The Dragon Warrior (Lochguard Highland Dragons 4)

Excerpt:

Chapter One

Taryn Demara stared at the faint blip on the decades-old radar. Each pulse of light made her heart race faster. This is it. Her people might have a chance to survive.

Using every bit of restraint she had, Taryn prevented her voice from sounding too eager as she asked, “Are you sure it’s a spaceship?”

Evaine Benoit, her head of technology, nodded. “Our equipment is outdated, but by the size and movement, it has to be a ship.”

Taryn’s heart beat double-time as she met her friend’s nearly black-eyed gaze. “How long do we have before they reach us?”

“If they maintain their current trajectory, I predict eighteen hours, give or take. It’s more than enough time to get the planet ready.”

“Right,” Taryn said as she stood tall again. “Keep me updated on any changes. If the ship changes course, boost the distress signal.”

Evaine raised her brows. “Are you sure? The device is on its last legs. Any boost in power could cause a malfunction. I’m not sure my team or I can fix it again if that happens.”

She gripped her friend’s shoulder. “After eight years of waiting, I’m willing to risk it. I need that ship to reach Jasvar and send a team down to our planet.”

Otherwise, we’re doomed was left unsaid.

Without another word, Taryn raced out of the aging technology command center and went in search of her best strategist. There was much to do and little time to do it.

Nodding at some of the other members of her settlement as she raced down the corridors carved into the mountainside, Taryn wondered what alien race was inside the ship on the radar. Over the past few hundred years, the various humanoid additions to the once human-only colony had added extra skin tones, from purple to blue to even a shimmery gold. Some races even had slight telepathic abilities that had been passed down to their offspring.

To be honest, Taryn didn’t care what they looked like or what powers they possessed. As long as they were genetically compatible with her people, it meant Taryn and several other women might finally have a chance at a family. The “Jasvar Doom Virus” as they called it, killed off most male embryos in the womb, to the point only one male was born to every five females. Careful genealogical charts had been maintained to keep the gene pool healthy. However, few women were willing to share their partner with others, which meant the male population grew sma

ller by the year.

It didn’t help that Jasvar had been set up as a low-technology colony, which meant they didn’t have the tools necessary to perform the procedures in the old tales of women being impregnated without sex. The technique had been called in-something or other. Taryn couldn’t remember the exact name from her great-grandmother’s stories from her childhood.

Not that it was an option anyway. Jasvar’s technology was a hodgepodge of original technology from the starter colonists and a few gadgets from their conquests and alien additions over the years. It was a miracle any of it still functioned.

The only way to prevent the extinction of her people was to capture and introduce alien males into their society. Whoever had come up with the idea of luring aliens to the planet’s surface and developing the tools necessary to get them to stay had been brilliant. Too bad his or her name had been lost to history.

Regardless of who had come up with the idea, Taryn was damned if she would be the leader to fail the Jasvarian colony. Since the old technology used to put out the distress signals was failing, Taryn had a different sort of plan for the latest alien visitors.

She also wanted their large spaceship and all of its technology.

Of course, her grand plans would be all for nothing if she couldn’t entice and trap the latest aliens first. To do that, she needed to confer with Nova Drakven, her head strategist.

Rounding the last corner, Taryn waltzed into Nova’s office. The woman’s pale blue face met hers. Raising her silver brows, she asked, “Is it true about the ship?”

With a nod, Taryn moved to stand in front of Nova’s desk. “Yes. It should be here in about eighteen hours.”

Nova reached for a file on her desk. “Good. Then I’ll present the plan to the players, and we can wait on standby until we know for sure where the visiting shuttle lands.”

Taryn shook her head and started pacing. “I need you to come up with a new plan, Nova.”

“Why? I’ve tweaked what went wrong last time. We shouldn’t have any problems.”

“It’s not that.” Taryn stopped pacing and met her friend’s gaze. “This time, we need to do more than entice a few males to stay. Our planet was originally slated to be a low-tech colony, but with the problems that arose, that’s no longer an option. We need supplies and knowledge, which means negotiating with the mother ship for their people.”

“Let me get this straight—you want to convince the vastly technologically advanced aliens that we are superior, their crew’s lives are in danger, and that they need to pay a ransom to get them back?”

Taryn grinned. “See, you do understand me.”

Nova sighed. “You have always been crazy and a little reckless.”