Asarlai Wars 1: Warrior Wench (14 page)

Chapter Fourteen

Vas was actually having a nice dream, a lovely dream where a bevy of handsome men waited on her as she relaxed by a peaceful lavender sea. She could smell the brine of the water, almost hear the warbling of the local seabirds—when a klaxon roared through and shattered everything.

“Crap!” The sound had so pulled her out of sleep, that she’d thrown herself onto the floor of her quarters. Wondering why she was naked, she got to her feet and slid to the main comm stuck in the middle of the wall. “Vas here. What the hell is going on?” On a plus side, her muscles felt great. Deven’s massage must have worked even though she didn’t recall any of it. A small nagging voice starting pushing at her in her head, but she forced it away with Gosta’s words.

“Captain, we’ve got a ship closing in fast. It’s small, but won’t answer our hails and could do some damage. I’ve gone into evasive maneuvers, but Hrrru can’t keep up. It’s changing course almost faster than we can.” His voice was calm, but she heard the underlying fear.

“Get Mac up there now. Continue staying out of its way. And keep trying to raise the pilot or crew,” Vas yelled into the comm as she threw her wrinkled flight suit back on. “If it’s them or us, you’ll have to blast it.”

The silence told her he’d thought the same thing. Of course if that happened he’d probably go into seclusion for a month trying to purge his conscience of having to kill whatever idiots were on the ship.

“Aye, Captain.”

Vas rolled her eyes as she palmed open the door. How did a mercenary company end up with so many non-violent types? And why in the hell hadn’t she noticed before?

That thought was gone the moment she hit the command deck.

The ship was still coming at them, but either it had slowed down, or Gosta had overreacted about its speed. The
Warrior Wench
was easily staying out its way.

Gosta got out of the command chair as soon as she got on deck. “Report.” She took her seat and called up the information they had on the ship. Raxilan-class, it was a small miner colony ship. Usually used for hauling ore. Probably had a crew complement of no more than four, five if they were friendly.

“We picked it up outside of the Deneb sector, didn’t seem to be following us at first. Then about ten minutes ago it started closing in. It still hasn’t responded to any of our calls. I even had the scrambler on in case they were outer world and didn’t have a common translator. Nothing.” Gosta punched in a few more numbers and the stats came in. “As it got closer we got this intel—single life sign, fading fast. The ship has enough raw ore to blow us out of the sky if it explodes anywhere near us. And it is tracking us with an automatic system. No pilot could have followed that tight, well, no non-teke pilot. And whoever is onboard is almost dead, so they couldn’t be piloting.”

Vas glanced over the data. Now that the ship was slowing down, the immediate danger was lessened. Still though, the thing was a bomb waiting for an ignition.

“Projections on when it will stop on its own?” She could pull back and order it blown to bits. It was too dangerous to be left out in space and the life signs were fading too fast for anyone to be saved.

But she didn’t want to. The ship trailing them was another part of the growing posse of mysteries tracking her. If she blew it up she’d never know what part it played. Ore ships didn’t go on destroy runs.

Gosta went to his own station, moving Bathie out of the way. “Within the hour. Whoever sent it after us didn’t think we’d be able to outrun it. There’s not enough fuel for more than forty-five minutes, an hour at the best.”

Deven hit the deck at that minute, looking fresh and relaxed as usual, even though Vas was sure he’d probably been sound asleep. Something about him stirred the muttering in her head, and she roughly shoved it aside. Why did she have a very bad feeling she’d missed something? Deven had given her a massage and she’d slept. Nothing more.

“I checked, and there’s no teke activity onboard. The sensors are clean.” Deven seemed ruffled, not that anyone but Vas could probably tell. However, he was disturbed by something other than the ore ship.

“Someone took over a fully loaded ore ship, programmed it on a suicide run, and aimed it our way. I want to know why.” Vas drummed her fingers on the arm of the command chair. Years of clean living and she got paid back with this. She sent a few nasty thoughts toward whatever deity was pissing in her bath, and then turned toward Mac. “Keep us clear. If it is on a suicide run it could still damage us from a distance.

“Bathie, monitor chatter around here. I know there isn’t much in this sector, but chances are whoever sent that thing after us is keeping an eye on it. I know I would.” Vas thumbed open the comm on her chair. “Terel? I’ll need you to ready a team. Full suits. I don’t know what’s over there. We’re going over as soon as its fuel is wasted.”

She felt Deven’s presence next to her long before he spoke. “Why don’t I go with them?”

His closeness triggered whatever her head had been trying to tell her. Head and body both, she felt the flush start to grow and it was all she could do not to rip his clothes off on the command deck.

What the hell happened?

One full look in his eyes answered that question.

Son of a bitch, she didn’t have time for this.

“I need five minutes with Deven. Gosta, get everything ready. Tell Terel I’ll be down for my suit in a bit.” She grabbed Deven’s arm and jerked him toward her ready room. “Deven will be staying here.”

Deven didn’t put up a fight and stayed silent. Vas lit into him as soon as the door to her ready room slid shut.

“You son of a bitch, what the hell did you do last night? You know how I feel about
your
people.” Vas was a rolling storm of emotions, with fear, pain, and betrayal being the strongest. She wanted him to feel some of them too. “You got into my head. You fucking got into my head and my body.”

Deven wouldn’t look up for a few moments, which would have given her food for thought had she been calm enough to listen. Bits and pieces of last night trickled into her mind. Her body and mind blending with his in a way that could only be unnatural. She’d never had sex like that in her life. And gods willing she never would again. It was all she could do to keep from running into her room and curling up and never coming out.

“It wasn’t just me. You responded—”

“And you should have stopped me. Damn it, Deven.” Vas folded her arms as tight as she could around herself. She’d trusted him. Completely trusted him.

“I didn’t mean for it to happen.” He held up a hand, his eyes meeting hers and staying there. There was a hurt there, and a softness. “Let me finish. I was trying to heal you as I massaged. I think I must have gone too deep with you mentally when I broke that block and the link was still there. Healing pulled us both into that.” At her arguing glare, he went on. “A haze, do you recall a haze?”

Reluctantly she nodded. It was coming back, all of it.

“I saw it too, it was—” He tried looking for a word, but failed. “I can’t translate it into any Commonwealth tongue. But it wasn’t completely my fault. I was pulled in as well.” He waved his hands between them. “Any residuals should be gone within a few days.”

Vas turned away. The feelings were too intense. Part of her needed to have him right now. The other part needed to have him abandoned on some moon far away. As a child, she’d been kidnapped by extremists from her family’s wind farm for two weeks. The extremists had all been high-level telepaths and thought nothing of rampaging through the mind of a child.

That portion of her mind couldn’t bear to look at the man before her.

However, part of her felt the truth in his words. He hadn’t been completely at fault. And the fact was she needed him if she was ever going to get her ship and her life back.

“We can’t deal with this now. But tell me one thing.”

“Anything.” The sorrow in his voice softened her a bit, but she couldn’t let him in.

“Could you have stopped it?”

He studied her and part of her felt the pull to go to him.

“Possibly. It wouldn’t have been easy, but I might have been able to stop it.” She’d never seen the level of pain in his eyes she was seeing right now.

“If that ever happens again, it will be your life.” She put all the steel she had left in her in her voice and face. Not that she was certain she could kill Deven.

“Understood.” He rose to move toward the door.

“I’m not done. You will switch schedules so that we are on opposite shifts until further notice. And stay away from me as much as possible.”

“Understood. And I am truly sorry.” Deven left the room.

Vas waited a few seconds, then took a deep breath, and followed him out. “So am I.”

She had just changed into the heavy environmental suit she’d have to wear on the ore ship when Gosta called her.

“Captain, I think we’re ready. The ship has stopped moving. Mac is keeping us as far out as he can, but I’ve got a tracker on it so it’ll stay steady while the team goes over.”

She buckled her grav boots, and then headed for the door, more than grateful that the ore ship was enough of a danger to distract her from Deven. “Have Terel and her team meet me at the shuttle. What’s the status of the life sign?”

“Life sign vanished about thirty minutes ago. You still want full quarantine suits?”

“Yep, we have no idea what’s over there. I’ll be in the docking bay. Deven has the deck.”

Vas made her way down to the docking bay before Terel and her people. While she knew Gosta would have scanned for any mechanical traps, they couldn’t be sure of bio-agents. Hence the heavy environmental suits.

Once her final check was completed, she wandered over to the Furies. Deven and Jakiin had been spending some time down here, bonding as they worked on the rusting piles of space junk. To be fair, they were pretty damn impressive looking. All sharp angles and wicked looking weapons ports, it was clear to anyone these ships had one purpose: to destroy as much as they could.

She ran a gloved hand up the side of the third. Deven and Jakiin had been futzing around with the other two, but this one actually looked in better shape. It appeared to be a bit older than its mates, which wasn’t saying much when dealing with ships that hadn’t been made in over one hundred years.

“You too, eh?” Mac’s voice broke her contemplation of the dangerous machine. “Jakiin has been spending way too much time around those things.”

She turned with a frown. “I would have thought a flight junkie like you would be all over these.”

Mac glanced at the ship but shrugged. “To be honest, they sort of disturb me. Too big to do what they supposedly can do and too damn old. Give me a Flit any day.”

“We’re ready.” Terel, Pela, Divee, and Gon came into the flight deck loaded with equipment. Vas hadn’t wanted the med team along for their ability to save lives; she wanted them in case there were any pathogens on board. Divee and Gon, both security engineers, were along for the same reason. She wasn’t sure why Mac was there though.

“Mac, just why are you along on this? You know that ore hauler doesn’t have much room. I really don’t need extra bodies there.”

“I’m playing pilot today. Deven pointed out that keeping someone in the shuttle while you all were on board might be prudent. Bathie hasn’t heard anything on open chatter but if this was an attack we can’t be sure that whoever set it up isn’t still watching.”

As much as Vas wanted to send him back just to spite Deven, she had to agree. It was even a little embarrassing she hadn’t thought of it first.

“Then why are you still out here?” She smacked him in the back of the head. “That shuttle isn’t going to do a pre-flight on itself, you know.”

Mac jogged toward the shuttle in silence. Sometimes she thought there might be hope for that boy yet.

The others all got Terel’s equipment on board and within minutes they were ready for launch. Vas opened a channel to the deck. “Deven? We’re ready to go. Any last minute changes or intel?” It was easier dealing with him when she couldn’t see him.

“Bathie hasn’t picked up any chatter beyond normal. And nothing near us.” There was a strain in his voice that she’d never heard before, but she shoved any concern for him aside. She couldn’t deal with her own emotions right now, and she sure as hell couldn’t deal with his.

“Got that. Vas out.” She turned off her personal ship comms after making sure the ones on the shuttle were solid. Not that she didn’t trust Mac to do a proper setup. Ah hell, who was she kidding, she didn’t trust Mac. But he’d done his job this time. They approached the ore hauler without incident.

The ore ship didn’t look damaged, at least not from the outside. Nor did it look old enough for age to have been a factor in a malfunction. Calling up the specs again she confirmed the ore hauler was only two years old. Called the Guppy for some inane reason. Assigned to the Ore Field Assessment and Survey Company out in the outer rim. Vas frowned. That wasn’t anywhere near here. Nor would it have had to come out this far to pick up its payload. Ore was collected at least five planets closer to the rim than where they were.

She studied the ship through the view screen as they approached, but there were no clues there. The docking was tight and clean. She might not trust Mac on some things, but he was a damn good pilot.