by Elsa Jade
There was something odd about the incoming light. She’d danced under black lights that had a similar effect, giving everything a strange, around-the-edges glow. Except this was stronger, as if the light streaming in was radiating on wavelengths she wasn’t equipped to see. She lifted her gaze another degree, craning her neck, and she choked.
“The? Fuck?” Lishelle muttered behind her.
“Oh my god. It’s…it’s gotta be just a picture,” Trixie said uncertainly. “Like a planetarium?”
Despite the almost daytime brightness, the visible star field was incredible, vaster than all of Big Sky Country. The hazy band of the Milky Way had impressed her then, but this was nothing like that. The glowing stars covered half the view from dome, and centered at the top was a…
“It’s a black hole,” Trixie said.
“No such thing,” Lishelle snapped. “Well, there is such a thing, but not…”
“Not around Earth,” Trixie finished.
Rayna didn’t want to believe what the young woman seemed to be implying. But the black hole stared down at her like an inescapable eye.
Her own eyes almost couldn’t make sense of it: at once a gaping void and a chaotic sphere of unimaginable energy pulsing out the radiation giving everything around her a surreal cast.
But if her abduction was real, if the sticky blood on her arms was real… She feared the black hole was real too.
A whimper from behind her. “What’s that?”
Rayna twisted to follow the shocked stare of one of Lishelle’s rescues. Cruising slowly across their view from the opposite side of the atrium was…
She let out a shuddering breath. A freaking spaceship.
They were in outer space.
A sound boomed through the atrium, seeming to come from the scintillating darkness outside, rattling right through the glass. Rayna flinched, then froze as the sound repeated and, after a few beats, the booming resolved into words. Words she understood.
“Blackworm Station,” the accented masculine voice announced. “You are bordering on sovereign Azthronos space in clear violation of intergalactic accords. Stand down. Do not attempt to flee, or our plasma cannons will disable your stabilizers and you will be subject to the dubious mercies of the singularity.”
“What? Abducted and punked?” One of the other women snorted, although Rayna couldn’t tear her gaze from the sleek, silver ship to see who spoke. “I can’t even.”
“At least it’s not him,” Trixie said, a fractured note of hope cracking her voice.
Rayna swallowed hard. Whoever it was, she’d make sure she was never trapped again.
Chapter 2
His Grace, Aelazar Amrazal Thorkonos, recently proclaimed Duke of Azthronos, Blood Champion of Zalar, Avatar of Azjor, God of Oaths—and at the moment slightly hung over and much aggrieved—adjusted his universal translator and sent the message again in the unfamiliar language called English for the benefit of the likely hostages inside the space station.
Raz had not intended to be part of a rescue operation (not when he had a thousand-year-old bottle of ghost-mead to drink and a newly inherited dukedom to lord over) but his dreadnaught flagship, the Grandiloquence, had been tracing the outer boundaries of Azthronos territory when intergalactic authorities had pinpointed the location of the reprehensible Blackworm’s victims.
Discovering that Blackworm—reprehensible and, worse yet, a dishonored Thorkon nobleman—had insolently anchored his criminal station on the event horizon of a heretofore uncharted singularity right on the doorstep of Azthronos space did not reflect well on His Recently Proclaimed Grace’s suitability for his new position.
The old Duke of Azthronos would’ve known that abducted citizens of an innocent closed world were hidden on the edge of his realm in unincorporated Thorkonos space.
Or so Raz had heard whispered in the long corridors of the Grandiloquence. Not that any of his watchful new crew would’ve said as much aloud in front of His Barely Remembered Grace. But he knew they were thinking it.
Or maybe that was the ghost-mead whispering to him.
Raz stood in the center of the bridge, imagining a divot in the deck where his father had once commanded, his weight and his consequence and his belovedness actually bending the heavy cerasteel plates. Or so it seemed. Without him there, the rebound might very well fling Raz into the abyss…
Ugh, he was getting morose. Larfing ghost-mead.
“No reply from the station on any channel,” the comm officer stated.
From engineering, the deck officer piped up. “Scans show only five lifeforms of any appreciable size. Can’t get a clear molecular analysis due to interference from the singularity, but initial readings seem to correspond to the Earther specs we were given.”
The head of security looked up from her post. “The station’s weapons systems—guns and cannons, also defensive arrays—appear cold, possibly non-functional.” She slid a glance between Raz and the Grandy’s captain who occupied the command chair. “Sir… Or, uh, sirs… Captain and Your Grace, I still recommend approaching with caution. Even though Blackworm was convicted on criminal charges related to the attacks against the crew of the Sinner’s Prayer under command of Sinclarion Fifth-Moon Jax and the attempted abduction of several companions in the Intergalactic Dating Agency alien bride program, he never revealed the location or fates of the dozen Earther females who went missing. If these are indeed those brides, they may be victims…but they may instead be Blackworm’s accomplices.”
“Suggestion and concerns noted,” the captain said, without waiting for Raz’s response, although technically Raz’s presence ranked higher than the other man. Rokal Nor irThorkonos had been made captain of the Grandiloquence only shortly before Raz had returned home. When he’d dined with the captain the first night of their tour and idly commented on the man’s relative youth to be given command of a dreadnaught, and the flagship at that, Nor had bristled.
“The dowager duchess granted me the post personally,” he’d said, pale eyes glittering. “Although rumor had it, filling the position was tricky considering that many younger sons were hesitant to buy a commission on a flagship with financing issues. Rather embarrassing to have one’s dreadnaught repossessed. But I work cheap, so…” He shrugged. “Then again, maybe it was just that I was conveniently here.”
And you were not. The unspoken words echoed in an empty space behind the blood champion insignia pinned to Raz’s chest. It was true. If he’d stayed in Azthronos, he would have moved up the chain of command much as this captain had and inherited the duchy as a known entity. Instead, he was all but a stranger. A stranger in charge of everyone here and another few billion souls.
Raz studied the singularity through narrowed eyes. In his years away from Azthronos, he’d had a professor—or so he recalled; ghost-mead had a deleterious effect on short-term memory—who’d lectured on the many practical uses for singularities. Which of those uses had interested Blackworm?
Not that it mattered. This was a rescue operation.
Or rescue and salvage, as his dowager mother had briskly informed him when she’d relayed the message from intergalactic authorities.
“Dukedoms don’t come cheap,” she’d reminded him. “Neither do spare parts of space stations. Don’t larf this up, my dear boy.”
She’d told him much the same thing—minus the elucidation on space station resale value—on the morning after his father’s return to the God of Eternity. Raz had still been space-lagged, having raced home across a hundred galaxies, hoping to make it back before…
But he hadn’t.
Now, he couldn’t imagine why Blackworm had chosen to linger on the verge of the menacing singularity, but abandoned in unincorporated Thorkonos space, the station might be claimed by whomsoever was there first.
Maybe the God of Fortuity was smiling on him from eternity.
“I’ll lead the boarding party,” Raz informed the Grandy bridge crew.
The security officer stra
ightened with a snap. “Your Grace, respectfully, that isn’t—”
“Send your second and five others with the away team,” the captain told the sec-off. Then he cocked one eyebrow at Raz. “Will that be sufficient backup?”
Raz lifted an eyebrow back. “To recover a handful of hostages and plant a salvage flag? I think I can manage.”
After a moment, the captain inclined his head. “Take transport shuttle Gamma. Don’t worry. We’ll have our cannons locked on the station.”
To what? Blow up the station with His Unwanted Grace inside?
The sec-off followed Raz and the away team to the shuttle, prepping her second in command and insisting that Raz don ships fatigues.
“You said the weapons systems were offline,” he reminded her as he stripped down to pull on the thin but heavy armor-grade clothing.
Her gaze lingered on his bare chest as he shed the ducal seal, blood champion insignia, and avatar emblem. “Yes, sir. Uh, Your Grace. Still, you’ll want shielding from stray radiation to protect future Graces.” Her eyes snapped up to his. “Er, not that it seems like you’d need any help on that front.” She hustled forward to grab a blaster from the weapons locker. “You know how to use this?”
He gave her a slow smirk as he holstered the pistol at his thigh. “I have master-level qualifications on all the most desirable weapons.”
Was that a blush? Or was the sec-off just worried about the potential career ramifications of sending His Oh-So-Valuable Grace out onto a derelict space station hovering on the edge of a black hole?
Not that it mattered, not even as a pathetic balm to his ducal ego.
He’d board Blackworm Station, claim it as his own, save the Duchy of Azthronos and its eleven billion inhabitants, and maybe—just maybe—finally feel that he’d come home.
Chapter 3
Would’ve been easier to feel like a conquering hero if the hostages hadn’t been hiding from him.
Raz had let the security-officer second in command take point—he had to establish his leadership but he wasn’t going to be stupid about getting in the professionals’ way—but the crewman controlling the scans announced the interference from the singularity’s emanations was worse and they’d have to split up to continue their search.
“I’ll take His Grace to the last pinpointed location,” the sec-off second said. “Rendezvous at the shuttle on my mark.” They synchronized their dat-pads while Raz watched impatiently.
Not that he thought anyone was coming to steal his station or His Grace’s glory, but…
With the second in his wake, he strode toward the location they’d last seen the hostages’ life signs. Not all space stations had atmospheric filtration enhancements—life support conservatories—since the cold and vacuum of space was decidedly unkind to most living biomatter, but Blackworm had apparently wanted only the best for his hostages. Or accomplices, depending.
Raz grimaced. It didn’t really matter which these Earther females were. His only task was to send them back to their closed world to face whatever justice or compassion they deserved while he claimed the station by right of interstellar salvage.
His Insolvent Grace, the Reluctant Pirate. What a larfing mess. Irate, he slammed though the gate to the central conservatory, the security officer scuttling on his heels.
The conservatory was only partially planted, leaving wide empty swaths. No hostages hiding there. He canted one eye toward the singularity hovering over them, the Grandiloquence shining off to one side. Maybe Captain Nor would fire on the conservatory, vent them all into space, and end this last-ditch effort to preserve the duchy.
The black hole pulsed silently, and Raz sighed. No such luck.
As he turned his attention away from those mysteries, a flash of white caught his eye.
He spun toward one of the thicker patches of purple-leaved wood. “Come out,” he called, pitching the universal translator in his head to English. The exotic sounds made his tongue itch. “I’m here to rescue you.”
Or throw them into the Grandy’s brig, if they were Blackworm sympathizers. Whichever.
He strode between the large empty planters toward the scant purple forest. “We scanned your presence, so there’s no use hiding,” he continued. “Blackworm is in prison and not coming back. If you want to keep eating—and breathing, for that matter, because this station is going to be pieced out for salvage—you need to show yourselves.”
He supposed he could blast the little forest to purple kindling—that would get them moving.
“Who is Blackworm?”
The voice that rang from the trees was an uneasy harmony of fear and defiance.
He remembered those twisted feelings as he’d watched the Azthronos homeworld recede into his childhood.
Savagely squelching the pointless reminiscence, he took a few more slow steps forward, not wanting to spoil this first contact. “Blackworm is the one who took you from your home and brought you here,” he said gently. “He is being punished for his crimes, and now you are free.”
While he would never be free again.
“How do we know you’re telling the truth?” A slight figure peeked between the purple fronds. “How do we know you’re not this…Blackworm?”
He tilted his head, his patience starting to fray. “Because I’m saving you,” he reminded her. “Unless you’d rather stay here.”
Earth was a closed world, deliberately kept in ignorance of the wider universe’s sentient, spacefaring civilizations until the more primitive planet could be trusted with the knowledge of millennia’s worth of advancements. But at least they weren’t intergalactically in debt.
The Earther female who hesitantly edged out from the leaves couldn’t appreciate his predicament, of course. She had her own problems. The wariness of her barefooted step and the way she clutched the too-short hem of her smudged white shirt to her thighs as if she could make it cover more told him she was innocent and desperately wishing she wasn’t here, not one of Blackworm’s converts.
He eyed her. Although she was barely dressed and obviously distressed, her brown hair tangled in a cloud around her wan face, she didn’t seem in any immediate danger of collapsing. Which was a good thing since he already had a collapsing duchy. Her wary dark eyes glittered in the invisible wavelengths of light beaming from the singularity, making her look like some wild creature from the myths his mother had read to him as a child before sending him away.
He hadn’t known anything about the planet Earth—so called by various of its indigenous populations with truly remarkable unoriginality—before he’d received the rescue call but he’d quickly reviewed the available information. And this Earther female appeared to be a typical specimen: bipedal, bilaterally symmetrical, mostly smooth-skinned except for that snarl of hair on her head. And maybe elsewhere?
Not so different from Thorkons, if lighter boned and shorter. Almost delicate compared to him. His impatience faded. It wasn’t her fault his system tour was a disaster so far and the ghost-mead he’d downed last night was so strong.
To play down his stature, he brought his shoulders together and ducked his head. “It’s all right, soonyili,” he said soothingly. When his translator fumbled the Thorkon word, he tried again. “I’m here now, little honey-bird.”
She blinked at him. “That does make it easier to take you down.”
He frowned. “Take me down where?” He was already practically kneeling so as not to intimidate her with his superior size and status, and he wasn’t going to debase himself any more. The space station probably had sub-levels below the conservatories, but he didn’t think she meant that. His universal translator hummed in his head, rapidly trying to decipher her meaning from her simple native language. To go down on someone was apparently a sexual act on Earth, although he hadn’t reviewed courtship rituals on her planet, and anyway that seemed injudicious considering the very recent nature of their introduction—
In his confusion and the returning irritation that this was so
confusing, he almost missed the second Earther who leaped out from one of the big planters and dove at him with a shard of something sharp in her hand.
He whirled toward the oncoming flash of white shirt and dark skin. Since he was still ducked down to calm the first little Earther, he dropped his shoulder under the attack and spun smoothly to one side. Thorkons—especially blood champions—weren’t just big, they were fast. And even if he’d been sent away from Azthronos for much of his life, that inborn heritage at least could never be taken away.
He didn’t want to hurt this other female—intent though she seemed on hurting him—so as she stumbled past him, the miniature blade in her hand swooshing ineffectually over his head, he turned, caught her by the hips, and heaved her gently into the other empty planter.
She went in head first with a shriek. Not of pain, he decided with gratification, but dismay and anger.
He thought of all the times he’d have liked to yell like that.
In the same easy flow, he twisted to face the Earther female who’d been acting as bait in this attack.
She must’ve caught the spurt of provocation in his expression because her dark eyes widened big enough for him to catch a reflected glimpse of the singularity overhead and she backed away rapidly toward the trees.
“Stay right there,” he snapped. “Don’t make me chase you, little soonyili.”
“Halt,” the sec-off shouted. “Or we blast the Earth girl!”
Raz winced as the female in front of him cried out in alarm.
He glanced over his shoulder to see the security officer holding a third Earther in front of him. At least the security officer had the sense to yell in English.
