The soldier’s eyes glazed over, and then he scurried off to do her bidding. Maddie had surprised herself, as that was the first time she had ever successfully used the Power of Command. Shortly after he left, Maddie saw and heard the system in Rayn’s cell shut down. She immediately ran to his side, entering coordinates as she went. As soon as she was next to him, she hit her teleporter, and they both vanished.
Seconds later, they materialized on Sharra’s ship. Rayn was unconscious.
“As we expected, they had no intentions of releasing either of us. I think it best if we teleport to another ship where a robomedic is on hand. I do not have a very good feeling regarding his condition, Sharra.”
“As you wish.” Sharra quickly teleported them to another ship that was waiting in the convoy. As soon as they materialized, Maddie screamed, “Robomedic, stat!”
They placed Rayn on a gurney, and the robomedics started treating his injuries. He started coming around, and Maddie could tell the Xanthians had gone to great lengths to break him down. He had lost a significant amount of weight, and he was filthy, looking like a mere shadow of his former self. His bearded face was filled with deep hollows beneath his cheeks, and one of his eyes was bruised and swollen. The other eye may as well have been for the space beneath it was darkened and purple. His hair was long and knotted, and his braid had been hacked off. There was dried blood on his lips, and they too were swollen. It nearly broke Maddie’s heart to see him in such a horrific state.
“Rayn, can you hear me? Rayn, it’s me, Maddie. You are safe, and we are taking you back to Vesturon.” She laid her head on his chest, reassuring herself by the sound of his beating heart. “Rayn, I am with you, and I will not leave you.”
Maddie felt his hand on the back of her head. She looked at his face, smiling.
“Sunshine, I cannot see. They have done something to my eyes; they blinded me,” he said in a throaty whisper.
“Bloody hell! Robomedic, examine his eyes!” Maddie cried.
The robots immediately began treating his eyes. The Xanthians had burned off his corneas in their torture sessions, blinding him.
“We have stabilized his eyes, but he will require further treatment once we get him to the medical facility,” the healer on board stated. “Our scanners have revealed both his arms and legs are broken, and they will need extensive repairs.”
“Rayn, we are going to fix you, I promise. Are you in pain?”
“Not much.”
“Give him something for his pain,” Maddie demanded.
As soon as he drifted off to sleep again, Maddie contacted Sharra.
“Sharra, are you still in place near Xanthus?”
“Yes, Maddie, the ship should be self-destructing any minute now. I will stay until then.”
“I am teleporting back to your ship now.”
“Why?”
Maddie didn’t stay to answer, but seconds later, she appeared on Sharra’s ship.
“As soon as the Star Fighter explodes, I am going back in. I want to destroy their security and surveillance systems and anything else I can get my hands on in the process. I intend to cripple them.”
“You cannot go back there! It is too dangerous!”
“Listen to me, Sharra. I am going back in there, and you will not try to stop me. Those monsters tortured Rayn, and I will not let them get away with that. I can get back in there and do my job quickly and efficiently. With the uproar surrounding the destruction of the ship, it should be fairly easy to accomplish. I will set my
shadar
on overload, and you will teleport me back here. Then, we’ll get out of here before they know what hit them.”
“Maddie…”
“Sharra, either you’re with me or you aren’t, but in either case, I am going in.”
Sharra didn’t like it one bit, but she knew she didn’t have a choice. Maddie, if anything, was one of the most stubborn people Sharra had ever met. It would be impossible to talk her out of this, especially since it involved Rayn.
“Let us do it then.”
Maddie equipped herself with her
shadars
, along with as many explosive devices as she could carry. She stuffed explosives and blasters in all the pockets of her cargo pants as well as the pockets of her jacket. She was loaded to the max. She would get in, set them and get out, leaving her and Sharra with just enough time to hit super propulsion so that they could reach a safe point in space. She carried enough firepower that the blasts from these explosions would destroy a quarter of Xanthus, if Maddie succeeded.
“Sharra, order the convoy to get the bloody hell out of here and fast…NOW! Tell them we will meet up with them later.”
Maddie was enraged. She felt the force of her anger energizing her, infusing her blood with the power of it. She didn’t want to dwell on the feeling, but rather, she wanted to harness it in order to accomplish the task at hand.
Sharra kept asking her if she was sure about her plan. Her response was “I have never been more sure of anything in my life. Those nasty Xanthians have made all of our lives miserable for the last year, and now, with what they have done to Rayn, this is much less than they deserve. I would like to destroy every last one of them, but I don’t have the means, so I will use what I have at my disposal here and hope to severely maim them in the process. Those cretins have pushed me too far!”
Almost as if on cue, they saw the blinding light that the destruction of the Star Fighter created when it exploded.
“Send me down to the main generating station right now, Sharra. I will take care of business. Remember, when I am finished, I will buzz you once, and then, you can retrieve me. If you don’t hear from me in 30 minutes, lock on my location and teleport me back here. You will have that information from my
shadar
.”
Maddie teleported to the main generating station, and she immediately went to work. She set charges in every vulnerable space she could. Then she made her way to the security station. She veiled herself and walked right in and set more explosives. Lastly, she made her way to their main surveillance station. She set her
shadar
on self-destruct, and then she buzzed Sharra. When she materialized on Sharra’s ship, she yelled, “Get us out of here now!”
Sharra slammed the ship into super propulsion, and they sped away. Moments later, they felt the magnetic waves from the detonations smash into them, rocking the fighter around mercilessly, like a ship at sea during a hurricane. Maddie and Sharra were thrown around the vessel like rag dolls, crashing into things. When the ship finally settled down, they both pulled themselves up, assessing the damage.
“Well, that was fun! I felt like a pinball bouncing around,” Maddie declared. She laughed and then looked down at her shirt, as she felt a warmth spreading across her stomach and saw blood seeping out. Lifting up her shirt, she saw a long gash beneath her ribs.
“Oh, brother. For the love of God, I wish that for once I could walk away from something injury free! Sharra, please tell me you have a magic wand on board?” she asked.
“I never leave home without it! Stand still a minute,” Sharra told her.
She reached out with the mending device and held it over Maddie’s laceration. After a few seconds, Maddie started to feel the heat of the device healing her wound. Minutes later, she was as good as new.
The two females looked at each other, and suddenly, they started laughing.
“I wished I had been a bee on the wall over there when they lit up like an Easter tree!” Sharra exclaimed.
Maddie laughed even harder. “Gosh, Sharra, I have missed you,” she said, launching herself in Sharra’s arms. “By the way, it is a fly on the wall and a Christmas tree!”
“Oh, yes…well that too! I have missed you as well!”
They reminisced over the explosion and how the Xanthians, or what remained of them, would be out for blood.
The transcom lit up, and Xarrid’s voice reverberated through the ship. “Where are you? What is happening? The convoy arrived with Rayn, and he is in medical right now. What is taking you so long?”
They both let out a huge burst of laughter, and after a spell, Maddie was finally was able to form a whole sentence. “We will be there shortly. We had to take a slight detour.”
“What do you mean detour?”
Sharra replied, “We will explain when we get there.” Then, they both broke into guffaws again.
Xarrid didn’t quite know what to make of it all, so he simply said, “See you in a bit then,” and signed off.
Sharra and Maddie could not get a grip on themselves. They were rolling on the floor, howling with laughter, with tears running down their cheeks when a voice lit up their transcom again.
“Commander Yarrister, this is ground control. We are locking on to your ship and will bring you in to the docking station.”
“Thank you, ground control. We are ready to dock.”
The girls were arm in arm and still giggling when they exited the ship. Therron and Xarrid were waiting for them with the angriest expressions on their faces that Maddie had ever seen.
They cornered the girls and exploded, “What did you do? Are you mad? You could have died—both of you!”
Maddie and Sharra just giggled in response, and Maddie added, “I just gave those jerks a taste of their own medicine. Now I have to go and see Rayn.” She took off in a sprint and left them staring at a blank space.
Locating Julian was Maddie’s first priority. He gave her a rundown of Rayn’s condition. Overall, he would be fine. They had repaired the cornea on one of his eyes, and they were hoping the other would be fine in a day. The Xanthians had burned them with a photoblast. Julian felt that in time, they would both be as good as new. One was severe enough to warrant a transplant, but Julian wanted to see if it would heal on its own. If it wouldn’t, Julian would do a synthetic transplant, and Rayn would be as good as new. Rayn’s sight had already returned in one of his eyes.
Julian had repaired all of Rayn’s fractures, which included several ribs alongs with his arms and legs. He had infused liquid nourishment and fluids into Rayn’s body. Rayn was currently resting.
“Maddie, you need to go through the decontamination chamber before you go to him.”
She did as she as instructed, and she quickly flew to Rayn’s side. He was lying on the gurney, so she crawled up next to him and put her arms around him. “I don’t care if you want me here or not, but I am telling you right now that I refuse to leave your side. I will not leave you until you are better, and you will just have to deal with it.”
Maddie didn’t know if he could hear her or not, but when his hand picked up a tendril of her hair and lifted it to his nose, she knew he was awake.
“It is my turn to thank you this time. You came for me when I thought I was lost. I do not want you to leave my side again ever,” he whispered.
“Oh, don’t worry about that. You’ll have to kick me out if you want to get rid of me!”
“Maddie, can you lay on my other side? I want to look at you, and I cannot see you with this eye that is covered.”
She crawled over him, but while she was in the process of changing sides, he grabbed her and pulled her down on top of him.
“Rayn, love, I hardly think this is proper.”
“I hardly care what is proper and what is not.”
Tilting her head to the side, he whispered in her ear, “I am sorry for acting like a horse’s behonkas, and I never want to be without you again. You are truly a sight for sore eyes, Sunshine. I have never seen you look more beautiful than you do now.”
She stared at his face, cupping his cheek, brushing her thumb across it. He left her speechless.
Maddie stayed by Rayn’s side, never leaving him for even the tiniest of moments. She acted like a mother bear protecting her cub. After hours of trying to assist her, Rowan and Annalise threw their hands in the air and left the medical facility, certain Rayn would get the best of care.
* * * * *
Two days later, Rayn was healing and looking much more like himself. Maddie had been with him continually, never leaving his side.
“I should like to bathe, and I mean a true bath. Do you think Julian will allow it?”
Maddie left in search of an answer. When she returned, she informed Rayn that they were going to the palace. Moments later, they teleported to his bedroom. She assisted him into the bathroom where she began running water in the bath. While the tub filled, he shaved, and they both brushed their teeth. Then Maddie helped him undress. He was still clothed in some of his prison attire, and he stepped out of it and crumpled it up. He grabbed Maddie’s
shadar
and destroyed the foul garments. When he finished, he turned toward her. Her eyes were averted since he was naked, so she handed him a towel to cover himself. She stripped down to her bra and panties and went to help him in the gigantic tub.
“What are you doing?” he asked, surprised by her actions.
“I am helping you bathe. I cannot leave you; you could fall and hurt yourself.”
“Maddie, now I must say this is not proper. I am naked, and you are nearly naked. I do not know if I can tolerate being in the tub with you as such.”
“Sorry honey, I am not leaving your side—propriety be damned. I have been without you too long, and if we cannot control ourselves in order for you to have a proper bath, then that doesn’t say much for us, does it? Besides, this tub is gigantic so get in now and I will help you bathe.”
He tilted his head, giving her an inscrutable look. Then, without another word, he allowed her to help him step down into the hot sudsy water.
A moan escaped from him, and Maddie smiled. She knew how wonderful it must feel to him. She picked up the large bathing sponge, squirted a huge dollop of soap on it, and lathered him up, starting with his arms. She scooted behind him and massaged the soapy sponge into his neck and back, once again, eliciting moans from him. She moved to his legs and feet, taking her time, kneading his muscles along the way. Then, she began the process of scrubbing his hair, massaging his head as she went. She shampooed it twice for good measure, and when she was finished, she helped him to his feet. Lastly, she took the handheld sprayer, and she thoroughly rinsed him from head to toe. She grabbed a thick, fluffy towel and wrapped him in its folds, drying him in the process.