Never one to ignore his instincts, Niklas turned and headed to his quarters. There was a twelve level security lock on his door, a habit that had stood him in good stead throughout the years. He always locked his cabin with a complex pass code he changed often. Entering the code, he approached the security console at the opposite end of the room. He eyed the sonic bath wistfully for several seconds. He really wanted to wash away the layer of filth that covered his skin, but something prodded him away from it and told him this was more important.
Sitting in front of the console, Niklas waited as the air in the seat adjusted to his body’s tensions. The cushion infused with heat to ease the pain in his lower back. Niklas typed the pass code to access the security system, hearing several warning beeps as soon as the program was activated. A female voice announced over shipboard speakers.
“Warning! Warning! Explosive device found! Sonic bath, location High King’s quarters. Warning! Warning! Explosive device found! Security console one, bridge. Warning! Warning! Explosive device found! Storage compartment three, storage compartment seven, storage compartment nine.” There were a few moments of silence before the computer added in a calmer voice, “Explosive devices disabled and extracted, transported and detonated. Risk to ship is now zero. All is well.”
Niklas heaved a sigh of relief. He still wanted to wash, but he now eyed the sonic bath with suspicion. Hadn’t his crew said they searched for more signs of tampering? Why hadn’t they used the security device? Why the Sonic Bath and not the Security console?
He thought for a moment, then knew. The bath had been acting strangely. He’d asked Ornos to take a look at it. When Ornos came to repair it, the other man had made it clear he would rather work alone. Niklas never left his rooms while Ornos worked. A situation had never come up to take him away from the maps and charts at his console. Ornos couldn’t have gotten in at any other time with the magnetic locks in place. He set the explosives in the bath because he couldn’t get to the console. Ornos had probably installed timers on the devices, so they would explode after he left the ship. Either that or he hadn’t considered that Niklas would use one of the crew baths to cleanse himself before calling for the repair.
Pacing the perimeter of his quarters, Niklas couldn’t help but wonder if others were sent to stop him. He sat on the bed and felt the familiar comfort of the soft air cushion and his Carboda quilt. His mother had commissioned the quilt from the witches of Nasha when he was a child. The witches had constructed it to protect him while sleeping and give him comfort. It was not unusual for a family member to purchase such a quilt for a loved one. The power of the witches of Nasha was legendary.
He fingered the soft material, needing some sense of comfort, of safety. The soft velvety feel beneath his fingers relaxed him. The soft muted colors brought a sense of stability and of security. He looked down to the swirling pattern and felt himself drawn into the moving tapestry, his anxieties floating away.
Slowly, he undressed, looked down at his smooth yet muscular chest marred by only one scar, and smiled as he remembered how he had received it. His cousin had been angry about something. They had been wrestling when Niklas accidentally pushed him into a large outcropping of rock. Haron received a large gash on the side of his face and grabbed a sharp rock, plunging it toward the left side of Niklas’s chest. Niklas’s father had found them then and pulled them apart.
After instructing the crew to give up their search for Ornos and concentrate on getting back into space, he stepped into the sonic shower. “Clean.” Groaning with pleasure, Niklas put his hands on the opposite wall, leaning across the width of the small room. Delighted to feel the dirt dissolving to nothingness, he reveled in the fact that the next thing he smelled would not be the body odor of the person at the next table. His entire body tingled as the dirt lifted from his pores, leaving a sensation not unlike gentle hands softly skimming up and down his bare body.
After his shower, Niklas dressed in a flight suit. He wanted to leave this planet as soon as possible. Resetting the magnetic locks, he strode toward the bridge, nodding to the people he passed and acknowledging their gestures of respect with a smile. He bumped into Cholo, the chief engineer.
“Ornos has been sabotaging the engines as well, Highness. We found broken engine parts, along with new in his rooms. He has been undermining us the entire time.”
Niklas shook his head. Would they never remember to call him by his given name or even Captain? “Is the engine repaired?” He needed to know. They couldn’t afford to stay here much longer. Time was running out.
“Oh yes, Sir! We are about to bring them back online any minute. The repairs took no time at all when we found the good parts in Ornos’s quarters.”
Niklas laid a hand on his shoulder and gave him an encouraging smile. “Very good, Cholo, I knew we could all count on you.” He left Cholo smiling proudly in the corridor.
The large bridge held several consoles. Niklas sat in the seat at a security console and brought up the star maps. Looking toward the star system called the milk of the Goddess, he found one inhabitable planet.
He checked the information. It was old but most likely still accurate—after all, the first fourteen planets hadn’t changed much over the last hundred years. Why should this one be any different? He punched the codes to get subliminal programs and set the disks aside.
Niklas looked around the bridge. Everyone was at his or her stations. Reba, the communications engineer, sat with her back to him, headphones against her ears, listening for who only knew what. Occasionally she would reach across her console to adjust the frequency of the long-range radio.
Rodel, his pilot, sat at the flight controls. He’d had a rough night by the looks of it. He was about to fall asleep. Rodel looked toward Minra with bloodshot eyes. She was running a diagnostic program. He caught her attention and winked. Minra smiled and blushed.
Niklas bit back a smile. There was no guessing at what they’d been up to last night. He leaned back, watching the large viewscreen and admired the beauty of an endless expanse of space. Stars streamed by, lengthened by the sub-light speed. Niklas had three weeks before they reached the planet. It wasn’t a lot of time. He snatched up the subliminal disks and headed for his quarters. He had a lot of work to do.
It would take the next few weeks to make sure he was ready to go to the surface as soon as they arrived at the planet. Niklas knew he was running out of time and had very little to waste. He devoured disc after disc, listening to the music while he showered, while he ate, dressed, worked and slept. He lived and breathed the Earth languages—all of them. When he arrived, he would be ready to go to the surface to search for his bride.
He had been so caught up in his effort to learn the languages that he was mildly surprised to find the time had passed so quickly, and they were entering an orbit around the planet.
“Raise the shields and engage the veiling device! Radar and sensor devices are present. Change our trajectory. Rodel, put us behind the moon. I hope they didn’t see us.”
Niklas glanced toward the security officer who reacted so quickly to their dilemma. “We’d better hope they didn’t see us, Hale. They appear to be advanced enough to put up a fight. And since they haven’t been contacted in so long, that is a distinct possibility,” Niklas commented, his expression grim.
“Uh, Sir? I don’t think you’re going to like this.” Reba was listening to the radio again, her hand pressed to her ear, a frown on her face. “They are very advanced and the possibility of finding The One here could be very high, but…”
“What do you mean, I’m not going to like that? If the possibilities are high, that is good.”
Reba eyes didn’t meet his, a sure sign of her nervousness. “Sir…” She paused to take a deep breath and nervously lick her lips. “The possibilities are so high because there are billions of them, Sir.” She looked like she wanted to flinch away when he turned toward her clearly agitated.
“Excuse me?”
&nb
sp; “There are billions of people on this planet, Sir. I don’t know how we will ever choose the right place to begin our search. Perhaps we should leave and search the other less populated worlds.”
Niklas frowned at her suggestion. He would be able to cover more ground if he left and went to the other worlds she suggested, but then again, a world which had Morwyyn helping it, would have flourished.
“No. We’ll stay, at least for a while. We are already here. It would be more of a waste to leave and have to return.” Niklas sighed, hoping he hadn’t just made a huge mistake. “Find out how out of date our information is. Get some information up here, and put it on discs fast.” If this took very long, he wasn’t going to be happy. Not happy at all.
Niklas was not pleased. It hadn’t taken long to find that their information was no longer useful. It was so out of date, to call it obsolete was an understatement. To coin a colorful Earth phrase, he was pissed! He paced in front of the communications console, waiting for the verdict from Reba.
How long could it take to do some catching up? There were new phrases to learn such as new slang and colloquialisms, so it was like learning a new language. Again. He didn’t want to sit back and do nothing, but it had been his designated job since they’d maintained an orbit behind the single moon. Niklas paced, stopping every few steps to scowl at Reba.
She ignored him. After nearly a year of serving on the vessel, Reba knew his moods were mostly show. After an hour of interminable pacing, he noticed her attention and nearly pounced on her. “What did you find? Do we have enough information to learn so I can go down to the surface?” His hands held her arms. He hated this waiting—hated wasting so much precious time.
“I have something we can load onto a subliminal disk. There is so much to learn, we need to run a routine scouting mission to learn it all.”
Niklas squeezed her shoulders, released her. “How long is that going to take?” Shoving his hands in his pockets, he looked at the ceiling and closed his eyes, trying to gain some measure of self-control before he glanced back at his communications engineer.
Reba tilted her head and looked at him as she reached up to tuck a stray lock of hair behind her ear. “As you know…Sir, a routine scouting mission usually takes about two weeks. If we put everything on disks as soon as we receive it, you should be able to function very well down there in sixteen days at a maximum.” She sat stiffly, obviously steeling herself against his temper.
Sixteen days…then approximately three months for the return trip left only a year to find The One if Trinaugh’s calculations about the death of the sister were correct. He could only hope he had enough time.
Niklas lowered his head and stared at his boots. He’d never felt so helpless in his life. Would he ever find her? The thought of losing his friends and his family was staggering. Even if they moved off world, he would still lose his home and everything he had grown to love through the years. Niklas had already made the commitment to marry the one who possessed the power to save his world, even at the cost of his own freedom, and quite possibly at the cost of his happiness.
It was a small price to pay to save millions of lives. Wasn’t it?
Chapter Two
“It sucks!” Brianna O’Neill looked at her friend and scowled. “You can’t possibly want me to recite that.” She climbed out of her old recliner and stomped over to the desk in the corner of the room.
“What’s wrong with it?” Amber asked, sliding out of the worn overstuffed chair to walk into the kitchen.
“It sucks. That’s what wrong with it.” Brianna picked up the crumpled piece of paper, tempted to launch it across the room. “Earth, air, fire and water, bring to me what you aughter? Ugh! You like it, you use it. I want my spell to be a little more romantic than that.” She balled the paper back up and flung it at her friend.
“Well, if you can do better, be my guest.” Amber dodged the flying paper then took a drink from her third strawberry daiquiri. She scowled into the glass when it made a slurping sound. “Empty again,” she said with a sigh, then placed the rim to her lips and tapped the bottom to get the last of the crushed ice from the glass.
Brianna shuffled through a collection of spiral notebooks. “Where is it?” She stumbled and fell against the small lamp on her father’s scarred, paper-covered desk.
“That’s it. You’re cut off,” Amber announced, laughing drunkenly.
Brianna snorted. “In your dreams, sister. It’s my blender.”
“Okay, okay, so you’re not cut off.” Amber waved her hand in the direction of the desk. “We’ll cut off the lamp. It can’t seem to stand up straight anyway.” She watched with a smile as the lamp fell to the floor.
Cringing, Brianna watched as it slowly stopped rolling on its light-blue shade. “Whew, at least the bulb didn’t break.” She curled her bare toes into the carpet, then went back to dig through papers.
“What are you looking for, anyway?” Amber asked from the kitchen. She plopped more strawberries in the blender and turned it on. The noise shattered the calm of the house and, Killer, Brianna’s Yorkshire Terrier, raced in to bark at the noise.
“Hey, put some drink mix in those. I want more than fruit and alcohol this time,” Brianna called over her shoulder as she rummaged through the cluttered drawers in the desk.
”Aw, come on, those were the best ones!” Grumbling, Amber grabbed the bottle next to the blender and read the label.
Brianna rolled her eyes, shook her head, then turned her attention toward a pile of spiral notebooks in the corner.
“What’s a jigger?”
“I think it’s a shot,” Brianna answered absently, back to digging through piles of papers, before turning her attention back to the desk.
“Shot?” Amber repeated with a blank expression. She shrugged. “Oh, okaaaay. Do you have any syringes?”
“What?” Brianna looked up. “What are you doing in there?”
“Oh, nothing. Do you have any syringes?”
Brianna shook her head. “That’s what I thought you said. I really hate to ask this, hon, but what do you need a syringe for?”
Amber heaved a sigh. “You said a jigger is a shot. Well, this calls for two shots for each drink…”
“Good grief, Amber. Shot glasses!”
“Oh, right.” She tossed Brianna a sheepish grin. “I knew that. I was just testing you.”
“Why don’t we just forget the drinks? I think we’ve had enough anyway. I don’t want to recite this spell drunk off my butt and end up with a jerk or something.” Brianna pulled a thick page of homemade paper from the drawer and stroked the frayed edges thoughtfully. “At least right now, I’m only a little tipsy.”
“Tipsy, my fanny. You’re downright inebritated, inebriabed.” Amber frowned as she swayed into the counter near the inner window between the two rooms. “Face it, girl, you’re downright drunk.”
“I found it.” Using her thigh to shut the drawer, Brianna frowned down at it when it stuck halfway shut. Pushing harder, she almost fell across the desk as the drawer closed. “I definitely don’t need any more to drink,” she muttered.
“Found what? You never told me what you were looking for in the first place.” Amber walked back carrying two more daiquiris and handed one to Brianna.
“I found the spell I wrote to bring love into my life.” She sniffed the glass suspiciously. “Did you put mixer in this?”
Amber nodded, giving her an innocent look. “Of course I did. I even used the shot glass.” She waved her glass toward the paper in Brianna’s hand. Aren’t you going to read that to me?” she asked, changing the subject. Her eyes were wide, and her red-gold brows nearly at her hairline. Brianna wondered what she’d been up to in the kitchen.
She made a face holding the paper behind her back. “I don’t know why I should. You make fun of every single spell I write.”
“Like the last one?” Plopping back down onto the chair, Amber rested her crossed legs on the coffee table and pushed a me
lon-cucumber scented candle aside with her toes.
“What one?” Brianna shot her a confused look. “And put your feet down before you break something.” She pushed at her friend’s legs.
“The one you threw at me earlier.” Amber put her feet down and stood.
“I didn’t write that! You did.”
Amber shook her head and grinned. “You wrote that last year and asked me what I thought about it. You said once you were ready you were going to recite it to bring love into your life.” She jerked her thumb in the direction of the ball Killer had picked up. He tossed his head, throwing the paper into the air so he could chase it.
Brianna cringed. “I don’t even remember writing that.” She bent, picked up the little dog and gently extracted the paper from his mouth. He growled, obviously not overjoyed at having to give up his new toy. She set him back down onto the faded rug beneath her feet.
“You probably blocked it. I know I would have.” Amber shivered, showing her distaste for the awful rhyme. “Now do you see how much you’ve grown over the past year?” She wandered across the room and grabbed a handful of grapes from the fruit bowl on the dining room table.
Brianna looked down, smoothing her hands over her hips and thighs. “Hey, I haven’t gained any weight!”
Amber crossed back to the desk and rolled her eyes. “Spiritually, hon. You’ve grown spiritually,” she soothed. She wrapped her arm around Brianna, and they walked toward the patio.
“Oh, sorry.” Now it was Brianna’s turn to feel sheepish. “Well, I suppose I should let you read it. You did stop me from using that last disaster.” She handed the paper to her friend.
Amber read the spell and her brows shot back up. “I’m impressed, this one is actually kind of good.”
The two women stepped through the sliding glass doors onto the small concrete patio. They inhaled the delicious aroma of a nearby barbecue the cool autumn breeze carried into the yard. The elusive scent of fresh paint tickled Brianna’s nose, and she heard the sound of someone hammering in the distance. “Everything’s ready. Do you think we can cast now?”
Briannas Prophecy Page 2