Dekkir (Galaxy Alien Warriors #1)
Lara Larue
CHAPTER 1 / GRACE
“All right, Grace, you’ve entered the atmosphere. If you check out your left view-screen, you will notice the main continent coming up quickly. You will need to hit the braking jets in sixty seconds. Just keep calm and get ready to go on my mark.”
“‘Keep calm,’ he says.” Cradled in the control chair of my dropship, I hovered my hand over the ignition switch, watching the growing broad swath of green and brown landmass through the view-screen. My heart pounded as I waited. This was my first live drop onto Planet Lyra. My instructor, Chief Science Officer John Stirling, had run me through dozens of simulations; by now, I could do them in my sleep. The difference here was none of the simulations could have killed me. “Ready when you are, Dr. Stirling.” I hope.
“Right, then, here we go. On one. Three . . . two . . . one . . . Go for rockets!”
I hit the switch and felt my stomach lurch. The red edges on the view-screen retreated as the rockets shook the ship around me, easing my catastrophic drop toward the forested land below. Soon, the dropship’s wings would deploy automatically, and I would be able to fly the rest of the way in. Meanwhile, I had to trust the onboard computers to slow my descent enough that I wouldn’t splatter all over the landscape.
It was the most nerve-wracking part of the entire descent: twelve long minutes of sitting there doing nothing, hoping all the calculations the programmers had made back at base were correct. I trusted most of my fellow personnel at Command, but that was hard to remember when I was rocketing toward the surface of a foreign planet.
“Are you still with me, Grace?” Stirling’s voice probed gently, the tiniest touch of concern coloring his tone. John Stirling, the only other human to make contact with the Lyrans, had a talent for putting me at ease. So much so that I had fought a totally inappropriate crush on him for nearly as long as we had been stationed together. Tall, lean, and pale, with white-blond hair and strangely impenetrable blue eyes, he had a velvet voice that soothed me as much as it got my attention.
“Oh, yes, Doctor, sorry about that. Descent rockets appear to be functioning normally. I’m just waiting for the wings to deploy.” I glanced nervously around the tiny cocoon of a cabin. Had I left any of my needed gear behind? Am I really ready for any of this?
“All right, then, we’ve got a little bit of time to go over your orders. I’ll be available to coach you if things get tight down there, but remember the Lyrans don’t trust our technology, so it’s best if they don’t see you talking to your earbud too much.”
That had been the biggest barrier to creating a treaty with the Lyrans: their almost superstitious wariness of our technology. Stirling had warned me that the first two dropships to approach one of their walled towns, known as forts, had been attacked on landing, mistaken for an invasion. Even now, even he had to land well off from any settlements and meet a guide to help him hike to civilization safely. I faced the same as soon as I disembarked.
“Understood, Doctor. Okay, so I’m supposed to meet this Chief Dekkir once I land, right? The briefing sheets Norcross gave me weren’t very complete.”
He snorted. “Well, that’s because it came from Damon bloody Norcross. Everything’s need-to-know with him, and in his mind, nobody needs to know. There are reasons I try to get you your data without his added filters, especially now that he has that grudge against you.”
My lips twisted. Norcross, my immediate superior, was dark-haired and handsome in that plastic way that spoke of a rich family and customized genes. He fancied himself a ladies’ man and had approached me with the most disrespectful case of jungle fever I had ever seen. At this point, I really could go my whole life without ever hearing a white man call me “exotic” again.
I had politely put him off, citing fraternization laws, while my stomach had churned with disgust. He had sulked ever since and kept doing childish things to trip me up—like supplying incomplete briefings on crucial missions. His hope seemed to be I would go directly to him to be filled in, but I always went to Dr. Stirling instead.
“Yeah, well, we may be out by the Crab Nebula right now, but Command rules still apply.”
“Actually, if the lieutenant doesn’t improve his behavior, a little bird may soon whisper in Commander Wickman’s ear.”
“Thanks for that, Doctor.”
“Thanks for what?” came the reply, so smoothly I giggled a little. Wow, that’s not professional. I need to do something to get rid of this crush.
Stirling sobered and went on. “War Chief Dekkir is the high chieftain’s son, Grace, and he is likely to be a little bit brusque until he knows you. They are very suspicious of outsiders, understandable, being that we are the first space-faring race they have ever had contact with.”
“If I were studying some lost Earth tribe instead, I would expect them to be wary at first as well.” Though all the “lost tribes” of Earth were truly lost now. My home planet was struggling along with massive overpopulation, resource depletion, and air that required breathers anywhere outside. Welcome to the twenty-fourth century, where you have to go off-world to see a real forest. Like the shimmering green canopy below me, growing vaster in my view-screens with every second. I would have marveled at its beauty if I weren’t busy hoping I wouldn’t crash into it.