Word that the legendary B’kah had taken up residence at the palace spread quickly, bringing Vash diplomats and members of the great council to Mistraal in never-before-seen numbers. The Dar compound was jammed with would-be crusaders. More arrived every day. When Rom last checked in with the Quillie, Gann stated that they, too, were on their way.
But despite relentless lobbying to amass a force large enough to hunt down and destroy Sharron’s bases, Jas was sorry to see that their efforts netted them but a handful of true allies. Ever careful to defer to those in power, Rom was disinclined to do more than meet with the visitors in private audiences, always insisting that he had not come here to involve himself in Vash politics. But the longer they stayed, the more involved he became, until finally he bowed to Joren’s urging to give an address.
Since Rom was banned from setting foot on the Wheel, the vast structure housing the Great Council when in session, he agreed to speak at the palace. Jas worked doggedly with him on its content, hoping it would be the catalyst they needed to spur the Vash into declaring war against Sharron. Unfortunately, the villain hadn’t helped their cause by virtually disappearing in the weeks since they’d fled his compound.
“While you were in the exercise chamber this afternoon,” Rom said, venting his frustrations one evening while she dressed for dinner, “a group of council elders took it upon themselves to inform me that my implication that Sharron possesses and intends to use forbidden technology is merely conjecture—and thus not worthy of their concern.”
“What did you say?”
“‘Do we have the right to take that chance?’—the very question you asked of me on Ceres. But they want proof, proof that the forbidden technology exists. And that is the one thing I cannot give them.” He walked to their bed and settled tiredly onto the coverlet, wedging a pillow behind his head. “Sharron has always been too clever to allow that proof to become known.”
His fatigue and frustration troubled her. “Joren supports you. So does that plantation owner, Drandon Keer. They don’t need proof.”
“No, but they are friends.”
“Friends with influence and money.”
“Resources are useless without unity.” He stared at the ceiling. “Perhaps if the B’kahs would come, true headway might be made.”
“Your father.” Jas tried to hide her distaste for the man. Even now he was blocking Rom’s efforts. Her fingers stiffened as she twisted her damp hair into a chignon. Fumbling, she made a conscious effort to relax them in order to put her hair up. “This is more his responsibility than yours. He’s the one who didn’t help in the first place. And he and the other elders are the ones who’ve mismanaged the trade routes and given the Family of the New Day the chance to come back, not you.”
“When my father should have devoted his time to the Great Council and left the day-to-day mechanics of ruling to a son, he had to do two jobs. It is hard to do them both well.”
His calm impartiality surprised her. “You’re making excuses for him. I don’t know if he deserves it.”
“We’ve all made mistakes,” Rom quietly conceded. “Perhaps I’m finally beginning to understand that.”
A series of resounding booms rumbled through the palace, coming closer and closer until a startling whoomph blasted behind her. Air swirled past her ankles. She spun around. “The shields?”
“Yes. They’ll stay in place over every portal until the wind velocity drops to normal levels.”
The Tjhu’nami.
She peered out beyond the terrace to the endless savanna. A ten-foot-thick clear barrier was now in place. Beyond it, the long grasses were completely flattened. She could feel, but not quite hear, a constant rumbling—the receding tide of air before a distant monstrous wave.
Deadly windstorms made Mistraal the most inhospitable and forbidding of the eight Vash Nadah homeworlds. By midnight—nights here were half as long as Earth nights—the Tjhu’nami was anticipated to reach an unimaginable eight hundred knots. Worse, the storm would pass directly over the palace and Dar City, home to the planet’s entire population. Shuddering, Jasmine rubbed her hands up and down her arms. Ever since the weather station on the huge space-city orbiting Mistraal had issued its warning, she’d been as agitated as an apartment-bound cat that sensed an earthquake was imminent, but could do nothing more than dart from couch to chair to coffee table.
“My ears are popping,” she said, tearing her gaze from the once-soothing vista.
“So are mine. The atmospheric pressure’s plunging. Dar City will literally close down within—” Sitting up, Rom glanced at his watch. “Well, now. It looks as if we already have. Total communications blackout—for at least a day.”
She thought of the envoys crowding the palace—relentless in demanding Rom’s time. And those in the space-city high above the planet. “That means no one can fly out, unless it’s an emergency.”
“Nor in, either.” Mischief glinted in his golden eyes.
She matched his devilish grin. “Poor politicians, stuck in orbit. What a shame.”
“For them, perhaps. For us, a temporary respite I say we celebrate.” He swung his legs off the bed and extended his hand. “Allow me to escort you to dinner, angel.”
The Dar Palace was a galactic version of medieval splendor—with all its idiosyncrasies. Dinners were communal banquets shared with hundreds of others in the largest room Jas had ever seen. Massive columns of white marble supported a dome resplendent with handpainted scenes of an alien sea, replete with creatures she’d not find on any Earth shore. The ceiling was so high that moisture collected there in diaphanous ribbons of mist, imparting the dreaminess of a mermaid’s underwater castle.
Rom led Jas past tables laden with fragrant delicacies. Sociable men and women, descendants of those who had attended the Dars for eons—a sought-after position among the merchant class—served hot and cold dishes of every description, liqueurs, wines and juices, casks of salt, the best the galaxy had to offer.
As the wind slammed hurricane fists against the shielded windows that spanned the height of the room, the very air drummed with the tempest. Yet musicians played, Bajha aficionados regaled each other with tales, and children squirmed and giggled, while sinewy, downy-haired ketta-cats prowled under the tables, looking for scraps.
As usual, they sat with Joren and Di, their children, and assorted powerful and influential members of the Dar clan. Since most spoke Siennan, except when addressing her, Jas was immersed in the tongue. The language was difficult, but gradually she was learning to communicate. She was thankful that tonight the conversation centered on lighthearted subjects, perhaps due to her and Rom’s obvious exhaustion in the wake of preparing for his address, and their consideration of it. The Dars were family, after all.
“The Earth beverage, sir.” A young man sporting a double row of silver triangles down his nose handed Rom a flask of wheat-colored liquid crowned with a layer of white foam. Then he bowed and backed away.
Rom grinned. “Beer.”
Protests and groans met his announcement.
“A different recipe this time!” he shouted over the noise. “The cooks assure me that it will win your stomachs and your hearts, as Jas’s precious supply won mine. Give me your glasses.”
All within reach reluctantly thrust out what clean cups they could find. Rom splashed beer into them one by one. Foam bubbled over onto the tablecloth, spreading in dark circles over the holographic pattern.
As Rom poured the last of the beer into her goblet, Jas remarked, “At least it’s the right color this time.”
He sniffed. “The aroma is promising, as well.” He raised his goblet high. “Let us drink!”
Jas nearly gagged when the bitter liquid hit her tongue. Fingertips pressed to her lips, she glanced around, desperate for any alternative to swallowing the stuff.
“Romlijhian!” Joren bellowed, slamming his glass down.
Jas squeezed her eyes shut and swallowed.
Rom dabbed at his mouth with a napkin. “Yes, brother?”
Mirth danced in Joren’s watering eyes. “Be warned, if I ever see this beverage at my table again, I will happily and quite unceremoniously bathe you in it!”
Laughter erupted. Rom waved his napkin like a flag of surrender. Then he dipped his head to Jas’s ear. “You say your friend Dan Brady maintains an Earth establishment devoted solely to the creation and distribution of beer?”
She smiled. “Well, he serves solid food, too.”
“We’ll partake of both, naturally, but the beer is what intrigues me.” His mouth tipped crookedly into a roguish grin, reminding her that he was still a rebel smuggler at heart. “Red Rocket Ale,” he said, pronouncing it Redeh Rockeet Ell. “I still have in my possession the trade agreement you brought with you from Earth. I believe it grants me an exclusive arrangement.”
She slid her arms around his waist. “You know, I have the feeling you’re going to make Dan a very wealthy man. B’kah and Brady—purveyors of beer to the stars.”
He threw back his head and laughed.
Oddly, his delight tugged at her heart. “I haven’t seen you do that in…I can’t remember how long.”
“What? Laugh?”
She nodded. “It’s wearing on you. The stress, the long hours. I realize we’re racing against the clock, but if you don’t take a break, you’ll burn yourself out.”
He turned pensive, drumming his fingers on his upper arms. Then his golden eyes sparked almost boyishly. “Let’s go flying.”
She reared back. “Are you serious? Where? When?”
“Patrol—each in our own starfighter. It’s more a tradition than a necessity, but after a storm passes, the Dars launch ships to survey damage to the palace—if any—and to symbolically reestablish contact with the space-city. No doubt the space chief has already chosen pilots for the mission, but surely he’ll be amenable to a little, ah, rearranging.”
She smiled and squeezed his hand. He was doing this for her, to cheer her and alleviate her concern. No matter what his condition, he always put her first. The good of the people outweighs the desire of the individual. It was what he was taught as the young heir to the throne.
She considered that, and then all the people who had flown here to hear him speak. They were looking to him for leadership, and she couldn’t help wondering what that would someday mean for their relationship. But for now, for the space of this one flight he wanted to arrange, he was hers.
“Auxiliary boosters.”
“Check,” Jas said over the comm linking her vessel to Rom’s.
“Life-support system.”
“Check.”
“Weapons systems,” Rom finished.
“On-line.”
Jas glanced at him across the shadowy hangar. Supposedly she wasn’t “seeing” him at all.
“Let me see if I understood you correctly,” she asked. “My windows aren’t really windows?”
“Correct. They’re viewscreens, simulating exactly what you’d see if they were transparent. Only they’re better than transparent. The onboard computer compensates for any decay in visibility.”
Cool, she thought. Except for her brief stint at the controls in the Quillie and the starspeeder, she hadn’t piloted anything in decades, and certainly not a craft this automated. Even the seat she was strapped to was “smart.” Capable of reacting faster than any human brain, and certainly her brain, it provided protection and guidance in situations ranging from interstellar combat to the far more mundane task of shielding her from the tremendous accelerations required for space flight.
Lowering her black visor over her face, she gave Rom a thumbs-up.
“Patrol One’s ready,” Rom radioed to the space controller, who sat in a pod just outside the cavernous shuttle bay.
“Cleared to launch,” the controller replied.
Jas gave a silent cheer as the shield in front of her vibrated, then slowly lifted. Dried leaves and grasses whirled inside the bay, borne on the wind of the dying storm. Spread out before her were endless plains below a dust-yellowed sky. As in her fighter pilot days, she sat poised like an eagle about to take wing.
In a burst of energy, Rom’s starfighter departed first. Three seconds later, she flipped on the thrusters. G-forces pressed her into her seat, bringing on a fleeting twinge of pain in her abdomen, where she was still healing.
Clearing the hanger, she aimed the craft’s nose at the sky. Though piloting the starfighter wasn’t difficult, she saw she wouldn’t have the same ease she’d acquired in her F-16.
The storm was ebbing rapidly, but turbulence shook her starfighter in uneven jolts. Hampered by oversize engines and stubby wings, the craft was designed for space rather than the atmosphere, but it was smaller, more advanced, and more heavily armed than the starspeeder Drandon had loaned Rom. For a society that abhorred conflict, the Vash certainly put a lot of effort and expense into their weaponry.
Within moments she joined Rom in formation. Side by side, several hundred feet apart, they soared over the prairie, searching the sprawling palace below for damage. Finding none, Rom said, “Onward to the space-city,” and took them higher, through the atmosphere, until stars took the place of the rising sun.
Space. A rush of freedom swept through her, and she suspected Rom felt it, too. Turning the heavens into a glittering carousel of stars, he led her through a series of practice maneuvers, careful not to heap too much strain on her tender stomach.
“Patrol One, this is Mistraal Control,” said a voice in their comm.
“Go ahead,” answered Rom.
“Unable to establish contact with the space-city. When you arrive, have the controller initiate comm from their end.”
At first the exchange puzzled Jas. How could they be cut off? Forty thousand citizens made their home there and on the mining colonies. The controller’s problem gave her an insight into the differences between the way Rom’s people and hers on Earth had developed. The Vash had perfected star travel and built space-cities, yet the Dars couldn’t compensate for something as simple as atmospheric turmoil disrupting space-to-planet transmissions.
Rom acknowledged the call, then moved his craft close to her left wing. Cockpit to cockpit, she waved him off. “You’re taking a chance, space cowboy,” she said when he stayed put. “This is no F-16. No guarantees how steady I can keep this thing.”
“So why wouldn’t you dance with me last night at dinner?” he asked, immune to her warning.
She gave an incredulous laugh. The question was the very last one she expected in the midst of flying patrol. “It was the promise song, that’s why.”
“We’re an unmarried couple. That is the only requirement to perform it.”
“Unmarried couples intending to legally wed.”
“When I request the song again tonight, will you dance voluntarily? Or will I have to toss you over my shoulder?”
She snorted. “I dare you.” Something told her that shoulder tossing wasn’t an everyday event in Joren’s palace. “We’ll be the oldest ones out there by twenty years. But you, I take it, as family rebel are tired of such details?”
He sighed. “More than you will ever know.”
The airless, frigid chasm of space sat between them like an unwelcome chaperon, magnifying their sudden silence.
From his cockpit, Rom wished he could see past Jas’s visor, wished he could read what was in her eyes. “My decision to make you my a’nah was impulsive. It is not at all what I wanted for us, but I haven’t a choice. I have no title, few resources.” And if he joined with a non– Vash Nadah woman in an unapproved, unarranged marriage, it meant giving up his secret hope of reclaiming his father’s favor.
His stomach muscles tensed. Well, he thought. He’d finally admitted it. But with the admission came a harder realization. If the man wished to see him, he would have done so already. But in its own way, that, too, was liberating.
“By all that is holy, Jasmine, we ought to be wed. Lawfully. Alas, I have spent a lifetime dreaming of the impossible, wishing for what cannot be—”
“Why can’t it?”
Because he never imagined such a decision was his to make. The concept shook him. His life was his own now, was it not? He was not the B’kah heir, would never be again. They’d leave soon to visit Earth, and after that…well, they had yet to discuss it. Of course, there was the question of whether she’d actually consent to any arrangement…
His words rushed out like a nervous youth’s. “We would need authorization—I’ve no official title, you see. But then, you are not Vash Nadah. However, there are different restrictions for the frontier, looser restrictions. The Treatise of Trade states—”
“Rom.”
He stopped himself midsentence.
Her voice was husky, a soft caress. “Are you asking me to marry you?”
With the computer maintaining the fighter’s speed, Rom gripped the control stick with one hand and lifted his other, pressing it to the window facing Jas. “Yes.” Silent, she raised her hand, fingers spread wide, as if overlaying her palm with his. He reached out with his senses until he could almost feel the heat of her skin coursing up his arm.
Tenderly, he asked, “Well? What say you to a lifetime formally bound to a space drifter with nothing to offer but a cargo ship and a bad reputation?”
Jas had no chance to respond. Out of nowhere a hunk of jagged metal hurtled toward them. She banked right and he veered left. The debris tumbled between them.
“Asteroids?” Jas asked tightly.
“No.” He checked his viewscreen. “It was an outlying buoy. One we would have used to set up a comm link with the space-city.” He searched ahead for the other buoys. “That’s odd. I can’t find anything.”
“Let me try.” She input the coordinates he gave her into her viewscreen. “It looks like more debris.”
He initiated a diagnostic on his ship and Jas’s, certain he’d find a malfunction explaining it all. But he found no glitches, only an empty viewscreen. The back of his neck prickled. Where was the space-city? Surely he’d have seen it by now—the sparkling lights on the immense central cylinder, the majestic spokes radiating outward. But nothing seemed to be out there.
Impossible. Something that huge simply didn’t disappear.
They blazed over the curve of the planet and into a sea of wreckage. Great Mother. Their starfighters looked like specks compared to the chunks of solidified slag whirling past. But the smaller items were what riveted his attention: a broken chair, a shoe. He fought a surge of nausea.
“What’s happened?” Jas asked.
“The space-city…the mining colonies—they’re gone.” Unable to fathom the immensity of the devastation, he listened to his own words with disbelief. Not since the Dark Years had there been such an atrocity.
Forty thousand people. Dead.
It was Sharron’s doing! He’d sent his minions after Rom as he’d promised, a brilliant hit-and-run above the cloak of the Tjhu’nami.
As his ship’s computer scoured the area, searching for signs of life, Rom envisioned the bleak future awaiting them if nothing was to be done about this attack. One by one, the ancestral homeworlds would fall. Over time billions would defect to the Family of the New Day out of fear as the balance of power shifted. All because the Vash federation was too mired in tradition to act.
He swore under his breath. No, such a future would not come to pass. Not as long as the blood of Romjha beat within him.
With the exigency to retaliate singing in his veins, he punched the flashing red light that was a direct link to Mistraal’s planetary security. “Get your asses up here. All available fighters—”
Jas shouted, “Bandits—two o’clock!”
A surge of adrenaline readied him for combat. His gaze tracked to his viewscreen, to several cruisers and a contingent of smaller vessels speeding away from them. He enhanced and magnified the image until he discerned the symbol emblazoned on their sides.
A blazing sun above two clasped hands.
The Family of the New Day.
“Rom, they’re almost out of range!” Jas yelled.
One glimpse of her, still flying valiantly off his wing, plunged him into soul-wrenching indecision. She was a worthy combatant, but never would he willingly place her, or any woman, in jeopardy. Yet what of his brother Lijhan, and Zarra? Hadn’t he lost them because he had left them behind?
“Jas—” A sound of anguish rumbled in his throat. The last of the enemy fleet was about to jump to hyperspace. If he lost them, he’d never discover their home base. “Turn back.”
I loved you, Inajh d’anah, he said silently.
Sweat and remorse burned his eyes as he sped away from her. Sharron would pay for the carnage he’d wreaked; this time Rom would see it through, even at the cost of his own life.
But not Jas’s.
He’d ensure her safety by snatching the enemy ship’s coordinates, jumping with them to light speed, then trailing the bastards until they dropped back to normal space. By the time they engaged in battle, Jas would be light-years behind, enfolded in the protection of the Mistraal space force.
Accelerating to catch the retreating ships he armed his weapons. “Sharron, I will find you!” he roared into the blackness of space.
“Romlijhian, is that you?”
A raspy voice invaded his comm.
Rom froze. A muscle jumped in his cheek. The man had sensed him. Fighting for composure, he extended outward with his senses, searching the enemy fleet. Sharron was among them—but in which ship? He reached farther. There. In the one remaining cruiser: irreparable, desolate coldness honed by intense self-absorption.
“Join me, Romlijhian.”
Rom blocked out Sharron’s entreaty, pushed his starfighter as fast as it would go.
“Things have changed considerably since Balkanor. Then you were a naive young man driven by misplaced heroics. Now you are adrift without family, without power. But you can have those things back. I can give them to you.” Sharron’s voice was gentle, so very reasonable. “Walk with me, Romlijhian. Let me save your soul.”
Revulsion choked Rom. “Save this.”
He fired what he intended to be a preemptive strike before achieving light speed. But Sharron’s cruiser slowed—because of Rom’s offensive, or simply in impatience to retaliate, he didn’t know, but he had no time to worry about it.
Rom blew past. Sharron’s cruiser fired. Rom yanked his starfighter into an evasive maneuver, banking away from the pursuing missiles, his onboard computer expelling chaff and decoys in the ship’s wake. The first missile spent itself on a decoy. The second got “smart,” and exploded in a blinding sheet of energy. Rom’s shields protected him, but the impact rammed him against his harnesses. The stench of something burning seeped into his air supply. Warnings flashed on the control console: HULL INTEGRITY 64 PERCENT, PLASMA LOSS NUMBER TWO THRUSTER, EQUIPMENT BAY FIRE. Somehow the damaged starfighter stayed intact. But it was leaking fuel, losing thrust. He shoved the good thruster to maximum power. Go, go, go! But the starfighter shuddered and dumped most of its velocity. Sharron’s cruiser wheeled slowly around and headed toward him. To finish me off.
“Crush the darkness!”
Startled, Rom jerked his attention away from the cruiser.
A starfighter streaked past. Great Mother—it was Jas! Uttering a war cry he’d shared with no one since…the Balkanor angel.
Rolling inverted, she let loose a deluge of missiles, hammering away at the cruiser and the fighters that hadn’t yet made the jump to hyperspace. One of the smaller ships burst apart, the explosion damaging another too close by. Hurtling away, its wreckage glanced off the shield on the cruiser’s underbelly.
“The next shot will be between the eyes, pal,” he heard her scream into her comm. “Between the eyes!”
Rom sensed Sharron’s surprise, and then his outrage.
He’d kill her.
“Jas!” Rom shouted. “Egress, egress now!” Don’t die in my place, he beseeched her silently, desperately. Turn back.
No! I won’t leave you this time.
He heard her response in his mind—as she’d no doubt heard his. But how? He obliterated the thought even as he formed it. If he distracted her from her task, they were as good as space dust. There would be time for questions later, if they survived.
Their two starfighters were no match against a heavily armed cruiser, but a tenacious assault could very well keep Sharron from making the leap to hyperspace. And the longer they occupied him, the greater his and Jas’s chances of receiving reinforcements. Panting from exertion, Rom blinked sweat from his eyes. Victory depended on him and Jas. This time he had no choice. Together, they must fight.
Perhaps, he thought, that was what the Great Mother had intended all along.
“Crush the darkness!” he roared, his senses unnaturally acute, heightened by shock and proximity to death. Jas’s thoughts, her fear and exhilaration, ebbed and flowed with his, mirroring the eerily beautiful dance he remembered from Balkanor. They blasted away at the cruiser’s defenses and most of the weapons the enemy ship hurled at them. But they took hits, hard ones, damaging their shields. Rom’s hopes of getting Jas out of this alive eroded. They were weakening. They couldn’t go on much longer.
Abruptly Sharron’s four remaining starfighters detonated in front of them. The intense display of pyrotechnics made lights dance before his eyes.
Rom whooped. “What a shot!”
Jas gasped. “Try to warn me next time.”
“That wasn’t you?”
“I thought it was you!”
Rom jerked his attention to his viewscreen. The Quillie was screaming toward them from one quadrant, and Mistraal’s fleet from the other. “Looks like we have company.”
“Woo-hoo!”
In moments, the engagement escalated from doomed skirmish to an emotionally charged battle. The odds were even. Missiles were exchanged. Relativistic bomblets. Deadly smart-dust that detonated on impact. Someone’s shot—his? Jas’s?—tore though the already weakened cruiser’s hull. The trillidium surface peeled back like fish skin, exposing its inner core. The cruiser erupted into a glorious blossom of energy so intense it seemed to ignite space itself.
Rom stared at the fireball long after it dwindled into tiny, unsurvivable bits. Then he tipped his head back against his seat, his muscles shaking with relief and exhaustion. He had lived this moment once before, on Balkanor, when he thought he’d killed Sharron. Only this time he knew it was true. The coldness, the evil he’d sensed during the battle, was gone.
Sharron had ceased to exist.
Once back at the palace, Rom was swept into the shuttle bay’s antechamber along with a sea of disheveled, exhausted soldiers, men whose battles were ordinarily confined to the Bajha arena. But numbing grief had already subdued their triumph. Forty thousand people were dead.
He pushed his way through the crowd until he found Jas. She cried out and ran into his arms.
He lifted her to him, finding her with his mouth, shuddering with the raw emotion in their all-too-brief embrace. As the crowd jostled around them, he clamped his hands to either side of her face and gazed intently into her eyes. “You remembered. You remembered Balkanor.”
“Yes,” she whispered, her eyes shimmering with tears. “When I realized it was Sharron out there, and you were about to face him alone, my thoughts…imploded. I don’t know how else to describe it. Words came into my head…images.”
She paused to take a breath. “You’re the man in the desert; it was you I always searched for, but couldn’t find. Because I never meant to leave you there, wherever it was we were. Never. Do you understand? I was taken from you when I was rescued—when I woke up after being unconscious. My God, after all these years, the dream finally makes sense. My life makes sense.”
He closed his eyes as she swept kisses along his jaw. The old memories overtook him then, swirling like grit in a sudden sandstorm, recollections of his first year of exile, how his obsession with the Balkanor angel had enabled him to dig in his heels when loneliness and guilt had pushed him to the precipice of despair. I never meant to leave you.
“If only you knew what those words mean to me, Inajh d’anah,” he whispered. Not trusting his emotions, he caught her around the waist, pinning her to him as they merged back into the crowd of returning pilots.
The massive doors to the dining hall slammed open. “Ajha, ajha!” Exclamations of shock and surprise preceded them into the enormous chamber, where Joren awaited them. Music hushed. Plates crashed to the floor.
Rom released Jas and walked to his brother-in-law.
“Yes. The orbital city, the mining colonies, all gone.”
There were gasps and muttered prayers.
Rom raised his voice. “It was deliberate, premeditated.”
Joren recoiled, as if the concept was too grotesque to contemplate. “Go on.”
“Sharron used the Tjhu’nami to cloak his attack.”
“And now he’s dead.”
“Yes,” Rom said. “The surviving ships jumped to hyperspace.”
Joren swore under his breath. “Now we’ve lost them.”
“No, we haven’t, my lord,” a new voice said.
Intrigued, Jas glanced over her shoulder. Gann stepped past, Muffin behind him. They looked rumpled and worn out. Gann’s forehead was bruised, and he was favoring his right ankle. Unconsciously she pressed her palm to her sore stomach.
Gann straightened under Joren’s scrutiny. “Gann of the Quillie, my lord, inbound from Karma Prime to see Rom B’kah.”
“You had help?” Joren prompted.
“Yes. A cruiser. Class-six. They picked up a distress call from one of the mining colonies, as we did, and came straightaway. We both detected the enemy vessels as they transmitted coordinates to make their jump. Had but seconds to decide—the class-six was the better ship to track them out of the system, so I brought the Quillie here. We came in as the battle was under way.”
“So the cruiser’s trailing them?” Joren asked.
“Yes, my lord.”
Rom drummed his fingers on his upper arms. “A class-six. I wonder who they are. Merchants, you suppose?”
“No. Vash Nadah.” Gann appeared uneasy. “Rom, it was a B’kah ship.”