To Touch the Stars

by Tess Mallory

  To Touch the Stars

  By

  Tess Mallory

  Contents

  Acknowledgments

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Epilogue

  Blissful Peace

  Her imaginary man was there. Sky sensed him before she saw him and allowed his essence to wash over her with a strength that took her breath away, even as his spirit drew her to him. Concentrating, she shut his image out of her mind, then opened her eyes. He remained, walking slowly, determinedly, toward her. Confused, she watched him approach. She could not see his face, but she began to walk toward him, the pull something she could no longer resist.

  Then he was there in front of her, but his face was still hazy, blurred, not unusual in a creation of her mind. She reached out one hand to touch his face and immediately a current of desire, passion, need, flowed between them. She concentrated again on making him disappear. Instead he took her hand and brought it to his lips, then pulled her closer until they were pressed tightly together. Sky brushed her fingertips against his jaw, tracing a somehow familiar path to his mouth. When she focused on individual aspects of his face, he became clearer. Before she could think, his mouth had covered hers and branded a tantalizing kiss into her, his tongue touching hers slightly, asking entrance that she freely gave.

  Sky felt a languidness passing over her, a hot, sultry heaviness flood through her veins and pool down low inside of her. She opened her mouth to his and he delved deeper, his hands moving over her body, lulling her into a sweet, sweet peace.

  For Jan Miller, and the golden days of T. C. and Jan, sweet memories that will never be forgotten or ever replaced.

  Live long, my friend, and Prosper.

  Copyright© 1998 by Tess Mallory

  ISBN 0-505-52253-5

  Acknowledgments

  To the Underground Rebel Alliance: a group of talented writers destined for great things, who make me laugh and cry, who cheer for me—and give me a good "smack" when I need it! Thanks to my Lovely UGLy (sic) Rebs: Jentle Jane "La Segunda" Appelt, Sally "La Torquemada" Walker, Lorraine "LOLly" Stephens, Linda "Spock" Op dyke, Debra "Troutie" Brown, Sherri "Sherrilicious" Erwin, Sara V. "Brook, li'l sis" Olds, Jo Anne "Jypsy Jo" Dreyfus, Carolyn "Caromia" Rogers, Sara "Sarafin" Reyes, Kerri-Leigh "Lady Enigma" Grady, Ron "Stormy" White, Janet "Laine" Gocke, Lisa "Pearls" Coleman, Jennifer "Miss Jennypenny" Licata, Deanna "Didji" Padilla, Anne "Aussie Anne" Clarke, Leanne "Finlea" Ellis, Susan "Suzie Q" Stevenson, Denise "Deli" Agnew, Lynn "Lynnfin" Whitney, Beverly "Calico" Haynes, Sherry "Sherabim" Davis, April "Red" Redmon, Nina "9-uh" Rowan, Jennifer "Jeff" Wilkins, Ruth "Sugar" Kerce, Judi "Judicious" Phillips, Claudia "Hugs" Yates, Ellen "Elinowy" Hestand, Carmel "Nila" Vivier, and Mary Lou "ML" Frank. UGLY REBS UNTIE (sic)! Much, much love from your La Jefa, Testy M.

  Thanks also to Flo Moyer (Hayley Gardner for Silhouette), honorary Reb, for her advice and support, as well as the Ladies of Leisure, and the San Antonio Romance Authors (SARA).

  Special blessings on my friends at Books to Share in Kerrville—Barbara, Jack, Mark, Gloria and Don, and to Cindy, Debbie and Debbie at Hastings. A special thanks to C. K. Dexter Havens for his support and understanding. And always, to my children and family, just for being who they are.

  Prologue

  Flames soared above their heads, and his men shouted at him to leave before the palace ceiling collapsed, but he would not listen. The stench of the dead and dying permeated the smell of smoke, and the heat closed in around him, sucking the air from his lungs, replacing it with fire. And yet he would not leave. Not yet. He stood, one foot on either side of the woman's body, staring down at her. She was dying, and for a brief moment he was struck by the fact that even as life ebbed out of her, her beauty remained. Beauty she would never let him touch, never let him experience. Silver-blond hair spread beneath her. Lavender eyes gazed up at him with such reproach, and such great sadness, that he could barely stand to watch her die. He swallowed and closed his eyes as some deep, forgotten sense of conscience shuddered through him. The unfamiliar emotion passed, and when he opened his eyes again, she had passed as well, her eyes now glassy, as devoid of life as the crystal around her neck, resting against the hollow of her throat.

  "Commander! Commander Zarn!" The shout came from behind. He turned and saw his leader of the ground troops signaling him desperately. "The roof! The roof is about to go!"

  He glanced up, then bent over the woman's corpse and, with one sharp tug, wrenched the necklace free. Letting it dangle from his fingers in front of his eyes, he threw back his head and laughed, loud and long.

  "And sol win after all, Aletha," he said, as the sweat danced against his forehead and the heat burned through the bottom of his boots. "You may have hidden your daughter from me this day, but never doubt that I will find her, and when I do—" He clutched the crystal tightly, lifting his fist above his head, feeling drunk with the blood he had spilled this day. He lowered the crystal, bringing it to his lips, pressing it to him as she had never allowed him to press her sweet flesh.

  "I will take her power… and end her worthless life."

  The ceiling above him crumbled, embers falling, flames surging downward. Zarn turned and ran, making it out of the fiery furnance just in time, his laughter echoing through the smoke as the inferno utterly consumed the House of Cezan.

  Chapter One

  "I am not prepared to be merciful. Plasma-blasters will be issued to every member of the crew."

  Skyra Cezan heard her voice tremble, and she stiffened as two of her officers glanced up from the map spread across the table in the briefing room. The rest of her senior officers began murmuring either at her startling announcement or the emotion she had inadvertently revealed. The plasma-blasters, illegal weapons banned in half the galaxy, had been stolen over a year ago. They had yet to use them, for Skyra had pronounced the risks too high. Until now.

  P'ton, security chief, and T'varr, helmsman and communications officer, looked first at each other, then back at their commander.

  "Captain," began, "with all due respect, if we use the plasma-blasters—which propel a highly inaccurate ball of energy—we could end up killing or harming the children." He stabbed one finger down toward the map. "Station One is essentially a world of domes. Each contains an atmosphere of artificial oxygen. The natural atmosphere is unbreathable. If we start using the plasma-blasters, we could accidentally dissolve the domes."

  Lieutenant P'ton was short, barely five foot six, but had a dense body composition and huge knotted muscles that gave him the appearance of a strong animal not to be treated lightly. Sky had chosen him to head up her security team because of that strength as well as his single-minded fixation on obeying orders. So far his loyalty had been unwavering, both to the late Redar and to his new captain. She turned her attention back to his concerns. "Can we isolate the children?"

  He spread his hands apart. "There's no way of knowing where they will be at any given time. According to our sources, their schedules vary randomly from day to day for security reasons."

  Sky closed her eyes briefly, feeling a wave of dizziness sweep over her. Although she had only recently become the captain of the Defiant, she was getting used to making the life-and-death decisions that affected the twenty people making up her crew. Still, she always listened to her seni
or officers and took their opinions into consideration. That was part of the reason she had been able to maintain the standard her predecessor, Redar, had set before he died, and why her crew of rebels had still been able to wreak havoc on Zarn's forces across the quadrant without getting caught when others had been long ago sent to penal worlds.

  She was a good captain because she listened, because she knew she was fallible and still had a lot to learn, and wasn't ashamed to admit it. Whatever gave her crew a better chance to come away from their mission alive—that was the course of action she always pursued. But this time it was different.

  Sky bowed her head for a moment, gathering her strength, then snapped herself erect, the muscles in her back, arms, and neck taut. She moved away from the table, hands clasped behind her back, aware that she presented an odd figure in the silver tynarium droid suit she wore. The form-fitting heavy suit in no way hid the fact that she was a woman, but the helmet deposited at her feet would hide her face and her identity when they landed on Station One.

  "This is the situation, harsh as it may sound. There is one child whose safety we are concerned about and one child alone: the heir to the throne of Andromeda, my sister, Mayla Cezan." It wasn't true. She wanted to shout the words. She was stricken with concern for the other children, but there was nothing she could do about it. She had to save her sister.

  The sound of a throat being cleared made her pause in her circling of the briefing room and she turned, nodding at the tall, blue-skinned man standing in one corner of the room. He was an Altairian, a race once known for their rage and love of war, whose culture had only recently found the peace of logic. Not for the first time, Sky felt grateful for the presence of her first officer. He always backed her up—at least in front of the crew.

  "Yes, Kell? You wanted to say something?"

  "I was merely going to suggest that it may not be necessary to actually use the plasma-blasters. If you let the Guardian and his men know you have this power and will not hesitate to use it, you may be able to bluff them into surrendering."

  "Excellent idea," Sky said after a moment's thought. "P'ton, arm everyone with a regular phaser as well as a plasma-blaster. When we land, we'll fire the plasma-blasters at something that will make a good but harmless target for our power." She pointed at a diagram on the map and her people moved closer to the table. "Here. This is some sort of decorative tower next to their landing port. As soon as we land, we'll hit it with the plasma."

  "Of course they will have already experienced the power of the plasma," Kell reminded her, "because you will use it to punch a hole in the planetary shielding."

  She nodded. "Yes, but I want something they can taste. P'ton, you take ten people and blow the tower, secure the landing port. The rest of us will transport from the ship to the outside of the main building. We'll give the Guardian another little dose of plasma; then we'll switch to phasers." She pushed away from the table. "Any questions? Very well. Battle stations."

  Sky wearily watched her officers leave. When the door slid shut she let her shoulders sag and released her pent-up breath in a long sigh. Twisting her long hair back into a knot at the nape of her neck, she sank down into a chair, allowing herself one moment, just one, before she began her own preparations.

  The soft shoosh of the cabin door opening sent her to her feet and back into her customary stiff pose of authority as she turned to face the intruder. Her shoulders sagged again as she saw it was Kell. His pale blue face and brilliant blue eyes should have been a welcome sight to her. In all the universe there was not a more loyal friend, a better comrade, but she turned away knowing all too well what he was about to say, too tired to hear it said again.

  "You're going to wear yourself out." His normally soft voice was even softer than usual, reflecting his concern. He crossed to her side and after giving her face a searching glance, led her to a chair beside the oval table occupying center stage in the small room. "Have you eaten today?" He pushed her down into the cushioned chair and knelt beside her. "Did you sleep last night?"

  Skyra sighed, then groaned as the Altairian took one of her hands in his own and began kneading her palm in slow, relaxing circles. She was too tired even to feel surprise at Kell's actions. Usually he avoided contact with others at all costs, but sometimes, once in a great while, he would bend a little. This was the first time in a very long time, however, that he had touched her. She always sensed Kell keeping a part of himself sealed away from her, locked away with his emotions. Perhaps as a new student of logic, he did not trust himself to keep the strong feelings he had for her at bay. And she knew he had feelings for her. It was impossible for her not to be aware of it, even though he had struggled ever since she came aboard to hide how much he cared.

  "That feels wonderful." She let her head fall back against the top of the chair and allowed her spine to curve in an uncharacteristic slump. "Why don't you take off this contraption and go He down for a while?" he said, gesturing to the silver droid suit she wore.

  She shook her head, eyes closed. "No. I've got to be ready the moment we get there." The droid suit was heavy, no doubt about it, but she needed the strength she would gain from the tynarium studded throughout the skin-tight silver uniform. The connecting circuits were presently left undone down the front of her suit, but once snapped together, the tynarium would pulsate into her own muscles and increase her strength by one hundred percent. It was illegal and dangerous, but in this scenario she needed every advantage.

  "You know this thing can backfire on you—people have used them and never regained their own strength afterward."

  "Shut up, Kell."

  He fell silent. Sky counted to ten and smiled when right on cue he began to speak again.

  "Have you eaten?" he persisted, moving to the other hand and continuing his ministrations there. She smiled down at him, affectionately brushing one lock of his dark blue hair back from his forehead.

  "No, I haven't eaten and I haven't slept," she admitted. "Please, Kell, don't start this again. I'm not hungry. I can't sleep. How can I when I don't know what's happening to her?" She sat up abruptly, jerking her hand from his grasp, and sprang to her feet to pace again. "How long until we reach Station One?" she demanded.

  "Not long." Kell caught her by one arm and brought her to a standstill, then quickly dropped his hand back to his side. "Sky, you have got to stop this or you won't be in any shape to help Mayla when we get there."

  "I know, I know. All right, I'll eat something."

  "You know it doesn't do her any good to beat yourself up about this. It wasn't your fault."

  Sky muttered an eloquent curse she'd learned on Candor 7 and was rewarded by the sight of the implacable Kell raising one blue brow. "The hell it wasn't," she amended. "I should have never left her with him."

  "It was just for a few hours. How could you have known? He was one of us."

  She tossed her long hair back from her shoulder and shook her head in disbelief "It's my job to know, Kell, or have you forgotten my father gave Mayla into my care ten years ago, put her under my protection before he was murdered?"

  "Quite a responsibility for a sixteen-year-old, giving her a three-year-old child and then disappearing into the galaxy."

  "He didn't disappear—he was murdered by Zarn and his Dominion Forces." Kell folded his arms across his chest. "You don't know that for a fact," he reminded her. "Your father simply never came back for you and Mayla."

  Sky moved around the room, shoving chairs against the table distractedly, her head aching with the thought of what might be happening to her sister even now as they hurried to rescue her. "He would have come back if he'd been alive," she whispered. "I know he would have."

  "You need to believe that, Sky, but it is not necessarily true."

  She spun on the man with clenched fists, and he took an involuntary step backward. "Damn your Atairian logic!" she shouted. "My father loved my sister too much to just abandon her and disappear to save his own skin!"

 
Kell lifted one brow again. "Did I suggest such a thing?"

  "It's what you're thinking—it's what you're always thinking."

  "I asked you to stay out of my thoughts, Captain," Kell admonished. "I thought we had an agreement on that."

  Sky blushed but lifted honest eyes to meet his. "I—I was speaking from an emotional viewpoint, of course. I haven't been reading your mind, Kell. I gave you my word on that long ago. Besides, I can't read anyone's mind as long as I'm wearing this." Her fingers touched the silver band around her forehead.

  A slight smile curved his thin lips. "Of course. Then I take it that it is still working well for you?"

  "It's wonderful. I can't tell you the freedom I feel now. I mean, the first prototype Redar invented stopped the thoughts of others equally well, but it was heavy and awkward. This is like—" she spread her arms apart. "Like being given wings."

  "I'm glad for you, Sky. Have you always had this problem? Did you never have natural shielding in your mind?"

  She frowned. "I have a limited ability. It was never a problem on Andromeda. I never experienced the mental assault of other minds until I went to Bezanti. I can only assume that my parents protected me somehow and did not realize I had no ability to protect myself, as their other children did."

  "You are fortunate then to have this device."

  "I'll never stop being thankful for Redar's genius. I only wish—" She hugged her arms around herself suddenly and turned away. Kell turned her back to face him, his hand gentle on her shoulder.

  "He's dead, Sky. You must accept this and go on. Redar abhorred grief in any form."

  Sky nodded, letting her hands fall back to her sides. "I know," she said, feeling again the ache that always accompanied any thoughts of Redar. "But I can't help it. I miss him." She glanced back at her first officer. "He saved me, Kell. If he hadn't come along when he had, I don't know what I would have done. Mayla's help in keeping the thoughts of others from my mind was draining even her power. I truly think I would have gone insane if Redar hadn't traced my thought-aura and offered to help me."