She shook her head, clinging to him, desperately praying for a miracle as Xander freed himself from his robes and stepped into the arena.
23
Zan didn’t understand why Gia had put herself in danger, why she clung to him so desperately, but her grip was so tight he couldn’t pry her arms off his torso without hurting her. Though his skin was slick with sweat and blood, both his from his split lip and broken nose and those of the men he’d bested, she held tight. “If you stay here, he’ll kill us both.”
She muttered something under her breath but didn’t release him.
Frantically Zan searched his mind for a way to stall his father, who barreled down on them like a crashing meteor hell-bent on impact. He’d accept his death if it meant taking Xander with him, but not with Gia as collateral damage.
“I’m sorry,” Gia whispered, looking up at him through tear-filled eyes. “There’s still so much I want to say to you.”
Say. He could have kissed her. “I claim the right to address the gathered people of Hosta! It is my right as second.”
Xander froze mere feet away from him. The veins in his neck stood out in sharp relief, thrumming with bloodlust at the challenge Zan had issued. But protocol must be followed in front of witnesses. Drawing himself up he acknowledged, “It is your right.”
“Let go, Gia. I need to address the crowd.”
She stared up at him, but her arms loosened. “I’m not going to let you die for me.”
Slipping back into his pirate’s vernacular he stared her down. “That ain’t your call.” Then he turned to face the crowd. His mind went immediately blank as he took in the sea of faces. What could he say to them that would help?
He thought about the things he’d seen in the market, the high tariff on water and the lack of decent medical care. The ranking and the three dead men at his feet, their families in the stands who even now mourned their deaths and worried for their own survival. His father’s hierarchy rewarded a few on the stooped backs of many.
“The shadows grow long, my son. I have much yet to do after putting you down like the rabid dog you are.” Xander’s hungry gaze focused on Gia as spoke.
No, he couldn’t be the only one to despise his monstrous sire. Fear had kept the people in check. Someone needed to show them they didn’t have to live in fear. Though he’d never wanted to be a leader, Zan had been born to the role and took up the mantle now.
“People of Hosta, you know me as Zan, progeny of your overlord. What you don’t know is that, like him, I too am immortal. And like him, I can die.”
Murmurs swept through the higher stands, those filled with the people from the town.
“I am here today purely by chance. Five decades ago I left Hosta after Xander ordered the woman I loved to be raped to death before my eyes. You see, she knew his secret and the price for that knowledge was her life. In retaliation I stole my father’s prized possession and jetted off into space. I vowed never to return, yet here I am.
“My actions were selfish and cowardly, I see that now. I thought putting Hosta and the past behind me would fix me. That if I wasn’t here, I couldn’t become a monster like him. A man who revels in the suffering of others, who kills for pleasure and spreads misery and suffering wherever he goes. I was wrong.”
Looking to Gia, seeing her beauty, her strength and her courage, he called out, “I found my destiny here on Hosta. And I know now why I was born, what the grand design demands. To ask your forgiveness and to show you that you don’t need to continue on this way. I was given a second chance, and I aim to fix a mistake I made five decades ago. It’s time for the overlord’s son to man up. He may be an immortal man, but he is still a man. If I die here today, it is in defense of the woman I love and the planet that reared me. If I die here, I expect someone else to challenge Xander, to do what I could not. End his reign of tyranny.”
The crows remained absolutely still. Gia moved next to him again and took his hand in hers. “You’re a force to be reckoned with, Zan the space pirate.”
He pulled her toward him, hoping it would work, not for his sake, but hers. “Go now.”
Green eyes flashed fire. “I’m not going to let you face him alone.” Then she turned to face his father.
Xander’s lips were tilted up. “Man of the people now, are you? Nothing I love better than slaughtering a man of the people. You’ve seen me do it. And you know what happens to his woman.”
“I’m not dead yet.” Zan moved to her side.
“And I mean to fight alongside my man.” Gia crouched into a fighting stance.
Xander scowled at him. “Females cannot participate in a ranking.”
She actually smirked at him. “What’s the matter, Overlord? Afraid I’ll win and ride your ass like a pony? I’m pretty good with a strap on.”
Xander’s gaze narrowed on her. “So be it.” He launched himself at them both.
Zan shoved Gia at the last moment and caught Xander’s attack. Dropping into a backward roll he used his father’s momentum against him and kicked up to send Xander sailing across the arena.
“Watch your own ass,” Gia snarled at him as she stood back up. “I can hold my own, so stop trying to protect me.”
Never, Zan thought before Xander was on him again.
Fists flew—some connecting, others missing. He lost track of Gia and the rest of the people, his world tunneling to focus on his attacker.
Xander landed an elbow to his solar plexus, and it took everything he had not to double over in pain. Instead he fell back in a controlled descent and kicked out at his father’s center mass. At the same moment Gia leaped onto Xander’s back and used her arm to secure a chokehold around his neck. As Zan’s foot connected, the two stumbled back, Xander landing on top of Gia.
A sickening crunch made Zan’s heart leap, the disturbing sound he heard over and over in his nightmares about Isabella. No, not Gia too!
He couldn’t even see her beneath Xander’s bulk, other than her arm still around his neck. Xander writhed, struggling for air, but the double attack had incapacitated him.
Zan should have gone for the deathblow, but not with Gia so close and possibly hurt. Prying her arm off his neck he knocked Xander aside, then landed a knockout punch. His father’s eyes rolled up in the back of his head and he went limp. Turning back, Zan bent over Gia’s unconscious form.
Blood coated the side of her head, so much that he couldn’t find the wound. She was so pale, so still. Memories flooded him: picking up his wife’s bloody, broken body after Xander had released him from the cage. He’d cradled Isabella, drowning in sorrow and guilt. If only he’d left her alone.
All around him the crowd was on its feet, incensed at the overlord’s treatment of a woman, even if she was an alien. Women should be protected, revered, and yet their ruler had just gone into mortal combat against one. Her chest didn’t rise and fall, but the pulse in her neck was strong under his fingertips.
“A healer,” Zan shouted. “I need a healer!”
No one acknowledged him, and his whole body shook.
No, wait; it was the ground trembling, directly beneath him.
A quake on Hosta? There were no tectonic plates to shift and collide because the planet was dense to its osmium core.
Or at least it had been dense, up until a second ago. The ground beneath his feet wavered, and for a moment Zan wondered if a sinkhole had appeared. Such phenomena were common out in the natural desert but nowhere near Xander’s terra-formed fortress.
Before he knew it, he’d lifted Gia, cradling her body in his arms. He’d just made up his mind to run, to get Gia to safety, when he fell. Not onto the surface but down, down through a whirling tunnel of light. He’d experienced this before but never without a ship surrounding him. Not a sinkhole, a wormhole. His crew had come for him.
Cold metal slapped suddenly against his bare back, expelling all the breath from his lungs. The hot, dry stench of the arena was replaced by the stale smell of recycled sh
ip’s air. The low hums and steady beeps of the medical bay was music to his ears.
The slow swish of a door and Zan struggled to unpin himself from Gia’s limp form. A familiar face grinned at him.
“You all right, Cap’n?”
“Duffy?” Zan wheezed.
“In the flesh. Glad to see you held your own.” The other man clapped him on the shoulder. If it had been anyone else so soon after the ranking Zan would have shrugged him off, but Duffy had risked the ship to save them. “The ship didn’t respond right away, and I figured you’d both need patchin’ up.”
Zan shifted out from under Gia and brought a scanner up. While he waited for the readings he asked Duffy, “How’d you know that would work, that the trip alone wouldn’t kill us?”
Duffy looked affronted. “I went through to make sure it was safe. Wouldn’t risk your life like that, Cap’n. Hers either.”
But yours is okay? Too focused on Gia’s wounds to dress Duffy down for such a foolhardy stunt, Zan studied the readouts. A broken wrist, a few cracked ribs, and most worrisome subdural hematoma. Her skull hadn’t caved in, but several blood clots had formed. Surgery would be necessary. “Get me a cranial helmet.”
“Cap’n, you’re in no condition to operate.”
Zan narrowed his eyes. “That wasn’t a request.”
Duffy stood toe-to-toe with him. “You’re naked and covered in filth, totally exhausted. You could slip up and kill her. I’ll put her in a healing suspension to reduce the swelling and heal her bones, maybe break up the clots while you get some rest.”
Zan looked down at Gia’s still form. The other man was right, but no way could he rest until he knew Gia would recover. “I can’t lose her, Duffy.”
“No one’s getting lost today, Cap’n. I didn’t risk my neck for nothin’. Go to your quarters, take a REM tonic to help you sleep. I’ll let you know if anything changes.”
Zan bent over Gia and kissed her forehead. “Hang tough for me, angel. The fires of hell can’t claim you back just yet.”
Gia’s head was killing her. She reached up, but her arms were trapped in some sort of thick green goo that surrounded her up to her ears.
“Welcome back.” A male voice greeted her.
Though it hurt she lifted her eyelids. “Hey there, Duffy. Better late than never.”
He grinned down at her. “Almost too late, from what the Cap’n said.”
“Where is Zan? Is he all right?” She tried to sit, but the goo held her steady. “What is this gunk?”
“Cap’n’s fine, he’s resting in his quarters. I practically had to trank him to keep him from operating on you. The gunk is a plasma healing suspension. It holds you still while nanites repair your injuries. So far they’ve broken up several blood clots, relieving the swelling on your brain, and knitting your broken bones. You’re one helluva fighter, Gia.”
“Only when someone else starts it.” The idea of little mechanical bugs crawling around inside her wigged her the hell out. “When can I get out of here?”
“A few hours maybe.” Duffy pulled up a chair. “It’s a good thing we got your message when we did.”
“It went through? The console in my stinger died. I thought for sure it didn’t send.”
“We got it loud and clear. If I were gonna put money on it, I’d say Xander bounced it to draw us in. He had an armada patrolling the system, ready to take us out. That’s why we opened the personal wormholes right to you.”
It made sense. Gia thought over Xander’s tactics, his interest in the living ship as well as her technology. “I didn’t know, otherwise we never would have risked it. When I think of what he could do with this ship . . .” She shuddered in her blue goo bath.
Duffy studied her a moment. “So you and the Cap’n? I thought you didn’t like him.”
Crap. Her lover’s jealous second-in-command had her held hostage in the medical suspension. Talk about awkward. She tried to shrug but couldn’t manage it. “What can I say? He’s irresistible once you get to know him. Shady ethics and all.”
“He’s a good man. A good leader.” Duffy’s gaze was filled with a sad resignation.
“He cares about you too, you know,” she offered.
Duffy frowned. “He told you about me?”
“Not exactly.” Gia had no idea if Duffy knew about the magical memory spooge, and she wouldn’t betray Zan’s confidence. But Duffy deserved to know how Zan felt. “He did tell me that if things were different he could have loved you.”
Duffy made a sound of utter derision. “Now I know you’re lying. Cap’n wouldn’t ever say that, especially not while on Hosta.”
“Maybe I embellished a little bit, but he did tell me you were the only man he ranked since leaving the planet, that you’ve been loyal to him for years. That matters to him, Duffy, that he can trust you, because he doesn’t trust many people at all.”
Duffy sat quietly, probably digesting her words. She studied his bright blue eyes, firm masculine lips, the neatly trimmed reddish gold goatee on his chiseled jaw. “It’s funny, Zan made it sound like you’ve been with him forever, yet you don’t look a day over twenty-five.”
“Physically speaking I’m not. My race ages very slowly. Chronologically speaking I’m about eighty Earth years old.”
“You’re not a native of Hosta?”
“No. I just adopted the culture to be closer to Zan.” He shook his head. “Pathetic, aren’t I? A monument to unrequited love.”
“Love’s a total cunt with a sick sense of humor,” Gia muttered.
Duffy barked out a laugh, and some of the sadness lifted from his face. “I can see why he cares about you. You’re . . . different than most women. Softer and harder at the same time.”
“I am who I am. No apologies, substitutions, exchanges, or refunds.”
Duffy opened his mouth to reply but a canned voice blared from the wall above her. “Duffy, the ship is opening a wormhole back to Hosta.”
“Who the hell ordered that?” Duffy barked.
“No one. The ship is acting all on its own.”
Duffy cursed. “Xander’s fleet will annihilate us.”
“Duffy,” Zan’s voice barked. Gia tried to turn to see him but he was too far away. “What the fuck is happening?”
Duffy quickly updated him on the situation.
“Drain the suspension and get Gia to an evacuation pod.” Golden eyes fixed on her, and she felt a chill at the cold determination she saw there. “We’re abandoning ship.”
24
“What?” Gia struggled to get out of the healing suspension, but the thick plasma clung to her body like tar. “You’re going to abandon ship, just like that?”
Zan moved to her side and held her still while Duffy drained the plasma. “There’s nothing else I can do. If the ship is creating a shortcut through space without orders, that means someone or something is calling it. One guess who could do that.”
“Xander?” Gia’s eyebrows, about the only part of her she could move, drew down. “But if he could call the ship at any point, why would he wait until now?”
The tube emptied with a wet-sounding slurp. Blue gunk still clung to Gia’s nude body, though she could move some. Duffy answered, “I reckon he needed to pinpoint our location. Better close your eyes, Miss.”
Gia did just as the hydrogen and oxygen sprayers turned on. Within the confines of the tube they bonded into water molecules and sloughed off the rest of the suspension. Gia gulped and sputtered, but held still.
“Did the nanites finish healing her injuries?” Zan asked Duffy as he helped her up. No way would he stuff Gia in an evacuation pod if she still needed medical attention.
Duffy studied the scan he’d just taken while Zan grabbed clean drying cloths to wrap around her shivering form. He rubbed her vigorously, flinching when her teeth chattered.
“They’re still at work, but she’s good enough for transport.”
“So . . . c-c-c-cold.” Gia snuggled into him and he wra
pped his arms around her, trying to keep her warm.
His eyes met Duffy’s over the top of her head. Hurt radiated from his second-in-command, and something that looked like longing washed over him. Scooping Gia up, he turned away, unwilling to acknowledge Duffy’s yearnings. “Find her something to wear and meet me at an evacuation pod. We haven’t got much time.”
Duffy strode off in search of clothing, and Zan made his way to the nearest life pod chamber. The small pods could fit up to five people and were well stocked with food and water, enough to sustain them for weeks if the passengers were smart. He’d appropriated five of them from an obliging pleasure yacht a few years back, along with several pounds of gold and jewels.
“You can’t just let him have the ship, Zan.” Gia’s green eyes bore into his.
“Sure I can. I stole it from him in the first place. Most likely he won’t be able to talk to it any better than we do. If we’re lucky, it’ll drive him crazy in the attempt.”
“He’s already crazy,” Gia muttered.
“The ship’s smart, Gia. He’s given us warning so we can evacuate, when he could just move on through.” Zan didn’t know if the ship understood what was waiting for it on the other end, but risking Gia’s life and the life of his crew to reason with the damn thing wasn’t a viable option.
He passed several crew members heading into the pod chamber but no sign of Duffy yet. All the doors to the pods stood open.
“Do you think you could fly this if you had to?” Zan asked her.
Gia studied the controls. He was pleased to see the color had returned to her cheeks and the shaking had almost stopped. “If someone shows me how.”
Setting her in the copilot’s chair he pointed out the controls. She nodded in understanding, absorbing everything. The line of her jaw set and determination glinted in her eyes. Hell, she was magnificent.
She tilted her head when she realized he stopped talking. “Zan?”
“Get yourself and Duffy as far away from here as fast as you can. I don’t want to risk that he’ll come right back through and scoop you up.”
No Mercy Page 19