The aliens are silent. The purr dies away. I narrow my eyes. Someone just resonated to one of the other humans—yet another problem we don’t need—and is hiding it.
“Georgie,” Kira says, dragging my attention back to her. “I’m so glad to see you,” she says, her voice soft and happy. “You’ve brought help. You’ve rescued us.”
I catch the faint sound of someone resonating again, and my heart sinks. I’m not sure if I’ve freed them or brought them a new set of problems. “We need to talk,” I tell her. “All of us.”
? ? ?
Two hours later, the girls are feeling a bit better after eating and drinking. They’re still weak and listless, but even Tiffany has been roused by a meal of broth delivered by a sa-khui who calls himself Salukh. Warm clothing has been provided, and the men are practically fawning over the women, who view them a lot more warily.
Eventually, I give Vektal an exasperated look when yet another male hovers over an alarmed Megan and keeps trying to offer her bites of raw meat. “Can you clear this place out? We need space to talk amongst ourselves safely.”
He looks as if he wants to protest and then bites it back. Instead, he nods, kisses my brow, and tells the men, “Come. We will hunt to feed the women. Pashov, Zennek, guard the entrance. The rest of you, come with me.”
Eventually the men organize themselves and leave, though several longing glances are cast in the direction of the human women. Then we’re finally alone again, and I grab a bowl of the hot broth and sit with the rest of the girls, huddled against one of the walls.
“So,” I tell them. “I brought rescuers. They’re both a good thing and a bad thing.”
“The way I see it, it’s a good thing,” Tiffany says in an exhausted voice. “What’s so bad about a bunch of big hunky aliens acting as babysitters?”
“There’s more to it than just that,” I hedge.
But Kira’s giving me a suspicious look. “How did you learn their language so fast?”
So I tell them about the spaceship that Vektal calls the elders’ cave. The language dump it shot into my brain. The whole “parasite” thing that seems to be a requirement for Not-Hoth living. The “Vektal’s tribe only has four women, and they’re looking at us to hook up and become part of the family” thing.
The women make no comment, except for a few horrified blanches at the thought of a symbiont. I don’t blame them.
“If we stay here,” I tell them, “we’re committing to an entirely different life. It’s not a choice that can be made lightly. We have other options. We can opt not to take in the . . . symbiont. We can fight instead.”
Tiffany shakes her head. “But we’re so weak right now. I can barely lift my arms.” Others nod. I’m rather exhausted, too, just not as bad as the others because Vektal’s been taking care of me. But in another day or so? I might be just like them.
“Not to mention, we don’t know when the ship is coming back,” Megan says. “Or if.”
“I think they’ll come back to get us,” Kira says thoughtfully. “They’re not going to want to lose such valuable cargo, and from what it sounds like, we’re extra extra valuable.”
“Goody,” Liz says with a sarcastic tone. “So they’ll be back.”
“And we can fight, or we can make it so they can’t remove us from this place,” I tell them.
“I’m more than a little freaked out at the thought of getting a sym-thing,” Megan confesses. “The cootie.”
“Khui,” I correct, then shudder. What if it does look like a cootie? “So we fight, then?”
“Girl,” Tiffany says. “I can barely lift my eyelids. I cannot fight. I vote we go with the big guys.”
“Here’s the thing,” I say, rubbing my brow. I have a headache that won’t go away. I don’t know if it’s khui-sickness or the smell of the hold, but I’m aching and frustrated. “The khui picks mates. So if it decides that you would be perfect having babies with your worst enemy, you don’t get a say in things.”
“But it beats being cattle,” Liz chimes in.
“Even if we do manage to somehow take over the ship, there’s no guarantee we’ll be able to get ourselves back home or that they’ll take us. They could lie to us about it, and we’d be no wiser.”
“What do you want to do?” Josie asks me. “You keep asking us. Tell us what you are thinking.”