by Cathryn Cade
He gave her a pitying look. “Not for long, she does what she’s planning. You’re right, there are some influential folks here in beautiful, downtown Bone Arch this fine evening. She blows them off the map, or even tries...” he shrugged.
Mecham stiffened. “We have to stop it,” she said, then froze as she heard her own words.
“We do,” he agreed. “You in?”
Was she in? She was an officer of the IGSF, sworn to serve and obey. But, this was why she’d joined up, to save people, not to destroy them in vindictive strikes. Mecham cast a hunted look at Arc’s holovid and saw that he was ignoring her.
“He can’t hear or see us,” Haro said. “Ilya’s tech is stellar, so’s Lodestar’s. Few tricks up their sleeves you eppies don’t know about.”
Mecham took a deep breath. “I’m in,” she said, and then swallowed hard, hoping she wasn’t about to vomit in her cockpit. The smell was hells to get out.
Chapter 28
The Bone Arch lodge was not a genteel resort. Built of huge logs and pieces of quarried rock, it towered over the rest of the settlement, the hide awning and flag flapping like harbingers of doom as Joran swung down from the hovercycle before the porch, and turned to lift Zaë down.
He’d insisted she wear the helmet of her flight suit, and the clear facial screen seemed to magnify the awe in her blue eyes as she took it all in. But she stayed close, following him up the hewn steps and across the broad porch to the open doors.
The main room of the lodge was just as startling for those unused to the less refined venue. It doubled as a bar and restaurant, with a bar along the back wall, tables and chairs ringing the floor and rows of hologames flashing above, waiting to be beckoned for play. Waiter droids stood blinking in the center of each table.
On the rough hewn walls hung the mounted heads of big game. Skrog, with their massive horns curving out from their shaggy heads. Catamounts with eyes slitted, fangs gleaming ferociously, and velvet-muzzled hormoose with graceful drooping ears and flared black antlers. Some joker had mounted a deerbitt and hung it out from the wall, caught in endless flight away from the catamounts.
And for those who preferred their entertainment alive, a monumental holovid glimmered above the tables. A pair of singers undulated in sparkling costumes as they sang of lost love and loneliness among the stars. Their image and sound wavered each time the thunder boomed outside, and once a lightning strike took them out in mid-note. They reappeared a few secs later, their images the worse for wear.
An area had been cleared in the center of the big room, and a hover stage floated, waiting.
Joran deposited Zaë to a stool behind the bar, with Ryder standing by to guard her. The bartender, a sturdy woman with the scent of hookah pipe wreathed about her, gave them a jaundiced look but said nothing. Since she was also the owner of the lodge and being paid extremely well for the night, Joran ignored her except to tell her to get Zaë anything she wanted.
“Joran,” Zaë called. “Wait.”
He looked back, a shade impatiently.
She grabbed his arms, and his look turned wary. “Bunny, you’ll be fine—“
“I know.” She was sending him into battle, in a way. She had to be strong for him, so he could do what he needed to do, and not worry about her. “I just wanted to wish you luck.”
She shoved up the facial screen on her helmet and tiptoed up to press a kiss to his mouth. For a moment she stayed there, memorizing him. Then she stepped back, and smiled at him. “:So, good luck.”:
Surprise and then pleasure moved over his face. He lifted his chin. “Thanks, sweetheart. Now go with Ryder—and stay put.”
“I will,” she promised.
But most of all, you stay safe, Joran Stark. Because I love you, she added silently, and then froze. She was in love with him. She loved Joran Stark, the Storm, scourge of the Frontieran plains. And if anything happened to him here tonight, she would never get over that. Oh, she’d picked a terrible time to realize that.
He gave her one glinting glance over his shoulder and then strode on, out to take the stage for his bold play, which she prayed would not come crashing down around his ears.
***
Thus far, everything was happening according to plan. Masterson’s people were in place, Bronc Berenson and the LodeStar people and tech secreted on site, Joran’s top people were here. Although he couldn’t see them, he knew because they gave regular status reports.
Slidi arrived with fanfare, two silent and beautiful creatures at her sides, one the slim, dark-eyed male Joran had noted at the Pleasure Palace and one a female with ebony skin, both foils for Slidi’s vivid auburn beauty. They were surrounded by her Mau and Gorglon guards, who shoved chairs and tables out of their way to create an open space around one large table. Joran walked to greet her, and did so with a kiss on the hand she lifted, ignoring her guards, one of whom poked his weapon into the side of Joran’s neck.
She allowed this, then watched as Joran was shoved back away from her. He glared at the Gorglon. “Hey. I have men here too, you big, ugly slab of space rock, so lay off.”
“Keep your distance, little raincloud,” the Gorglon answered, his guttural utterance translated by Joran’s com. The Maus grinned at the good joke.
Slidi sank into the chair they held for her, her two slaves standing at her shoulders. “Enough. When does it begin?”
“Now that you’re here,” Joran said, watching with what he hoped looked like lust and admiration as she threw back her fur cape to reveal a tight, gold catsuit cut low to reveal a swath of cleavage. “Whenever your buyers arrive.” They were on site, he knew from reports, landing in several craft on a rock shelf just behind the lodge.
“They are coming now.” She lifted a languid hand to the door, a gesture which belied the avid spark in her sloe eyes.
As the thunder rolled outside, more guards paced in the open doors, these Serpentians, slim and hard-eyed. In their midst walked the Serpentian brothel owner who had bid on Zaë at the slave auction.
Next came a human, also heavily guarded, a trio of Mauritians and then a pair of Vulpeans on hoverchairs who skated watchfully to a table. More humans, and another Serp. A cloaked figure slid in and to one side, to stand in the shadows.
“Got eyes on him?” Joran murmured.
“I do,” Haro said. “Let you know who he is as soon as I figure it out.”
The droids went into motion, zipping to the bar and back to the tables, laden with bottles and beakers of drinks, frosty ales, bottle of wine, jewel hued drinks hissing with vapor.
Stone Masterson strolled in as if he owned the place, his golden raptor’s gaze mocking as he surveyed those filling the tables. His pilot, Steele loomed behind him, a blond giant in black leather and iridium chains.
“Ready?” Joran asked.
“Ready,” Haro replied.
“Ready.” That was Ilya.
“Ready.” Bronc Berenson’s deep voice.
“Ready.” Pede, his voice tense.
“Excellent.”
Joran leapt onto the hover stage. He snapped his fingers and the singers gyrating above their heads cut out in midnote, aided by another crack of lightning outside. He smiled at those gathered, with as much pride as if he’d engineered the strike himself.
“Thanks for coming all the way up here tonight,” he said, his voice magnified. “As promised, got somethin’ special for you, make it worth your while. Now, the bidding is starting high, but if you didn’t have deep pockets, you wouldn’t be here, right?”
He chuckled, ignoring the fact that his audience not only didn’t respond, but gave him looks of varying disdain and boredom.
“And we’re not talking mere slaves tonight,” he went on. “You can find whores on any street corner or settlement, am I right? But the beings you’re about to view are special.”
The doors at the back of the bar opened, and a large crate glided into the room. It rose, and veered over their heads. Several of the guards cock
ed their weapons, watching suspiciously as it paused over the hoverstage.
Then it opened, and a cage dropped down, surrounded by a crackling grid of power, and containing a beautiful, woman, nude except for a tiny thong.
She landed hard on her hands and knees, and then sprang up into a wary, defensive crouch, hands clawed, every muscle in her body taut. Her blonde hair flowed down her back in a sleek swathe, and her dark eyes glittered as she glared at them.
Drawing back her lips, she snarled, a chilling sound. But there was an edge of terror in her gaze as well. A fierce creature, trapped with no way out.
The room was dead silent for a sec. “Meet Sharena,” Joran called. “The deadliest female ever trained by the famed Serpentian guard academy. She’s killed five males and seven females. And she can be the headliner at your next event—fighting or fucking, whichever you command. Or both—winner take all, as they say.”
“Gladiators,” someone gloated aloud. “I like this.”
“I’ll fuck her,” another man called. “If you’ll hold her down.”
The woman in the cage snarled again. “Try, and I’ll rip off your puny cock,” she threatened in a throaty voice. “You’re all slime.”
“She’s a fierce one,” Joran called. “And the bidding opens at a million credits.”
***
Waiting for Joran’s scheme to unfold, Zaë sat on her stool in the shadow of a gigantic skrog’s head, and sipped the bottle of berry wine the bartender shoved at her, because she was thirsty and nervous. She was not sorry to have a guard by her side, even if it was the snarky Ryder, who had one hand on his weapon and his hard gaze roving the bar. He was taking his task seriously.
This whole situation was like being thrust into the middle of a holovid adventure film—although she herself wasn’t a player this time.
She understood that this was a setup, but it was still a massive shock to watch Joran slide effortlessly into the role of illicit auctioneer, his smile mocking his audience even as he exhorted them. When he practically drooled on the horrid Slidi, Zaë gritted her teeth, clutching her wine bottle so hard it contracted in her grip.
And then the captive female warrior appeared in her cage, and Zaë could only gape in horror. The poor woman. For a moment the scene shifted, and it was her trapped up there, wearing only a tiny costume, terrified and alone, the cynosure of lustful gazes.
She struggled for breath, cold sweat breaking out over her skin.
“Hey,” Ryder muttered, leaning sideways to her. “Chill, babe. Don’t know that female, but she’s tough. She’ll be okay.”
“Right.” Zaë nodded and concentrated on taking slow breaths. That was not her in the cage. And she had to believe the woman would be all right. Joran wouldn’t allow the buyers to take her away to a life of further degradation. He’d stop it somehow before that happened.
The bidding began, although cautiously. After a few rounds, one of the Serpentians agreed to pay twenty million credits for the woman.
“She’s yours,” Joran approved, throwing out one arm toward the cage, which immediately began to glide away toward one of the high corners of the room, its occupant still showing her disgust for all of them. “We’ll hold her for you till the auction is concluded.”
Two guards immediately moved to follow the cage, standing underneath, weapons at the ready. Zaë watched with her stomach churning as another sailed out.
Above the stage, it opened. She gasped as a man appeared this time. A huge man, his golden body rippling with muscle, his face fierce with rage under short, matted black hair as he circled his cage, defying them all. Scars marred his face and gouged his body. Only a tiny loincloth covered the bulge of his groin.
“And now, Maro. This ex-Space Forces soldier was born and bred right here in the tropics of Frontiera. This man, ladies and gentlemen, can fight not only in a cage, but underwater! He’s killed countless enemies, some of them humanoid, some with tentacles and fins the likes of which you’ve not seen. You want your venue to be the hit of the galaxy, he’s your draw.’
“Not to mention what he can do for the ladies with enough credit. And we have ten, count ‘em, ten more like him and Sharena to come.”
“Nine million,” called the Serpentian brothel owner.
And it was on, this time fast and furious as the bidders all seemed to realize they needed to act, or miss out.
***
Ren Mecham sat in the cockpit of the unmarked cruiser she’d dropped into from her fighter.It was an older model, battered and worn, but full of tech that she’d not yet seen the likes of. Haro and the female warrior Qala sat hunched over the console, muttering occasionally with others Ren could neither see nor hear, while monitoring readouts from inside the lodge, and various points around Bone Arch.
The thunder storm had moved overhead, and even this cruiser, moored in the shelter of two hangars, was vibrating with the force of the wind outside. Lightning flashed eerily, echoing the turmoil inside Ren as she watched events continue to unfold via holovid.
The final gladiator, a husky Mau woman with murder in her eyes, was claimed by a buyer.
Ren couldn’t take her eyes off the row of power cages in the lodge, and their contents.“Where did the Storm find those beings? He’s going to rescue them, right?”
Haro exchanged a look with Qala. “Better you don’t know where they came from, Sarge. As far as rescue, it’s all good. They’re safer than the rest of us.”
“Heads up,” Qala said, sitting up straight and pointing at the console. “Incoming. Fighters, right, Mecham?”
“Oh, my God,” Ren said, horror icing her gut. Her fellow IGSF officers had arrived, in force. “She’s sending in an entire wing battalion. They have enough fire power to blow this whole place off the side of the mountain.. You need to warn the Storm.”
Qala held up a hand for quiet. “Boss,” she said. “Eppies are here in force. Mecham thinks they’re heavy on the firepower.”
“Got it.”
“Let’s just listen in,” Haro said.
Ren jumped as a holovid sprang up, of the interior of a fighter cabin, the helmeted pilot and his passenger. “It’s Cerul,” she blurted. “She came herself.”
“Glory, glory,” Haro hummed as his fingers flew on the controls. “Who wants the glory?”
“Commander,” Arc’s crisp voice sounded. “The auction is in progress. Awaiting your orders.”
“Stand by,” Cerul said.
They watched as the IGSF craft dispersed around the perimeter of the settlement, hovering in formation.
“Show time,” Haro said. “Boss, get ready.”
“Something’s wrong,” Ren said. “They’re not landing.”
“Why not?” Qala demanded.
Ren was afraid she knew why. The better to blast Bone Arch and everyone it to space rubble, while remaining safe.
***
“Thank you,” Joran said from where he still stood in the center of the lodge. “We are more than ready, aren’t we, folks?”
“Ready for what?” called one of the bidders suspiciously, half-rising from his chair.
“Why, for our next special guests,” Joran called, flinging out an arm to the door.
Along with all the others in the lodge, Zaë looked toward the main doors. She jumped as a flash of lightning illuminated the doorway…which remained empty.
She waited, every muscle tense. Where were the IGSF officers?
Joran lowered his arm and grinned wryly. “Huh. You just can’t count on some folks to show up when you want ‘em to.”
“What is going on?” Slidi demanded. “Storm? Are there more slaves?”
“Don’t like this,” one of the Mau said, rising so suddenly his chair toppled. “We go now.”
“Not so fast,” Joran said. “No one leaves until we’ve concluded the auction—which means making sure your credit is uploaded to my accounts. Then you can take your purchases and go.”
“We go,” a Vulpean hissed, his ho
verpad already rising, ready to zip toward the exit. The other followed. “Bring the slave.”
The cage with their purchase floated toward the open doors. The other bidders moved, and their purchases floated that way also, the prisoners crouching to hang on.
But then the doors began to groan closed, although no one stood by them.
“It’s a trap!” one of the bidders’ guards yelled. Weapons appeared in their hands, some trained on Joran, some moving to cover the other bidders.
A Serpentian fired and a laser charge shot out, straight at Joran.Only it ricocheted, to strike the edge of one of the cages. Sparks exploded in midair with a light so bright Zaë was momentarily blinded.
Heart in her throat, she peered at Joran. He still stood, and now he held his weapon in his hand, trained on the tables.
“Next one to shoot, dies,” he promised.
“Then you die as well, Storm,” pronounced the Serpentian brothel owner, on his feet, flanked by his guards. “Or better yet, your woman.” He flicked a hand, and one of his guards turned his weapon on Zaë.
The Serp smiled, a cruel parody of humor. “Yes, I remember her from the Pinnacles. I see you have her under protection, which tells me she’s important to you. It will be such a shame if you lost her tonight.”
Zaë sat frozen. If she tried to move, the guard would shoot her. But if she remained where she was, she made Joran more vulnerable. She forced air through her tight throat, and prepared to throw herself onto the floor. Maybe dying by laser wouldn’t be so bad. Better her than him.
Fear for him rose in a suffocating wave, and she pushed it back. She must stay strong and act—for him.
Time crystallized for Zaë, so that the smallest details became clear. She saw the avid gazes of the slavers lock on Joran, waiting for the Storm to fall. She heard her own breath loud inside the helmet of her flight suit as she tightened her muscles to leap. She heard Ryder move behind her, shifting his weight.
She felt the beat of her heart, the slight ache of her body where she and Joran had been joined as one, at least for a little while. She saw the feral gaze of the Serpentian guard, his weapon trained on her.
