Lion Man's Captive by Kaitlyn O'Connor (read full novel .txt) 📕

Aidan wrestled with the impulse to becompletely honest and the certainty that the truth would not makeher happy or particularly cooperative. “Still on. Property of cops… or High Council. Uncertain. But no mine. I no can turnoff.”

Anya studied his earnest expression forseveral moments, charmed in spite of every effort to disregard anyappreciation. The plain fact was, though, that she couldn’t helpbut think his efforts to speak English were ‘cute’.

Because he was cute and she thought hewas sexy as hell.

She needed her headexamined.

It was just plainwrong, on so many levels,to find him so attractive on so many levels!

She was sure it was.

Dismissing those thoughtswith an effort, she turned to glare at the hovering camera/robotthingy, holding the coverlet a little closer. “If you don’t fuckingmind I’d like a little damned privacy,” she growled.“I haven’t doneanything even if he has!”

Aidan sent her an indignant look—whichshe ignored. Getting to her feet with an effort, she jerked thecoverlet off of Aidan, wrapped it around herself, and lookedaround. “I need a bathroom.”

“Ship facilities arethrough the cabin door, down the corridor two meters, and thenthrough the door at the right hand side of thecorridor.”

The voice came out of nowhere and spokeEnglish way better than poor Aidan—English minus the heavy, awkwardaccent. It wasn’t exactly a pleasant surprise to discover yetanother ‘intruder’ although Anya had decided even before she got aresponse that it must have been an onboard computer that hadanswered her question. “Who are you?”

“AI unit 6194,” thecomputer responded.

Anya was a little takenaback even though she’d thought it must be a computer—mostlybecause it seemed to respond to her. Of course AI units—computers were designedto seem as if they were responding, or at least she’d alwaysthought so. “You’re a computer?” she said doubtfully.

“With AI.”

“I got that. How come youcan speak English better than Aidan?”

There was a significant pause. “Becausehe is a biological unit and must learn as a biological unitdoes.”

Irritation flickered through Anya.Maybe she was wrong, but it seemed to her that the uppity computerhad a superiority complex. “I meant how did you learnEnglish?”

“I accessed the informationavailable through your technology. It seemed imperative to know howto communicate once I ascertained that the object which caused thedamage to the ship was a manmade satellite indicating atechnologically advanced civilization. The language is similar inmany aspects to languages on the Grinderian home world.”

Anya felt her heart sink. “Technologythat’s gone now,” she said flatly. She didn’t even want to thinkabout what the world was going to be like now that they’d lost somany of the things everybody depended upon. No doubt it was goingto be a great deal cleaner without cars and factories to polluteeverything but how were people going to get to work? And what werethey going to do if they didn’t have a job to go to anymore becausethe f’ing building had gotten eaten by nanites?

“Not entirely and theGrinderians fully intend to restore what they inadvertentlydestroyed.”

She’d believe that when she saw it!Shaking her head, she followed the directions the computer hadgiven her and found the facilities. A hot bath and the discovery ofclothing—even though it was clothing that didn’t fit all thatwell—went a long way toward restoring her equilibrium. Shediscovered when she left the bath that the smell of food was in theair and her cup runneth over with joy and gratitude. Thank god forcivilization!

Aidan eyed her somewhat warily when shereached the kitchen/dining area, having followed hernose.

She didn’t have aclue of what was on theplate that Aidan handed her—and she was pretty sure she didn’treally want toknow—but it smelled wonderful. It was hot. And it tasted like thefood of the gods. She hoped it wouldn’t kill her, but she thoughtshe would die happy if it did.

Days without anything but a few bites of those horrible survivalbars!

That thought abruptlyproduced a happy one—she bet she’d lost pounds!

Of course her scales probably weren’tthere anymore to tell her that—because her apartment probablywasn’t or her clothes ….

When she’d finished eating,she settled back to try to translate the full story from Aidan—whocouldn’t speak as well as the AI bitch but knew the story a lotbetter. Of course the computer wasable to set forth the plans the Grinderians hadcome up with as restitution for their mistake.

By the time she had the entire storyshe was feeling a lot more hopeful. Assuming, naturally, that theGrinderians were sincere—and she didn’t see any reason to believethey weren’t. After all, they hadn’t been compelled by anythingmore than their own integrity to offer restitution!

They were offering toreplace everything they’d ‘inadvertently’ destroyed, though, andnot only did that mean fixing things back the way they were, itmeant better thanbefore because it would all be new! Beyond that, they’d confessedthat they’d terra-formed both Mars and Venus with theterra-formers, which meant bothof them would be habitable soon if they weren’talready! All they wanted was a treaty that would allow them to putcolonies of their own on the three planets ….

Well people might be hard to convinceabout allowing a colony of Grinderians to move in on theirterritory/backyard, but, really, it was a hell of a trade off! Sothey’d lose a little real estate. They’d be gaining a hell of a lotmore.

Convincing people to accept the termsof the treaty, Anya was sure, wasn’t going to be easy.

Who was she kidding?The people weren’tgoing to get a say in it at all! The government would make all thedecisions for them—probably in favor of the treaty for economicreasons and also because they would have to know that not onlywould it beat war, but humans probably would lose any war theystarted with the Grinderians.

To her thinking, though, it could turnout to be the best thing that had happened to humans in a very longtime if they could just be convinced to see it that way.

“Flyers!”

Aidan looked at her blankly and thenconsulted his computer and then looked at her blankly again.“Flywers?”

“Not flowers ….”

He frowned. “No say fl-ow-rs. Say …ting you say.”

Anya thought about it. “Actually thatisn’t that bad an idea. I mean women, at least, would probably bewon over by that kind of gesture, but I don’t