The Warlord's Daughter

by Susan Grant

  Zaafran, Aral thought. Was he trying to track down Aral in the wake of his “disappearance?” Quite possibly. Finding him would be like picking a microbe out of a mud puddle, but not impossible, especially if he cast a large enough net, like stopping each ship in and out to see who was flying it.

  He’d long had doubts about the sentiments of the high command about his role in their victory. Giving credit to a Drakken, a battlelord, no less, would only weaken their image as the stronger power in this conflict, and the rightful power. The resistance movement would exploit that weakness. Aral coming and going as he pleased was a dangerous proposition for the new government. Zaafran must see it, as well. Why else had he never revealed Aral’s role publicly? It was telling indeed. Maybe now the man had developed second thoughts on letting him go free. He didn’t think Zaafran would go that route. They’d built a trust over the years, an understanding. But the man was under a tremendous amount of pressure, faced with regrouping loyalists and the discovery of the existence of a surviving child of the warlord. Desperate measures would not be unexpected.

  Putting Awrenkka at even greater risk.

  And nothing Kaz herself didn’t already suspect.

  He scanned the immediate area for any sign of the meddling trader and his guard friend. He hoped she’d tied him up with fines or paperwork for interfering. “To the ship,” he said.

  “Guards,” Kaz warned.

  Four camp guards were pushing through the crowd, stopping refugees and demanding what they knew or had seen. At least one priestess was being questioned. Wren cast her gaze around, looking for a way out as the sensation of being trapped, of being tracked, returned. Then Aral was at her side, strong, reassuring. “Split up,” he told Kaz. “Meet me at the ship, ready to depart.”

  Kaz hurried away.

  He undid the fasteners of the shirt sticking damply to his torso, revealing a hard, muscled body and bronzed skin. He’d camouflaged his tattoos. Their faint outline was visible in the blinding, yellowish sunlight. He did have another shirt on underneath, but it was a tank, nothing more than a black scrap of fabric. He draped the shirt over her shoulders and urged her in the opposite direction from Kaz. She hoisted the wadded-up robe higher to keep it from slipping out of her blouse. It won her a few smiles from passing refugees. “Many blessings,” an old woman said, patting her on the arm.

  “Good to see new life after so much death,” another refugee told them, tattooed and toothless. A veteran. Warily she glanced around for the ex-soldier she’d knocked out, and hoped he and his friends weren’t searching for her.

  Their boots hunted for traction on the gritty street. Gravel shifted under his heels, turning to smoky clouds of dust with each stride. Something hollow and metallic collided with her toe. Aral caught her before she took a nosedive. “Why didn’t he ever see to your eyes? It was outright neglect.”

  No one other than Sabra had ever gotten angry on her behalf. “Kidnapping, murder, genocide, plus the proper training of my half-brother—it took time. The warlord was a busy man.”

  He made a derisive sound in his throat. “We’ll see to your eyes first thing, Awrenkka.”

  “Wren,” she said. “Awrenkka is the warlord’s daughter, the woman whose value was in who she’d be bred to. Wren is me.”

  “Breeding. Is that how you see marriage? No wonder you despise the concept.”

  “That’s the real reason he never had my vision repaired, I suspect.” She pushed on her glasses. “He wanted to keep his prize racehorse hobbled so she couldn’t run away. If I couldn’t see, I couldn’t very well escape, could I?”

  “Would you have?”

  “If I’d known what I know now—about my father, about his battlelords, and what crimes they committed—yes.” She felt his hands tense. “You, I wanted to run away with, not from.”

  “But not marry me.”

  “I have no issue with the trappings of marriage. I don’t want the trap.”

  “The trappings?” She met his dark eyes, saw the desire there. It made her skin warm all over.

  He turned a corner. The tents were closer here. Ahead was a knot of guards ordering around a few refugees. He spun her so fast in an about-face that she almost lost the robe.

  Gasping, she clutched at her stomach, hoisting it higher. It won her several concerned glances from those passing by. He had her up against a tent. “Put your arms around me. Do it,” he demanded at her hesitation. Then, lower, he whispered in her ear. “They’re watching, talking about us.” He flattened his hand on her fabric-stuffed belly, tenderly, as if she carried a real child—theirs. His breath tickled her ear. “Pretend we’re lovers. People, even the guards, give lovers privacy. In both our cultures the natural inclination is not to stare at kissing people but to look away.”

  Kissing? His explanation was ever so scientific, but she was too aware of his heat. His intensity. He was close enough now for her to study the tiny nubs of his beard on his golden skin. She’d never viewed a man so close. Never smelled anything as good.

  Unfamiliar voices in Coalition accents came closer. He tucked her close again, one hand brushing over her hair, his parted lips pressed to her jaw. She’d stopped breathing—equally because of the guards and Aral’s caresses. They stayed close, Aral’s lips touching her cheek. She began to lean into the embrace. His mouth dragged to her ear, his hand sliding up her back. “Wren,” he whispered. His soft lips grazed hers. A tremendous shudder ran through his body. Their embrace was no longer a ruse, she thought. It was real.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  THE GUARDS PASSED BY. “Nah, leave ’em alone,” one said. “She’s got one in the oven.”

  “They breed like mar-mice, even in the camps.”

  Aral squashed his anger at their comments. It cheapened what he’d felt with Awrenkka.

  Worse, from inside the tent next to them came giggling and a deeper, throaty laugh, followed by the very distinct sound of a hand slapping against a bare rump. There were three or even four people in there, and all in bed, Aral realized. Awrenkka appeared oblivious. It was he who was ready to turn red, if he were even capable of such a feat.

  A girl who looked no more than half his and Awrenkka’s ages appeared from behind the tent. Her blouse was unbuttoned. Underneath tiny, tattooed breasts peeked out. They were splotched with pink marks and a fading bruise. Sex for money. Few females had the opportunity to bring valuables with them as Wren had. This woman’s value was in her body. The scarcity of young, pretty women in this camp no doubt allowed her to charge high fees for sexual services.

  “A little fun, fine sir and lady?”

  He turned her down with a scowl. She disappeared into a warren of pathways winding deeper into a makeshift city of tents. He wished to the very core of his being that they were anywhere else but this heat-soaked, dust-ball of a planet. Little wonder it was being used to house Drakken refugees. No sane person would live here voluntarily.

  He snatched Wren’s hand. They were almost at the docks. The sky had taken on a sickly yellow cast. It had all the look of an approaching dust storm. Grit in his teeth confirmed it.

  His PCD was still lying on the console where he’d left it.

  It sat there, a challenge. As much as he liked Zaafran, he’d wanted no more ties with the Triad. They were looking for a battlelord. Him. If it made Zaafran feel better, he’d check in. The missing battlelord. He hooked the unit on his ear. “Call Z,” he said to initiate authentication that could not be traced to his ship.

  “Stand by…” the artificial voice said.

  “Oh, I am,” he said under his breath. “Nothing more I can do but stand by.” He paced, anxious to leave.

  “Authentication completed.”

  “M?” The prime-admiral sounded downright stunned. Something else was in his tone, something off. “Still taking care of your private matter?”

  “Yes. And for some time to come.”

  There was silence on the line. Then, “We lost him. Karbon Mawndarr is missing.”r />
  Aral halted as if he’d been flash frozen. As Zaafran offered the excuses as to how Karbon slipped away, Aral met eyes with Wren and couldn’t help wondering if his hope of escaping with her and finding a new life had been nothing more than a pipe dream.

  Incompetents. The entire Triad. No wonder he’d had to hand them their victory; they could not have done it themselves. Their idiocy made a mockery of his efforts to see Karbon executed. Now he was free. Watching him. Knowing who sold him out. There was no doubt in Aral’s mind.

  He took full blame. In wanting to keep his hands clean of the actual killing, in wanting to be something better than his father, he’d brought danger to everyone around him. He should have been there for the execution, seen it through to the end. But he’d been afraid of hearing his father’s caustic words. Words that deep down Aral feared were true. Words he’d fled from, words that had driven him to this point in time.

  A dead end.

  He’d never been able to escape the man before. What made him think he could now?

  “M, I’m under pressure to bring you in for questioning on the matter.”

  “For Karbon’s escape? After everything, Z, you think I’d help that bastard?” Because he was Drakken, and to many on the other side, they were all monsters. “I’m afraid that’s impossible, Z. I cannot assist you.”

  He ended the call before Zaafran could anger him more.

  He dashed the back of his hand across his mouth. “Karbon escaped, and some want to blame me.”

  Kaz was white. Wren watched him with compassion, or something close to it. There was so much about him that she didn’t know. To have any hope of a normal life with her, something he wanted desperately, he would have to allow her a window into his dark soul. He hoped what she saw there didn’t send her running.

  As part of his carefully crafted and so far flawlessly executed grand plan, Karbon was to be dead or at least in custody before Awrenkka was evacuated from Barokk. But it hadn’t worked out that way, and he’d have to accept the fact. If anyone knew that life wasn’t always neat and tidy, that loose ends weren’t always tied up, that scars remained open and bleeding years after they were gouged open, it was Aral.

  “Zaafran helped me obtain fake transponder codes for the ship. The minute we take off, we’ll be traced.”

  “We’ll fly with the transponder off,” Kaz said. We’ve done it before.”

  “And raise a red flag in the middle of the space lanes? It’s doable, but I don’t like it. We need to ditch the ship and find another.”

  “We can go with Vantos,” Awrenkka said. “He’s a freelancer. He has no loyalties. He was willing to take me out of the camp for a price.”

  “No. Not Vantos. He’s already curious. This will confirm everything he already suspects.”

  “If he does, he cares not for the morality of turning me in so long as he gets the money.”

  “A guess? Intuition? I will not hand you over to the executioner on a hunch, Awrenkka.”

  “I offered him more—more than the bounty. He agreed.”

  “Your dowry was lost in the fall of the palace.” Even the vast Mawndarr fortune and assets had been frozen by the Triad. He wasn’t a pauper by any means—he’d hidden away money on several different worlds, and on his ship—but she’d have nothing except what she could have stuffed into her pockets. Some jewelry or gems, a little money, that was all.

  “This isn’t a dowry. It’s tied to no marriage. It’s treasure. Priceless. And it’s mine.”

  ON THE BRINK OF ASSUMING her first command, Hadley stood outside the entrance to the bridge of the Cloud Shadow. In view of the bridge but behind a glass privacy wall, she was able to steal a few moments of privacy before making her grand entrance, an entrance that would help set the stage for the entire voyage.

  Suddenly Bolivarr was at her side, steadying her with his quiet strength. That was his way. Tall, dark and intense, he could appear and disappear like cloud shadows on a summer day, sliding silently in and out of sight. She’d often told others of the vast sky on her home-world, and how clouds raced across sun, casting fleeting shadows over the farmland. Admiral Bandar thought the name would fit a small, swift vessel. And thus the Cloud Shadow was born.

  Within minutes she’d step onto its bridge. “I spent so many years an executive officer, a glorified assistant, really, to my personal hero, that it’s hard to wrap my mind around the concept of commanding my own ship and crew,” she confessed. “Especially knowing how I got here.” Saving Admiral Bandar’s life earned her the promotion ahead of so many others. Now she’d have to bear the burden of proving that she deserved it. She didn’t like that fact, but there was no way around it. It was the way the military viewed outsiders. She was an outsider, just a farm girl from Talo. She pictured offspring from families that had produced generations of officers waiting in line for her to fail so they could step in and take her place.

  “Your bravery won you this command, Hadley. And your quick thinking. Your out-of-the-box thinking. If the Triad wanted robots to command ships, they would do so. They want leaders. Leaders think outside the box when required. Leaders make brilliant decisions, and mistakes. Leaders are human.”

  At the faint change in his voice, she glanced up at him. There were times he despaired that he was not fully human, though she knew otherwise, because of the alterations the empire had made to his brain to allow him to function as a wraith. Alterations that allowed them to erase his memories, and his sense of identity along with it.

  “You’re going to do great. This is just the beginning of a long and distinguished career.” He brushed his knuckles against hers, a reassuring warm caress. “If I didn’t feel that way, I’d have already begged for reassignment.”

  She laughed. “No, you wouldn’t have. That would have landed you back in the hospital. More tests, more meds.”

  Leaning on his cane, he cringed. “I’ll take the risk and serve with you, then,” he teased.

  From a portside briefing room came laughter then a few whoops. Then something thudded against the wall. A body? What were the cadets doing in there? “Dear goddess.”

  Bolivarr tipped his head to listen along with her. “Almost sounds like a Drakken crew.”

  Her second-in-command walked up to them, looking nervous. “Gods forbid.” The mere mention of their former enemy made him turn pale—paler than usual. Clearly out of his element, Garwin Tadlock was an aging star-lieutenant on his last mission before retirement. He was a scientist not a soldier. He had little charisma that Hadley could discern and almost no battle experience. It doubly assured her there would be no action on this mission. Her only hope was that he wouldn’t panic if they encountered pirates, a definite possibility across the Borderlands. But he’d be invaluable once they reached their destination. For that reason, she was glad he was aboard, as well as Sister Chara, their resident priestess, a wiry, athletic woman who’d already inspected—and blessed—the facilities in the ship’s gym.

  The cadets grew quieter as they filed into the bridge in anticipation of her entrance. It was more of a low-level hum of energy now. She remembered well her exuberance for her first summer voyage as a cadet at the Royal Galactic Military Academy. Rooks ranged from fifteen and a half to nineteen years old. Someday one of them could very well rise to the top leadership spot in the Triad Alliance and lead them into the future, as Admiral Bandar did, and Prime-Admiral Zaafran.

  “Shall we?” With a soft smile at Bolivarr, and a nod to her first officer, she squared her shoulders with their shiny new epaulets, pausing for a brief moment to take in the sight of the brand-new pilot and weapons stations and a state-of-the-art command array, the banks of view-ports with the graceful arc of the Ring rotating slowly against the icy backdrop of Sakka. She took that extra moment to ponder her good fortune for good reason. The war may have ended, but her life was just beginning. With one last tug on the hem of her uniform jacket, she stepped across the imaginary border of her life before and the rest of her lif
e.

  “Attention—Captain on the bridge!” Garwin called out.

  Hadley strode across the bridge, back ramrod straight, her hands clasped at the small of her back the way Admiral Bandar used to do when addressing her crew. In fact, the admiral affected that stance almost all hours of the day. Hadley used to wonder if she slept that way—with perfect military bearing. Hadley imagined she’d settle in to a more casual leadership style, but for now she felt a little unsure—okay, a lot unsure—and certainly in need of building respect. Whatever she could borrow from her mentor and hero she would.

  “Greetings, ladies and gentlemen. And rooks.” The rambunctious group of first-year cadets—rooks—immediately became serious. Dressed in their crisp cadet uniforms in the new Triad colors—red and blue on a mostly black background—they stood at attention.

  As Garwin read out their names, she stopped to straighten the epaulet of one young man. He turned white, then red. “Cadet Tenru,” she said.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Your father is Baru Tenru. One of the best fighter pilots we have.” And one of the most annoyingly egotistical. Though his ego didn’t come close to Tango’s. “I’ll expect great things of you.”

  “I’ll try, ma’am.” Try? Had the ego gene not made it into Tenru, Jr.? He certainly shared the fighter pilot’s cocky good looks. “I’ll just have to be careful not to show up my fellow cadets here.”

  That elicited a quiet snort from one of them. I stand corrected, Hadley thought. Apparently he was indeed a chip off the ol’ block.

  Garwin read off the names of the other cadets—Holster, also Coalition, and the twins Arran and Arrak of mixed heritage. The twins’ mother was a Drakken healer who somehow had managed to stow away on a ship where she’d met their father, a Coalition physician. It was rare to see half Hordish, half Coalition offspring that weren’t the result of rape. Regardless, they were never really accepted in either society, something she hoped would now begin to change.