Omnes Videntes (The Space Merchants Book 4)

by Wendie Nordgren

  “I made certain no ice bear were in our vicinity. You are not to be anywhere near one,” Yukihyo said.

  Kaoti grinned at me. He was enjoying himself. I on the other hand wanted to run back to Yukihyo’s mountain castle. Hunting was scary, and the dead deer with their lifeless eyes made me sad. Fishing was better than hunting in my opinion.

  After they had loaded the deer onto the anti-grav cart, we began the long walk back. I wanted something warm to drink, a bath, and a nap. Yukihyo and Quaid walked me inside, helped me out of my outerwear, and kissed me goodbye. I was relieved. I saw to the children and then went to the bathing chamber. The stupid wolves had made me leak. I soaked and floated in the mineral bath until I had shriveled fingers and toes.

  During our stay, Violet and I spent a lot of time watching movies, but when she and the children napped, Thunderdrop and I explored. We learned every inch of the house. He had made a few webs high in the rafters of the family room and our bedroom.

  Eventually, Lady Galatea returned Galina to us. My niece was a new girl. She radiated a new assurance and self-confidence that made me happy for her. Along with a new wardrobe befitting Chione, Galina had a sheathed knife on her belt and a new bow. I prepared food and drinks for the Galatea Clan who I now considered to be extended family. Galina had a vid-screen full of pictures that she couldn’t wait to show us.

  “You will return with your aunt and uncle each time they come,” Lady Galatea said.

  “Yes, Grandmother. When I’m eighteen, I’ll be able to stay with you forever,” Galina said with firm determination.

  “The snows will begin soon, or I would keep you another night.” The tough Lady Galatea had tears in her eyes as she pressed her forehead to Galina’s and said goodbye.

  Yukihyo sent the Galatea Clan home with enough game meat to last them a month. Unconcerned with the coming snow, we were staying a few more nights before leaving for Nephele. The men were having a good time hunting.

  We had eaten dinner and were watching a movie while playing with the children on an ice bear rug in the family room before bed. Thunderdrop and Neema were playing with a ball. It rolled past her. Niklos was on his tummy. He would grab his soft rattle, put it in his mouth, and then drop it. My children loved repetition. Everything was perfect. Then, Neema got to her feet. I whacked Yukihyo’s thigh over and over. She took a step and then another until she got to the ball. Then, she sat with a huff and rolled it back to Thunderdrop.

  “Did you see that? Did you see? Our baby walked!” I was crying and laughing.

  Yukihyo picked up Neema and kissed and tickled her until she was shrieking with laughter. Quaid was smug.

  “What?” I asked him as I wiped my tears on my shirt.

  “I got it,” he said as he held up his vid-screen.

  “My daughter took her first steps in our ancestral home,” Yukihyo said proudly.

  That night, he spent a great deal of time expressing to me how happy he was which spurred the affections of Nico and Fitz. However, when I ended up on the far side of the bed beneath the attentions of Quaid and Zared, I lost my mind and had to trust them to catch it for me. Walking normally the next morning to the bathing chamber was challenging.

  At breakfast, Jazon and the others turned red in their faces when they saw me. I laughed at them and enjoyed my coffee. I was too tired to worry about them. Yukihyo’s vid-screen began signaling, and he got up from the table to answer it. Worry flashed through our bond. Zared, Jazon, and the others looked expectantly at him.

  “Teagan, we are going out for a while. Stay here,” Yukihyo said.

  “What’s happened?” I asked.

  “An avalanche is blocking the pass to the Galatea lands. We need to help clear a path. At present, they are trapped.”

  “We can use large land transports and equipment from the ship to clear the rubble,” Nico said as he handed Niklos to me.

  “I can fly in and get them out,” Dario said.

  Galina looked at me with wide worried eyes.

  “Everything is alright. This is an occurrence for which we must prepare on Chione,” Yukihyo assured her with a kind smile.

  However, his words of assurance didn’t feel completely true to us. I feared the situation to be far more dangerous than he had led us to believe. The longer the men were gone, the greater Galina’s fear for her grandmother grew. I tried and failed to get her to take a nap when the babies went down for theirs. Then, Galina’s vid-screen started beeping, and she answered a garbled audio message from the Lady Galatea.

  “We are…trapped. The path…near the cliffs. Come….”

  Panic gripped Galina. “Aunt Teagan, we have to go and help her!”

  I shook my head. “That is what all of the men are doing. Even the crewmen from our ship are helping. Yukihyo told us to stay here. It could be a trap.”

  I told her how the miners on Malta had tricked me with a fake message from Phillip. I made Galina something to eat and then excused myself to go to the restroom. When I came back, she was gone. Thunderdrop blinked down sleepily from his web.

  “Where did Galina go?”

  He showed me an image of her going through the doors and into the room with the chairs in front of the fireplaces. I looked for her there. The door to the weapons room to my left was open. Galina’s knife and bow were gone. In the foyer, her outerwear was gone.

  “Shit.”

  I hurried into the clothes I had worn on the hunt and was about to open the door when Drex stopped me.

  “Where do you think you are going?”

  “Galina just went out there. I’m gonna grab her and bring her back.”

  “Not alone you aren’t. Go get hunting blasters,” he said as he began pulling on thicker clothes over his own.

  I told Thunderdrop and Lorca what had happened and then rushed to get the blasters.

  “Put on your mask,” Drex said as he took a blaster and opened the heavy door. I followed him out. Drex walked down the steps and scanned the snow. “There,” he said as he spotted Galina’s tracks.

  I followed behind him at a fast jog. A light snow had begun to fall. Finally, we made it into the tree line. Thoughts that it had been a trap worried me. Who would want to lure Galina away? Whoever was responsible knew that I would be forced to chase after her. Suspiciously, I looked at Drex. It would have been simple for the Inquisitor to intercept Lady Galatea’s message, modify it, and send it to Galina. Was this his plan to capture me again?

  “Can you see her yet?”

  “Be quiet and follow me.”

  I made a face at Drex behind his back. Then, several yards away, I saw Galina. She was tied to a roller. Drex had been with me. There was no way he could be responsible. I started to run to her, but Drex stopped me and pointed. In a small clearing, I saw a man in a thin coat shivering with cold. From where we hid, I could see the fear in his eyes.

  Drex whispered, “Stay here. Stay down. I will get her.” Then, he disappeared off to the right with an eerie similarity to Kaoti.

  A few minutes later, a crunch of snow behind me made me turn.

  “I knew you would rush after your little niece. Dragging you out into the cold was a last resort. It is so very difficult to see you. They conspire to keep us apart. Never once have you left my thoughts. I haven’t abandoned you. I am yours.”

  I stared up at him in shock. “Pax, I thought you were on Parvac.”

  “Yes, your husbands are selfish. They keep you to themselves when they should be putting your happiness first. I have a present for you. See through there? It is the man who disrespected you on Trambelus Space Station. You can punish him yourself.” Pax reached down and lifted me up by my arm. “Teagan, you must order them not to interfere in our relationship. They won’t even allow me to call you. It is the only way we can be together. They go to extremes to separate us.” Pax held me by my elbow and pulled me over to stand beside him.

  “You should take Galina and me back to Yukihyo’s fortress. We can talk about our relatio
nship in front of a warm fire with cups of hot coffee.” I saw his smile through my mask.

  “I have other plans for us, my love. I took over his ship,” Pax said as he nodded his head at his terrified captive. “I will make love to you all of the way to Parvac and to our little house in the city that you didn’t have time to enjoy. I will take you to all of the best parties and make it my goal to keep a beautiful smile on your face.”

  “Pax, I don’t want to leave my family, and I have my own ship.”

  “They have poisoned your mind to me.”

  The wolves began to howl almost as though in accompaniment to his displeasure.

  “You had better take us back before Yukihyo comes for me.”

  “He won’t get here in time to stop us, my love. I created a disaster for them to clear and made certain to time the distances so we could escape. If they don’t hurry, the Galatea Clan freezes to death. You see, they didn’t make it back to their home before the avalanche.”

  “No!” I struggled and tried to get away. “You’re an evil bastard. How could you?”

  “I’ll do anything to win you. Now, come and enjoy your gift.”

  Pax picked me up and carried me under his arm over to the smuggler who had tried to touch me. Pax was so intent on me, that he didn’t notice that Galina and the roller were gone. I was grateful to Drex for taking her to safety. I still had the hunting blaster slung over my back. When Pax put me down, it took me a moment to find my balance on the snow. The wind made the heavy snow covered branches sway up and down, and a light snow continued to fall.

  “I’m sorry for what I done! I swear! I’ll do whatever you want. Just let me go,” the smuggler begged.

  “Pax, please let him go.”

  “Let me prove myself to you.” Pax unsheathed a knife and slid it across the man’s thigh. Blood arched across the snow, and he screamed in pain.

  “Pax! Stop!”

  I heard a heavy rhythmic thumping sound and looked through the trees. An ice bear at least twelve feet in height galloped straight for us.

  “Pax, cut him free! Hurry!”

  Pax dropped his knife, lifted his hunting blaster, and fired repeatedly. It was so close that I could see the steam of its breath. The ice bear lifted a paw the size of my torso and swatted Pax sending him flying through the air and into a tree trunk. As he made contact with the tree, the snow slushed down from its leaves to cover him in a deep mound. The ice bear roared making my blood vibrate in my veins. The mound of snow exploded outward as Pax burst free and resumed fire on the ferocious creature. Enraged, the ice bear stood on its hind legs and let forth a mighty roar that promised death.

  My terrified thoughts and feelings, and everything that made me who I was, collected into a warm safe ball and moved to a protected place in the back of my mind. I became an observer in my own body.

  The ice bear charged Pax. I took a step toward the smuggler, but suddenly Drex was there. He shoved me back, unsheathed a knife, and freed the prisoner.

  “Get on the roller and go, Teagan,” Drex ordered.

  Whoever possessed me made me turn and run for it. However, the bleeding smuggler beat me to it. He took off leaving me behind. I saw myself running for the mound of snow. I dived into it and covered myself. Meanwhile, the ice bear surged forward after the roller. I heard what sounded like the heavy machine hitting snow and tumbling. Then, I heard the ice bear huffing and dragging something back to the clearing. Through a hole in my mound of snow, I could see the ice bear had the smuggler in its mouth. He was dead, and his guts trailed across the snow. I gagged and managed to move my mask aside in time to throw up. Pax and Drex fired at the ice bear. It made an awful sound as it fell dead to the snow beside the man it had killed. I thought it was all over, but the men again raised their weapons.

  A large furry animal darted forward, grabbed the dead smuggler by the leg, and began dragging him away. I heard barking, blaster fire, whining, whimpering, and growling. They were everywhere. Growling was inches from me, and a wolf began digging away at my snow. Aiming at the sound, I fired and heard a thud beside me. Having destroyed my hiding spot, I stood with my back to the tree.

  Pax and Drex stood before me firing at the rapidly moving targets. The wolves began darting in and away faster and faster. Their snarling and growling broke through my ball of safety and terrified me. Occasionally, a wolf darted in and tore at the ice bear’s flesh. Dead wolves laid on bright red snow around us, but still more came. In a concerted attack, wolves barreled into Pax and Drex from behind knocking the men to the snow. Snapping jaws and sharp claws seemed to tear at them in slow motion.

  Again, calm took me, and I was no longer myself. My arms lifted the blaster and fired. Running forward, I took up Drex’s blaster making it into an extension of my left arm and hip. Turning in a slow circle, I fired each hunting blaster in synchronization. The one in my right hand failed. I dropped it and rolled. When I came up, Pax’s long knife was in my hand. It flashed down into the wolf on Drex. Turning, I fired and dropped as a wolf sailed over me and skidded to a bloody stop in the snow having torn open its belly on the knife I had lifted.

  Then, all was quiet but for the sound of fleeing wolves and the hum of rollers converging on our location. I came back into my own mind. My arms were numb. My eyes roamed over the carnage and blood drenched snow around us. They stopped on Drex. His eyes held mine as he got up to his feet. The blood of our attackers and snow stuck to him. Pax stared up at the sky as blood gurgled up from his throat. Drex dropped down beside him and began trying to staunch the bleeding.

  A roller crushed over a dead wolf as it came to a stop beside me. Zared took the weapons from my hands, picked me up, and sat me down on the seat in front of him. Dr. Savelli kneeled down beside Pax and took over. Drex turned and met my eyes once more before Zared crunched back over the wolf and sped us away through the trees and snow to our clan home.

  “She took out half of a wolf pack on her own? Teagan? How is that possible?” Yukihyo asked.

  Zared had bathed with me, dried my hair by the fire, wrapped me in a fur, and now massaged my arms and legs as I laid on one of the large flat couches beside the fire in the family room.

  “Those wolves were the size of ponies,” Quaid said. “I hid her in the snow.”

  “I attempted to aid her in freeing the victim,” Zared said. “Who was responsible?”

  Yukihyo, Quaid, and Zared looked around at the other faces in the room. Phillip was scanning my brain and mumbling to himself.

  “She was. Just as she bound us to herself when she was desperate, she drew from us what she needed to survive. I don’t know how, but she did. Did you see the wounds on those wolves? The ones with the knife wounds weren’t particular to any of our fighting styles. It was a combination,” Xavier said.

  “Well, whatever it was that you did, Cupcake, you’re gonna be sore for a few days,” Phillip said.

  “I was already sore from last night,” I said. Jazon choked on his coffee. Dario whacked him on the back a few times. “Will Pax live?”

  “Yes, until your father gets ahold of him,” Nico said.

  Galina was in serious trouble with Yukihyo. He gave her a stern lecture. Then, he assigned her bathroom cleaning duty.

  Eli took a team, found the surviving smugglers, and freed them.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  During the trip to Nephele, I was immersed in my own thoughts. I had survived Pax’s attentions, an ice bear, and a pack of wolves. How had I done it, and could I do whatever it was that I had done again? At night when everyone slept and Nico’s snores masked any sounds I made, I dressed in my closet and then took the lift down to Deck Three. The lighting was dim. I went to a back corner and took out the training balls that I had bought on Trambelus. Activating one, I tried to dodge it, but it bonked me in the head a few times. While avoiding the annoying blows, I went away in my mind and observed what was happening. I moved from the ball before it could strike. When it became easy, I added another tra
ining device. Anger grew within me as I dodged the balls which I imagined to be Nathan Green’s fists. Never again.

  Each night, I waited until everyone slept before sneaking into the gym. I didn’t feel like the frightened girl Teagan Green had been. I didn’t feel like Yukihyo’s obedient wife. I didn’t feel like my father’s princess. I felt like me, and I liked it. I felt like the me I should have been. I felt like the mommy Neema saw when she looked at me and said I was pretty.

  Twelve days later, we arrived on Epopeus after brief stops on Nephele and Leucon where Yukihyo had purchased tribrillion. Fitz, Nico, Quaid, Zared, and I had met with the rulers of each planet to exchange pleasantries and attempt to create diplomatic goodwill.

  Quaid’s handsome, tan, and blonde haired father, Consul Quinn Bosh, and his beautiful mothers, Elspeth and Julia, welcomed us. Quaid’s father was so proud of him for his bravery in the Talpa System that he overlooked the political ramifications of me marrying a Laconian hybrid.

  Eri ran to me and hugged my waist. “You came back! I’ve missed you. Your tummy is all gone! Where is the new baby?” Eri asked.

  “Let your Aunt Teagan come inside, and you will get to see the baby,” Elspeth said with a laugh.

  After getting sixteen more hugs, I was seated on a couch with a cold cup of juice. Elspeth and Julia took turns holding Niklos.

  “I am a princess just like Aunt Teagan,” Eri said as she curtsied. “Who are you?’ she asked curiously.

  “I am Galina Galatea, and I’m going to be a fierce ice bear and wolf hunter one day, just like Aunt Teagan.”

  The ladies looked at me in surprise. I stared back.

  “I brought silly little dolls with me from Arachne,” I said to change the subject. It worked.

  The girls sat and played dolls. Eri had a wide collection of doll clothes, most of which had been handed down from her sisters. Neema joined them but soon discovered little Quinn Bosh who was nearing age two. They became immediately inseparable and played until they fell asleep on the playmat.

  Unwelcome thoughts of Pax and the chaos and death his misguided actions had set into motion floated through my mind like old strands of a web that needed to be cleared away. Dr. Savelli had saved Pax. Now, he recovered on my ship. While treating his injuries, Dr. Savelli had discovered a buildup of pressure on Pax’s brain which apparently had caused his irrational behavior. The brain injury had been the result of the beating Drex had given him. Therefore, had Drex not beaten Pax, Pax wouldn’t have cut off Drex’s hand, or kidnapped the now deceased smuggler. The slow and gradual buildup of pressure had been minimal enough to escape notice in basic scans, but had been enough to cause drastic departures from reality. Had Dr. Savelli not been doing such delicate surgery to repair Pax’s throat, he may not have noticed. Looking up, I saw my father-in-law watching me.