Rebel's Quest (37 page)

“Ro, oh, for the love of the stars, Ro…” Andreia raised her hips, grinding her sex into Roshan’s mouth.

Roshan sucked hard at the inner lips and the shafted clitoris, not unlike her own, but longer and larger. She milked it with her tongue, and suddenly Andreia exploded with a broken cry. Roshan kept caressing her, eased her through the orgasm with more patience than she knew she possessed. Finally Roshan heaved herself up and kissed Andreia’s mouth. The long, exploring kiss shared the taste of Andreia’s passion. Roshan was shivering, on the brink of release, but knew she needed direct touch to come.

As if Andreia had read her mind, she raised her knee and squeezed her leg between Roshan’s. “Here,
henshes
, come against me.” Andreia looked up at Roshan, supported above her by her arms, then pinched Roshan’s nipples and rolled them between her fingers while Roshan rode her slender leg.

“Ah!” Roshan tumbled into a ravine of bliss and passion. “Andreia…Gods.” Her body jerked and she coated Andreia’s thigh.

“So sweet, so strong,” Andreia sighed. “So beautiful.” She pulled Roshan on top of her as her lover’s arms buckled. “Here. Rest.”

Roshan simply had no choice. She had to rest, since Andreia had drained her completely. Her head spun with unanswered questions and from the aftermath of the overpowering orgasm.
And now?
Roshan had hardly any energy left to consider the future. So much was uncertain, and they faced so many obstacles: the political situation, their personal history.

“Roshan? Please. Look at me?” Andreia’s voice, breathless and yet so strong, urged Roshan to lift her head. “What are you thinking?”

“That I’ve wanted this for a long time,” Roshan confessed cautiously. “I’ve always desired you.”

“And that’s it? Desire?”

“No. That’s not all.”

“Then…are you saying you care for me?”

Roshan bit her lower lip and wondered if it were possible to take this leap of faith in the middle of a war, in the middle of an assignment. Then again, what if she never had another chance to tell Andreia what was in her heart? What if something disastrous happened? “I care. I more than care.” Roshan stared at Andreia in all her naked glory. “You’re everything I could ask for. You’re everything I would ever need.”

Andreia drew a deep breath. “Oh, Gods, Ro. If you only knew how much I care. If I could make you see, for just a moment, what I felt all those years, whether I thought you were a collaborator or not. My heart’s full of all these emotions, and I’m afraid—” She stopped talking.

“Of what? What are you afraid of?” Roshan touched Andreia’s cheek. She still lay between her legs, but could feel the air cooling them, so she pulled the blankets up. “So?”

“I’m afraid that I’ll allow myself to feel, only to have you recoil, get wounded in battle…even die. I don’t think I could handle that.”

“Me either.” The admission was out before Roshan had time to second-guess the wisdom of lowering her guard. Still, Andreia had exposed herself, for Roshan to accept or discard. “I…I can’t walk away again, Andreia. Not again.”

Andreia’s lips softened, as did her entire expression. Small tears formed at the corners of her eyes, yet she’d never looked stronger or more beautiful. Wordlessly, Andreia cupped Roshan’s face with both hands. She stroked a thumb across Roshan’s lower lip and smiled when Roshan kissed it.

“Is this your way of saying you feel the same way?” Roshan asked, her heart pounding.

“Yes,” Andreia whispered. She was still caressing slowly, and Roshan guessed that Andreia was imprinting the memory of her face into her hands. A cold lump formed in the center of her stomach, and Roshan let her body align fully with Andreia’s, kissing her forehead, then down her cheeks, to finally claim her mouth in the most bittersweet of kisses.

“We can’t have come this far…only to…” Roshan whispered, trembling against Andreia.

“Shh, we’ll be all right.” It sounded as much a mantra as a convinced opinion.

“Yes. Yes, we have to.” Roshan curled around Andreia, wrapping the towel closer. “We must be.”
If not, I can’t go on. I couldn’t continue our fight to the end without her.
“We have a few minutes before we should contact Jacelon,” Roshan murmured. “I just want to hold you until then.”

“Good.” Andreia turned her face into Roshan’s neck. The tickle of her breath was proof enough of life, of being safe together right now, and made Roshan slowly relax.

We have this moment.
She closed her eyes.
Am I greedy to want more? Much more...

“D’Artansis to senior crew. Enemy vessels approaching. Red alert.” Alarms blared, and Jacelon turned from the view port in her small office onboard the
Gallant
and hurried toward the door leading onto the bridge.

“I have the conn, Commander,” she informed Leanne, who rose from the command chair.

The captain of the
Gallant
had sustained injuries to his legs and was being treated in sickbay. Jacelon didn’t expect him back on duty for forty-eight hours.

“On screen,” Rae commanded, and took a seat. The large view screen lit up, and Jacelon saw a small armada of Onotharian vessels approaching them from orbit. “Shields.”

“Shields at one hundred percent,” Owena said from behind her. She’d returned to the
Gallant
only a few hours ago and insisted on resuming her duties on the bridge.

“Good. Start a comm link.”

The ensign at operations punched in a command. “Channels are open, Admiral.”

“This is Admiral Jacelon of the Supreme Constellations. We do not wish to engage you in battle. Stand down and keep your current distance.”

The view screen flickered and a woman’s face appeared. Black hair twisted into a hard bun emphasized an austere face with dark, almost black eyes under thin, equally dark eyebrows. “I am Captain Oeseta M’Axos. You are in the Onotharian sector during an ongoing conflict. I ask you to leave immediately.”

“I beg to differ,” Jacelon said in a friendly tone. “This is Gantharian space, and the Supreme Constellations doesn’t acknowledge the Onotharians’ unlawful occupation of Gantharat. I don’t want to engage you in battle, Captain, but I will, if you don’t stand down.”

Annoyance and something resembling surprise flickered across the captain’s face. “You are trespassing and also engaged in an act of war against the Onotharian Empire by firing on our prison facilities—”

“Enough.” Jacelon rose slowly and stood behind the small railing between her and the pilots’ seats. “I have places to go, people to see, and I ask you again, for the last time, to
stand down
.” She had learned to work with her voice early in her career and knew that people found it intimidating.

“I think not.” If Oeseta M’Axos reacted the same way as most other people, she was obviously not about to show it. “You’re far from home, Admiral. You’ll regret the decision to go against the Onotharian sovereignty. M’Axos out.”

The view screen turned black before the long-range sensors changed the image to an exterior view of M’Axos’s ships.

“That went well,” Jacelon murmured. “Commander Grey, take out their weapons and propulsion system. Those ships look impressive from a distance, but unless my memory plays tricks on me, those are old birds. All the new, powerful vessels, with cloaking ability and so on, are at the SC border. They’ve left the old ones back here, thinking they wouldn’t need much defense on the home front.”

“Firing, Admiral.”

Blue-green streaks lit up the view screen, and they watched as parts of the ships were demolished, one after another.

“Incoming fire!”

Jacelon knew M’Axos was a capable opponent and was grateful that the Onotharian captain didn’t have access to a better-equipped, state-of-the-art vessel. The bridge shook, and Jacelon gripped the railing to remain on her feet. “Report!”

“Shields down to eighty-two percent, Admiral.” Owena rattled off the numbers. “Three casualties on deck three. No fatalities.”

“Good. D’Artansis, make sure we’re between Paladin’s fleet and the Onotharians.” The ships behind them were loaded to the top bulkheads with former prisoners, which meant they were vulnerable. One wrong hit and countless lives could be lost.
That can’t happen. Not after we finally got them out.

“Yes, ma’am.” Leanne maneuvered the
Gallant
in an elegant dive, coming up with her side to the enemy, making sure they blocked their view.

“Eject distortion-buoys.” Jacelon watched the small lights of the markers that would confuse any space torpedoes or plasma-pulse beams from the Onotharians, at least for a while. “Now, fire again, Commander Grey. Target their life support. They’re close enough to Gantharat or, better yet, the deserted prisons, to save themselves.”

“I’m sending you the coordinates, Commander,” the young operations ensign said, sounding more assertive now.

“Firing all torpedoes. Direct hit. Seven ships without active life support. Two ships firing their plasma-pulse torpedoes.”

Jacelon raised her voice. “All hands, brace for impact.”

The
Gallant
bucked under their feet, and Jacelon felt her feet leave the floor when the inertial dampeners went offline. “Return fire! Status?” She pulled herself down to the railing and willed her body to stay upright.

“No casualties. Structural damage on deck four, the mess hall,” the ops ensign replied.

“Anything we need to worry about?”

“I’m closing off the area. No crew members are present.”

“Make sure. And get the inertial dampeners up and running.”

The ops ensign looked up. “Yes, ma’am.” Her fingers flew across the computer console. “Confirmed, Admiral. Engineering is working on the dampeners.”

“Commander Grey, any signs of more trouble from this group?”

“No, we seem to have created enough havoc with them, ma’am.”

“Excellent. No doubt, they’ve sent signals to what’s left of the Onotharian fleet, so we’d better get out of here. Jacelon to Paladin.”

“Paladin here. Nice work, Admiral.”

“Thank you, but we need to debark. Are your ships ready to launch?”

“Yes. The last transport shuttle has just come home. We now have 37,000 former prisoners onboard my freighters. They’re not very comfortable, but I understand it beats the hell out of where they came from.”

“Good job, Paladin. We’re about to pull out now. Are your other six vessels ready?” Jacelon listened for Paladin’s tone, knowing how hard this must be for her, no matter what they had gained.

“Yes, they are. We’re on track with the plans.”

“It will be a big loss for you.”

“It will be a tremendous triumph on the way to our ultimate victory,” Paladin replied matter-of-factly. “It’s a small price to pay.”

Jacelon thought of the man who was resting in her sickbay to regain his strength. Mikael O’Landha had refused to transfer off the
Gallant
and onto one of Paladin’s ships. He wanted to reunite with his daughter when he could face her standing on his own two feet. He was receiving nutrition and medical attention, mostly for the bedsores he’d contracted from sleeping on such a hard surface with an increasingly skinnier body, also for the other ailments that Doc had diagnosed earlier.

“Very well. I’ll give the order to go. May your Gods be with you, Paladin.”

“And with you. Paladin out.”

Jacelon heard the elevator door at the back of the bridge hiss open. A familiar feeling of joy and relief told her who it was even before she turned around. “Lieutenant Commander O’Dal, you’re just in time.” She knew her voice probably sounded short and casual to anyone else but Kellen. Jacelon turned around and let her eyes declare what her voice couldn’t under the circumstances. “Lieutenant Commander D’Artansis, take us toward the orbit coordinates above the Merealian Mountains. Engage flight pattern Alpha-Beta-4-4.”

“Aye, Admiral. Flight pattern engaged. All we have to do is wait for the welcoming committee.”

Jacelon walked across the bridge until she stood next to Kellen. She briefly let her hand touch her wife’s elbow and received a raised eyebrow in return. “You’re right, Leanne,” Jacelon acknowledged. “And it’ll probably be a very warm one. Plasma-scorching hot, in fact.”

*

Roshan stood on her bridge, allowing the captain to maneuver the large ship at his own discretion. She had enough space training to operate a smaller vessel, but these enormous ones, capable of carrying 120,000 cubic meters of goods, were beyond her capability. Behind her, four more ships of the same size lined up, then six smaller ones—a convoy of hope on a course to Gantharat.

“Paladin to engineering. Is everything prepared?”

“Engineering all set to go, ma’am,” a concise voice replied.

“Good. Remain on standby.”

“I see we’re about to head home,” Andreia said from behind as she came to stand next to Roshan. “I bet a lot of people will be celebrating in quite a few homes, in a day or two.”