by Celeste Raye
Blade’s eyes were hooded. All the old animosity still hung between them and Drake could feel it as Blade said, “Me too. You’re needed on the bridge. There are no navigation systems that can take us where we need to be.”
Drake nodded and finished tucking his tunic into his trousers. His boots, no longer polished but still fine leather, already rested on his feet and weapons sat in the belt around his waist.
Blade spoke again, his tone menacing. “Is there anything we need to know?”
Drake’s smile was bland, innocent. “If there was, I would have said it already. I need you, remember?’
Blade snorted. “I do remember. I just do not know if I believe you need us for anything except a ride in.”
Drake didn’t flinch. “I see.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“You’re going to have to trust me.”
“Not with my life.”
“I can understand your feelings. Now, should we get to the bridge?”
It was an impasse, and Drake knew it. He also knew that he had to do what had to be done, regardless of how he felt about it.
Chapter 2:
His dark hair hung in his face. His eyes, also dark, bored into hers as his body positioned itself over hers. Lornia’s legs parted. Her fingers moved along supple skin, satin over steely muscles. The feel of that skin under her fingertips made a hard gasp escape from her throat. Her hips bucked upward as his fingers slid between her legs, stroking her wet sex with an expertise that sent shivers racing all along her spine and made dewy perspiration come up all over her body.
Her full lips met his. His mouth tasted of water—fresh and clean water—and the starchy vegetables that were so large a part of her diet. The heat of his body soaked into hers, sending more sensation along her nerve endings as his hand continued to move between her legs, his thumb finding the high-standing ridge of flesh right at the top of her wet mound and stroking it in slow and hard circles that made fluids gather and pour from her core.
Those fluids drenched her inner folds and ran down her ass crack, pooling onto the covers below her body. Her heels dug into the mattress and covers, her body twisting as she struggled to get closer to the source of that exquisite torment.
His tongue stroked hers and pleasure coursed through her body, making a low moan, muffled by his lips, come up and echo around the large and high chamber in which she had lived in for so long.
“Yes,” she whispered into his heated mouth. “Please yes.”
His hard rod pressed against her opening. Her fluids drenched that silken skin at the head of his thick and throbbing member and Lornia’s legs spread wider. Her nipples went stiff and high, pointing toward the ceiling as her back arched and her hips did too. One single inch of his thick rod slid inside her walls, parting her sheath and making her want him more than ever.
More oils slid from within her. His hips, lean and well-toned, moved and then he was in her, hot, hard and so very long and thick that she could feel herself stretching to take him in and cradle him within her snug and slippery walls.
They moved together. Her nails, short and square, left vivid scratches along the flesh of his back. His teeth tugged at her bottom lip, and her cries grew longer and louder with every thrust and withdrawal of his member.
She moaned out, “I’m coming! I’m coming!”
His eyes, dark and fathomless, drilled an intense gaze into hers again as sensation broke and left her gasping. Her body began to spasm, her inner walls folding in on his dick and then releasing that hot member with every wave of her orgasm. He said, “I’m coming. Soon. We are all coming soon. Wake up, Lornia.”
What?
Lornia sat up, her blonde hair hanging in tangled strands around her face and her mouth dry and sour. Her heartbeat far too fast.
The dream—had it been a dream?—shattered all around her. She sat up in her bed, her eyes searching the darkness and her ears straining for a sound.
As always, there was nothing but the sound of the wind battering at the crumbling walls and broken windows, the scurry of mice feet and the low whine of machinery that was wearing out and breaking down a little more with every passing year.
Wishful thinking then. She was used to that. Far too many years of silence made sure of that. Her heart ached. Her fingers curled as she placed her feet on the floor and stood, her breath coming in hard gasps as tears threatened. It was funny how all of her emotions had become magnified with each passing year and consciousness.
She slid through the room, her hair waving down to her slender waist and her slim pale feet silent on the cold stones of the floor. She didn’t bother closing the door to her chamber anymore; why would she? Lornia was the sole survivor of the Speakers, the race that had created that space between the universes and just beyond the sealed doors to both the universes that it stood between. There was nobody else there and nobody to breach her privacy.
The corridors hummed with the tuneless whine that always pervaded the fortress. The machines that had once powered it had mostly broken down and died over the centuries. The walls had fallen. The prison that had been meant to keep the weapon, the machine that could change the very shape of the entire universes around it, was too old to remain there where it stood but there was nobody to make the necessary repairs.
Lornia paused, her golden eyes huge and lambent despite the darkness. Why bother? None had come though she had been sure that they would. Why not let the machine die? Why not let the gears grind down and the door close forever? The weapon was old now, worn away by too many years of ceaseless waiting and lack of care. What difference did the fate of two universes make if the secret of the door and those who’d sheltered with the fortress between them had been lost and forgotten?
That was what worried her the most: what frightened her the most.
What if it had been forgotten?
It had been so long! So many centuries, all of them passing slowly and inexorably. Death had come and taken all that she had known and loved and left her with nothing but loneliness and the terrifying certainty that she’d exist forever there, trapped in the nowhere and yet everywhere because there was not one being left in the universes who remembered that legend and who might come to open that door so she could slip through and back into life again.
Life.
She missed it so much!
She paused, a tall and attenuated being whose silver hair hung to her ankles and whose face was made up of clever angles that gave her high, pronounced cheekbones and a wide mouth. Her eyes were slightly too large for the oval shape of her face, and her ears were small, well-made, and very close to her head. Her legs and arms were long, and her waist tiny. Her breasts were small and firm despite the centuries and the long and narrow feet stilled on the stone floor had a set of pulsing blue veins running along the tops of those pale feet, veins that had knotted slightly over the years but not yet bulged.
Life.
That thought caught her and held her in place. The sound of voices and laughter. Passion. Food. The sight of stars and the feel of wind in her hair. The sight of others, and all the passion they brought with them. She’d give almost anything to have that again!
Would she ever have that again?
“I’d rather die than remain here as I have for so very long. Why can’t I just find the courage to find a way to turn it all off and let Tralam fall?”
Her voice sent the little mice that had nestled into a corner into flight. Lornia watched them go. Where they’d come from was no mystery. The science makers had thought to use their ancient ancestors for experiments, but that horrible accident had freed them and the other creatures as well. Some of those creatures had been deadly, and a battle had ensued. Many, both creature and sentient being, had died before they—she and the ones who’d survived the beast’s initial onslaught—had finally won, but not without sacrificing much in the way of the fortress’ defenses and supplies.
There’d been nothing to do but to go to the cryo-chambers and hope the
centuries-long sleep would allow them to live again once they woke.
Only four of the two dozen who’d survived the beast wars had woken though.
Franchine had killed the rest.
Lornia’s lips thinned down as she headed for the room where the machinery labored on. Franchine. That arrogant and determined being who’d done his experiments in secret and without conscience.
He’d mutated the creatures, which was why they had attacked in the first place, and been so hard to kill as well.
Franchine, who had been willing to risk everything—even his life and the lives of all those behind the Speaker’s door and inside Tralam—to try to find immortality.
In the end, he had.
But it had cost nearly every life there—even his.
Lornia had woken to find Franchine not just ancient, but insane. He’d been dying even as she had woken. He’d somehow managed to pretend to be going into cryo, but he had arisen from that frozen bed and began his experiments all over again, that time using his own people for his unwilling subjects. How hard they had suffered, Lornia did not want to know. The bones, the desiccated remains, had told the story enough—and she had wanted to see or hear no more.
She’d been lucky. Franchine had somehow discovered that taking his fellow dwellers out of cryo to experiment upon them only ensured their deaths. He’d found a serum and used it on the ones who had remained, and on himself.
That serum had kept him alive for centuries while he did his best to perfect it. When she had woken, it was to find that she alone had survived his experiments and that she had been altered in ways that were irreversible and terrible.
The machinery room door had once been closely guarded. Now it stood open. She entered it slowly. The machine that kept Tralam from falling into the nothingness sat in the center of the room, all its aging tech lining the walls of the room and everything blinking and beeping and whirring away as the machine struggled not to die too.
Lornia went to it. She lifted her hands and settled them upon the face of the panel. The panel lit up. Her heart ached.
If the machine died—she died.
Maybe it would be better to let that happen.
“They’re coming.”
That voice spoke up inside her head again, and her teeth gritted. Was it possible or had she too gone mad from the long isolation and loneliness?
The machine groaned and labored; the lights blinked and winked out. Darkness blurred her vision. Lornia felt the floor falling out from under her feet. Panic hit her hard.
Franchine had done this, made her part and parcel of the machine, and she hated him for it. Hated him for all of it.
But mostly, she hated herself for being too afraid of death to let it all, herself included, just end.
The machine groaned. A stinking burning smell rolled up. Her nose wrinkled in disgust. More panic hit. Life or death. Everything. Always, and she was always and forever stuck, unable to choose death and without any hope of ever having life again.
Chapter 3:
Jessica watched Drake carefully. He didn’t blame her. He was dangerous, and he knew it.
But so was she.
Jessica was Talon’s woman, and she would probably kill him without a shred of remorse, something else Drake knew all too well. He ignored that fact as he watched the edges of the wormhole come into his field of vision. It sat at the very end of the universe, hidden behind a gaseous planet that was avoided simply because it was so dangerous. Drake knew damn well that Blade was used to hiding in places that read out as uninhabitable, most of the crew on that ship were used to the same thing, but this planet was a whole new animal. The entire system they were passing into was lethal. One small breach of the hull and they’d all die choking on their own lungs, or clawing at their suddenly fiery skin.
He’d never been with people on this trip, and it had been years since he had entered this space—and he had hoped to never have to return either.
Jessica said, “You had better be right about this, Drake.”
He gave her a dead-even glare. “Do you honestly believe that I would put myself into such serious danger if there was not something on the other side of it?”
Jessica stared right back, her gaze unwavering. “I have known people to do the very same thing you just suggested. Especially people who are deluded. I would hate to think that you are insane because I don’t truly enjoy killing insane people. That is unless they are power-mad. That’s a whole other kind of crazy right there.”
An unwilling grin tugged the corners of Drake’s lips upward. “I will concede that point to you without a quarrel. This is the way. It is the only way to enter. I must warn you, again, that once we are inside, I have no idea how to open the Speakers Door.
“I know how the legends say it must be opened, but I cannot do it alone. I will need all of you. Especially those of you who can fight. We may actually be doing nothing more than putting ourselves into an even larger battle than the one that we are leaving behind.”
Jessica didn’t flinch nor look away. “The Federation is a formidable enemy. I’ve been fighting them for years now. Whatever lies beyond that door, we may not be ready for it, but I can promise you that it’s not ready for us either.”
That was another point he had no wish to quarrel with her. She was probably right. His mood swung between anticipation and worry. He had long wanted to know the secret that dwelled behind the door that barred the two universes from meeting.
Solving that mystery would forever ensure his entry into history, something that he wanted desperately. Drake knew that was a dangerous thing to want. Arrogance and pride were often the things that failed the mightiest of warriors, and the weakest. It was those two things that also felled the mightiest of men, and the weakest.
History wrote itself for the most part and he needed desperately to be included. To be forgotten was the one thing they could not face. Dying was incidental, just another stone on the path that every single being ever created walked.
Death he could stand.
An ignominious and forgotten life, however, that he could never stand.
He knew that part of that stemmed from his childhood and he had the rueful thought that he really needed to work out his Daddy issues. Now was not the time to try to do that though. Now was the time to band together with this ragtag crew of misfits that had somehow all managed to find each other, this pack of warriors and wise people, of healers and death bringers, and try to put an end to the Federation for once and for all.
To do that, he needed what lay behind that door.
If it was still there.
That last thought made his nerves flutter. That was the rub of it. This was a long shot, and everyone on the ship knew it. It was highly possible that whatever the Speakers, an ancient race who had brought life into the universe that all of them on the ship called home, had placed behind that door was gone now.
It was said that the founding members of the Federation had found a way to enter that place—the place called Tralam—and that they had hidden themselves there in an effort to distance themselves from the very thing that they had created.
He spoke aloud without meaning to. “Do you suppose that the founding members of the Federation were disappointed in what they had created? Or do you suppose they were frightened of it?”
Jessica’s eyebrows rose toward her blonde head. “I have no idea. I have no idea why they ever thought the Federation was a good thing.”
Jenny chose that moment to join them. She spoke softly, as she generally did. “Because peace is something everyone wants. I believe that the founding members of the Federation honestly believed that they had the ability to not only bring you peace, but to maintain it. Perhaps their hearts were too pure, or perhaps they were too naïve about the ways that power can corrupt. Or perhaps they knew that it would happen eventually but thought that the peace that they could bring before that happened was worth it.”
Margie stepped up. She was Jeval’s
woman and obviously pregnant, something that worried Drake to no end. He had no idea why she’d even been allowed to take the trip. Margie said, “I don’t really care what their reasons were for secreting themselves away. They’d be dead by now anyway, and there is no way we can ever ask them.”
Drake’s gut tightened again. If the things that his father had told him were true, the founding members of the Federation were not, in fact, dead. His father had been sure that the ancient race called the Speakers had somehow found the key to immortality, or that they possessed it naturally. That they had met there with the founding members of the Federation and given them that code or that key to it. That even now they lived, those founding members, and were simply awaiting the time that they could be rescued.
Legend had it that the founding members had jettisoned the ships away from Tralam in a bid to remain undisturbed. If that were true, they could be taken back to the universe from which they had come. If the current powers that were in the Federation had no choice but to cede over their posts to those who had wanted peace, then peace would reign.
If there were no Federation members still alive, then there was the weapon. The weapon: it was like no other. The weapon that they could bear back into the universe and demand that those who held power in the Federation ,accept that the Federation would have no choice but to bow to or spell out their own destruction.
Talon approached and slung an arm around Jessica’s shoulders. Their bodies pressed together, and for a moment Drake felt nothing but regret. Of all the women that he had known and loved over the years, there had never been one that he wanted to stay with. One who would have protected him even as he protected her. One who would have gone to the ends of the earth with him.
What would it have been like to have known that? Talon said, “The nav systems are dead. I need you front and center now, Drake.”
Drake said, “I can captain the ship into the inner ring.”
Talon said, “It’s not just that I doubt your skill. It’s that I prefer mine.”
Drake advised himself toward caution. Talon truly was the best in the universe, but this was a place that required more than skill. It required knowledge of it. The first time that Drake had entered it, he had entered it with a map and a code, and all of that had proven to be wrong. He had barely survived. But he had marked well that passage. Many of the crew that had been on board with him that day had died. He had nearly died himself. Of all of those who had survived the initial horrors of that wormhole, he alone still lived.