A Hero for the Empire: The Dragon's Bidding, Book 1

by Christina Westcott

  Wolf gave her a sour look as he picked up a towel and wiped sweat from his face. “I don’t think we’re going to accomplish much more today. Let’s grab some food and then take a shower…”

  “Oh, I like that idea,” Fitz interjected.

  “Solo showers,” he said, but smiled as he did so. “I need to get with the ship later and program in a search grid for when we reach Baldark. But before we finish up, I want you to get the feel of a real sword.” He opened a long wooden case he’d placed on the top of the console.

  Fitz recalled when he’d brought the boxes on board at Rainbow. From the manufacturer’s logos on the crates and the excessive care he took in stowing them in his quarters rather than the hold, she’d figured they were the weapons he’d charged such a hefty fee to provide. She assumed the long box contained a rifle. She’d been wrong.

  He folded back the cloth covering the contents and pulled out a sword. The blade sliced through the air, sighing, as he swung it in tight figure eights. He rotated it with a casual ease and presented the hilt to her.

  Fitz’s first impression was of weight. The sword was heavier than she’d expected. Any Normal who could swing this for hours in a battle would have to be in exceptional physical shape. It wasn’t a fancy dress sword to be trotted out for balls and formal occasions, but a stark, functional tool for one purpose alone—killing living beings.

  The blade was dark with a rippling pattern in the steel. Its leather wrapped grip had darkened from years of use and the heavy crosspieces—quillons, he’d called them—bore dozens of nicks and scratches. She ran a hand up the length of weapon, feeling the slight sheen of oil protecting it. The edge sliced her finger.

  “Ow, that’s sharp.” She stuck the wounded digit in her mouth.

  “It’s supposed to be,” he chided, but his little boy grin took the sting out of it.

  “You’ve really used this thing?” In a mechanized army of lasers, powered armor and gunships, a sword seemed a useless anachronism.

  “Of course. An Acinonix warrior’s status in his culture is determined by his competence with a blade. I don’t think a day went by on that contract we took on Gollurma that I wasn’t forced to prove to some young upstart that I was in charge, and he had to take orders from me.”

  “So you learned to use a sword just to take that one contract?” Fitz let her eyes wander over the odd patterns in the steel of the blade. Seconds passed before she realized he’d gone silent. He’d turned his back to her, leaning against the console and wiping his hands on the towel. When he spoke, she had the impression it hurt to speak.

  “No, that was a talent I picked up during The War.”

  “The Bug War?” she asked. Tzraka War, Bug War. She’d heard it called several different names, but the veterans of that bloody conflict only referred to it simply as The War—as if there was never any doubt of what they meant.

  When she’d been a first-year newbie, she’s stumbling across a mounted Tzraka in an armorglass case in the Fleet Museum. Why it had been called a bug was a bit of a mystery, since it appeared to her to be as much reptilian as insectoid. An octoped, it used its four rear legs for running. Of the remaining two pair, the lower set terminated in the same three clawed arrangement as the back ones. The upper, longer appendages bore razor-like blades that flicked out of grooves in its forearms like switchblades, giving it a reach of almost three meters.

  “You killed Tzrakas with this?”

  His chuckle was dry and humorless. “It wasn’t the preferred way to dispatch one. It was a damn sight better to stand back—a long way back—and blow its brains out with a pulse-rifle. And its brains weren’t in its head either. They were in the thorax, beneath the second set of legs, so the bastard had to rear up for you to get a clear shot at it.” He scrubbed the towel across his face again, then placed it on the console and began folding it. “We fought in pairs, so there’d always be someone at your back. The bugs’ blades were brutal. They could slice an unarmored man in half with a single swing and nick the strongest steel.”

  Fitz recalled the dings and scratches on the sword’s quillons, wondering if she’d have the nerve to stand and hold that up as the only defense between her and the creature’s whirling blades.

  Wolf unfolded the towel, smoothed it out and began the process again. “The trick was to get in and slice off the bug’s sword arms, then all you had to face were the claws—and the ten thousand other chittering bugs behind it. It became quite the in-thing to carry a sword fashioned from the first blade you’d ever hacked off.”

  Fitz looked at the weapon in her hand. Her nose wrinkled. “Oh, ick.”

  He looked around and smiled. “Don’t worry, that’s just good Zarkasterian steel. I always thought taking trophies was a barbaric custom, like some sleazebag mercs who cut off their victim’s ears and wear them around their necks.”

  “I hadn’t realized you’d been a ground pounder.”

  “A tanker, actually. But you were still out in the field and subject to being overrun at any time. I joined Expeditionary Forces toward the end of the war, after Ari…released me from her service.”

  Fitz wondered if he’d meant to say “after Ari threw me out.”

  He stared at the neat square of towel he’d made and then began to unfold it. “You know about the Tzrakas’s reproductive habits.” It wasn’t a question.

  Fitz placed the sword atop its case and crossed to stand beside him. “Yeah, they have to lay their eggs in a living, warm-blooded creature.”

  He nodded. “It was probably the first war where we killed as many of our own as the enemy did.”

  “There wasn’t anything the med-techs could do once someone got, ah, infected?”

  “There generally wasn’t time to get to a med-station and on the few occasions they could, the eggs had implanted into the organs so deeply and attached to a blood supply, that they couldn’t get them out without killing the patient.” He unfolded the towel and began scrubbing his hands as if they were coated with dirt. Or blood. “You couldn’t let another human being lie there paralyzed, waiting for the larvae to hatch and begin eating their way out. The person you woke up beside that morning could be begging you for a clean death before the day is over.”

  Fitz pulled the tortured fabric from his hands and wrapped her arms around him. He returned her embrace, his grip growing almost uncomfortably tight, but she didn’t care. He buried his face in her hair and they stood for several minutes, Fitz listening to his heartbeat and wishing the conversation had never taken a turn into such horrible memories.

  Eventually he eased her back and kissed her forehead. “Sorry.”

  “No apology necessary.” She ran her fingers along the edge of his jaw. “Sure you don’t want to take me up on that offer of a shower?”

  His smile was wan, but that it was there at all lifted her spirits.

  “I’ve still got a few things I’d like to accomplish before this shift ends, but after that… I think something could be arranged.” He kissed the tip of her nose.

  “I’m going to hold you to that, soldier.”

  As Wolf gathered up the practice swords, she replaced the real one in its case. When she lifted the velvet cloth, she found another sword beneath it. This one was the antithesis to the weapon she held. Ornate and golden, the hilt had been worked in the form of two dragons entwined. Their tails twisted around to form fancifully shaped quillons and their talons gripped the pommel, an enormous Farisian blood crystal. She’d seen one like it before—Maks Kiernan’s. It was a Triumvir’s dress sword, a gift from the Emperor to mark a candidate’s investiture to the office of the military’s highest-ranking official.

  “I’m surprised they let you keep this.” Fitz trailed her fingers along the intricate golden castings.

  “They didn’t let me keep anything. While I was a guest in the Emperor’s detention cells with the Praetorian Guard u
sing me for a punching bag, a friend broke into my apartment and liberated anything he thought I might have a sentimental attachment to. Three years later, when I’d gotten settled into a semi-permanent life, he showed up at my place with all my stuff and offered to give it back to me.”

  “You’re lucky to have such a good friend who’ll stick his neck out for you like that.”

  Wolf scratched one blond eyebrow. “Yeah, that’s what I thought at the time. Which makes me all the more curious why now my good friend, Jan Tritico, wants to assassinate me.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  On the overhead monitors, Baldark hung in the black of space, all green and blue and naked. No lights spangled the planet’s night side. No glittering necklace of satellites, stations, or ships girded it. Not even a halo of space junk. Nothing manmade. Only a single large natural satellite, shepherding a series small rocky moonlets, circled the world.

  “I guess I never understood what the term pre-industrial meant.” Fitz sat in the copilot’s seat and stared at the screen, shaking her head.

  “It does look bloody odd, doesn’t it?” Wolf said. “We’ve taken contracts on some rather primitive worlds, but there were at least communication satellites or a ship or two in orbit. Nothing this…” He seemed to search for the right word. “Unspoiled.”

  Fitz increased the screen’s magnification as the ship passed over the terminator and into the planet’s dawn. Below them, a narrow ocean separated two large landmasses. “The thing I don’t understand is that Baldark looks like a Class One-A world. There’s not a hundred One-A planets in the entire Human Sector. How could the survey teams have missed something this valuable?”

  “This sector was mapped two centuries ago but most of the systems were written off as worthless. I’m not sure how Dr. Deva-Lorza came across Baldark, but after her research team established their station here, she arranged to have all traces of the world removed from the survey records. There was no other reason for anyone to come out here, so the planet seems to have been forgotten.”

  “Whoever locates this system and secures the rights for colonization will make a fortune,” Fitz said.

  Wolf’s smile was sad. “What about the people, the Baldarkii? No primitive culture has ever survived its first contact with a more advanced civilization. Look what we did on Trainor.”

  She shivered at the reference. An entire pre-sentient species had been eradicated on that ill-fated world, only because the planet held the promise of vast mineral deposits. “Lizzy, when we pull out of here, I want all references to Baldark wiped from your data banks.”

  “Of course, Commander,” Lizzy answered, something approaching approval in her computer-generated voice.

  Wolf gestured at the monitor. “Those specks on the sea near the coast, the ones with the white vees in their wake, they look like some kind of seagoing vessels.”

  “I believe they are, Colonel,” the ship said. “From its large natural harbor, I suspect that city they’re bound for is a trading hub. I’ve also detected large quantities of pollution in the air there, from the burning of wood and possibly coal, so it may also be some kind of primitive industrial center. The woodlands have been cleared for many kilometers around it, presumably for agriculture or harvesting the trees for ship building.”

  Beyond the cultivated lands, the thick forest marched up the foothills toward a chain of mountains that stretched down the length of the continent. Above the reach of the trees, the rocky, snow-capped peaks sporting long plumes of snow blown inland by the ocean’s winds.

  “Colonel, the coordinates for the research station lie just beyond these mountains,” Lizzy announced. “I’ll begin scanning for the return signal from Ransahov’s spike there. But I would caution you that this could take some time because I’m forced to keep my search grid quite small.”

  Wolf rose and stretched. “Then I trust we’ll have enough time for a little more blade work and perhaps a good run.”

  Fitz groaned. “Come on, Wolf, can’t we take some time off? I’ve run and lunged and parried until I’m sick of it. There isn’t a spot on me that doesn’t hurt.”

  “Don’t wimp out on me now, FitzWarren.”

  “I had drill instructors at the Academy who were easier on me than you.”

  “I bet you didn’t learn anything from them either.” He reached to pull her up.

  A squeal issued from the speakers. The two exchanged startled glances.

  “Lizzy, is that…”

  “Yes, Commander, and precisely at the coordinates the Colonel gave me.”

  Fitz let out of whoop of joy, but noticed Wolf’s lips thinned.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  “I don’t trust anything that’s too easy.”

  “Relax. After the Gods of Luck have jerked us around all over the Human Sector, don’t you think it’s about time we got a break?”

  He gave a grudging smile. “Ship, begin your deorbiting procedure and set us up for a descent to that location on the next pass.” He pulled her to her feet. “And I’ll let you out of your training today only because we have to get the ship squared away for landing.”

  With the luck they’d been having, Fitz had been half afraid there would be an Imperial cruiser waiting for them at Baldark. They’d dropped back into real space far outside of the hyperlimit to give them time to react, but the system had been empty. That gave them two extra days to fall in toward the planet, two more days for Wolf to put her through his perverse version of Primitive Combat Techniques 101.

  Her days started with running—not jogging, running—through the hallways, up and down the stairs to engineering, and over an obstacle course set up in the cargo hold. Jumper would watch with typical feline amusement. Then she’d be allowed to grab a sandwich and it would be on to blade training.

  He drilled her with the practice swords until her shoulders and thighs were bruised and sore from the hits he got past her guard. When she’d finally managed to hold her own, he’d switched to real swords. He gave her his old weapon while he used the flashy Triumvir’s dress sword. At first, she’d been afraid of hurting him, but rapidly learned, no matter how hard or wild her swing, she couldn’t get past that golden blade. Once she thought she might have nicked his forearm, but couldn’t find a trace of the wound later.

  After a meal and shower, he’d work the knots out of her aching muscles with expert fingers, and then there would be more exercise, but of a more intimate nature. She’d fall asleep curled against him and awake the next morning to repeat the process. They had quickly fallen into a routine during the several days in transit.

  Now it was ending. No matter what awaited them at Baldark, they couldn’t remain as they’d been, just the two of them in a tiny bubble of reality adrift in space. She stowed her gear, locking down all the drawers and doors for landing, and tried to keep the future from intruding into her thoughts. The task took only a few minutes since she hadn’t spent much time in her own quarters on this leg of the journey.

  Fitz crossed the hall, stepping into his now familiar room. Wolf sat cross-legged on the bed, the components of the slug thrower spread out in a meticulous row before him. His fingers moved over it, cleaning, oiling and reassembling the weapon. She would miss those hands sliding across her body.

  “Expecting trouble?” She sat on the edge of his bed.

  “Of course, that way I’m never surprised.” He finished with the weapon, set it aside, and pulled her down across him.

  They made slow, quiet love. Fitz savored his kisses as if they were the last glasses of a particularly exquisite wine. Like an addict, the fear of losing that heady intoxication twisted in her gut, but she pushed the pain away. Now she only wanted to relish the time they had together, bitter sweet as it was. It was all they had.

  They lay with their bodies entangled afterward, his hand stroking her hair, her back. Fitz buried her face a
gainst his chest, tears matting her eyelashes. She’d promised herself she wouldn’t cry.

  The door to his quarters opened, and Fitz felt a tentative thought brush across her mind.

  “Boss, the ship said that she’s starting her descent and needs the two of you on the bridge.”

  “Tell her we’ll be right there, Jumper.” Wolf didn’t move, only traced the outline of her lips with his fingertips.

  “You are going to fix the comm unit so it functions in this room again, aren’t you?”

  “Eventually. Until then the ship doesn’t need to spy on us. I don’t think she approves of our relationship.” He reluctantly rose.

  Fitz rolled out of bed, retrieving her trousers from the far side of the room where she’d tossed them. So, he thought they had a relationship, did he? But for how much longer?

  They stopped in the common room for coffee and sandwiches, then headed to the bridge. Lizzy displayed their course on the overhead monitor. A long curve to the north would avoid the large coastal city. They’d cross the row of crags with plenty of altitude under them, then a wide three-sixty would bring them back around to their destination on the other side of the mountain range. Fitz crawled into her seat and racked her cup in the console’s holder.

  Lizzy surrendered control to Wolf without comment. Fitz wondered if the ship was starting to trust him or just want to avoid another argument. He guided the lumbering freighter through a series of long s-curves to bleed off airspeed.

  She reached for her coffee, noticing ripples spreading across the surface of the liquid. Beneath her fingers, the console shivered with vibrations, growing more violent with each second.

  “What the bloody hell?” Wolf scanned the instruments, his hands shaking with the shuddering of the controls.

  Fitz couldn’t focus on the wildly quaking overhead displays. The juddering increased. Hot coffee sprayed out of her cup and splattered across the back of her hand.

  “What’s happening, Lizzy?” She yelled, but she knew. The thruster. If she lived to make it back to Lister she’d have a word or two with its snippy CEO about their quality control.