Finding Her Heart (Orki War Bride #2) Read online

  Finding Her Heart

  By

  Isoellen

  © 2021 Isoellen

  And

  Reticent Desire Publications

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written consent of the author.

  This includes electronic or mechanical transmission, photocopying, recording, information retrieval systems or storage.

  This book is a work of fiction and is intended for adults only. Some scenes may contain explicit material that could make some readers uncomfortable.

  Any names, businesses, places, or events in this work are fictional. Any similarities to living or dead people, incidents, companies, products, or organizations are purely coincidental.

  Prologue

  Once, Long Ago, On A Planet Far Away, A Crew Of Very Bad Raider Mercenaries Crash Landed...

  Stuck in Green City for five days too long.

  This damn adventure started with a luxury cruiser with an arms array like that of the meanest dreadnaught he'd ever seen. His little gunboat had got shot up. With the ship's life resources damaged and leaking fuel into space, Boss was thankful his navigator found the slipstream to Dorsus and Bable's Skyport 6.

  After assessing the damage, they realized they were short on money for repairs. Boss decided to create teams from his crew to hire onto local Under Leaders in the city. They'd make some money. Get repairs, get off the damned little planet and back into the sky where they belonged.

  But the city of Bable had a constant influx of workers and idiots through their ports. The tax-free, undocumented positions he hoped for, the kind done right under local authorities' noses, were not to be found. He couldn't get a decent price for a single job. Before he knew it, his ship was sold for fees incurred, and he and his men were tagged and chased out of that city. Told not to return until they had credit to clear the tags.

  His hand wanted to rub at the back of his neck where that tag sat, itching, itching, itching at his brain. They'd crossed a bridge into the next city, Tandem'dor, on foot. Two days in that city, with its spires reaching to the sky like the bony fingers of alien dead, he and the team kept their ear to the ground. Their best bet, still an Under Leader in need of temporary blood and muscle. Broke, always hungry, they robbed a couple of old ladies and drunk students on the main promenade just to get a meal and a place to sleep.

  Then, Boss finally got his meeting. He woke up looking into the eyes of the quadrant's Under Leader, two of his own men missing, looking down the barrel of weapons that would disintegrate his DNA into untraceable dust.

  His first thought had been, When the hell did those become available on the open space market? And the second was, it’s time to leave Tandem'dor. Hopefully alive.

  Finally, after clinging to the barrel of the night train with the regular urchins and maggots of Steel Cities underbelly, they found work for half the crew in the city named for the color of its favorite resource, Green. Work in the mines. Work in the fields. Work in the machinery towers and downs–but it was all grunt and grind for half-cents, not fit for war heroes like himself and the men.

  There was no other choice at hand.

  With nothing to do in their off-hours, the former intergalactic pirate crew was drawn back to each other like magnets. Boss found his men every evening in Garden Square. The open area was a working man's all-hours kind of place, with shops, food, and alcohol. There was a park-let with benches and tables for sitting and complaining about the plight of life. Thick with pickpockets, too low on the Dorsus pedestal of who-had-what, it was the kind of city space Boss had occupied a hundred times in his life.

  He knew what to watch for when it came to the pickpockets and grifters. Different planet, different culture, some of them not human, it didn't matter. Survival always had the same taste. He'd joined up with the Trenneth Corporation Fleet thinking to escape that particular flavor and rise in the ranks—make something of himself. A brainless kid then, Boss signed his life away. Made himself a slave instead of agreeing to something better. Trenneth Corp used him and thousands like him however they wanted—sent them into war zones to protect company interest, pumped them full of drugs and called it food. Kept him awake and alert for days at a time, obeying the command to kill.

  Boss discovered he had a knack for the killing. There was only so far he could rise, but his successes earned him a modicum of respect, and made him a cohort leader.

  A couple of years ago, some new biggity-big came to Trenneth's head and took over the entire company—wanted all the old shit cleaned out, replaced with clean, shiny, and new. Boss and the men who had survived job after job of Fleet dirty work watched from the sidelines, standing at attention while fresh troops boarded a new state-of-the-art frigate. The experienced soldiers were given a final paycheck with a tin gratuity for thanks. That was all, after twenty-fucking-five years of service.

  It wasn't even enough to buy a ticket to the nearest human habitation.

  So, he'd formed his own crew, called himself Boss, convinced everyone to use that last check to buy in on their own little ship. At least they had been taught how to get shit done, so Boss and his newly minted crew would do their own dirty work. Muscled in or hired on where necessary.

  This current ten-hour day, week in, week out bullshit in Green was the life they'd tried to escape. The day-to-day, back-breaking empty that turned death into a hope.

  Runk, his former navigator, dirt-covered from his underground job fixing breakdowns, eased himself onto the stone bench next to Boss with a creaky sigh of a dying man. They were the same age to the day and had served together under Trenneth Company policy the longest.

  "Heard something over there, early," Runk said, tipping his head to indicate a booth on his right.

  Busy staring at nothing, Boss didn't turn to look.

  "Might be something for us," Runk continued. There was a gap in his teeth, giving his S's a slight whistle. While under the Trenneth Corporation's Fleet, food and medical was taken care of. It was all bland, but top quality. Runk had lost the tooth after they'd been booted out in a fight with a big berserker. The helmet and gear had not protected his face or right arm from the hand-to-hand combat. He'd come away missing that tooth and with his arm bent backwards.

  "What you hear?" Boss asked.

  "That guy there, he is a guide. He takes tours through the mountains to the Peace River Valley. This place is like no other. They got a special license to be there that goes back a few years. People there are isolated, and act like they don't know how to turn on a light. They do everything by hand. Real rustic and shit."

  "You want to go on a tour, Runk?"

  "No, sir, no. I had some time. Thought I'd check it out. This place is like that plummy little settlement the Corporation wanted us to take out. Y'know, quiet and isolated. Peaceful. Pacifists. Out all by themselves. With their food and their houses and their women."

  Boss remembered. That place had been like a vacation. Trenneth dropped them and wanted it done in three days.

  He and his crew swept in like a knife through butter. That little cluster of brick and wood called a town was out there alone, begging for it. No weapons, just pitchforks. Most of the people had not even resisted. They had set up a sweet little life right where Trenneth wanted to do some deep crust digging and their town was in the way, oh so innocent, so determined to escape the evil of the world only to land themselves in the worst of it.

  Three days. They'd done the work in one. And by the time the shuttle came round to replace them with a cleaning crew and the survey team, Boss and his men used every hole of every female and a few of the boys, drank all the alcohol and medicinal herbs they could
get their hands on, and dirtied all the clean feather beds with their filthy selves.

  Mention of the place made his mouth water. "Here? Where? Every city has a fisheye camera for the authorities and where the pressed uniforms don't have eyes and response teams set up, the Under Lords have triple."

  "I shit you not. Independent villages all up and down a big river. I looked it up. They have a special contract, been there for years. That guy, he is a guide for a bigger company that books fishing holidays and rustic relaxation tours. There are rules about going there, no weapons sharper than a small gutting knife allowed. "

  "Why is that guy here, in this part of Green, if he works for a decent outfit?"

  "Tours only run twice a year. But some of those folk out there, they still have a taste and need for fine city things that are forbidden. Guy does a little harmless smuggling on the side,” Ruck answered. Mild-mannered, Ruck's favorite thing was gathering information and plotting paths. Should have been something better, but amped up on the high of battle, he transformed into a brutal berserker. Trenneth Corp’s drugging made it worse. Any chance Ruck had of being recruited to something better like intelligence work was ruled out that first time he used blood and bone to write some crappy poetry on a wall.

  "We gonna make him smuggle us? You think he will?"

  "That mountain route is only safe for big groups during the hottest part of summer, months away. But, I've checked the maps. It is actually faster to go straight over land. Faster. Closer. They call it 'Original Treaty Territory.' A no-go zone, I guess there are dangerous critters. Gonna need to do some digging and find out why people just don't go that way. Looks like it would only take a day by air, but it's labeled a no-fly zone too."

  "You said Dorsus was safe for humanoids," Boss remembered.

  "Best match in the whole system. But there are only six cities on the planet." Runk whistled through the gap in his teeth.

  "Only six?"

  "Yeah, six. The oceans are big. And yeah, there is that volcano activity, but still. Lots of land and much of it marked off-limits. I asked a couple of people. They looked at me like I was an idiot."

  "They know something everyone knows, but no one talks about. Find out. We can't live like this. I won't live like this."

  "There has to be something in the Original territory that keeps people out."

  Boss glanced over at the other man before turning to glare at a grifter weaving through the other people in Fifth Square, sizing them as potential prey for the last ten minutes. Sometimes those types worked in pairs, out to take what they could get with a game or a deal. Not that it would work. Boss kept his credit taped down, and his patience on a short leash. The boy had no chance of getting anything off him today. Eyeing him, Boss said slowly, "If it is something we can kill, we kill it."

  "Yeah, Boss."

  The boy got the message and moved on. Boss asked Ruck, "Remember those bugs in the asteroid mines? What can be as bad as that? Just need firepower. Weapons we have, ammunition and power packs we are low on."

  Ruck nodded.

  Boss let his hope hang out a little more. After he'd bought his gunboat, he'd stood at the helm high on power and freedom to do as he pleased. The sensation was a craving now. He'd chase it till he died. "We just need a goal. Taking over some helpless little township and living like kings in wine and women and off someone else's hard work sounds like a goal. We can spend a winter there, find all their good credit, and come back in the spring with enough to buy a ship back to the stars."

  "That sounds amazing," Ruck said.

  "It does, doesn't it? You get the information. Find out what we need to do to get to those independent villages. I'm ready to leave these steel cities behind."

  Chapter 1

  Everyone Knows

  There once was a farmer, the father of six sons and a daughter, who went outside on the night of a double red moon. His big sow, Peg, broke out of her pen to get into the garden. Every woman in the township boundaries of Righteous Way knew the rule about going outside under an angry Mother and Father moon, but the men, stubborn in their ways, refused to believe the truth of things. The farmer included.

  A stern man, the farmer had a soft spot for his daughter. Many a dawn found them with their heads pressed together, whispering the stories of the Orki Originals and how their family came to settle the village of Righteous Way. Men and women who paid the price to come down through the mountain pass and to live the 'humble life,' on the edges of the longest freshwater river on the planet.

  Since the first day she could walk, father and daughter toasted bread, cheese, and honey in the early hours of dawn in front of the day's first hearth flames.

  On the day of the two red moons, the farmer was not in his customary place at the table slicing bread when his youngest child, Annabell Roe, who left her bed and went to find him. This was not too strange. Their working farm often called him outside into the dark to take care of trouble.

  When Annabell Roe opened the back door to go to the barn, a black sky with red eyes and a mountain range mustache greeted her. She bit her lip to see the Mother and Father moons low on the horizon. Their faces red and displeased, she hesitated on the step. The air thickened with omen, and she felt a shiver down her spine. But then, the seven-year-old heard a pained moan that sounded like an achy wind, and she ran to find her father, looking for comfort.

  There was no comfort to be found. She discovered the sow loose in the carrot patch and a broken fence behind her. Holding his hands to his head, trying to keep the blood in, her father leaned, crumpled and pale, against the paddock fence.

  By the time the glowing moons faded from red to peach, but before the Child bright sun could be clearly seen, the farmer had fallen asleep, never to wake again.

  With blood on Annabell’s hands from hugging him, as if the celestial spheres reached out and stained her up good with their anger, Mama put her right into the bath. Testing the water, Mama said, "Are you poisoned by the creeping dark? Are you stained? Who, that is human, would refuse clean, when a little water does redeem?"

  Later, in the arms of a friend, Annabell's mother wept over the thought of her seven-year-old, seventh daughter of the seventh son, discovering her father a few hours from his last breath, and the greedy pregnant sow eating up the carrot patch.

  And it was the well-meaning friend who saw the plight of the poor, poor daughter and her beloved father. Farmer, a well-liked councilman, never heeded the red in the sky, the same as every stubborn man. And now, no one could say what would become of their family.

  And it was the friend's child who would see Annabell Roe in school after two missed Mondays and say, consolingly, "How sad you must be, Annabell Roe, Child of Woe."

  And everyone who heard agreed—moon cursed child; how woeful she must be.

  The humble town of Righteous Way remembered the curse and the words. Noticing that Annabell suffered more than a normal amount of woe, they saw grief always somewhere in her train. It was best not to talk too long to such a person. Best not to linger in her company. They remembered every stumble, every wound, every suggestion of sorrow.

  Annabell Roe, the Woman of Woe, lived on a farm a day and a half walk from town. Her life was filled, the town's folk all said, with woe since that day the sow killed her father. When Annabell's mother died in the girl's thirteenth year, the whispers grew louder.

  The wild, cursed motherless seventh daughter, who carried stories in her head about a history that didn't matter, would make no man a safe and decent wife. When she stood in the sun on market day, everyone could see the red stain of her curse in her hair and cheeks.

  It only followed suit that when the native Orki Originals came to town on market day that the girl would receive an offer of marriage. The town of Righteous Way didn't know if they should be scandalized or thankful that it wasn't their daughters who were courted. While her brothers sent the Orki away, the damage was done. Now not only was Annabell Roe a Child of Woe, but she carried the blemis
h of having talked to the brutish, dangerous Orki Warriors.

  No man would want her.

  A fine dowry and generous property eventually improved her tattered reputation. Years after the incident, she took a husband, the friend of one of her brothers. Mark Walcott the Wool Taker's son was doing the esteemed family a favor, the women townsfolk said. Yes, he was thin, quiet, and losing his hair early, but everyone knew he could do better.

  Six years her elder, Mark Walcott fell ill and never recovered. The sisters and mothers of Righteous Proper all expected it to happen. They had done their duty, warned the man, but men never listened properly to the way of things.

  Everyone knew who and what she was. Everyone knew the Child of Woe had become a woman, and to entertain her in any way was to dare her cloud of woe to come visiting. Having come from a big bossy family and having known many 'judgmental' woman, Annabell didn't mind the town's abandonment. Two years and some months ago, after her husband died, even his family members refused to set foot in her house.

  "Mother would want you married," Benjere said as a greeting the night he came to help Annabelle with the young heifer, Daisydoo. The cow had been in labor too long with her calf. Annabell feared she'd lose them both.

  Stubborn chin covered with a beard gone gray, her second oldest brother wore his age well: skin smooth without a single mark of laughter around his eyes or mouth. Hair and an austere diet his sagging jowls.

  Benjere, the brother who lived closest, was the only one to help. Unable to say, "How do you do," without bossing her, the man irritated her nerves to no end. Annabell tried to be grateful for his instruction and his availability to help hold Daisydoo's big brown head.