Barbarian Prince (20 page)

Slowly in sank in upon him as he watched the ship become no more than a dark spot, and then a dot and then vanish altogether that he had lost them.

He had lost the child dearest to his heart and he had lost the woman. He’d lost Noelle.

He felt as if someone had just ripped his heart out of his chest.

There was so much pain for many moments that he couldn’t catch his breath.

They were gone. Dead. Or as good as dead. There was no way the ship could reach the sister planet at this time of the year.

And there was nothing he could do about it.

He couldn’t save them.

For a few moments wild thoughts circulated in his mind as he considered which of the other clans might have a working ship. They all kept their ships carefully hidden and well protected ….

That thought brought his guard to mind. Rage engulfed him as he turned to look for the man. “Where is Dolf?”

The men around him simply gaped at him and then began to look around. “He is not with us,” the nearest man finally responded.

“
Find him!” Drak roared. “And then bring him to me!” With that, he turned his beast and rowled it into motion, racing back toward the fortress with as little regard for life and limb as he’d had when he’d raced to try to catch Noelle to save her. Less. Except for the pain, he felt dead inside.

The beast seemed to beat out that refrain in the rhythm of its hooves against the ice—lost, gone, dead.

He had nothing but the fires of rage to keep the cold from spreading outward from his heart to completely envelop him.

Dolf was not to be found. Apparently, he’d had enough sense to realize he was very likely a dead man for losing the ship and when the men had tore out of the fortress to try to stop the ship from taking off, he grabbed a few of his belongings and some supplies and took off to try to find shelter with another clan.

Drak did
not
take the news well. He wanted someone or something to vent his frustration on.

Tossing the reins of his beast to a stable hand, he stalked inside, up the stairs … and slammed face first into the door of his room again. That time he was caught completely off guard and bloodied his nose. He let out a roar that could echoed through the halls of the fortress. Half the men turned around and left the hall again, figuring it might be better to hunt for the missing man than face Drak’s wrath. Kulle had more balls than the rest. He and a handful of men raced to their Prince’s side.

Kulle looked around in confusion when they reached the Prince’s suite and discovered he was standing at the door nursing a bloodied nose. “What happened?”

“
The door is barred from the other side,” Drak growled.

Kulle gaped at him in disbelief, blinking while he tried to assimilate that news. “But … who took the ship?”

Drak stared at him, struggling with a surge of hope. “Break the door down!”

It took several men pounding against the panel before they finally managed to break through. Then they had to shove the furniture out of the way. Drak shoved in first, searching the room.

He was both puzzled and deflated when they found it empty.

“
Witchery!” one of the men muttered.

“
Don’t be a fucking idiot!” Drak growled. “She had no magic. She went out another way. Find it!”

They all surged toward the only window and looked out, but there was absolutely no way, they decided, that the woman could’ve scaled the side of the fortress at that point. Since that ruled out the only two openings, they turned and looked at the fireplace. But there was a smoldering fire on the hearth and had been, constantly, since Drak had brought Noelle to his home.

Drak glanced around. “Check the walls for a secret passage.”

It took them twenty minutes to find it and another twenty to fetch an ax to open it when they couldn’t find the latch.

His own damned fortress and it hadn’t occurred to him there might be a secret passage! It should have. The old bastard that had built it had made secret passages all over the fucking thing!

But his own suite of rooms?

He supposed the old man had thought he needed an escape route.

Gathering several torches for light, Drak and Kulle and the men followed the stairs down and then made their way along the tunnel. When they arrived, they discovered just how Noelle and Jules had managed to get into the ship without the guard stopping them. He’d stationed himself at the entrance to the cave.

Drak still wasn’t inclined to let him off the hook. “When you find Dolf—twenty lashes,” he growled. Turning on his heel he headed back the way he’d come.

His fury had deserted him by the time he reached his suite again. After standing in the middle of the room, staring at nothing in particular for a while, he left the room and headed to his solar.

He didn’t think he could bear staying in the room anymore even if not for the fact that it was hardly secure with the passage now known and the both doors shattered.

When he reached his solar, he grabbed a bottle of brew, dropped onto the padded couch the room boasted near the large window, and proceeded to get as stinking drunk as he could manage in the hope of drowning the pain that simmered just at the fringes of his mind.

Noelle didn’t make a huge push toward diplomacy. That wasn’t her strong suit. She stayed long enough to be polite, extended an invitation to Jules and his mother, whom, it transpired, was the village queen, to visit the colony ‘someday’ and then bid them farewell.

When she was airborne again, she considered the safest way to handle her return and decided that it might be best to land the ship far enough from the colony to prevent them from seeing it. She didn’t feel up to explaining how she’d gotten it and there was no place within the colony where she might land anyway. They had a small landing field and a few hangers, but those had been designed and built for the small shuttles they used to travel between the mother ship in orbit and the colony. They wouldn’t accommodate such a large ship.

Beyond that, they were liable to shoot first and ask questions when they were scraping her off the rocks.

Unlike the Amazons,
they
had the means to shoot her down.

In any case, the walk from where she hid the ship to the gates of the colony gave her plenty of time to decide what she wanted to share about her adventure and what she didn’t.

She thought they weren’t going to let her in. After making her identify herself five times, they made her wait while they sent for Monica to verify.

She was so thrilled to see that Monica was alive and safe and well, she burst into tears.

Monica, naturally enough, took that to be a sign of distress over her experiences and she was taken directly to the med center for a thorough examination and mental evaluation.

She was pregnant.

She’d worried endlessly that that might happen, and she was still stunned absolutely speechless when the computer informed her that she was gestating.

“
Really?”

“
Affirmative.”

Noelle searched her mind for other questions. “How far along?”

“
Approximately one week.”

Shocked to discover it was from the wild BDSM night she’d spent with Drak, Noelle sucked in a sharp breath. “Seriously?”

“
I am not programmed for humor.”

Well, maybe not that night. The computer had said approximate and she supposed it could have been the night before but that would be stretching it.

She didn’t know how to take that—because it meant if she’d escaped only a day or so earlier she wouldn’t be carrying Drak’s baby. Was she glad? Or sorry that she hadn’t managed to escape sooner.

“
Is it … ok?”

“
It is a viable embryo.”

Which didn’t actually tell her a damned thing beyond the fact that it was alive and, she supposed, growing. “Normal,” she tried again.

“
It is not normal.”

If the machine had stabbed her she didn’t think it could’ve been more painful. “How is it not normal?”

“
It is an alien-human hybrid.”

Noelle felt like taking a hammer to the damned computer for scaring her so badly! “So your assessment has to do with it being only half human?” she asked.

“
Affirmative. It has a DNA strand that it half human and half unknown. It is not normal.”

The machine wasn’t designed or programmed to deal with anything but human physiology. It couldn’t determine whether the embryo was free of disease or defect because it had no data on Drak’s people.

“
Would you like for me to abort the development?”

Horror washed through Noelle. “No!”

“
It is an abnormal embryo—defective. And it cannot be repaired. It is lacking 50% of the DNA that it needs to be normal. It will not be an asset to the community.”

“
You don’t know that.”

“
If you refuse to abort when you have been informed that the infant will be defective and a burden to the resources of the colony I am required to send a report to the governor of the colony and also to the psychiatric department.”

Anger flickered through Noelle. “It’s a democratic government and that means I have a choice. And my choice is to wait until there is enough data to make an informed decision!”

The psychiatrist counseled her to abort and said that she would have to attend classes regarding the care of defective and possibly retarded children before she was allowed to make a final decision.

Noelle was so depressed when she left she had no trouble at all fulfilling her wish to climb into her own bed and cry her eyes out. When she’d exhausted herself, she slept.

Monica gave her a sympathetic look when she arrived home from work. “Was it that terrible? Do you want to talk about it?”

Noelle glared at her. “Who said it was terrible? I didn’t say it was terrible!”

Monica held up her hands in a surrendering motion. “You hungry?”

That instantly diverted Noelle. “OMG! I really hate most of the native food! I am so hungry for
real
food!”

Monica snorted. “Only you would call space rations ‘real’ food!”

“
Well, it’s human food and I’m used to the taste. And the consistency.”

“
Next question—eat in? Or go out?”

Noelle thought that over. She was really reluctant to go out. It wasn’t a very big colony and she was pretty sure gossip had made the rounds two or three times by now. There wouldn’t be a damned soul that didn’t know everything there was to know about her capture.

On the other hand, she had to live with them. She supposed the sooner she got out and got it over with the better. Eventually, they were bound to get used to seeing her and tired of rehashing it.

The arrival of a group of Amazons several weeks later threw the entire colony into high alert. Everyone, including Noelle, was stunned when the leader asked to speak to her.

She discovered when she arrived at the gate that it was a group from Jules’ tribe. She hadn’t realized how much she’d missed Jules until that moment. Joy and excitement filled her.

“
It’s Jules! Let me out! Open the gate!”

No one was particularly anxious to open the gates, however. “We’re waiting for the governor and his party to arrive,” the guard informed her.

“
Listen you chunk of metal and circuits!” Noelle growled. “Those are friends, not hostiles, and I want to go out.”

The governor arrived. “You know these people?” he asked in surprise, his voice laced with suspicion and disapproval. “These are the people who held you captive?”

Noelle explained that she’d met them after she’d escaped with the child and returned him to his family.

Which left a hell of a gap in the tale she’d told when she’d gotten back and she could see the governor wasn’t slow to realize that she’d left out some fairly important facts—at the very least.

She was allowed to go out—under escort. She introduced the governor to Jules’ mother, Queen Niri, as the leader of their ‘clan’ and after a few minutes of fairly stiff conversation, and with a great deal of suspicion, the Queen and her son and their escort entered the colony.

Noelle finally got a chance to talk to Jules when they’d been led to guest quarters near the city meeting hall. They natives were invited guests and preparations for a celebration of the historic meeting was underway.

Jules, she discovered, had spent a good deal of time chattering to his mother about the ‘mechanicals’ in his father’s treasure vault and how Noelle had helped to repair them. This, she discovered, was what had led the queen to visit—no doubt because she was desirous of acquiring some of those treasures.

It wasn’t merely modesty that inspired Noelle to downplay her part in working on Drak’s treasures. They
belonged
to him and she wasn’t going to feed his ex-girl friend information about it that she might use against him!

Fortunately, the governor saved her from having to dig her way out of the ticklish situation with Jules’ people by summoning her.

That wasn’t a pleasant meeting. She was accused of supplying aliens, who were quite possibly hostile to the human colony, with knowledge that could be very detrimental to the success of the colony. In a word—treason.

“
That is absolutely not true!” Noelle gasped, torn between anger and fear. “The mechanicals the child spoke of belonged to them! It was
their
technology to start with. And beyond that, absolutely ancient. Most of it didn’t work and even with the things that could be fixed there was no one who knew how it worked or what it was for. I didn’t know what they were although some of the things looked vaguely familiar.

“
I put it in my damned report! These people aren’t what they seem. Some cataclysm threw them backwards. They were originally a very advanced race at one time.”

“
A report which you have yet to complete and turn over!” one of the council members pointed out.

The asshole.

The governor studied her angrily for some moments. “If you can prove the veracity of that statement, I will consider dropping the charges.”

Noelle gaped at him, wondering how the hell she was supposed to do that. “What the hell happened to innocent till proven guilty?”

The governor gave her a look. “The lives of every colonist could be at risk ….”

“
I didn’t actually get anything working except a recor ….” Noelle broke off abruptly as that triggered a memory. “I will allow limited—very limited—access to my PMAI. I will expect my privacy to be respected. There should be enough recorded to prove I did not give them any of our technology!”

They were really unreasonable! She hadn’t been back more than a couple of weeks and she’d been dealing with depression and all sorts of other emotional issues from her ordeal, damn it!

Mostly because she missed Drak so bad all she could do was whine about it.

Which was stupid, of course. It really didn’t matter that she’d left. They didn’t keep women anyway. He would’ve sent her back when it was spring and they hauled all the other women back.

And she couldn’t go back even though she still had his ship—because he was bound to kill her for stealing it in the first place.

It was as well her mind turned in that direction because it dawned on her that she hadn’t made any attempt to get it back to him even though she knew she could program the computer to return it.

She hadn’t because she was struggling with the urge to go back even though she knew she probably wouldn’t even be welcome. In fact, just the opposite!

But the damned government/security was on to her now! She didn’t trust them not to rifle though all of her memories, regardless of her objections, and that meant they’d find out about the ship and they might confiscate it!

It seemed very likely that they would want to study it because it was alien technology.

And that meant she had to send it back to him or risk losing the chance.

And she couldn’t do that to him. It wasn’t just his pride and joy. According to Terl, it was critical to his people’s survival, not just a convenience they used to raid for women . They couldn’t grow enough food to make it through the winter. They’d starve if they weren’t able to raid to get food!

Even with that resolve, she had a hell of a time sneaking out of the colony since they still had very little access to the world outside, due mostly to the fact that they’d already been attacked and had several colonists captured—her and Monica. She did not, in point of fact, know how she would’ve gotten out if not for the delegation from Jules’ village.

But Jules turned out to be her savior in another sense, as well. She managed to talk him, and his mother, of course, into allowing her to do a scan so that the computer could gather data about the biology of the natives.

Armed with that data, the computer was then able to ascertain that her fetus appeared to be perfectly normal and healthy—for a hybrid. Which mean there was still not enough data to determine how a hybrid would turn out. Preliminary data, however, suggested that the infant would have traits from both parents and no physical abnormalities.

She was tearfully grateful to learn that and able to successfully eliminate the objections of the colony to the infant on the grounds that it might be a societal burden. It should not, from what they could determine, have special needs.

The governor was waiting for Queen Niri and her party to leave to interrogate Noelle further and to access her PMAI since, technically, Queen Niri was actually Noelle’s guest. She’d come to visit, at least according to her, based on the invitation Noelle had thrown out without any expectation whatsoever that the queen would ever take her up on it.

The truth, of course, was that, like any politician, she’d used the thoughtless invitation as an opportunity to look the colony over and see these ‘mechanical wonders’ the star children supposedly possessed for herself.

She was impressed. It took no more than a few hours to see that, even though the aliens were vastly outnumbered by the natives, the natives were vastly overwhelmed by the technology of the star-children. They would be, she decided, formidable enemies and good to have as friends. Since she also concluded that Noelle had no other motive for befriending and helping her son than honest affection, she thought she might not mind being friends with the intruders.

The fact that the queen and her entourage considered themselves Noelle’s guests and the anxiety of the entire colony in general and the governor in particular to try to make peaceful allies of as many of the natives as possible, also gave Noelle the chance she needed to reach Drak’s ship. She told the governor that she’d agreed to escort the queen and her party beyond the perimeter of the colony as added insurance of the good will of the Earth people.

She was more than a little worried that the governor would ask the queen point blank if that was true, or some remark on either side would reveal it for the lie it was, but she was in luck. The governor was so pleased with her for giving them an opening to at least begin the process of forming alliances that he merely thanked her for her service to the colony.

Clearly, he was relieved to see the queen and her party leave. Not that they hadn’t enjoyed entertaining local ‘royalty’ but he’d been fearful some incident arising out of ignorance might destroy what little progress they managed to make and once they were out the door it was no longer something he needed to concern himself over.

Noelle could see the queen and company found it odd and not a little unnerving that she had decided to accompany them to the foothills. Unfortunately, she couldn’t tell the queen why she’d decided to join them and she couldn’t think up a lie that would make her comfortable.

It wasn’t likely, to her mind, that the queen would take it well if she knew the plan.

Drak was liable to swoop down and carry the child off again, but that was their problem to work out as far as Noelle was concerned.

She traveled with the queen’s entourage until they were out of sight of the colony watchtowers, waited until the party had traveled on a goodly distance, and then headed to the clearing where she’d stashed Drak’s ship.

As she’d hoped, there was no difficulty in programming the ship to return to the cavern where it had been when she’d taken it. She hesitated when she’d finished, trying to decide whether to leave a message for Drak or not. Finally, she decided she wanted to at least try to explain the circumstances. She thought sending his ship back to him was going to go a long way toward appeasing him.

But he was a man.

He was probably suffering agonies that a mere female had managed to outsmart him and slip through his fingers.

When she’d finished recording her message, she left the ship and headed back to the colony.

Drak frowned in concentration as he studied the map he and Kulle and his captains, Iral and Tomas had been poring over for days, plotting, searching for flaws and weaknesses. He didn’t particularly like the lay of the land, but it was what they had to work with and he was as convinced as he could be that every contingency had been considered and a plan of action plotted.

It was just a shame that the darkling warlord, Javar, had secured his clan’s ship in a nearly inaccessible grotto.

They’d had a hell of a time even discovering the location. It had taken weeks to obtain that information and then more time to work out a plan to acquire the ship with the least loss of men.

Impatience flickered through Drak, but he firmly tamped it.

He would not get the ship and Noelle by being impatient and careless.

He was tempted to go over the plan again—one last time to look for anything that they might have missed—but reluctantly dismissed the impulse. The men were wound tight with nerves as it was, and exhausted because he had pushed them as hard as he had himself. It would do none of them any good to face the battle tomorrow bleary eyed from exhaustion.

Finally, he nodded and dismissed them to seek whatever rest they could find before the sun set and they set off for their destination under cover of darkness.

The men had begun to file out of his solar when they met up with a breathless watchman. “There’s something coming this way, my lord! In the sky. I think … it looks a ship!”

Drak’s heart seemed to stop in his chest painfully. For a split second he felt perfectly blank, then a surge of elation filled him …. And doubts. It had been weeks. It couldn’t be them.

He’d watched for them for days, days that turned to weeks, knowing that every hour that passed, every day, it became more and more likely that they’d perished and less likely that they would return safely.

He couldn’t accept that it was his ship returning—or that there was no hope at all.

Dismissing his qualms, he left the room quickly, gaining speed as he went until he was almost running when he hit the stairs. He jogged down them and crossed the wide room to the doors that led outside. As soon as he reached the courtyard he began to scan the sky.

He spotted it almost immediately. It was so close by that time that it was impossible
not
to identify the craft as theirs.