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  The Outcasts

  Sue Jones is a spacebus driver from a nowhere colony. Yearning for adventure, she pilots a shuttle into uncharted regions—and crash-lands in a harsh world. Kara is an alien whose people are Outcasts who have been banished to this world and survive in Rings above the storm-swept surface.

  When Kara rescues her and brings her to the Rings, Sue soon learns that the Outcasts believe humans belong on the surface. As Sue discovers her protector’s secrets, Kara struggles to keep Sue safe and her own feelings at bay. Can love bridge the gap between worlds and heal the deepest of wounds?

  The Outcasts

  Brought to you by

  eBooks from Bold Strokes Books, Inc.

  http://www.boldstrokesbooks.com

  eBooks are not transferable. They cannot be sold, shared or given away as it is an infringement on the copyright of this work.

  Please respect the rights of the author and do not file share.

  The Outcasts

  © 2018 By Alexa Black. All Rights Reserved.

  ISBN 13:978-1-63555-243-0

  This Electronic Book is published by

  Bold Strokes Books, Inc.

  P.O. Box 249

  Valley Falls, NY 12185

  First Edition: July 2018

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

  Credits

  Editor: Cindy Cresap

  Production Design: Susan Ramundo

  Cover Design By Sheri ([email protected])

  By the Author

  Steel and Promise

  The Outcasts

  Acknowledgments

  Thanks to everyone who gave me feedback and ideas, and thanks especially to Theo and Kat for such thorough beta reading. You’re still both wonderful, both at encouraging me and at letting me know when I need to fix something.

  Thanks to Cindy, my editor. Thanks to Sandy for the conversation that led to this book. And, as always, thanks to the rest of the BSB team. Getting to know so many of you has been wonderful.

  Dedication

  To Kat D and Theo T, for sticking with me and my stories.

  Chapter One

  This wasn’t her shuttle.

  Bluish light flooded Sue’s vision, far brighter than the light in her little craft. It stung her eyes, and everything looked blurry anyway. She closed her eyes again.

  She was lying down, on something less than comfortable. Her bad leg ached, and she frowned. Had she injured it again somehow? Had she crashed?

  This couldn’t be her shuttle. She would feel it moving under her.

  I must be on a planet. I must have made it.

  But where?

  She remembered light and sound. One moment she’d been looking at the stars, studying, searching. Cursing herself for a fool. You’re just a spacebus driver. You’ll never find anything new out here. You haven’t even been to the outer colonies.

  The next moment the sky had opened up, a jagged lightning streak across the star-spangled black, and she couldn’t have pulled away even if she’d wanted to.

  “Well, you found something,” she tried to say. It came out as a weak moan.

  She cracked her eyes open again. The cold light stung, but this time she knew it was coming.

  A figure hovered over her, its silhouette dark against the light. Or was it really that color? Aliens could look like anything. She squinted.

  More light, in the wrong places. Streaks of it, across the creature’s figure, as if it made its own light.

  “You are awake,” said a voice, deep and echoing and clearly not human.

  She rubbed her eyes. “Yes, I’m awake.” Well, at least she could talk now. “Where am I?”

  She bit her lip to keep from saying “What are you?” She’d found someone. An alien. She’d gone exploring and found aliens. That was better than whatever she’d hoped for, and she wanted to know everything.

  But she couldn’t just demand they tell her all about themselves, as if they existed just for her to find them. That seemed rude.

  But she did look at the creature. The woman, she corrected herself.

  The alien woman would have towered over Sue even if she hadn’t been lying on some strange cot. But she was muscular too, broad-framed like an athlete. Or a soldier. Did these aliens like strangers?

  Sue didn’t know yet. But this one wasn’t threatening. That was a start. Athlete, then. Hadn’t athletes competed naked, somewhere in the far-off history of Earth?

  Well, this alien looked like that. Right down to the naked.

  She looked enough like a human woman that Sue couldn’t help but stare. She blinked, trying to clear her head again.

  She’d been right. She hadn’t just seen a dark shape against the light. The woman’s skin wasn’t black but gray, a deep, rich charcoal. The warmer light she’d seen came from the woman’s body too, bright glowing streaks of light crossing her body, almost like molten cracks in stone. One tore across the right side of her chin, like an illuminated scar.

  Sue stared at them. Some kind of bioluminescence, she guessed. But she couldn’t help but wonder just what was under this creature’s skin.

  Something shimmered around the alien’s body, as if the light of the room had shifted. Shadows settled around her shoulders. Was that just this room, or just that Sue was groggy, or something else? Parts of the alien gave off light. Could parts of her also…give off darkness? It looked that way to Sue. The shadows followed her visitor around. Moved when she moved.

  That was too weird to reason out right now, and staring still hurt Sue’s eyes, so she looked up at the alien’s face again. Her eyes were the same color as her scars, a fiery yellow. They gleamed, like the scars did. The alien had a long face, with sculpted cheekbones. Not just high, but like someone had carved them out of rock. Or whatever this woman’s skin was made of.

  She had horns on her head, two of them, curling up from her forehead.

  Those looked familiar. Too familiar. Like something out of a story. Aliens should look weirder than that. Especially aliens from out past the Rim.

  “Drink this,” the alien said. Her teeth were sharp, and Sue caught a glimpse of gold when her lips moved. Did the inside of her mouth glow too?

  Nothing else. No answer to Sue’s question about where the hell this planet was. Not even a greeting.

  Well, Sue had forgotten hello too. So she couldn’t hold it against her hostess.

  And that wasn’t the only strange thing.

  Sue looked down at the alien’s hands. She held out a black bowl. The liquid inside glowed, a cool blue that matched the light of the room.

  Sue reached out for it. It felt cool to the touch.

  Pure curiosity made her press it to her lips. It smelled bracing, like mint.

  She stopped just before she opened her mouth. Did aliens even know what humans ate?

  “I don’t know what this is.” Sue looked down, apologetic.

  “It will nourish you,” the alien replied.

  Sue watched her lips move, saw that gold shimmer again when she opened her mouth. What the hell are you made of?

  But the alien was waiting for her to try the—drink? Soup? Her hand twitched with impatience, and Sue saw that her fingers ended in sharp claws.

  “Bottoms up,” she muttered. She’d gone looking for aliens, and now she’d found them. And this one was trying to take care of her. Whatever that meant, it was better than several alternatives.

  She might as well see where this would take her.
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  The liquid tasted like she’d expected, cool and minty. A tingling spread through her sore leg, a pleasant chill that numbed its ache.

  She took another careful sip. If this was meant to kill the pain, did the alien know how much of it a human needed?

  The cool feeling changed, as though the liquid were warming in her mouth or in her body. The chill became a faint heat, and her tight muscles began to relax.

  The alien smiled. Or smirked. Sue couldn’t tell quite well enough to read her body language.

  “Thank you.” Sue tipped the last of the liquid into her mouth. The warm feeling grew, a bright fire under her skin. Intense enough to be distracting, especially with a naked alien standing right in front of her. It felt almost like desire, and Sue blinked to keep herself from staring.

  If the alien noticed, she didn’t let on. “Now. What is your name?”

  Well, if the alien wanted Sue’s name, maybe she’d tell Sue hers. “Just my name? Not where I’m from?”

  “I know where humans come from.”

  Oh, you do? Good, because I have no idea where I am right now. “Sue Jones.”

  She offered her hand to shake. If the alien knew about humans, she might know about that. And looked a lot like a human, at least for the moment. Maybe they had some other things in common, too.

  The alien didn’t take her hand. She nodded instead. “Kara.”

  “Well, thank you, Kara. This”—she tilted her head at the empty bowl—“is it medicine, or food?”

  “You are not seriously injured.”

  “Okay. Food, then. This food was great. It really helped.”

  “But it should also ease whatever pain you might feel.”

  “Yeah. Yeah, it did. Thanks.”

  Kara didn’t answer that. She just stared down at Sue. The shadows danced around her again, a little swirl just past her back.

  That’s not the lights in this room, is it?

  She looked around. The room was plain, as was the cot she lay on. But behind her stood a flat computer screen, readings scrolling across it in blue glyphs Sue didn’t recognize. A wavy line appeared and disappeared. A graph of her vitals?

  That would make this a medical room of some kind. Which would make sense, after a crash. But what about this alien? Was she something like a nurse, or just especially nice to alien visitors who got stuck in storms that might be wormholes?

  Sue chewed her lip and stared at the golden lines running over Kara’s body. Even if these aliens went everywhere naked, she doubted that doctors and nurses would be so casual about treating aliens.

  Unless they knew humans well enough to know they weren’t a danger.

  She looked at Kara; Kara looked at her. Neither spoke.

  Sue swallowed hard. If she wanted to know, she’d have to ask. “Where am I?”

  “The Ring. Around the World of Flame.”

  “What? Where is that? I don’t understand. My ship was—”

  “Caught, yes. And brought here.”

  “Right. But where is here?”

  Kara’s lips closed. No hint of light shone through them.

  “Please. I appreciate you taking care of me. And I’d love to look around a while, now that I’m here.” Was that too forward? Maybe it was. But she’d zoomed off in an unauthorized shuttle to get here, after all.

  The shadows around Kara swirled again, and her eyes glowed a bright yellow. “You should rest.”

  Sue sighed. She’d found the aliens, and all they wanted her to do was lie down? “I’m sure you’re right. But I need to know where I am, so I can eventually get home.”

  Kara looked at her for a long moment. That little smirky smile disappeared, and Sue shivered. Kara had looked stern before, and she hadn’t exactly been friendly. But she’d looked like she was trying to help, at least.

  This was different. That was the wrong question, wasn’t it?

  “I do not know,” Kara said and turned away.

  Sue saw a flare of shadow over Kara’s back, and through it the glow of two massive scars.

  What are you?

  Chapter Two

  Sue looked around her little room. It was plain, with smooth white walls, blue light shining from fixtures on the ceiling and walls. She had her small cot to lie on, a mirror across from it, a small cabinet where she could put her few possessions. Glyphs scrolled across a screen behind it, but Sue couldn’t tell if it was a videoscreen with channels she hadn’t figured out how to change, or a hospital room’s record of her own vitals, or both. A small stall had been cut into one corner of the room, with a toilet and a space to shower.

  But nowhere to wash her laundry. She’d have to ask about that, that and clothes to wear. She didn’t feel terribly dirty yet, not when she’d just gotten to some strange alien world. But one shirt and pair of pants—and one set of underwear—would get dirty fast. And she didn’t think the aliens wore clothes.

  Which was a bit awkward. But there wasn’t much she could do about it for the moment.

  And whoever her benefactor had been, Kara seemed to be the only alien who bothered with humans. She’d called out to some of them. They’d turned their horned heads, looked at her a moment, and stalked off like she’d insulted them.

  And even Kara had been cold. She hadn’t introduced herself, not right away. Just made sure Sue was drinking her juice or whatever it was, and only introduced herself after long moments.

  You’re not like the others, are you?

  Too many mysteries. Sue pulled out her small tablet and turned it on. She doubted it would receive anything from home. She didn’t even know how far away the colonies were, much less how far they could transmit data.

  And it was stormy tonight. Today? Whichever. Sue could hear the rumble of thunder outside somewhere. Even if she wasn’t far away, that could mean she wouldn’t get a signal either.

  Pointless, then. But there were riots going on back in her colony. She closed her eyes and could see the fire, scorched on the back of her eyelids. What was happening back home?

  She exhaled hard. She’d stolen the damn shuttle to get away from the flames and the fighting. And it felt good to be here, in a pristine little room, cleaner than Sue had been in years. Drinking strange alien soup that nourished her better than the swill at home. Curling up on a cot that didn’t have any holes.

  It was almost a relief to be bored.

  Almost. She blinked down at the tablet.

  Images and glyphs appeared on the screen, but when she tapped her fingers to them, nothing happened. Error messages blinked, filling the display, generic little messages about not finding any signals.

  Yeah. Don’t vanish through random wormholes. Sue shrugged and tossed the device onto a little table near her cot, more forcefully than she meant to.

  Kara had taken the shadows with her. The room was even duller now, the lights searingly bright, with no swirl of light and shade. How had Kara done that?

  She’d caught a glimpse of an answer when Kara walked away. Those scars on her back, between her shoulder blades. Golden gouges deep in them, like the lines on her skin.

  But too big, too thick. Not like her bright streaks. Lumpy and misshapen, the light in them pulsing too slowly. They looked like they hurt. Or like they had hurt, a long time ago.

  And the shadows had curled around her from there.

  Sue shuddered. Did that mean all of Kara’s streaks were scars?

  She curled up on the alien cot and tried to sleep.

  * * *

  “Come with me.”

  Sue blinked. Come with you? It took you forever to get to your name.

  This time her vision cleared right away. Either she felt better, or that blue stuff was impressive.

  But she found herself staring at Kara’s chest, at the rough stony texture, the light inside the scars. She hurried to sit up and look anywhere else. Being rude right when Kara had offered something like that would be a disaster.

  “You wished to see our world, did you not?”

>   Sue sprang up, forgetting the ache in her leg. This was too good to be true. “Yes!”

  “Then come.”

  Sue patted down her clothes and tried her best to smooth out wrinkles in the fabric. She hadn’t showered yet, just poked at her tablet and slept, and these aliens all looked so clean. Did they even get dirty?

  Compared to them, she would’ve been a mess even if she had managed a shower.

  Hi, I’m Sue. A sweaty short little human with a bum leg who got lost and still isn’t quite sure how. Glad to make your acquaintance. So what do you think of our species so far?

  Kara, for her part, still wasn’t saying much. She just walked ahead of Sue with precise, measured strides, too long for Sue to keep up easily.

  Especially with the leg. The miracle meals helped, whatever they were. But pain happened sometimes, especially after you’d been reconstructed. The doctors were good at what they did, but they weren’t Mother Nature. Especially if you were destined to be something like a spacebus driver.

  Sue bit her lip and fought to keep up. She’d wanted to be a starfighter pilot once. Before she’d realized the military took people who hadn’t needed rearranging to move right. Once she had realized it, she’d almost gone crazy. If she was just going to sit in a cockpit most of the time anyway, what did she need a perfect leg for?

  Kara led her into a narrow little hall. All around them rose glass windows, slanting from the floor to a high ceiling. Sue rushed to one, eager to see anything at all.

  There wasn’t much nearby. Just other corridors, like this one, with a few taller towers that looked like the building she’d just come out of.

  But beyond them stood high halls, tubes that gleamed with light. People who passed in and out of them, talking and laughing. Their voices sounded hollow, like Kara’s, but they didn’t seem solemn. Others inside greeted them. She couldn’t tell what anyone was saying, but she stretched out a hand, like a curious child.