The last thing he should do was make any further attempt to locate Lira Jannholm. Bad enough that he had gone as far as he had already. If she had, for whatever reason, decided to put aside all her training and throw in her lot with less-than-savory merchants, there wasn’t much he could do about it. She was a grown woman, capable of making her own decisions.
And yet…
He had been to Iradia, just once, newly commissioned on his first posting, eager to see the galaxy, to explore the stars that had glittered so brightly in the clear skies of his home world. As a first impression of those faraway planets, Iradia hadn’t been all that inspiring. His ship’s crew had been admonished to stay within the safe confines of Aldis Nova, the site of the main spaceport and the planet’s largest oasis, spanning a good two hundred kilometers across. But of course he and several other of the junior crew members had laughed at the warnings and ventured outside the safe zone. After all, they were from a harsh desert world as well. They’d been confident they could handle anything Iradia or its denizens threw at them.
Eighteen standard hours later, the group had limped back into Aldis Nova, missing two of its members. The bosses that controlled the desert just outside the oasis hadn’t taken kindly to a contingent of Stacian interlopers entering their territory, and made it clear through an ambush in a canyon some ten kilometers beyond the safe zone. Despite all his training, it was Rast’s first firefight — and his last. Not much need for that sort of thing on board a starship, and he found he liked it that way. It wasn’t cowardice to know he’d be a happy man if he never had to see a compatriot bleed out in his arms again.
Those bitter recollections did not do anything to improve his mood. And if he’d found Iradia so hostile, how would it treat Lira Jannholm, she of the upper-crust Ganymede background and the spotless record?
Well, spotless until she had met him, anyway.
That seemed to decide things. He wouldn’t call it a rescue — he had a feeling Lira wouldn’t appreciate being thought of as someone who needed protecting — but he knew he couldn’t abandon her to Iradia’s tender mercies.
It was time to take a leave of absence.
* * *
Lira stared at the captain of the Star of Madrid in consternation. “You’re leaving me here?”
He seemed unmoved by her distress. “I told you the job was only temporary. You been paid. You can get your own passage off-world.”
So she could…at a cost that would eat up more than half what she’d just been paid for bringing that garbage scow of a freighter safely here to Iradia. And hadn’t that been a picnic, what with blown coolant coils, a balky nav-computer, and a ship’s engineer with roving hands.
When they’d landed, she’d been overwhelmingly relieved that she could get off the ship for a few hours, walk around in Aldis Nova, and breathe air that didn’t stink of stale coolant and bodies that weren’t quite as fastidious about keeping clean as she was. However, she hadn’t thought she’d be barred from returning once she’d had her fill of fresh air.
“People come in and out of Iradia all the time,” Captain Marquez said, with a shrug of his fat shoulders. “You shouldn’t have too much trouble getting another gig.”
That might be true. Too bad she wasn’t all that keen on picking up another piloting job, considering how well this one had turned out. Not that she had much of a choice at this point.
“Sure,” she said, and bent down to pick up her satchel, which contained pretty much everything she owned. A few odds and ends had been left behind in her old room on Ganymede, but she somehow doubted she’d be going back there anytime soon to retrieve them.
A hot breeze ruffled her hair, loosening a few strands from the tight coil she wore at the back of her neck. The wind was coming from the west. It seemed as good a direction as any.
She turned away from Marquez and strode off into the swirling crowds of Aldis Nova. She wouldn’t let herself think about what might happen next.
* * *
To say that Admiral sen Trannick was angry would probably be an understatement. Rast had somehow doubted that his request for a leave of indeterminate length would pass by unnoticed…but he’d rather hoped it would.
“Leave?” the admiral demanded, and tossed the handheld containing the leave-of-absence forms on his desk. “After getting a post most men in your situation would have killed for?”
“Sir, I know it’s somewhat irregular, but it is necessary. I am fully prepared to relinquish my command on a permanent basis if that’s what is required.”
As he spoke the words, Rast was a little astonished at himself. Hadn’t he spent the last decade working toward such a post? And now, to throw it away to pursue an alien woman who no doubt hated him for what he had brought her to?
On first examination, it was insane. But Rast prided himself on his instincts, which so far had never steered him wrong. Somehow he knew he was meant to be with Lira Jannholm…just as he also knew the command of Syrinara’s defense force was not his intended destiny. Something about it felt wrong, wrong as the admiral’s own actions and reactions had been of late.
What drove that wrongness, he didn’t yet know. He only knew that he had to leave, and as soon as possible.
“‘Personal family business,’” sen Trannick read, after retrieving the handheld from the desktop. “What could be so urgent that it would take you away from your command?”
“As stated, your Excellency, it is a private family matter that I am not at liberty to discuss.”
A bald lie, of course, but Rast had known that would be the best tactic to avoid as much unpleasantness as possible. Family was sacred, and the privacy of a family’s concerns even more so. As much as he might want to probe, the admiral would most likely forbear from asking any further questions.
Rast’s guesses proved correct, as Admiral sen Trannick frowned down at the handheld for a few seconds longer before saying, “Then go. I will not ask your business…but know if you don’t return within one standard month, don’t bother to return at all.”
“Of course, your Excellency.” Rast bowed from the waist, the proper response. As any further conversation seemed superfluous, he took his leave and exited the admiral’s office. A ship was leaving for Eridani in a few standard hours; that gave Rast just enough time to put matters in order before it departed. From Eridani he could get another flight to Iradia.
One standard month. A lot could happen in that time.
Somehow, though, Rast doubted he would ever return to reclaim his position in Syrinara’s defense force.
CHAPTER FIVE
Lira stared at the glass of Iradian brandy sitting on the bar in front of her. Only one glass, and a small one at that. She knew she could never allow herself more than a single glass. Any more, and she might find she’d start drinking and never stop.
A few weeks ago, if someone had told her she’d end up like this — drinking in a disreputable little tavern in Aldis Nova and working for one of Iradia’s most notorious crime bosses — she would have recommended that they seek out a good psychiatrist. But life did have a way of playing little tricks on you.
After Captain Marquez dumped her so unceremoniously, she wandered the city for a while, knowing she would have to find lodging at some point, and wondering how much of a chunk it would take from her meager funds. There was a Gaian consulate here, and she supposed she could always go there to send a transmission to Ganymede and ask her parents if they would transfer some money to her. That, however, seemed even more distasteful than having to beg for a slot on a third-rate transport.
So she’d wandered some more, and drifted into a seedy little cafe, and ordered the least expensive item on the menu — a bowl of some sort of grain-based milky dish. It was while she was nursing her meal along that someone dropped into the seat opposite her and remarked,
“Heard you were a pilot.”
She’d glanced up to see a well-dressed man a few years older than she watching her carefully. From his pale
lavender skin she guessed he was at least part Eridani. “Who told you that?”
“I hear things.”
Turned out he did. When he first hired her, he gave no hint of who his — and her — new boss actually was. She didn’t discover that until she showed up at the location he’d described to her, found herself being patted down by two enormous men, and then saw the man himself waiting by the door of a sleek Sirocco-class ship, a Gaian-engineered rich man’s toy designed for both in-atmosphere and subspace travel. This one was so new that it even had a carefully scaled-down version of the Gupta drive that powered the GDF’s starships. She’d heard of the new Siroccos but had never seen one. Maybe a desire to pilot that beautiful machine had fueled her decision to sign on with her new boss.
Gared Tomas. The name hadn’t meant much to her at first, of course, but she figured it out soon enough. He had holdings all over the planet, as well as under the base on Iradia’s smaller moon, and he needed someone to take him wherever he needed to go.
“Someone he can trust,” Istafa Morain, the lavender-skinned man, told her.
How he’d determined that trustworthy person was her, Lira didn’t quite know. But after a few days in Gared Tomas’s service, she realized he made it his business to learn everything he could about the people he considered hiring. Probably his agents had hacked into her file with the GDF to steal her personal history and slipped back out again with no one the wiser.
Tomas could have been anywhere between forty and sixty. Hard to say, with the shaved head and the smooth warm brown skin. His eyes were a startling green against that mocha complexion. Some women might have found him attractive. Lira didn’t, but mostly because she knew better than to have any type of feelings for a superior besides respect.
Tomas didn’t have the same scruples, and made no secret of the fact that he would have liked her to be something more than just a pilot. By that time she’d worked for him for the better part of a standard week, and knew a little more of his temperament and moods.
“You can have a pilot, or a mistress,” she told him. “But not both…at least not both in the same woman.”
Maybe that had been taking her life in her hands, speaking so boldly. But she found she didn’t much care. Hadn’t she already hit bottom, working for the sort of man who treated people’s lives like trash and who she would’ve vigorously hunted down if she’d still been part of the GDF?
To her surprise, he’d only grinned and nodded. “Fair enough,” he said. “I know I can always trust you, Lira, to speak the truth.”
And she hadn’t known whether to be relieved that he’d spared her, or disappointed that he hadn’t ended her sad existence then and there.
So now here she sat, staring into the brandy’s amber depths and wondering how long she’d hesitate this time before taking that first sip, and whether she’d be able to stop when she reached the bottom of the glass.
“Captain Jannholm.”
The voice shouldn’t have been familiar. After all, she’d only heard it a handful of times. But it haunted her sleep, filled her dreams…that burnished baritone with the foreign edge to its pronunciation. He couldn’t be here, though. Why would he be here, in the ass-end of nowhere?
One part of her wanted her to stay rooted in place, to ignore him, ignore that insidious voice. She’d never run from a fight, though, and she wasn’t about to start now.
Slowly, she climbed off the stool and turned to face him. She was going to do this on her own two feet, and not sitting on a barstool like the local lush.
He looked different somehow. Then she realized it was because he wore civilian clothing, the high-collared tunic and slim-fitting pants favored by the Eridanis and popular throughout civilized space. His trousers were tucked into tall boots instead of the typical sandals or low shoes. The hair was still the same, in all its barbarian glory. And the face, whose features she’d thought must have been blurred by faulty memory. But no, the face hadn’t changed — those shining copper eyes, the strong nose and defiant chin.
She’d expected a rush of anger, or even hatred — after all, Rast sen Drenthan was a large part of the reason she’d ended up here on Iradia, servant to a man who thought of all life, human or otherwise, as a commodity to be traded or sold, or disposed of when no longer necessary.
What passed through her mind, however, was a single traitorous thought.
God, he’s handsome.
Which was just ridiculous, because his looks shouldn’t have mattered one way or the other, and since when had she even been capable of seeing a Stacian as handsome?
Self-disgust hardened her tone. “What the hell are you doing here?”
Probably not the reception he had wanted or expected, but that didn’t seem to faze him. Without blinking, he replied, “Looking for you.”
“Well, you found me.” And I really wish you’d done so after I’d had that first swig of brandy…
“So I have.” He moved a few paces closer and paused, looking around at the somewhat dubious surroundings, the sector’s dregs sitting at the far end of the bar or huddled in shadowy corners. “Perhaps I should be the one asking what you’re doing here.”
“An overwhelming urge to get away from it all?” Her tone was brittle, but she refused to tell him the truth, that she had ended up in this miserable backwater because of him.
She turned then, hoping he would take the dismissal for what it was. Of course he didn’t, but came even closer, until he was standing next to her at the bar. How could she have forgotten how tall he was, how almost physically overwhelming his presence could be?
To cover her confusion, she reached for the glass of brandy.
“I don’t advise drinking alone,” he said, and shifted so he addressed the barkeep, who’d been hovering at the other end of the counter and trying to act as if he weren’t listening to every word they were saying. No doubt Gared Tomas would have a complete account of their exchange before nightfall. “One for me as well.”
She lifted her shoulders, knowing somehow it would be pointless to tell him to go away. Maybe another woman would have been flattered that he had tracked her down so far from his own sector. Right then she just felt tired, and uncertain whether she had the energy to give him the brush-off…and, even if she could muster the strength to send him packing, whether he would be accommodating enough to comply.
What she did know was that they couldn’t have any kind of meaningful conversation here. The bartender was one of Tomas’s creatures, and, for all she knew, so was the young woman who wiped down the tables and served as a back-up barkeep when necessary. Asking Rast sen Drenthan to leave with her seemed like the sort of encouragement she really didn’t want to give him, but she didn’t have much choice.
“No need for that,” she announced. “We should get going anyway.” And she lifted the brandy and took it neat and fast, the way she’d learned during too many rowdy shore-leave episodes from her academy days.
Rast’s copper eyes widened a bit, but then he seemed to catch her sidelong glance toward the bartender, and he nodded. “That restaurant you were telling me about…”
“The very one,” she agreed, relieved that he’d picked up on the hint. “I’ll show you the way.”
She began to reach for her pocket to pull out some irrads, the local currency, to pay for her brandy, but Rast forestalled her by dropping a few copper coins on the counter. “Best get going. I’m very hungry.”
Holding her tongue appeared to be the best response. In silence, she led him out of the bar and on down the street. A block away was a small courtyard that some previous inhabitant had planted with off-world flowers and ornamental shrubs, with a stone fountain in the center. It provided a quiet space to sit and think — or stand and talk, as the case might be. For some reason the Iradians mostly ignored the spot, intent on their own busy commerce, but Lira had found it to be a welcome refuge in a world she found more than a little hostile.
Iradia’s orange-tinted shadows had begun t
o slant toward dusk. They had only an hour or so before night fell, and Gared Tomas would expect her back by then. She’d been given her liberty this afternoon, since he had no appointments until this evening, but she knew better than to be late.
“All right,” she said, after they had entered the courtyard and found it to be empty, as she had hoped. “What in the galaxy are you doing here? And what makes you think I’d be remotely happy to see you?”
That did seem to take him aback. He paused, staring down at her, the black brows forming a “V” shape as he frowned. The ridges above those brows didn’t move at all, however. Then his shoulders lifted. “I was worried about you.”
“You were — ” She broke off then, thinking she would explode into hysterical laughter if she said anything else. Worried about her? That was rich. Too bad he hadn’t been so worried about what might happen to her when that squad of five Stacian cruisers showed up in the Chlorae system to engage the Gaian forces there. “No, really, why are you here? Making sure the disgraced captain stays safely out of the way? Or did you realize you’d better make sure I kept silent so I would never reveal what happened between us? I can’t imagine your commanding officers would be too thrilled by the information. I know mine weren’t.”
Again he was silent. Thinking of the best lie to hand her, probably.
After a long moment, he said, “Is this really what you think of me? That I meant to deliberately disgrace you? That I was a party to the murder of innocent colonists?”
Surely he couldn’t be that obtuse, or believe her to be that stupid. “What else? Oh, maybe it was a calculated risk, a gamble to see whether my superiors would recall me from my post so the way would be clear for a Stacian incursion, but it all worked out very neatly for you, didn’t it?”
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