by Susan Grant
The sentence lingered in the shocked silence between them. “He wanted to break you—why?”
“Because he couldn’t. He tried for all the years I was with him. I think he realized the only way he could do so was to kill me. He stopped short of that, as I stopped short of killing him.” He exhaled, his eyes narrowing further. “If he’d hurt Bolivarr, I would have killed him, Wren. And by the fates, Wren, if he so much as touches you, I won’t stop to think, as you want me to. If he raises a hand to you, he’s done. No question. No second thoughts.”
He dragged her close, at first out of pure need, then out of desire. The kiss deepened with mutual urgency. His hands slid over the swell of her breasts before starting another luscious, downward slide. She urged him on with equally hungry hands.
“I want to make love to you,” he whispered, gasping as their mouths separated. “All night, and wake with you in my arms.” His lips brushed over hers. “To stroke you and kiss you until you were ready for me once more.” He buried his mouth in the crook of her neck, making her sigh. “Then as you went about your day, you’d carry the memory of me between your legs.”
As he whispered his carnal words, he began to touch her, bringing her to pleasure. It was not difficult; his erotic promise had already carried her halfway there. Within a few breaths she was pressing her teeth against his shoulder to muffle her moan. Grabbing her wrists, he started to mount her, then a shudder ran through his body and he wrenched his mouth from hers. Breathing hard, he swore. Her eyes opened wide. He gave her little time to ponder the acute expression on his hard, noble face before he lowered his head between her breasts, groaning and quietly laughing out of the frustration she shared. “This is madness. I want you, Wren. I want to make you my wife in every way.”
“I’m already yours in every way that counts.”
He lifted his head, his eyes questioning and dark with need. She touched his cheek, feeling the hardness of his jaw, knowing the tenderness of the man inside and not how that gentle soul managed to survive what had been done to it. “I love you, Aral Mawndarr.”
Emotion played over his face, raw and honest. “I’ll see us safe, my love. We won’t have to run forever. You have my word.”
“Hush now. It’s time to rest.” She did indeed love him, and feared it. Bad things happened to those close to her. A sense of dread followed her into an uneasy slumber. It somehow came as no surprise when the ship’s alarm jolted them from a deep sleep.
“We’ve got a target on our tail,” yelled Kaz into the confines of the small ship.
They scrambled, gathering on the bridge. A blinking icon dragged her attention to the main screen. “Who is it?” Aral demanded.
“Ion signature undetermined.”
“Flarg me,” Vantos blurted out. “They’ve got no identification at all.”
“Pirates? Rogues? REEFs?” Kaz wondered aloud.
“Or loyalists,” Wren warned. Karbon was on the loose. The resistance was a real threat. Falling into his father’s hands would be a fate worse than death.
Vantos jumped into his seat. “I’m not hanging around for the rest of the guessing game, boys and girls. They’re definitely tracking us. Everybody tied down?”
“Strap in,” Aral yelled at Wren. She’d come to know that his fear came out as anger.
Vantos whooped. “Prepare for the run of your life, folks. Hang on.”
Turbulence indicated the wormhole entry. The transit was prolonged. The ship shook hard. Wren stifled a moan and gripped the armrests. Her stomach seemed to stretch like rubber, vertigo making her head spin. A few more jolts and they were back in normal space. If only they could stay there.
The proximity alert wailed once more. “The bastard’s still with us.”
“Jump!” Aral called.
Their pursuer chased them through wormholes, one after the other. Vantos didn’t give the ship a chance to recover before making another jump. He seemed to have no sense of self-survival whatsoever. He took risks only a dead man dared. Thank fates for that.
They kept up the pattern until Kaz warned that the fuselage had heated to dangerous levels. “We’re leaking fuel and air and fates know what else. This pace is too hard on your ship.”
“Keep going.” Aral’s tone was flat. He wasn’t ready to give up.
Vantos drew an exhausted hand through his hair. “This area of space is riddled with instabilities. If we decide to jump, our best bet is here—” he magnified an image “—via this wormhole. It’s old. I’m not too sure it’s still viable.”
Jumping without looking first. Since when did that bother the man?
“And ready whatever weapons you have,” Aral said. “If they follow us through this wormhole, we’ll turn and fight.”
“No.” With the eyes of the warlord, Wren shook her head. “If we can’t outrun them, we’ll strike a compromise. A deal.”
“No deals,” Aral argued.
Vantos echoed him. “No deals.”
“Doesn’t my opinion mean anything?”
“No,” they chorused, Kaz included.
“Not in this, Wren,” Aral said. “I know where your heart is with regard to our safety, and the reason for your guilt. It makes it impossible for you to be objective.”
She fell back into the chair, glowering fiercely over her hands that she’d once again pressed together under her chin.
I understand your need to atone for your father, but I will not allow you to commit suicide. Aral bit back the words. She’d argue and they needed all their concentration on their pursuer.
The runner readied his weapons. “I’ve got a small bank of missiles and a couple of relativistic bomblets—should we need them.”
“On this?” Kaz’s expression showed her disbelief.
“This crate you mean? Yeah. Thanks to a nice, unexpected trade bonus from an illegal arms dealer in the Borderlands.” Vantos’s hands flew over the panels as he put the weapons online. “I managed to wangle a nice little profit off the record, taking arms in place of some of the money. I sold most of it afterward, keeping a few things for my ship. You never know when you might need a bomblet or two, right?”
Aral hoped to the fates they didn’t need any now.
The transit alert rang. “This passage isn’t too stable. I’ve seen some like this before, though. I think we can make it if I hold off just shy of max hyperspeed and coast out the back side.”
“Weapons alert!” Kaz cried. “They’ve armed their plasma cannons.”
Aral had fought in many a battle over the years. They couldn’t afford a hit. If they made a jump while damaged the forces of distorted space would tear them apart. “Jump now!”
The wormhole entrance wavered. It shrank then bloomed, filling the forward screen. The stars began to distort. Entry was imminent. Aral made a fist. They would make it. They had to. Just as they made the jump, the wormhole collapsed behind them.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
BORROWED TIME CAME screaming out of the wormhole, warning alarms blaring. It had been a shrieking, jolting ride. How they had made it through a collapsing wormhole at all, Aral had no idea. Whether or not their pursuer had tried to follow was moot. They couldn’t.
He shared a glance with Wren. We made it.
“Hull integrity 77%. Plasma loss number two thruster. Low fuel state.”
“Flarg. We’ve got a hull rupture. We’re leaking fuel and losing air.”
So much for making it, Aral thought. He homed in on the air-remaining readout. The digits were extrapolated to the ten-thousandth place. The smallest ones were plunging so fast that they were blurred to the eye. Taunting him. One hour and thirty minutes of air. A heartbeat of time in space. Battlelord, what will you do now? “Can we make Ara Ana?” With all the jumping through hyperspace they’d done, they were practically on its doorstep.
“Only if we don pressure suits. I’ve got three. The women get two. Mawndarr—we will flip a queen to decide which one of us gets to breathe.”
“
Absolutely not,” Wren said.
At the same time Kaz shook her head. “We’re a crew. Either we all put on suits or none of us do.”
Vantos looked positively touched for a moment, then schooled his features. “If we abandon ship we can make it in the escape pod.” He magnified the still invisible planet many times until it filled the screen. “There you are, beautiful. At last.” Then he turned back to them. “It’ll be a one-way trip, boys and girls.”
Kaz took the news as stoically as ever, but as he watched she lifted a hand to touch her ruby earrings, a way she sometimes seemed to connect with Bolivarr when under pressure. But the earrings were gone. And he was gone.
“Life support reserves critical. Fuel state low.”
They had no choice. Wren found Aral’s hand. He leaned close to her, his forehead pressed to hers. “I wish I could have done more for you, Wren. I wish we could have run away like you wanted.”
“Ara Ana is where we’re supposed to go.”
“And not be able to leave?”
“We’ll find a way out,” she whispered.
“From the laser-fryer into the fire,” Vantos growled suddenly, drawn by an incoming call. “We’ve got a welcoming party.”
“Unidentified trader vessel, this is the TAS Cloud Shadow. We copy your distress signal. Do you require assistance?”
They jolted at the sound of strange voices after so long. TAS, Aral thought. That meant a Triad Alliance ship. Bloody hells. “It’s the Mission Origins vessel.” Not only had they beaten them to Ara Ana, they were offering them rescue.
ENSIGN MORGGIN, assistant security officer, hurried over to where Hadley stood with Garwin and Bolivarr searching for signs of inhabitation. “We’ve got a target emitting a Mayday. It has a trader signature. Triad. No visible threat. It’s an old AG-250. Tiny, a crew of one to six, max. They’re down to emergency levels of fuel and air, Captain.”
“It’s a long way from home for a triad trader.”
“They could be our treasure hunters,” Garwin postulated, looking quite possessive about his hoped-for discoveries as he frowned at the damning images.
Everything plundered, hoarded and tucked away in a thousand years of upheaval was now fair game—and irresistible for trader types with old ways of earning money drying up as fast as border skirmishes.
Bolivarr shook his head. “I’d be surprised if they’re one and the same. That ship isn’t made for long-distance hunting. Close-in maneuverability, yes. They’re crazy to be out here.”
Already the cadets, on the bridge for the orbital entry, were speculating excitedly about the turn of events. “They’re probably lost,” Holster said to a burst of derisive laughter from the other rooks, all clearly feeling full of themselves for having spent so many weeks in space.
“We have a duty to rescue them.” Hadley turned to Bolivarr. “And quickly. Send a shuttle.”
“I’ll go.”
No, she mouthed silently. The incident in Sister Chara’s quarters was too fresh. He’d taken meds for a severe headache even as they’d left her quarters. He had no business flying in that condition.
“We’re still on level-two alert,” he reminded her, trying hard not to lean on his cane. “I highly doubt these idiots were involved in the attacks of the religious settlements, but I can’t take that chance. Especially now with signs someone beat us here. I want to question them.”
“You can question them here.”
Although he knew the reason, he seemed to struggle with her order, hating to admit to what he perceived as weakness—his tenuous health—especially if it interfered with his assigned duties. He must have seen she wasn’t intending to back down, either. Or that she was indeed the captain of this ship. With a locked jaw, he nodded. She hid the shiver of relief that went through her. He hated worrying her even more than feeling shame of his physical and mental condition. “I’ll send the shuttle with extra crew—armed, then,” he said. “I take over once they’re back.”
“Approved.”
Morggin called from his station. “Captain, the traders have abandoned ship. We’re tracking the escape pod.”
“Raise the alert to three,” Bolivarr said.
Hadley nodded. “I concur.”
Bolivarr left to supervise the shuttle preparation, and Garwin to organize the first of many surface visits. With security mobilized and the threat level raised to three, a sense of purpose swept through the ship—and her. Finally they were seeing some action. A rescue mission would only add to the excellent training for the cadets, even if it meant bringing aboard a group of scruffy, directionally impaired traders from their ramshackle ship.
WAITING IN THE ESCAPE POD for rescue, the Drakken looked as if they were on their way to their execution. Maybe they were, Keir thought.
Blast it all. He tossed aside the nanopick he was chewing to listen to Mawndarr’s briefing. “On that ship we’re going to have to watch every word we say, everything we do. Three of us are at risk of being convicted for treason. Vantos, you’re the only one with a choice of sides.”
“Sides? You think I’m going to spill the beans? If they find out she’s the warlord’s daughter, there’s nothing to stop them from splitting the bounty between them while my frozen body drifts out the nearest airlock. No treasure, no bounty. Not a good deal for ol’ Vartekeir. Look, I got us into this, I’ll get us out.”
He felt Wren’s grateful gaze on him. “Nope, not hero stuff. Don’t even think it. It’s still about the money. It’s always been about the money.”
But it had become more than that.
Fates. He jammed a hand through his hair. He wasn’t responsible for her or any of these Drakken. He owed them nothing. But blast it all, common decency told him he didn’t deliver them into the Triad’s clutches and take the spoils.
“That’s hero stuff, Vantos.” He cringed, thinking of Ellie’s words back on Zorabeta. Like then as now, doing something nice for a pretty girl who just happened to be the warlord’s daughter who’d lured him into her little snare telling him fifty-millions queens was pocket change didn’t sound like hero stuff to him. Nope. He wasn’t involved. No, just offering temporary assistance. The Triad never did anything for him. He owed them nothing.
“Look, we’ve got a watertight alibi. We’re traders who got lost scoping out possible new routes. We tried to jump our way back and cooked the ship.”
“They’re scientists,” Kaz said, dismissing the Triad crew as nonwarriors the same way she’d once dismissed him. “They won’t care. They’re hunting artifacts.”
“That we happen to want,” Vantos said. “Our treasure.”
“My treasure.” Wren stared them down with her best imitation of the warlord’s stare. It was surprisingly effective.
Mawndarr wasn’t any happier about it than he was. Keir was a trader at risk of losing the deal of his life. And Aral? His wife.
The Triad shuttle coasted close. “Standby for tow.” The closing of a mechanical arm over the pod reverberated with a clank. The stars started moving again as the shuttle turned to return home—with them in its jaws.
“A battlelord, his second, the warlord’s daughter and a blockade runner hitch a ride on a Triad shuttle,” Keir said to the grim group. “It sounds like the beginning of a bad joke.”
Aral sat with Wren held close. Keir couldn’t see her face. It was buried against Mawndarr’s chest. Mawndarr, an infamous battlelord, unrecognizable in his incarnation as a trader, cradled the warlord’s daughter so tenderly. He hadn’t seen such easy intimacy since his parents. This was why humans sought out someone else, he thought, feeling his loneliness and blasted well not wanting to. It was why his parents fell in love and took a gamble on spending a lifetime together. No, not just for the sex. For this—to be able to open yourself to another. To know someone had your six. Always.
He realized Kaz was watching him, her dark eyes curious. “Do I get a hug, too?” he asked, half hoping she’d cave in.
Kaz snorted softly. “
Trader trash.”
“But you say it with the utmost affection.”
Her lush lips lost some of their stiffness. “Yes, actually. I do. But don’t read into it.”
“I thoroughly intend to.” They regarded each other in the pod’s snug confines. Keir leaned a shoulder insolently against the inner wall—or, rather, he leaned his shoulder as insolently as a man could in the total absence of gravity.
Shaking her head, Kaz made her way to a seat. With a firm hold on the handgrip behind his head, Keir tried to keep his legs from floating up in front of his face and obscuring his view of one hells of a cute ass moving under standard-issue trousers he was sure weren’t designed to spark the imagination. But despite all reasonable efforts to assure a different reaction, Kazara Kaan did spark his imagination—in a decidedly un-commerce-like way.
Kaz drew the straps over her head. The movement sent her short hair swirling around her face like ink poured in water. Don’t try to get close to me. The sentiment was written all over her face.
“Don’t you have something else to do, Vantos?” she asked.
“A good-luck kiss would be nice.”
She made a choking noise. He’d actually startled a laugh out of her. Imagine that. The woman who had treated him with unrelenting, absolute disdain from the moment they’d met, a battlelord’s second who reserved the lion’s share of her respect and regard for Mawndarr, and who saw the fact that he’d quit the military as instant points against him. Even if that military service would have meant fighting as her enemy. To her, civilians were as boring and necessary as the supplies stashed in a cargo hold. As meaningless as chem-toilets. “So, you like me now.”
“I hate you.”
Liar. “It makes you a challenge.”
“I told you—I don’t want to be involved with anyone, Vantos.”
“Keir. Sexy beast is fine, too.”
Her expression chilled further but two spots of pink appeared on her cheeks. Oh, yes, he was breaking down the walls. It made the humiliating tow-in to the Triad ship almost bearable.