Asarlai Wars 1: Warrior Wench (9 page)

Xsit nodded, but Gosta’s face became pinched in pain as he keyed in new images to be sent to her screen. “Only this.”

The heavy ships wiped out the entire battleground in under five minutes. It was a good thing her transport ships got off before she did; not a single ship got off after the
Warrior Wench
. The lumbering gray ships had turned their sensors to the
Warrior Wench
. The logs indicated a low-level scan had been bounced off right after liftoff, but they hadn’t launched an attack. Most likely they knew they couldn’t maneuver fast enough to catch a Gallant-class cruiser with a lead on them.

The slaughter on the ground horrified even Vas.

“Keep recording. We need to send the data to the Commonwealth.” She’d also be contacting the holder for this contract. Or she would have had they not most likely just been blown apart with their planet.

Vas turned as she heard a collective gasp, or imagined she heard it, from her command crew. “Yes, I know. Me sending something to them besides ‘go to hell’ messages.” She studied the frozen images on her screen. “This isn’t a normal fight. It’s not one nobleman hiring a group of thugs to rough up the thugs hired by another. They were slaughtered. We owe it to the mercs who died down there to let someone know. There are dictates of battle for a reason. Those bastards just made themselves an enemy.”

Chapter Eight

 The bridge went silent as images of the slaughter on the ground held their attention. Vas let them watch; she believed in letting her people know what was going on. However, after a few minutes she cut it off. They also needed to re-group.

Right now she needed to get her people as far away from this system as possible. Since they were already doing that, and no pursuit had appeared, she felt it was safe to leave the deck.

“Gosta, I’ll be in my ready room, if anyone needs me.…” Vas let her comment trail off with a sigh as Terel came up the ramp to the bridge with Deven right behind. “Not again. Aren’t I done with those damn shots? There are a few other things going on right now.”

Deven frowned. “No, we’re not done, and those ships didn’t follow us. I told our troop transports to head to Home after they regroup. They’ll be running scans to make sure no one trails them.”

Vas gazed longingly at her ready room. Obviously these two weren’t going to let her escape, and they’d joined forces to make sure she complied. “Please tell me we’re close to being done?”

Terel smiled and stepped back to let Vas precede her down the walkway. “Soon, Vas, soon.”

Terel then suspiciously found tasks for her med techs so it would just be the three of them.

“What’s going on? I don’t need another shot, do I?”

“Oh no, you need a shot.” Terel’s grin was feral. “But Deven found information which will speed up the process and get the rest of the poison out of your system completely. I needed a few hours to run tests on it though.” She held up the evil needle, but the liquid in it this time shimmered gold.

“Wait on giving it to her for a minute,” Deven said. “There’s another thing I need to tell both of you.”

“Like where in the hell you came up with a magic cure? How do we know it’ll work?” Vas asked.

Deven pulled out a chair and swung into it. “You wouldn’t believe me even if I told you, which for my safety and yours, I’m not. Take my word, it will work. But the person who gave me the antidote also examined your blood and said you were infected less than two weeks ago. Can you think of any reason anyone would have tried to kill you on your trip?”

Vas squirmed at more than the giant needle in front of her. She didn’t think anything happened to her while she’d been gone. In fact, she knew nothing had happened, only a visit to Achaeon, a simple agriculture planet. So why didn’t she want to talk about it? Fighting her own thoughts, she shook her head. “Nothing I can think of.” She studied Deven’s face. “Why do I think there is something else?”

Deven ran his fingers through his black hair. Vas took note; that was usually her response in dealing with him, not the other way around. “Because there is. There are blood trackers in your system. I didn’t know such things were possible, but my source is thorough. In the last thirty-six hours you were infected with biological tracking nanites. Did anything else happen? On the station? In Skrankle’s office? On the planet before you found me?”

“No,” Vas said as an image came to mind. “Wait. A spacer slammed into me as I came back to the shuttle. But I didn’t feel anything. He was probably just late for a job.” The nagging image of the terror on his face got shoved aside.

Deven shook his head. “You wouldn’t have felt it. We should go back to the station and see if we can find anything. Whoever did it wanted to be able to track you anywhere. My source said within a month there would be no way to get them out of your blood.”

“Then we need to go back now. Terel, the shot—”

“Can’t wait either.” Terel said. “We have to get the poison out of your system. I’m not sure how this liquid came about, but it should completely clear the drell out of you. However, this shot doesn’t go in your arm. Now, Captain, if you would bare your ass for me?”

****

Vas’s mind filled with wind that chased her and grabbed her. Terror ripped into her heart, her soul, and her mind. The winds from her home planet followed her, biting at her ankles, pulling her hair.

She couldn’t let the wind inside her soul. Somehow she knew it would destroy everything if it got her.

Vas felt the scream in her throat as she fought herself awake. She thought she’d screamed out loud, but the lack of people kicking down her door told her she hadn’t.

The dream had been horrific.

Vas was never scared. Ever. To be accurate, she hadn’t been scared since the first night she’d snuck onboard a smugglers’ scow when she was fourteen. Fear had swallowed her at the time, but afterwards life took away her capacity for being scared. She gave other people nightmares now. She didn’t have them.

Vas lay in the luxuriously soft and deep bed, trying to will her heart to calm down long enough to go back to sleep. After a half hour she gave up and turned the lights on. She tried focusing on the dream itself to get her mind around it. The wind? Not even a child would be afraid of that. Without understanding what caused the fear, she couldn’t fight it down.

Sleep avoided her and her dream made no sense. Slipping on her robe, she padded her way down to the mess hall. Food was a perfect solution to lack of sleep.

A vague shape stood in the mess hall, but the lights were very low.

“Vas?” Deven’s deep voice seemed almost menacing in the darkness.

“Lights.” Vas activated full lights before entering the room. She couldn’t shake the chill invading her soul. The nightmare had gotten to her. Or rather the fact she’d had a nightmare got to her.

“What are you doing up?” she asked as she poured herself a cup of hot solie. Might as well wake up enough to get something productive done.

“I’m not sure.” Deven sat near the view screen; he too had a familiar looking mug in his hand. “I couldn’t sleep. Finally gave up and decided to get out of my room.”

Vas pulled up a seat and laughed. “So who’s in there now? Jasine? Llitrell?” She laughed even more at the look on his face. “Both?”

Deven’s attempt at a wounded air didn’t work very well. “I’ll have you know, I do sleep alone sometimes. Most times in fact.”

“But tonight?” She took another long sip as Deven drifted back to looking out the window. He smelled like sex; there was no way he’d been alone. However, she didn’t know why it bothered her this time.

“So tonight I had a friend.” He glanced at her long enough to frown, but then turned back to the view screen.

Vas scowled. He’d never had trouble discussing his sex life with her before. Oft times he’d go into great detail just to see if she’d leave the room. Now he seemed embarrassed. And she found herself not wanting to know who lay in his bed right now. More unnerving items to pile on to an already bizarre week. She shoved whatever was going on back into a dark corner of her mind. The thought that she may be jealous was more disturbing than her nightmare. Almost.

“Are you all right?” Deven asked.

She found she’d been staring into her solie cup. “Yes. No, I’m not.” She paused, she felt strangely hesitant about telling anyone about the nightmare, as if she couldn’t tell them. She fought past it. “I had a nightmare.”

He pulled back in surprise. “I didn’t think you dreamed, let alone had nightmares.”

“I don’t. I haven’t had a dream since I was a kid. And no nightmares since then either.” Vas felt an odd compulsion as she said it, as if the contents of the solie would be coming back up if she kept talking. Setting the cup aside, she took a deep breath and went on. She didn’t let anything stop her, even if it was something in her own head. “Terror, pure terror. It makes no sense, but the wind tried to kill me.” 

He leaned forward and took her hands, pulling her closer as he rubbed them between his own. “You’re freezing.”

She let herself go closer to him; she wanted warmth and lots of it. “I don’t know what the hell is wrong. I’m like ice.” She looked up at Deven and gave an evil smile. “And I feel like I’m going to throw up.”

Deven didn’t flinch, but pulled her closer until she was almost in his lap. “I know. It’s okay.”

Vas almost jerked back, but his warmth felt so damn good. “Wait, what do you mean it’s okay? What are you sensing?”

His chuckle stayed low. “The cuffs are still on, don’t worry. It’s just obvious that you’re upset.”

“So upset you’d keep holding me even if I puke?” Vas moved away from his chest far enough to see his face. She couldn’t read his face as he looked down at her.

“I’ve held you when you’re sick from drinking. Why not now? Who do you think usually keeps this mass of hair out of the way when you’re on a bender?”

She pounded his chest. “Since I don’t always remember those incidents I have to assume it’s you.” Her smile faltered. “But this is different. I don’t know what in the hell is going on.”

Deven reached around her then held her mug up to her lips. “You’ll feel better if you drink something.”

Vas took a long sip. It tasted different this time. The bitter solie she expected was sweet. Maybe it had cooled down too much.

“But I need to figure out what caused this.” She paused as a yawn overtook her. “I can’t be waking up in the middle of a battle zone screaming at nightmares.”

“I know.” He forced another sip down her. “And we’ll figure it out.”

“But,” she said as another yawn overtook her. “Oh crap. What did you…?”

***

Deven smiled and gently picked her up to carry her to her room. She wouldn’t be happy with him when she woke up, but she needed to sleep.

Moreover, he needed to think.

Chapter Nine

Vas woke up relaxed and tucked into her bed. Which was a very bad sign.

She rarely slept through the night, and never would have tucked herself in. It was a good night if she had a single sheet left on the bed when she woke up.

Then she remembered the nightmare from the night before.

And Deven.

“Damn him!” It took two minutes to pull the covers free. If Deven had thought trapping her like this was going to save him, he had another think coming.

She toppled to the floor the moment she tried to stick one leg into her flight pants. He’d drugged her too well obviously. But with what? Did the bastard carry sleeping pills on him now? She pulled herself up and sat on the bed to finish dressing and get her boots on. Quickly pulling her waist-length hair back in a ponytail, no time for a braid, she stomped out the door.

Terel rounded a corner right in front of her, and Vas was just enough out of sorts she couldn’t stop from bumping into her.

“Drinking already?” Terel asked as she steadied her.

“No,” she said as pulled herself away. “Deven drugged me last night. The bastard. Have you seen him?”

Terel changed direction and followed Vas down the corridor. “I haven’t. Why would he drug you? What did you do to him?”

“Ha, already on his side, are we?” Vas shot Terel a glare. “He drugged me because I couldn’t sleep.” She held up one hand but didn’t slow down. “I know how it sounds. He gave me sleeping pills when I couldn’t sleep. However, he did it without asking me. I can’t have a second-in-command who—”

“Anticipates his captain is too proud to admit she’s having trouble sleeping and has a long day ahead of her so he gives her sleeping pills?” Terel laughed and easily kept pace no matter how fast Vas walked.

Vas stopped and turned to her friend. “It doesn’t sound bad when you say it. But he can’t go around drugging me at his whim.” She waggled a finger at Terel. “You either. I am the captain, you know. A fact many people on this ship seem to forget.” Satisfied that Terel was sufficiently chastised, even though she didn’t quite look it, she continued her march to Deven’s room. With any luck he was still asleep and she could give him hell before he was awake enough to defend himself.

A male scream of surprise down the cross-corridor ahead of them brought Vas to a wobbly run.

Mac bounced into her as she rounded the corner. A very naked Mac.

“What in the hell are you doing?” Vas jumped back. She was certain other mercenary captains didn’t have to deal with the things she did.

At least Mac had the decency to look scared of her. On the other hand, he could just be extremely embarrassed. He was so red it was difficult to tell the difference.

Mac pointed behind him at a partially open door, which immediately slammed shut. “There was a misunderstanding. See Bathshea and me—well, she tricked me out here then locked the door. Like this.”

Bathie’s voice came through the door. “I told you if you slept with another woman, I would make you pay!”

“I don’t want to know.” Vas cut him off with a wave and stepped around him. “I really don’t ever want to know. Just get your skinny naked ass out of my corridor and behind a closed door, any closed door, where it belongs.”

Mac opened his mouth to defend himself, but Vas held up both hands to hold him off and resumed her stalking of Deven’s quarters. “No, nothing. I don’t want to know.”

Terel rejoined her a second later.

“Please tell me he’s heading toward his own quarters?” Vas asked softly, afraid to turn around.

“Yes.” Terel kept her laugh down, but it was in her bright eyes. “He is not someone who should be running around naked. For any reason. I didn’t even know you could get freckles down there.”

“How did I end up with this crew? I mean really?” Vas asked the corridor in general.

“You picked us,” Terel said. Her smile was just short of being rude.

“Don’t remind me.” Vas reached Deven’s door and started pounding, then thought better of it. Why give the crew in the adjoining rooms a free show? Keying in her override, she let herself in.

Only to be disappointed. Deven had been there and he’d had company. But he and his company were long gone.

“Damn him!”

Terel took Vas’s arm and steered her back to the corridor. “Excellent, so now I can get you down to the med lab like I intended.”

“What? I don’t need to go down there. You fixed it, right?” This wasn’t how she wanted to start her day. Trying to recover from being ambushed by her own second-in-command, being accosted by another man who should never be without clothing, and now her best friend was dragging her down to her evil lab again.

“We don’t know, do we? And we still don’t know what those blood trackers are doing. Deven thinks he has them under control but we need to get them out completely. For that I need more samples.”

Vas surrendered. She could fight armies, nations, even kingdoms. But her own crew? They just walked all over her. “Agreed. But afterwards we find Deven.”

Fortunately for Deven, but unfortunately for Vas, she calmed down after an hour in Terel’s lab. The blood tests hadn’t taken long, and since she wasn’t using that archaic needle, Vas didn’t mind it. In truth she was fascinated by the blood trackers and had spent the last half hour examining them on a slide.

“I don’t think they’ll do flips right in front of you.” Terel’s voice cut into her observation, but Vas cut her off, still keeping her right eye on the scope.

“You never know. They are fascinating.” Vas sighed and finally pulled away. Interesting or not, she had things to do. She’d confirmed Gosta had sent the alert on the attack at Lantaria to the Prime Council of the Commonwealth. The people who had hired them for the Lantaria job had paid enough in advance to cushion them for a bit, but in a week or so she would need to line up another job. In the meantime, she still needed to explore this new ship of hers.

Jumping off the lab stool, Vas headed for the door. “I’m going to go check out a few blank spots on the ship’s schematics, see if any are spaces we can convert for storage.”

Terel shut down the screen and turned to follow her out of the med-lab. “You mean places for smuggling?”

Vas pulled out a small pad with the ship’s schematics on it and led the way toward the back of the ship where the two holochambers were. “You say smuggling, I say storage. We’re storing items for transportation from one location to another.” She frowned. “Maybe we’ll have better luck smuggling than mercenary work. I’d still give a month’s pay to find out who those damn gray ships belong to.”

“Still no luck on anyone identifying them?” At Vas’s shake of her head, Terel sighed. “That’s not good. The council’s lack of response isn’t good either.”

Vas stopped. She backtracked as an odd blank space appeared near one of the two holochambers. “Agreed, but not surprising. Personally, I would be concerned about unknown ships attacking a Commonwealth planet if I were in charge of the Commonwealth. Apparently, the council has their own agenda.” She shrugged and tapped on the walls. The entrance should be right in front of her according to the schematics. “I warned them. If they’re too complacent to get off their asses and do something, it’s not my—aha!” She turned with a grin as a thin line appeared down the length of the wall. With a few more taps and a nudge, she got it open.

“Shall we?” She held open the door for Terel to go in first.

Terel ducked as she crossed the threshold. The opening was a bit shy of her six-and-a-half-foot-tall stature. Vas followed and was pleased when the hallway opened to a larger room. Depending on the rest of it, and where it came out, this might in fact be a likely smuggling candidate.

Terel tapped on her wristlamp as the light from the hallway faded behind them, and Vas did the same. It appeared to be a good-sized room followed by another hallway.

“Keep going?” Terel asked.

“Yeah, we should see where it cuts out. Maybe there’s another room we can use.”

Even with the wristlamps glowing from the cuffs of their uniforms, Vas almost smacked into Terel’s back when the medical officer stopped suddenly.

“We’ve hit a glass panel.” Terel held up her wrist to illuminate the plane. It was dark and coated with a shimmering substance. “I think this is it, there doesn’t seem to be any more space…” Terel’s voice dropped off as lights suddenly lit up the black space before them beyond the glass. The small room they were in was designed to spy on people in the holochambers below them. Considering this ship’s former line of work, Vas could guess what they were spying on.

Terel and Vas stood back in the hidden room as the holochamber door opened. By mutual agreement both women stopped their conversation as Deven, stripped to the waist and holding two battle swords, entered.

“Now this, you have got to see,” Vas told the doctor. Something would have to be done about this room. She didn’t want anyone being able to pry into a private holochamber. Well, after this one time anyway.

Terel nodded, but Vas noticed she was keeping a close eye on Deven.

Not a hardship at all to do so, however. The man was disgustingly handsome, even more so dressed only in loose workout pants that hung low on his hips. His black hair was pulled back into a low ponytail. He queued up a sequence on the keyboard.

Vas knew this one immediately. It was one of his favorite fighting exercises.

Three hologram fighters appeared. All garbed in rough armor and clutching nasty swords longer than Vas’s legs. She nodded in appreciation; not even she would have started so high in the workout.

Looking like an ancient prince from some exotic land, Deven bowed to the holofigures, and then took his stance. The figures didn’t bother with a bow, but attacked with vicious intensity. Deven was a blur of golden skin and black hair as he danced around the room. And danced was the best term for it. Vas knew the man was graceful, but his movements now were like some elaborate game. He did what he intended to do regardless of the three holoattackers before him.

His moves happened to put him within easy reach of all three heads however and they were cleanly removed in under a minute.

Deven continued his stylized moves, not even bothered by the lack of opponents. However, the computer didn’t give him much of a break. Five more attackers immediately appeared. Two each held a long sword and short sword pair. One held two curved daggers. The last two had a pike and a heavy long sword that Vas doubted she could even pick up had it been real.

This time music joined the movements. An odd, almost wistful sounding tune filled the arena, something Vas had never heard in her life. It was gorgeous and matched Deven’s moves perfectly. Sweat glistened on his skin as all five attackers moved in at once. Again, Deven’s movements were his own, not seeming to be in response to those of his attackers. Having so many opponents at once and fighting off so many different types of weapons at the same time, even Vas would have been hard pressed to hold them at bay. If she were honest with herself, she probably couldn’t do it. Not the first round at any rate.

His moves were even more graceful, lighter, and freer than before. His opponents might have been made of light, but he was the one who moved like it. He wove in between them, striking strategically as he flowed through, leaving them staggering but not fallen. Vas would have used their closeness to try to force one attacker to accidentally injure one of the others, but Deven kept them all separate. It was as if he just happened to be having five different battles at the same time.

His movements were hypnotic and Vas found herself holding her breath as she watched. After five minutes, he dispatched the first, the pikeman, but it was more as if he hadn’t wanted to kill the hologram rather than him not being able to.

She heard Terel’s intake of breath as Deven did a round dive and came up, cleanly dispatching the two sword-and-dagger fighters in one long, sinuous strike. Vas saw the same look that was probably on her face. Complete awe. And more than a little attraction. Deven wasn’t by any means Terel’s type; she didn’t date humans. However, no one could watch this dance without being swayed by Deven’s charms. He moved as if in a lover’s game; he just happened to be armed.

He drew himself up for another pass and quickly killed the remaining three holograms. The music in the room built and he held a pose as if waiting.

Vas studied her impressive second-in-command. It was really too bad she refused to get involved with one of her officers. And downright depressing that he was a telepath. Right now dragging him into her suite sounded like a damn fine idea.

Taking a deep breath, she forced her hormones under control. He might not always be one of her officers, but he would always be a telepath.

“Now you know why I keep him on board.”

Terel raised one eyebrow. “Oh?”

Vas smacked her and winked. “His fighting skills, of course.”

There was no way Deven could have heard them—Vas recognized the glass as a specialized soundproof composite—but he broke from his pose and nodded to the hidden room. With his arms out he bowed deeply. His grin told Vas he’d known they were there the entire time. Show off.

“Come on. Let’s go,” Vas laughed and she headed back to the door. “We don’t need to build that one’s ego any more.”