The Marann

THE MARANN

Christie Meierz

Sky Warrior Book Publishing,
LLC

Smashwords Edition

© 2013 by Christie Meierz.

Second Edition.

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced or
transmitted in any form or by an electronic or mechanical means,
including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and
retrieval system, without the express written permission of the
publisher, except where permitted by law.

Published by Sky Warrior Book
Publishing, LLC.

PO Box 99

Clinton, MT 59825

www.skywarriorbooks.com

This is a work of fiction. All
characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious, and
any resemblance to real people is purely coincidental.

Editor: Phyllis Irene
Radford.

Cover by Laura
Shinn.

Publisher: M. H. Bonham.

Printed in the United States of
America

1. 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
   

For my beloved

Certain things catch your
eye,

But pursue only those that capture
your heart.

Native American proverb

Chapter One

Marianne Woolsey never wanted to leave Earth. For
that matter, she never wanted to leave her hometown of Casey, Iowa,
where she taught young minds how to wrap their mouths around
foreign languages most of them would never speak again.

Now she stepped into the
business-class seating compartment of an Interstellar Spaceways
passenger liner and searched for a seat. Of the flight information
displayed on her tablet—
Interstellar 4421—Tau Ceti—Gate
B08—06:35/25/DEC/2543—4B,
only the seat number at the end was
important. In two days, even the date wouldn’t matter anymore, not
where she was going.

She settled into her place, body
yearning for the comfort of her bed but mind abuzz from the coffee
she’d drunk to get herself moving after waking at an ungodly
o’clock. While she waited for the ship to finish boarding and leave
Earth orbit, she flipped through the Tolari language vocabulary
lists on her tablet, searching for fresh terms to memorize, but
found her thoughts wandering off into distraction. Annoyed, she
brought her mind back on task, only to meander into fruitless
speculation as to how her six large, fancy goldfish fared at her
friend Susan’s house. Leaving them behind on Earth stabbed at her
heart, even if they were just fish.

She shoved the tablet back into her
carryall and shifted in her seat, seeking a position to make sleep
possible. For this first leg of the trip, Marianne had declined a
berth, though the government had offered one. A late Christmas Eve
party and an early flight to the Chicago spaceport to catch the
station shuttle had collided to result in about four hours of
sleep. Now she faced an eighteen hour flight through K-space to Tau
Ceti, where she would board an Earth Fleet vessel bound for the
Beta Hydri system and the world its inhabitants called Tolar. She
wished she hadn’t turned down the berth.

A man she didn’t recognize stepped
over her to get to the window seat, then turned to offer her a
large travel cup. The steam drifting from its spout filled the air
with the scent of mocha.

“Compliments of Central Command,” he
said with a wink and a smile. He wiggled a government
identification card with his picture on it, gripped against a
smaller travel cup in his other hand. “Double mochaccino with a
hint of peppermint. Happy Christmas.”

Marianne groaned. She’d had enough
coffee for one day, but chocolate and mint tempted her too much to
pass up. She took the cup and sipped at it, closing her eyes in
bliss. Then she realized what the man must be doing here, and
flipped them open again to glare at him.

The man’s gaze fixed onto hers. Her
annoyance at the situation throttled the usual amusement she felt
when strangers riveted their attention on her eyes. Susan, her best
friend, envied the athletic figure daily running gave her, and her
friends said she was pretty enough, with even features and wavy
light brown hair that reached the middle of her back. Her eyes,
though, were a shade of crystalline sky blue that startled everyone
and never failed to attract notice.

She preferred it that way.

“Merry Christmas,” she muttered. “Are
you here to make sure I arrive at my destination?”

“I’m here to make sure you’re safe,
ma’am.”

“I don’t need a babysitter. Where am I
going to go? Out the airlock for a nice
breathtaking
walk?
You should be home with your family. It’s Christmas.”

He laughed. It was a nice laugh, too.
He was a man no one would look at twice—she’d bet real money his
forgettable face got him this job—but she would remember his laugh.
The rich rumble seemed to emanate from his entire chest. He stuck
out a hand.

“Garrison Harding,” he offered. “Call
me Garry.”

She shook the hand and plastered what
she hoped was a sincere smile on her face. “Marianne Woolsey. But I
bet you already know that.”

He chuckled.

“You’re entirely too cheerful, Garry.”
Marianne took several swallows of the minty mochaccino.

His eyes twinkled as he sipped at his
own coffee. It was black and had the rich aroma of a dark roast. “I
wasn’t up late at a Christmas Eve party,” he said.

Marianne frowned. Was there anyone in
Central Command who
hadn’t
kept track of her every move
since she got this assignment? “It was my last chance to see my
friends for a very long time,” she pointed out.

Garry cleared his throat and turned to
look out the viewport at the docking ring of Earth Station Hawking,
but not before she caught a glimpse of sheepish expression. “Right,
sorry.”

“So why are you here, Garry? It can’t
be just to make sure I don’t run away, when I have every intention
of arriving at my destination.”

He turned back to her. “Are you quite
sure about that?”

“Which, that you’re here for some
other reason, or that I intend to reach my destination?”

There was that cheerful twinkle again.
“The latter.”

“I’ve spent the last three weeks
getting used to the idea of being sent to another planet to teach
half a dozen Earth languages to an alien monarch’s daughter. I’m
okay with it.”

“Three entire weeks. My, that does
comfort one.”

She gave him a look. “Why is everyone
so suspicious? I never threatened to run away.” She took another
long drink.

“You should slow down on the
mochaccino,” he said, ignoring her comment. “It’s high top. You
might buzz yourself into an alternate dimension.”

“I already have. I come from a
dimension where I’m cheerfully passing out Christmas presents to
lonely old people with no families.”

Garry’s response was lost to an
announcement that passengers were now free to move about the public
areas of the ship. He unbuckled himself and got to his feet.
Marianne stared at the seat he’d just vacated, wondering what use a
seatbelt could have on a spaceship.

“I didn’t feel the jump into K-space,”
she said with a frown.

“It’s played up in flicks. You
actually can’t feel it.” He offered her a hand up. “Come
along.”

She glanced at the hand without
moving. “Where?”

“Your berth.”

“I don’t have a berth.”

He chuckled. “Yes, you do.” He held up
an Interstellar Spaceways keycard.

She squinted. “And you think I’ll go
there with you?”

Garry tapped a foot. “Oh really, Miss
Woolsey, I can’t bloody well brief you out here. I planned to
impart the information my superiors want you to know until you’re
too knackered to absorb another fact, then read a good book in the
observation lounge while you nap off your Christmas party. Does
that meet with your approval?”

“Anything your superiors wanted me to
know, they could have imparted to me yesterday, without any risk of
innocent or not-so-innocent bystanders overhearing.”

Garry’s eyebrows lifted. He grinned.
“Very good. You’ve learned a few things over the past three
weeks.”

Marianne allowed herself a small
smile. “Thank you,” she said. “I think.”

“The dining room then,” Garry decided.
“Are you hungry?”

She let Garry escort her to the
business class dining room. It resembled an oversized train car,
with booths sporting tablecloths, breadbaskets, and fresh flowers
rather than rows of seats. A viewport graced the wall beside each
table, giving diners a stunning view of… the featurelessness of
K-space, so black it seemed to pull the soul right out of the
observer. Marianne glanced out the nearest viewport and looked
away, shivering.

Garry declined to let the maître d’
seat them, instead brushing past him to the booth at the end of the
dining compartment, as far from other passengers as possible. He
ordered both their breakfasts before the man could escape. It
didn’t surprise her when he ordered her usual without
prompting.

“You’re quite the cranky traveler,
Miss Woolsey,” Garry said, helping himself to a chocolate muffin in
the breadbasket. “Your file indicates you’re
even-tempered.”

“I didn’t get much sleep last night.”
She watched in horror as Garry spread butter on the muffin.
“Butter? On a chocolate muffin?” She shuddered.

Garry shrugged and took a bite,
nodding with pleasure.

“What do you mean, ‘my
file’?”

He smiled and didn’t explain. Instead,
he pulled a small tablet from his left coat pocket and fiddled with
it.

“What are you doing?”

“Making sure anyone who tries to
listen gets an earful of white noise.” He shoved the tablet back in
its pocket and turned his attention back to Marianne. “How much do
you know about the Trade Alliance?”

“Um, they’re a bunch of weird alien
races we trade with?” She shrugged. “There are thirteen now, I
think, including us. The Terosha look like giant walking sticks,
the Kekrax resemble upright geckos with four legs, four arms, and
two tails, and it just gets stranger from there.”

Garry laughed. “Fair enough. What if I
tell you they
all
warned us to leave the Tolari
alone?”

Marianne blinked. “Why would they do
that? It’s not as if we’re going to hurt them.”

“They aren’t concerned about the
Tolari. They don’t want
us
blundering around.”

“Blundering around what?”

“We’re not sure, but we want you to
keep your eyes and ears open. Some of our associates in the Trade
Alliance think there’s more going on in Tolari space than meets the
eye. None will say what.”

“But the Tolari haven’t even invented
air travel yet.”

“Yes well.” Garry paused while a
waiter delivered their breakfasts. When they were alone again, he
continued. “We have no doubt Tolari technology is backward, though
the culture is quite civilized. We want you to find out if there’s
something else going on, or if our space-faring friends are simply
skittish.”

“I’m not a spook.” Marianne stabbed
her poached egg on toast, took a bite, and smothered her fruit with
yogurt.

“No, and we don’t want you to be. If
the Sural is astute, he’ll expect anyone we send to be watching him
and reporting what they see, but we didn’t train you because it
would cause changes in your behavior he would notice. Instantly.
The Tolari are keen observers. They can almost read your mind from
your body language, and they know if you’re lying or hiding
something.”

Marianne grimaced.

“Yes, we know what a private person
you are. Just be yourself. That’s all they want.”

She heaved a sigh. “That I can
do.”

<<>>

A bump woke Marianne from a dream
about… about... She yawned and stretched—
what was that
dream?—
but didn’t reach for her tablet to check the time. Garry
had talked for hours, pumping her for what she knew and filling her
with new information. Her head felt like an overstuffed
pillow.