The Lereni Trade Read Online Free PDF Page B

before.
    Was he? She had hardly known him for a
day.
    "Can we start down there? I've seen
enough of this area." And of his crewmates, but she kept that
thought to herself.
    Torik moved away to give her a clear
path to the steps into the hold.
    She took the invitation and climbed
down into the ominous near darkness full of crates and boxes and
places for things to hide. In that, she was glad not to have
wandered alone to be discovered by some strange mutant space rat
hiding in their hold.
    He followed her and touched a control
pad at the wall. Lights brightened around them, revealing the scene
from yesterday when she was brought on board.
    "The computer will switch and they
will hear." The voice of the translator came from a speaker
nearby.
    She looked up at the tall alien next
to her. "Could you teach me your language?"
    "That will take time."
    "And what else can I do? How long will
I be here?"
    Muscles flexed in his cheeks and his
gaze flicked to her but mostly stared away, an unfocused look in
those inhuman eyes.
    "A few days," he finally
said.
    "Then what?"
    "You will learn."
    She supposed it was the best answer
she would get from him, but he'd given her a piece she didn't have
previously.
    "And what else am I supposed to do?
I'll be bored."
    Torik glanced up the stairs for a
moment and returned his attention to her with a sigh. A second
later, he reached towards the panel next to the steps.
    The words that came from him were not
translated.
     

Chapter 5
     
     
    After a tentative first few dozen
words, Torik relaxed into a teaching mode that made the rest
easy.
    Krissa soon had a basic working
vocabulary that she reiterated at every opportunity in her tour
through the hold and into the engine section of the ship with what
seemed to be a large bundle of thick tubes between two towers of
light rising high to the ceiling past what would have been the
upper deck.
    And Torik seemed to enjoy being able
to speak to her without the computer. He spoke slowly, giving her a
chance to incorporate the different forms of verbs and nouns and
some of the phrases. Although she didn't understand the details of
the engines, she at least knew the words in Lereni that he used to
describe them, helping her with phonetics and understanding the
patterns to begin unraveling the complete language.
    In the midst of her language lesson,
they stood for a long while in the short corridor between the hold
and engine chamber, next to the break in the wall for the entrance
ramp.
    Only when one of the others appeared
from the maze of storage containers in the hold did they pause long
enough for her to realize she was hungry again. It had been hours
since her meal, but she was trying to avoid the awful food
packs.
    "What are you doing?" The other looked
from Torik to her and back.
    "Teaching."
    The air thickened with threat around
the crewmate, who eyed her darkly. He snatched Torik by his armor
to slam him into the bulkhead. His words growled in anger such that
Krissa couldn't make them out with her limited
understanding.
    She didn't have to. The way he
attacked Torik and pinned him was enough to understand that they
didn't like what Torik had done. They wanted to hide something. Her
knowledge was a threat.
    "It was necessary," Torik
objected.
    "And when she turns on us?"
    "Wait." Krissa grabbed the arm of the
one pinning Torik to the wall. "He didn't—"
    In a flash, the alien whipped his arm
aside as if spring-loaded. She slammed into the wall with a clunk
that rang through her head and body and darkened the
world.
     
    * * *
     
    Damn him!
    In a moment of panic and rage induced
strength, Torik tore free of Korr's grasp and dropped to his knees
by the unconscious figure. After a brief search, he found a pulse
on the human form and turned to Korr looming over him.
    "You could have killed her! The Tah'Na
will not negotiate if she's dead." The growl of anger in his voice
was barely restrained.
    "You have jeopardized us all," Korr
said from behind. "She