by Cathryn Cade
“You,” she hissed at Lady Elliane. “You have everything—or so you think.”
Then she struck, leaping on Elliane and bearing her to the floor.
Logan jumped forward, so did Joran.
Then they both froze as Slidi was borne backward, her back arching unnaturally, her eyes wide with horror, her mouth open in a parody of a caress around the barrel of the laser weapon in Lady Elliane’s grasp.
Joran recognized the weapon—it was a fancy one he’d taken in trade and tossed in one of the cabinets in his tont, preferring his own utilitarian model.
“I will fire,” the lady assured Slidi, voice trembling with rage. “I will gladly fire this weapon—just give me an excuse.”
“Do it,” advised Joran. “Whatever you want, my lady. Don’t know how you know how to use the laser, but I’ve no objections to your using it on her, none at all. I like a woman who can take care of herself, especially when there are serpents on the ground.”
“Hold,” Xen Sou ordered, a note of pure cerametal in his voice. The Council attaché stepped forward, taking command. “This is all most illuminating, and will be recorded for further discussion. But the night grows long, and we have much to do.”
“Officers, take the Serpentian, and this time hold onto her.” He beckoned the IGSF officers, who instantly snapped to attention. “You and you, return your commander to base. I will follow you there shortly.”
Logan stood and waited for the ending of this drama that his younger brother had arranged. Pride swelled his chest as he watched the IGSF round up the slavers and their guards. More than one had to be taken down physically, but with lasers set on stun and the precision of trained veterans, the officers did their job and did it well.
When Cerul had been escorted, her head still high, gaze blank as if she couldn’t take in her own defeat, and the prisoners had followed, Xen Sou turned to face the motley assemblage that remained.
Stone Masterson and his pilot, Joran and his people, the Bravelings, who now had eyes only for the blonde girl at Joran’s side, Bronc Berenson, who walked in just as the last of the prisoners were being herded out, and a single IGSF officer, Sgt Mecham, who stood to one side as if uncertain of her role.
The monk faced them all, and then slowly shook his head.
“Never have I seen such an…interesting operation,” he said. “One might almost call it a caper. As representative of the Alliance Council, I hardly know how to report on what I have seen and heard and learned here tonight.”
“I’m sure you’ll think of some way to convey the reality of it, sir,” Joran said, emphasizing the word ‘reality’.
“Yes, I am sure I will,” the older man said, pinning him with a gaze. “And you have Creed Forth to thank for giving you this chance. My advice to all of you unexpectedly distinguished conspirators would be, in the future do not push your luck quite this far.”
Joran bowed with respect and courtesy. “Sir. Your point is taken.”
“Good. Then I will be on my way to the IGSF base, where tomorrow an emergency meeting of the galactic commanders and council liaison will convene. You will, as I’m sure you’ve surmised, soon have a new planetary commander. One with whom you will learn to work.”
“Make sure you choose one that has a bit of flexibility this time,” Stone Masterson put in. “Because this world demands that of us all.”
“And so do these times,” the attaché allowed. He bowed again, turned as if to go, and then swung back at the last moment. “Oh, and by the way, there has been talk of establishing a citizen constabulary on Frontiera. Perhaps a flexible sort of vigilante such as the Storm would be interested in heading that force.”
He lifted one hand in farewell, and strode out.
“Well, hells,” Joran said, looking to Zaë. “Never saw that one coming.”
She gave him a proud, glowing smile. “You’d be perfect.”
***
Joran gave Zaë a hug, and then jerked his head toward the couple waiting a few feet away. “You need to go to them, bunny. They’ve been waiting for this; they need to see to you.”
She swallowed, and then nodded. “You won’t leave without me?”
“No, baby. Now go on.”
She let go of him reluctantly—really this would be much easier if she could do it from the shelter of his arms—and turned to face the couple that she knew, even if she couldn’t remember everything about them, were her parents.
She walked to them on trembling legs, and tried to smile. “Hello. I’m, um, glad you found me,” she said.
With a sob, her mother pulled her into her arms, soft and perfumed and familiar. Zaë felt the jolt as her father’s arms closed around both of them, and his kiss on the top of her head, also familiar.
“We’ve found you,” he choked. “You’re safe now, Elle. And I swear to the heavens, we will keep you that way, from now on.”
Weirdly, she felt the warmth of the love behind the words, but she also saw a flash of that dream door, opening to pull her back into a world not of her choosing.
Chapter 30
The decision was made, mostly by Logan, who took over with the ease of an autocrat who directed beings and companies for a living, that all of them would fly to the thriving town of Adamant just over the mountains to spend the night at the hotel there.
That was fine with Joran. He wanted a comfortable, safe place for Zaë to spend time with her parents. Adamant was also close to the satcom site, so he and Logan could fly up for the meeting with Xen Sou the next morning.
Logan invited them all to use the suites LodeStar kept at the lodge. Joran would share a suite with him, and Zaë another suite with her parents.
They met in the Bravelings’ sitting room by a crackling fire. Joran was amused and impressed with the atmosphere in the room—between Logan and Samuel Braveling, the walls fairly bulged with the force of autocratic authority.
Logan sat back in a comfortable leather chair, and accepted a glass of moonbrandy with a smile in his eyes that said he was satisfied with the night, but he also looked exhausted, his face drawn. Joran was going to get into what was going on with him later.
But now, Joran stood by the corner of the fireplace, legs apart, arms crossed, watching Zaë. When their eyes met, her cheeks flushed that pretty pink, and he winked at her.
Her mother sat on the divan beside Zaë, holding her hand and smiling, her eyes still pink from her tears. Every once in a while, she dabbed them gently with a handkerchief.
“Elliane,” her father said, his voice full of grave and gentle reproof. “What were you thinking earlier? We taught you to protect yourself. This evening, you should have stayed in the background. You might have been killed.”
Joran watched as his brave, sweet woman’s smile disappeared, her new self-confidence wavering. “Yes, Father,” she said quietly, clearly the habit of a lifetime.
“Wait a sec,” Joran said.
The elder Bravelings looked at him with shock, quickly controlled, but there. They were not used to being challenged.
Joran crossed the room to her. “Here now, head up, my lady.”
He moved to her side, his arm settling around her. She fit there like a piece of a cosmic puzzle, one he had long felt the lack of, but not knowing what it was that was missing. His woman—his, and no one would be allowed, ever again, to put that look of dumb misery on her face.
Not even her parents.
“You did just fine,” he told her with a squeeze of his arm, then he turned to her parents. “Sir, with due respect, you’re the ones who pushed your way into a situation you didn’t understand this evening, and could have tipped into something much worse than it ended.”
Samuel Braveling didn’t like being called out, the lift of his brow said that, but he listened and did it watching his daughter on the arm of this new man. His wife did the same, with a look that said she could hardly take in the combined shock of being spoken to this way, and the fact that her daughter had not only acqu
ired a suitor, but one like him.
“Tonight may have looked rough and ragged,” Joran told them. “But it was planned, down to the last detail. We had good people all around us. And Zaë, or Lady Elliane was the being there tonight—with the possible exception of Slidi’s slave—most harmed by this gang of slavers. She deserved to be in when the last of them went down. She was safer with us than she was in your care .”
That hit home. They both flinched.
He smiled down at her. ‘Also, when the action went down, she did just fine. Had her weapon in that bitch’s mouth, ready to fry her brains, didn’t you? Proud of you, bunny.”
Her gaze lit again. He winked at her and then pressed on, firing his final shot of the night.
“And,” he said, looking to the Bravelings’ assistant, who stood in the background, drink in his hand, his gaze fastened darkly on Zaë. “You might want to ask yourselves why the kidnappers targeted your daughter. As in, who hired them?”
“Hired them?” Lady Braveling shook her head. “We were told they were opportunists, looking for attractive young women.”
“On Tardos?” Joran asked. “On the eve of your departure? When Lady Elliane was headed home, and you and Woodby were headed here on an expedition, a long one?”
He looked to Woodby, and the man froze like a lizard caught out in the open. Behind Joran, the door opened, and Ryder and Pede walked in, as arranged. They stopped, waiting for his orders. Woodby paled at whatever he saw in their faces.
“Which meant,” Joran went on deliberately, “that he not only wouldn’t see her for months but that he wouldn’t have time or opportunity to press his suit of marriage. And that she might very well meet another man, one she wouldn’t keep putting off, keep telling him she just wanted to be friends.”
“Oh, my God,” Zaë whispered, her hand pressing into his chest. “David?”
“So he made a play,” Joran said. Ryder and Pede moved around the room to Woodby. “He hired someone to grab her, scare her, rough her up a little and then put her on sale so he could show up, buy her back and bring her home in style. Be the man her parents would be so grateful to, they’d pressure her to marry him, cement his position not only in the family, but as your successor.”
Woodby surprised Joran then. He didn’t try to run for it, just snorted, as if the accusation was ridiculous.
“It would have worked,” he said. “And she would’ve been perfectly safe, if it hadn’t been for the drugs. I didn’t know about them; how could I have?”
When the Bravelings turned on him, he held up his hands, indignant now. “How could I have known they’d harm her?” he repeated.
“You never wanted me, did you?” Zaë demanded. “You just wanted my name.”
“That’s right,” he snarled. “You little fool, you never appreciated the life of an anthro-diplomat—all the travel, the culture, the important beings you were introduced to. You hid in the background like some frightened child. I should have been a Braveling, not you. If I’d married you, at least I’d get the name!”
Glora Braveling moved fast. Joran watched with admiration as she moved forward in a gliding turn and hit Woodby so hard with the side of her rigid hand the man’s eyes glazed over. He went down like a stunned skrog, hitting the floor full out on his face.
No one moved to break his fall, or to check on him. Pede looked from the prone man to Lady Braveling, and nodded once, in clear approval.
“Well done, my dear,” Braveling said. “Although I rather wanted the first punch.”
Ryder grinned at Lady Braveling. “This way’s better—more humiliating. Everyone will always know a lady took him down—a real lady.”
Zaë’s mother blushed. “Just some self-defense training. Elliane has had it too.”
“Noticed that,” Pede said. “Ringi wants to learn it now.”
Zaë said nothing.
“David was wrong, you know,” Braveling said to her, his gaze pained. “You’re perfect just the way you are, my dear.”
She tried to smile at him, but it was a miserable effort.
“He was also right about one thing,” she said. “I never had the courage to tell him to get lost, did I?”
“That’s what I heard you doing earlier,” Joran reminded her, with a little squeeze.
“I want him arrested,” Braveling said. “I think a stint of hard labor, or mission service on an extremely backward planet.”
Joran shrugged. “Fine with me. That will either make or break him, I don’t much care which. I’m for lasering him, myself.”
“No,” Zaë said, leaning into him. “Let him dirty his hands serving others—he won’t enjoy that at all.”
“You got it, my lady.” He nodded to Ryder, who leaned down and grabbed the unconscious man by one boot. Pede grabbed the other, and they dragged Woodby away toward the door.
“Ouch.” Zaë winced in sympathy as his cheek thumped over the threshold.
“He was too pretty anyway,” Joran said.
She tipped her head back and looked up at him. “I never noticed.”
“Know you didn’t. He knew it too, knew he had to do something desperate to get your attention.”
She laid her head on his chest, and closed her eyes, leaning her weight into him. His arms tightened to support her. “You’re exhausted. Need to get you to bed with something to help you sleep.”
She stirred in his arms. “Just you beside me will do that,” she murmured.
He whispered into her ear. “Baby, you sure? Your parents.”
His lady surprised him yet again, lifting her head to give him a look that he now knew the origin of—her parents—haughty and sure of the right to be in charge, yet with a hint of mischief that was pure Zaë. “I think I’ve earned the right to decide where and with whom I sleep. If you’re too timid—“
“Oh, no,’” he cut in, giving her a look. “Now you’re just askin’ for trouble. Never question the courage of a Stark, my Zaë.”
“I was rather hoping for the Storm to blow through,” she whispered, her cheeks pink, her eyes glowing. “He dares anything, or so I hear.”
“For a woman like you, he does.”
***
The next morning, Joran left Zaë sleeping in their bed. He carefully tucked the covers around her bare shoulder and leaned down for a last kiss on her silky hair.
Their coupling last night had begun sweet and gentle, in deference to all she’d gone through that long day and night.
But it hadn’t ended that way. As always when he touched her, his lady melted in his hands like warm honey, and he could no more resist her pleas to hurry and have her than he could stop breathing, so they’d ended up locked together in a hard, fast, and hot coupling that had the bed creaking under them, and her soft cries rising in the night, his muffled in the pillow by her head.
He was still smiling reminiscently as he showerdried and dressed in his clothing which had been cleaned and delivered to the suite during the night.
He met Logan at the LodeStar hangar just outside Adamant. They were served a delicious breakfast and coffee on board Logan’s cruiser by a smiling flight attendant.
The storm of the night before had dissipated, and the morning was clear, bright and cool on the flat-topped mountain that held the Frontiera SatCom installation and IGSF base.
Xen Sou was waiting for them in the big conference room, and Stone Masterson arrived soon afterward, followed by a trio of uniformed IGSF officers who were introduced as General Hek Brace, Commander Qale and Lt. Ren Mecham.
Ren Mecham blushed when she met Joran’s amused gaze. He bowed politely. “Lt. Mecham. Well met. Congratulations on your promotion.”
“Thank you. Glad to be here.” And glad not to be removed from the Forces in a state of disgrace, her gaze said.
He nodded, and they walked with the others to sit around the command center, over which a holovid image of Frontiera and her moons revolved silently, waiting for interface.
Another group of
men and women entered the room, and Xen Sou beckoned them to seats.
“Good, we are all here, let’s get started.”
Deciding the direction of the rule of a new and burgeoning planetary population took time and protocol, at least when the meeting was being run by an Alliance attaché. But finally, after three hours and much rhetoric, not all of it friendly but all of it determined on a common cause, the emergence of Frontiera as a democratic republic with checks and balances, both civilian and military, was outlined.
Joran was indeed offered the position of High Sheriff, in charge of setting up and overseeing a civilian police force on the planet. He turned it down.
“Sorry,” he said, not apologetically. “I don’t see myself as the man to manage on that scale, and anyway, this planet’s population is growing too fast for a network that size to work. Suggest you split civilian law enforcement up into regions—provinces, or the like. Appoint a sheriff of each, and balance that with police forces in the cities, as they do on Earth II. They work with the IGSF, the IBI and the elected officials.”
Xen Sou allowed himself a smile. “Our thoughts are in accord, Mr. Stark. I too feel this is the best plan. Shall we vote?”
Then Joran was more or less bludgeoned into accepting the position of sheriff of the plains region, which he accepted. Hells, he’d been doing it anyway, may as well get paid for it and do it without the IGSF riding his ass.
Besides, if he was going to win a lady’s hand in marriage, which he had every intention of doing, time he went legit.
“Now, as to the disposition of the slave gang,” Xen Sou went on. “We have the heads of the different divisions, and they will be dispatched to Deep Six, the prison planet after due process.”
“What we do not have,” he added grimly, “is Midas Vadyal’s credit. We have several blind accounts and of course his physical assets, but the bulk of his fortune seems to have vanished.”
“Really,” Joran said, leaning back in his chair. “Think I may know who to ask.”