Cherry bent over to get a closer look at the other spots and configurations on the grid. "Are one of those bigger shapes Earth?"
Dot frowned and glanced at Voyager. "I am sure Captain Voyager would be much more capable of answering all your questions."
With an abrupt twist, Mar faced his captain. "Please excuse us. It is past time for our rest period and you know Dot gets quite cranky—"
"I do not get cranky," Dot insisted as she turned her face toward Cherry.
"You do," Mar said, stepping away from the panel, "and we should not subject our guest to one of your moods."
"My moods!"
"You see, you are getting cranky."
Cherry tried not to laugh at the he-she as they left the bridge, arguing back and forth in the same voice. A moment later their voices were cut off by the door to their room and Cherry turned to Voyager. "I guess you're used to that."
He shook his head without looking at her. "I accept it. They're the best navigator in the galaxy."
"So, tell me how all of this works," she said with a wave of her hand over the panel.
"Wouldn't you rather take your rest now?"
"You've got to be kidding. I just rested for twenty-four hours. I'm wide awake." She noticed that he appeared to be totally absorbed in whatever was on his monitor and she leaned over his shoulder to take another look.
Immediately, he cleared the screen and turned his chair so that she was forced to move aside, while he made some adjustments on the navigator's side of the control panel.
Cherry leisurely circled the panel, mainly to see if she could get him to follow her movement. So far, he had managed to avoid meeting her eyes except for the briefest moment and it was beginning to get on her nerves.
Gallant let out an exasperated sigh. "If you think you could sit still for a few minutes, I'll answer your questions."
Cherry smiled and looked around the unfurnished area. "I'd love to. Where would you suggest?"
"Here," he said, and pulled a padded bench out from under the panel where Mar-Dot had been standing. "Mar-Dot doesn't sit often but when they have the need, they straddle this."
Cherry sat down facing him instead of the unladylike position he suggested. "Okay, shoot." That almost made him look at her... but not quite.
"Shoot?"
"A Terran expression for go ahead, talk. Tell me how all of this works."
Gallant turned his screen back on and punched a few buttons in front of him. His eye stayed on the monitor as he spoke to her. "Very simply, the computer oversees the basic operations and alerts me if anything is not functioning properly. As Dot told you, this ship was built for speed. It's lightweight and powered by a specially customized stardrive."
He went on to explain how the stardrive worked but Cherry didn't understand enough about engineering to follow, so she let her mind wander. At any rate, for all the attention he was paying her, he could have been speaking to a piece of furniture. With every passing moment, it became more obvious that Voyager was purposely trying to ignore her presence.
There was nothing she relished more than a challenge and with little else to do, she decided to accept the unspoken challenge to make him pay attention to her.
"O-o-oh," Cherry suddenly moaned and covered her right eye with her hand.
"What is it?" Gallant asked in a concerned tone, yet still kept his face averted.
"I got something in my eye." She rubbed it, tugged on the lid then moaned again. "Drek. It's probably just an eyelash but I can't get it out."
Leaning closer to him, she pleaded, "Can you see anything?" She heard him take a deep breath before facing her and had to forcibly hold back her smile.
"Move your hand," he ordered. She did. "Open your eye." She tried but after a little lash fluttering, it was clear she could not keep it open on her own. He hadn't wanted to look at her, let alone touch her, but as her lower lip began to quiver, he gave in.
Steadying his hand on her cheek, he used his thumb and forefinger to gently pry her eye open. Her facial muscles strained against his effort for a moment before she relaxed and met his gaze. He didn't find any eyelash or particle but he did see a definite twinkle of mischief... just before she tweaked his nose.
"Gotcha!" she said with a laugh.
He jerked back in his chair and looked at her as though she were unbalanced. "What was that for?"
Cherry shrugged lightly. "I wanted to make you look at me and I did it. You were being very rude, you know. In fact, speaking of rude, you have yet to apologize."
He slowly swiveled his chair back to its usual position and stared at the monitor. "I told you, the importance of my mission—"
Cherry gripped the arm of his chair and turned it back to her. "Look at me and say I'm sorry or you won't have any peace for the rest of this trip."
Gallant decided she was quite capable of carrying out her threat and, considering how long this trip was actually going to take, he acceded. He looked straight at her pretty face and murmured, "I apologize for stunning you and taking you away without your permission."
Cherry's smile broadened. The expression on his face was one of extreme discomfort. "See? That wasn't so hard. And now that we got that business out of the way, tell me about this grid."
"It's a navigational device."
She smirked at his simple answer. "I gathered that much. I want to know what all these blips and markings mean. And what are all the red sparkles at the edge? It looks like the tail of a comet or something."
Gallant realized if he didn't answer, she would just keep prodding. "That's an ion trail."
Cherry frowned at the screen. Dot had said the blue spot of light was this ship and, even though the movement across the grid was slow, it looked as though the ship was following the ion trail. The distance between the last red sparkle and the blue spot appeared to be exactly the same as it was earlier. "You said something about an ion trail before. Is there a ship on the other end of that trail?"
Now it was Gallant's turn to frown. He hadn't expected intelligence along with all her other attributes. "Probably. But it's too far away to be picked up on the grid."
She had an inkling that she had just learned something important but she couldn't put her finger on it. "And where's Earth?"
"Also too far away." He knew she was going to have to be told the truth sooner or later but he opted for as late as possible. Since it was clear she would not permit him to ignore her, he thought distraction might buy him a little more time.
"Do you play cubit?" he asked as he reached under the control panel and slid out an extension, creating a table between them.
Cherry shook her head. "I don't think I've ever heard of it."
He pulled open a drawer on his side of the table and took out four small cubes which were a different color on each of their six sides: blue, red, yellow, green, orange and purple. He put them in the center of the table. Then he placed six penny-sized markers bearing the same colors as the cubes in front of Cherry and gave himself another identical set.
"It's fairly easy," Gallant said. "The object of the game is to get four of each color. After an initial toss of the cubes, you have two more tries, during which you can reroll as many cubes as you like to try to get four of one color. If you make a set, or quad, you put aside that color marker. The first one to get rid of all their markers, wins."
"Sounds something like a game called Yahtzee that I played in Outerworld a long time ago."
Gallant raised an eyebrow. "Oh? Perhaps you'll teach me that one next. Does it involve gambling?"
"Not usually."
"Then that's one big difference. Cubit is the most popular gambling game throughout the galaxy. The players and bystanders bet on the outcome, which color quad one will get first and whether or not either player will roll a quad on an initial try. It's taken very seriously by some players."
Cherry noted the way he made it sound like he didn't take it very seriously himself but she had a feeling the opposite was proba
bly true. "So, Captain, what are the stakes in this game?"
His answer began with a slow grin. "I wouldn't want to take advantage of your innocence."
Immediately, her guard went up. "Why do I get the feeling I'm being conned here?"
He asked her to explain what she meant by that and then firmly denied he would ever do such a thing. "I'll tell you what, we'll just play for points... until you decide to make it a bit more interesting."
Cherry's intuition told her she was still being entrapped by a practiced liar but boredom seemed more lethal than any snare he had planned for her. "Okay. I'll play with you, Captain, but be warned, I'm very good at games."
His only response was another slow grin.
Chapter 3
Inside the Mosque of Omar in Jerusalem, Bessima stood behind a marble column. Shrouded in the concealing garments of an Arab female, she attracted no attention to herself. There were many visitors that day, both the devout and the curious, who had come to see the rock from which Muhammad allegedly had ascended to heaven.
Suddenly a fierce-looking man, in traditional Muslim attire, was standing on the rock, scanning the faces of the people beyond the guardrail. Within seconds, shocked murmurs rippled through the crowd.
"I am the prophet, Muhammad," the man loudly declared in an old Arabic dialect. He waited until several onlookers confirmed that he did indeed look like drawings they had seen.
The prophet continued in a booming voice that echoed off the dome of the mosque. "You must prepare yourselves for Judgment Day. Allah is coming. Non-believers and those who disobey Allah's words will be punished. Behold the face Allah will wear and remember it."
For a few seconds, an image hung in the air above Muhammad then it and he disappeared.
Bessima sighed with relief as she observed the people around her. This had gone much better than the visitation at Our Lady of Lourdes. The Arabs were properly shaken by the prophet's appearance and appeared to accept his warning. It confirmed her suspicion that she had to avoid the places where large numbers of Americans congregated until the very end of her mission. She had been on Terra long enough to discover how jaded the Americans were.
If the Princess had known more about these Terrans before sending off Bessima, her most able warrior, she might not even be there. But the Princess had been convinced that Terra was the ideal planet for the relocation of her people and that the natives were a primitive, easily conquered species.
Bessima now knew better but there was no way to advise the Princess of her discoveries. As she had been ordered, Bessima destroyed the ship that had brought her to Terra a year ago. The only thing she could do at this point was head for Asia next and hope for the best.
The warrior could not help but wonder how the rest of the Princess's plan was progressing. From the beginning it had been understood that if the royal plan did not come to fruition, Bessima would be stranded on Terra for the rest of her life. If that were to happen, however, she had already learned of several countries that would suit her needs and accept her leadership.
* * *
Princess Honorbound inspected the platter of cooked morset ribs offered by the servant boy and chose one the size of her forearm. The four men and five women seated on the floor around the huge stone slab that served as a table waited tensely as she brought the meaty bone to her teeth and ripped off a chunk of meat. A trickle of juice escaped the corner of her mouth and ran down her chin while she tested the flavor and texture. With a wave of the bone, she gave the boy permission to serve the others.
Josep, the Princess's elderly chief advisor, selected the smallest piece from the heap of bloody meat. He rarely ate animal flesh anymore but it would have been an insult to refuse. With the exception of brief visits, such as this one, his duties had kept him away from the Princess for most of the last twenty years. During that time he had adopted many of the ways of the more civilized people he dealt with.
Although he still owed his allegiance to Honorbound, he saw her as the barbarian she was. Taller and larger-boned than the average man, her gold-plated helmet with its morset antlers made her appear even greater, and she rarely took off the royal helmet.
The animal skin slung around her hips was her only concession to modesty as she was extremely proud of her muscular body with its numerous jagged scars. But barbarian or not, the ornate gold medallion that hung from a leather thong around her neck declared her a member of the royal family of the planet Illusia, and therefore, his superior.
From various civilizations they had conquered, they had gained sophisticated weaponry as well as the ability to travel through space at great speeds. Yet they preferred to maintain their primitive existence in every other aspect of their life. Besides animal skins comprising most of their attire, fire was still the primary source of light and heat. And their manners and traditions had not altered in a thousand years.
According to custom, no one spoke during the meal. Only the sounds of open-mouthed chewing, slurping and finger licking echoed through the cavernous chamber.
As Josep glanced at the other eight Illusians who made up the Princess's council, he realized how soft he had become in his years away. The animalistic urges that drove these warriors were also present within Josep but he had learned to control most of his barbarism. Now, however, sitting among them, he could almost feel himself regressing to their level once again.
Before leaving his ship, he had removed the flowing red robe he normally wore and donned a fur tunic that failed to completely conceal the deterioration of his aging body. But his status had been determined by his mind, not his strength, so his white hair and sloping shoulders did not alter the respect he was paid by his fellow council members.
As the others did, Josep tossed his unwanted scraps into the center of the table. Before the final course was served, the garbage had grown to a sizable mound of gnawed bones.
Emitting an elongated belch, Princess Honorbound announced the end of a highly satisfying meal. "So, Josep, my friend, do you bring us good news?"
All eyes turned to him in anticipation. "Some, though not as celebratory as you had hoped. When I left Norona several weeks ago, the Consociation representatives were almost evenly divided about what action should be taken with regard to Illusia's dilemma."
With the long curved fingernail of her right index finger, Honorbound picked a piece of meat out of her tooth and flicked it onto the bone pile. "That is not unexpected. What about Gallant Voyager? Where is he?"
Josep noted how unconcerned she tried to look and knew it was for the others' sake. Her anxious thoughts came through to him whether she wished it or not. "The Consociation Regent, Esquinerra, heeded my suggestion to give Voyager the assignment to track down the Weebort trader. At the time I departed, I was informed that Voyager was on his way to Innerworld Terra, where the Weebort was last reported to be."
"And the assassin?" Honorbound asked with a little more interest.
"Frezlo was also headed in the same direction."
"Good," she said, though so much more was going on in her head that only Josep could hear.
He was one of the very few of their people who had been born telepathic. That ability had earned him his position as the Princess's chief advisor. On the other hand, her fear of that ability caused her to give him a mission that would keep him far from her side most of the time. It was a mixed blessing at best.
She questioned him on a few other matters before adding her own piece of information. "According to the chronology of our plan, Bessima should be planting her seeds now as well. It is too bad we could not maintain contact with her, but she is most trustworthy. She will complete her assignment in the time frame she was given then all will be ready for us."
The Princess clapped her hands and a short, plump woman in her middle years appeared seconds later. An abrupt hand signal from her mistress was all the instruction the servant required before she was off again.
"Your timing was excellent, Josep," Honorbound said with a s
mile. "You may have already guessed by our feast that we had a celebration planned for tonight even before your arrival. Five of our children have reached full maturity and are ready to be integrated."
The plump woman returned then, leading three young men and two young women, all wearing only a piece of white linen wrapped diaper-style, and a white band circling each of their heads. They stood at stiff attention in a straight line as the Princess rose and inspected each one from head to toe.
"Not a bad-looking group," Honorbound said to the woman, who immediately beamed at the praise. "You must have fed them better than the last candidates. Let's hope it did not lessen their hunger for more important things."
Josep had not participated in a Maturation Ceremony in a very long time. It was the most important day in the life of an Illusian. Though he had once reveled in the celebration activities, he now simply wondered if he was up to it.
The Princess must have caught him frowning because she laughed and said, "Don't worry my old friend. Your own maturity permits you to sit and observe the first half of the ceremony."
Josep nodded in appreciation but he had received the unspoken message that his active participation in the second half was mandatory if he did not wish to be shamed in front of the others. His gaze traveled over the maidens and was met by a particularly bold stare from the more well-formed of the two. She clearly intended to receive the high honor of being chosen by the chief advisor. As his body responded to her look of raw sexual hunger, Josep shed his fear that he would not be able to perform as expected.
The Princess stepped back from the novitiates and removed the thong and medallion from her neck. With the thong wrapped around her clenched fist, she held the medallion in front of her as she spoke. "This royal medallion has been handed down through my family for nine hundred years. As the current possessor, I have sworn to protect all of Illusia and to regain the power we once held.
"To that end we have struggled to replenish our army with strong bodies and aggressive minds. You five come before the council this evening on the brink of maturity. Are you prepared to shed childhood and accept the responsibility of mature adults?"
GALLANT (The Innerworld Affairs Series, Book 3) Page 4
