“Why was he out here?”
“After delivering the message to you, the human spy was supposed to find Hiffa.”
“Why?”
“That’s what I am going to find out,” Zared said as he left.
I began working on my hair and eyebrows. I let the shower wash Sara away. Afterwards, I dried off and slipped my wedding band back onto my finger. Then, I dressed in a comfortable pair of pajamas. Pierce, Lorca, and the children were sleeping. I grabbed something to eat from the kitchen. A short time later when I went to dry my hair, I was horrified.
“No, no, no, no, no.”
In my mind, Zared asked, “Are you alright?”
“No, I’m not alright. Look through my eyes at my hair,” I whined out loud.
“Come here,” Zared said.
I carried the box of inquisitor disguise paraphernalia with me. Drex and Luca gasped when I exited the lift. Jazon’s laughter came forth like a dam had burst.
“What went wrong?” I wailed.
Zared patted me. My hair was a weird orange color the exact shade of which I had never before observed in nature on any planet. My eyebrows almost resembled thin carrot wedges. I cried. Zared continued to pat me. When he started laughing, too, I stormed angrily back into the lift.
The next day, it took Lorca hours to get my hair to look natural. Afterwards, when I decided to find out what progress they had made with Hiffa, I found that the lift was locked.
“Teagan, trust me. If Izaac and the others were not satisfied with the answers arrived at through their telepathic questioning, you don’t need to observe the means by which inquisitors extract information,” Pierce said.
Trying to sound brave, I said, “I don’t want to distract them from their work.”
Eventually, Eli paid us a visit. “Hiffa waited on Luna Eight for the spy. He was ordered to take him to Amphictyon. There, they would be taken to their team.”
“So, how do we find Momma?” The trail seemed too convoluted and tangled to follow. I forced my fingers to unclench from the seat cushion and held onto my elbows instead. Then, I stood and began pacing.
Eli said, “It’s simple. Drex and I are going in as Hiffa and our unnamed spy.”
“What if you’re caught? The two of you don’t look much like them.”
“We will resemble them closely enough to allow Izaac and Xavier to telepathically influence them to see what we wish for them to see. A few of our teams are already in place on Amphictyon. Drex and I are the bait. The Omnes Videntes will convince anyone who contacts us to believe that we are who we say we are. We will strike before the enemy knows we are there.”
“What do you want me to do?” I asked.
Eli gave me a slight bow of his head. “The most helpful thing that you can do is stay aboard with the children. That way, we won’t be distracted worrying about you. Teagan, the Empire has had these factions under observation for decades. However, they always seem to elude us. This time, we have an advantage. Will you trust us?”
I nodded.
Hours before our landing on Amphictyon, I was called to the bridge. My heart sped up, and my eyes widened when I saw Hiffa waiting for me on the other side of the lift doors. I took a few steps back. Hiffa leered at me, turned his back, and strode over to a few inquisitors to whom he began giving orders. The spy with no name was engaged in similar activities. I followed after Hiffa and stared at him. I couldn’t figure out if I was looking at Drex or Eli. I could sense my Omnes Videntes, but they too looked like rough, dangerous strangers. They were doing weapons’ checks.
The inquisitor disguised as Hiffa turned to me. “Teagan, we have to move fast. You, the children, Pierce, and Lorca are to stay onboard and under guard.”
“Good luck,” I said.
“Luck? We have planned our hunt.”
I returned to the children. Thunderdrop clung to my shoulder and nuzzled my neck.
“They mean to prove themselves to you,” Lorca said. “The Inquisitors will pull and pull at the knots until they have untangled them.”
I believed his words, but I dropped my face to my hands and let out a frustrated sob. Where were they hiding my mother’s body? What was the point of not returning to us her remains after all of this time? It was cruel and inhumane. Were her remains here on Amphictyon, or somewhere else? Hours passed. Uncle Kagan called, but I had been ordered to remain silent. Anyone could be spying for my voice to find my location. Eventually, Luca and Xavier came back.
“How fast can you become Sara Eos?” Luca asked. I stared at Luca with wide eyes. “Help her,” he ordered Lorca.
With lots of help, Luca was soon handing me a helmet in the transport bay. I put it on and fastened myself into the small seat behind him. Luca swung his leg over the seat in front of me.
“Have you ever ridden one of these?” Luca asked.
“No.”
“Hang onto your handles. If you get dizzy, close your eyes.” Luca powered on the hover bike and zipped out of the transport bay. Xavier was right behind us.
The ship’s hatch closed, and a defensive shield surged into place. Nothing would be able to get through that. The land port was a blur. Soon, it was replaced with a dark alley. A zing of sound filled my ears as Xavier took his bike up on the side of a building to pass us and take the lead.
My eyes grew wide. Through my helmet, I asked, “Can these things go upside down?”
In answer, Luca drove up on the side of the building, hit a thruster, spun us upside down, and took us back down via the building’s wall on the other side. All the while, I felt as though we were being watched or watched over. Luca followed Xavier down into a parking garage. We kept spiraling downward, around and around. We kept going downward as though we were water in a drain. Lights flickered in their metal cages as though struggling to survive their dismal lives for just a little while longer.
A man stood holding open a door on the far-right side of level ten. Xavier drove his bike through the open doorway, and Luca followed. A long, cement corridor with doors to each side every few feet stretched out before us. Xavier and Luca began to slow. Not far in the distance, on their stomachs with their wrists bound behind them in charged metal restraints were eight unconscious men. All of them had the look of Nathan Green about them. They looked like anti-Parvac militant scum. Hurt and anger filled me at once bringing on their tide memories of my painful childhood. I had been punished for my blood, not for anything I had done. Zared and Rozz each grabbed a prisoner, harnessed them into the back of hover bike seats, and sped off the way we had come.
“Where are they taking them?” I asked Luca.
“To the stealth ships where they will be stored for our return trip,” Luca said. “Teagan, can you handle this?”
“Handle what exactly?”
Guards stood to either side of a rusting door. Wires hung from the ceiling, deactivated traps for my soldiers. The men had lit the room to a level that was too bright. Every decrepit detail of the room was clear, but it all became hazy as my vision tunneled at the sight of her. I cried out and ran to my mother’s embalmed corpse. My knees abandoned me to crumple at the pod’s base.
“Teagan, get up. There is no time. This has been set to lure you here. The locking mechanism is coded. If we crack away the floor to remove her, it will damage the capsule. Once your palm scanned, the room was set to lock. We have disabled the locks and traps, but we need to move quickly. The portable power sources we have will drain quickly. Do you understand?” Hiffa asked. His scar and green eyes frightened me, but I realized he was really Eli. “As soon as the clamps release, take her and go,” Eli said to Luca. “Here,” Eli said indicating a scan pad.
I pressed my hand to the scanner. The floor clamps holding the capsule released. However, several deactivated traps clicked above us throughout the ceiling. Luca grabbed me around the waist and carried me into the hall to our hover bike. Someone had turned it around. I fastened myself in. Then, Luca was speeding after Xavier.
; I turned my head in time to see my mother’s capsule being loaded into the back of a hover delivery bike for a building supply company. Then, we were through the door and speeding in upward circles as though the parking garage were vomiting us out. We raced through different alleys on our return trip to the land port.
“Watch out!” I warned too late.
A sparkling metal net fell from the rooftops and over Xavier and his bike. It sparked as it touched metal. Xavier slid with the hover bike across the alley until coming to a spinning stop. From the rooftops above us, men propelled down to surround us.
“Well, well, well. It looks like our little princess is trying to accept her payment without making her delivery. You haven’t met our terms,” one of the men said. They all had short hair and carried themselves like soldiers.
“My name is Sara, not Princess. You’re fucking with the wrong crew,” I said as my hands slid to my weapons. I could feel hatred inching its way closer to us.
“They have neural blockers,” Xavier announced. “We’ll have to deal with them the old-fashioned way.”
I heard a light tap as I grabbed my blaster with my left hand. My cheeks burned from my mistake. I had forgotten to remove my wedding band.
“They were on alert as soon as your palm touched the scanner,” Xavier said to ease my guilt.
There were nine of them. Xavier was doing his best to avoid blaster fire while he freed himself from the net and his bike. Luca fought like a rabid ice bear to keep the anti-Parvac militants off of me. Unfortunately, I got cornered.
“Your mother’s real pretty. If you find smudges on the glass, it’s probably old cum. We like jacking off while looking at the Parvac whore.”
He thought that he would make me angry and that I would strike without thinking. He was wrong. He wasn’t a man. He was a wolf out for the kill. He thought I was the weakest animal. It was his last thought. I slid my knife in under his sternum and dragged it down to his groin before pulling it free. He collapsed on top of his guts, making a squish of sound.
Enraged, his partner flew at me. I lifted my left hand and shot him in the face with my blaster. His head cracked back against the wall. Stupidly, he came back at me with the force of his recoil. His eye made a pop of sound as I slid my blade into it all of the way to his skull’s socket. I put my left foot in the center of his chest and slid him off of my blade.
“Come on! More are coming,” Xavier said as he grabbed me. He sat in the seat behind Luca and held me on his lap. Sure enough, men on hover bikes were zinging down the alley toward us. I turned and straddled Xavier. “Go!” Xavier shouted.
Luca sped away. It forced my chest against Xavier’s. I sheathed my bloody knife, wrapped my left arm around Xavier’s neck, switched my blaster to my right hand, and began taking aim. It was a lot harder to hit moving targets. But suddenly, there they were. My Omnes Videntes began taking our pursuers down one by one. The ones who lived were bound and secured to seats. We had boarded our ships and lifted from the surface before Amphictyon’s enforcers could grab us.
I left my weapons and holsters in the transport bay. I shoved my bloody clothes into a recycling unit and went up to my quarters in my undies. I was in my shower scrubbing with soap for the second time when the first searing pain struck me. A sharp twisting agony hit me deep inside beneath my belly button. Clutching my stomach, I sank down to the shower floor. Then, another and another of the crippling pains coursed through me stealing my breath.
“Help,” I called out telepathically and vocally.
Blood began to mix with the water beneath me. Zared rushed into the bathroom, shut off the water, picked me up, and carried me sopping wet to the bed. I curled around myself and cried out.
“We need a medic in here!” Zared yelled into communications and the minds of his brothers.
I felt Zared attempting to soothe me and trying to hide the pain from me. Luca and a medic arrived, but Zared sent me into a mental construct. All I knew were soft warm blankets and pillows.
When I woke, there was a nanite device on my abdomen, and a bag of fluids dripped into my arm through a tube and needle. I didn’t feel any pain from the ribs down. Luca sat to my left, sadly holding my hand. Through the open door, I could see the medic speaking quietly with Drex. Zared was cleaning the bathroom, while Pierce carried out a bundle of wet sheets and blankets. My hair was wrapped in a towel. Something was missing, and it left a vacant feeling in my soul.
“What happened?” I asked.
Luca kissed my fingers. “Teagan, rest.”
“No, what happened?”
Luca wiped at his eyes and sobbed before controlling himself. “You suffered a miscarriage of our child.”
I froze from the inside out. “No, I didn’t. I’m not pregnant. I would know.”
Luca kissed my fingers. The pain and devastation on his face made it real.
“I lost my baby? I lost our baby? My baby I didn’t even know about is gone?” Grief ripped me apart. “It’s all my fault. I didn’t know. I should have been more careful.”
“It’s not your fault, Teagan. The embryo wasn’t strong enough. This happens even under the calmest situations.”
“Not to me. I’m good at being pregnant. I have had two babies.”
Luca held me to his chest while the two of us poured out our grief.
Hours later, I sat in a chair gazing at my mother’s face through plasti-glass and embalming fluid. The men had connected her pod to a stable power source. I laid my head on the capsule’s surface above where her heart was and mourned my mother and the loss of my unborn child. My tears rolled down the shell between us. The men left me alone with my grief.
It was Lorca who came for me. “Teagan, Peter cries for you. Niklos keeps calling for you, and Neema becomes more and more frustrated with them both. Will you come with me to see to them?”
I lifted my head from the glass and stood. Lorca put his arm around my back and helped me back down to the sitting room. To me, the children seemed to be contentedly playing. Lorca tucked me in on the couch with pillows and blankets. That night, Luca and Zared slept curled protectively around me as our ships sped back to Parvac space. However, during the middle of the night, a quiet knock on our door woke us.
“Have we stopped?” I asked as I sat up in bed.
Zared went to the door. His long, dove-grey hair hid his bare back from view. Dim light from the opened door made me squint.
“Forgive my intrusion. Admiral Valen surrounds our ships with his fleet and demands to speak to his niece.” Eli handed over a vid-screen. Zared brought it over to me.
Uncle Kagan looked out from its surface at me. He was furious. “Teagan, when I realized that Drex had abducted you again, I rushed to your aid. Are you alright?”
“Oh, Uncle Kagan.” Tears spilled from my eyes. “He was following my orders. It’s not what you think.”
“Order him to dock that piece of crap in my flight bay.” The screen went black.
I threw on some clothes and waited with Luca and Zared in the transport bay. When the hatch opened, I saw the inside bay of a Parvac warship. Then, I saw a furious Admiral Valen. He boarded our vessel along with a team of elite soldiers. I waited as he approached me. My uncle could feel my sorrow, and his eyes filled with it.
“What’s happened?” he asked.
I held my hand out to him, but instead he crushed me to his chest. I could feel the strengthening of the bond between us.
“Everything we did was to protect you, Grandmother, and Papa.” To the men around us, I said, “Please, give us some privacy.” Uncle Kagan nodded to his soldiers to comply. My hair caught on his jacket as I pulled back. He frowned at the color. “If it’s okay, I’d rather just show you, and let the others explain. I don’t have the strength to do more.”
Uncle Kagan’s eyes narrowed, but he gave me his arm and walked with me into the lift. “Has Drex hurt you?”
“No, I ordered that this be kept from you. It could have been a hateful tric
k. It was intended as a trap.” I stopped in front of the door that we had approached too fast. “Uncle Kagan,” I said. I didn’t know how to prepare him.
He freed himself of my hand and entered the room. I hurried to follow after him. Uncle Kagan walked back and forth in front of the pod encasing Neema Valen. I sat in the chair placed beside her for my use. Hot tears continued to fall. All of my early years, I had thought she had left me. After my family had found me, I had learned of her murder. Now, her body was returned to us. I didn’t know what to say to my uncle to ease his shock.
“Eli?”
“Yes, sir?”
I noticed that the small room had filled with men. Luca put his hands on my shoulders. My abdomen still throbbed, even after the nanites.
“Why… does this chamber require a power source?” Uncle Kagan asked. Silence stretched out. “Answer me!” Uncle Kagan screamed with a fury that left me shaking.
“Faint life signs remain, sir,” Eli reported quietly.
“What? My mother is alive in there?” I started hyperventilating.
“Hush, Teagan,” Luca said. “Permission to take Teagan to the infirmary, sir,” Luca requested.
“She’ll be fine. Leave her alone,” Uncle Kagan said angrily.
“My wife lost our child a few hours ago, sir,” Luca said quietly.
I stared at Neema Valen’s face. Was she alive? Was it possible after twenty years in suspended animation that she might still be inside?
I was whisked away to the infirmary. Pierce and Lorca moved Thunderdrop and the children up to the Imperial suites. All of my Omnes Videntes were onboard Uncle Kagan’s ship. The thirty-eight men we had captured, including Hiffa, were being held on other warships. Now, I watched from my medical bed as doctors oversaw the transition of my mother into the infirmary. In seconds, scans and talk that I didn’t understand surrounded her. Luca sat beside me, holding my hand.
“I’m so sorry, Luca.” A tiny life had depended on me, and now that life was gone. “How long….”
Luca knew what I meant and answered me. “Almost four weeks, too soon for you to realize it,” he said softly.
The Spider Queen (The Space Merchants Book 5) Page 22