A flying fist to her left drew her eye as well as the bouncers’, and the two patrons were quickly ejected from the bar before they could do more damage.
This was why the king didn’t like to dock his ship, the Vengeance, in port. He ran a tight command, liked everything in order. The space station had too many races drinking Volcano’s Breath, too many outsiders not vetted for top security, and too many hidden corners. It was a disaster waiting to happen.
But the king was running the largest empire in any of the systems they’d encountered thus far, so once in a while he had to give in to convention. Although each time they left the dock, he mournfully complained for the few days after departure as he forced those who’d had the worst behavior to clean the personal rooms and blood rooms of the Vengeance—where the Ardaks threw the carcasses of the prisoners they didn’t eat.
Kirelle’s eyes kept falling on one woman across the room, but she couldn’t say why. On the surface, she looked like everyone else. Perhaps it was just that her long straight black hair and pale skin seemed slightly too clean. Or perhaps it was simply that she seemed too fragile for this place. Or maybe it was that she was sitting next to two males with long straight blond hair—obviously twins—who somehow looked equally naive despite their height and musculature.
Before the Ardaks had destroyed her planet, Kirelle might not have noticed such things. But now she noticed it all, filing it away in case she needed it in the future.
The too-pale woman glanced furtively across the bar directly at her, and that made Kirelle very nervous. She slid from her bar stool and rose to find the personal room. Once inside, she took as long as she could, to forestall being alone when she returned to the bar. She was just washing her hands when the out-of-place woman entered the personal room, obviously trying to look nonchalant until the door closed behind her.
Kirelle tried to edge by her, but the young woman stopped her, checking to make sure the two stalls were empty. “Are you Kirelle? The scientist who works with the cyborgs?” she asked in a low voice.
Kirelle hesitated. “What do you want?”
“I heard your life is in danger.”
Kirelle glanced around the personal room, even though she knew no one was in there. That didn’t mean there weren’t listening devices. She lowered her voice to a whisper. “How did you hear that?”
“We have a mutual friend.”
Kirelle raised her eyebrows. The only “friends” she had were Ardaks and cyborgs. “I find that hard to believe. Who?”
“I can’t tell you that.” She paused, her eyes searching.
“Well, whatever you heard is a complete falsehood. The Ardaks aren’t nice to anyone, least of all each other. And I’m the best scientist they have in my specialty. That keeps me out of danger.”
The woman snorted. “Here’s to overconfidence. Look, I’m not even supposed to be talking to you. But we’re trying to fight the Ardaks, and I don’t know if I’ll ever see you again.” She pulled a small, black Ardak comp device from her pocket. “If you take this device and insert it into one of the cyborgs, he can help us. He might even be able to rescue you.”
Kirelle’s stomach dropped, and she held up her hands. “You’ve lost your mind. I’m not touching that device. And we’ve been in here so long they’ll suspect me of something anyway. Fuck off.”
The woman grabbed her, shoving the device in her pocket. “You don’t have to do it now. Please, just consider it. We’re all in danger every day because the Ardaks have so much power. No one will ever know you did it.”
“I’ll know. I’m not a traitor.” Kirelle tried to shrug her off, but the woman didn’t let go. “Jaffete. Get off me.” Kirelle punched her in the mouth. Hard. The woman finally let go, her black hair flying, her opposite hand going to her face and tears springing to her eyes.
Kirelle took the device from her pocket and returned it to the other woman, eyeing her dispassionately. “I suggest you find another profession, because you suck at being a covert agent.” Then she turned and opened the door, striding out of the personal room. Retaking her seat at the bar, she clasped her hands together to stop the trembling of her fingers. She ordered another drink—this one with a dropperful of Volcano’s Breath. Hopefully it would calm her nerves.
Kirelle had no loyalty to the Ardaks, but the collar around her neck was a reminder that she was alive as long as they allowed it. And traitors tended to have incredibly short life spans.
The Ardaks had destroyed her homeworld, leaving her with night terrors that still woke her five years later. But one act of futility like the one the woman suggested would probably be her last if they ever found out.
Less than five minutes later, an Ardak security force of three entered the bar, led by the king’s cousin himself. They closed in on the table with the odd woman, the two males, and another male with long black hair who had joined them just seconds before.
Everyone else began edging away, and the black-haired male stood, showing his full height to be almost equal the Ardaks’. He moved like a panther, placing himself in front of the woman and the two younger males. Her husband? Their hair, eyes, and aristocratic features shared too many genetic similarities. Brother.
The male answered the guards’ questions, his eyes searching the room at the same time. When his gaze met hers, a strange shiver went through her that she’d never felt before. It wasn’t just that he was handsome. There was an intensity in his eyes that pulled her—almost sucked her across the room toward him.
Some insane part of her wished she could meet him, but this definitely wasn’t the time. Something was about to go down, and there wasn’t a damn thing she could do about it.
Kirelle fingered the collar around her neck. One of X-Blade’s special inventions, it prevented her from using her magic. If she could take it off, she would help them. And herself. But over the past five years she’d tried every way imaginable in the labs to do so and nothing had worked.
The young woman tried to protest and reached into her pocket, but before she could pull anything out, the Ardak in the center shot her point-blank in the chest.
As she fell, Kirelle saw the life in the woman’s eyes go out, extinguished forever.
The tall male screamed with rage, and two blasters appeared his hands. He shot the king’s cousin right in the center of his chest, as well as the Ardak to his left before the Ardak on the right kicked his blasters away with one sideways thrust of his boot.
The man reached between his shoulder blades and drew two swords, and the Ardak met them with his own. But his blades flashed twice as quickly as the Ardak’s, singing through the air and clashing into the red blade in a combination of metal and electricity.
The Ardak missed him once, his blade sliding straight through the metal table, cutting it in half. Gods, those blades were wicked.
As they fought, his agility showed the male was long experienced with battle. He fought with a smooth, efficient style that was almost a dance, making the Ardak appear overly large and slow in juxtaposition. With a well-aimed kick between blows, he knocked the Ardak’s sword away.
More Ardaks had entered the bar, but none interfered. Their whiskers barely twitched as they watched, their fangs gleaming. It was as if the jungle felines were entranced by the swords that gleamed and glowed as they swirled through the air.
All at once, the warrior sheathed his swords and fought the Ardak hand-to-hand. His long hair flew as he spun, punching and kicking, bumping into the now-empty tables and knocking over glasses until the Ardak finally took him to the floor.
When the man saw his dead sister’s face, he screamed again, a sound of pain and fury that she would never forget.
As the Ardak cuffed his hands behind his back, his eyes took in the entirety of the room.
Abruptly she realized why he’d fought the Ardak for so long.
The two blond men were gone.
He’d sacrificed himself.
X-Blade had returned, grabbing her arm and pu
lling her with him. She was momentarily frozen in place, but then let him lead her back to the door that exited toward their ship.
The Ardaks led the man out the door in front of them, leaving the woman on the floor for cleanup later. She wondered what would become of him.
But as she stepped over the dead body of the woman, she noticed the device lying under the table, inches from her lifeless hand.
Maybe he can even rescue you.
Kirelle pretended to stumble and picked up the device.
The Ardaks believed in science, and her expertise had worked in her favor.
But the day when her luck ran out, maybe she would have to use it.
Chapter Three
Tristin
Tristin awakened from a deep sleep, not recognizing where he was. Then pain shot through his chest as he had a vision of Andraya’s sightless eyes, her limp body collapsing to the floor. He wished he’d killed all the Ardaks in the bar. But then he’d be dead, and not in an Ardak prison.
He jumped to his feet and punched the side of his cell. He was going to make these bastards pay.
He prayed that Casin and Corin had gotten away while he was distracting the others. The shame of it was that he’d gotten the location of the secret base and a chip with codes and information but hadn’t been able to pass it to them before the Ardaks had confronted them.
He surreptitiously felt for the tiny chip in his pocket, breathing a sigh of relief that it was still there. He didn’t want to take it out in case the Ardaks were observing his cell since he had no idea where to hide it that it might not be found.
He ran a hand through his hair, pushing it over his shoulders. He’d let it hang free as a disguise rather than using the traditional braiding of their royal house. If he was lucky, the Ardaks still may not know who they’d captured.
How in the hell had they been discovered, anyway? He had no idea what they’d done in ten minutes on the station to trigger the alarm. Perhaps news of their escape had preceded them, but he doubted it. Despite what he’d said to the others, there was no way the Empire could have known which way they were going, and there were too many rebel ships for them to be overly concerned about his.
A more likely scenario was that their security had already been watching the Ardak who slipped him the intel.
But the larger question for him was why they were keeping him alive now. Perhaps they were hoping to torture him for information. But if that was the case, they were really barking up the wrong tree. The Royal House of Tuorin trained its children to fight almost from birth, as well as to focus their minds and resist torture for situations just like this that might jeopardize the Tuorin empire.
But if they had to capture someone, Tristin was glad it was him. His training had been even more difficult than his cousins’. While Casin and Corin were from a temperate planet with plentiful water and lots of sunlight, his planet was the harshest in their system, its oblong orbit giving them only three months where snow would melt.
His people lived in clear domes set into the ground at the base of ice cliffs rising miles high. The cliffs were a mixed blessing—they protected the domes from the brutal ice storms that raged during the long winters, but during the three-month thaws, there was danger of falling icicles the size of small mountains.
Tristin had learned to fly as a scraper, scraping off and catching enormous icicles that formed on the undersides of the cliffs before they could fall and crush the domes below. Avoiding the gigantic ice bats that hung from the underside of the cliffs was always a problem. They didn’t attack the scrapers directly, but disturbing them could cause them to fly, and one flap of their wings could send a scraping ship spinning, crashing into the cliffs or the ice below.
At the thought of the ice bats, his heart constricted once more in sadness. Andraya had found an injured ice bat as a baby and healed it, so it had bonded to her. Even now it waited on the cliff just outside their dome for her return. He would have to tell it that she wouldn’t be coming home.
He clenched his fists.
Breathe.
He forced his breathing to slow. Anger wouldn’t help him now—he’d need a cool head to deal with these bastards, especially if they tortured him again.
But he was long experienced with that. Aside from scraping, the rite of passage on his planet was to stay outdoors in the snow and ice in a short-sleeved shirt and shorts for three days and nights, using only breathing techniques and their wits to keep their bodies warm, with only ice and snow to eat.
After so many hours in the climate so cold it burned, his skin had acclimated to the burning sensations. He’d felt it, but it didn’t stop him. He could separate himself from his body—think around the pain.
He’d repeated the experience several times since then, the last after the Ardaks had invaded their system. It was that pain, that focus that had given him the strength to start the ARF with his cousin Juordin.
There wasn’t much these Ardaks could do to him that would be worse than the feel of air so cold it burned for days on end. That’s why when they’d captured him last time he hadn’t broken.
Perhaps a cyborg would happen along and save him again.
Cyborg.
An involuntary shiver went up his spine as he thought of the few cyborgs he’d encountered the last time he’d been captured. To him, there was nothing worse than the loss of his mind. The loss of his memory. The very thing that made him who he was.
The cell door opened and two Ardaks entered. To his satisfaction, he saw that the one he’d fought had a bloody snout and a cut over its eye.
He stood up to his fullest height. They were still a few inches taller than him, but he refused to cower.
“You’ve got bad luck,” the one he’d fought commented. “Your second capture in as many months.”
Damn. So they did know who he was. He kept his face impassive. “I guess I’m just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“Perhaps. But perhaps there is another reason for it as well.” The Ardak strode forward, a pair of cuffs in his hand.
Tristin backed away, jumping onto the cot where he’d slept. “What are those for?”
“Well, we know we cannot break your mind, so we have another use in mind for you. One that doesn’t require you to have one.”
“No!” Tristin shouted, fear going through him for the first time. The cot had some spring so he somersaulted over the Ardak’s head, going for the exit. But there were two more outside the door. He spun, kicking each of them several times, until they finally muscled him to the ground.
“I can see we’ve finally found what makes you tick.” The Ardak’s voice was dry as the cuffs now locking his wrists behind his back. “Perhaps now you’ll tell us what we want to know.”
“I won’t, but if you turn me into one of those things, I guarantee you’ll never find out.”
“Yes, but there will be other benefits.” The Ardaks burst into a coughing, screeching laughter.
Tristin didn’t even want to think about what he might mean. This was his worst nightmare come to life. If they took his mind, they could force his body to do anything.
Anything at all.
Chapter Four
Kirelle
Kirelle gaped at the enormous unconscious male who was being carted into her lab by a team of four Ardaks. “What the hell is this?”
“The specimen you requested for the new ultimate cyborg. X-Blade said this is the best one we’ve got.”
Kirelle glanced over as they laid him on the long metal table. He was certainly large enough. Almost as tall as an Ardak, muscular, but not so large that his reflexes would be dulled. He would probably be a good fighter.
“How much sleeping agent did you give him?”
“Enough to kill a couple humans. But this Tuorian will probably be out for another eight hours,” one of them replied, smirking. “You’d better tie him down. He has a lot of fight in him.”
The Ardaks departed without another word, so she p
icked up her clipboard and strode over to him to begin taking his specs.
She’d created many cyborgs before—in fact there were four in the next lab recharging at the moment. But this one would be a different kind of cyborg. A breakthrough using the upgraded specs the Ardaks had only theorized about until now. She had big plans for him.
She started by removing his boots. Through experience, she’d found it was better not to start with their faces. Their chances of survival were usually small, and she couldn’t afford the added pressure of caring for them.
When she took off the second boot, she found a strange seam in the center of the sole. Picking up a scalpel, she pried it open. Inside, she found a tiny slip of white paper and a digital storage device. There was writing on the paper, several numbers, and a few strange symbols. Perhaps this was why he’d been captured.
A guard strode by in the corridor outside, peering in one of the tiny windows in the door, so she shoved the piece of paper and the device into her pocket and went to the second boot.
He had good-sized feet—she found them nicely proportioned when she removed his thick under-boot garment. Then she picked up her scissors to start on his pants.
Muscular legs tapered up into a trim waist and sculpted abs that she could see through his fitted shirt. He had good-sized hands, too, now that she came to think of it. She reached out to touch one of them, assessing it. This warrior was starting to remind her of. . .
Without thinking, she glanced up at his face.
Traako.
Traako. Traako. Traako.
It was the warrior the Ardaks had captured from the bar several days ago. She’d expected him immediately, but each passing day had allowed her a bit more hope that he wouldn’t land on her table.
A slight tremor began in her fingers, the one she’d been trying to avoid by not identifying with him. His long black hair was knotted into a bun at the back of his neck, which was why she hadn’t known him immediately. It wasn’t just that he was handsome. Somehow he was just as beautiful, just as intense in repose with his eyes closed as he had been awake.
Tristin Page 2
