Aboard the Quillie, his muscles tense, his combat instincts pulsing in readiness, Rom turned in a full circle, slowly, holding a sens-sword in front of him in a sure, two-handed grip. “It’s over for you, Gann.” His voice echoed dully in the cavernous room. “Give up now and I might show you a bit of mercy—you sniveling whatever-the-Earth-dwellers-call-those-subservient-furry-creatures. Ah, yes, you sniveling little dog.”
Rom froze. He was certain he’d heard a muffled laugh. Quelling his own, he stared wide-eyed into a wall of complete blackness. “It’s over. I see you.”
Though not with his eyes.
The neurons in his body hummed, pointing to his prey. Honed to a nearly infallible sensitivity from years of training in Bajha, the age-old game of warriors, Rom’s senses guided him. Following their ancient, mysterious direction, he trusted his body in the way warriors must, inching closer. Listening.
Though not with his ears.
He relied on the blood coursing through his veins, his tingling pores, and the tiniest hairs on his body, while he clutched the blunt sens-sword in his fists. Ah, he loved this aspect of the sport: the thoroughly arousing anticipation of a victory not yet realized. Show yourself, Gann.
His opponent attacked, the rounded blade of his sens-sword passing so close that the wind sang over the tops of Rom’s bare hands. Rom arched his back, ducked. Whooping in joy, he whirled, swinging his own weapon in a brutal arc from above his head and sharply to the right. He heard a grunt of surprise as the sens-sword vibrated in his hands, signaling a hit.
“Ah, hell and back,” he heard Gann mutter.
“Lights,” Rom said. The illumination came up, revealing his second-in-command on one knee. He pointed his weapon at him. “Give?” he inquired, breathless.
“Give.”
Rom offered Gann his hand—a show of respect for the man he trusted as much as he had his brother, and the only member of the Vash Nadah willing to follow him into exile. Gripping each other at the wrist, they inclined their heads, formally ending the match.
Fealty, fidelity, family. Like him, Gann was devoted to the ancient code of the warrior, one that stressed control and self-discipline. It was an honorable way of life, one that set the example for the lower classes—unlike the habits of most current rulers.
Fools, Rom thought, wrenching open the fastenings on his collar. Certainly eleven thousand years of peace was an accomplishment worthy of awe, but many of the Vash Nadah were using pacifism as an excuse for apathy, caring more for personal power, pleasure, and riches than the foundation of their civilization. If that foundation were allowed to crumble, the chaos and death of long ago would return. The Dark Years. Already there were signs of deterioration—terrorism, the destruction of supply lines and ships, previously unheard-of riots on essential planets across the realm. Had Rom not killed Sharron with his own hands on Balkanor almost twenty years before, he would have sworn the acts bore the mark of the monster and his cult following.
Rom’s stomach muscles knotted up. The politics and future of the Vash Nadah were no longer his concern. He was estranged from his family, banished in disgrace. If the Vash wanted to wallow in ignorance and inaction in the name of peace, so be it. He was quite content to live out his life on the fringe, meandering along the ancient routes in the stars with his loyal crew, trading for baubles on backwater frontier planets.
Gann interrupted his decidedly dismal thoughts. “What was that you called me?” he asked, unfastening his white Bajha jumpsuit. “A dog?”
“Yes. A dog.”
“I can match you epithet for Earth epithet, B’Kah: A-okay-have-a-nice-day.”
Rom said dryly, “Not something I’d care repeat to my mother, I take it?”
“Wouldn’t risk it.”
Chuckling, Rom draped a towel over his shoulders and squeezed half the contents of a bag of drinking water into his mouth.
“Zarra’s volunteered to serve as translator,” Gann said. “The lad boasts he’s fluent.”
“I’ve no knack for languages,” Rom admitted. The fact had never posed a problem before. Vash Basic was used galaxy-wide; it was the language of commerce. Nevertheless, during the two months he’d wasted waiting for Earth’s governments to decide whether to welcome Lahdo’s fleet, Rom had been memorizing what little English he could, a guttural and oddly familiar tongue. It lessened the chance of being cheated in trade—should there be those on Earth who’d dare try.
He packed away his sens-sword, stripped off his Bajha suit, then stretched and flexed his muscles. He felt sated, alive. The game had heightened all his senses. A fleeting image of a bath—a real bath, not a timed hygiene shower—flitted through his mind. Next appeared a woman, offering him the gift of herself for a long night of lovemaking, yet another one of life’s sacred pleasures he’d had to go without on the long voyage.
“Bridge to Captain B’Kah.” His engineer appeared on the viewscreen positioned near the soundproofed ceiling.
Rom rubbed his head with a towel, then draped it over his shoulders, combing his fingers through his damp, spiky hair. “Go, Terz.”
“Fleet Commander Lahdo is on the line, sir.”
Rom exchanged surprised glances with Gann. “Mr. Composure, himself,” he said under his breath. “Put the commander through, Terz.”
Lahdo appeared on-screen, looking harried but triumphant. “Earth has cleared us to land.”
“Well done, Lahdo, on keeping the Earth astronauts happy and healthy. Am I correct in assuming the quarantine experts on their homeworld have concluded we won’t infect the general population?”
Lahdo’s face fell. “No. Until an establishment they call the Center for Disease Control completes its final study, we will be placed in quarantine. A restricted area designated”—Lahdo squinted at a viewscreen on his wristband—“Andrews Air Force Base.”
“Andrews…” Rom committed the odd-sounding name to memory.
“I will forward the coordinates,” Lahdo continued. “Earth’s astronauts will pilot the lead vessel, the class-three ship I gave to them. I want you to move into position and follow the fleet.” He thrust out his chin. “Now remember, B’Kah, I expect nothing short of full compliance from your ship and crew.”
Rom lifted his palms and smiled reassuringly. “No worries, Commander. No worries. You can depend on us to do our part.”
The viewscreen went blank, and Rom whooped heartily. “Frontier time!” Lighthearted for the first time in—by all the heavens, he’d lost count how long—he snapped his towel against his friend’s solid back. “All right, Gann, let’s find ourselves a nice bit of cargo while we’re there. I’m in a profit-making mood.”
Jas slid onto a bench seat next to Dan Brady, making sure she had a clear view of the big-screen television in his microbrewery, a side business he operated out of sheer entrepreneurial enjoyment. Fortifying herself with a swallow of beer, she watched a replay of the arrival of eleven huge but sleek delta-shaped spacecraft. Trailing whirling ribbons of condensation, they floated out of the sky like exotic petals, settling onto an unused runway of Andrews Air Force Base, the installation near Washington, D.C., that housed Air Force One. Even the smallest interstellar vessel was larger than a 747 airliner, but the command ship Lucre was said to be as big as five U.S. Navy aircraft carriers. It had stayed behind in an orbit around Earth because no one had been able to figure out where to put it. “This is incredible—spectacular,” she said, vainly searching for words worthy of the event.
Abruptly the scene changed to an aerial view of the highways in and out of Maryland, backed up for miles in each direction. Tens of thousands of people were fleeing what they called an alien invasion, but an even greater number were flocking to get a glimpse of the spacecraft. “And that’s chaos,” she said to Dan out the corner of her mouth.
“I pictured worse, considering how fast this was approved.”
Two months of worldwide protests, bureaucratic snarls, misunderstandings, and emergency orders had ended abruptly in a unanimous invitation extended to the Vash. The decision had rocked the planet. “Our backs were to the wall; only idiots would risk losing a lightspeed starship and the cure for cancer.”
Dan’s eyes lit up. “The Vash knew that from the start. I doubt we’re the first technologically inferior planet they’ve ‘discovered.’ They understand the power of gifts.”
Thoughtful, Jas tucked her jean-clad legs beneath her. “A ship and some shared medical tech—small potatoes compared to the minerals they claim permeate the asteroids between Mars and Jupiter.” The rights to which the Vash wanted badly. “But they’ll have to give us more technology if they want us to run the mining operation ourselves.”
“They will,” Dan said with confidence. “We get free start-up equipment and a built-in clientele. They get cheaper minerals. It’s a win-win situation for both parties. Their trading federation is immense, Jas. The potential for profit is staggering.”
“Unless they offer to pay us in salt,” she quipped—unbelievably, the stuff was a rare and costly luxury for much of the rest of the galaxy. “In which case you’d better up your shares in the Morton company.”
He spread his hands on the table. “Done.”
Laughing, she raised her glass of Red Rocket Ale. “Here’s to the only other person I know who shares my obsession with our visitors from space.”
“Not obsession, Jas.” He clinked his glass against hers. “Demonstrative intellectual and entrepreneurial fascination.”
Whatever Dan might label her absorption with the Vash, it had taken over her life. Although she hadn’t again glimpsed the handsome spaceman who’d so unsettled her, she was channeling her preoccupation with him into a far more sensible pursuit: learning Vash Basic, the language of intergalactic trade. Night after night, she logged onto the U.N. Web site to practice Basic and study Vash history and culture.
“Now I wonder what this could be,” Dan muttered.
A special report headline was scrolling across the TV. Jas lowered her beer glass, praying it wasn’t a reinstatement of the curfew, a return to squeezing her life between dawn and dusk, battling it out every third day for gas, and having to put up with the crowds at the supermarket. But the footage showed a gathering of newspeople. Flashbulbs flickered as a distinguished-looking African-American man strode up to a podium, looking more like a young boy with his excited grin than a fifty-seven-year-old senior correspondent for CNN.
An odd mix of yearning and envy squeezed her chest. “So Kendall Smith’s the lucky winner,” she said. The competing networks had chosen Smith from an impressive pool of candidates after the Vash had offered to bring a correspondent into space to tour their main cargo depot. Afterward, if Smith wanted, he could continue on, traveling and reporting back indefinitely.
“A Vash public-relations stroke of genius,” Dan remarked, “like the ‘go west, young man’ posters of the eighteen hundreds.”
Unexpectedly, Dan’s words painted an image of a new life, of starting over. What would it be like to do what Smith was doing, to set out into the unknown, to feel alive again?
The way she had before the crash.
Longing struck her with surprising force, and the ache in her chest tightened to where she could hardly breathe. She thought of all the adventures not yet taken, of all the dreams she hadn’t envisioned since before obligations and heartache had stolen them away. Quietly, she said, “I’d give anything to be in his shoes.”
Dan contemplated her with an understanding smile. “Within a couple of years I’m sure we’ll all have the chance.”
“Right.” A couple of years. What should have been a deflating statement of fact unexpectedly became a challenge. Was there was a way to circumvent such a long wait? Nervously she twisted the silver bangles on her right wrist. Adrenaline made her hands tremble. At the age when most women were ensconced in their nests, she was suddenly buoyed by the overwhelming urge to spread her wings.
As the sun reached its zenith over Andrews Air Force Base, Rom, Gann, and young Zarra, their trusty but untried translator, climbed into the backseat of the automobile. It was an antiquated vehicle, one not capable of flight, Rom noted with some relief, for he didn’t relish the prospect of traveling any great distance wedged in its cramped interior. Like Gann, he struggled to fold his long limbs into a comfortable position, pressing one knee into the seat in front of him while angling his other leg toward Zarra, who appeared quite content, nestled between his two larger companions.
Gann said under his breath, “Great Mother, this is worse than the cattle hold of a Tromjha freighter.”
“The lower hold.” Rom recalled—in vivid olfactory detail—the two hellish days that he and Gann had spent trapped in one during the campaign against Sharron.
A cheerful female voice called out from the front passenger seat, “Buckle up, gentlemen.” Rom winced as the last door slammed.
“She means the waist harnesses, I think,” Zarra said, holding up one black strap in his hand as he fumbled rather intimately behind Rom’s rear end for the other. “Sorry, sir.”
Their escort, one Sergeant Mendoza, scooted around to watch their progress. She was dressed in a crisp, dark blue uniform, her black hair twisted and gathered at the nape of her neck in a clawlike contraption. Rom stared. Though he refused to dwell on what had happened that long-ago day on Balkanor, Mendoza’s tresses evoked an undeniably erotic yearning for the woman tied to his worst memories. He continued to study the sergeant, wondering idly what her hair would look like brushed loose, whether it was long enough to fall below her shoulders.
“Would you like some assistance, sir?” she asked, a flirting lilt to her accented Basic.
“Not at this time, no.” He snatched the harness from Zarra.
Her gaze meandered from his face to his boots, and her brown eyes glittered with an invitation that was unmistakable on any planet, in any culture. “I’ll keep the offer open, sir.”
Rom masked his lack of interest with a polite dip of his head. To his relief, she turned her attention to a folder in her lap. Gann observed the exchange with a speculative gleam in his eye. “Shall I make alternate arrangements for your transportation back to the ship?” he inquired in Siennan, their native language, one few outside their class knew.
Rom frowned. “Don’t be a fool. It’s the hair color again. Damned distracting.”
Ever tactful, Gann said no more. He knew more about Rom’s battlefield vision than anyone else, recognized what its aftermath had done to his friend’s life.
In a torrent of incomprehensible English, Sergeant Mendoza gave the driver instructions. The vehicle lurched forward. “What did she say, Zarra?” Rom asked.
“Out the north gate to the capitol, sir. For Commander Lahdo’s address.”
His thoughts tied up in the day ahead, Rom only half watched the landscape whir past. He anticipated success. After all the time wasted waiting to arrive on Earth, and then two more months spent sitting on the Earth base Andrews while the planet’s politicians fretted over disease, he deserved a round of satisfying negotiations, salt trade heading the list. This planet’s seas were laden with the expensive, sought-after commodity. The inhabitants actually swam in the precious liquid and thought nothing of it! Ah, it was easy to envision the Quillie’s hold filled with blocks of salt. Perhaps, too, he could buy a stake in one of the mines opening on the asteroids. That would be a unique opportunity, for most mining was under strict Vash Nadah control, making it nearly impossible for unaligned traders to buy an interest. If he could purchase a claim while here, he’d make a handsome profit selling it once they reached the Depot—enough to buy that trading post he’d had his eye on. It was a tiny, remote moon, but it had a nice port. In no time, he’d have a small but efficient operation up and running. Not that he’d give up his nomadic life for good, but it wouldn’t hurt to put down some roots.
Rom clenched his jaw. Dreams were one thing, but today had been a near disaster. If not for the quick-thinking officer monitoring the viewscreens of the cameras mounted on the exterior of the Quillie, Rom would have been excluded from the day’s events. Vehicles had been picking up delegations from the other ships all morning, and would have skipped theirs had his bodyguard not blocked one of the automobiles with his sizable bulk. Oversight? Rom doubted it. It was subterfuge, and most certainly Lahdo’s doing. Rom would waste no time locating the impertinent commander at the gathering, and looked forward to sharing a few choice words of wisdom on the subject of violating the Treatise of Trade. By the time he was done with Lahdo, the buffoon would never consider such traitorous behavior again.
Poised on the edge of her bed, Jas waited for the broadcast to begin. Applause signaled the Vash diplomats’ arrival. The president, the members of both houses of Congress, and heads of state from around the world stood as the Vash delegation filed in. Dressed in their beautiful indigo uniforms, they greeted their audience with their distinctive handshake, gripping each Earth diplomat’s forearm and wrist. But they saved most of their enthusiasm for the secretary of commerce, whom they flocked around until she was lost behind them.
After a spirited introduction from President Talley, Commander Lahdo stepped up to the podium. His resonant voice boomed, while a translator relayed his hopes for partnership, understanding, and, to no one’s surprise, profit. To test her grasp of Basic, she concentrated on Lahdo’s voice. Here and there a phrase eluded her, a few words that she didn’t recognize, but she could understand him. A talent for learning languages was something she’d inherited from her linguist mother, but it had never proven useful until now. Not that Basic was complicated. Throaty and to the point, it was designed to facilitate dialogue between inhabitants of countless worlds. Other languages existed, but they were evidently never used in commerce.
To hearty applause, Lahdo relinquished the podium to the secretary of commerce and rejoined his delegation, basking in their adulation, their handshakes and smiles, until a tall Vash stepped in front of him, blocking his path.
A Vash dressed like a futuristic buccaneer.
Jas sucked in a breath. It was the devilishly charming space rebel. His lean body radiated strength, purpose, and a powerful, masculine self-confidence that made her head swim and her body respond with a deep, aching yearning.
Then he turned his back to the camera. His hands were fisted behind him and hidden from Lahdo, his fingers clasping and unclasping, betraying the intensity of his anger.
Lahdo’s uneasy delegation began gathering around their leader, while dark-suited Secret Service men hovered closer, drawn by the Vash leader’s discomposure. A microphone placed nearby was picking up the argument, barely. Jas grabbed the remote, punching up the volume. The tall Vash’s tone was low but intense. “The Articles of Frontier Trade state that I may trade with whom I please. You cannot exclude me, Lahdo, as you tried today. I will commence contact with the merchant leaders of my choice.”
Lahdo fidgeted. “The agreement will be signed next week. Earth will no longer be a frontier planet then, and your articles will not apply.”
The tall Vash’s hands closed into fists. “But until then, Commander, they do.”
Lahdo’s tawny skin gleamed with perspiration. He tugged at his collar, and his clipped Basic took on a pleading tone. “It would be best if you and your companions leave the planet. I trust that one Earth week will be enough time to prepare the Quillie for departure. Shall my crew assist you in gathering the supplies you need?” Applause exploded and in the foreground of the screen, the secretary of commerce relinquished the podium to the British prime minister. More heated words were exchanged between the Lahdo and the other Vash, but because of the noise, Jas missed them.
“One Earth week,” Lahdo said, louder.
The tall rebel gestured to two similarly dressed men standing nearby. One was tall and muscular with hard and handsome features like him; the other was much younger and had hair of a lighter blond. With glowering faces, the rebel and his friends strode out of camera range, trailed by a battalion of Secret Service men.
Jas flopped backward onto the bed. Her Vash man had just been unceremoniously and undemocratically kicked out of a joint session of Congress. For Pete’s sake, he’d been kicked off the planet, too, if she’d heard Lahdo correctly. Her thoughts plunged ahead. The trade commander wanted to exclude him. Why? He apparently was not part of the delegation. She’d assumed all the Vash were, but if he wasn’t, it would explain why she hadn’t seen him in any of the previously aired interviews. In fact, she’d begun to think she had imagined him.
Without warning, a memory of the rebel’s golden eyes evoked a shivery, erotic echo of the way she’d felt when she woke from the dream of him. But she clenched her teeth against the unbidden image; she’d endured too many years of unbidden images, fantasies that were more vivid than life. Common sense told her that this flesh-and-blood man had nothing to do with her dreams. She couldn’t fathom why he affected her so profoundly, but maybe somewhere in his world was her answer.
His world.
She sat up, her elbows on her knees, her chin in her hands. She wasn’t wealthy, and she wasn’t a dignitary. Average citizens like herself would have to wait many years for the chance to travel into space. And even that was only conjecture. She massaged her temples and concentrated. It looked as though her only way into space was though the back door. But short of thumbing a ride on one of the Vash ships, how would she do that?
Thumbing a ride…
Yes, she could hitchhike. Her heart sped up as she analyzed the plausibility and risk of such a scheme. It was a rash idea. Insane.
Electrifying.
She lurched off the bed and began to pace. All her life she’d been praised and rewarded for making sound, logical choices. Even her unconventional desire to become a fighter pilot had been driven by a sense of duty to her country. Dependable, do-right Jas. Well, except when it came to her love life, but she was smarter now. Her thoughts circled back to the Vash rebel. He was the key. If she could somehow make it worth his while, he might be willing to take her along. She’d even bet that he didn’t play by the rules, as did Lahdo and the others. He was an outcast, or better yet, an outlaw—exactly the kind of individual she needed for her plan. Yep, he was her ticket out of here. And she had one short week to prove it.