The Commander's Slave (11 page)

Her sense of smell identified a
familiar scent at the same time as her eyes moved upward to a pair
of unsmiling orbs of blackest glass.

He quirked an eyebrow.

Tangus!

Chapter
Seven

“
How … I … what?” Words
deserted her. What was Tangus doing here?

He smiled but it was a gesture without
humor.

“
I see you had a safe
landing. Would you follow me?”

It was a request, but there was
nothing optional about the hand that gripped her arm and the pace
at which he led her through the forest. She was about to protest
her exhaustion when they happened across the first sign of
habitation, short barracks placed between large tree trunks in a
random pattern. Then a clearing, then more barracks, all made from
recycled spaceship parts. She looked up at the leafy canopy high
above them.

“
You’re hiding your camp,”
she said.

“
It won’t stop a thorough
sensor sweep,” he agreed, “but it will deceive a casual
survey.”

“
How many of you are
there?”

“
Four thousand here, the
other four on another part of this moon.”

“
How did I get here?” she
asked.

“
An interesting question.”
He gestured to a passing soldier who snapped to attention. “Get
Doctor Zehnda.”

“
Yes, commander.” And he
sped off into the trees.

“
But one I’m afraid will
have to wait.”

They stood in the shade in an
unnatural silence. Asha couldn’t think of a single thing to say,
and with a quick glance at Tangus’ rock-hard features, she was sure
that he wasn’t in any mood to listen.

The first glimmer of welcome she got
was when the doctor, approaching briskly, saw her and gave her a
warm smile.

“
My dear, I’m glad to see
you again. I still haven’t thanked you ….”

“
Get her cleaned up,
Doctor, and give her something to eat. Then keep her at your
facility till I call for her.”

“
Very good,
commander.”

With a curt nod in her direction, he
left. Asha’s bewildered gazes following his progress into the
dappled shade of the forest.

“
The facilities on this
moon are still a bit primitive,” the doctor told her, leading her
in a different direction, “but I think you’ll find them adequate.
The commander made sure that the infirmary was the first place up
and running in both camps, and I’m grateful that he always assigns
us top priority.”

And it showed. While the doctor’s
infirmary was also built of scrap material, the inside was
well-ordered and maintained. He led the way to a small bathroom and
showed her how the equipment worked, then, after producing another
set of fatigues for her to change into, he left.

Asha reflexively probed the walls for
some weakness but couldn’t find one. And there was only one exit,
back into the main treatment area. In any case, what would she
possibly achieve by escaping again? Tangus had already captured her
once when she had launched herself into the coldness of space. She
was sure he would capture her again if she tried disappearing into
the moon’s verdant forest.

Gratefully, she peeled off her
days-old clothing and soaped herself under the stream of hot water,
emerging ten minutes later feeling completely refreshed, her hair
tied back from her face with a clean bandage she found in the
bathroom.

Zehnda smiled as she entered,
indicating that she should put her soiled clothing in a nearby
sack, but she held onto the filmy two-piece suit she had originally
fled in. She would wash them herself, later.

“
Is there anything I can do
to help?” she finally asked.

“
Well, you
did
show some proficiency in first-aid,”
the doctor mused, “and I haven’t got around to recruiting an
assistant yet.”

The afternoon progressed steadily, and if it wasn’t for the
thought of Tangus hanging over her head, Asha would have felt
almost happy. There was a small but steady stream of visitors to
the infirmary, all with mostly minor injuries--sprains, bruises,
gashes, and a couple of broken limbs--and, as she assisted Zehnda,
they regarded her with steady, if curious, gazes. And she couldn’t
help thinking, is this the one? Was I bought to bear
this
man’s child?

But despite her discomfort, the doctor
was right. She had a latent talent for a firm but comforting touch
and wondered whether it meant she was actually engaged in the life
sciences.

“
Are you the only doctor
the Seti have?” Asha asked when they had stopped for a quick
lunch.

“
No. We do have another
doctor at the other camp, with his intern, but I’m afraid it’s just
the two of us.” He frowned. “When the Lasc Prein first began
attacking our planet, our first instinct was to land and administer
to the civilian population. We lost most of our doctors that way.
Then, as they began decimating the Fleets, we would transfer
medical staff to those in most need. With everything else going on,
the deployment of doctors wasn’t on anyone’s mind, and when the
Second Fleet finally managed to escape we discovered we only had
three doctors and two interns. In the three years since then, we’ve
lost a doctor and intern.”

“
And no one has been
trained?”

“
With what?” The doctor
shrugged. “We have only basic facilities in a challenging
environment. I know the commander has a plan,” he cast a quick
sideways glance at her, “but I believe we will need to think of
something else in the interim. While he has a long-term strategy in
mind, we seem to be out of short-term options.”

The words hung in Asha’s mind while
she worked on till evening. Dusk had began to fall before Daurent
came for her, and she followed him on unsteady feet.

“
It’s a lovely evening,”
she commented.

Daurent snorted. “You won’t say that
after a month.” He didn’t explain further.

They stopped outside what looked to
Asha to be a cargo bay door, and he knocked twice.

There was a creaking as the door slid
open, manually, and Tangus stood there.

With a nod, Daurent walked off into
the night, leaving her at the commander’s doorstep.

“
Come in.”

* * * *

Tangus couldn’t stay another moment.
If he did, he would have either taken her in front of the doctor or
wrung her slender neck. He needed distance, and fast.

Stalking off, he tracked down his
adjutant. He knew he was overworking the young officer. Nobody
deserved the chore of constant duty, not until they were captain of
a ship at least, but Daurent was tireless, smart ... and reminded
him of his favorite nephew. Now dead. His sister. Dead. His
parents. Dead. His world. Dead.

He gritted his teeth and continued
walking, chasing down Daurent in the second of their four crop
fields.

“
Progress?”

Daurent looked up from a chaotic
schematic. “We’ve planted the six species, arranged semi-randomly
as agreed. Astronomy points out that it does look vaguely natural,
but we won’t get the same kind of yield as from monoculture
fields.”

There wasn’t much need for an
Astronomy section on the moon, so they had been reclassified as
Xeno-Agriculture. They took to the change with acceptance.
Mostly.

“
It’ll do.”

“
This is really pushing the
envelope, commander. With so little light available on this moon,
and every ‘night’ lasting almost two days, it may take a while
before we even get our first crop.”

“
I thought you told me eight months back on the
Strike
.”

Daurent grinned. “Creative
license.”

“
Hmm. Well, I may hold you
to that. Speaking of which, are all the ships still
concealed?”

“
Sunk to the bottom of the
lagoon.”

“
The
Strike
?”

“
This
afternoon.”

Silence.

“
We retrieved the escape
pod,” Tangus commented.

“
Ah. And how is
Asha?”

“
She survived.”

“
Have you told her why you
did it?”

“
No.”

They fell into silence again, watching
the breeze ruffle the wild grass.

“
I’ll leave you to it,”
Tangus finally declared.

He took a walking tour of the camp,
evaluating what had already been done, and what was still left to
do. Four fields of crops. A half-finished dam to complement the
natural lake that supplied them with fresh water. Barracks for four
thousand men with basic medical facilities and a serviceable
canteen. Low but acceptable energy supply through use of
geothermals.

But what about a future? And what
about Asha?

It hadn’t taken them long to figure
out what had happened after the battle with the Lasc Prein scout
ship. At first, they had discounted the premature ejection of the
pod, until discussions with a conscious--and contrite--Tomben had
dictated otherwise. They had tracked the pod and tractored it
within two hours.

But Tangus thought long and hard about
his next actions. If he brought Asha back on the ship, she might
somehow engineer another escape attempt. He didn’t know how, but
she had managed fairly well with the first one, and he could tell
she was intelligent and resourceful, as well as beautiful. It was a
lethal combination.

But perhaps if he left her in the pod
and tractored it back to the moon with them...? Where could she go
with such rudimentary navigation and steering controls? According
to their calculations, they would reach their base in a little over
two and a half days. Maybe she’d learn a lesson about impulsive
actions. And he’d get some much-needed distance from the pull of
her body.

So that’s what he did. It was only
when he saw her again that he realized she could destroy his
fragile self-discipline with little more than an unsuspecting
look.

He growled as he stalked through the
forest. He needed to do something about that.

* * * *

“
Come in.”

It
was
a cargo bay, she realized. At the far
end, a window had been cut out of the metal and shuttered with
clear-panels and wood. Along one side ran a bench, now loaded with
instruments and books in neat piles. On the other side was a wide
bunk bed, the equivalent of the one on the Strike, and taking up
some floor space was something she recognized as a circular escape
hatch, reworked into a low table and flanked by two chairs. There
was food laid out on it.

Illumination came from a monitor on
the bench and a low-light lamp on the floor next to the
bed.

“
Please sit.”

There was so much to discuss, Asha did
not know where to begin. Her knees buckled as she sank into the
upholstery.

Tangus helped himself to some food. “I
hadn’t thought our uniforms would look so good on you,” he
remarked.

The illumination cast his face in
shadow so Asha couldn’t see the accompanying expression. The light
from the small lamp was a distracting glare in her eyes.

“
You’re wondering how you
landed here,” he continued. “Was it a coincidence? No.”

“
You were monitoring
me?”

“
For such valuable cargo,
we were doing much more than that.”

Understanding dawned, firing sparks of
indignation in her amber eyes. “You kept me trapped in that … that
prison for four whole days?”

“
It was barely more than
two days.”

“
I could have
suffocated!”

“
You didn’t.”

His calmness infuriated her. “I could
have ....” She searched for words to give meat to her argument.
Starved to death? No, she had had more than enough ration bars.
Died of thirst? No, she had plenty of water, as well. He had
already told her she had enough oxygen to breathe.

But the way he sat there, immovable,
while he told her of yet another way he had subdued her threw her
into fury. Without thinking, she got out of her chair and lunged at
him, taking him by surprise. But only for a moment.

With an oath, he threw her onto the
bed and followed, pinning her body beneath his.

“
How could you?” She tried
to free her hands, but he had them both in one firm
grasp.

“
I own you,” he
growled.

He had meant it only to teach her a
lesson, to prove that she was incapable of physically overpowering
him. But the writhing of her body beneath his, and the defiance in
her face, kicked his desire into full gear. Then he remembered the
features of the trousers she wore and his cock hardened
instantly.

Asha felt him and her eyes widened,
but before she could do a thing he was biting her breast through
the material of her shirt, the sharp nips catching at her nipple
and pebbling it. She cried out and, ashamed of herself even as she
did it, wantonly thrust it into his face.