Exile (9 page)

Kyr flipped off his harness and knelt on the floor. He grabbed Aja’s leg to hold her still and without hesitation, sliced directly into the mark above her ankle.

“Deeper.” She gasped. “He planted it into the muscle. It’s already attached itself. Gods, Kyr, cut it out. Get it out of me.”

Kyr enlarged the incision, digging into her leg until the knife hit something hard; something he hoped wasn’t bone. He spread the edges of her skin apart and he saw a tiny metallic chip with living tentacles gripping her muscle fibers. He dared a glance at Aja’s face. Tears lined her cheeks but her eyes remained closed. She’d bitten down on her lip, drawing blood.

Steeling himself, he sliced through every muscle strand and used his knife to pry the thing out. Aja sucked in a deep breath just as the thing flipped onto the floor. From behind him, Kyr could hear Davi muttering curses.

“Hold her steady,” Kyr shouted. “I’m shooting this out the airlock.” He grabbed the blood-smeared chip and headed down the companionway to the galley.

“Kyr,” Aja called after him. “If they drop on top of us, I’ll have to come about again. Be ready.”

Kyr searched a locker for a container. By the Gods, he didn’t want the thing sticking to his ship. He dropped the bloody piece of metal into a prese jar and screwed on the lid. He wove his way to the supply bay. There was a small airlock there. He’d installed it in case they had to jettison any illegal cargo in a hurry.

He heard Aja call, “Prepare to come about.” He just barely had time to wrap himself in the wall of cargo netting before she yelled, “Coming about!”

His feet flew out from under him. The muscles in his arms took the strain as his ship swerved once more and he flew sideways, his legs in the air, his back crashing against the padded cargo wall. He held onto the jar for dear life.

When the ship righted herself, Kyr untangled his arms and legs and crawled to the sealed hatch. He flipped the lock and opened the small door, tossed in the jar and closed the door behind it, pulling the handle tight, ensuring he’d made a proper seal.

He hit the button and the exterior hatch opened. The jar was sucked into the blackness of space. Kyr closed the exterior door.

“Done,” he shouted.

“Then get your sweet ass back here and strap in,” Aja yelled. “I’m entering the Pikes. Shields up, Mr. Fedd.”

Kyr heard Davi’s weak response. “Yes, ma’am.”

Kyr threaded his way toward the cockpit, grinning like a madman. What a bloody wild ride this was turning out to be.

“Y
ou lost them. You blood-sucking whore mongering son of a Chigalla, you lost them.”

The captain knelt on the deck. Face to the floor, he began to stammer out his apologies.

“Shut up, fool. You should have followed them into the Pikes.”

“But General, to do so I would have… I would have destroyed this cruiser.”

General Bom put a booted foot on the back of the man’s neck and mashed his face into the deck. “I told you to shut up.”

With cold eyes, the General surveyed the command room, hoping some officer would look up, would challenge him. He craved a battle, a bloody death by his hands.

There were no takers.

Cowards.

They stared at their boots, at the wall, hoping against hope they would be spared the captain’s fate, whatever horror that might be.

To be bested by a woman, his own daughter, at that. The Abomination.

“Get up,” he ordered the captain. “Scan this quadrant. I want our forces alerted in every system, at every refueling stop, at every supply depot. Tell them to watch for anything unusual, anything out of the ordinary no matter how irrelevant it might seem. Tell them to report suspicious activity immediately.”

The captain rose to his feet with care, keeping his head bowed. He walked, stiff as a board, to his command console. “Yes, General. Mr. Stax, get on the com and send out an alert. Lieutenant Rowd, did we get a reading on that ship?”

“No sir. It had some sort of shielding. No reading.”

“Any name on the vessel? Any identifying marks?”

“No sir, they were moving too fast for a visual ID.”

The captain turned toward General Bom. “General, do you want us to continue to scan the asteroid field? At the very least, there may be some debris. More than likely the ship collided with a rock and broke apart.”

“More than likely they’ve flashed to another quadrant, idiot. There won’t be any debris. I’ll be in my quarters. I don’t want to be disturbed unless you have word of that ship.”

The command room remained quiet as a grave until General Bom had disappeared through the doorway. When the sound of his footfalls died away, second in command, Lieutenant Rowd, approached his captain.

“Sir,” he said, keeping his voice low. “Do we know what the general is looking for?”

The captain shook his head.

“But sir, how can we be expected to find something if we don’t know what it is we seek?”

The captain shrugged. “We do whatever he tells us to do until he leaves this ship. Those are our orders.”

“I don’t mean to question the General, sir, but it makes no sense. It’s as if he’s ordering us to chase a phantom.”

“Keep these thoughts to yourself, Lieutenant. Such questions won’t do you any good, and they sure as hells won’t do me any good. Until General Bom leaves our ship, we follow his orders.”

“Yes, Captain.”

General Bom dismissed his personal guards. He paced the floor of his cabin, ignoring his growing hunger, his thirst.

If she could set aside the requirements of her body, so could he.

He was of the Blood. The power should never have been given to an inferior female, never. It should have passed to a son, to his son. But his sons had died at birth, deformed, mutant, the results of generations of past genetic tampering with his bloodline.

All he had left of his line were the three abominations, his daughters, his daughters with her.

How he hated that bitch. She’d used him, absorbed his blood, allowed him a taste of hers, taken his seed three times, given him more pleasure than any man had a right to experience in this galaxy, and then, when he’d begged her to stay with him, to rule jointly with him, she’d left without a single backward glance.

Her heart was devoted to that ordinary soldier, Dua N’ib.

She knew how to hide from him, the Empress. And she’d taken her consort and her children with her. Ah, but the worst of them, the one who posed the greatest threat to the Coalition...

The General allowed himself a smug smile.

He’d managed to steal that one from under her nose. He’d almost succeeded in ridding the galaxy of them all, but for one rogue resistance fighter and an undermanned laboratory...

Damn the Gods.

He hadn’t been able to risk a full complement of guards. Word would have leaked out‌—‌General Bom would have been caught breaking his own laws banning recombinant DNA.

She should be in his possession right now, the one named Aja. He would have her if it wasn’t for this cowardly captain and his equally cowardly crew.

He could have guided them through the Pikes if the effects of the Blood hadn’t worn off. Now his supply was exhausted. He’d used the last of it to track her, to trace the tiny bio-mimetic diode he’d ordered implanted in her, the diode that contained a few microns of his serum.

Ika Bom laughed. He’d made use of his own daughter’s blood, injected directly into the right temporal lobe of his brain to give himself the Sight, the ability to fly by inner vision, to track his own blood. For a brief time, he’d tasted the power she possessed and he wanted more. If he controlled her, no one could stand against him. Not the Empress, not the Ruling Council, not the Provincial Governors. He would be unstoppable.

If he had her, this daughter of his, he could harness her power for himself and breed her to the men he chose, begin his own genetic program; establish his own dynasty from the sons he would insist she produce.

Yes. The more he thought about it, the more feasible it seemed. He’d acted precipitously in thinking to kill the entire Royal Family. Better to use them.

And if this one died? Well, didn’t he have two more daughters? Perhaps he should focus on them. They might prove to be easier targets and he might even catch this Aja if he threatened her sisters. He understood enough about the Blood now to know that she would see what he did. If he held her sisters she would know and she would come to their rescue.

No, his ancestors made a terrible mistake in giving power to the weaker sex. Only men were worthy. What the hells were they thinking?

“General?” His com buzzed.

“Yes?”

“What heading are we ordered to?”

The general thought for a moment. He would sell his soul and the soul of every man alive for the Sight right now. “Return to the capital.”

“Yes sir.” The com clicked off.

Yes sir, indeed, Bom thought, my soul and the soul of every man, woman and child in the Empire for the Sight.

F
rom the navigator’s seat, Davi groaned. “Why isn’t he sick?” he asked, pointing down the companionway after Kyr.