by Celeste Raye
Talon said, “I suppose we will not ever know unless we actually board and wreck them.”
Jessica said, “I’m over here trying to talk you out of doing that.”
He said, “It seems to me that this was your idea.”
Her mouth tilted upward into that smile that always got to him. “Oh no. I beg to differ. This was all your idea. So far it is just an idea, too. Perhaps it should be just that and nothing else.”
Talon’s eyes roamed over her face. Animation had sprung up onto every one of her features, and he knew that that was due to her interest being piqued by the words that they had spoken. The only person aboard that ship who hated the Federation more than him was Jessica.
Jessica said, “Did I ever tell you that when I was a Capo, a very young Capo, that one of my first duties was in a hall of knowledge? Not just any hall of knowledge either; this one had the old books in it. The ones made of real paper. They had pages and pages and pages within their covers, and they lined the shelves, miles and miles and miles of shelves.
“The Federation owns all of Old Earth’s halls of knowledge, of course. The populace isn’t allowed in; only the highest ranking of the Federation members and their families were ever allowed to enter the halls.
“I found this to be such a shame. But I also wondered why they didn’t want the population to have access to something so wonderful.”
Talon snorted. “For the same reason the Federation doesn’t with a population of any system or planet in the entire universe to have access to the things that they hold dear. The Federation is greedy.”
Jessica leaned against a small pillar, “I can’t argue that one with you at all because it’s true. But it’s more than that. You see, those books held all the history of the world that the ones who collected it could find. It seems strange to me that people who lived many centuries before I was even born had spent most of their lives trying to dig up the stories and histories of people who had died thousands of years before the ones who were collecting their histories had lived, but I think I understand it more now.”
Talon had no idea what she was getting at. “I see. Are you going to tell me what it is that you understand?”
Jessica said, “I can understand wanting to know where we came from and how we got where we are. Everyone wants to know that I suppose. But that’s not my point. My point was in those books they listed the ways that the people who lived on Old Earth got food before there was even credits or anything like it in the world.”
Talon’s toes were tapped into the flooring. “Jessica, you’re going to have to spell this out for me. You are just confusing me. We went from talking about taking a Federation ship to books in the halls of knowledge and how people dead for millennia used to acquire food.”
Her white and square teeth flashed as she smiled. “They used to cut the weakest from a herd. They’d follow behind the herd, staying out of sight while they watched until they picked out which one was the weakest. Then they did something to make that weakest one fall back even further. You know, to be separated from the larger group. Then they’d kill it.”
Talon’s mouth fell open. “That’s genius!”
Jessica said, “Well, it may have worked for them, but they weren’t hunting Federation ships, now were they?”
Talon said, “No, they were not. However, if we used our cloaking device and stayed very far behind until we could pick out a straggler ship and then cut it off from the others.”
Her eyes met his squarely. “Maybe.”
He said, “I am willing to try it.”
Her head tilted to one side. Her eyes danced with an almost unholy light. His heart gave a painful throb in his chest. When he had been very small, he had asked his father how it was that he and his wife, Talon’s mother, had managed to stay together for so long when so many couples tended to eventually leave their mate and find another. The reply his father had given him had been simple. He had told Talon that if Talon were to be a warrior, then he needed a female who was soft and yielding.
Talon’s mother had been a healer. She would only pick up arms if her own life or the life of her children and her husband were in danger.
There was nothing soft or yielding about Jessica. She was as hard and sharp as a moon dust gem, and three times as deadly.
Her lips curved upward even further. A radiant light lit her face from within. “I don’t think I’d mind dishing out a little punishment to the Federation. If they are carrying fresh food and water, then that makes it all even better.”
Talon said, “I don’t care what they carry, to be honest, although I would like to see some weapons. We could use some new technology in our weaponry, and if anyone has that, it is the Federation. Also, don’t think you talked me into this.”
Jessica said, “I know very well that you are the most stubborn being who’s ever been born in this universe. I would never try to talk you into anything.”
She thought he was stubborn? Well, she was right.
He turned to the bridge and strode to the control panels were Caleb still stood, flying confidently along toward the destination Talon had given him a few minutes before.
Talon said, “I have decided that we need to wreck a ship.”
Cheers broke out along the bridge, but then someone asked, “Which ship?”
Talon took a deep breath. Was he really going to do this? Yes, yes, he was.
“We’re going to take one of the Federation ships from the fleet.”
Chapter 3 - Talon
Had she just talked Talon into taking on a Fed ship? And one that was traveling with at least a hundred others?
She had.
Shit.
Jessica was already regretting that little game she had played with Talon. She had totally shoved aside that bad feeling that she had in her gut, and she had done it by suggesting to him that they do something sure to either get them killed or hunted down by the Federation!
Not that she was not already wanted by those bastards, and it was likely that Talon would have decided to try for one anyway.
He was growing bolder by the day, and he had become something of a cult figure among the outlaw circles that wrapped the universe. He was out for vengeance, which made him dangerous, and he didn’t care if he died, which made him even more dangerous not only to the Federation but to the entire universe.
She readied her weapons as they slowly circled around a small star system that would hide them from the Federation ships long enough to drop behind them and raise their cloaking shields.
Not even the best cloaking shields would keep them from being noticed if they didn’t fly in the wake of the Federation ships though, and she knew that because Talon had told her so. When it came to flying, there were few in the universe that could match Talon.
She could trust him to fly her into danger and out of it, every time.
If only she could trust her body when he was near!
A small spasm of pain came and went in her temples. She frowned and closed her eyes, trying to let her mind go blank. Whatever memory she had locked away in her head to protect it from the mind wipe was trying to surface, but when she tried to grasp it, to reach for it, all she got was a searing pain for her troubles and no closer to recalling what it was that had made her so dangerous to the Federation.
What did she know?
It was maddening that she still did not remember after all this time! She had a strange and very strong sense that she had to remember, and fast, but she could not recall whatever it was she had seen or heard or done that made her such a threat, and she groaned, her fingers rubbing at her temples absently.
She managed to get a grip on the pain just as they circled around a small meteor shower and star storm.
She walked to her chamber with dragging footsteps. Her body ached from exhaustion and that endless worry that had been nagging at her for weeks now, telling her that something was very wrong. That there was something she should remember, and soon, because time was run
ning out.
Time for what?
It was so close to the surface, so very close and yet so far away.
Yori.
If only he had been there, he could have shown her how to open that box in her brain and dig out the contents.
Was he even still alive?
She had not been the only one interrogated, and she knew that.
She had been a Capo and a leader of the resistance all at once and the worry and the stress had been enough to kill her at times.
She leaned against the wall in her chamber and sighed again. The Federation ship and the taking of it was a battle she would rather not fight so why had she goaded Talon into doing it?
Because he would have considered it anyway, a little voice in her head said. He would have because he was always on the lookout for a dare, for a challenge, for a way to get even with the Federation and the Gorlites.
She knew that. So why push it?
She had to. She needed something on that ship.
She paused, her hands flattening as she pushed herself away from the wall.
“What the hell is wrong with me?”
Good question.
But that thought stayed.
There was something she needed, and she had to have it from that ship.
But which ship?
She shucked her clothes and slid into bed. Her eyes closed and Yori’s face drifted up. He had been her best friend and her leader. She had kept his secret, and he had kept hers.
She had not betrayed him, but she had betrayed the woman who had been mind-wiped and implanted with the software that had turned her into a cycle spy.
Nobody knew that.
Oh, they knew that she had been the one to help turn that young woman into a cycle spy, but they had not known what that woman had done or why she had ended up on a slaver's ship. There was a cover story implanted in Jessica’s brain, and she had let Jeval into that section of her brain but not the rest of it.
The young woman whom she had betrayed had been the daughter of a Federation officer—and she had also been a member of the resistance down on Old Earth.
“I betrayed her to save Yori. It was a shitty bargain but what else could I do?”
What else could she have done?
The Federation knew that the Old Earth resistance had in its ranks one of the higher-ranking Federation’s offspring. What they didn’t know was that there were two people in the resistance who were offspring of the Federation’s members.
She had saved Yori because without him, the resistance was nothing and she had known that she was either going to die or be sent to a slaver planet.
She had known it, and so she had shut away her memories so that they could not touch the most important ones. She had not given up Yori, and she had yet to unearth that big secret, the one that Jeval had found when he had done the mind walking with her.
He had cornered her later that evening and told her he had never come across anyone who was so able to stay closed off before and he was curious, but he was also willing to leave it alone and let her be because she was a good fighter and he knew Talon wanted her as a crew member.
Sleep was what she needed, but it eluded her. She rolled over on her belly and her clit pressed against a rise of the sheets and covers. Desire throbbed along her nerve endings.
Talon and her attraction to him were becoming a serious issue and maybe that was causing her to think that there was something else she needed, maybe she was driving them into danger—whether it was danger that Talon relished or not—for no other reason than she was running from her feelings for him.
Her fingers tangled in the sheets. Her bottom lifted and her hips ground in a lazy circle. The pressure on her clit increased, and her top teeth sank into her lower lip. She swallowed hard as a heavy and intense throbbing began in her lower belly, and a liquid heat spilled from her inner folds and smeared along her inner thighs.
Her fingers clutched the sheets more tightly, winding into them as her ass cheeks clenched and she ground her front against the thick wad of her bed linens, wishing that it was Talon’s body below hers, that they were making love.
She came, but it was a purely physical thing with no real release or relief.
She rolled back over. Her eyes stared at the ceiling, and she sighed. Her body was lax and her limbs heavy, but her mind spun along like a wheel. She was too tired, so very tired, and yet sleep seemed so far away.
Chapter 4 - Talon
Talon sat in his chamber with Harlon, a Revant who had been with his father and who now crewed on Talon’s ship.
Harlon spoke. “You know I have done everything ever asked of me by the family you are part of. I have never backed down from any fight, whether it was for the right to close the wormhole or the right to live. I worked beside you in the mines, Talon, and I don’t know how either of us has managed to live through all the battles we have seen.”
Talon leaned forward, his eyes locking onto Harlon’s. “I agree with every word you just said, especially the last part, but I think you are wrong about the taking of this ship.”
Harlon snorted. “A Federation ship is not so hard to take. We have done that before when we found them alone. This is not that. You are talking about taking a ship that is part of an armada, and in that armada are at least a dozen warships.”
Talon licked his lips. He gave Harlon a wary glance. “Do the rest of the crew feel the same?”
“Most. It is foolish, Talon. I know you, and I know if anyone could do this, it would be you. But this…it feels like arrogance rather than need. The truth is we do not need this ship. We do not need the trouble that will come from this either.”
That was true. The Federation was not going to take this well. They would definitely be angry as hell, and the last thing he really needed was that. On the other hand, it was no longer such a huge problem for him to be marked as an outlaw. They had Revant Two now, and it was outside Fed territory. At least for now.
He tapped his fingers on the table he sat at. He said, “I know this seems odd. It sounds crazy. But I know we can do it, and the truth is we are running low on weapons and supplies. Wrecking one of those ships would give us weapons like they have, and that is important since they raided the last outliers and managed to take such a huge lot of the black-market guns away.
“I can always back off if it seems bad.”
Harlon snorted. “You could, but will you? We all know you do not let go once you get a hold of things.”
Talon grinned. “That is so true. I can’t even argue that.”
Harlon stood. “You tell me what you decide on this one. The crew and I will follow you. You know that we will. We always have, and even the ones who have not been here to know that I have owed you something. Even if that something is our lives, which it very well may be this time.”
“I know that, but it could be our lives every single time.”
The words held the harsh ring of truth because they were true.
Every ship could bring death, whether it was from fighting the Gorlites or fighting off a ship’s crew so they could wreck the ships they took. Any and all of those ships that they had gone after over the years could have meant their death.
Harlon nodded. Talon stood and walked to his small porthole window. They had slid behind a star system and were still waiting for the fleet, moving slowly to conserve fuel, to pass by.
The darkness of space rolled around them, broken by a colorful and beautiful stream of light from the star shine.
He stared at it. Once upon a time, when had been a child, he had loved standing on the warm soil and grass of his homeland and looking up at the skies, wondering if his father was flying past.
He had always wanted to fly.
For as long as he could remember, he had wanted to fly.
The skies had called him like the sea had called the sailors of old lore. He frowned, trying to recall what planet had been known for those stories of beings that made ships and then set them
on the seas.
On Revant, fish hunters took boats out to trap the enormous Sturg-fish and landlers that would feed several families for a whole sun and moon phase. They spoke of the sea the same way he spoke of the skies, and he found himself thinking hard about how strange it was that all beings seemed destined to wander and seek out things that should not have been theirs.
He turned away from the windows and went to his bed. The day had been long and tiring, and the fleet would take hours to pass. After it did, they would have to go slowly to come up behind it and stay far enough behind it to pick out any stragglers that they might be able to take.
That had been a smart idea.
He dropped his clothes to the floor and crawled into his bed, folding his hands behind his head.
Jessica. She was an odd one, always ready to go up against anything and anyone. She was a warrior in every way, and she was the one woman he could not have, but the only one he wanted.
Just his luck.
“There.”
Talon squinted, and a grin filled his face. “It is slowing down.”
“A lot.” Jessica’s forehead wrinkled. “Maybe too much.”
Talon asked, “You think it is a trap?”
“No, but…but maybe.”
He gave her a long glance. She wore a pensive expression. She said, “I think I am jumping at shadows. The whole thing is stupid, you know. We should likely call it off.”
“True.”
She drew a breath. The breath lifted her chest in an enticing way, and he had to turn his eyes away to stop staring at that magnificent physique of hers.
She said, “Oh look, it was slowing down for…” Her mouth opened and closed. A frown came and went, but he had seen it too. He spoke softly. “It’s a cloaked ship!”
Her words held worry. “It is a Gorlite ship, and Talon, look!”
Talon had already seen it. So had Harlon and several other crewmembers. They crowded around the windows, all of them watching but not speaking.