Asarlai Wars 1: Warrior Wench (13 page)

“We are.” Deven gave a pointed look at Hrrru sitting in the pilot chair. “Mac isn’t happy.”

Vas gave the command to leave space dock. “Good. I really don’t care. Do we have any info as to where we’re going yet?”

Deven locked his arms behind his back in the almost military stance he often adopted. Even though he wouldn’t admit to being part of any military in his past. “The Qualian system. The job is simply drop, get paid, and leave. Planet is low-tech and lightly populated. We probably won’t even be noticed.”

Her shoulders loosened as the commands and orders that would get the ship out into open space flowed around her. The fight had helped some with stress relief, but not enough. She turned back to her second-in-command. “Have you had a chance to look at our information?” Bathshea, Hrrru, and Fron were carefully not paying attention to their conversation. Which meant of course they were dying to know what was going on.

“Actually, I wanted to give it to Gosta. Shouldn’t he be up here?”

“Gosta is ensconced in his lab. Which is why Fron has the nav seat. Figured getting him to try other positions would be a good idea.”

Deven’s eyes brightened when she mentioned Gosta’s lab. He pretended to be all about sex and fighting, but there was a secret book learner in that fine body. She waved him off. “Go down and find him. You can see if he can find anything on our information.”

“Captain?” Hrrru’s hushed voice broke Vas out of her thoughts as she watched Deven stride off the command deck.

“Yes, Hrrru?” The star field on her view screen had completely removed the image of the space station. Thank the gods they were in space again. With a shake to clear her head, Vas turned toward the small Welisch yeoman. The Welisch had been bred for generations to fight in tunnels by a long-lost conquering race. Or formerly conquering, since the Welisch had risen and overthrown the invaders. Complete genocide wasn’t pretty even when a race deserved it. Hrrru, like most of his people, appeared like a large pet: furry, soft spoken, and meek.

Vas figured he was one of the more dangerous beings on her ship.

“What’s wrong?”

Short gray fur shimmied as he shook his head as he spoke. “Not wrong. But why does master Gosta have Graylian puzzle on his work panel?” Hrrru held up the panel Gosta had been trying to show her before. The panel with the weird circles and lines.

“A what what?” Vas had been lost in thought before the yeoman’s call, but now she wondered if her ears were working.

“Graylian.” Hrrru glanced down. He didn’t enjoy the attention of others. “Small enclave of monks from home world. They live there now; but they came from the planet Achaeon. Chased out fifty years ago when the ruling prince overthrown.” He waved a paw in the air as he got off track. “This looks like one of their ancient puzzle texts. Where did master Gosta get it?”

Vas walked over and took the panel. Maybe it would make more sense to her now as opposed to when Gosta showed it to her before.

“It goes this way, Captain.”

The fact that she’d been holding it sideways and Hrrru had to correct her definitely indicated it hadn’t suddenly started to make sense. “Thank you, Hrrru.” She looked around the deck, but once her joy at leaving the space dock wore off, this part of the trip was rather dull. “I’ll take this down to Gosta and see if he knew he had a Graylian puzzle. Maybe he’s figured out what it means.”

Hrrru bobbed his head and went back to his screens.

“Bathie, you have the bridge. If you need anything call me. Or Deven. Or Gosta. We’ll all be down in Gosta’s hidey-hole. Again.”

The second trip down to Gosta’s lab was uneventful, even if Vas did walk slowly to see if somewhere along the way she’d be able to figure out the linking of all the items on the panel. Or Graylian puzzle as Hrrru called it. Yet another piece of the master puzzle currently taking over her life. However, she was afraid some of the pieces were missing.

Alas, figuring out whatever clues were hidden on the panel wasn’t going to happen in the short span of time between the command deck and Gosta’s lab.

This time the door to his lab hung open, but only a hair’s width. Deven’s low voice could be heard asking Gosta a series of intense questions. By the time that Vas thought about sneaking up to eavesdrop, she knew she was already too close.

“Come on in.” The tone in Deven’s voice told her he knew who was out there. He had been talking about something she would probably like to hear about with Gosta, and he wasn’t going to continue. Not only had her world become far more complicated as of late, it was also becoming more insubordinate.

With a sigh, Vas nudged open the door. “Hrrru had some questions about your panel. Or rather why master Gosta had a Graylian puzzle text on his log panel.” She handed the flat disk to Gosta. Deven tried to peer at it but Gosta was holding it close as if he’d never seen it before.

“What did he call it? Graylian?” He peered at it as if for the first time. “I have heard of them, you know, I have.” Shoving the panel into Deven’s hands, Gosta’s reed-like fingers dashed over his keyboard. An instant later Vas saw the fruits of his pilfered knowledge.

The large computer screen filled with text and images that continued to grow until Gosta finally forced it to stop. “Ah, Hrrru is a wise student to have picked out a Graylian puzzle.” An image grew larger on the screen. Brightly colored lines and squares overlay a star chart. Far more complex and intricate than the one Gosta had found, but the similarity was there.

“I certainly wouldn’t have seen it,” Vas admitted. “I see it now, but glancing at the two things? I don’t think so. Hrrru knew it immediately.”

Deven studied the two separate images with a frown. “But why would the pieces of our ship be parted out in such a ritualistic manner? Can you check again that none have been installed anywhere?”

The clicking that followed was as much from Gosta’s finger joints as the keyboard.

“No, see here,” Gosta said as he pointed to each dot on the screen. “None of them are installed. They stole our ship, took it apart, and left all the pieces in an obscure religious pattern in space.” He sighed and rubbed his long fingers across his face.

Deven rose and offered Vas his chair, when she refused, he stood as well. Vas could never figure out why her second-in-command would periodically pull out archaic chivalry on her.

“There has to be a connection. Vas, have you heard of the Graylians?”

“No, and I doubt a group of monks are going after me by hiding my ship in a puzzle. Besides, it’s not much of a trick. We can see all of the parts.” She waved at the screen.

Gosta leaned forward intently. “Unless that is the trick. In Graylian puzzles the obvious choice is usually the wrong one. Often the fatal one if my memory is accurate. But you are right, Captain. I cannot see them doing one of these this large, nor in space.” He scratched one long elbow with his first knee in thought. “They were only dangerous to their own people. Those who chose to follow the religious path, but failed. Their ritual sacrifices were…inventive. They became even more isolated when they fled from Achaeon.”

Deven frowned at Vas’s intake of breath. “Why did you react to Achaeon just now? You didn’t react to it before.”

Vas shrugged. She’d been trying not to respond, but the coincidence was too strong. “It just hit me. That’s where I went when I left last month. I was meeting a potential client about a job. Then I was talking to a seller about another base of operations. I might like a small planet on the side besides Home.” The faces before her were unfairly judgmental. “Nothing happened. It was a simple trading trip. I lost track of time. There were some parties of some sort.”

“You said it was a client.” Deven’s eyes narrowed. “And you never lose track of time. I think you swallowed a time piece as a child.”

Vas waved her hands and paced around the small room. “It was a client and some trading.…”

Deven grabbed her shoulder and forced her to look at him, then practically pushed her into the empty chair. Probably a good thing since the world was spinning and a dull drumming was threatening to take over her head.

“Vas? Look at me.”

Deven’s green eyes were enormous and dangerous. Why would she have someone so deadly near her? He shouldn’t be so close. “Away. Too close. You’re hurting my head.” Black dots obscured her vision as she tried to pull back out of his grasp.

“I’m not causing the pain, Vas—”

“Actually, maybe you are.” Gosta cut Deven off and Vas heard him tapping furiously at his computer keyboard. “She might be under a block. Something could be forcing her memories away from what happened. If so, any attempt to recover them will lead to pain or loss of consciousness.”

Even with her eyes obscured by clouds of pain, Vas knew Gosta was thrilling in the search of what was hurting her. Or killing her. Again. This was really getting old.

“My brain is going to explode.” Getting that sentence out was harder than the five weeks she’d been trapped on a desert island after a shuttle crash. “Make. It. Stop.”

She felt cool hands on her cheek. “Vas, you have to release my bracelets. Now. Let me in there. If someone put a block on you, it will kill you. You’ve triggered it and it will keep shutting down systems….” Deven’s voice dropped off as she opened her eyes. “Crap. You can’t see, can you?”

Her eyes burned. She felt them open but saw nothing. The noise of the room was overwhelming her, pushing her mind deeper into her skull. Like a windstorm, but only in her head.

“Vas!”

Hands, too tight, far too tight, were shaking her arms. “Let me sleep.” She struggled until she was sitting on the floor. The nice cool floor.

Cold metal pressed against her hand, and fingers fumbled her hand around the metal. Metal and hot skin. She tried to pull back, but the force of the other hand had her own pinned.

“Release the bracelets.”

The words were faint. She wanted to ignore them. Sleep sounded so good now. But maybe if she gave in, the voice and the hands and the noise would leave her alone. “Release.” She uttered the word, and then fled to a cocoon of darkness and silence.

Only to be rudely pulled back by a glowing presence in her mind. The unbearable light cleared and Deven’s voice flowed into her mind. Words, arcane, mystical, and dangerous, flowed through her head. Why did she know they were dangerous? She didn’t know how she knew, but she knew they were there to kill her. They chased her and pulled away the safe shelter. A part of her wailed as the words threatened to shatter her soul.

Chapter Thirteen

Vas fought for her life, fought against the words trying to swallow her entire self. They were inside her, in her mind, in her essence of being. They pulled and tore, ripping her away from the quiet peacefulness she sought.

As she fought to gather her tattered soul back around her, a slip in the onslaught of words appeared. A chink in the armor assaulting her mind. A moment of clarity.

The words weren’t the enemy.

Deven’s words were fighting the miasma that filled her mind. There were two parts. The most aggressive had laid there in wait since she had been attacked on Ghorlian Prime, the other was far older. Wait, she’d been on Achaeon, not Ghorlian…why would she have been on Ghorlian? The clarity faded…then rushed back in like sand filling a hole. She had been on Ghorlian. Making a deal for a huge job. One too good to be true. The bastards had taken her somewhere, but those memories were still shuttered. However, the fact that they existed, and that she had been kidnapped, those memories were free. Finally.

The freedom allowed her to help Deven’s presence fight the encroaching darkness. She reached out and pushed against the shadows, looking for more answers that her mind withheld from her. Nevertheless, even with Deven’s telepathic assistance she couldn’t push past the barricade in her head.

That her own mind had been used to block the truth from her almost pissed her off more than the idiots who tried to kill her with poison.

They took her ship, took her mind, then tried to take her life. They would have to invent new words for hell when she found the bastards behind this.

Disgusted at her own mind’s ability to thwart her, Vas drifted toward consciousness.

To find herself cradled in her second-in-command’s arms. She was surprised at how nice it felt. Not in a sexual way, but in a secure way. Although even in her weakened state, she had to admit it felt pretty damn good in a sexual way as well. Not enough for her to forget who he was, but good nonetheless.

She pushed Deven away. “I’m okay. At least my brain isn’t going to leak out of my ears anymore. And I know that something happened while I was gone.” As she said the words, she waited for that dark presence to swarm out of her mind and swallow her. A few seconds and nothing.

“I think, whatever it was, you broke it. I still don’t remember much. I went to Ghorlian Prime for a deal.” She frowned. Without knowing all the details it appeared that she had been an idiot for going to Ghorlian Prime. “This deal, whatever it was, obviously was nothing more than a trap.” She held up her hand when Gosta looked ready to launch into data gathering mode. “No, I don’t know where I went after that, or why they took me, or who they even are. Maybe you and your new toy can help me on that.”

Deven helped her up into the chair, and for once Vas didn’t fight him. That block in her head had been damn strong. If Deven had been a weaker example of his kind, she wouldn’t have gotten out.

“You don’t remember anything? Faces? What the deal was?” Deven frowned. “There was another block in there as well, one too old to be part of this. I couldn’t see anything about it, but I think the new block cracked the old one.”

Vas shuddered. She’d felt the edges of that older block, and she was pretty sure there was only one person and place it could have come from. Her older brother and her home world—a world where wind and sand storms could kill within minutes. However, he was dead and if she was lucky, so was her homeworld. “I don’t remember a damn thing about the trip. As for a second block, there’s not much we can do about it right now, is there?” At Deven’s reluctant shake of his head, she went back to the current issue. If there was something else lurking in her head from almost twenty-five years ago, it could stay where it was. “We move on to what is happening now. We have to assume that the attack on me, my memories, and the missing
Victorious
Dead
is all related somehow.” She waved toward the computer. “Is there any way that database can combine things? Maybe see connections that we’re missing?”

Gosta studied the screen he had up for a few seconds. “I don’t know. Maybe with it I can at least fill in the pieces more.” He finally turned toward her, worry unlike any she’d ever seen made his thin face skeletal. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

Vas started to bravado it off, but stopped. “I’m going to be all right, Gosta. I’ve come out of worse scrapes.”

“But not like this.” His deep brown eyes were almost watery. “I’ve never seen anything go after you like this. You’ve always been the rock, the one thing in this company that stays the same.”

For an instant Vas thought he was going to say
in this world
. He was clearly terrified. She’d always thought of her crew as her family, but she never thought about them thinking of her the same way.

“I have you and Deven, and this whole damn crew looking out for me. Whoever those assholes are, they don’t stand a chance.”

Gosta met her eyes with his own worried ones for a few minutes more, and then nodded. “Agreed. Whoever is doing this are assholes.” Swearing was rare for him and the term sounded awkward. “And I will help you find new evil things to do to them when we find them.” He paused, and reached up to a small shelf above his desk. “I was going to wait to give you this. It is not fully tested. But it might come in handy at some point.” His face flared red in embarrassment as he tumbled a small, metal sphere into her palm.

“What is it?”

Gosta fluttered his hands and turned back to his monitor. “In theory it is an EM weapons buster. I have not named it yet. It could be used to temporarily disable blasters. Up to a class three, I would think.”

Flashing him a smile, she pocketed the ball. Inventing things was his hobby, and about half of the gadgets even worked. Just not always as intended. She wasn’t sure what good something that would wipe out her own weapons as well as her enemies could be, but she’d keep it.

“Thank you, Gosta. Okay, enough about me, did you two find out anything about our cargo or destination?” She poked Deven. “You know how I hate going into these things blind. Pretend I didn’t almost die again and fill me in.”

Deven went to the empty room next door to get another chair. He waited until he’d sat before finally turning to Gosta.

“We found what I think the seller wants us to find. It’s nothing more than exotic silks, but they were from poisonous silk worms. Thus being used to make celebration robes for the Floxian magistrates.”

“Which are illegal since at least half of the magistrates die.” Vas rolled her eyes. “I say if they want to practice an odd way of population control through poisoned garments and their religious caste, more power to them.” She rubbed the back of her neck; it felt like someone had shortened all of her neck muscles. “There’s no danger to us from this fabric, is there?”

Gosta spun back to his data screen and happily clicked away. “No, Captain. The fabric has to be treated before the poisons become active. There’s no threat to any of us.”

She stretched as she got out of her chair. It wasn’t just her neck; every muscle in her body suddenly felt two inches too short. “Mac and Jakiin are just damn lucky this one looks clean.”

“You look like hell.” Deven rose as well. “Your body is having a reaction to breaking down that command on your mind.”

“Wonderful. Then if that’s the case, I’m going to my quarters and trying to sleep. Deven, you have the bridge.” She didn’t know if it was because it was getting worse, or because he said it would get worse, but each step toward the door was like fighting through a swamp.

“Actually, Gosta, could you take the bridge?” He said from behind her.

“Deven—”

“You need something now or you’ll not even be able to move in the morning. Gosta can babysit for a bit.”

Deven took her elbow. Annoyingly, it seemed to be too much trouble to remove his hand. Which pissed her off even more. How could she control her crew if she couldn’t even control her body?

“And don’t even try to say you’re fine.”

Gosta came up behind them before she could come up with a response.

“I’d listen to him, Captain. He does know more about this sort of thing than even I.”

Vas let the two of them lead her into the lift as if she were a thousand-year-old Ilerian godmother. “You two are worse than two little old ladies. Deven, you can escort me to my quarters. Gosta, you have the bridge.” She glared at both of them. “But it was my idea.”

Neither said anything but Gosta got off the lift in record speed when they hit the command level.

Deven stayed silent as they made their way to her quarters. Wise move for him.

“Now what?” she finally asked when they got to the door.

“I’ll give you the best massage you’ve ever had.” The look in Deven’s eyes was definitely one that would do well in a brothel.

Vas backed into her door. “What the hell? Deven, this isn’t the time—”

“It’s the only thing that’s going to work. Your mind and body are connected. Everyone’s is. Your mind just had a catastrophic event take place, and now all those chemicals are rushing around your body kicking the hell out of it. The adrenaline release alone could make you immobile for days.”

She tried to stretch to prove him wrong, but her arms felt like she’d been lifting heavy weights for a week straight. Thing was, she wasn’t sure if she trusted herself if he started in on her body. She may not recall what had really happened during her month hiatus, but she was sure no sex had been involved.

However, she was damned if she was going to let recent events ruin her resolve where this sexy hunk of telepath was concerned. No teke had ever been in her bed and she was keeping it that way. She wished she could say the same about none ever being in her head, but she did not intend to let that number go up either.

However, he was also right about the massage. Just standing here was turning her back into a solid lump of metal.

“Okay.” She put one hand on his chest as he grinned and started forward. “But nothing happens, do you hear me? You just make me relax, but keep all your other body parts to yourself.”

He nodded and pushed open her door. “Whatever you say, Captain.”

She ignored his look and shuffled to her bed. With an uncommon bit of self-consciousness, she stripped off her flight shirt and pants and eased herself on top of her bed. There was no reason for her to be self-conscious. She’d been naked in front of more than a few men, including Deven, during battles. Plus this was just a massage.

The minute his strong fingers touched her body, she knew why she felt awkward. If her body hadn’t been tight enough to snap, she would have been sorely tempted to roll over and grab him. As it was it took a few minutes to force her body to not react to the long movements those hands were making. He carefully soothed her entire back, and then started in on her neck, deftly separating out the muscles and relaxing them one by one.

Why the hell was this man a merc? He could make fifty times what he made in a year doing just this, even more if he added sex.

A soothing haze filled her mind. As she relaxed further, her body began responding to his hands in a very different manner. Rolling over, she couldn’t think of why she wouldn’t want this man in her bed.

Reaching up and pulling him close, she kissed him and tried to return the sensations she was feeling. Deven held back, then leaned in and returned the kiss with an intensity she’d never felt before. Suddenly his hands were everywhere at once, and where his hands weren’t his lips were. Her body had been almost too stiff to move moments before but now it needed to move, and it needed Deven.

Ripping his clothes off, Vas moved with an intensity unusual even for her to push Deven onto the bed beneath her. There was still a vague haze around everything, but it was soothing, not threatening. All she knew was that she needed him. She needed him inside her.

His hands went there first, teasing and taunting her, all the while the gray fog soothed any other thoughts. Pushing his hands aside, she climbed on top of him, her mind and body needing him more than she could believe. After a few moments, he flipped her beneath him, his eyes searching for something as his mind kissed hers. Their minds merged into one in an even more passionate reaction than the one taking place between their bodies. The climax was so intense that Vas screamed once, and then lost consciousness in a comforting world of gray fog.