THE GUARDS PASSED BY. “Nah, leave ’em alone,” one said. “She’s got one in the oven.”
“They breed like mar-mice, even in the camps.”
Aral squashed his anger at their comments. It cheapened what he’d felt with Awrenkka.
Worse, from inside the tent next to them came giggling and a deeper, throaty laugh, followed by the very distinct sound of a hand slapping against a bare rump. There were three or even four people in there, and all in bed, Aral realized. Awrenkka appeared oblivious. It was he who was ready to turn red, if he were even capable of such a feat.
A girl who looked no more than half his and Awrenkka’s ages appeared from behind the tent. Her blouse was unbuttoned. Underneath tiny, tattooed breasts peeked out. They were splotched with pink marks and a fading bruise. Sex for money. Few females had the opportunity to bring valuables with them as Wren had. This woman’s value was in her body. The scarcity of young, pretty women in this camp no doubt allowed her to charge high fees for sexual services.
“A little fun, fine sir and lady?”
He turned her down with a scowl. She disappeared into a warren of pathways winding deeper into a makeshift city of tents. He wished to the very core of his being that they were anywhere else but this heat-soaked, dust-ball of a planet. Little wonder it was being used to house Drakken refugees. No sane person would live here voluntarily.
He snatched Wren’s hand. They were almost at the docks. The sky had taken on a sickly yellow cast. It had all the look of an approaching dust storm. Grit in his teeth confirmed it.
His PCD was still lying on the console where he’d left it.
It sat there, a challenge. As much as he liked Zaafran, he’d wanted no more ties with the Triad. They were looking for a battlelord. Him. If it made Zaafran feel better, he’d check in. The missing battlelord. He hooked the unit on his ear. “Call Z,” he said to initiate authentication that could not be traced to his ship.
“Stand by…” the artificial voice said.
“Oh, I am,” he said under his breath. “Nothing more I can do but stand by.” He paced, anxious to leave.
“Authentication completed.”
“M?” The prime-admiral sounded downright stunned. Something else was in his tone, something off. “Still taking care of your private matter?”
“Yes. And for some time to come.”
There was silence on the line. Then, “We lost him. Karbon Mawndarr is missing.”
Aral halted as if he’d been flash frozen. As Zaafran offered the excuses as to how Karbon slipped away, Aral met eyes with Wren and couldn’t help wondering if his hope of escaping with her and finding a new life had been nothing more than a pipe dream.
Incompetents. The entire Triad. No wonder he’d had to hand them their victory; they could not have done it themselves. Their idiocy made a mockery of his efforts to see Karbon executed. Now he was free. Watching him. Knowing who sold him out. There was no doubt in Aral’s mind.
He took full blame. In wanting to keep his hands clean of the actual killing, in wanting to be something better than his father, he’d brought danger to everyone around him. He should have been there for the execution, seen it through to the end. But he’d been afraid of hearing his father’s caustic words. Words that deep down Aral feared were true. Words he’d fled from, words that had driven him to this point in time.
A dead end.
He’d never been able to escape the man before. What made him think he could now?
“M, I’m under pressure to bring you in for questioning on the matter.”
“For Karbon’s escape? After everything, Z, you think I’d help that bastard?” Because he was Drakken, and to many on the other side, they were all monsters. “I’m afraid that’s impossible, Z. I cannot assist you.”
He ended the call before Zaafran could anger him more.
He dashed the back of his hand across his mouth. “Karbon escaped, and some want to blame me.”
Kaz was white. Wren watched him with compassion, or something close to it. There was so much about him that she didn’t know. To have any hope of a normal life with her, something he wanted desperately, he would have to allow her a window into his dark soul. He hoped what she saw there didn’t send her running.
As part of his carefully crafted and so far flawlessly executed grand plan, Karbon was to be dead or at least in custody before Awrenkka was evacuated from Barokk. But it hadn’t worked out that way, and he’d have to accept the fact. If anyone knew that life wasn’t always neat and tidy, that loose ends weren’t always tied up, that scars remained open and bleeding years after they were gouged open, it was Aral.
“Zaafran helped me obtain fake transponder codes for the ship. The minute we take off, we’ll be traced.”
“We’ll fly with the transponder off,” Kaz said. We’ve done it before.”
“And raise a red flag in the middle of the space lanes? It’s doable, but I don’t like it. We need to ditch the ship and find another.”
“We can go with Vantos,” Awrenkka said. “He’s a freelancer. He has no loyalties. He was willing to take me out of the camp for a price.”
“No. Not Vantos. He’s already curious. This will confirm everything he already suspects.”
“If he does, he cares not for the morality of turning me in so long as he gets the money.”
“A guess? Intuition? I will not hand you over to the executioner on a hunch, Awrenkka.”
“I offered him more—more than the bounty. He agreed.”
“Your dowry was lost in the fall of the palace.” Even the vast Mawndarr fortune and assets had been frozen by the Triad. He wasn’t a pauper by any means—he’d hidden away money on several different worlds, and on his ship—but she’d have nothing except what she could have stuffed into her pockets. Some jewelry or gems, a little money, that was all.
“This isn’t a dowry. It’s tied to no marriage. It’s treasure. Priceless. And it’s mine.”
ON THE BRINK OF ASSUMING her first command, Hadley stood outside the entrance to the bridge of the Cloud Shadow. In view of the bridge but behind a glass privacy wall, she was able to steal a few moments of privacy before making her grand entrance, an entrance that would help set the stage for the entire voyage.
Suddenly Bolivarr was at her side, steadying her with his quiet strength. That was his way. Tall, dark and intense, he could appear and disappear like cloud shadows on a summer day, sliding silently in and out of sight. She’d often told others of the vast sky on her home-world, and how clouds raced across sun, casting fleeting shadows over the farmland. Admiral Bandar thought the name would fit a small, swift vessel. And thus the Cloud Shadow was born.
Within minutes she’d step onto its bridge. “I spent so many years an executive officer, a glorified assistant, really, to my personal hero, that it’s hard to wrap my mind around the concept of commanding my own ship and crew,” she confessed. “Especially knowing how I got here.” Saving Admiral Bandar’s life earned her the promotion ahead of so many others. Now she’d have to bear the burden of proving that she deserved it. She didn’t like that fact, but there was no way around it. It was the way the military viewed outsiders. She was an outsider, just a farm girl from Talo. She pictured offspring from families that had produced generations of officers waiting in line for her to fail so they could step in and take her place.
“Your bravery won you this command, Hadley. And your quick thinking. Your out-of-the-box thinking. If the Triad wanted robots to command ships, they would do so. They want leaders. Leaders think outside the box when required. Leaders make brilliant decisions, and mistakes. Leaders are human.”
At the faint change in his voice, she glanced up at him. There were times he despaired that he was not fully human, though she knew otherwise, because of the alterations the empire had made to his brain to allow him to function as a wraith. Alterations that allowed them to erase his memories, and his sense of identity along with it.
“You’re going to do great. This is just the beginning of a long and distinguished career.” He brushed his knuckles against hers, a reassuring warm caress. “If I didn’t feel that way, I’d have already begged for reassignment.”
She laughed. “No, you wouldn’t have. That would have landed you back in the hospital. More tests, more meds.”
Leaning on his cane, he cringed. “I’ll take the risk and serve with you, then,” he teased.
From a portside briefing room came laughter then a few whoops. Then something thudded against the wall. A body? What were the cadets doing in there? “Dear goddess.”
Bolivarr tipped his head to listen along with her. “Almost sounds like a Drakken crew.”
Her second-in-command walked up to them, looking nervous. “Gods forbid.” The mere mention of their former enemy made him turn pale—paler than usual. Clearly out of his element, Garwin Tadlock was an aging star-lieutenant on his last mission before retirement. He was a scientist not a soldier. He had little charisma that Hadley could discern and almost no battle experience. It doubly assured her there would be no action on this mission. Her only hope was that he wouldn’t panic if they encountered pirates, a definite possibility across the Borderlands. But he’d be invaluable once they reached their destination. For that reason, she was glad he was aboard, as well as Sister Chara, their resident priestess, a wiry, athletic woman who’d already inspected—and blessed—the facilities in the ship’s gym.
The cadets grew quieter as they filed into the bridge in anticipation of her entrance. It was more of a low-level hum of energy now. She remembered well her exuberance for her first summer voyage as a cadet at the Royal Galactic Military Academy. Rooks ranged from fifteen and a half to nineteen years old. Someday one of them could very well rise to the top leadership spot in the Triad Alliance and lead them into the future, as Admiral Bandar did, and Prime-Admiral Zaafran.
“Shall we?” With a soft smile at Bolivarr, and a nod to her first officer, she squared her shoulders with their shiny new epaulets, pausing for a brief moment to take in the sight of the brand-new pilot and weapons stations and a state-of-the-art command array, the banks of view-ports with the graceful arc of the Ring rotating slowly against the icy backdrop of Sakka. She took that extra moment to ponder her good fortune for good reason. The war may have ended, but her life was just beginning. With one last tug on the hem of her uniform jacket, she stepped across the imaginary border of her life before and the rest of her life.
“Attention—Captain on the bridge!” Garwin called out.
Hadley strode across the bridge, back ramrod straight, her hands clasped at the small of her back the way Admiral Bandar used to do when addressing her crew. In fact, the admiral affected that stance almost all hours of the day. Hadley used to wonder if she slept that way—with perfect military bearing. Hadley imagined she’d settle in to a more casual leadership style, but for now she felt a little unsure—okay, a lot unsure—and certainly in need of building respect. Whatever she could borrow from her mentor and hero she would.
“Greetings, ladies and gentlemen. And rooks.” The rambunctious group of first-year cadets—rooks—immediately became serious. Dressed in their crisp cadet uniforms in the new Triad colors—red and blue on a mostly black background—they stood at attention.
As Garwin read out their names, she stopped to straighten the epaulet of one young man. He turned white, then red. “Cadet Tenru,” she said.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Your father is Baru Tenru. One of the best fighter pilots we have.” And one of the most annoyingly egotistical. Though his ego didn’t come close to Tango’s. “I’ll expect great things of you.”
“I’ll try, ma’am.” Try? Had the ego gene not made it into Tenru, Jr.? He certainly shared the fighter pilot’s cocky good looks. “I’ll just have to be careful not to show up my fellow cadets here.”
That elicited a quiet snort from one of them. I stand corrected, Hadley thought. Apparently he was indeed a chip off the ol’ block.
Garwin read off the names of the other cadets—Holster, also Coalition, and the twins Arran and Arrak of mixed heritage. The twins’ mother was a Drakken healer who somehow had managed to stow away on a ship where she’d met their father, a Coalition physician. It was rare to see half Hordish, half Coalition offspring that weren’t the result of rape. Regardless, they were never really accepted in either society, something she hoped would now begin to change.
Hadley stopped in front of the two young girls. “Who snorted?”
They were instantly contrite.
The taller of the two stepped forward, snapping her heels together and bringing her hand up for a salute. She was slender with a long, Earthling-style hank of hair swinging around her graceful neck that added to the impression of a dancer. “I did, Captain, ma’am. Cadet Holloway.”
Holloway, as in Ellen Jasper Holloway, Hadley thought. A prebriefing on the girl’s presence had prepared Hadley for having the queen’s consort’s niece assigned to her ship. Admittedly it had made her nervous having the queen’s family on board. Partly for this very reason—what if she felt she was above shipboard rules?
“Do you see anyone else here showing disrespect to the captain?” Bolivarr asked.
“No, sir.” Ellen pressed her lips together, staring straight ahead. She’d screwed up and she knew it. Hadley liked that she didn’t try to justify her small breach of decorum. “Sorry, ma’am.”
Hadley shifted her attention to the rest of them. “It’s going to be a long voyage on a relatively small ship. There will be people aboard who will drive you crazy. Some of you will drive me crazy. What separates military professionals from the rest is that we do not reveal our less than positive personal opinions of fellow crew members.”
“Yes, ma’am,” the six rooks responded.
“Yes, ma’am.” Ellen said, a little more forcefully than the others.
Garwin concluded the roll call with the final rook. “Last we have Cadet Meith…Meitheera…”
“Meitheeratanaphipat, sir.” The correction came from a small girl with lovely dark hair and eyes standing next to Cadet Holloway.
“Mee…theera,” Hadley tried. “Tana…” She gave up trying to read the name badge.
“That’s okay, Captain.” The rook accepted her attempts at pronunciation with a shy, wry smile that told Hadley this was nothing new. “My ancestors are from a place on Earth called Laos. We have long last names.”
One of the twins said, “We call her M-19, Captain.”
“Is that what you prefer?” Hadley asked the girl.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“M-19, it is.” It would have to be. Hadley shared an amused glance with Bolivarr. Though he’d give anything to know what his last name was. Long or short, any name was better than having no name.
They ran through the rest of the introductions quickly—the pilots, mechanic, engineer and the ship’s surgeon. “Battle-Lieutenant Bolivarr will now brief us on our mission.” She refused to call it an expedition. He took center stage and ran through the briefing that Zaafran had given to her.
Through it all, Bolivarr’s eyes were unreadable. So much hinged on this mission. If he couldn’t recover his memory soon then he was likely doomed to live out his life without knowing who he was.
As she’d suspected, there was quite a bit of excitement at the prospect of exploring an uncharted world at the farthest edge of civilized space. Civilized? Hardly. The planet they’d fancifully dubbed Ara Ana had existed, forgotten, in the mostly lawless Hordish frontier for generations. Who knew what they’d find there? Prime-admiral Zaafran had high hopes for a windfall of religious relics. Hadley was certain anything of value to be found had been plundered long ago. But it was supposed to be a mission of hope, and hope she’d have.
The cadets chattered excitedly about the uncharted, possibly unstable wormholes they’d have to traverse and pirate attacks, but in truth, they’d be hard pressed to see any real action on this ride. Their parents would probably be relieved. The academy didn’t believe in coddling cadets, still, no one wanted to see teens placed in harm’s way.
Bolivarr stepped down and the crew reported to their stations to get ready for launch.
“Captain Keyren—Cadet Holloway requests permission to speak.”
Hadley turned. Ellen was standing in front of her. Her military bearing was perfect but she was clearly nervous.
“Go ahead,” Hadley said.
“I wanted to apologize again. I didn’t mean any disrespect. And I wanted you to know that I don’t want or expect special treatment. I want to succeed on my own terms. I want it more than anything.” She lifted luminous, determined eyes to Hadley, as if willing her to understand.
Hadley did understand. Very much so. She, too, wanted to succeed outside the bright light of her famous mentor. She nodded. “Then I expect great things of you this trip, Holloway.”
“Yes, ma’am! You’re my hero, ma’am.”
Her hero?
“Admiral Bandar was abducted. You took a shuttle without permission and—”
Bolivarr cleared his throat to stop Ellen as Hadley thought, Oh, dear. Unfortunately, one of the twins finished for Ellen. “You went around orders in order to save your captain.”
Yes, and won her promotion for that act. So had Rakkelle, the feisty Drakken pilot-cadet-ex-pirate who’d flown the shuttle in question and who was still serving on the Unity, Hadley’s former ship. But that was bar talk. She didn’t want the cadets worshiping her for a mission that could have easily blown up in her face. The ramming during the checkride notwithstanding, she was determined to be more conservative, to play by the rules. “The lesson not to be learned is that it’s okay to disobey orders and do what you want. The situation was unique.” She frowned at them, her best captain’s scowl. No one laughed, so that was good.
Back in her office, Bolivarr leaned heavily on his cane, seemingly amused by the cadets’ idolization of the incident she’d most like to bury in her past. After weeks of improvement, physically he appeared to have taken a turn for the worse the past few days—no seizures, just an overall fatigue. He’d not wanted her to say anything, lest he be pulled from the mission.
Maybe she was asking too much of him. “Bo, are you sure you feel up to this?”
“Hadley, even if I were on my deathbed I’d go.” He paused. “I have to go. It’s my best chance at remembering who I am. My last resort before surgery,” his mouth thinned, “that I really don’t want to have. In fact, I’ve decided I won’t go under the laser-knife, Hadley. My brain has been damaged enough, and some things even nanomeds can’t fix. If this doesn’t work, if Ara Ana doesn’t release my memory, I’m done trying. I’ll just start fresh. What happened in my past will stay in my past.”
“You’re still having the dreams, right? You’re still seeing the five marks?”
“And writing gibberish in runes that I know I once knew how to translate. Why, Hadley? What would I be doing with knowledge of an ancient language that only a few priestesses know? What did I do in my past that gained those secrets?” His jaw tightened. “What did I do?”
Silent, she moved beside him, slipping her arms around his waist. “Good things. I know you.”
“But I don’t know me.”
She held him tighter. The quiet sadness that was always a part of him seemed more pronounced as he turned his dark, narrowed eyes to a view of the Ring they’d soon trade for the unknown.
She reckoned that Bolivarr’s memory was as ripe for discovery as the uncharted space they’d soon explore. As much as she looked forward to beginning the mission, she couldn’t shake the sense that it would soon change everything she thought she knew about herself—and him.
BLOWING DUST turned Zorabeta’s sun into a bloated yellow orb bearing an uncanny resemblance to a decaying sun-melon. The wind whistled as Keir pulled out a fresh nanopick and faced down the three Drakken who’d showed up at his ship.
A fancy weapon glinted in the battlelord’s hand. It looked like it could do some damage, too. Keir reached for his pistol before he remembered it was on his ship. He’d been disarmed upon arrival like everyone else visiting the camps for commerce and otherwise, but both blue-bloods were posing as law enforcement.
As for Wren, she looked like the girl next door, and here he was, acting as if sending her to the executioner was as routine as ordering a drink in the bar. He was a jerk. She must know by now that he’d fully intended to use her. The way he saw it, he had nothing to apologize for. It was high time she got to know him the way every other woman knew him. He was in this game for himself.
“So, it sounds like our deal is still on,” he told her. “Riches beyond my imagination. Right, sweetheart?”
Mawndarr frowned at the endearment.
“Don’t worry, battlelord. Nothing happened and nothing will. Ours was a financial relationship.” Nipped in the bud before it had the chance to bloom.
Bloom, hells. Fifty million queens were still his if he turned Wren in. A life of comfort (and no more chem-toilet running) would be his future. He ought to call Ellie back for reinforcements right now, land Mawndarr’s ass in the brig and turn his wife in. All he needed to do was deliver her to the camp commissar’s office in person and claim the bounty. One bellow and the curtain would come crashing down on the little Drakken right here, right now. Except his potential-profit meter was pegged. This gig reeked of money. The company could be dangerous, yeah, but in his experience, a little extra risk reaped a larger reward.
As ochre dust swirled, Mawndarr studied him as if trying to get his bearings with an unexpected adversary. He wasn’t the first battlelord Keir had faced. Battlelords were the opposite of a good runner: they were thinkers and planners. Right now he was thinking this through. Finally he said, “I see we have three options, Vantos.”
“I’ll love them all, I assume.”
“One—I can take your ship and leave you in Zorabeta, maybe even bribe you to stay quiet.”
“Bribes are nice. What’s two?”
“Rather than risk leaving you behind to tell everyone what you know, I can kill you where you stand.”
“I think that if you’d wanted to kill me, you’d have done it already.”
“What I want is irrelevant. I’d actually prefer to have you shock-cuffed—or dead—in the hold of your ship. But I can use you. Your so-called unmatched talent as a runner.”
“So you know a good runner when you see one, eh, Mawndarr? You made the right choice. I’m the best there is. Six years and barely a scratch. Don’t worry about a thing. Keir Vantos is behind the wheel. I’ll get us across the Borderlands so fast, no one will ever know you were there.”
“You’re not that good, Vantos. I let you pass all those times because it served my purposes.”
“Bull flarg. We’ve never crossed paths before.”
“Victory day. You were coming across the backside of the Inelglio dust cloud. You passed close enough to my battle-cruiser to shake hands.”
Holy hells. “That was you?” The sight of that battle-cruiser bearing down on him was burned into his memory. He’d been sure he was dead meat. He’d actually muttered his goodbyes to this world. It wasn’t something he cared to share with Mawndarr. “Do you have any idea how much repairing that warning shot cost me? What were you doing out there on victory day, eh, Mawndarr? Trying to save your ass?”
“You could say that.”
Rumor was that insiders had let the queen’s consort through the perimeter around the warlord’s flotilla. Gods, was Mawndarr involved in that? He could very well be in the company of one of the biggest traitors in Empire history.
“I watched you cross the blockade more times than I care to count,” Mawndarr said. “You were good, Vantos. Smart. Probably the best I saw out there, but you didn’t live this long without my help.”
“Yeah. I get the point. No need to rub my nose in it. I got around you a few times, too, you know.”
“I do. And that’s exactly why you’re hired.”