by Celeste Raye
Her eyes met his. “I lost the last hand.”
“One out of three is not bad.”
Clara’s eyes danced. “True. Those are pretty good odds. But the earlier pots were very small. I am afraid he took off with all the profits from the first two games, so I am exactly at zero.’
“The day’s young.” His eyes ran over her again. The dress emphasized the creamy swell of her breasts and the glistening black silk of her hair. He spoke again. “You do know you have already gained quite the reputation here.”
“Have I?” She tucked the hundred-credit chip into the small bag she kept for the tips she earned at the table, and which she was not obligated to share.
“Oh yes. I almost hate to see you go when your time is done.”
Her shoulders drew down a little. “I have to admit I have not given too much thought to what happens when I am no longer in your debt.”
The walls provided soundproofing as well as invisibility. That emboldened him. “No?”
“No.” Her eyes met his. He read uncertainty there. “I don’t think I could go back, even if I were in possession of my file and without the chip. My face is too well known. I also don’t have a single clue what else is out there. But you said eventually you will sell this hall, and I am also not sure I want to work for anyone else.”
Her eyes fell to the cards in her hands. She fanned them neatly then stacked them with quick, sure movement. “This planet of yours, is that—I mean, that’s your future?”
He didn’t talk about that planet too often, not unless he was speaking to his allies or brothers. He took a seat at the table. “Yes. I…we grew up on the ship after our home planet, Revant, was destroyed by a warp suck. After our ship was taken, we were taken to the mines in Sonagis, so we never had much in the way of a home.”
Her brow wrinkled. “I don’t know where that is.”
“It’s nowhere.” The past was always there, just waiting to trap him into its misery. He drew a breath. “My family was captured by Gorlites and the cargo ship they owned seized.”
Her frown grew deeper. “Gorlites?”
“They’re without a homeland. Parasites. They capture ships and ride them until they are junked then take another. They took my father’s ship and killed him, my mother, and most of the crew. Those of us who survived were left in the outlying world. Sonagis.”
Clara’s mouth hung open. “They just…they just dumped you?”
How he wished he could say yes to that. “No. They sold us. Sonagis is a mining planet.”
Her face showed horror. “Mining? Isn’t that dangerous?”
Too dangerous. Both his uncles and many others that had survived the Gorlites taking of the ship had died in the mines, either from the creep-lung or the rot, or from simple starvation and overwork. Many who had lived had been broken.
Clara leaned back in the chair. “How did you get away?”
A muscle ticked in his jaw. “Talon was young, but he loved ships from the moment he drew breath. He was always on the bridge and watching as the ship flew. Father indulged him. He allowed him to fly at times when we were far past systems and in pure space. One day a small craft landed very near the mines. Talon, Marik, Jeval, and I decided to make a break for it. We, and a few others who had flight experience, seized the ship and ran as fast as we could.”
Clara’s eyes rounded. She whispered, “That’s so…that’s so incredible.”
Renall wasn’t sure why he was telling her that. It was not something he was comfortable talking about, in truth. “It was desperation.”
Clara said, “And brave too.”
He found he could barely breathe. Something sprang up between them, something warm and so different from anything he had ever known. Uncomfortable now, he lifted the walls and said, “I’ll let you continue with your game.”
He strode away quickly, but the past dogged his footsteps. It was a long way from the mines to the hall. They’d spent a century gathering the first part of the credits that had gotten them to the larger ship they’d had to have to work the stripping crews. It had taken another to show a real and viable profit. But there were still far too many moments in his life when he was terribly afraid he would awaken in his filthy crib in the mine shafts to discover that all of this was just some fever-induced dream.
Chapter 8:
Clara deliberately took her time setting up a table, keeping the closed light lit as she thought about what Renall had told her. How had he done it? How had he gone from being a slave in a mine to being the incredibly wealthy being that he was then?
It was mind-boggling.
No wonder he treated his people so fairly, she mused as she hit the light to signal her table was open for play. He was fair, even if she railed against the fact that so much of what she earned had to go to satisfy so many debts she had run up just by speaking for her family, and then Dana’s.
Not that she was paying much in the way of debt to Dana and her daughters. The women were accomplished and the clothing they made wonderful. The Gurley girls gleefully bought the creations and the profits were already piling up and eradicating their debts to Renall.
The table filled. The game began. Clara pushed thoughts of Renall away, knowing she had to concentrate hard now.
The day waxed and waned. Night set in, signaled by the thinning of the air and the gathering of larger crowds. The wine flowed freely, as did the harder spirits. The Gurley girls ended their shifts, and fresh dancers came onto the stage. Clara was engrossed in a table that was made up of either the very wealthy or the very stupid; she was not sure which. The stakes were incredibly high. Nearly thirty thousand credits were on the table, and she had what was a good hand, but not a winner. Still, the house percentage would be high too. She folded then dealt swiftly, knowing the end was coming. All but four players were gone now. Two were hanging in out of sheer stubborn determination.
Clara knew a rube when she saw one and worry began to set in when the last three players took the next ante. The creature, one she’d never seen before, shook all over, it was so excited. It was humanoid only slightly, with a long face peeking out from around a boxy-framed skull and with four arms and three legs, one of which was off center and appeared to be more appendage than actual limb.
It was clearly over its head but not letting go.
The Habbit that had been at her table the night before called, laid his cards, and came up with a full house. The Outlander from Orbitary slapped his down and came up with a full house, two but his face cards were higher in value, and he had three-eyed kings while the Habbit had two-eyed queens. Clara looked at the creature. “Your down.”
The creature shrieked. The noise, a whining and thin cry, cut through the din. It rang against her eardrums, setting them to throbbing. A sliver of pain crashed into her skull, right between her eyes, blinding her.
The Habbit stood, one hand already going to its laser. The Outlander was on his feet too. The shriek kept going. All over the hall people were slapping their hands over their ears, and Clara did the same but she couldn’t get that scream out of her skull now that it had lodged there. Pain rolled through her, bringing queasy sickness.
Renall appeared, flanked by security, all with drawn lasers. Renall snapped, “Lay them down.”
The creature flung the cards, still shrieking as it did so. Clara’s eyes filled with tears that ran down her face. The sickness spread, floated up toward her teeth. The creature stopped the shriek and shouted, “It cheated in their favor!”
It directed another burst of that sound, and right at Clara! The noise scraped past her white-knuckled fingers. Agony stole over her. Darkness swam in. Pain lanced across her entire body, and she went limp, unable to stay upright in the face of that onslaught.
The Habbit drew, but it was too late. The security officer fired. The creature fell dead to the floor in a spill of bile and organs. The sound stopped, but the pain stayed. Clara retched and gagged. The Outlander grabbed her. She heard his voice come from
around the edges of the pain. “That damned Terristal scraped her skull good.”
Clara sagged lower in the chair. Arms went around her. She closed her eyes, but a wild careening and looping sensation swallowed her up, making the vomit rise higher. Acid burned her throat.
Renall said, “It’s all right. I have you.’
His arms lifted her from her seat. Her limbs would not move. All over the floor beings lifted themselves and spoke in low whispers. The dead thing stayed dead, she was glad to see.
Renall carried her out of the hall and into the dim and quiet hallway. The pain began to abate but other things set in. His arms, so strong and long, felt so good on her body. He carried her so easily that she nestled closer, reveling in the feel of smooth muscles working and flowing beneath his tunic as he toted her up the stairs and down the hall that led to her chamber, calling for wine and a compac-press.
In her chamber, he deposited her on the bed and leaned over her. His scent filled her nostrils. She gazed up at him, unable to move still.
Wine and the compac-press arrived. Renall took it and sent the indentured one who had brought it away. His hands were tender as he lifted her from the hard pillows and held the cup to her mouth. “Slow,” he said softly.
She took a few shallow sips. Her eyes closed again. She was sure she was about to throw up, but the wine stayed down and settled her trembling stomach too.
The compact-press met her forehead, cooling it and shredding away the last of the pain there in her skull. Her eyes still watered and ran though. She mumbled, “What was that thing?”
His lips flattened. “A Terestrial.”
She managed to pry her eyes open. “What did it do to me?”
“Skull scraped you. They can focus that voice of theirs to one person. At first, it stunned the room, but then it just went after you.”
“I’ll say.”
Renall leaned back over her. His cool fingers met her wan cheeks. Desire worked its way back through her yet again despite the miserable feeling left from the skull scrape.
His eyes met hers and held. She drew a shuddering breath. Desire grew, intensifying. His mouth came down on hers, demanding and fierce. Their tongues met and danced. Clara’s fingers went to his hair. The scrape of his beard across the lower half of her face was exciting and sexy.
His body lowered over hers; his weight braced on his forearms as the kiss grew longer and deeper still. Clara’s eyes closed and she gave in to all the sensation spiraling up and over her. He was invoking something beyond mere lust.
His body pressed against hers. A very masculine hardness pressed between her thighs, rubbing at the material covering her body. Fresh sensation spiraled along her nerve endings as his hands wandered over her body, the heat of his fingers soaking through the dress and sending shivers across the bare patches of her flesh.
The dress parted below those fingers of his. His fingertips stroked her skin, heating it and her passion. Her legs opened as his tongue continued to probe her mouth and drive her crazy. Her tongue responded and her hips arched below his, her body tendering an invitation that was undeniable.
His breath washed over her neck. His teeth closed over the soft skin there and tugged gently just above the heavy beat of her pulse, and her breath caught. Her nipples hardened, and her toes curled. Her fingers dug into his coarse and thick hair, and her mouth hung open in a hard pant as he took her nipples into his mouth, his long fingers cupping each breast as he took turns suckling first one nipple and then the other.
Clara stared down at his dark head against the white flesh of her breast, and long tremors rocketed across her body. He was making love to her in a slow and assured way, and she wanted more, so much more.
His hands moved lower, and so did his mouth. Little trails of fire streaked over her belly. His tongue left wetness in its wake, and an answering wetness erupted from within her core, streaming down her inner thighs. Her legs opened wider. His hands delved into that junction and found the very tip of her desire; his expert manipulation of the tight bud of flesh at the top of her mound left her shaking and gasping, her hips writhing as she sought to get closer to the fingers driving her toward the brink of a climax.
Renall’s hands shucked his clothes off to reveal a wiry and muscled body. His cock was large and long, and she whimpered as it pressed against the wet flesh at the center of her body and then he entered her, moving fast and hard. Clara responded, her body meeting his every thrust. He filled her body in a way she had never known. Her hands went to his shoulders, her nails digging in deeply. His mouth met hers again, and she kissed him back, her body finding the rhythm and keeping it as he began to move his hips faster and harder, pounding into her now.
Climax hit. Clara came hard, her voice lifting in a low, slow, and very loud moan. Renall’s moan was equally noisy, and then he shuddered one time before going rigid and hanging onto her, his fingers digging into the soft flesh of her neck before releasing her.
They lay together in a tangle of cooling limbs and slowing breath. Renall spoke softly. “Clara, I have to tell you, to be honest with you.”
“Don’t.”
Her fingers went to his lips. She did not want to hear him say that he could not be with her. She knew that already. What she really did not want to hear was that he was sorry that he had bedded her. She was not sorry about it. She could not be. She had liked it, very much. She wanted more, in fact. She shifted a bit, letting her body rest next to his. His skin was smooth and cool to the touch now that the heat of desire had fled from him.
She looked at him. “So, how did you get from the mines to here?”
He blinked. “You want to know?”
She smiled. “I know you are a wrecker. I also know you had to be. But what I don’t know is what else you did, and you do not have to tell me. I just wonder how you could go from such a place of darkness to this.”
His face registered more surprise. He paused. He said, “We flew for a few days, in the stolen ship. We were low on fuel and scared. We were young then, you see. We had no idea where we were, or what to do next.
“Talon had figured out the controls enough to fly, but none of us could figure out the rest of it. To be honest, that first day, after we were sure we had really gotten away, we basically ate and drank everything on the ship we could find. We were starving, you see.”
Clara felt pity worm into her heart. “I am sure you were.”
Renall sighed. “We found a small, half-ruined planet on the brink of some darkened system. It was mostly dead stars, and abandoned. There have been crater wars there so there were no people and there was little in the way of food, but we managed.”
Her head tilted. “What’s a crater war?”
His eyes met hers. He spoke softly. “I keep forgetting that you humans did not know about other life in the galaxy until just a few hundred years ago. The Crater Wars were…long ago when travel through the wormholes began to collapse due to overuse. Those wormholes were the trade routes and when they started going, the Federation that existed then began to limit how often a craft could fly, and how many journeys each system could make through them. A lot of smaller systems felt it was unfair. It was unfair. Smaller systems were left without a lot of ability to journey and bring in things they needed or to export the things that paid for the things they needed. The Crater Wars began when systems and planets fought each other for the rights to use the remaining wormholes. The traffic through them eventually collapsed them too, but before that happened, many a system and planet died.”
Horror hit. “And the beings in them?”
“They died too. Not just from the war though. When the wormholes collapsed, they sucked systems near them into the gravitational clutch. The whole atmosphere collapsed, and the planets imploded due to pressure. We could see, quite easily, that the one we landed in was from war and not from being trapped. Thankfully. If we had wandered too close to one that had been trapped, we would have died instantly.”
“Remind
me not to go near a system like that,” she snuggled deeper against him, relishing the feel of his body against hers.
“There are very few gravitational pulls like that still existing. The ones that do are usually clearly marked. That is one good thing the Federation managed to do.”
His words held a ring of something she understood. Anger. She tilted her head up so she could look into his face. “You don’t like the Federation.”
Renall said, “I think having laws in place is a good thing. But the fact is the Federation interferes too much. It’s like your own government. They know the past, and they are afraid of repeating it. They created laws to make sure that it didn’t get repeated. But when the law disregards the beings it is supposed to serve, it isn’t very just.”
Clara’s heart throbbed painfully. “I have to admit, that about sums it up.”
He asked, “Why did you break the law knowing the consequences?”
The past was hurtful, but she could see that his was as well. He had opened up to her about it too. How could she do any less? “I suppose when I was a child it didn’t occur to me that there might be consequences. I mean, yes, they told me. I knew we lived differently and that things were dangerous. I saw neighbors being taken by the Capos. But as a child, those stories of what happened to the criminals felt like stories, you know?
As I got older, I understood the consequences a lot more. The difference then was clearer, however. Our tables kept us from starving. Old Toronto is built above and below, that was a holdover from the ancient days when they built underground for pleasure I think. Anyway, those who lived under, we didn’t have the things that we needed. We were not able to grow, so we had to buy. Those above who could grow were regulated and watched, but there were many who were able to grow extra foods, fruits, and grain that they could and did say had gone bad from blight or drought or the acidic rainfall. They’d send it under, and only those with coin or credits could buy it.
“And my family didn’t just buy for ourselves. In the under, everyone shares so nobody starves. You have to. If you don’t, those who are hungry will turn you in for the rewards and bounties. I once saw a man executed because he refused to share a handful of muskies with a neighbor. The neighbor was hungry, of course, but it was not just hunger that drove him to report.”