A Hero for the Empire: The Dragon's Bidding, Book 1

by Christina Westcott

  “Sergeant, go to Security and get with Captain Maksiminko. I want a complete diagnostic to determine if there’s been any incursion into the system. Take a team out to that southwest perimeter to see if you can find the commander’s graffiti or any signs that someone besides her came over the fence. Get back to me as soon as you know something.”

  Fitz waited until the door closed behind the sergeant. “I gave you a heads-up on your security problem, so how about hearing me out?”

  He folded his arms across his chest and studied her, head slightly tilted.

  She smiled. “Unless you’re afraid you can’t handle me alone. Really, Colonel, you pulled my spike, I’m totally disarmed. Without that, I’m just a harmless little girl.”

  He snorted. “FitzWarren, I suspect the last time you were harmless, you were still floating in amniotic fluid.”

  “It’s freezing standing around in your underwear.” Fitz rubbed her bare shoulders. “How about a cup of that coffee?”

  “I expect you know how to use a processor.” He waved toward the kitchenette, then turned and walked into the bedroom.

  Fitz stared after him. This must be some kind of test to see what she’d do if he turned his back. She wasn’t about to run away, not after what it cost to get here. She rotated her abused jaw and winched.

  The cat’s green gaze followed her into the kitchenette. “What are you looking at, Fuzzy Butt?”

  “Fuzzy Butt? That’s just rude. Go ahead and insult the poor, stupid cat. He’ll never figure it out. Just like a person. I never said anything about your skinny, hairless ass, did I?”

  The words appeared in her mind like the messages she received via her internal computers and comms, but since they were offline, that left only one answer. Telepathy.

  She’d heard rumors about spacer’s cats and the mythical bond they shared with freighter captains and pilots. Cats swarmed the ports and stations out here in the Alliance, strolling onto ships like they owned the place, but none of them had ever talked to her or read her mind.

  “No, I can’t read minds. As if I have nothing better to do than go rummaging around in a human’s mind, what with all that crap you carry around in there.”

  “But, how did you know…?”

  “It’s the first thing everyone asks. Most Kaphier cats can communicate mind to mind, but I’m an empath, so the only way I hear you is if you talk aloud.”

  Her mind replayed her earlier interaction with Youngblood. “You talk to him.”

  “Of course I do, he’s my person.”

  “You told him I was hiding in the bedroom.”

  “Yeah, and I told him not to blow your skinny butt away, so you should thank me. Now go to the processor and dial up selection CF4.”

  She edged over to the appliance and brought up the main menu, eyes going wide at the number of entries cascading down the screen. Not since she’d stayed at that fancy hotel on Meyerbridge had she seen such an extensive menu. She punched in the alphanumerics expecting coffee, but a dinner plate appeared, piled with a thinly sliced meat in pale gravy. She swiped a finger through the sauce and licked it. The taste was rich and meaty.

  “I wouldn’t eat that if I were you.” Youngblood returned from the bedroom dressed in coveralls, his weapons strapped over them. “Don’t let him con you into getting anything out of the processor for him. Doc Ski says he needs to lose weight. And don’t bloody well eat anything with a CF prefix. In case you can’t figure it out, CF stands for cat food.”

  He snatched the plate and turned to the cat. “I ought to throw this into the recycler. What happened to playing the dumb cat and keeping an eye on her, Jumper?”

  “She insulted me, called me fuzzy butt, so she had to apologize. Liver in creamed gravy is a good way to say you’re sorry.”

  Youngblood dropped the plate on the counter a bit too hard. It clattered, but Jumper had his mouth buried in the food before the dish stopped moving.

  The blond-haired man rounded the counter, handing Fitz a soft bundle.

  “What’s this?” she asked.

  “You said you were cold.”

  It was a sweatshirt with a large Gold Dragons emblem on the back and his name on the chest. She pulled it over her head, catching his distinctive scent lingering in the fabric. The shirt reached to her mid-thigh, and she had to roll up the sleeves several turns, but it was warm.

  “How do you take your coffee?” He reached around her to the processor, punching in a selection. Fitz was acutely aware of how close he stood, wedging her body between his and the counter.

  “Black.” She had to clear her throat and swallow before she got the word out.

  “Of course, Fleet style. I think you’ll find our Rainbow High Mountain is a bit better than what you get on an Imperial warship.” He handed her a mug.

  She took a sip. “Damn, this is good. I think the processors on the AriR use the same formula for hydraulic fluid that they do for coffee.”

  He gestured toward the door. “Shall we adjourn to my office? You’ve handed me a rather thorny security problem, so I’ll be a little busy this morning, but I can give you the time it takes me to finish my coffee. I suggest you get right to the point.”

  Fitz curled into an overstuffed chair facing his desk, took a gulp of coffee and a deep breath. She plunged in, leading with the name she knew would get his attention, the name of the Empire’s most beloved hero, missing now for over forty years.

  His former lover.

  “I found Ari Ransahov.”

  “Several thousand people have claimed that since she disappeared, but she hasn’t turned up yet. What makes you so sure this time is any different?”

  “An independent salvager hauled the wreckage of the Yaquiti Dawn into the Rokotski Shipyards looking to sell it to the breakers.”

  “Wreckage?” He glanced up sharply.

  If she hadn’t been looking directly at him, she might not have noticed the flash of emotion that flickered across his face.

  “The shuttle suffered a catastrophic engine failure. When the thruster let go, it took off a wing and unzipped the whole right side to vacuum.”

  Youngblood’s gaze dropped back to his cup. “Ari’s pilot abused the Dawn, pushing the engines into the red zone and overrunning the maintenance clocks. And she encouraged him. Always in a hurry. I told them he was going to get us all killed.” There was no mistaking the pain in his eyes when he looked up. “So she’s dead.”

  “She wasn’t on the Dawn. The techs did a thorough genetic scraping of the organic residue left in the cabin after the explosive decompression and concluded she hadn’t been onboard, only the pilot.” Fitz was about to take another drink until she thought about the grisly job of gathering the remains.

  “Then we’re back where we started,” he said. “You still don’t know where she is.”

  “Ah, but I do. The logs revealed exactly where he took her.”

  “What makes you think she’s still there?”

  “It’s a primitive planet located in a star system in the Back of Beyond. They have no contact with Human Space, no off-world travel, not even intersystem…”

  “Baldark,” he said.

  Fitz blinked a couple of time before she replied. “How did you know that? I had a hell of a time getting information on that world. It’s not on any astrogation charts, and the coordinates had been removed from the shuttle’s nav-comp. The only reference I could locate came from a thesis written by an anthropologist at the University of South Levanterra.”

  “Amin Deva-Lorza.” He smiled, seeming amused with his little game of one-upmanship.

  “Deva-Lorza was Ari’s mother,” he explained. “The good doctor liked living in thatched huts with dirt floors and no hot water, electricity or computers. When Ari was a kid, she accompanied her mother on field trips, living among the natives while they gathered re
search material for a paper on how human cultures developed without external influences. Deva-Lorza went so far as to petition the Emperor to quarantine the system until the natives developed their own space travel.”

  He leaned back in his chair. “I’m not surprised that’s where Ari ended up.”

  “If you knew that, why didn’t you go looking for her?”

  “Because the last time I saw her she specifically told me not to.”

  “When was that?”

  “I was with her that last night, the night she disappeared.”

  “With?” Fitz wondered if that meant what she thought it did.

  He fixed her with a long stony stare and turned away, his eyes taking on that unfocused quality of someone remembering the past.

  “I was traveling through Coronia Terminal on my way to a few days of R-and-R before going on to my next assignment. The hundreds of travelers hurrying past the bundle of rags panhandling for credit chips would have been horrified to learn it was the great Hero of Empire. Ari was drunk, smelled like vomit and old sweat, and was high on RTZ…”

  “Ari Ransahov didn’t do drugs.”

  His response was quick and hot. “You weren’t there. During the Bug War, we used whatever we could get our hands on to keep going. Stims to stay on our feet and downers when we had to crash. RTZ when you couldn’t face reality any longer and lithies if you got too high. And we all drank entirely too bloody much.”

  He picked up a stylus, flipping it end for end. “I missed my flight, rented a hotel room and ordered food and coffee to sober her up. Gave her a shower to wash off the weeks of living on the street. Eventually, she came down, and we spent the night talking. Well, me talking, her crying. I thought she’d finally hit bottom, that she was ready to turn it around and put her life back together.”

  Youngblood threw the stylus on his desk. “When I woke up the next morning, she was gone. All she left was a note. Said she wasn’t ready yet, needed more time to sort things through, and promised to come back when she had. And she told me not to come after her. And I never did.”

  Fitz sucked in a breath. He still loved her. Ari Ransahov had the love and loyalty of a man that could last half a century, and instead, she’d cut out his heart and walked away. What must it feel like to have someone love you that much? She’d never know. No one loved an augie.

  “The Triumvir has instructed me to secure your help in going to Baldark, finding Ransahov and bringing her back to Scyr to unseat Emperor Ashcraft.”

  “No.”

  “Why not? You obviously still care about her.” Oh, great, Fitz, next time don’t engage your tongue until your brain’s in gear.

  “No. I can’t help you,” he said.

  “Can’t or won’t?”

  “Can’t. Of all the rules governing contract military in the Alliance, the strictest ones involve our neutrality. Each of us has to relinquish all ties to any planetary or system government. I can’t act as an agent for the Empire, which is how they’d see it. They call it going rogue, and they’d yank my license to operate the GDs in a nanosecond.”

  “Yeah. And there would go your cushy job.”

  “Bloody hell, FitzWarren, it’s not just my job. There are over twenty-seven hundred troopers on this base, not to mention their dependents and the civilian workers. If I lose my license, they lose their jobs and the entire organization falls apart. I can name you half a dozen other merc units who’d love to pick our bones clean. My people are good at what they do; they’ll be able to find other work, but at half the pay, and for some fool who’d squander their lives. I won’t let that happen just so your Triumvir can play kingmaker.” A thunderstorm brewed behind his eyes, but before it broke the office door chimed.

  “Come.” His command was louder than necessary.

  Sergeant Bartonelli stepped into the room, droplets of rainwater glistening in her purple curls.

  “What did you find?” he asked.

  “Not much.” She wiped the side of her face against her shoulder. “Captain Maksiminko didn’t see any anomalies in the surveillance logs, but she did admit if the hacker was good, she probably wouldn’t. She’ll have to pull the logs and go over them minute by minute.”

  “I came over the fence at 0337,” said Fitz. “Tell her to start looking previous to that.”

  “Will do. That’ll cut down on the amount of data she’ll have to pull.” Bartonelli turned back to her CO. “It’s still going to be a while before she has anything for you, sir.”

  “This is high priority. Have her put as many techs on it as she needs. Did you uncover anything out at the perimeter fence?”

  Bartonelli held out a hand and rocked it back and forth. “Maybe, maybe not. We did find your red graffiti, Commander. Or rather, what was left of it. We’d no more and gotten outside the fence and it started raining. You know, one of those rains we get, like piss pouring out of a boot. If we’d been five minutes later, the paint would have been washed away.”

  “Water soluble?” He arched an eyebrow.

  “Yeah, whoever put it there didn’t plan on it being around long.”

  Youngblood shot Fitz a sidewise glance, and she couldn’t resist a tiny smile of triumph. Maybe now he’d believe her.

  “Did you see any sign that someone had been out there?”

  Bartonelli looked at her wet boots. “It’s a frigging mess out there. I noticed some divots, but I couldn’t tell if they were from a person running or just a hornback rooting for grubs. Sorry, sir.”

  Youngblood stood. “Sergeant, the commander will be our guest for a while. Escort her down to North 317.”

  Fitz scrambled to her feet. “Wait a minute, we’re not finished here.”

  “We are now.” He checked the desk chrono. “I have just enough time to shower and eat breakfast before the staff meeting. We’ll continue this later, Commander.”

  Before Fitz opened her mouth to complain, he gave Bartonelli new orders. “Assign a couple of escorts to the commander, to keep her out of trouble.” His eyes raked down her bare legs and back to her face. “And find her some suitable clothes. You’re dismissed.”

  The sergeant turned Fitz over to a pair of guards who escorted her to the lift. The stockade was the logical destination, so she was surprised when they stopped on the next floor down, the Bachelor Officers’ Quarters.

  The lift doors opened on a man with a heavily tattooed face. Intent on the data he entered into his tablet, he stepped forward without looking up and collided with Fitz. He flinched back, mumbling an apology, and his gaze flickered across hers. She noticed the usual momentary surprise that follows a misstep, and then rage filled his eyes, an anger so intense it hit her like a slap. As swiftly as a screen blanking, all the emotion disappeared, leaving her wondering if she’d interpreted the reaction correctly.

  Her minders directed her down the hall, and as she preceded them, the need to turn back and confront the tattooed man nagged at her. She glanced over her shoulder. The lift doors had closed but he remained, watching her with the same intensity she would expect Youngblood’s cat to give a nest of gerbats.

  Jumper slipped from the shadows beneath the chair and leapt into the space recently vacated by FitzWarren.

  “What do you think of her, Boss?”

  “I think the Commander is argumentative, irritating and demanding. In short, all the traits that make a good SpecOps officer. And I don’t trust her.” Wolf leaned his chair back and steepled his fingers, tapping them against his chin. “More importantly, what’s your impression? You’re the empath.”

  “She’s kinda cute.”

  “I hadn’t noticed.”

  “Oh please, I could tell you enjoyed her little striptease.”

  “This isn’t a joke, Jumper. As a SpecOps agent, FitzWarren knows a hundred ways to neutralize her target. This entire story of a coup d’état and needing m
y help could be a ruse. She might have painted that message to make it look like there was a second assassin. While I’m combing the base for this fictional intruder, she has a clear shot at my back.”

  “I don’t sense any hostile intent. Her interest in you seems to be of a more intimate nature.” The cat’s whiskers twitched.

  “Isn’t that what you said about the other augie? The one who tried to kill me?”

  Jumper’s ears folded down. “I was kinda distracted.”

  “Well, I can’t afford to be distracted. The only way I beat those two women was because they expected to face a Normal. Whoever purged my file inadvertently did me a favor. If either of them knew I’d received some of those early prototypical augmentations, they’d have used a lot more care approaching me.”

  “But you’d still be able to take her, wouldn’t you, Boss?”

  “I’m not so sure about that.” Wolf pulled a scrap of velvet from his pocket and unfolded it to reveal FitzWarren’s spike. He held it up, letting the light reflect from the gleaming case. “In a stand-up, one-on-one fight, a fully augmented FitzWarren would probably wipe the floor with me, despite my enhancements and greater size. As long as I keep this, we’re more or less equal, and she won’t be going anywhere without it, so that gives me time to check out her story.”

  “And if it comes back she really is attached to some DIS augie hit squad?” the cat asked.

  Wolf twisted the spike in his fingers, recalling FitzWarren standing nearly naked, arms akimbo, challenging him. A pleasant heat coiled low in his abdomen.

  “I don’t know, Jumper. I really don’t know.”

  Chapter Four

  As holding cells went, the Gold Dragon’s guest quarters were impressive, but a pretty prison was still a prison. At least Fitz could take advantage of the amenities.

  She stepped out of the shower and wiped condensation from the mirror. Against the glow of her heated skin, the white ridges of the implantation scars stood out like slashes. Black bruises from this morning’s fight bloomed on her arms and jaw, and a shiner decorated one eye.