“Why the hell . . .”  The
captain stopped in mid-sentence.  “She’s Bruha?”

“Yes,” Lore said even
while the doctor was nodding his head.

“Claimed?”

“Hopefully, but doubtful,”
Lore said, as the doctor continued his humming through the data.

“Why hopefully? Why doubtful?”

“Because I don’t think
we want to be responsible for the only living unclaimed
untouched
Bruha
left in the solar system.”

“Shit.”

“Yes, every mercenary
in the galaxy will be after her.”  Lore looked at the captain, “At least every
mercenary who doesn’t loathe and despise slavery.”

“We’re in luck,” the doctor
said, though the look on his face indicated it was anything but good.

“Well, spit it out,
Doc, what?”

“She’s claimed.”

“How is that possible
if she’s untouched?”

“That would be the bad
news.”

“The bad news?  When
did we get the good news?”

By now, the tube had
exited all the way, and the girl lay before them, covered only in a thin silver
shield.  Her eyes closed, she was compellingly beautiful, even without those
green eyes open to pull you in.  She was clearly built to be a man’s fantasy; as
a Bruha, she would be more.  All but Lore shifted uncomfortably at the thought.

“Doctor?” he said
pulling his eyes away from the unconscious girl, “what’s the bad news?”

The doctor’s hands were
busy across the controls, but he looked up at that.  “It’s a genetic imprint.”

Lore caught the captain’s
brow raise and responded without prompting.

“Someone genetically
hardwired her to respond only to one man.”

The doctor hummed a bit
more, “But she hasn’t been turned on as it were.  My guess is she was placed in
that pod and was somehow lost before the final imprinting could occur.”

“Now what does that
mean?”

“It means that her ‘master,’
for want of a better word, never got around to meeting her after the genetic
manipulation occurred.  She may be able to go on and live a normal life, well,
except for the other things.”

The captain rubbed his
head, wondering if he even wanted to know.

“Of course, anyone with
the DNA of her original owner could cause her to have some very serious . . . lust. 
It would only be when he is actually touching her; otherwise she is not driven
to search him out as a regular Bruha would be.”

“What other things?”  The
captain finally couldn’t stop himself from asking.

“She is psychically
gifted.”

“How?”

“I have no idea.  But
she’s also very, very smart.”

“We knew that when she
bit Mac,” Sera said leaning against the door, catching the tail end of the
conversation.

“No grease in my
laboratory,” Doc said.

Sera rolled her eyes.  “Yeah,
yeah.  I know.  I’m not coming any closer.”

“You’re different than
the others.”  The voice had them all turning to look at the bed.  The clear
green eyes were open and on Lore.

Lore bowed.  “Lore
Trugarian.  I am honored to meet you, Bruha.”

“That is not my name,”
she said, after thinking a moment.  She sat up, “And that is not your name.” 
The sheet fell forward exposing her breasts.  Everyone took in the sight of her
full pert breasts with the soft pink nipples over golden skin.  Her brow
crinkled, her hand going to her head, she did not seem to notice her partial
nudity while everyone else just stood there staring.

Sera harrumphed from
the doorway, then stomped forward despite her grubby boots, whisked the girl’s robes
off the chair and back over her body.  She glared at the men, sent a heated
glare to the doctor and stomped out again.

“Men suck,” she said loudly
and with passion before hitting the corridor.

There was a great deal
of clearing of throats and coughing before they were reminded of what they had
been discussing.

“What is your name?” the
doctor asked, his cheeks rosy with embarrassment.

Her hand went to her
head.  She was obviously struggling and the doctor hissed when he saw the
spikes in her reading.

“Now, that isn’t
something we have to worry about right now.  I still have a few tests to run
and it would be a good idea to give your brain a rest.”

“Lie.  You have no more
tests to run.”  She said it even as she continued to hold her head.  The
captain looked at the doctor with a raised brow.

“Fair enough,” Doc
said, shaking his head, “but I do have some research to do with the data I
already have.”

“She’s a truthsayer?” 
Lore asked, his own brow rising.  He looked at the captain.  “If word gets out
about what she is.  What she’s capable of . . .”

The captain’s jaw was
set.  It was not an exaggeration to say the female was worth her weight in
gold, an untouched Bruha, even without the claiming, and then a truthsayer. 
Either ability alone could get them killed, but both?  Definitely a guarantee
for a short painful life.

“We still don’t know
what she’s capable of,” Doc said looking from one to the other.  “We could just
be scratching the surface.”

“For now, no one knows
about this outside this room, and no one will, is that understood?”

“Aye, Captain,” the two
men answered in unison.

“In the meantime, Doc
keeps her here in medical while he does his research.”  He looked at the girl
who was studying them through clear green eyes.  “We need to get as far away from
this sector as we can.  Lore, change the ship beacon and i-dent.  We do not
want the Gorson finding us, and if they have any idea what we took out of that
ship, they will be looking.”

He went up to the side
of the bed and caught the girl’s eyes again.  “You are safe here.”  She tilted
her head and her lips pursed.  Then she just looked sad as she shook her head.

“Though I cannot read
your thoughts like the others, I can still feel a lie when you speak it.”

The captain hissed out
a frustrated breath.  “You are safer here than anywhere else right now.  How
about that?”

She smiled still a
little sadly.  “Truth.”

“Good.”  Without
another word he turned on his heal and headed out, Lore right behind him.  Both
men roughly the same six foot height, both wide in the shoulders and trim in
the hips; but where the captain had short brown hair, and was sleek with
muscles, moving with a solid footed surety across the ship, Lore had long black
hair that shimmered almost unnaturally in the dim light.  He was also less bulky,
and moved with soundless precision. 

“Lore Trugarian is not
human,” she said watching them depart.

“Clone.”

She looked at the young
doctor questioningly.  Since she had first seen him, she had liked the kindness
in his light brown eyes.  Shorter than the other men in the crew by a few
inches and with a trim figure, he still seemed somehow soft in comparison to
the rest of the shipmates.  Even the golden-haired mechanic with the pretty blue
eyes was wiry with strength beneath her softness.

“He is a copy of
someone else, someone who died long ago.”

“Cloning.  Are there
many?”

“No, cloning was
outlawed hundreds of years ago.  Most were hunted to extinction.  The few that
are left are slaves, unable to think beyond simple orders.”

“Your Lore is not like
that, though I sense you are telling the truth.  How is that?”

“Lore is the
exception.  Most people cannot even tell he is different; that is what keeps
him alive – that and the captain would never allow any member of his crew to be
harmed.”

“Your Captain is an
interesting man.”

“Yes.  You’re lucky we
found you rather than the Gorson.”

“The raiders?”

The doctor looked up
from his terminal surprised.  “You know of them?”

“Only what I heard
after I was awakened.”  She rubbed her head, her eyes still so sad; the doctor
felt a tug on his own heart.

“Here,” he said, going
over to a desk and pulling out a small white box, which fit in the palm of his
hand.  He placed it back on his terminal and the machine hummed for several
minutes while she watched.  Then he placed it on her head and gently pushed her
to lie down.  “Normally, I would not give you so much data at one time, but
seeing as how you seem to use more than 90% of your brain this should be easy
for you.  It’s a data cube.  This one is the history of the last 300 years,
most everything that you have missed.  When you finish it, I can give you
another.  Within a few months, you will know everything about this time period
you never thought to ask.”

She lay down under his
hand and allowed the machine to be attached to her forehead.  It clicked on and
she started.

“Relax,” the doctor said,
“just let it flow through you.  It will go as fast or as slow as you need, and
you can stop any time by pressing the cube.”  He grinned.  “I have to say I am
curious about your absorption time and retention.  I have never seen a brain
like yours before and am curious to find its boundaries.  Of course, after
coming out of hyper-sleep, you’ll probably take a few months to get back to
your full potential.  But we’ll see.”

She shut her eyes as he
continued talking, and then he was back at his terminal and she began concentrating
on her tutorial.  The cube began to hum, and then hum faster as she flipped
through the data scroll.  The doctor was still talking a few minutes later when
she patted the device.

“Doctor.”  She handed
him the device.

He looked disappointed
but shrugged, “Done so soon?  Oh well, it is early yet.  We can try again
tomorrow.”

“No, doctor, I need
more information.  That cube is empty.”

He looked confused and
then laid the cube back on his terminal and the strangest look of excitement
and surprise came across his face.  “That’s not possible.”

She looked confused.  “You
are telling the truth but it does not change what is.  May I have more, please?”

The doctor closed his
mouth.  He filled the box up again, this time with all known languages in the
data bank, which included dialects numbered in the thousands.  He handed her
the box and watched as she expertly attached it and closed her eyes.  There was
a whirring and then the box stopped.  She sat up and handed him the box.  “More
please.”

“Are you sure about
that?” he asked in Creet.

“Yes, I need more,” she
answered in the same language.

“Shit,” he said, his
eyes nearly bugging out of his head.  “Maybe this would go faster if we just
plugged you in directly?”

“Yes.  That would be
fine.”

He reached the console
and pulled out a small round tab this time; placing it on her forehead, he then
pushed a few buttons on the console with shaking hands.  “Just let the computer
know what you want and if it becomes too much, just think of the info slowing
down or stopping.”

She was already lying
back, and the doctor watched the info flying across the screen faster than he
could see it clearly; eventually, it became a whir and he had to step back from
the humming machine.

When the minutes
dragged on to hours, the doctor made himself busy by going over all the data
from her scan and doing a DNA search online.  The name that came up made him
curse and head for the bridge.  He did not even spare his patient a glance he
was so nervous.

“Captain,” he said out
of breath, just inside the doors of the bridge where Tyber, Lore, and Mac were
all at their stations.

“Yes, doctor?  Please
tell me you have not found yet another spot of bad news.”  Tyber did not look
amused.