Salvage Rights (Distant Worlds Book 2) (17 page)

Lucan watched as some
of the men Tuft brought back carried the bodies out in hazard gear.  Doctor
Avia also ordered the room quarantined for a thorough medical clean, and she
wanted a scan of the rest of their guests in case they were carrying some
unknowingly on their clothes.  Tuft and a large number of the security force
escorted the doctor through the rest.  They did find one instance where a small
amount had brushed onto one man’s sleeve.  They very carefully removed him from
the rest and explained the issue.  He was quick to agree to allow the medical
team to divest him of the poison.

Lucan caught himself
looking around for Danika every few minutes.  At present, she was still at Tuft’s
side where he had deposited her when the man returned.  He would keep her safe
until all the guests were gone.  He was tempted to send her back to the private
area, but with her abilities, she could be instrumental in staving off trouble,
much as she saved lives earlier.  As her first day on the job, it was certainly
more than he had expected.

When Barnos moved up to
his side, he turned to catch the other man following his eyes to Danika.  “Should
I be envious of your prize, or happy not to get caught up in that honey trap?” 
He looked back to Lucan.  “I have never seen you this distracted.”

“Why are you still
here?”

“What do you mean? 
Aren’t I invited to dinner?”  Barnos grinned huge, winking at the good doctor
when she turned distractedly to look their way.  She rolled her eyes and went
back to her sensors.  He turned back to Lucan.  “Besides, I am still waiting to
get my knife back, and find out who sent those men here and why.”

“And you are so
concerned because?”

“Oh come now, you know
I like to be in the know on these things.”

“I also know you like
to meddle, and usually where you go, trouble follows.”

“Trouble?  Hah!  When
did you become such an old woman?”

Lucan shook his head at
the captain’s drama.  “What’s the real reason?”

Barnos shrugged his
massive shoulders, lowered his voice, and looked Lucan in the eye, suddenly
deadly serious.  “Let us just say you are not the only one who sees
connections.  You get yourself killed and Cor Warrung will be moving to take this
quadrant just as fast as his super fleet of assassins can get here.”

Lucan held his eyes,
then nodded, acknowledging the logic.  “As one of the few people who went up
against my brother and still breathes, I can see why that wouldn’t work for
you.”

Barnos snorted.  “Lost
an eye and an arm in that debacle.  The cybernetics may be top of the line and
give me the strength to bend solid steel, but I still get the damn phantom
itches.  Not real keen to lose anything else, or my head for that matter.  And
it’s getting awfully hard these days not to find oneself in Warrung territory
of one kind or another, at least for anyone who also wishes to avoid League-patrolled
space.”

Lucan gave his old
friend one of his few real smiles.  “Your problem is you can never resist a
lady in distress, and it always inexplicably seems to lead to bar fights and
property damage.”

Another snort, while
Barnos trailed eyes over the ladies still in the room.  “You should talk.  A
lovely long-legged physician formerly of your brother’s employ, a shy little
scarred beauty who jumps at shadows, formerly in your brother’s less than
tender bed, and a beautiful truthsayer who is also a Bruha, more than likely
the one your brother is even now searching quite diligently for.”  He looked
back at Lucan, his lips tipped up, his eyes laughing at him.  “Pot, meet
kettle.”

Lucan lost his smile.  “You
could buy a lot of good will from my brother with that information,” he said
mildly, even as his eyes sharpened to blade bright.

“I want your brother’s head
on a spike,” Barnos answered in a rumble.  He motioned to Danika who looked
over at Luc and smiled just then, before she went back to what she was doing. “But
I would not smother such a light as that to get close enough to get it.  Your
brother’s death will come in time, and at my hands, God willing, but it won’t
be at the cost of my soul.”

Lucan released his
tension and smiled again at his old friend, knowing he spoke the truth.  “Very
romantic speech.  Now, who is becoming the old woman?”

Barnos guffawed,
slapping Lucan on the back. 

Lucan took the beating
without flinching, too much.  As a former recipient of those sledgehammers
Barnos called his fists, he knew it could have been worse.  He waited until
Barnos turned back to his woman watch, still chuckling, to shake out the
tension in his abused back.  With a sigh, he sent a communication to the
kitchen ordering dinner for three in the formal dining room.  The fact that it
further postponed his alone time with Danika was just an added bonus, and a
frustration.  His old friend was right about that at least.  She was fast
becoming a weakness he had not expected.  The power of his physical responses
was one thing, but the way she continued to bind him emotionally?  That was
what had him pushing her away like a coward.  Where she was concerned, he was
fast discovering he lacked the proper defenses.  However, he was also not about
to let her go, nor was he willing to spend another night tossing and yearning
while she did the same thing in her lonely bed.  Tonight he would put an end to
this infernal waiting, consequences be damned.

***

Danika wore another
sarong to dinner, this time with her hair braided up with crystal pearls so
that only a few curls hung down by her neck.  She did not bother with shoes as
she had only the boots and they were not leaving the house.  It was Tuft that
took her to the second dining room in the more public area of the home.  “Where
do the other guests stay?” she asked, thinking of all the others at the meeting
earlier.  She shied away from thinking of the two men who died.

“They do not stay at
the island more than the hour or so it takes to have the gathering.  Then they
are escorted under guard back to the spaceport beach where some have special
permission to stay and enjoy some down time, but most are escorted to their
ships and out of our quadrant.”

She looked up at him
wonderingly.  He shrugged, “We do not like uninvited guests.”  His emotions
suggested he was waffling about her own status; that was something.  At least
he was not as suspicious as he had been before she saved his life.

She sighed, “I wonder
what it would take for you to not see me as an uninvited guest.”

He looked down at her
briefly, then faced forward again as he directed her to the door.   He paused
before opening it.  “You saved lives today.  Maybe mine, maybe Luc’s.  That
goes a long way with me and I am not ungrateful.”  He shrugged, pressing open
the door, finishing gruffly, “I just have never discovered change to be a good
thing.”

“I see.”  Danika fought
to keep her exasperation with the abrupt male hidden when she entered the room,
only to be faced with two more dominant personalities.  One who shot her
emotions through the roof with sexual tension behind hot eyes, and the other
that regarded her with both appreciation and suspicion.  The suspicion was
getting old, even if she could not really blame them for it.

When she walked in,
Captain Barnos whistled his appreciation.  Something about that jovial smile on
such a deadly big man made her smile despite the feeling he kept hidden beneath
the surface.  “Lovely lady, what are you doing with my ugly friend here, when
you could have me?”

Danika looked from the
gruff captain with his somewhat burly attraction, to the smoldering dark good
looks of Lucan Warrung.  “It’s a mystery,” she said dryly.  Barnos laughed
again as he seemed prone to do, but where the appreciation in the big captain’s
eyes was noticed, it was dismissed as nothing more than light flirtation. 

The furnace of desire
that flowed from Lucan was almost enough to stagger her steps.  She ignored it
as best she could, holding her head up and trying to keep her breath steady,
all the while knowing he was through waiting.  She could feel his determination
to claim her hiding under his calm persona.  It was causing all kinds of
embarrassing reactions in her body.  Dinner was going to seem an eternity, but
it did give her a bit of time to make her own decisions.  Should she take a
chance and bind herself to this man who seemed to reject all softer emotions?  With
the way she felt about him, did she really have a choice?

Lucan held the chair to
his right out to her, sitting her across from Captain Barnos on his left.  The
table could have easily sat another dozen people, but they were just set up to
use the end of one side.  The rest of the room was large in size and austere,
except for the table and chairs that looked to be island-made teak, hand-carved
and sturdy.  Like most of the personal space, the room was mostly windows, and
the light from the suns glinted over distant waves.  The synthetic lights in
the room were low enough to give the space an intimate air, and the food was bountiful
and spread across the table before them.

Sitting down and
looking at the two men, it was almost how she would picture a family dinner. 
Only the big redheaded captain across from her was barely hiding his suspicion
of her behind his boisterous facade, and Lucan was not hiding at all his desire
to get her naked and on her back.  At least from her perspective.  She hoped
the desire that flowed between them was not obvious to Captain Barnos.

“Your first name,
Conall?  In my understanding it is an uncommon name of Old World origins.”  She
picked up her fork and was happy to see her fingers were steady.  “And the
tartan you wear as a sash suggests strong associations.  Have you ever done the
pilgrimage to Old Earth to see where your ancestors came from?”

He raised a big brow; what
she was coming to learn was his standard reaction to surprise.  “And how would
you know the origins of my name, or what the blazes a tartan even is?”

“You would be surprised
what Danika has studied,” Lucan said mildly, sending a subtle warning her way. 
“She has a voracious mind.”

“Hmm,” he looked them
both over but did not voice his new suspicions any more than he voiced the
hundred others he harbored behind his mischievousness.  “Well, as a matter of
fact, I have been to the Old World.  Most of the old cities are overgrown and
the protected status meant I could only stay the standard rotation, but I was
able to find where my family made their home.”  He motioned to the tartan he
always wore with pride, “Though they called it a clan, the Clan Brodie to be
exact.  Long forgotten and nothing but ruins now, but full of heroism,
mysticism, and romance,” he waggled his eyebrows, “and the stories never hurt
with the ladies.”

Danika shook her head
and smiled down at her plate.  He did have a way about him, despite the brutal
fighter he hid just under the surface.  It was a thin veneer that hid the
warrior within, but it was potent.  “I bet.”  Indeed, she would hazard a guess
that women flocked to his particular banner of charm with great frequency.

She missed the smile Luc
threw his way that was nothing more than a baring of teeth.  “Wine?”

Barnos winked, ignoring
his own mortal jeopardy.  “Don’t mind if I do.”

***

Cor Warrung had just
finished a lovely port with his lamb.  His private dining room was opulent in
red velvets and costly antiques.  The illegal wood fire burning in the brick
fireplace gave a cozy warmth to the room.  Thus, the knock was both intrusive
and mood destroying, and his voice a cold lash when he spoke, “Enter.”

“So sorry to intrude on
your dinner.”  The little man was practically frothing at the mouth in his
fear.  Sweat beaded off his bald head, and his skinny frame shook with each
tentative step he took into the room.  “But you asked to be notified the second
we received news of the Bruha.”

Cor stopped fondling
the steak knife by his plate and relaxed back.  “And?”

“The Bruha is reported
to be with your brother on PortSea.”

Cor steepled his long
elegant fingers.  “And do we know
how
she came to be there?”

The man paled further. 
“The informant did not have that information and the Gorson raiders reported a
salvage ship leaving the coordinates you sent them, too, just as they arrived. 
The satnav was a fake, but we are still attempting to discover the ship and its
captain.”

“See that you do, and
set a meeting with Greize.  I would like to know from his own lips how his
raiders let her slip through.”

“Yes sir.”  The man did
not move from his spot, his head bowed in supplication. 

Finally, when he began
to shake, Cor motioned him away.  “That will be all Brice.  Get me a list of
all those we have positioned with my brother.  It seems time has come to make
use of them.”

Brice left the room
with undo haste, and Cor turned back to his meal, only now it had cooled.  He
sighed at the inconvenience and rang for a new plate to be prepared.  Then he
sat back in his seat waiting for service he knew would be swift.  While he sat,
he thought of the Bruha – a Bruha genetically altered by the same ancestor
responsible for the many genetic secrets the family has kept through the
centuries.  A Bruha keyed to be the mate of a Warrung and perfectly preserved. 
And she was with his brother.