by Speer, Flora
“I did not expect a man of such wide experience to be squeamish about his food, Admiral.” From her position by the mouth of the food processor, where she waited for their order to appear, Perri sent him a sly glance. “But then, I did not expect you to be weak as a toothless babe either.”
“The doctors say with time and continued therapy the weakness will pass.”
“If you live long enough. Here.” She set a fork and a bowl of salad in front of him and added a loaf of coarse Regulan bread. “You will have to break the bread with your hands. I won’t give you a knife.”
“I am flattered to know you think me so dangerous,” Halvo said wryly. He would have given anything he possessed for a plate of hot Demarian stew with big chunks of meat in it and a carafe of wine, but he wasn’t going to tell Perri that. The salad of fruits and vegetables wasn’t too unpalatable. He tried not to look at the mess Perri was devouring with every evidence of pleasure.
“I would like to know what you intend to do with me,” Halvo said when he was finished eating.
“I will turn you over to the Regulan Hierarchy.”
“The Hierarchy? If that is so, then this kidnapping makes no sense at all,” Halvo said. “Regula holds Membership in the Jurisdiction. Why would you abduct me from a Jurisdiction ship only to hand me over to a Jurisdiction Member? The Hierarchy will be duty bound to hold you as a prisoner for what you have done.” There were sure to be several twisted reasons for his abduction. Of that, Halvo was certain. A man in his high position could not avoid being aware of the Regulan love of political intrigue.
“I do not know what the Hierarchy intends,” Perri said. But her eyes slid away from his, her delicately shadowed lids lowering until dark lashes lay softly upon her cheeks.
She knew.
She just wasn’t going to tell him.
Since first sighting the Space Dragon, Halvo’s emotions had ranged from curiosity to anger, to regret and disgust at his own failure to employ either the brain nature had given him or the training imparted by the Jurisdiction Service. Now, inexplicably, he was consumed by another emotion. He wanted to protect his captor.
The wide experience Perri had mentioned had not only taught him to eat strange foods. He had also learned during his years in the Service to gauge accurately the emotions of many different Races. Thus, he knew Perri was frightened. She concealed her fear well, but Halvo could sense it pervading her every word and action. Except for the robot, she was alone. As he was alone. He stared at her, sitting across the table from him and eating as if she were famished, and he wondered what in the name of all the stars had made a beautiful young woman embrace a career as a space pirate. His curiosity fully awakened by the mystery of her actions, Halvo knew he would not rest until he had plumbed Perri’s deepest secrets…
Chapter Three
Perri had not expected to like Halvo. Liking him made her task infinitely more difficult. Worse, she had never thought to find him so attractive. She had been told that Admiral Halvo Gibal was overweight, out of condition, and no physical threat to her. He had also been described as an aging parasite who was fattening himself on the Jurisdiction Service and indulging himself in an unnecessary rest cure after suffering minor wounds.
The man she had captured was bone thin. His handsome, chiseled face was marked by lines of pain. His every movement was controlled and cautious, as if he took great care to avoid further discomfort. Perri could see that, far from being minor, Halvo’s wounds had been terrible. She could also tell that he was determined not to give in to the threat of permanent disability.
Nor was he as old as she had been led to believe. True, the dark hair at his temples was liberally streaked with silver, but that only made him look distinguished. The Demarians were a beautiful Race and Halvo was no exception, not even when he was angry – and he was angry most of the time.
The discrepancies between the information given to her by the Chief Hierarch and the reality of Halvo’s presence puzzled Perri, generating a disquieting sense of unease.
She had tried to be kind to Halvo. Knowing Rolli would stop any attempt their prisoner might make to take over the Space Dragon and escape, Perri no longer kept her weapon pointed at Halvo whenever they were together in the galley or the cockpit.
She allowed him to avoid the restraining bands of the bench, letting him sleep in a real bed in one of the three private cabins. Perri tried to keep all of their conversations pleasant.
Halvo was unmoved by her efforts to be agreeable. He constantly demanded facts she was unwilling or unable to reveal. Mealtimes were especially disturbing, perhaps because of the forced intimacy of a galley too small for more than one person to occupy with any degree of comfort.
At the moment, Halvo stood in the galley, glaring at her out of shadowy gray eyes. He hung onto the edge of the table as if he would fall without its support, and when he bared even white teeth in a fierce snarl he reminded her of a Demarian leopard-wolf, the fabled beast from his home planet that could swallow a human in two gulps. Perri decided she would in the future eat all of her meals alone in her own cabin if she must to avoid Halvo’s simmering resentment and persistent questions.
“Tell me, Perri, how much are you being paid for this piratical venture?” Halvo growled.
“You do not understand. I had no choice.” It was what she always said in response to his questions. As usual, he snorted at the platitudes she repeated so patiently.
“Then make me understand,” he said in a tone that told her why he had become an admiral at such a young age.
Never had Perri met a man so single-minded. For the past three days, while they rushed through space toward Regula, he had been so relentless in his questioning of her that she wished it were possible to use Starthruster constantly instead of just in short, occasional bursts of power. Rolli had warned her that the stress of using Starthruster too often or too long could cause the aging Space Dragon to disintegrate. Thus, she would have to endure Halvo’s persistent questions for another two or three days. Perri knew Halvo was physically weak, and she controlled the only weapon on board, yet she was beginning to fear he would eventually defeat her by the strength of his will alone. Looking into Halvo’s eyes, she almost called for Rolli to come and help her.
“I deserve an explanation,” Halvo said.
“I cannot—”
“Tell me what to expect on Regula,” he said. “At least let me be mentally prepared.”
There was something about him – the habit of command, she supposed – that finally convinced her to respond with a few bits and pieces of a truth she would have preferred to keep entirely hidden from him until the last possible moment.
“The Regulan Hierarchy wants you,” she said.
“You have already told me as much.” He sounded thoroughly exasperated. “Why do they want me?”
“I am not sure exactly what they plan to do with you,” Perri said, stalling while she tried to compose a simple explanation.
“Oh?” The single syllable demanded that she continue.
“It is an exchange, you see.” Put that way, the whole situation did sound simple.
“An exchange,” he said, “of myself for someone else? I know I have a fair-size ego, Perri, but who could be valuable enough to be exchanged for the Admiral of the Fleet? Is some Race outside the Jurisdiction holding an important Regulan official and demanding me in return for that person’s life?”
“It has nothing to do with Races outside the Jurisdiction,” Perri said, offering another crumb of information. She watched him consider her response before he began asking questions again. She could not avoid a flare of sympathy for the man. So often in her own life she had questioned – and questioned again – and received unsatisfactory answers or no answers at all. It troubled Perri to discover that basic similarity of character between herself and a person whom she ought to think of as a dangerous enemy. She did not doubt that, if he could find a way to escape from her, Halvo would be ruthless about doing so. B
ut if Halvo escaped, Elyr would die. Perri reminded herself never to forget that frightening fact.
“I can understand why the Regulans wouldn’t want to commit a ship with their own markings to an illegal enterprise like this one,” Halvo said, “but why send a lone woman and a robot to abduct me, especially when Regulans don’t think much of the mental abilities of females?”
“I was sent because I am the one who cares most.”
“You?” His shrewd eyes threatened to expose all of her secrets. “For whom am I to be exchanged then? Your parents perhaps? A dear friend? Or is it a lover?”
“It would be better if we did not talk about this any longer.”
“That is what you always say when my questions get too close to the truth. What you mean when you say, ‘Don’t talk,’ is that you are ashamed to admit what you are involved in.” Halvo ran a hand through his hair in a gesture of pure frustration. “I am rapidly reaching the end of my patience with this situation.”
Again he glared at her, making Perri wish she could shrink to atom size, or disappear altogether. He was right. She was ashamed of what she was doing, but she could see no other way. She was forced to depend upon the Chief Hierarch to keep the promises he had made to her.
With a sound of utter disgust, Halvo spun on his heel and took a step toward the hatch leading out of the galley. The movement was cut short. Halvo swayed, gasping, and put his hands up to his head.
“Cursed dizziness,” he rasped, swallowing hard.
“What causes it?” Perri asked, glad of a chance to change the subject. “I know you were injured in combat.”
“Injured?” Halvo groped for the chair in which he usually sat, found it, and dropped into it with a sigh. He fixed Perri with the cold glance she was becoming accustomed to seeing from him. “I was torn to pieces, as good as dead. There have been times during the last year when I have wished the medics had never found me.”
“How can you say such a thing?” she cried, shocked by his intensity.
“Because it’s true,” Halvo said between gritted teeth. “A quick, clean death would have been infinitely preferable to what I went through.”
“What, exactly, happened?” Perri met his eyes, determined not to flinch before the rage and the pain she could see there. Perhaps if she could make him talk about himself, he would stop questioning her. And perhaps talking about his injuries would ease his anger. Because she was not used to people answering her constant questions, she was a little surprised at how readily Halvo began to speak.
“We were fighting pirates who had massed on the Styxian border to attack one of our space stations,” Halvo said. “Purely by chance a quarter of the Jurisdiction Fleet was nearby. Why the pirates didn’t know about our presence I can’t say. Perhaps their intelligence reports were faulty. We held a quick conference and decided to take advantage of the opportunity to dispose of a worsening menace to space travelers.”
“The pirates were defeated,” Perri said. “I do know that much. The news was the talk of Regula for days.” She saw no reason to add that not everyone she knew had rejoiced over the defeat of the pirates. She had not understood Elyr’s attitude about the battle, but he had told her that her questions on the matter were so silly they were not worthy of answers.
“I was informed later that it was a great victory,” Halvo said. “I do not remember the end of the battle.”
“Because you were so badly wounded,” she said, still meeting his eyes. There was a flash of something between them, an odd connection forming. She did not have time to think about it before Halvo was talking again, and she was listening with growing horror.
“When the bridge of the Jurisdiction flagship was blown up, my left leg was torn off at the hip, I was thrown onto my face, and my back was broken by falling debris. My inner ear was all but destroyed by the blast. It took months, and three operations, before I could hear again.
“But the ship’s medics saved me,” Halvo said. “They got me to a hospital planet where my leg was reattached and my spine rearticulated. Then the therapy began. Have you ever been severely injured, Perri?”
“Not like that, but I can imagine—”
“No, you can’t. Shall I tell you what it’s like? After the surgery is over, they wrap you in elastic bands and make you stay flat on your back for days on end,” Halvo said as if he were talking to himself, reliving the pain and the despair. “Then they take the bands off and stand you up and tell you to walk. But your injured leg is completely numb and you stand there trying to wiggle your toes or flex your ankle so you can take a step, but nothing happens. For the first time in your life your own body refuses to obey you and you slowly begin to understand that the connections between your leg and your brain have been severed and will have to be restored – and only the most intense therapy can accomplish that restoration.
“They dump you into a pool of warm water and a nurse who is a sadist in disguise moves your leg for hours at a time, day after day, until your skin is permanently red and wrinkled, like the carapace of a Jugarian crab, and you understand at last why Jugarian crabs are so testy. You lie in bed at night crying from the pain, so they give you drugs to help you sleep. But when morning comes and they want you up and working again, you are too groggy from those drugs to put two thoughts together.
“Still you keep on trying to force your body to move as it should, because the nurses won’t let you stop trying. A year later, when your back still aches every day and your balance is never dependable, the doctors discharge you. Then comes the real injury, worse than anything that has gone before.” Halvo paused for a moment, and when he went on, his voice was drenched in bitterness. “When you are finally able to report to Fleet Headquarters, the officials there tell you that you will never again be fit to command a ship, so they are retiring you from active duty. Do you know where I was going when you kidnapped me, Perri?”
“You were heading for Capital,” she whispered, too shaken by this passionate account of his sufferings to speak more loudly.
“Yes, to Capital, to my formal retirement ceremony. In the grand old Jurisdiction tradition, I was asked to name my own successor as Admiral of the Fleet, while I was to be permanently consigned to a desk job,” Halvo said, and Perri had never heard such grief in anyone’s voice. “After all I’ve done for the Jurisdiction, after all I’ve been through, they were finished with me. And now, as the gravestone of my career, you have kidnapped me in order to exchange me for someone whose name you refuse to tell me!”
She sat there, close to tears of sympathy for him, gazing into his tormented eyes. Suddenly remembering a method her dear old nurse, Melri, had used with her when she was a child, Perri knew what Halvo needed to snap him out of his mood.
“Admiral,” she said as coldly as she could, “I have never met a man who felt so sorry for himself!”
“I am not absorbed by self-pity,” he said. “I got over that a long time ago. Now I am angry. I am furious at the way I have been treated by my own people and even more outraged by what you have done to me.”
“It was necessary.” She faced his glare, aware once again of the bond that was slowly, irresistibly, forming between them.
“I have told you what you want to know,” Halvo said. “I have answered your questions. Now I insist that you do the same for me. Tell me why you abducted me.”
“Oh, please,” she whispered, “can’t you wait until we reach Regula?”
She could not look at him any longer. She lowered her gaze to the tabletop instead. She had become remarkably tough and determined during the past twenty days or so, while she and Rolli searched through space for the Krontar, and then, having located it, tracked it to a spot where they could waylay it without concern about interference from another ship. Perri did not like what she was doing, but her mission had to be completed. Still, she could not help the sympathy she felt for Halvo. What was going to happen when they reached Regula was not fair to him. Not for the first time since beginning this vent
ure, Perri wished she could think of some other way to secure Elyr’s release.
“No, I cannot wait.” Startling her out of her unhappy ruminations with his sudden movement, Halvo grabbed both of Perri’s hands in his and held on tightly. She thought the dizziness must have assailed him once more because when she looked up at him, he immediately went pale, but he did not let her go.
Perri was aware of the latent power his hands possessed even after a year of illness and rehabilitation. It was more than physical strength. There was a quality in Halvo that touched Peril’s spirit, awakening in her needs and possibilities she had never considered before meeting him. She wanted to curl her fingers around his, to sit with their hands clasped on the cold, bare metal surface of the galley table and their eyes locked, while they sought in each other unexpected truths.
Did Halvo experience the same reaction to the touch of her hands? She did not think so. Halvo was interested in only one subject: gaining his freedom. She could not blame him for that. Elyr was probably thinking similar thoughts.
“I have a right to know what I will face on Regula,” Halvo said, adding with a faint smile, “It is my life, after all, such as it is.”
“It is Elyr’s life, too,” Perri whispered, unable to stop the words because her thoughts were at that moment upon Elyr. At once, Halvo seized on what she had said.
“Who is Elyr?”
“Please.” Telling herself the emotions swirling through her heart and mind were most unseemly, she tried to tug her hands away from his. Still he held on to her. Afraid to look into his eyes again, Perri concentrated on his hands. They were large and strong. A man weakened as Halvo was should not have hands so strong. Her own looked remarkably fragile in his grasp. Halvo’s hands were warm. For an instant, before she caught herself in shame and dismay, Perri wondered what it would be like to lie unclothed with Halvo, to be stroked with tenderness by those hands.
