by Nina Croft
Tiger of Talmare
by
Nina Croft
Kindle Edition
****
Story Summary
Melissa Stark will take on just about any job as long as the price is right. But this particular job she would gladly take on for free because Captain Zachary Knight has been a thorn in her side ever since she stole his starship ten years ago.
Back then he was a genuine hero and poster boy for the army's hybrid breeding program. Now things have changed. Zach has been accused of a massacre on the planet of Talmare and is being shipped home to stand trial. But certain influential people want to make sure Zach never reaches Earth and Mel and her crew on The Revenge have been hired to intercept him and return him to Talmare.
It should have been easy money. The problem is, Zach is impossible to resist and once Mel gets her hands on him she's doesn't want to let him go. Now those same people are also after Mel.
Tiger of Talmare
Copyright 2011 by Nina Croft
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author or publisher except for the use of brief quotations in critical articles or reviews.
****
This is a work of fiction. Names, places, businesses, characters and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, actual events or locales is purely coincidental.
****
Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Epilogue
About the Author
Prologue
Year: 3036
Intergalactic Agency Space Liner: The Orion
"What the hell just happened?"
Mel picked herself up off the floor and put her hand to her head. It came away wet. She stared at the blood on her fingers before glancing around the cell. Darla was already on her feet. Leila was sitting up; she appeared dazed but otherwise unharmed.
Crouching down in front of her, Mel brushed a strand of pale blond hair from Leila's face. "Hey, sweetheart, are you alright?"
"I'm fine, I think." Leila blinked a couple of times, rubbing her forehead. "I felt something strange. There was someone...." She frowned. "No, they're gone. What happened?"
Mel cocked her head, listening. Silence, where before the ship had hummed with life. "I'm not sure, but a wild guess is we've crashed."
"I've never heard of an Agency Space Liner crashing before," Darla said.
"Me neither." Mel straightened and peered out of the small rectangle of glass in the cell door. "One of our guards is down, the other gone." She turned to Darla. "Can you do something with the locks?"
Darla grinned. "I've been itching for the chance."
It took her only minutes. Once the door slid open, Mel searched the area. Nothing moved, and she stepped over to the fallen guard and took his blaster. "Okay, let's see if we can find a way off this thing."
Mel let Darla lead the way; she'd travelled on one of the huge Space Liners before and knew the layout. Leila followed with Mel close behind, covering the other two. The main power was down, and the emergency lights cast only a sullen red glow. Breathing in, Mel caught the faint tang of burning metal hanging in the air. Her heart pounded in her chest, her whole body tense, ready to run. But they encountered no one. The liner appeared deserted, eerily silent.
Darla finally brought them out onto the cavernous freight deck. Mel came to a sudden standstill, her eyes widening. A battleship stood on the deck—black, sleek, and beautiful. Her name written on her side in gold: The Valiant. It was love at first sight, and Mel coveted her with every bone in her body. She could be free with a ship like that. Go anywhere in the Universe.
She nudged Darla. "Over there. That's the one we want. If we get her, can you fly her?"
"Either that, or I'll die trying."
Mel looked at her curiously. The three of them were all being shipped from the space brothel to the asteroid mines and a slow and certain death. She knew why Leila and herself were there. Despite her pretty face, Leila had had a certain way of making the customers feel uncomfortable. And Mel had earned her place by killing a man. She didn't regret it—he'd deserved to die, and besides, she'd rather be in the mines than chained to a bed in that stinking brothel. But she had no clue what Darla had done to deserve the death sentence. Or what the other woman had been before she'd found herself an unwilling guest in the brothel.
"Where did you learn all this tech stuff?" she asked.
"My dad had a ship. He taught me everything I know. How to keep them running, short cuts when the money was low, how to steal them." She grinned. "My dad wasn't exactly legit. It's how I ended up at the brothel—a job gone wrong. They killed him and took me in lieu of bad debts."
"Bastards. What was your dad, some sort of smuggler?"
"He preferred to call himself a pirate."
Mel smiled. "Hmm, pirates. I like the sound of that."
Leila tapped her on the arm. "There's someone on board."
They all ducked behind cover and watched as a man emerged from the open hatchway; tall, broad at the shoulder, lean at the hips with short hair, streaked black and gold to match his ship. He wore the uniform of an army captain, fitted to his figure like skin.
"Who is he?" Mel asked.
Leila closed her eyes. "His name's Captain Zachary Knight. The Valiant is his ship."
"No," Mel said, "actually, she's our ship."
"Can we kill him?" Leila asked.
Mel shook her head. "At least not yet. I've got a plan."
A few minutes later, she stood back and inspected Leila. "Okay, make it realistic."
Leila grinned. Then the grin faded and pain etched her features. "Like this?"
"Yes, just one thing." Mel leant across and tore Leila's shift baring her shoulder and the curve of her breast. "There, a perfect damsel in distress. Off you go."
Leila limped across the freight deck. She looked so small and helpless, even younger than her sixteen years, her fine blonde hair loose around her shoulders. The soldier glanced up, caught sight of Leila, and came running toward her.
"Help me," Leila whimpered. She stumbled and collapsed at his feet. Limpid blue eyes blinked up at him. He crouched down beside her, his expression still wary. "Please, Zachary, help me."
Leila's voice was like liquid honey, and Mel watched as his face softened. Then he frowned.
"How did you know my name?"
"A good guess?" Mel said, stepping up behind him. She placed the blaster against the back of his neck. "Stand up slowly."
He straightened and turned toward her, towering over her, and Mel had to force herself to hold her ground. She stood firm and stared up, straight into the most beautiful eyes she had ever seen. They were a clear greeny-gold, slanted like a cat's as they flicked from her to Leila and back again.
"What do you want?" he asked.
"Your ship."
His brows drew together. "You're joking, right?"
"Believe me," Mel said, "I have absolutely no sense of humor."
He shrugged. "You'll never get her off the ground."
"Darla, what do we need?"
"The access codes would be good. They're an eight-digit sequence. I might manage without them, but they would make things easier."
Leila lowered her lids. When she opened them, she was smiling. "Got them. Can we kill him now?"
Mel hesitated.
"He'll come after us," Leila said. "And he won't stop until he catches us."
He stared at her, his gaze unwavering. "She's right."
Mel had killed before. She knew it was the sensible thing to do now. But somehow, she couldn't make herself pull the trigger. She switched the blaster to stun and shot him.
"Come on, let's get out of here."
As she led them up the ramp into their new ship, she couldn't resist smoothing her fingers down the sleek side. "I'm going to rename her The Revenge." She grinned. For the first time in her twenty-one years, the future did not look bleak. "Hey, you two, we're going to be pirates."
Darla grinned back. "Rob from the rich and..."
"Keep it ourselves."
"Yeah!"
"Do we get to kill people?" Leila asked.
"Yes," Mel replied, "but only if we don't like them."
Back to Table of Contents
Chapter One
10 years later
Mel dodged a blaster beam and dived for cover.
She peered out into the main room. The fighting was over. The crew of the transport ship were either down or huddled in the corner trying to avoid being hit by the random shots that still bounced off the walls. Another blast nearly blew her head off, and she ducked.
"Goddamn it," she yelled, "they've surrendered! Stop shooting."
She was going to be seriously pissed if she got shot by one of her own trigger-happy crew.
It took a few more minutes, but finally the room fell silent. "Thank you."
Mel stood up, brushed herself down, and noticed the large solid object she had taken refuge behind. "Shit!"
She swung around to stare at her crew. "Okay, which one of you morons shot the goddamn cryotube?" No one answered. "Did I not make myself very, very clear? Did I not say, 'do not shoot the cryotube'?"
"Sorry, Mel," someone muttered.
Leila swaggered across the room, holstering her pistol. She came to a halt in front of Mel and looked down at the coffin-shaped container.
Wisps of liquid nitrogen were already seeping from the broken seals, and a film of ice crystals covered the glass front. "Is it a problem?" she asked.
Mel rolled her eyes. "Read my mind. Of course it's a goddamn problem. The client's orders stipulated one intact cryotube plus contents, untouched and definitely not shot to bits."
"I still don't see that there's a real problem." Leila nodded at the cryotube. "You know Sanderson wants him dead. We just did that part for him."
"Yeah, right," Mel replied, making no attempt to hide her sarcasm. "Perhaps you should ask him for a bonus. The problem is, I think he wants to do the killing himself."
"Well, I can understand that. All the same, he still gets what he wants."
"But not what he paid for. I have a reputation to think about you know."
"Actually, Mel, your reputation sucks."
Leila had a point. Mel always prided herself on completing her missions, but lately things seemed to be going a little haywire. Not her fault, merely a run of bad luck. Which she should have broken with this job.
But maybe all wasn't lost. Maybe this wasn't him. Maybe there was another, unbroken cryotube hiding somewhere. The one she really wanted.
"Are we sure it's him?" Leila asked, echoing her own thoughts.
Mel moved closer and used the sleeve of her jacket to wipe the frosting from the glass. For a moment, she could see nothing but the swirl of white mist. It cleared slightly, and a face appeared. She stared at it, stepped back, and gestured to Leila to look. She peered in. "Oh yeah, it's him." She grinned. "Who would have thought it? Captain Zachary Knight, aka 'The Tiger of Talmare'. How the mighty have fallen."
"Well, he's going to be the dead Tiger of Talmare if we don't revive him fast. Come on, let's get him back to The Revenge and wake him up."
Leila didn't move. "You know we're stuck with him once he's awake. The Cryo unit of The Revenge is broken. Again. And Darla doesn't have the stuff to fix it."
"Tell me something I don't know," Mel grumbled.
"Anyway, my point is, wouldn't it be much easier to let him freeze? We could always pretend we didn't notice."
Mel glanced at the blaster burns that crisscrossed the cryotube. "Somehow I don't think that's an option."
She forced herself to think rationally about Leila's suggestion. Should they do nothing and let him die in the tube? She nibbled on her lower lip. It was important to get this right; she couldn't afford not to get paid for this job. But what would Sanderson prefer? A dead and definitely unconscious Tiger of Talmare, or an alive and wide awake one? The mist shifted again, revealing his face, and she made up her mind. "No, we'll take him back to The Revenge and wake him up."
Leila didn't budge. "Remember, he's dangerous, and he doesn't like you."
"I'm sure he would if he knew me better."
"I'm not."
"Well, we'll just have to put him in restraints. Look," she snapped when Leila still looked dubious, "who's captain here?"
"You're the captain, Mel. But I still think you'll live to regret this. So, if we can't kill Tiger, can we shoot them?" She nodded in the direction of the transporter crew who were still huddled under the watchful eyes of Angie and Grace.
"No, we can't shoot them." Mel shook her head; it was a source of constant amazement to her how someone as sweet and innocent appearing as Leila could have such homicidal tendencies.
Leila pouted. "You never let us have any fun."
"Okay, you can stun them, but only for a few hours. We need a head start. Not that I think they'll come after us. He's"—she waved in the direction of the cryotube—"such an embarrassment to the administration, they'll probably welcome his disappearance."
****
The Revenge was equipped with a cell, even if it had never held a prisoner. At the moment, it was used as extra storage space for anything they couldn't offload. Plunder, Mel called it, rubbish according to everyone else. It took a few seconds to kick stuff aside and make enough space for them to put the cryotube down and still be able to close the door.
"Can you send Darla down?" she asked Leila, as she left. "The intercom's not working."
"What is on this pile of junk?" Leila muttered.
Mel cleared some more things from the small cot, sat down, and waited. She didn't dare touch the tube herself; tech stuff wasn't her strong point. She heard the rumble as The Revenge's engines fired up and held her breath, but they made the jump smoothly, and a few minutes later, Darla appeared. She stood in the doorway wiping her hands on a piece of rag. "I heard it didn't go exactly as planned."
"When does it ever?" Mel nodded at the tube. "Can you wake him?"
"Probably, but you know, Leila might be right. Maybe you should just let him die."
"Leila's a bloodthirsty bitch."
"Yes, but that doesn't necessarily make her wrong. She thinks you won't because of who he is."
"Who he is?"
"She thinks you've got a soft spot for him. You're not thinking straight."
"Soft spot? You've got to be joking! The man's been a pain in my butt for the last ten years. So I humiliated him. I stole his ship. It wasn't as though it was personal." She thought for a moment. "And what do you mean 'Leila thinks'? She hasn't been reading me, has she?"
"No, you know she promised not to, but she can't help but get a sense of what you're thinking."
"Well, this time her 'sense' is all screwed up. I feel absolutely nothing for Tiger over there, except glad he's finally off my back. I'd kill him just like that." She snapped her fingers. "But it just so happens, I've carefully considered what's best for the client. And what's best is we hand him over alive."
"Of course you have."
Mel stared at her with narrowed eyes. Why did she get the impression that she hadn't convinced Darla? "Just wake him up."
"Let's have a quick look first. Maybe we can fix it." Darla stood over the tube. She twiddled a few knobs. "And then again, m
aybe we can't."
