Once the scout ships were out of range, I felt Izaac’s shame and heard him whispering in my mind. “You should be able to take from me whenever you have need without hesitation.”
Zared responded, “Patience, brother. Teagan, Cormac searches for you. Jazon is with him. He is drawn to you as Tracy is drawn to olives.”
Chuckling at his joke since we all knew Tracy was an olive hog, I asked, “How much longer before we rendezvous?”
“A few hours. Hold your course and speed. I know your worries. There is no need for them. We are fine. However, the AI was unable to keep its head. It made the mistake of getting too close to Yukihyo. You should have seen the look on Dario’s face when our enraged clan leader sent the robot’s head sailing across the warehouse in which we had been trapped. Dario had grown too accustomed to seeing Yukihyo as a businessman. He now realizes what he had believed to be true was a façade for the feral warrior within.”
I smirked. “He’s seen Yukihyo fight.”
“A reminder never hurts,” Zared answered.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Soft laughter drifted through my mind and then faded.
Pulling the alloy from my pocket, along with my vid-screen which was no longer being scrambled, I analyzed it as thoroughly as I could and encoded my findings, sharing them with my team. “Ross, is it safe to send my report?” Stepping into the cockpit, I showed him my work.
Stayton said, “Watch this,” and showed me how to embed my report within a vid-message to my children in which I told them how much I loved and missed them. I sent it not a moment too soon.
Suddenly, the Constantine loomed before us like a comet hurtling through space. Proximity alarms flashed silent warnings across the control panels in the cockpit. The starship’s speed made any evasive actions we might attempt nothing more than the equivalent of a game of Russian Roulette. We’d survive, or we wouldn’t.
“Thunderdrop! Come!” Clark commanded. He gently grabbed me by the arm and pulled me along. Pushing a button on the hull, a hatch hissed open, and he pushed me and Thunderdrop inside of the escape pod. The stealth ship rumbled and vibrated as the Constantine bore down upon us. Without even wasting time on a goodbye, Clark ejected us.
The escape pod jettisoned away from the stealth vessel with speeds meant to help it survive an explosion. Its trajectory was being manually locked onto the nearest Parvac warship. Fear made my breathing audible to my own ears. Thunderdrop’s claws dug into me, and he wrapped his front legs around my neck.
“It’s going to be okay, baby. Don’t be scared.”
“Chitter.” He called me a fibber. “Clack chitter chitter clack.”
“Yes, I know you’re not stupid. I was just trying to make you feel better.”
“Chirp.”
Fear for Clark and my team made me nauseous. The pod turned just enough to give me a partial view. The Constantine had flown over our stealth ship, come to a stop, opened its flight bay doors, and affixed grapplers to it. She was being hauled inside. I breathed a sigh of relief. Being captured was better than being destroyed. While I’d been thinking of my relationship with Clark as being more like friends with benefits, I’d realized at that moment that he meant far more to me than I’d realized, and I didn’t want to lose him. I didn’t want my team hurt either. They’d become my friends, and I cared about them.
My fear turned to anger. Captain Espanoza was determined to get her hands on the alien alloy. The joke was on her. I had it. I patted my pocket. The boys had been trapped, but Clark had made certain that I wouldn’t be. My feelings of vindication got squashed as soon as I felt them because my pod was suddenly caught in a metal net and dragged into the Constantine’s flight deck by a fighter ship.
“Well, fuck.”
“Chitter.”
It seemed like an hour passed while Thunderdrop and I were left to stew in our anger. Eventually, the netting was removed, and my hatch opened. Captain Espanoza stood in front of it in her Galaxic Militia captain’s uniform.
Smiling far too smugly, she said, “Ensign Probus, welcome aboard.” She put far too much emphasis on my rank.
I realized this was payback. “Captain Espanoza, where is my team, and why have you brought us here against our will?”
Innocently, she said, “I rescued you. The vessel in which you were travelling obviously suffered some malfunction. Why else would you have been ejected in an escape pod? Since its communications were down, its crew didn’t hail us, and it gave off no readings, I could only assume it was in distress.” She knew all too well we’d been hiding from her.
I gave her a slow, sarcastic clapping of my hands. “Well-played, Captain. Now, let us go.”
Her eyes twinkled mischievously at me.
“Chirp! Chitter chirp!” He moved a few of his legs, and I could feel his claws sink through strands of my hair and down to my scalp.
Through the closed flight bay doors, I could see stars streaking by so quickly that they looked like white lines on black paper.
“Ensign Probus, to do such a thing would be in remiss of my duties. How could I in good conscience cast you out into space in such a tiny little damaged vessel? Certainly, now that your curiosity for Luna 241 has been satisfied, you would prefer to return to your own ship. Am I correct in my assumption?”
Glancing over toward our stealth ship, I saw it was being swarmed by security officers. More of them were heading straight for us and my escape pod. “Yes, thank you. Has the debris field been cleared?” Going for vapid, I said, “It was such a big boring mess.”
Her smile said she wasn’t buying my act.
Scowling at a security officer who was motioning for me to move to a safe distance, I took a few steps back. A team of them started dismantling the escape pod. “Hey, that’s my personal property you’re destroying, and there’s nothing wrong with it,” I yelled at the security team. My protestations didn’t have any effect on them.
“Oh, but you’re wrong. The pod is malfunctioning.” Pedantically, she said, “Escape pods are designed to send out a distress beacon. Yours didn’t. I’ve ordered my crew to repair it for you. You should be thanking me. After all, what might have happened to you had I not found you when I did? You could have floated around in space for weeks before anyone found you.”
“My Laconian Imperial Guards would have found me.”
With a smile and a wink, she asked, “How do you think I found you?”
The moment when I had felt something brushing against me before I had reached out to Zared, we had been found by her own Laconian crewmen. Mentally, I kicked myself. A Laconian pilot on deck inclined his head to me. He was a smug fucker, and instinctively I knew he had been the one to thwart our plans. I resisted the urge to flip him off. His smile told me he knew.
“Where is my team?” I asked again.
“Please, allow me to take you to them, but first empty your pockets.” She held a hand out to me, palm up.
“Excuse me?” Anger heated my cheeks.
“I know you have it. Hand it over.”
“Anything I have on me is mine. I’m not handing over anything.” I crossed my arms over my chest.
“Hiss!” Drops of Thunderdrop’s venom hit the decking.
“Tell her, baby.”
As if speaking to a child, she said, “I know you have the alien metal alloy in your pocket. It was on Luna 241, a Galaxic controlled base, and it rightfully belongs to my government, a government you considered to be your own not too long ago. Once, you sought our protection against those whom you now serve.”
All too well I remembered when she had guarded my back on Arachne when I had been terrified of meeting and being kidnapped by Uncle Kagan and Kane. I could see in her eyes that she recalled the same meeting, which now seemed like something from a dream. “I retain dual citizenship. I’m not a traitor either. My team and I need it to complete a training mission. How about this? After we’ve gotten credit, you can have it back.” There was no longer an
y sense in playing dumb. They’d known I had it on me the moment they’d scanned us, and for the Laconian pilot who was leaning against the wall reading my thoughts, I was mostly telling the truth.
“A training mission?” She sounded incredulous. “The piece of metal in your pocket is a clue as to where the hybrids obtained their technology, technology over which disputes almost led us to war. There are far more important issues at stake here than a simple grade for a handful of students. How about I write you a note for your teacher?”
Narrowing my eyes, I said, “If I recall correctly, the Empire wasn’t the aggressor in the unfortunate series of events which unfolded. We did nothing more than prepare to defend ourselves against those who were too hasty to discover for themselves the truth before rushing to act and alienating their allies. You act as though the grade I’m trying to earn is some frivolous fancy, but it’s not. It’s about learning to investigate and uncover the truth for ourselves, something on which the Militia could use a refresher course.” My tone had become clipped, and I realized I sounded like Momma when I was mad.
“Oh, Teagan, I know it must be important to you. They’ve awarded you with the elevated rank of ensign and pander to your ego, but do you truly deserve your rank? Everyone knows you were rejected by the Militia.” Her sympathetic tone bit as deeply as her words. “Too much is at stake here for me to coddle you as the Parvacs do. Give me the alloy.”
I stared into her eyes. She was trying to undermine my self-confidence, but I wasn’t the same frightened girl she had once known, and I had earned my rank. Earning my rank hadn’t been easy, and it had been grudgingly awarded to me and my all female team. However, at that moment, I distinctly felt all of the ranks between an ensign and a captain, knowing my knowledge and skills paled in comparison to hers.
“Technological advancement in the wrong hands is a dangerous mistake and one which I have no intentions of facilitating.” The last thing I wanted was for them to destroy the alloy while testing it, especially when we had learned that it was a lifeform, but I didn’t want her to know it. “You can’t demand anything of me. I have diplomatic immunity. Return my team to me at once. Otherwise, I will have no other recourse than to register an official complaint against the Constantine and her Captain.” There, I thought. Suck on that.
Through the intercom, a male voice announced, “Captain to the bridge.”
“Come with me,” she ordered. Two of her officers accompanied us into the lift. “I can protect you, Teagan.”
“Protect me?”
She glanced from my pocket to my belly. “Yes, you should go to sickbay. It might pose a threat to you and your unborn children.”
I snorted at her. “If it was a threat, it wouldn’t be anywhere near me. Tell me where you’re holding my team, one of whom happens to be my husband and a member of the Imperial family. Oh, wait. Through marriage, Stayton is now my cousin. I hope they haven’t suffered any indignities. It wouldn’t go well for you if they have.”
Captain Espanoza gave the impression of being unaffected by my words. Stepping out onto her bridge, she ordered, “Report.”
Her first officer said, “Parvac warship closing in fast.”
“Hail them,” she ordered while taking her chair.
The viewer activated and Inquisitor Cormac Gordian appeared. His face had all of the emotion of a stone. I knew he saw Thunderdrop and me, but he didn’t take his eyes from Captain Espanoza’s. “Explain to me what possessed you to detain the Princess Probus of Parvac.” His tone and demeanor gave me chills. This wasn’t the male who plied me with fudge and treats. I wondered if that male was real or an illusion. This was Cormac in his true form, the side he kept hidden from me. He was cold, calculating, and murderous.
“Detained? I rescued her and the boys who were in her company.”
Cormac said, “Return them to their vessel and release them.”
She stared back at him. “It would be negligent of me to send them out in a damaged ship.”
Cormac didn’t require any explanation for her ruse. “Now, or we come in after her.”
“And risk a war?” she asked smugly. “You can have them, but we keep the alloy.”
Cormac made a gesture ordering me not to interfere, so I kept my vehement protestations to myself. None of it was worth interstellar war, and I’d learned to trust in the guidance of my Military Advisory Committee, of which Cormac was a member. “Give it to her and dock in my flight bay.”
Defeated, I pulled the metal from my pocket, sadly gazing at its surface. Cormac and Espanoza continued exchanging words. After everything we’d gone through to find it, I was being politically manipulated into relinquishing it. The iridescent surface seemed to shimmer and shift on its own until the shimmer spilled from the black and brown surface and onto the metal of my wedding ring. My eyes widened in shock, but no one on the bridge seemed to have noticed. They were too busy sparring with veiled political threats and outright insults.
“Here. Take it.” I held out the hard won and easily lost metal to her.
Taking it from me, she said, “Stick to your own game. This one is beyond your skill level.”
Angry and insulted, I stepped from her bridge and into the lift, accompanied by two security officers. They took me to the flight bay where the escape pod was being hastily reinstalled in our stealth vessel. I watched Clark and the rest of our team walk toward me from across the deck. They were under heavy guard. We didn’t speak. We didn’t need to. Instead, we boarded our vessel and awaited disembarking orders. When the flight bay doors opened to release us back into the stars, instead of the sight filling me with the usual excitement, all I could do was dwell on all that had occurred and wonder what I could have done differently.
I wasn’t alone in my disappointment. I stood behind Stayton, who sat in the command chair and flew us from the Constantine and into the bay of the larger Parvac warship. Once the outer hull doors had sealed, I allowed my depressed feelings to vanish. Not all was lost. The Militia had the alloy, but we had something far more valuable. We took the lift down and waited while Clark opened the hatch. He offered me his arm. Accepting it, I smiled at Cormac. He had been waiting for us.
“Forgive me, Princess. Had we arrived any sooner, the mission would have been a success.”
Jazon stood beside him and gave me a pointed stare. “Why are you happy all of a sudden?”
Looking around at each of them, I said, “It wasn’t a failure. They have the metal, but it’s worthless. We have what matters. Look.” Taking my hand from my pocket, I showed them my ring. “Our new friend jumped ship and came with us.”
Jazon held my hand and studied the now shimmery metal of my wedding band while reaching out to it with his empathic and telepathic abilities. “Remarkable,” he said in awe.
Cormac asked, “Can you sense its thoughts?” He and the others had crowded closer for a look.
“No, but I can feel it…. Something is there, some little part. It’s not whole. It needs….” Jazon shook his head.
Cormac said, “We need to learn what it is and from whence it came.”
“I’ll report to the medical bay. Where are the others?”
“On their way,” Cormac answered.
“I’m surprised they didn’t beat us here.” Pulling out my vid-screen, I called Eli. He was piloting a stealth ship. Before he could ask, I shook my head. “I’ll tell you about it in person. What happened to all of you?”
“They sent every piece of heavy machinery on Luna 241 to the flight bay and then cut their power, effectively blocking us in.”
Frowning, I said, “It must have been tedious to move all of it out of the way.”
“We decided blasting our way out wouldn’t have been conducive to continued good relations, so yes, it was time-consuming which was the intention of their ploy. Beck out.”
The disappointment in his voice had been clear, and I felt responsible for it.
Into my thoughts, Izaac whispered, “There was nothing
to be done.” His words made me feel a little better, but I had something to prove both to myself and Captain Espanoza.
Cedrenus was vying for a position at my side and was in the process of offering me his arm when Clark grabbed his wrist, spun him out of the way, and took his place. “I’ll walk with my wife to the infirmary,” he said.
Cedrenus backed off, but the look I caught Cormac giving Clark could have frozen a volcano. Thunderdrop jumped from me and ran ahead. Since Parvac warships had uniform designs, he knew exactly where to go. Jazon fell in step behind us.
“How’s Tracy?” I turned my head to look at him.
He was dressed in his uniform and apparently was on duty, guarding me. Not watching where I was going, I stumbled. Catching me, Clark put an arm around my hips. Jazon twirled his finger in the air for me to turn around.
“She’s napping. It’s what you should be doing. Running around a lunar base, being chased by robots, being lowered several feet to the surface, and crawling through service tunnels in your condition? Seriously, Teagan? And they think hybrid Laconians are crazy. Don’t turn around to glare at me. I can sense it from here. All of us saw through your eyes. We don’t need to view it through your suit’s recorder. We can’t help it, and you know it. What were you thinking? Either your husbands or your father needs to give you a reality check. There’s no way I’d ever allow Tracy to run around the way you did.”
“Whatever, Jazon. I’m fine.” Mimicking his voice, I said, “Good job, Teagan. You and Cedrenus located the alien and the metal it had attached itself to. You kept Captain Espanoza from getting her sanctimonious hands on it. Way to go.”
Jazon snorted behind me.
I noticed Clark clenching his jaw and knew what it meant. I whispered, “I know he’s an ass, but no fighting.”
Jazon snorted again.
I’d seen firsthand what he could do to an opponent in a fight, and it wasn’t pretty. Unfortunately, I also knew that Clark had too much pride to back down when he was angry.
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