Daughter of Destiny (21 page)

The tears welled and
threatened to spill, but Katarina took a deep breath and blinked
them away. "I know, and I thank you." She looked at Robert. "Both
of you."

"You're family. It's what
family does."

Naia added, "You’re staying
here tonight. I don’t think you should be by yourself."

She gripped Naia’s hand in
return. "I’ll take you up on that invitation. And Robert, I
apologize for being bitchy."

Robert leaned against the
doorjamb and grinned. "Nah, that's okay. I knew you'd come around.
I'm irresistible like that."

Naia shook her head and
rolled her eyes. Then she gave Katarina a hug before joining Robert
in the doorway. "Let me know if you need me for anything. We’re
just down the hall. G’night."

"Night." Robert echoed
Naia.

"Night," Katarina
said.

Late though it was,
Katarina's mind raced and sleep did not even enter her thoughts.
She needed to contact Coran again. She believed she reached him.
She sensed a flare of emotion just as she ceased broadcasting. If
so, he needed more information to look for Zane. She sank into a
meditative trance and focused on Coran's psychic signature.
Contacting him took much more concentration than reaching Zane, but
the more she did this, the easier it became.

"Coran, it’s Kat. Karglock
has Zane. Hurry Coran. He's going to kill him!"

God in heaven, please
let him hear me,
she thought to herself after severing the
brief connection.

***

"I’m telling you sir,
something isn’t right. Zane swore he would contact me and he
hasn’t."

"You barged in here for
this? This isn’t an IGCF matter. File a report with Civil
Enforcers."

Coran fisted a hand at his
side.
Damn it.
Searching for the words to convince the
general, Katarina broke into his thoughts again. Her message made
his stomach sink and his throat threaten to close.

"Lieutenant! What in the
galaxy is wrong with you?"

Coran stopped staring into
space and focused on General Xu. He swallowed, forcing his voice to
work. "Would you change your mind about looking for Zane if I told
you Karglock is responsible for his disappearance?"

The general's lids half
closed over his bulbous eyes. "Origin of information?"

Coran hesitated and General
Xu added, "Truth, Lieutenant. All of it. That is an
order."

Coran winced. If Kat was
right, Zane’s life was on the line.
If Katarina's right, I
suppose the question I have to answer is would Zane rather die at
Karglock's hands or IGCF's?
Coran cleared his throat. "Well,
sir, Zane’s wife is a telepath- a very powerful one. She and Zane
are bonded. He was able to tell her who kidnapped him and then she
contacted me."

"Where is his wife? If they
are linked, we can use her to pinpoint Karglock's
location."

At least IGCF won't
torture him first.
Coran cleared his throat again. "Uhm. Well,
the thing is she’s uhm… on Earth." Coran steeled himself for the
explosion he knew would come.

"She’s where?!" General Xu
boomed as he leaped from his chair. "Did you and Captain Gratig
purposely leave out any mention of sensitives on Earth?”

"No, sir! Katarina is an
anomaly. Her DNA doesn't even register as a hundred percent human,
which must mean someone else has already visited Earth, right? The
general populace is no more sensitive than humans over
here."

Coran expected Xu to call
for his arrest, but instead the general sat down and thought before
asking, "She’s on Earth, and yet she communicated with you, a
non-sensitive, across an entire galaxy using mere telepathy? Very
interesting."

Uh-oh.
"Sir," Coran
interrupted the general’s musings. "Zane doesn’t have a lot of
time. This could also be the break we’ve needed to finally crush
the Goloth terrorist movement."

"Yes." Then he repeated
more emphatically, "Yes. We’ll use this woman to help find them.
Give me her coordinates. The communications team setting up the
cybernet relay is near Earth. They can extract her."

Coran breathed a sigh of
relief. The general’s fascination with Kat still worried him, but
if she could handle Zane, surely she could handle an over
inquisitive Glimera. "I’ll pull the coordinates from our mission
records."

"Do so."

***

As Katarina walked down the
hall to her apartment, putting one foot in front of the other took
Herculean effort. Zane's exhaustion bled through the link adding to
her own, but she took comfort in it, as it reassured her. As long
as she felt him, he was alive. She stopped at her door and rummaged
through her purse.

"Where did I put that
stupid thing?"

Too short to peer over her
shoulder, Naia poked her head around her. "Check your jacket
pocket. I think I remember seeing you put the key remote in
there."

She put her hand in her
pocket and sighed when she pulled out her key remote, along with a
wad of tissues, a pen, one earring which wasn't even hers, and a
ticket stub to a movie she and Zane saw. The last stole the breath
from her lungs as emotion choked her, but she steeled herself and
put it out of sight back into her pocket.

Katarina pushed the button
to unlock her door, and lifted her hand to the biometric security
pad. She paused, hand in mid-air. The light over the scanner showed
the alarm already deactivated.
I know I set it. I always set
it.
Katarina reached out with her mind and scanned her
apartment. Adrenaline surged, fueling her anger, when she located
two men inside the apartment. She reached into their heads,
planning to force both into unconsciousness, but the instant she
entered their minds, she reevaluated the situation. One thought in
Standard, and the other in a mix of Standard and, if she wasn’t
mistaken, Glaal. Were they here to help? Or here to eliminate a
security breach?

She closed her eyes and
concentrated on translating their thoughts into English. Some of
her tension eased. They were IGCF soldiers searching for her
because of Zane's kidnapping.

She turned to Naia. "I have
alien visitors."

"Again? Did I miss the part
where 'take me to your leader' got changed to 'take me to Katarina
O'Brian'?"

Katarina squared her
shoulders and adopted her most commanding demeanor. She put her
hand on the door, opened it, and strode through. She announced in
Standard, "Good afternoon gentleman. Find anything
interesting?"

The commanding officer
didn’t let his surprise register on his face, but Katarina sensed
it. The younger officer coming out of the kitchen froze in place
and his jaw dropped. The commander growled, "Stop gawking." To
Katarina he said, "I’m Commander Vrion and this is Private Driglok.
I presume you are Katarina Gratig"

She frowned, but decided
not to correct them on the name. To her right, the young Private
Driglock bobbled the can of green beans he held in his hand and
dropped it on the floor.

Vrion's vehement thought
caught her attention.
"Quizark. I hope he falls out an
air-lock."

Katarina coughed to cover
her laugh.

"We are here to take you to
IGCF headquarters on Yopmar," Vrion announced.

The brief moment of levity
vanished. "Yopmar? Shouldn’t we focus on trying to find Zane
first?"

Commander Vrion offered
Katarina an apologetic smile. "Orders."

Katarina resisted the urge
to rail at him for wasting time. Fine, they wanted to take her into
space, and she needed a ship. Once she knew where Zane was she’d do
whatever necessary to rescue him.

A gentle telepathic probe
brushed against her mental walls. She raised an eyebrow at
Commander Vrion. The commander’s gaze locked onto hers and she
speared him with a frigid glare. A lesser man would have broken eye
contact, but even far outmatched in power, he didn’t back down.
Katarina took note of that. If she could win him over, he would be
of valuable assistance. If not, she had to be prepared to use
force. Katarina turned and gestured to Naia.

"This is Naia Sheffield, my
sister."

Naia waved and smiled at
the aliens.

"Sir, this is a pre-warp
world. Regulations state we need to eliminate all evidence of our
visit here."

Before Katarina could
comment, the commander glared at Driglok. "Private, try using your
brain for something other than keeping your face in place. Gratig
has a wife on Earth. She speaks Standard, and isn’t surprised to
see us. I think contamination worries are a bit too
late."

"But…"

"Silence."

Commander Vrion turned back
to Katarina. "Am I correct in assuming you are
gestating?"

No. I swallowed a couple
of watermelons at breakfast.
She remained silent and let her
expression convey her opinion of his question.

He blushed an interesting
shade of green. "Yes. Okay, then. I can assure you space travel is
safe and we have a fully operational med bay."

"When do we
leave?"

"As soon as you’re ready.
The trip should take about two to three weeks depending upon where
they begin the teleporting relay."

She wanted to scream at the
thought of sitting idly on a ship for two to three weeks. Zane
didn't have that much time. Vrion knew it too, based on the
sympathy he attempted to mask. Katarina decided not to let him know
her itinerary did not include Yopmar.

"How did you get here so
quickly? I only contacted Lieutenant Plaswer yesterday."

"We were just outside your
solar system installing a communications relay."

"So IGC is setting things
up to make formal contact with Earth?"

Commander Vrion winced. "I
can’t say. Orders."

Katarina eyed Vrion, but
she didn’t need his confirmation. The evidence spoke for itself.
For some reason, IGC was willing to forgo its usual procedures and
make contact with a pre-warp society.

Naia interrupted, "Will
someone please speak English and explain what’s going
on?!"

"Sorry, Naia." Katarina
gestured to the two aliens. "These two officers are here to take me
to IGCF headquarters."

"But what about Zane? I
mean is he there? Did they already find him?"

"No." Katarina put her hand
on Naia’s arm. "I’m sure they’ll help me find him."

"Kat…"

"Trust me,
Naia."

She turned to Commander
Vrion. "I need to get a few things and then I’ll be
ready."

He nodded.

"Come help me pack," she
said to Naia.

She and Naia went into her
bedroom.

Naia shut the door, locked
it, and then pinned her with a disapproving frown. "What are you
planning Kat?"

"I need a ship. Theirs is
the only one around."

Naia sat down on Katarina’s
bed and put a hand to her forehead. "Please tell me I’m not hearing
what I think I’m hearing. You’re going to hijack their
ship?"

"I only plan on borrowing
it. I'll give it back."

"Shit."

Katarina surprised herself
by laughing at the absurdity of the situation. She didn't even
cheat on her taxes and she was planning on commandeering an alien
vessel. She went to the closet, pulled out a handful of outfits,
stuffed them into a satchel, and then collected her
toiletries.

"Kat, please don't do this.
You don't know what they might do to you, and how do you plan to
pilot an alien vessel? Huh?"

Katarina stuffed the
toiletries into bag. "I look at Commander Vrion, see the green tint
to his skin and know he is Goulal with a bit of human in him. The
young private's retractable claws and nictitating membranes tell me
he is Zerwillian. Not only can I tell you what they are, but I
could pick out on a star chart their home systems. Anything Zane
knows I know, Naia." She zipped up her bag and looked at Naia. "I'm
not going to sit around and wait for life to dump more shit in my
lap. I'm taking charge. Whatever it takes to bring him back alive,
I'll do it, and Heaven help anyone who tries to stop
me."

Naia rubbed her forehead.
"Be careful, okay? You aren't invincible."

Katarina took her sister's
hand. "I know, and I will."

Naia stood and they met in
a fierce hug. "I love you," Katarina whispered and then she stepped
back and picked up her bag. After a moment's hesitation, she pulled
the paper out of her pocked and handed it to Naia. "I doubt you'll
be able to do much with this, but at least I know it'll be safe.
Hunting down my father will have to wait."

"I could try to track him
down for you."

Tears burned the back of
her eyes. "Thank you, Naia." She took a moment to picture his face.
"He's pale blond and very tall, close to seven feet perhaps. Unless
he wears a glamour to mask that, the height alone will make him
easy to locate."