It was like nothing he could ever have imagined. It was the most complete immersion in orgasm on every level—physical, mental and even spiritual—that he had ever experienced. And he wanted more. So much more. He wanted that every time. Every day. It was like a new drug that, once tasted, was always craved. And the drug was love in its purest, rarest form.
Distilled perfection.
Agnor held Bet as she gasped along with him. Gradually, their breathing quieted, as they came back to themselves.
“You are amazing, Bet,” Agnor praised her when he could speak again.
She snuggled against his chest, her head resting on his shoulder. “You too, Ag.”
She sounded adorably worn out. He roused her briefly to cycle through the cleaning pulses again, amused by the way she let him take charge.
She seemed to revive as soon as they were both clean again, and his thoughts turned to the big bed waiting for them in his quarters. But, no. He had to resist the temptation to find that nirvana of pleasure again.
He wished he could just take this shift off and spend it in bed with her, but duty called, and he was the captain. There were things only he could deal with. Just as there were responsibilities in the cargo hold that only Bet could see to. Most especially the very rare collection of spallings, control scepters and other bits of Ki that only Bet seemed both capable and willing to deal with.
Reality came back to him with a crash. They both had responsibilities, much as he’d rather just make the world go away and spend time with her. He carried her into his chamber and placed her on the bed—seating her on the side of it, not lying in the center, spread eagled, the way he really wanted her. He was trying hard to be good. The ship needed them both, he reminded himself. There would be time for more divine sex later.
But before they each left for their duty stations, Agnor had one thing he wanted to make perfectly clear. They dressed quietly, each a little wrung out from the emotional storm of their lovemaking, the admissions of love and the aftermath. By the time Agnor was fully dressed, he’d regained a bit of his equilibrium. He took Bet by the hand and urged her to sit beside him on the edge of the bed.
“I meant every word of what I said before,” he began, wanting to solidify the promises they had made in passion, now, when they were both calmer and thinking more clearly. “I love you.”
“Me too,” she replied in a quiet tone he noticed she used when she was feeling uncertain.
It enchanted him that she could still feel shy around him. Perhaps she would never outgrow that habitual timidity—and he found he didn’t mind that at all. She was who she was, and he loved every facet of her being.
“That being the case…” Agnor slid off the edge of the bed to kneel at her feet. “Would you do me the great honor of marrying me?”
Her little sob of joy rang through his heart as a few precious tears flowed down her face.
“Yes,” she choked out. “Oh, yes.”
She reached for him, and he reclaimed his seat on the bed, next to her, taking her into his arms and squeezing her tight while she clung to him. He stroked her hair, happiness filling him.
“I want the whole galaxy to know how much I love you, Bet. I want us to be partners in life and love for the rest of our days,” he declared softly, loving the feel of her in his arms. Loving her.
“I want that too,” she finally managed to say as her tears subsided. “I love you so much.”
And then, she reached up and kissed him, putting all the love in her heart into the kiss that stole his breath.
* * *
Agnor was in regular contact with some of the stronger telepathic minds on Geneth Mar. His telepathy had taken another giant leap in strength when the energy waves had hit them above Ipson. Everyone on the ship had gained power from the experience, much like what had happened on the
Circe
during the battle with Jana’s armada.
Since then, however, with Ki’s influence and Bet’s ability to direct the power of the spallings, they’d avoided any more uncontrolled explosions. Everybody had been spared further upset.
The new ability to contact multiple minds on Geneth Mar, and many more on the planets they passed closer to, helped tremendously in the planning and disposition of the enemy fleet. Rather than escort a flotilla of former enemy ships deep into the heart of Council space, they were able to divide the ships into much smaller groups, dropping them at various points along their course for examination.
Specialists had been dispatched from Geneth Mar and also taken from among the populations of the planets they passed, to interview the crews and grant them asylum or passage to wherever they wished to go. Many of the non-Talented foot soldiers, for example, wanted to return to their planets of origin. The Council was already making plans to help those people repatriate, though it would take some time to get them back home. In the meantime, small groups were cautiously given quarters on various Council worlds and were monitored closely, though not imprisoned.
The Talents pretty much uniformly applied for political asylum. They didn’t want to go anywhere near the collective. Not for a good long while.
Most of those poor souls had lost years of their lives, unable to remember what they had done or where they had been. Some had been taken as children by the collective and were now close to retirement age, with no recollection of what had come in between.
Counselors were found for those sad cases, and all freed Talents were given at least some therapy to help them deal with what had been done to them. Each Talented mind was examined in the process and a few were found that had actually volunteered for the collective. Some were power hungry, and remained so.
Some had actively participated in atrocities. Those few were arrested and detained while cases were built against them. Trials would commence as soon as possible.
Agnor supervised all as they made their way slowly home. He also quietly retested each member of his crew, assigning new designations for them all and committing those who were having trouble with their new abilities to extra training.
By the time they arrived back home, they had only a few of the surrendered ships with them, and the process had been streamlined. Agnor and his crew were able to leave that work to others while they made their report directly to the Council.
Bet was in sole charge of the very precious cargo they were to deliver, and she wouldn’t allow any of the usual cargo handling equipment near the two containers. Instead, she moved them using her Talent alone. Agnor had discussed it with her beforehand. In addition to being safer for such delicate treasures, now that Bet’s ability was off the charts as far as strength and reliability went, it would also speak very eloquently about her standing.
Bet may have left Geneth Mar inconspicuously, but she was going to arrive back home in style. Agnor was going to see to it. All those people who had underestimated or overlooked her all these years were about to get a very rude awakening.
He even had some covert plans for Bet’s reunion with her aunt. She’d told him more about her home life and upbringing over the past days, and Agnor knew there were unresolved emotional issues surrounding Bet’s Aunt Petra and the way Bet had been raised. Agnor couldn’t wait to see how the older woman responded to this new, confident and strong Bet. He planned to have a front row seat to see how it all played out—and to be there to support Bet, should she need him.
He thought maybe, at this point, she was plenty strong enough to handle anything her aunt could dish out, but he’d be there, just to make sure. He knew it was important for her to come to terms with her past so they could move forward into the future…together.
Her Talents had increased so much over the past weeks. Her new power was almost incalculable. Like his own. They’d changed on a fundamental level with all that had happened, and the steady diet of energizing, fulfilling-on-every-level sex had only added to their abilities.
There was no down time anymore. If one or the other of them were feeling fatigued from using their vastly expanded Talents, a sharing of love would set them right in no time flat. In fact, it made them even stronger.
Which only went to prove a hypothesis Agnor had held for a long time… Love truly was the strongest power in the universe.
Bet’s ability to read minds would remain a closely guarded secret for now. Even if the collective was no longer the force it had once been, her Talent might yet come in handy. Agnor and Bet would tell only the highest levels of their government about her mind-reading skills. In the meantime, her telekinetic abilities were enough to wow anyone. He couldn’t wait to see the reaction to her no-longer-hidden Talent.
When they docked at the orbital station, much to Agnor’s surprise, Micah, Jeri, Jana and Darak were there, waiting for them. Agnor was hugged and clapped on the back by all four. When he introduced Bet as his fiancée, he received another round of hugs and congratulations, as did Bet.
The foursome had arranged a private room for a quick debrief before Agnor and his crew went before the Council. Since Micah and Jeri were two of the most powerful Talents in the galaxy, they got pretty much anything they asked for. In this case, a few hours with Agnor before he had to report to the Council seemed a small enough concession.
Bet was shy with his friends at first, but Agnor kept her near as they sat in a comfortable lounge. Each couple had been given a plush couch placed around a low, central table that had been laden with all sorts of finger foods. Agnor snagged a plate and loaded it with things he thought Bet would like, sharing the plate with her as they sat side by side. The others were relaxed, which helped Bet relax too. Once they’d caught up on personal stuff and eaten a bit, Micah got down to business.
“What everyone wants to know is, how in the world did you manage to capture so many enemy ships?” Micah asked bluntly.
Agnor had ‘pathed some of this already to Micah and several other strong minds, but he had known the real explanation couldn’t be made until they were face to face. He motioned to Bet, and she took the wrapped spalling he’d asked her to carry out of her bag. Gently, she removed the fiber covering, though she didn’t touch the crystal itself with her bare hands. They both knew by now that, if she touched the crystal directly, her consciousness would be transported to that galactic plane on which she’d operated to disable all those ships.
“When we got to Ipson, this is what we found,” Agnor said quietly while everyone seemed mesmerized by the sparkle of the large, double-terminated crystal. “It is a small part of Ki. What it calls a spalling. Ki gifted this to us, along with others like it in different sizes, once we had proved ourselves to it.”
“How did you manage that?” Jeri whispered, still staring at the crystal.
“Bet made first contact simply by lowering her shields. Nobody knew this before we started our journey, and I don’t intend for any but the highest in our government to know now, but Bet has a very powerful and accurate mind-reading Talent. She was able to read, and be read by, Ki. That paved our way.”
Darak’s shrewd eyes shifted from the glittering crystal to Bet. Darak looked her over, as if appraising her, and Agnor bristled a bit. Darak may be happily mated now to Jana, but he had always been a rogue and inveterate ladies man.
“You are a lady of hidden Talents,” Darak said, tipping his imaginary hat to her as Bet blushed.
“Once Ki had accepted us, I was allowed to make direct contact via telepathy. I don’t know how long it took…” Agnor trailed off, still not sure how long he had stood there in the crystal cavern, communing with Ki.
“It was over an hour,” Bet supplied quietly. “Closer to two or three, maybe. I lost track of time too, but Lara, the priestess, came to get me eventually. I sat with her for a while, watching you from the antechamber.”
Agnor covered her free hand with his, squeezing lightly.
“I didn’t know that,”
he ‘pathed privately to her.
“Thank you for watching over me, my love.”
“Priestess?” Jana asked, unknowingly interrupting their private moment. “There are people on Ipson that serve this…Ki?” She looked upset by the idea, but Bet was quick to set her straight.
“The people on Ipson have no Talent. That’s the way Ki wants it. Ki promotes order in all things and helps others find it, if they wish it, but Ki has no desire to enslave Talented minds,” Bet told them. “It was Ki that disabled the collective’s control crystals, working through the spallings and through me.” Bet blushed a bit more. “That’s what allowed me to retune the crystals in the enemy ships and free the trapped minds. Ki wanted them free. Ki never intended for its order to be imposed unwillingly on any human mind.”
“And Ki is expanding,” Agnor put in, knowing they had to hear this. “The system containing Ipson has two other planets and a moon that are now seeded with old, shattered control crystals. Two collective captains died in the process. This was before Ki and Bet had worked out how to do the retuning without overloading the crystals to the point where they exploded.”
Jana looked shaken. “I’m glad you figured that one out.” Her own permanently attached crystals sparkled in the light of the room.
“Ki felt bad about the death of those two captains. Ki wishes to name the two planets after them, in their memory.”
“This Ki is sentient? It has feelings?” Micah asked shrewdly.
“It’s not exactly the way we comprehend emotion,” Agnor explained. “Ki is timeless. It doesn’t age, though it does understand time’s passage as it relates to its surroundings and the priests that live on Ipson. I think it started communicating with the people on Ipson as a way to learn about our species, even though it’s hard for Ki to commune with an un-Talented mind.”
“Ki implied that it had learned the danger it posed to Talents at some time in the past. It sensed its order could be imposed on weaker minds, and luckily, it believes that is a bad thing. Order is what Ki is all about. It likes to encourage it in other beings, but only if it is welcome. Ki seems to understand that not all beings are—or even want to be—as well-ordered as it is.”