by Elsa Jade
At least…she didn’t think he had the right. Who knew what rules he was playing by.
But she was done with being a victim.
As if to mock her determination and show her just how little recourse she had, their shuttle was swallowed up by the bigger spaceship in one gulp. The crew bustled into motion and she listened closely, trying to make sense of the clipped orders, some from Raz, some from the shuttle pilot, some coming from the voice over the ship’s radio, or whatever signal they used for communications. The shuttle was secured, she figured out, the airlock attached, a medical team on its way, a message being sent to someone distant, another claim of some sort being made…
Her head was whirling again, and it wasn’t until Raz lifted her from her seat that she realized she had her hands over her face.
“Hey,” she said woozily.
“I’m not leaving you on the shuttle alone,” he said. “Who knows what trouble you’d get into. Maybe you’d break free from here too.”
She glanced over his shoulder. Everyone else was already gone. She craned her neck the other way to see the other women being guided away. “Wait.” The word caught in her throat.
“You’re going with them,” Raz assured her. “You’re all going to the med bay to get checked out.”
Her arm tightened inadvertently on his neck as he carried her out of the shuttle. “What…what do you think Blackworm did to us?” She hated the quaver of fear in her voice.
Almost as much as she hated his hesitation. “I want to lie to you and tell you everything is fine, but I don’t know.” Regret softened his tone. “I can say with full confidence that the med bay, the galley, and several suites on the Grandiloquence were upgraded for my presence on this tour, so I swear you’ll be well taken care of until you are returned to your world. Perhaps fresh food and a sonic shower don’t sound like much when everything you know seems lost, but trust me when I say that clean hair and a slice of pixberry pie will do wonders for your outlook.” He gave her a lopsided smile. “Even if what you see is just a sky of unfamiliar stars.”
Peripherally aware of the wide, sleek bulkheads that seemed like a bigger version of the shuttle, Rayna concentrated on his face, searching his clear blue gaze for any sign he was prevaricating. But when he met her glance, she saw only concern and candor.
And maybe a touch of some deeper awareness. He might be an alien and a duke, but somehow he seemed to know what she was feeling. And that wry smile turned his excessively handsome face into something less perfect and more personal.
“I have no idea what you mean by a sonic shower or a pixberry,” she said slowly. “But…thank you. For those things, I guess, but more for saving us.”
“It sounds like you were off to an excellent start at saving yourself and the others.”
She grimaced. “Yes. I would’ve opened our coffins and then probably opened the front door to the space station and blasted us all into space.” She shook her head. “I still can’t believe in all this. Spaceships, black holes, aliens.”
The other side of his mouth quirked up to join the first. “As one of those things you don’t believe in, may I urge you to open your mind even if your world is closed?”
She caught her breath a little at the way his genuine amusement transformed him. Something in her that had been shut down in survivor mode woke up, sensing maybe not a friend yet, but an ally at least. She’d been so set for so long on being fiercely independent, reliant on no one—even before this wild, horrible incident—that maybe she’d forgotten what it was like to have someone in her corner and at her side.
Although technically, right now she was in his arms.
She realized then that there was a floating transport pad beside them. Ahead of them, Carmen and Anne were both sitting on a similar pad, though Trixie and Lishelle were walking beside it. He could have put her on the pad if he didn’t think she could walk. But instead he was carrying her.
That guarded, defensive feeling inside her faded a little more.
When they reached the med bay—she recognized it by the stark, pale walls, shadowless lighting, and smell of antiseptic; was every hospital in the universe the same?—she found herself clinging to his neck for a heartbeat, unwilling to let go now that she’d found someone.
But that was crazy. She hadn’t found him. He’d found her. And the other women, of course. And anyway, she knew better than to rely on others.
She forced herself to release him as he settled her butt on a flat exam table, and she slapped her palm over her lap as his retreating arm snagged on the fabric of the short shift and nearly flipped up the hem. Although really, at this point, she felt like she’d accidentally showed him more vulnerability than just her crotch.
The other women were similarly being assisted onto tables by med staff in pale blue scrubs. One of the aliens started to pull scrolling films between the tables that turned opaque—privacy curtains, Rayna realized—but Trixie recoiled with a thin cry of distress, and Rayna held up her hand.
“Can you…” She met Trixie’s panicked gaze before shifting her attention to the medic. “Can you leave the screen open between us?’
“Is that what you want?” The medic glanced at Trixie.
The girl nodded, her furrowed brow smoothing. “Where we were trapped,” she whispered, “the coffins looked a little like this, in a row, where we couldn’t see or hear…or get out.”
The medic touched her shoulder briefly. “I’ll leave it open. Please, tell me what else will make you comfortable while we continue the exam. We are here to help.”
Trixie swallowed hard and jerked her head once in assent, but her grateful, desperate gaze was fixed on Rayna.
“I want mine open too,” Lishelle said from the farthest table. Carmen and Anne nodded.
The medic gestured at her coworkers who pushed back the screens before she glanced sidelong at Raz. “Your Grace. If you would please…”
Though she didn’t continue, he nodded curtly. “I’ll leave our guests in your well-trained hands, Doctor. See that they are given every care.” The aristo tone was back in voice, making the words sound both admonishing and approving at the same time.
The doctor didn’t seem to mind though and ducked her head in a dutiful bow. “Of course, Your Grace.”
Rayna wouldn’t have appreciated that tone at all. But when he pivoted on his heel to leave, her heart skittered in her chest, and she was dimly aware of the control panel at the head of the bed making a muffled alarm sound. “Raz,” she called.
He turned back, his chin angled a little imperiously. “Yes?”
She had no idea why she’d said his name. Just that he was her only touchstone in this strange place, this bizarre situation. “Save me a piece of pie.”
His lips tilted upward. “I’ll make sure the galley is programmed with Earther favorites. I saw a notation that a favored beverage among your kind is called coffee.”
“Coffee?” Lishelle and Carmen spoke up simultaneously from opposite ends of the row of exam tables.
He laughed. “I’ll take that as a yes.” He glanced back at the doctor. “Make them well.”
Rayna lowered her head again as he strode out.
“Aelazar Amrazal Thorkonos, Duke of Azthronos, Blood Champion of Zalar, Avatar of Azjor, God of Oaths,” she muttered after he’d gone.
Rayna looked at her. “What?”
“You called him Raz.” The doctor shook her head.
“He said that was his name.” Rayna frowned. “Was that not true?”
The doctor lifted her eyebrows. “Not for any of us. However, I know your name is Rayna, and I am Doctor Boshil. Now lie back and let’s bring that heartbeat under control.”
The other medics were bustling around the five beds, and Rayna watched them for a moment, with a close eye on Trixie. The nurse was still talking softly to the girl, a comforting hand on her shoulder until she finally lay back. The stiffness in Rayna’s muscles surprised her as she reclined, not pain exactly, but su
ch a reluctance to be vulnerable again that it was a different kind of agony.
“No drugs.” She fixed a stare on the doctor. “No injections. No gas. Nothing like that.”
She knew she had no way to enforce her order, but she had to try. Boshil nodded. “I will explain every procedure and not continue without your permission. May we start with a scan? It is not intrusive, but it is externally and internally thorough.” Her gaze was calm and steady. “We need to know what damage may have been done to you, besides the obvious wounds on your arms.”
Rayna wrinkled her nose as she stared up at the ceiling. To her dark amusement, there was some sort of screen that projected slow-moving, almost hypnotic clouds: distracting anxious patients was apparently a universal need. “I did that to myself.”
Boshil made a soft, noncommittal noise. “My expertise is in physical complaints, but we also have counselors who will check in with you next to assess any mental or emotional repercussions of your situation.”
With an explosive snort that raised another beep from the machine at her head, Rayna stared up at the peaceful clouds. “I don’t mean I was trying to kill myself. I was just trying to get free.”
“I reviewed the public reports on Blackworm after we received orders to investigate.” The doctor’s voice turned strict. “Whatever you had to do, it was good you took your chance.”
Rayna wasn’t sure she wanted to hear more. She closed her eyes. “There was another woman in the coffins. She…didn’t make it.” A light touch settled on her forehead, and she opened her eyes to see some sort of wand that Boshil swept slowly down her body.
“I know.” The doctor kept her gaze on the readout above Rayna’s head, her expression serious. “Another away team brought her back to the Grandiloquence along with more evidence against Blackworm. Although he was convicted of other crimes, this will only add to the length of his sentence. In case a verdict lasting his natural lifespan wasn’t long enough.”
Rayna was glad to hear that part, but still. “Life wasn’t long enough for that woman.” Guilt swept her. “If only I’d woken up sooner.”
“No,” Boshil said firmly. “I do not deal with if-onlys, only what-is’s.”
Staring at the alien, Rayna gave a quick nod. “You might not be from Earth, but I guess you have to deal with a lot of the same shit.”
The doctor chuckled. “Indeed, biological processes often seem to result in the same waste products, regardless of which galaxy is spinning around you. We study a theory that the universe was seeded by a master race of dominating genetic material—the theologically minded call it a quintessential creative force—which is why so many beings across so many systems are built along similar, familiar, compatible lines. And not just our appearances but our needs, our wants, even our gestures, our very dreams are deeply, surprisingly the same.” She shook her head with a self-deprecating grin. “But you are here to be cleared for pixberry pie and coffee with His Grace, not to hear a med school seminar.”
“It was interesting,” Rayna assured her. “I never went to college. Although I guess they wouldn’t’ve been teaching interstellar species seeding anyway.”
“Maybe you can continue your interstellar species seeding studies with Raz.” The doctor winked.
A little thrill of shock zipped through Rayna, making the med bed chirp a warning. If interspecies gestures were the same, was the doctor implying what Rayna thought she was implying? That was just crazy. Even if he had held her so gently.
“I’ll stick with the coffee,” she said.
The doctor shrugged. “If that’s all you want, then I think there’s more wrong with you than I can fix.”
When Rayna sputtered, Boshil patted her shoulder. “Of course there’s no need to act on the attraction that the scan shows, if you truly aren’t interested. We are more than the sum of our biology, even if the body parts align. But you’ll be relieved to hear that there’s no sign of physical damage other than the abrasions on your arms. There are lingering traces of soporifics in your system—a common anesthesia drug that Blackworm must’ve used to keep you comatose—and elevated stress markers, which isn’t surprising at all. With your permission, I’ll treat the cuts with topicals and one injection to counteract any possible infection.”
At Rayna’s nod, the doctor pressed a small ampule to the insides of both her arms. A faint, cool sensation flowed through her veins before dissipating.
“Thank you.” She watched as Boshil cleaned, sealed, and bandaged the scratches on her arms left from bursting through the coffin glass.
“All done,” the doctor said while helping her sit upright. “Your electrolytes are slightly unbalanced, but a small meal will correct that. Although pixberries and coffee with His Grace might destabilize your heart rate again.” Another one of those winks.
This time, Rayna grinned back, and she realized that had been exactly the doctor’s intent. Boshil might say her specialty was only physical, but she’d tidily short-circuited the simmering panic that had bothered Rayna from the moment Raz—His Grace—had walked out the door. “I’ll risk my heart for coffee.”
Boshil patted Rayna’s elbow, smoothing down the tail of the bandage. “It might surprise you to know that coffee is a popular export from your Earth. It’s a closed world, but a few products make it to the stars.”
Rayna’s amusement faded as she looked at the other women being assisted off their beds. “And now we’ll be sent home from the stars?”
After an almost imperceptible hesitation, Boshil nodded. “There are some formalities yet, but I was told that a few of your people who are approved for galactic representation have been notified of your status and someone is being sent to retrieve you all.”
“That’s…good.” Rayna wasn’t sure what to make of the hesitation, but that would have to wait. She slid off the bed and stood. “If I can get clean, clothes, and coffee, in that order, I’ll be great.”
And she’d be ready for whatever came next, whether that was a spaceship, a black hole, or a strangely enticing alien duke.
***
Retreating to the stateroom off the bridge that he’d commandeered for his use during the tour, Raz placed a comm link to his mother at the duchy’s planetary seat.
The dowager duchess had always been a power in Azthronos, even when his father was alive. But where his sire had been brash and beloved, his mother operated behind the scenes. He thought now that if she’d been more assertive, maybe their finances wouldn’t be so precarious. Since she had clear ideas for righting the duchy’s fiscal position, he was willing to hear her.
Even if it involved a bit of privateering…
A month ago, he’d still been numbed from watching his sire dispersed to eternity without having a chance to say the words that roiled inside him when his mother had sat him down and explained the actual financial circumstances of his inheritance.
“A solar system duchy with your name on it,” she said. “And more debt than you have honor titles.”
He sputtered. “But Father was a great man, beloved—”
“Yes, yes,” she agreed impatiently. “His Grace, Aezlo Ralez Thorkonos, late Duke of Azthronos, Blood Champion of Reh, Avatar of Leronos, God of Fortuity, mighty commander of the Grandiloquence on her celebrated pilgrimages around his adoring realm.” With her brow furrowed but chin set, her gaze went unfocused, as if seeing past him to some distant galaxy of regret, grief, and resolve. “The man never met a galactic credit he couldn’t spend.”
“Then why…” He faltered, hearing the childish entreaty in his voice, a wistful sound he’d vowed never to let whine from his lips again. “Why did you send me away?”
“To learn what the previous Dukes of Azthronos refused to see: beloved doesn’t pay the bills.”
At the time, sleep-deprived and sorrowing, he’d shouted at her, blamed her cold-heartedness for his father’s death, his own long absence, the faltering fate of the Azthronos duchy. She’d listened to his tantrum with her head cocked, an
d only then had he noticed the hollowness in her cheeks and between the bones on the backs of her hands, the shadows in her eyes deeper yet. And he’d sunk to his knees in front of her. Not weeping. His eyes had been still burning from the myriad stars that had streaked past the viewports of all the ships he had requisitioned to get back home.
Her thin hand on the back of his head had fallen like a blood champion’s sword, light and devastating. “You’re here now. And you are Duke of Azthronos. Don’t larf this up, my dear son.”
And so he’d found himself touring the Azthronos system (five planets and twenty moons inhabited by eleven billion Azthronites, all of whom he was now responsible for), inspecting the resources (a legacy asteroid mining system that hadn’t been updated in a century and a haphazard tourism industry focused on the pastoral pleasures of the middle planet, specifically the potent psychedelic properties of the same flower distilled into ghost-mead) and reviewing the system’s debts (a figure significantly higher than the number of Azthronites with an inordinate number of zeroes after it and only slightly offset by the aforementioned resources) for which he was also now responsible.
The staggering duty was one he’d been born for, sent away for—and only now fully appreciated.
It was enough to drive even a duke to despair.
Unless he was forced to sell his dreadnaught flagship for quick funds, and then he’d be walking to despair. Or floating, since he was currently touring Azthronos space.
The tour had left him at the edge of the Thorkonos Galaxy right when the call had come about the imprisoned Blackworm’s unsanctioned station.
Prime salvage, his mother had said.
He’d been appalled. “Are we space pirates now?”
“The peerage have always been pirates, boy,” she’d snapped back. “How do you think we got what we have? Now go save those poor survivors. And then save our duchy.”
Thinking of the Earthers he had just saved, he took a calming breath as he waited for the comm link to connect.
