Clan and Crown (24 page)

Clajak snorted and backed off. Egilka
was struggling for reasons of his own, some of which the Dramok
knew. Clajak was sure Egilka would clan with him, whether it was
now or at their official ceremony on Kalquor. It hurt that the
Imdiko was shutting down again, but it felt prudent to give him a
few minutes of space. Or a few days, if necessary.

I know what’s behind that
aloof exterior. I know what’s behind that protective wall you’ve
put up. I know you will let me in. So I’ll play along until you
peek out again.

Instead of pushing his suit, Clajak
joked back. “Captain Adraf might let you have the stasis device as
a clanning present. Or he might charge for it along with the
ransom.”

Egilka’s eyes widened. “Mother of All.
Would you believe I forgot all about the Adrafs? Are we going to
pick them up?”

Clajak shook his head. “I can’t fly
this fucking thing. It takes a full crew. I’ll com the captain a
message, tell him he can turn around and take his ship
back.”

Egilka considered. “Will he take us
prisoner again and demand ransom?”

“Of course. They’re a practical people,
those Adrafs.” Clajak grinned. “I would think a man of science
would appreciate such.”

The Imdiko snickered and ducked his
head. “I know, I know. Duty-bound Egilka. As you said, ‘he had work
to do’. I’m no fun to be around.”

Clajak took his lover’s hands and held
them between his own. “I think you can be cured of that. What’s
more, I know you’re the perfect man for me.” He sobered and gave
Egilka a searching look. “You are, you know? I wish I could
convince you of that.”

Egilka swallowed. “You won’t allow me
to remain boring, will you? My routine is going to get blown all to
hell with you around. I guess happiness comes at a price though. I
love you, damn it. I love you ... my Dramok.”

With that utterance, they were
clanmates. Clajak’s heart swelled so full he thought it might
explode. Egilka had not come to Clajak out of duty or because of an
arrangement made to guarantee the Dramok a stable and worthy
clanmate to rule at his side. Egilka had come to him because he
loved him. It was better than any fantasy the prince had ever
entertained.

Clajak let go of Egilka’s hands to cup
his Imdiko’s face. He kissed him long and deep, a celebration of
the union they both wanted.

When the kiss ended, Clajak said, “I
will do my best to ensure you don’t regret this. No promises,
though.” He winked.

Egilka snorted and gave him a
half-hearted shove. “At least I’ll never get bored, my
Dramok.”

Clajak gave him his most mischievous
smile. “I won’t have to work hard to prove you right on that
account, my clanmate.”

Book 2: Bevau

Chapter 11

5 years later

The sun was a vicious spotlight on a
sweltering summer day when Clajak and Egilka accompanied Emperor
Yuder to the newest Kalquorian ground forces’ training camp. The
Eastern Seaboard Training Camp was a state-of-the-art military
facility. Yuder had been champing at the bit to tour it. He’d
invited the two princes along the week before, his expression
saying he expected to be turned down.

Clajak agreed for himself and Egilka
with great enthusiasm. The shock on Yuder’s face had been worth
Egilka’s later private complaints that he had work to
do.

“I don’t appreciate you accepting this
waste of time on my behalf, Clajak,” the Imdiko prince had
scowled.

Five years of clanship to Clajak had
loosened Egilka up in many respects. Last-minute encroaching upon
his precious research schedule had not been one of those areas,
however.

“Waste of time, my Imdiko?” Clajak gave
him a disapproving glare. “This new training camp is a big deal to
our forces. Haven’t you seen the amount of funding that went into
this facility? I guarantee you the Royal Council has, and they’ll
want an accounting of where all that money went.”

Egilka’s narrowed gaze told Clajak he
wasn’t fooled by his speech in the least. “What are you really up
to?”

The Dramok didn’t bother to be
embarrassed for being figured out. Most of the time he felt Egilka
knew him better than he knew himself.

He settled into typical smiling charm.
“Tell me, Egilka, how do you feel about the Nobek suitors we’ve had
since Henbo failed to live up to our expectations?”

The Imdiko made a rude noise. It more
than summed up Clajak’s feelings for the candidates who had put
themselves forward as the potential third to their clan.

“We should think about leaving it to
your parents to arrange a match,” Egilka griped. “After all, they
found you such a stellar Imdiko.”

Clajak laughed, pulling his grouchy
clanmate close. “Indeed they did. But I like the thought of you and
I picking out a Nobek for ourselves. Who knew with so many of that
breed running around that we’d have such a hard time of
it?”

“You’re hoping to find someone
worthwhile on this jaunt?” Egilka considered the idea.

“It’s a training camp. That means Nobek
recruits, soldiers, and officers as far as the eye can see. Honed
men running around in droves, training their muscled bodies and
minds for battle, probably nearly naked in the heat of
summer—”

“I can take a day off,” came Egilka’s
sudden capitulation.

“I knew I could count on your duty to
the Empire.”

The day of their tour dawned hot all
right, and muggy besides. Clajak had given decorum only a passing
thought after feeling the day’s heat on his home’s balcony. Even
the seaside’s cooling breezes held more humidity than was
comfortable. With the training camp several miles inland, the
Dramok had known the day would be oppressive. He had dressed
accordingly in a tank top and shorts made of light, breathable
fabric.

Naturally, his father and Imdiko had
worn official garb, looking down their patrician noses at the far
too casual Clajak. Yuder sweated freely in his armored Global
Security formsuit, though it had no sleeves. Egilka’s short-sleeved
shirt and summer weight trousers were no doubt cooler, but
perspiration still ran down his face. If they were miserable from
their wardrobe choices, neither man expressed it. They bore the
heat with a stoicism that made them more like father and son than
Clajak and Yuder ever seemed to be. The one difference was that
Egilka sucked down water pouches like a man traversing a desert
instead of the grassy, tree-shaded hills of the training
camp.

The two princes followed the emperor
and High Commander Nobek Urb throughout the newly commissioned
facility after a brief orientation. The Eastern Seaboard facility
was not just a training camp. It was where the most elite warriors
bound to be officers were sent to hone their already impressive
skills. These men were the absolute best of the best to come
through basic training and their first five years of military
service. They were to become the Empire’s front line, the first
into battle and the last to leave.

It didn’t look much different from the
other training camps Clajak had seen, except that the men were not
provided dorms to sleep in. Instead they were expected to construct
their own shelters out of the natural materials they found. One
section of the camp looked like a refugee camp with its tents,
lean-tos, and cobbled together shelters. The only buildings were
the ones designated for administrative personnel offices, officer
quarters, and the large hospital.

Clajak paid little attention to the
simulated war fields, ballistics training bunkers, or combat
theaters. His attention was all for the bloodthirsty Nobeks
screaming their way into virtual reality battles, their feral faces
both terrifying and compelling, their muscles veined, their bodies
frenzied motion as they took on pretended enemies.

Only one section had turned even a
small portion of the Dramok’s attention from the deliciously virile
Nobek soldiers. He had been impressed with the Intergalactic Enemy
installation within the base. A Tragoom tribal village and even a
simulated Bi’isil city had been built for the trainees to practice
maneuvers in unfriendly surroundings. The settings were supposedly
accurate to the smallest detail.

Clajak was even more impressed with his
surroundings on the training fields. There a large number of mostly
Nobek and a few Dramok soldiers ran obstacle courses and exercised.
As he’d promised Egilka, the men were barely clothed due to the
heat. Shorts briefer than Clajak’s mid-thigh pair were the order of
the day. Dark brown bodies gleamed from a layer of perspiration,
making the soldiers’ muscled physiques even more enticing to roam
the gaze over. Clajak glutted on the eye candy.

Egilka grinned at him and leaned close
to whisper. “Can I have a Nobek harem, my Dramok? I see so many
excellent candidates.”

Clajak tamped down his answering
snicker. “Behave yourself, you shameless thing. We’re supposed to
narrow our options to one clanmate. My mother is getting rather
vocal in her opinion we need our third.”

A troop of soldiers ran past them.
Egilka watched as their butts, encased in form-fitting shorts,
flexed enticingly. “What’s the hurry? Narpok still has years of
fertility testing to get through. It’s not like we’ll be clanning
her next year.”

Yuder glanced back at them with a
little frown creasing his severe face. Clajak and Egilka quieted
and pretended to attend to High Commander Urb’s travelogue. Giving
them a warning look, Yuder turned back to the officer.

They’d gone a few feet more when a
great noise erupted from a section of roped-off field ahead.
Clajak’s hair rose at the sound of howls and screams that sounded
like rabid animals fighting. He instinctively felt for his blade on
his belt as Egilka crowded close to him.

Urb grinned at his guests. The
battle-scarred soldier looked like a hungry zibger ready to tear
the bowels out of some particularly tasty prey. “It sounds like
High Commander Bevau has them fighting hand to hand. He turns out
the fiercest fighters in the whole military. It’s quite the
display, my emperor, my princes.”

Yuder’s face lit with eagerness. “Let
us see your best fighters by all means.”

They went to the roped-off fighting
field where a sea of men heaved mightily against each other. Like
the rest of the trainees, most wore fanny-hugging shorts. Several
had lost even that small amount of covering in the melee. Shreds of
fabric were ground into the trampled grass as the combatants beat
the hell out of each other.

Blood had already begun to flow. Those
who had been injured didn’t seem to notice. Fists swung and
grappled. Feet kicked. Fangs flashed. Bodies like living brick
walls thudded hard against each other. It was an amazing display of
raw, savage power. Clajak’s cocks got hard looking at all that
masculine meat straining for supremacy.

Egilka nudged him. The Dramok glanced
at his clanmate to see a bright grin flashing on his dark, lean
face. Clajak returned the happy leer. He glanced over Egilka’s
shoulder at the group of medics standing by, waiting to treat those
soldiers injured enough to need it.

Egilka looked to see what had gotten
Clajak’s attention. He turned back to the Dramok and punched him
hard on the shoulder.

“Hey!” Clajak rubbed where Egilka had
tagged him in a not-so-gentle fashion. “What?”

“Eyes on the Nobeks. Stop looking at
the Imdikos.”

Clajak rolled his eyes. As if those
others could hold a candle to Egilka. He slung his arm around his
clanmate’s waist. “Possessive bastard.”

“Damned right I am.”

They went back to watching the melee.
Some of the combatants were being bested by their opponents. Blood
shed in copious amounts now. As Clajak looked on, he saw one man go
down and not get back up.

He looked to the medics again. He
thought that though the injured man needed help, it would not do
for the predominantly Imdiko staff to step into the violent
exercise.

One man moved towards the combatants on
the fighting field. He was no medic ... and certainly not an
Imdiko. Clajak forgot how to breathe.

The man’s countenance was as savage as
any Nobek, complete with lips wrinkling back from fangs. Yet the
man heading fearless into the fight was the most perfect specimen
of masculine beauty Clajak had ever seen. Long black hair rippled
down a broad back. It fell forward to frame a face so flawlessly
formed that it looked unreal. Everything, from the man’s square jaw
to his sculpted body, was a faultless work of art. The sweat that
set a glowing sheen on his unblemished mocha-colored skin
highlighted the swells of carved muscle. Little was hidden from
Clajak’s rapt stare, as the stunning specimen wore the same brief
shorts as the warriors he waded through. The Nobek fell into the
happy medium of Egilka’s long-limbed grace and Clajak’s bulkier
build. If he had any defect, the prince couldn’t see it.

Clajak heard his Imdiko’s intake of
breath. He didn’t have to check to see if Egilka had sighted the
godlike being shoving aside fighters as he worked his way to the
fallen soldier. The Nobek eclipsed everything around
him.