They want to save the world—starting with each other.
The Dragon’s Bidding, Book 1
Commander Kimber FitzWarren is running on borrowed time. The cybernetic augmentations that give her superhuman strength and speed have also shortened her life. The success of her next mission is imperative, not only to save her Empire, but because this operation could be her last.
She and a cabal of other idealistic officers are plotting to topple the corrupt Imperial government. The key to placing missing military legend Arianne Ransahov on the throne lies with the one man who can find her, mercenary Wolf Youngblood.
Having just survived an Imperial assassination attempt, Wolf is understandably on edge when Fitz shows up in his bedroom at 0-dark-30. Except she isn’t there to kill him, but to plead for his help. Help he’s reluctant to give—until another assassin pushes the issue.
Pursued by Imperial forces, left with no one to depend on but each other, a bond begins to form that even their secrets can’t destroy. But before they can explore what’s left of their future, they have to survive the mission.
Warning: Space is no place to go it alone. We recommend taking along a telepathic cat, an immortal mercenary, and a cybernetically augmented Imperial SpecOps agent. You never know what kind of trouble you’ll run into…
A Hero for the Empire
Christina Westcott
Dedication
To Barbara, best friend and sister, who always had to read those terrible first drafts of my crazy stories, and to Linnea, Andrea, Rhonda, Lynn and all the SWFRWs who offered their help and support during this book’s long literary pregnancy. Last, and certainly not least, to my feline office staff—Gryphon, Kimber, Loki and Odin—who all, in one way or another, made a cameo appearance in the book.
To Do The Dragon’s Bidding. Military. (Late Scyran Empire—532 to 893 ER)
(1) To pledge your life and honor to the Empire. The reference was to a soldier’s oath of allegiance to the Imperial Seal which bore the image of a rearing quolla—a creature resembling a mythological First World Dragon.
(2) To offer blind obedience. Often derisive.
Chapter One
Nothing focused your attention like knowing you were dying. Commander Kimber FitzWarren felt her days slipping away like the mission clock counting down in the corner of her inhead display. She sucked in a lungful of humid night air. This was only a field op, like dozens she’d worked in her career. But the future of the entire Empire didn’t hang on any of those. She shook her head. Concentrate.
Across the quadrangle stood the headquarters of the Gold Dragons Private Military Corporation. She was behind schedule, should already be on its rooftop amid the jumble of antennas and comlink towers. A scan of the open area in night vision and infrared found it empty, but before she could launch across it at hyperkinetic speed, her augmented hearing identified the sound of footsteps running in her direction.
She jerked back into the shadows of the alleyway, hugging the plastcrete wall. Her camosuit blended her shape into the background, rendering her all but invisible. The uniform hid her thermal signature as well, but did so by keeping all that heat inside. Sweat ran in rivulets along her ribs and plastered her undershirt to her back.
No alarm sounded, but a man loped into view, jogging with the economy of movement common to long distance runners. He was tall, with a whipcord lean build and broad shoulders. A thick braid of flaxen hair trailed down his back, pointing to one of the finest butts she’d ever seen.
Her threat assessment computer fed her details on the impressive array of weaponry he carried. Under his right arm, holstered for a left-handed draw, he wore one of those new Acton Mk IV pistols, the ones with settings that went from stun to slice-and-dice. There was a knife in the back of his belt, another in his boot. An old slug thrower hung low on his thigh. Those weapons had fallen out of fashion before Fitz was born, so ammunition must be expensive and hard to get. The pistols were loud and kicked like an arkobeast, but for sheer stopping power, nothing could beat them. A slug thrower could stop an augmented agent charging at hyperkinetic speed dead in her tracks. That thought made the sweat trickling down the small of her back turn icy.
Why did he feel he needed to carry enough firepower to start a small war just to take an early morning jog? The perimeter of this base was nearly impenetrable. She’d spend most of the night slogging around in the jungle testing its security, until she found the one tiny flaw that allowed her to slip inside undetected. She’d best make a point of avoiding Mr. Great-Butt-Armed-To-The-Teeth, or this mission could go out the airlock real fast.
Behind her, the clatter of falling boxes sounded, punctuated by a muffled squawk. The jogger slid to a stop. He turned to peer into the darkness, his head cocked to hear every sound, his eyes shifting to catch the slightest movement.
Another box hit the ground, its contents scattering in a metallic crash. He stepped to the edge of the walkway, so close she caught the scent of male sweat, with an undertone of woodsy soap and a hint of gun oil.
As long as she didn’t move, he couldn’t see her, wouldn’t know she was there. Not unless he touched her. Fitz held her breath and tried to sink into the plastcrete of the wall at her back. Her telescopic augs zoomed in on his face. Worry lines creased his forehead as his eyes searched the darkness. Then he turned and stared at her.
Impossible. He can’t see me. Her heartbeat thundered in her ears, so loud he must have heard it. Beneath the hood of the camosuit, sweat poured down her face, stinging her eyes. She blinked it away. All her combat systems went active. She could overpower him and escape, but her orders were to avoid all contact. Except for Youngblood.
She zoomed in on his blue eyes, alert for the second he decided to attack. The night had dilated his pupils until they were black with only the thinnest ring of color, reminding her of the luminous azure arc of a planet’s atmosphere seen against space. And those eyes were just as cold as that airless region. His face was angular with a long straight nose, square jaw and the ghost of a cleft bisecting his chin. All in all, too handsome a face for a hired killer. He must be new to this mercenary gig. If he survived a few years, he’d look like the other mercs she’d tangled with—like a tank had backed over his face.
A cacophony of squalls erupted behind her, reaching a crescendo as two small creatures exploded out of the alley and raced across the field. The jogger whirled to follow the pair, his elbow sweeping past her jaw. She twitched her head to the side to avoid getting slugged.
Tension flowed out of his body, and he scrubbed his hands over his face, walking away, moving quicker with each step until he was running again.
Her camouflage had held up, but not for much longer. The explosive appearance of the two rutting creatures had saved her butt, so she sent a silent thank you winging after them, glad someone was enjoying the night.
Fitz huffed out a breath. Her muscles had stiffened, and her knees ached in an old familiar pain. As she dialed up another hit of painkiller from her onboard pharmacopeia, the computer warned she’d already exceeded her recommended daily dosage. She ignored it. The steady ticking of the mission clock took precedence. Time to kick up the pace. She flashed into motion, crossing the open area in a blur of augmented speed.
A set of gecko pads allowed her to scramble up the plastcrete outer wall on the headquarters building. She rolled over the parapet and crouched in the steel forest of stanchions and girders, listening, but only the drone of electronics and insects marred the stillness.
She padded to t
he hatch of environmental maintenance. Gaining entrance should be as easy as syncing into the mercs’ security system, but she didn’t want to leave any trace of her incursion. The base had once been the Ishtok Expeditionary Forces Post, abandoned years ago by the Empire when they pulled out of the Midworlds. SpecOps maintained back door codes to all Imperial installations so their operatives could appear anytime, anywhere, as if by magic. After a couple of decades in private hands those codes might be gone, but it was worth a try.
No response.
Fitz cursed, watching the seconds click away.
Youngblood might have cleaned out all their private codes, but she knew one fact he didn’t. A civilian contractor who serviced the equipment embedded their own codes to give their repair people easier access. That particular screw-up came to light only in the past few years, long after Youngblood had left the Empire. Now, if he hadn’t accidently stumbled across the files…
She punched in the sequence.
The door opened.
Fitz located the surveillance camera above the door and extracted a slender plastic tube from her pocket, twisted it and shook it to mix the nanos with the polymer gel. She squeezed the nano-glop onto her glove and coated the lens with the thick gray goo, momentarily blinding it. The mixture would go inert in two minutes, the nanos dissolving the molecular bonds of the gel, reducing it to a harmless dust that the cleaning-bots would sweep away, leaving no trace. If the techs in surveillance noticed a monitor was offline, it would be back before they had time to do anything about it.
She slipped inside.
Administration was on the fourth floor with the offices arrayed in a crescent behind the watch room and the personal quarters of the command staff beyond that. A single corridor led to the admin suite from the lift, but behind its armored walls lurked enough firepower to deter the most determined of assaults. Luckily, she had another way in.
At the next level down, she located the maintenance hatch for the AC ducts. The opening appeared too small for even her petite frame, which was why she’d picked it. No one would expect anything larger than a mistcat to slither through that space.
Before she’d left on the mission, she’d checked the environmental system specifications. And checked them again. The duct was large enough. She even built a mock-up and practiced sliding through it, but what seemed simple in her brightly lit quarters was one thing. Crawling down a long claustrophobic tunnel in the ceiling of the merc’s base was something else entirely. Fitz wiped sweaty palms on her trousers and wormed through the hatch, pulling the door closed. Her shoulders scraped the sides of the duct as she inched her way along on toes, knees and elbows, keeping her eyes fixed on the defused glow ahead.
The barred patch of light streaming in through the grillwork came from the watch room. Two people sat behind the long curved desk and a third, a guard judging by the pulse-rifle over her shoulder, punched up a cup of coffee from the processor. While the guard’s back was turned, Fitz wiggled silently past.
At the next junction, she turned right. Her data files showed this had been the base commander’s quarters, the largest apartment in the complex. She felt certain those would be Colonel Youngblood’s private quarters, where she and the old reprobate would have their little tête-à-tête.
Nothing said you were going to have a bad day like a SpecOps agent sitting in your bedroom when you woke up in the morning. The old joke brought a silent chuckle.
The next room was dark, but the glow of the kitchenette’s ready lamps supplied all the light her night vision needed to tell it was empty. Only a large black cat sprawled belly-up on the sofa, white paws folded over its rotund middle. A further scan revealed no visible surveillance equipment, and she detected no sounds of breathing, no rustle of clothing, so she swung back the vent cover and slid out.
Fitz padded to the bedroom door, alert for any sounds of movement. Youngblood must still be asleep. As she reached for the door’s controls, her hand froze. Someone was behind her. Her systems hadn’t picked up any errant sounds, out of place smells, detected no movement in her periphery, but none the less, she knew something was there. The pressure of its gaze thrummed along every nerve. She blurred around, dropping into a crouch, but the room remained as dark, quiet and empty as before. No, not quite. The cat sat at her feet, watching her with wide green eyes, apparently having no trouble seeing her despite the camosuit.
Fitz bent to scratch behind its ears, her touch eliciting a throaty purr. As the cat stood to butt its head against her hand, she noticed there was no tail, only a comical puff of fur on its behind. She scooped the cat up, burying her face in its thick black coat, savoring its warmth. Its tongue rasped her cheek. In the back of her mind, the purr felt like a warm engine running deep inside her, and for long seconds, only that cocoon of pleasure mattered.
There had been cats roaming the back alleys of the Warren with her as a child, but those creatures, like her, had been lean and hungry. This cat was soft, clean and well fed, perhaps a little too well fed. The cat hissed and struggled out of her grip, padding back to the sofa. The comfortable sensations inside her head vanished as her hyper-awareness snapped back with a jolt.
What just happened? She’d faced down spies and assassins, but a kitty cat made her lose focus?
Fitz shook her head, palmed the door’s release and slipped inside. The bed was empty, coverings folded and tucked into place with military precision. An infrared scan revealed no heat residue from recent use. A further search of the room and its adjoining freshener turned up no trace of the mercenary. She’d been certain these were Youngblood’s quarters, so where was the old goat?
She hated going on a mission with less than perfect intel, but even with her best hackers on the job, she couldn’t build much of a dossier on the elusive expat. Youngblood’s personnel records hadn’t been sanitized. They were simply missing. According to Arachne, Fleet’s main computer, Wolfgang Amadeus Youngblood had never existed.
From the other room, she heard the outer door open, then a snatch of laughter and mumbled conversation. Light steps crossed the carpet, followed by the electronic beeps of the processor, revealing that the newcomer had moved into the kitchenette. The unit dispensed its order—coffee with cream and sugar, lots of cream and sugar, her olfactory augs told her.
Fitz flattened against the wall, her camosuit blending into the pattern of the wall coverings. All her combat systems kicked into hot standby, ready to explode into HK activity. Heart rate and respiration increased, hearing became more sensitive, more selective, and her pupils dilated to take in every bit of input possible.
The door opened, and a tall figure strode through.
“Lights, low,” a masculine voice said.
She squeezed her eyes closed, quickly ratcheting her night vision down to keep from being blinded. The now familiar scent of woodsy soap and gun oil registered on her olfactory systems.
The jogger.
He placed his coffee cup on the night stand, stripped off the heavy slug thrower and dropped it on the bed. The cat jumped up, sat next to the weapon and turned to stare directly at her. Fitz didn’t dare move, even to lick away the beads of sweat popping out on her upper lip. In a lighted environment her shadow would betray her presence if she so much as twitched.
The man’s gaze cut to the cat. “What the bloody hell?”
He spun, pulling the pistol from his shoulder holster. The whine of the weapon powering up cut through Fitz’s augmented hearing like a buzz saw. She jinked to the left, but the stun beam washed over her side, driving a thousand needles of pain into her arm and leg. Only her sudden leap had disrupted his aim, saving her from a direct hit. Her pharmacopeia pumped a cocktail of stimulants, pain killers and neurotransmitters into her blood stream, but she couldn’t move quickly enough to evade him. His weight plowed into her, clumsy at first, grappling with her only by touch, then his arm tightened around her throat. She tried
to flip him over her shoulder, but he kicked her feet out from under her.
Her consciousness, accelerated by the chemical brew coursing through her blood, dragged the world into a twisted slow motion. Time distorted as she fell, expanding until she seemed to be drifting in zero gravity, giving Fitz ample time to wonder how this operation had gone to hell so quickly. In the last second, reality returned to its breakneck pace and they slammed to the floor together.
Chapter Two
Her attacker’s grip constricted on her throat, surprisingly strong for a Normal. He knew her weakness; even augies needed to breathe. She smashed her elbow into his side, driving a hiss of pain from him. Her vision collapsed to a gray tunnel, the characters of her inhead display receding down it until they were smears of blue light, and a roar like a hull breach filled her ears. She had only seconds left.
He ripped off her hood, pulling out a handful of hair with it. His fingers slid up her neck to the housing at the base of her skull. If he pulled her spike, she’d lose all her augs…
The normally faint click of her spike unlocking exploded through her head. All her systems crashed, plunging Fitz down a well of sensory deprivation. She went limp, teetering on the edge of unconsciousness.
The weight on her back lifted, hands tangling in her collar and belt, dragging her up. She faced her assailant. The jogger stood panting, hunched over with an arm around one side, his face twisted in pain. Her eyes flickered up and down his frame, trying to decide how badly she’d hurt him. Not badly enough.
Blondie must be security, perhaps Youngblood’s personal armsman. That would explain why he was in the colonel’s quarters. If she could win him over, maybe she would get her chance to talk to the old goat. Time to bargain instead of fight. She cleared her throat, preparing to force air through her abused larynx.
He spoke first. “We can do this the hard way or the easy way. It’s up to you. Play nice and I won’t have to kill you like the last woman.”
A Hero for the Empire: The Dragon's Bidding, Book 1 Page 1