Asarlai Wars 1: Warrior Wench (8 page)

Deven ran his fingers through his hair. He came looking for answers and found nothing but more questions. “How could they have given it to her?” He tried to think of Vas’s habits on a space station. “Could they have put it in her food?”

She shrugged, sending a ripple down her silver hair. “Possible, but unlikely. The needle could be hidden in food, but the person doing it wouldn’t know they’d gotten her. Judging by the lack of spreading, I’d say it was given to her in the last thirty-six hours, no more.” She stood up, walked over to a small kitchen, and came back with two glasses. “I’d like to know what this mercenary captain of yours is up to that she has one person using blood trackers on her and a different person or persons trying to kill her with a drell.”

Deven gratefully took the short glass, grimacing as the fiery liquid made its way down his throat. “I’d like to know that too. Which comes back to who do you know who might be messing around with drell-class poisons?”

Marli drained her glass in a single gulp, making Deven cringe more than his own sip had. “This is only hearsay, rumor drifting around the space lanes as it were. But folks are saying there’s a cult focusing on the Asarlaí, on the darkest side of my people. They believe there are still enough immortals left around to lead them into a blessed land. Which is a hell of a thing because if
there was such a land, my people would have already destroyed it.”

He noticed a slight shake in her right hand. “You’re drunk.”

She cackled as she went back to her kitchen and came back with a huge half-empty bottle. Amber liquid sloshed around the exotic golden glass. “And here I thought you were nothing but a pretty face. Righto, my boy, I am completely drunk. Or as drunk as an immortal with a viciously fast metabolism can get.” She sighed and peered at the bottle. “Which isn’t much, sad to say. Back to the cult. They have been around for the last ten years or so. Sneaky little bastards. They mostly stick with stealing anything rumored to be from the Asarlaí. However, there are darker rumors too. If someone has brought back the drell poisons, I’d say it’s them.”

She reached out as a hidden slot in the wall spit out a slim disk. “Here’s all the information I have. If you’re with a merc company, you might have better luck finding them.” She started to hand him the case, but didn’t let go. “One thing though.” She waited for his nod before continuing. Her grin was the darkest he’d even seen. “When you find them you have to tell me where they are. I want to show them what a real Asarlaí is like before I destroy them.”

Chapter Seven

“Captain, Deven is flagging us on line one.” Xsit’s voice carried the frown Vas knew she had as well. “And he’s got three wrecks in tow.”

Vas thought of new things to call him. After six days she had begun to wonder if Deven planned to come back at all. “Patch him through.”

The console
fizzled
once.

Xsit gave a chirp of apology. “I’m sorry, Captain. His line went dead. He did request the docking bay to be opened and docking for the shuttle plus the other three.”

“He better have bought that damn shuttle.”

Xsit heard her. “What did you say, Captain?”

“Never mind let the bastard dock. I’ll meet him down there.” If Deven had run off without buying the shuttle she would send him back in pieces. Last thing she needed was unsanctioned stolen property.

Her anger at him returned on the walk down to the docking bay. It had almost died down to a simmer in the last few days.

Deven maneuvered the shuttle and the three towed ships with the ease of moving a chair from one side of a room to another. Vas admired his skill even if she still wanted to space him.

The three extra ships looked vaguely familiar, but were little more than piles of rusted metal bones. She wondered what sob story Deven had believed to take the wrecks.

When the bay pressurized, Deven let himself out of the shuttle and came into the docking waiting room.

“Where the hell have you been? Why didn’t you tell me where you went? Did you know we’re now two hours behind rendezvous time?” Not that two hours really mattered with a battle like this, but it was the principle. She paused on her tirade long enough to slap her hand against the window looking into the docking bay. “And what in the scathrian abyss are those three things doing coming into my ship? They look like scrap metal.”

Deven hung back. “I had errands to run. Not all of those errands involve you or this company.” He cut her off as she started to argue. “Are you willing to talk about where you were before? I didn’t think so. When you are, then we can talk. And a big part of my being late involved those three beauties that you insulted.”

Vas swore under her breath. She liked ships as much as the next space rat, but the members of her crew went completely bovine shit about the weirdest things.

“What are those pieces of rusted crap?” She stepped forward and drummed her finger into Deven’s chest.

“That crap, as you so tactfully put it, is three Furies,” he said with the pride of a new papa.

Vas ran her hands over her face. “You brought three broken Furies on my ship?”

“Our ship.” He frowned. “Why aren’t you happy? Furies. Three of them. Ours.”

“Great, three ships no one properly knows how to use and that look like they’re broken to bare bones? They’re ancient. No one has known how to fly those things right for the last hundred…oh.”

Deven beamed as she caught on. “The last hundred years? Correct. The people who designed them are long gone.”

She sighed. He definitely didn’t lack in the balls department. Furies were a fatal disaster waiting to fire. “Except for someone who’s been around long enough to know how to cure a two-hundred-year-old poison? I might forgive you for going AWOL.” Furies were mythological in power and unpredictability.

“I can’t be AWOL. We’re not military.” Deven held up under Vas’s stare for about two minutes. “Next time I’ll be more detailed about my comings and goings. When I can.” He folded his arms and stared at her. “Let a guy have some secrets.”

Vas didn’t bother to argue. Deven could be as pig headed as her. She sure as hell wouldn’t want him busting her about her past; she’d grant him the same courtesy for now. “Just don’t take off without letting me know in advance.” She walked away. “I could have been worried about you.”

“Were you?” Deven yelled after her.

“I said ‘could have’.” She paused at the door. “Secure your toys and get cleaned up. We’re behind schedule. And you damn well better have a bill of sale for that shuttle.”

Vas went up to the bridge, leaving her wandering second-in-command to deal with his mess. It would be a cold day in hell before she let him know she had in fact been worried about him. Thoughtless bastard.

“Are the rest of the troop carriers with us yet?” Vas asked Xsit once she got to the bridge.

“Aye, Captain. The whole group is here. ETA six hours. We were supposed to be there in three hours.” Xsit bobbed her head quickly. As a Xithinal, she shared a long-lost bird-like ancestor with the Wavians. However the two lines were as diverse as a massive bird of prey verses a small bird kept in a cage. Xsit’s bobbing was her inherited way of asking a predator not to eat her. She wasn’t aware she did it, and Vas had learned to ignore it.

“I know. Deven’s errand ran longer than expected.” Vas turned to Mac and Jakiin, “Without losing the rest of the ships, can you shave any time?”

Jakiin shook his head, but Mac nodded. “No problem, Captain.”

****

Four hours and one harrowing trip later, Vas glared up into the cloudy sky on the planet of Lantaria as she set up her command console. Deven’s little stunt cost them some ground; they were still at least an hour behind schedule. Not to mention that the two smaller troop carriers had to run like hell to keep up with Mac. After this, she and Deven would be having a long, ugly talk. She said she’d leave him alone, but she hated being behind schedule. 

All of her ships would land near each other, but their late arrival put them a few miles from the other merc companies and the side they would be fighting for. There were supposed to be four other companies fighting alongside them for this side. It looked like all were full complements and in place.

Not only were they far away from the rest, the ragged ground made it difficult for the two smaller troop ships to find a clear landing. The rest of the troops had disembarked from the larger two transports and were jogging toward her command center. But interestingly, no one from the paying side had shown up yet. Usually folks wanted to meet her and her officers. You didn’t build the reputation she had without gathering a few awe-inspired fans.

The clouds grew heavier and she considered ordering bad weather gear. With a few choice swear words, she glanced up to determine how nasty the weather would get.

She froze.

Those weren’t clouds.

Silent ships filled the sky above the battlefield, lurking in massive cloudbanks that may have been created by the ships themselves. The ships were still too high to fire in the atmosphere, but wouldn’t be for long. A dozen things flashed through her mind: this was a ground battle—no ships; she’d never seen any ships that size hanging as low and silent as these were trying to do; nor had she ever seen anything with those markings. Heavy and gray, they did look like lumbering rain clouds at first, especially with a steady outpour of controlled exhaust to mask them. Electronically, they still didn’t show on any scan. No one would know they were there unless they glanced up. This had to be a trap; she just wasn’t sure for whom.

She opened the main comm, keeping her voice low and calm. “We have a scatter situation. Retreat to ships and blast off when full. I repeat, we have a scatter situation and need a full evac of this site immediately. Retreat to ships and bug out. Closest ship will do. We’ll meet at evac point four. The others may be compromised. Don’t wait. Go now.” The chill building in her gut branched out to the rest of her body. There could be a rational reason for those ships hanging there. The screaming cold in her belly told her otherwise.

At the most, her people had a few minutes until the ships started firing. The other mercenary companies had to be unaware, judging by their continued prep for a ground battle that wasn’t going to happen. But she couldn’t do anything to help them; tipping them off could tip off the gray ships as well. She’d be lucky to get her own people out intact.

Deven jogged over and nodded to the lowering ships. “I didn’t notice them. They’ve got an esper block up.”

Vas stopped loading the command console. “They have an esper block?” As if they were expecting an esper? A high-level esper? Damn, this could be worse than she thought. Much worse.

“We can’t do anything about it now. We need everyone off the ground five minutes ago. I have a bad feeling that we need to be airborne before they realize who we are.” The unspoken command to go help the rest of their transport ships sent Deven running off with a nod.

The gray ships were hovering in place, but she knew it wouldn’t take them long to move over if they noticed her people. A chill down her back told Vas those ships were looking for her people. Or her. There was no rational reason for her feelings, they just were.

The two smaller troop carriers got off the ground at that moment. Which meant they’d run out of time; the lift off couldn’t have gone unnoticed. Whatever those lumbering gray ships were, they still would have to regain altitude before they could move over to Vas and her people. Even ships that huge could land on a planet with the proper equipment; they just couldn’t maneuver worth a damn in atmosphere. Those behemoths were doing a controlled landing with the intent to fire upon the land below them. Instead of rising like she feared, they began opening fire on the troops below them. She made a note to find out who had been slaughtered down there. They at least deserved that. They’d come for a fair fight, and they weren’t going to get that and it pissed her off.

Deven came back with twenty fighters in tow before she could finish trying to figure out the enemy ships and their maneuvers.

“Everyone else is on board. These were closer to us than their ships.” The roar of the two final troop carriers blasting off threatened to drown him out.

Vas nodded over the noise and motioned toward the
Warrior Wench
. They got the rest of their people out. Now they needed to do the same.

Running, she and Deven led the remaining fighters onto the ship and entered the code to pull in the troop plank. They secured the extra fighters in a spare hold, making sure they were all strapped in before heading down toward the bridge. An explosion rocked the ground. The gray ships weren’t on them yet. The explosions were heavy ordinance hitting a few leagues off, but the ships would be there soon.

“Mac, leave NOW,” Vas yelled into her comm as she and Deven grabbed two emergency strap seats and secured themselves. Mac must have been waiting with his hand on the trigger. A split second later the ship threw itself into the sky.

Gallant-class cruisers could take off from a ground position, but they took a gradual assent. Too fast and the
Warrior Wench
would come crashing down faster than if those gray ships hit it.

Even though Vas didn’t trust Mac with her money, she trusted him with her ship. Besides, she didn’t have much of a choice.

The ship rattled and tossed as the gravitation of the planet fought with the attempt to break free. A few popping sounds told Vas repairs would have to be made, but so far no explosions foretelling impending doom.

“What were those ships?” Vas yelled over the strain of the engines as she hung on the railings. Both of them were strapped in, but at the rate they were being thrown around she didn’t want to take a chance and end up with a broken neck if the straps broke.

He tightened his grip on his own railings as the ship felt ready to buck apart. “I have no idea. I saw the same thing you did.”

“Damn it, this isn’t time to be Mister Reticent. You’ve seen a hell of a lot more of this universe and things in it than I have. What were those damn ships?” She’d been in this business for twenty years, and right now she felt like a first-time novice. Her gut fought to come out, and not only because of the pull of the ship.

He stayed silent for a good five minutes, or at least it felt like five minutes as the ship bucked and fought its way free of the atmosphere. Finally he shook his head. “I’m not sure, Vas. That’s an honest answer. They weren’t anything I’ve ever seen.” He freed a hand from the rails to wave off her objections. “I’m being honest. I’ve never seen ships like those, nor ships that could do what those were trying to do in my life. But there are places I haven’t been to in probably two hundred years.” He sighed. “There are places the Commonwealth has never heard of. People who could have advanced to those ships had they wanted to.”

The
Warrior Wench
stopped bucking, so Vas released her straps, carefully ignoring the way her hands shook.

“Fine,” she said with a frown. She would have to count on him giving her what he thought she needed to know at this point. He didn’t know those ships any more than she did. However, he brought up a good point; maybe asking some of her crew who were originally from outside of the Commonwealth would help narrow things down. 

“Keep me updated if you think of anything. You don’t know what might be important.” She turned and made her way out of the bowels of the ship and up to the bridge. A few vents hissing into the ship’s interior told her the
Warrior Wench
definitely hadn’t come out completely unscathed. But as long as the tears weren’t life threatening, they wouldn’t worry about them yet.

“Gosta, did those ships do anything as we took off?” Vas slid into her chair, calling up as many images of the gray ships as possible. “Xsit, did all our transports make it out of the system?”