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The first thing I noticed about Zabria Prinar One when I stepped off the supply shuttle was the amount of space. I’d gone straight from a human industrial colony planet, where buildings swallowed every stretch of ground, to Elora Station which was all bright, shiny colour and sound. But things were different in this place. If I angled myself away from the pilot and the shuttle that had brought me here, I could almost pretend I was the only person on this planet. Alien emptiness stretched out for kilometres ahead of me, seemingly without end.
There was silence here. The sort of silence I’d never truly experienced before.
The sort of silence that made me, with no small amount of unease, snap my fingers beside my ears to make sure they were still working.
The second thing I noticed was the dust. As soon as I’d taken a few steps, my boots were somehow already covered with it, dry reddish powder coating the black soles and laces. I grimaced, imagining that most of my clothes would probably end up stained the same muddy red colour after a few years here. But it was better than them being stained red by my own blood. And the more I observed this isolated planet with its tough, scraggly sprouts of yellow grass and the pinkish-gold mountains on the horizon, the more I let myself relax into the thought that Magnus’ men might really be off my trail for good now.
“Cherry Dawson?”
In the quiet, the voice seemed unnaturally deep and loud. Or maybe that really was just his voice, because when I turned towards the man who’d spoken, I found an absolutely colossal male striding towards me through the sunlit dust. He said a quick word to the pilot, who was currently unloading boxes from the shuttle, then continued until he came to a stop before me.
“Warden Tenn?” I asked, my eyes running over his face and remembering Tasha’s description of him. Just like she’d said, he had a pale lavender-coloured hide, long white hair, and a jaw that could cut a bitch.
He tipped his broad brimmed hat in what I assumed was confirmation, casting his face into deep shadow. I frowned. The shape of their hats really did seem familiar. I just couldn’t figure out why. It didn’t get very sunny in New Toronto. Most of the hats we wore were toques in the winter to keep warm. I highly doubted I’d ever actually seen somebody wear a hat like this. And yet…
I tried to ignore it and focus on the man himself, squinting up at him in the sun. He adjusted his hat slightly again and I got to see a little more of his face. His mouth was hard and firm, like he didn’t put up with any shit, but there was a warmth in the striking orange colour of his eyes that I decided to trust. He had white eyebrows but no eyelashes.
“Welcome to Zabria Prinar One,” he said. “Silar is on his way here now.”
My stomach tightened. I was really here. I was doing this.
I was about to meet my husband.
The pilot, who’d never bothered to tell me his name even though I’d asked, made his last trip out of the shuttle, holding my bag this time. I reached for it, but Warden Tenn took it instead, hoisting it easily over his large shoulder.
“If you’ll just step inside, we’ll wait for him,” he said.
“Him” being Silar. My new alien groom. Oh God.
I nodded nervously, wishing Silar were already here. Not because I was excited, but because the waiting had to be worse than whatever weirdness my new husband would bring.
The warden led me around the shuttle to a building I hadn’t noticed because I hadn’t yet looked back this way. It was large and fairly simple in design, with what looked like wooden planks for the outer walls. There was another structure beyond, with a large, fenced-in area beside it. It looked a bit like images I’d seen of small farms on Terratribe II.
“This here is the warden’s station,” Warden Tenn was saying as he stepped up onto a shaded porch and opened the door into the building, his bulk making the wooden boards creak. I watched his tail with fascination as I followed him. It was so damn long. Longer than seemed natural for an upright, walking creature. It was too long to just hang behind him without dragging all over the floor, so it stayed loosely wrapped around a shiny, knobby sort of buckle on the back of his belt. Like looping rope slung over a hook.
“You’ve got a data tab?” he asked as he shut the door behind us. We were now standing in a large but very simple room, lit by light streaming in from a window at the front beside the door. Through it, I could see the pilot getting back into the shuttle and preparing to lift off. It seemed deafening when he did it, and I waited with gritted teeth until things were quiet again before answering.
“I have a comms tablet,” I said. The warden placed my bag down on a large wooden chair. I unzipped it and fished out my tablet.
“Good,” he said, taking it. He took out his own comms tablet, or “data tab,” I supposed, and activated a data sharing setting before placing it directly beside mine and waiting for a few seconds. “You’ll be able to contact me here anytime now.”
He handed my comms tablet back. “We’re pretty isolated out here. You won’t be able to tap into any of the bigger galactic data streams with just that little thing. So you’ll be limited to communications with other tabs on the planet and to whatever files are already stored on your tab’s memory. But if you need to download something, or get in contact with someone off-world, I have a more powerful signal tower on station property you can use. That’s how I keep in contact with the Empire and Elora Station.”
“Alright,” I said, trying to keep my voice even. The reality of this situation was really starting to bite me now, and the teeth were sharp. Not only was I completely isolated, the only human on a planet of unknown alien males, but I wouldn’t even be able to contact anyone off-world without coming here to ask permission to use the tower first? And I wouldn’t be able to keep track of human news, either. Terratribe I could collapse tomorrow and I would have absolutely no idea.
I’d never been so cut off from, well… Everything. I reached out and gripped the back of the wooden chair, feeling so adrift that if I didn’t steady myself with something solid, I was fairly certain my knees would buckle and I’d hit the floor. The last thing I needed right now was Warden Tenn getting an eyeful of human weakness. If he thought I was sick or something he could call that pilot back, stick me on the shuttle, and punt me right back to Elora Station.
Luckily, he wasn’t looking at me now, so if I appeared suddenly queasy, he didn’t notice. His big, bulky form was bent slightly as he looked out the window.
“Finally,” he muttered under his breath before he straightened and turned back to me. “Silar’s here.”
“Oh!” My fingers tightened on the back of the chair. I’d been told that it was currently spring on this planet, and it wasn’t too hot yet, but I felt sweat coating my palm and beading along my spine. I knew I had to let go of the chair and step out to meet him. I just couldn’t seem to make myself do it.
But for some reason Warden Tenn didn’t seem like he was in any hurry for me to walk out and meet my husband. He was looking out the window once more, frowning this time. For a disorienting moment, it looked like his eyes suddenly glowed from beneath the brim of his hat, but when he straightened up again, they were the same orange as before. Must have been the window light reflecting.
“Stay here,” he said. Clearly, he was used to his orders being followed, because he didn’t wait for me to respond or agree. He just clomped right out the door, his boots heavy and his tail looking more tense than before. The pale purple rope of it was now tightly wound, literally.
Warden Tenn left the door open, and I could hear his voice drifting in.
