Dana Cartwright Mission 3: Kal-King (5 page)

As he waited for the deck officers to clear the bay, he rubbed the kneecap. It’d been years since that leg pained him. Why had it suddenly flared up again? Why now?

He shrugged it off, focusing on the piloting controls.

Although his eyes were adjusting to the darkness, Janz Macao leaned his back hard against the rock wall, as far from the ledge as he could. Terrified of heights and shivering from the cold, he wept and softly muttered again, “No,” shutting tightly his eyes, willing his mind to reach out to Dec, but to no avail.

Instead, he heard a voice…a gentle whisper. “Come down?” it tempted.

Macao did not answer.
 

Shalee, help me?
He mentally called to his life-mate.
Shalee, I’m afraid of heights. I’ve always been acrophobic. Kieran used to tease me. I’d still be on that cliff at Forever Pointe if he hadn’t pushed me. I’m afraid, my dear one. Shalee?

Jump, my darling. I am with you. Jump.

No…

Jump…

He made two attempts, but couldn’t do it.

“Come down,” the gentle voice whispered, and tempted again.

Shalee repeated in his mind,
Jump, my beloved.

Macao exhaled, took three long strides, and went over the edge.

Janz fell, feet first, about three stories, arms flailing, and plunged deep into a bubbling pool, making a massive splash. He struggled back to the surface, gasping for air, thrashing about until he regained composure and could tread water.

The gentle voice whispered, “Well, that’s certainly one way to come down.”

Macao opened his eyes and saw four silhouettes reaching out hands to him.

“It’s warm,” he mumbled.

“Natural hot springs,” one answered.

“And tastes funny.”

“Has lithium in it. Very therapeutic if you have aches and pains.”

“Oh, I’ve got those,” Macao answered. He swam to the edge and accepted the helping hands.

They guided him to a fire pit and he got his first look at the sokem — the imprisoned ones.

One skeletal man, with deep-set eyes and gray, tangled hair down to his pitifully thin shoulders, gave him a blanket and urged, in that same soft, tempting voice, “Take off your wet clothes and wrap yourself in this.”

He disrobed quickly, tying the blanket like a kilt, which drew their stares.

“Lieutenant Schaffer?” Janz mouthed in recognition. “You were an exchange officer aboard
Navitor
, right?”

The man with the soft voice, tallest of the four Enturians, nodded his head. “And you are Captain Macao of
Lancer
.”

“I was… You’ve been missing for years.”

All four of the sokem nodded.
 

“We long ago gave up hoping someone would come looking for us.”
 

Another of the sokem whispered, “Begging your pardon, Captain, but I’m guessing you’re not here to rescue us.”

Janz Macao surveyed their disappointed faces. “Actually,” he offered, “that’s the plan.”
 

CHAPTER SIX

His name was Hawk and he never let you forget it. The Tresgan towered over most, like a bird of prey, obsidian eyes drilling deep into your soul if you dared to look up into his grizzled, humanoid features. Having him heading toward her café table made the hot chocolate in the bottom of her cup curdle, as Dana Cartwright nervously gulped down the last of it.

At places like T-town, and other rat infested asteroid-sized planets, orbiting a scalding sun, creatures like this Tresgan abounded. Like vultures, or buzzards, they congregated around salvage and mining planets, making a sizable living trading electronics, metals, ships, and even contraband.

Since becoming somewhat of a privateer herself, Cartwright did everything in her power to avoid them and they avoided her. She cultivated a reputation of being a loner, doing her best to keep it that way, preferring anonymity. Hawk wasn’t giving her that option.

At first glance, the Tresgan looked to be a macabre figure; tangled, jet hair snaking out from the hood of his dark, fabric, solar cloak, which obscured much of his other features. Dana deliberately sank deeper into the barrel bar chair at the café table, hoping to avoid an encounter, because she was just grumpy enough to cause a scene.

“Captain, I would speak with you,” Hawk said, loudly enough for half the galaxy to hear.

It took all her strength not to bolt for the escape hatch right then. However, he’d called her by her rank, at least, a clear sign of respect, which was totally uncharacteristic for a Tresgan addressing an Earther.
 

In most of the outer colonies and non-allied sectors, Earth natives were the minority — tolerated, like exotic pets and robot-servants. Hawk knew her rank; good bet he also knew her full name, Star Service history, her dire situation, maybe even her pilot’s license number.

Fane!
Dana swore under her breath.

Of course, she knew things about him, too. He made no attempt to hide his status.
 
How could he? Hawk lived the high life — First Class all the way — aboard private yacht,
Kal-King
, and skipped about the galaxy as only someone with unlimited funds can.

Rumors flying about the spaceport had the Tresgan looking for someone. How had Frost put it? “Rumors traveled faster than a hydrogen fire.” Well, they could be just as deadly. This rumor, unfortunately, appeared to be accurate; Hawk sought her.

Not one to face conflict headlong, she studied the bottom of the stained and chipped mug in her hand, reading the cracks in the bottom like tea leaves in the last of the brownish liquid, seeing trouble with a capital “T.”

Hawk crossed the distance between them, hovering over the empty chair opposite her at the round bar table. It made her cringe. Like a monolith out in the red rock desert beyond the spaceport, he cast a shadow too ominous to ignore.
 

“I may sit?” He didn’t wait for a response; rather, he slid down, uninvited, onto the chair opposite, leaning close enough for her to smell strong liquor on his breath.
 

Dana set her empty cup down on the tabletop and slid it out of range. Then, she answered sternly, “I’m not interested in company,” avoiding his gaze, fretting a little over what the other patrons in the café might think, seeing a petite, copper-haired, young humanoid female with the likes of a Tresgan shipping magnet. A lot of women on planetoids like Tonner III made a living — if you can call a life of prostitution living — entertaining the foreigners. Don’t you dare call them aliens, by the way!
 

“I need you,” Hawk rumbled, in a low, throaty, grating voice, an attempt at a whisper.

“Need?” The word caught in Dana’s throat. Maybe the translator in her link-reader had gotten it wrong. They certainly proved capable of bollixing up other languages at the most inopportune times. Maybe he meant something more respectable? No, not likely…

A nasty retort caught on her tongue as she looked up, staring with her disconcerting mismatched eyes — right brown and left blue — into his black and amber irises.

He blinked first — ruffling his solar cloak as a bird of prey would ruffle feathers — and exhaled loudly. Once again, uninvited, he pushed his chair closer, bumping the one where her injured leg rested.
 

Biting back pain, she reluctantly moved her aching left foot to the deck. The thigh and knee also throbbed, beyond the scope of the pain meds from the injector, though she’d dutifully been keeping the limb elevated.
 

As Hawk got comfortable, she contemplated how to proceed, not liking any of the immediate scenarios that came to her. On Earth she’d have an advantage; but here, at a spaceport where she already had the pleasure of being
persona non grata
, well, the prospects were not good at all.
 

“I would speak to you in private? I need you.”

There, he’d repeated that word and the translator hadn’t belched.
 

Alarm bells, too bloody loud to be ignored, started jangling in her brain and a fresh headache pounded like a sledgehammer beating an anvil right between her eyes. She resisted using any form of empathetic training with the Tresgan.
 

“This is as private as you are ever going to get,” Dana snarled with contempt, suppressing the fight-or-flight instinct until she could be certain of making a clean escape.

On a good night, the café held two hundred fifty. Thankfully, it was an hour after sunrise, so the place held only seasoned, foreign spacers loitering and looking for a cool place to escape Tonnertown’s blistering forty degrees Celsius. The locals rarely ventured out during daylight so the place was nearly empty. Of the dozen or so spacers there, however, all were watching.

Hawk settled back in the padded chair; a little too tall for it to be comfortable for his towering frame. His eyes fell upon the link-reader on the tabletop. “The Captain will listen?”

His attempt at being polite came across as being too damned nosey. She slammed the cover of the link-reader closed to hide the personal financial computations on the screen. “What do you want, Tresgan? Just say it straight?”

A robot-server, mistaking the question for a command, appeared to take the Tresgan’s order, but it retreated when neither Hawk nor Dana spoke to it.

“I may address Captain Cartwright openly?”

Through gritted teeth, she reminded, “Considering where we are, you might want to use some discretion.”

He frowned at first, but finally understood her attempt at humor and offered a smile, crooked carnivorous teeth, and all. “You hope for a flight out of here.”
 

She detected a trace of sarcasm in his voice, making her wonder just how much the Tresgan knew of the situation.
 

Dana said, simply, “Don’t we all?”

“I dare to go further, Captain, and say, you are stranded here. I am wrong?”

At least half the galaxy knew by now that
Seraph
had disintegrated after landing three days ago and Cartwright was the only survivor. “Get to the point, sir!”

“I offer so fine a captain a prestigious position aboard
Kal-King
; a tour of duty to begin immediately, if you accept. I need you.”

The pain in her left leg and in her forehead couldn’t compare with that stabbing her in the heart.

For one evil moment, Dana Cartwright contemplated what it would be like to sit at the controls of a private, Hale Star Yards yacht the size of
Kal-King.
A look into the Tresgan’s face squelched any notion of accepting the offer. Serving a Tresgan had as much appeal as eating Aldebaran buzzard-meat pie.

Besides,
Kal-King
already had a captain, another Tresgan named Heskar, rumored to be a nasty bastard; and she didn’t have the strength, nor the inclination, to attempt an assassination, let alone succeed at one, as required by Tresgan custom.

In one fluid motion, Cartwright pushed away from the table, stood, putting her weight on the good leg, jammed her link-reader into her pack, slung the pack over her shoulder, and flung at him, “Not interested!”

Many eyes watched and many patrons held their breaths as the Tresgan sprang to his feet in insult, making a move to claw her with his leather-gloved hands. She evaded and escaped, as only a well-trained martial arts master could. Being petite also gave her the advantage.

Hawk spread his arms and cloak like a bird would spread its wings. “I would have you give the courtesy of hearing me out,” he squawked

It was too late now for discretion. Cartwright felt no need to lower her voice. “I’m not interested!” Her eyes flashed a warning before she turned her back again on the Tresgan.
 

She shoved the exit hatch open, as if the room were engulfed in flames, and didn’t waste a moment to look back as the thing slammed behind her.

The air outside the café scorched like a blast furnace, but she didn’t want to waste a trip on her transportation card on a temperature-controlled robo-cab for such a short distance. Dodging some hover-cars and keeping to the shadows, she hobbled across the promenade, limping as quickly as her legs would carry her.

She half expected Hawk would follow to dispute her manners. If he did, well, she’d do something rash, like create an even bigger scene and hope for someone to take her side in the confrontation. She had no weapon. That rat of a Commissioner had her Sterillian blade and revoked her diplomatic immunity, which would have allowed her to carry concealed.

The backpack with the link-reader — along with a supply of pain meds — was all she had. That backpack could take down a Tresgan with the right amount of force connecting to a vulnerable part of his anatomy.
 

If he had companions…well, that would change the equation.

With a quick look about the sunbaked walkways, she limped toward her cheap, spacers’ hotel, intent on vanishing into the melee in the lobby. Dana thought she caught a glimpse of Hawk, strutting off alone in the opposite direction, solar cloak flapping as he moved.
 

She sighed.

After a brief rest in the climate-controlled oasis of the hotel lobby, she headed up to her seventh floor solo, mulling over the incident. It raised many disturbing questions, like why a Tresgan with a private yacht, captained by one of his own race, would make a woman — an Earth woman — such an offer. Not from sympathy, she felt certain…

And not without a price…
 

The lights came on automatically at the sound of her opening the door, allowing Dana to quickly scan the tiny room, noting the bare counter-top desk, the hover bed and the open wardrobe with her only change of clothing. Nothing appeared to have been disturbed, so she secured all three locks on the door with her thumbprint and leaned her back against it.

In the silence, she heard the pounding of her heart — doing double-time — and willed it to slow to normal, breathing deeply and exhaling fully. Her hands were still shaking from the encounter with the Tresgan; she angrily flung her pack onto the hover bed.