GALLANT (The Innerworld Affairs Series, Book 3) (6 page)

Cherry smiled and looked around the unfurnished area. "I'd love to. Where would you suggest?"

"Here," he said, and pulled a padded bench out from under the panel where Mar-Dot had been standing. "Mar-Dot doesn't sit often but when they have the need, they straddle this."

Cherry sat down facing him instead of the unladylike position he suggested. "Okay, shoot." That
almost
made him look at her... but not quite.

"Shoot?"

"A Terran expression for go ahead, talk. Tell me how all of this works."

Gallant turned his screen back on and punched a few buttons in front of him. His eye stayed on the monitor as he spoke to her. "Very simply, the computer oversees the basic operations and alerts me if anything is not functioning properly. As Dot told you, this ship was built for speed. It's lightweight and powered by a specially customized stardrive."

He went on to explain how the stardrive worked but Cherry didn't understand enough about engineering to follow, so she let her mind wander. At any rate, for all the attention he was paying her, he could have been speaking to a piece of furniture. With every passing moment, it became more obvious that Voyager was purposely trying to ignore her presence.

There was nothing she relished more than a challenge and with little else to do, she decided to accept the unspoken challenge to make him pay attention to her.

"O-o-oh," Cherry suddenly moaned and covered her right eye with her hand.

"What is it?" Gallant asked in a concerned tone, yet still kept his face averted.

"I got something in my eye." She rubbed it, tugged on the lid then moaned again.
"
Drek.
It's probably just an eyelash but I can't get it out."

Leaning closer to him, she pleaded, "Can you see anything?" She heard him take a deep breath before facing her and had to forcibly hold back her smile.

"Move your hand," he ordered. She did. "Open your eye." She tried but after a little lash fluttering, it was clear she could not keep it open on her own. He hadn't wanted to look at her, let alone touch her, but as her lower lip began to quiver, he gave in.

Steadying his hand on her cheek, he used his thumb and forefinger to gently pry her eye open. Her facial muscles strained against his effort for a moment before she relaxed and met his gaze. He didn't find any eyelash or particle but he did see a definite twinkle of mischief... just before she tweaked his nose.

"Gotcha!" she said with a laugh.

He jerked back in his chair and looked at her as though she were unbalanced. "What was that for?"

Cherry shrugged lightly. "I wanted to make you look at me and I did it. You were being very rude, you know. In fact, speaking of rude, you have yet to apologize."

He slowly swiveled his chair back to its usual position and stared at the monitor. "I told you, the importance of my mission—"

Cherry gripped the arm of his chair and turned it back to her. "Look at me and say I'm sorry or you won't have any peace for the rest of this trip."

Gallant decided she was quite capable of carrying out her threat and, considering how long this trip was actually going to take, he acceded. He looked straight at her pretty face and murmured, "I apologize for stunning you and taking you away without your permission."

Cherry's smile broadened. The expression on his face was one of extreme discomfort. "See? That wasn't so hard. And now that we got that business out of the way, tell me about this grid."

"It's a navigational device."

She smirked at his simple answer. "I gathered that much. I want to know what all these blips and markings mean. And what are all the red sparkles at the edge? It looks like the tail of a comet or something."

Gallant realized if he didn't answer, she would just keep prodding. "That's an ion trail."

Cherry frowned at the screen. Dot had said the blue spot of light was this ship and, even though the movement across the grid was slow, it looked as though the ship was following the ion trail. The distance between the last red sparkle and the blue spot appeared to be exactly the same as it was earlier. "You said something about an ion trail before. Is there a ship on the other end of that trail?"

Now it was Gallant's turn to frown. He hadn't expected intelligence along with all her other attributes. "Probably. But it's too far away to be picked up on the grid."

She had an inkling that she had just learned something important but she couldn't put her finger on it. "And where's Earth?"

"Also too far away." He knew she was going to have to be told the truth sooner or later but he opted for as late as possible. Since it was clear she would not permit him to ignore her, he thought distraction might buy him a little more time.

"Do you play cubit?" he asked as he reached under the control panel and slid out an extension, creating a table between them.

Cherry shook her head. "I don't think I've ever heard of it."

He pulled open a drawer on his side of the table and took out four small cubes which were a different color on each of their six sides: blue, red, yellow, green, orange and purple. He put them in the center of the table. Then he placed six penny-sized markers bearing the same colors as the cubes in front of Cherry and gave himself another identical set.

"It's fairly easy," Gallant said. "The object of the game is to get four of each color. After an initial toss of the cubes, you have two more tries, during which you can reroll as many cubes as you like to try to get four of one color. If you make a set, or quad, you put aside that color marker. The first one to get rid of all their markers, wins."

"Sounds something like a game called
Yahtzee
that I played in Outerworld a long time ago."

Gallant raised an eyebrow. "Oh? Perhaps you'll teach me that one next. Does it involve gambling?"

"Not usually."

"Then that's one big difference. Cubit is the most popular gambling game throughout the galaxy. The players and bystanders bet on the outcome, which color quad one will get first and whether or not either player will roll a quad on an initial try. It's taken very seriously by some players."

Cherry noted the way he made it sound like he didn't take it very seriously himself but she had a feeling the opposite was probably true. "So, Captain, what are the stakes in this game?"

His answer began with a slow grin. "I wouldn't want to take advantage of your innocence."

Immediately, her guard went up. "Why do I get the feeling I'm being conned here?"

He asked her to explain what she meant by that and then firmly denied he would ever do such a thing. "I'll tell you what, we'll just play for points... until
you
decide to make it a bit more interesting."

Cherry's intuition told her she was still being entrapped by a practiced liar but boredom seemed more lethal than any snare he had planned for her. "Okay. I'll play with you, Captain, but be warned, I'm very good at games."

His only response was another slow grin.

Chapter 3

Inside the Mosque of Omar in Jerusalem, Bessima stood behind a marble column. Shrouded in the concealing garments of an Arab female, she attracted no attention to herself. There were many visitors that day, both the devout and the curious, who had come to see the rock from which Muhammad allegedly had ascended to heaven.

Suddenly a fierce-looking man, in traditional Muslim attire, was standing on the rock, scanning the faces of the people beyond the guardrail. Within seconds, shocked murmurs rippled through the crowd.

"I am the prophet, Muhammad," the man loudly declared in an old Arabic dialect. He waited until several onlookers confirmed that he did indeed look like drawings they had seen.

The prophet continued in a booming voice that echoed off the dome of the mosque. "You must prepare yourselves for Judgment Day. Allah is coming. Non-believers and those who disobey Allah's words will be punished. Behold the face Allah will wear and remember it."

For a few seconds, an image hung in the air above Muhammad then it and he disappeared.

Bessima sighed with relief as she observed the people around her. This had gone much better than the visitation at Our Lady of Lourdes. The Arabs were properly shaken by the prophet's appearance and appeared to accept his warning. It confirmed her suspicion that she had to avoid the places where large numbers of Americans congregated until the very end of her mission. She had been on Terra long enough to discover how jaded the Americans were.

If the Princess had known more about these Terrans before sending off Bessima, her most able warrior, she might not even be there. But the Princess had been convinced that Terra was the ideal planet for the relocation of her people and that the natives were a primitive, easily conquered species.

Bessima now knew better but there was no way to advise the Princess of her discoveries. As she had been ordered, Bessima destroyed the ship that had brought her to Terra a year ago. The only thing she could do at this point was head for Asia next and hope for the best.

The warrior could not help but wonder how the rest of the Princess's plan was progressing. From the beginning it had been understood that if the royal plan did not come to fruition, Bessima would be stranded on Terra for the rest of her life. If that were to happen, however, she had already learned of several countries that would suit her needs and accept her leadership.

* * *

Princess Honorbound inspected the platter of cooked morset ribs offered by the servant boy and chose one the size of her forearm. The four men and five women seated on the floor around the huge stone slab that served as a table waited tensely as she brought the meaty bone to her teeth and ripped off a chunk of meat. A trickle of juice escaped the corner of her mouth and ran down her chin while she tested the flavor and texture. With a wave of the bone, she gave the boy permission to serve the others.

Josep, the Princess's elderly chief advisor, selected the smallest piece from the heap of bloody meat. He rarely ate animal flesh anymore but it would have been an insult to refuse. With the exception of brief visits, such as this one, his duties had kept him away from the Princess for most of the last twenty years. During that time he had adopted many of the ways of the more civilized people he dealt with.

Although he still owed his allegiance to Honorbound, he saw her as the barbarian she was. Taller and larger-boned than the average man, her gold-plated helmet with its morset antlers made her appear even greater, and she rarely took off the royal helmet.

The animal skin slung around her hips was her only concession to modesty as she was extremely proud of her muscular body with its numerous jagged scars. But barbarian or not, the ornate gold medallion that hung from a leather thong around her neck declared her a member of the royal family of the planet Illusia, and therefore, his superior.

From various civilizations they had conquered, they had gained sophisticated weaponry as well as the ability to travel through space at great speeds. Yet they preferred to maintain their primitive existence in every other aspect of their life. Besides animal skins comprising most of their attire, fire was still the primary source of light and heat. And their manners and traditions had not altered in a thousand years.

According to custom, no one spoke during the meal. Only the sounds of open-mouthed chewing, slurping and finger licking echoed through the cavernous chamber.

As Josep glanced at the other eight Illusians who made up the Princess's council, he realized how soft he had become in his years away. The animalistic urges that drove these warriors were also present within Josep but he had learned to control most of his barbarism. Now, however, sitting among them, he could almost feel himself regressing to their level once again.

Before leaving his ship, he had removed the flowing red robe he normally wore and donned a fur tunic that failed to completely conceal the deterioration of his aging body. But his status had been determined by his mind, not his strength, so his white hair and sloping shoulders did not alter the respect he was paid by his fellow council members.

As the others did, Josep tossed his unwanted scraps into the center of the table. Before the final course was served, the garbage had grown to a sizable mound of gnawed bones.