Red Sands: Warlords of Atera Read online

  Slowly her vision cleared and the world around her came into focus. Above her face was a clear glass panel, inlaid with digital displays that monitored her vitals, which were erratic, and recorded her uneven pulse, rapid breathing, and rising anxiety.

  The ship shook once more, and a large crack snaked its way up the glass above her. An electric spark flared, blinding her for a moment. Then the digital display shorted out and went dark, though the red lights continued to flash and sear her sight.

  Sheri placed her palm flat against the stasis pod lid and pushed, struggling against the weight of the glass. She shoved again and again, gritting her teeth and gathering all of her strength to give the lid one last shove. It finally popped open, letting in the smoke-filled air that filled the cabin. Coughs erupted from her chest the moment the pod opened, and she tried to take shallow breaths as she looked around the cabin. Confusion assaulted her and she tried to remember what to expect when the ship docked at her destination.

  Well, she sure as hell wasn’t expecting this.

  When she’d climbed aboard the Intergalactic Mating Agency Tranquility, she’d been told she was in for a long, routine voyage. She and twenty-nine other passengers were traveling from Earth to Nyx Station where they would then transfer to different passenger ships bound for their final destination.

  And their future mates.

  Had she mentioned this was all supposed to be routine? She was pretty sure “routine” didn’t include smoke, sirens, and fire.

  Yet that was what she awoke to find. There was clearly something wrong and it seemed the ship’s failsafe had been triggered—waking her before they’d reached their destination. Goody for her. She’d be awake when the Tranquility blew up.

  Sheri yanked at the wires connected to her forehead and chest and then jerked the IV drip from her hand, wincing as the sting of the catheter being ripped from skin shot through her. Hopefully none of what she’d done would permanently damage her in any way. There were supposed to be med techs when she woke, dammit! But no one else was around. For all she knew, the ship’s crew was dead.

  She half-climbed, half-fell from the stasis pod, slamming hard against the cold metal plating that made up the floor. Around her, other pods clicked, thumped, and hissed open, the inhabitants slowly emerging. Each and every one appeared just as confused and disoriented as she was.

  “Where are the doctors?” Her attention bounced around the room, touching on some of the other distressed women. “The crew?”

  She got blank, confused looks in return though more than one edged toward panic the longer the sirens blared. Several women had tears forming thin rivulets down their cheeks and one woman’s chest rose and fell so fast she was sure the chick would pass out at any moment.

  Sheri clung to the stasis pod as she climbed to her feet, continuing to scan the area. Panic threatened to overtake her, but she pushed it back, refusing to be overwhelmed by fear. She’d endured enough trauma in her life to know when to hold steady and push it aside. Now wasn’t the time, even if her most recent therapist told her to get “in touch” with her emotions.

  “Suppressing your emotions is unhealthy.” Yeah, whatever, Doc. Indulging in them in the middle of a space crash was even more unhealthy. Her survival instincts were just as strong as they’d always been, and they told her to suck it up. It was time to grit her teeth and bear whatever was coming her way—much like she had when faced with her abusive father and even worse ex-husband.

  Why did she let those two invade her mind now of all times? She didn’t need a mind fuck from her memories of those two at the moment.

  Sheri swallowed a cold, hard lump and forced herself forward. She gripped one stasis pod and then the next, using them to stabilize herself amid the bone-jarring shakes of the spaceship. The Tranquility trembled and rocked beneath her feet. The deck tilted and it felt as if something was wrong with the artificial gravity and stabilizers. The floor tipped hard left, her feet slipping from beneath her, and she clung to a pod to stop herself from falling.

  Others weren’t so lucky. One woman went sliding past, her scream echoing around the room only to be silenced when she struck the base of another pod. She hung there, draped around the thick base as if hanging on a tree limb, and she didn’t move.

  Sheri’s stomach churned, unease and disgust mixing until she was sure she’d lose what little remained in her stomach.

  The ship rocked again, hurling to the right, and she fell to her knees with the sudden position shift. The motionless girl simply flopped over, and Sheri stared, willing the woman’s chest to move. When it rose and then fell with the obvious signs of breathing, she released the breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding and returned to her trek.

  She headed toward the cabin door, hands still gripping the edges of opened pods tightly as she progressed. She wasn’t going to get tossed around like a rag doll. Nope, she was going to get to that stupid cabin door, get it open, and give those freaking Intergalactic Mating Agency aliens a piece of her mind.

  Sheri gripped the solid bar to the right of the door, holding the handle as tightly as possible while she prodded the controls. She pressed her hand to the slick pad and waited for the device to scan her palm. And waited. And listened to the cries of the other women. And waited even longer.

  “What’s going on?”

  “What happened?”

  “We’re going to burn alive!”

  “We’re going to die!”

  Sheri wasn’t sure of the identities of those women, but she felt sorry for their mates. Panic in a high-stress situation didn’t help anyone.

  She slammed her hand against the door controls again. And still, nothing happened. She frowned and punched the controls again and again. She switched to the comm controls at one point. If they wouldn’t let her out, the least they could do was talk to her.

  The floor fell out from beneath her once again and she was glad for her tight grip on the bar. Others screeched and screamed, and she was sure she heard more than one bone breaking nearby. But she couldn’t focus on those women. Not yet. Not when getting help was a priority. These aliens were paid to look after them, dammit.

  Sweat peppered her brow, the air around her growing hotter with each passing second and her vision clouding with the ever-increasing smoke. She ran the back of her hand across her forehead and dashed away a rain of sweat before reaching for the comm panel. “Hello? Is anyone there?” She raised her voice over the other dying women, fighting against her own tears that threatened. “We need help!”

  No response.

  “Assholes,” she snarled.

  Scanning the doorway, she searched for the hatch’s manual release. Every ship that docked with an Earth station had to have manual releases for each and every hatch. This was the first time she was on board with Earth’s idiocy when it came to space faring. Spying the near neon blue stripe that outlined the hatch release, she stretched for the handle only to miss on her first try…

  And she slapped the door with her palm instead. The door burned so hot it was almost cold, searing her down to her bones with the heat. She yanked her hand away with a yelp and curled her fingers to form a loose fist. She held it to her chest, the agony pulsing in time with her heartbeat. Holy shit, the hatch was blazing hot and the paint on the door bubbled and stretched as the heat increased.

  A hatch—hell, any door—only got hot like that if there was a fire on the other side.

  Fucking shit.

  Ignoring the agony in her hand, she tapped a few more commands on the comm panel. Even if she couldn’t connect with the bridge, the panel could at least display what was happening on the other side of the door. It took a handful of commands and one hard kick against the wall before she finally got the view she demanded—smoke and fire.

  No, more than just smoke and fire. Smoke, fire, and a wholly unfamiliar skyline. No hallways or aliens. No, she couldn’t get that lucky. She got to see an alien planet.

  Holy fuck her with a support be
am.

  She kept the connection open, watching as more of the world sped by. Pieces of the ship broke off, swallowed by the atmosphere until those small parts burst into balls of fire as well. Bits of the hull and interior were scattered through the air, and their portion of the Tranquility continued its race toward the planet’s surface.

  “Oh, shit.” For a moment she simply stared, motionless and struck dumb with the shock. The central hull, engineering, and bridge were gone.

  Gone.

  “The ship’s breaking apart! Get back in your pod!”

  The screams doubled in volume, screeches and shouts near deafening, and she struggled to yell louder than the others. “Get in your pods! Now!”

  “My pod’s broken!”

  “I can’t get the lid closed!”

  “My pod…”

  Sheri reached for the closest pod and gripped its control panel, bracing herself while she took step after struggling step toward her own stasis pod. “These pods are as good as evac nodes.” At least, that’s what the staff had said. She wasn’t going to think about the fact that the lid on hers was already cracked in half. “Get back inside.”

  One of the nearby women whined. “But—”

  She swung her gaze to the chick. “Listen. The ship is crashing. Get in your pod, or don’t, that’s your choice, but I’m getting in mine and then praying to every god I can think of.”

  Including a few that belonged to alien cultures. Someone in time had to have gotten it right, right?

  Their part of the ship tipped once again, and she found herself sliding along the ground. She slipped over the grating and toward the woman who still hung limply over the base of a pod. Fuck.

  She twisted and turned, lifting her legs and slamming them against the base just above the stranger’s unconscious body. She avoided smashing into her with her full body weight. Barely. Though the near miss pointed out the obvious. This chick wouldn’t survive the crash outside a pod.

  Another woman struggled nearby, a trail of blood seeping from beneath her hairline. She hated asking for help from someone injured, but she had no choice. “Hey, help me get her into this other pod.”

  “Wha—?” Wide eyes, dilated pupils. This lady wasn’t in much better shape, but Sheri had a palm with deep burns, and they were approaching the ground fast.

  “Just help me,” she growled and reached for the unconscious passenger, smiling to herself when the other woman helped her haul the injured lady into one of the empty pods. She sent her helper off to find a pod while Sheri slid across the sharp grating toward the other side of the room.

  No one had tried to claim her obviously broken pod, which was all the better as far as she was concerned. Playing musical stasis pods while death lingered on the horizon didn’t seem like a fun time to her. Using her unharmed hand and arm, she hauled herself up and over the edge of the pod, thumping against the cushioned surface with a groan. She reached up and grasped the edge of the pod cover, yanking and tugging until it gradually folded back into place.

  Into place but didn’t latch. Fucking piece of crap.

  And of course, there weren’t any safety straps in the stasis pod. According to the Intergalactic Mating Agency, their transports never had a problem.

  Riiight.

  Sheri braced her hand and feet against the side walls, closed her eyes, and gritted her teeth. Hopefully it would be over soon.

  Dead or alive—it’d be over.

  And then it was.

  * * *

  Sheri didn’t know how long the darkness cradled her. Didn’t know how long she tried to focus her eyes on the midnight world around her. She reached out and ran her fingers over the lid of her stasis pod but couldn’t see the hazy glass that was mere inches from her face. The world around her no longer shimmied or shook. There was no deathly heat emanating through the pod lid. Smoke didn’t sneak through the lid’s seams.

  By all indications, she could venture out of the small pod, but she couldn’t seem to force herself to move. She just wanted to go back to sleep. To return to stasis and only awaken once this nightmare was at an end.

  But no help was coming. At least, she didn’t think help was on its way. She had no way of knowing if a distress signal had made it out before the bridge was ripped from the rest of the ship. Or if the crew would even bother looking for them. The crew could be dead… just as they might be in the near future.

  Who knew what planet they crashed onto or even if it was a planet with an atmosphere at all? There were any number of inhabited worlds along the Tranquility’s original course, but depending on when and how they were damaged, they might not be anywhere near civilized space.

  Sheri winced and sneered at herself. Okay, she was just delaying the inevitable because she was being a whiny baby.

  Get your poop in a group, Sheri Zaeden, and move that ass.

  Sheri placed her uninjured palm on the pod lid and pushed, grunting with the effort of getting it up and off. Damn, adrenaline had really fueled her strength earlier. Now, she felt as weak as a newborn puppy.

  She rolled out of the pod, using her body weight to get her free of the cushioned stasis unit. She thumped to the grating, half-stumbling to her knees before she rose on shaking legs. It was too dark to see a damn thing and she doubted emergency lights would flicker on, what with them not being attached to an engine. She didn’t have anything like a flashlight or lighter on her either. She possessed nothing more than the simple clothing she’d been given just before climbing into the stasis pod. All of her personal belongings were in the ship’s hold, which was probably half-way to the ass end of Planet Who the Fuck Knows.

  Voices echoed in the darkness, whispers and whimpers gradually transforming into sobs and cries. No one had any ideas about what was going on. No one had answers to any questions. No one…

  “Hold it! Everyone be quiet!” Sheri raised her voice above the other women. “Does anyone have any kind of light?”

  Sheri knew she’d be a lot less scared if she could see two inches in front of her face.

  There was a moment of silence and then a small voice broke through the darkness. “I might be able to access any residual power stored in the pods to give us a little light. They have to have a consistent power flow, but most ships don’t bother building to minimum specs. Instead, they install removable backup storage in the base that they can easily pull out if they need to perform maintenance. They don’t violate their warranty and save money at the same time.”

  More than Sheri needed to know, but sometimes people fell back and focused on the minute details when everything else was going to hell.

  “Good enough.” Sheri peered through the dark in the direction of the voice. “Can you do that in the dark?”

  “I can try.”

  Trying was all they had.

  The minutes passed, the faceless voice muttering and mumbling, but the sounds were overridden by the soft sniffles of the other women. Then there was the scrape of metal and the occasional spark that had her wincing in sympathy, but the woman kept at it until light flickered and then a bright flash filled the cabin as the pod came back to life. The glass lid lit up with the electronic displays that normally revealed the inhabitant’s vital signs. The light was faint, but at least they wouldn’t trip over each other.

  “Good job…” She hesitated when she realized she didn’t know the other woman’s name.

  “Kalinda,” the woman offered.

  Sheri smiled in return. “Sheri.”

  A few more brief introductions were passed around. Then one of the ladies spoke up. “Does anyone know first aid? There are some people hurt over here.”

  Sheri picked her way across the tilted deck and knelt beside one of the pods where an unconscious woman lay, her head cradled in another’s lap. Blood matted her hair to her forehead and dripped down her pale skin. The poor woman had cracked her skull against the stasis pod during the crash.

  “I’m a nurse,” Sheri murmured as she knelt. “Or, I was.�
� She had left that life behind when she’d decided to become an alien mail-order bride for a Vruq. By now, she had expected to be on another transport ship, just leaving Nyx Station on her way to meet her future husband. It looked like fate had other plans for her.

  “Just keep her still for a second,” she murmured as she crawled over to the base of a pod. “There has to be an emergency med kit in one of these.” She dug through one base and then moved to another. Then another. Not finding a damn thing other than empty holes where the kits should have been, she pushed to her feet and moved to the wall, knocking on the metal panels and searching for one that might hide what she needed. “Everyone look for anything useful. Medical supplies. Food. Water. I really need first aid supplies.”

  The others slowly gained their feet, quietly doing as she asked. Sheri finally located some completely out of date medical supplies in one of the compartments. Thank god the crew managed to overlook the one stash. She moved on and did the best she could for the women who’d sustained injuries in the crash.

  She also found some who hadn’t made it. Sheri counted herself lucky that she’d only suffered a burn to her palm when so many others lost so much more. She didn’t stop to treat her own injury until she’d handled the most critical among them, setting a couple of breaks and doing what she could for everyone left. It felt like hours had passed by the time she sat to take a break.

  Kalinda brought her a bottle of water and a packet of freeze-dried rations from the supplies the group had found.

  “At least we won’t starve?” Kalinda gave her a little shrug.

  Sheri scanned the over two-dozen women stuck in the crashed ship. She didn’t know how many supplies they had on board, but she doubted it was enough to feed this many people for more than a few days. They could very well end up starving, though she kept that to herself. Most of the others were finally calming and she didn’t want to upset them all again.

  “When are we getting out of here?” someone in the back spoke up. “I tried the door, but it’s jammed.”