The Warlord's Daughter (12 page)

Kissing? His explanation was ever so scientific, but she was too aware of his heat. His intensity. He was close enough now for her to study the tiny nubs of his beard on his golden skin. She’d never viewed a man so close. Never smelled anything as good.

Unfamiliar voices in Coalition accents came closer. He tucked her close again, one hand brushing over her hair, his parted lips pressed to her jaw. She’d stopped breathing—equally because of the guards and Aral’s caresses. They stayed close, Aral’s lips touching her cheek. She began to lean into the embrace. His mouth dragged to her ear, his hand sliding up her back. “Wren,” he whispered. His soft lips grazed hers. A tremendous shudder ran through his body. Their embrace was no longer a ruse, she thought. It was real.

T
HE 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.”

O
N 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 off
spring 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 for
mer 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.