by Susan Grant
Unless she left him with no choice.
“My life debt,” she said as the idea struck. “By leaving, you stay safe, and I pay off what I owe. You’ve got no choice now, Dake Sureblood. Go!”
He blinked as her proposal sank in. “You’re freepin’ kidding me.”
“If you don’t have the sense to save your hide, I will.”
He glowered fiercely, and she glared back. Their passion was a tangible thing; the very air pulsed with it. Then she let the air out of her lungs. This wasn’t how she wanted them to part. “Please, Dake. I gotta deal with this on my own.”
For a few more heartbeats, he stood there, his jacket hanging open, his breaths exiting in gusts of vapor, a wrenching look of indecision in his eyes. His anguish was heart-rending and stole her breath. For a second, she feared she might change her mind and beg him to stay.
“I know you do, Blue girl,” he said quietly. “And I’ll abide by your wishes. Blues warring with Surebloods will make Nezerihm very happy. I’ll kiss a war pig’s ass before I’ll stoop to making that conniving piece of flarg happy.” He paused, his regard fearless, intense. “I will see you again.”
“I bloody well hope so.”
His mouth softened a fraction as that promise hung between them. Then he turned and walked away.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“ARE WE LEAVING, BOSS?”
“You heard her,” Dake snarled at Yarmouth.
“I heard her, aye. I just didn’t think you’d be obeying.”
Caught out in a miserable, unrelenting downpour, Dake frowned at his first mate as water dribbled down his jaw and seeped between his collar and his skin. They made slow, trudging progress along the road to the docks. The ground was barely visible under the puddles. At any given moment over the past two days, the cozy, cloud-choked planet of Artoom had threatened to close in on him, but never more than now. The horror of what had occurred within the past few hours seemed unbelievable. Val wore the tragedy on her face, and the guilt. She didn’t have to say the words: she blamed their tryst for what happened.
Hells, if there was any guilt to bear, it was his. At his urging, she’d left her post to be with him. In truth, neither of them was responsible, but they’d shoulder that guilt for the rest of their lives.
Dake swiped the back of his hand across his face. In the drenching rain he kept seeing the devastation in Val’s golden eyes. The heartbreak. Hells, he’d barely gotten to know Conn himself and still felt the loss hard. It was easy to imagine her anguish; he knew what it was like. He knew better than most how swiftly life could change. She was younger than even he had been at the time he first took command. It put her in an even riskier position with both her brother and father dead. Despite Grizz’s show of support, knowing the jackals snapping at her from the shadows, like Ayl, Dake feared hers would be a precarious position to keep. He would have stayed, had she not kicked his sorry ass off Artoom.
For his safety, she’d claimed, calling on her life debt to force his hand. Bah. He wasn’t scared of the Blues, or any other clan. And when he’d saved her life, it was instinctive, and expecting nothing in return.
“Rumors are flying,” he told Yarmouth. “But Val’s got a cool head, and so does Grizz. It makes sense to clear out of Artoom until things calm down.”
“Halt, Sureblood!”
A gang of Blues, eight strong and armed with dozers, approached through the drizzle. Instantly his raiders drew out guns they weren’t supposed to be packing. What did he expect? The Surebloods never followed all the rules.
“Easy now,” Dake told everyone. “No shooting.”
“I don’t need your permission to shoot, Sureblood,” Ayl said as he and his group glared down the sight of their weapons.
“You poisoned Conn Blue,” an older man growled, looking all too eager to fire. “We have the proof. Why don’t you just admit it so we can get your punishment over with—one, two, three?”
The gang laughed hard at that. “Don’t you know what that means?” Ayl queried. “That’s what we Blues call shooting off your balls one by one, then your brains. One, two, three shots.”
More guffaws. Dake’s clansmen grumbled and swore, weapons ready but not about to fire. Their discipline was impressive and made him proud. “I didn’t kill Conn Blue. My clan’s not responsible for his death.”
“I’m supposed to believe that?” The older man’s eyes narrowed at Dake. “You’re a Sureblood. Raid-crashing, lying sons of bitches—”
“Ragmarrk! Ayl! Warrybrook! Are you bloody insane? What did I just say?” Steaming mad, Val strode toward them followed by a sizable group of supporters. Completely unafraid, she slapped down the Blues’ weapons as she passed between the two groups. “You don’t have the right or the power to take clan law into your own hands. Put your weapons down.” She frowned at the Surebloods as well as the Blues. “All of you!”
“You heard her,” Dake told his men.
The weapons came down.
Val pulled the weapon away from a startled Ragmarrk, and for a moment Dake thought she might strike him with it. “If I find out that my father was poisoned, I’ll spend every last waking moment hunting down the assassins. But I will not—I will not—allow a witch hunt based on prejudice and jealousy.”
A pointed glance at Ayl, then she turned to Dake, her chest heaving. “Weren’t you going somewhere, Sureblood?”
“Aye. To the docks.”
“Reeve.” She pointed at her clansman who was trudging up from the docks after delivering Nezerihm to his ship. “Escort the Surebloods to their vessel. Then grab a helper and get all the other clans out of here.”
“Aye.” Reeve signaled for them to follow.
As they walked away, Dake glanced over his shoulder as Val glanced over hers. Regret passed between them, sharp with the sense of leaving things unfinished. It had been complicated between them from the moment they first aimed guns at each other. It would be even more so now.
He wanted Val in his life. He’d figure out a way to make it work. I will come back for you.
She nodded, that promise lingering between them once more. Then she was walking away with a bit of a swagger, Ragmarrk’s rifle gripped in one hand and her dozer in the other. If Dake even made a move to go after her, she’d probably blow him into so much space dust. And so, leaving her to address the needs of her grieving mother and her clan, he had the grace to disappear.
THE MOOD OF THE CREW manning Tomark’s Pride was somber. Company was the last thing Dake expected reaching the outer limits of Artoom’s planetary system and their calculated jump point back to Parramanta. “Boss, we got a Drakken vessel coming in!” Yarmouth called out.
“Drakken?” Here? Dake strode over to the nav screen to look over Yarmouth’s shoulder. Merkury jumped up to trot at Dake’s side, his claws making a familiar rat-tat-tat on the floor.
The Hordish vessel was dark and menacing as they all were. “Hunter class,” Dake said. Merkury’s cold wet nose pushed against his palm. He moved the dog out of the way. “She looks like a troop carrier.”
“In the Channels.” Kage, his second-in-command, seemed concerned, and for good reason. They’d all heard the stories of pirates captured and forced to fight. “They must be hard up for recruits to be coming here looking for bodies to fill a quota.”
“She won’t be getting ours. Accelerate to jump speed.”
“You sure you don’t want to shake them down first, boss?” Yarmouth coaxed. “May be something they have that we need.”
“The only thing we need right now is to be getting home.” In light of everything that had happened, he wanted to be where Val could comm him and he could comm her in privacy.
Merkury whined and thrust his muzzle in Dake’s hand again. He paused to hold the dog’s head still, looking his loyal friend in the eye. “It’s okay, boy.” A quick ruffle of soft fur, then he was back to monitoring the displays with his crew.
Suddenly, Yarmouth swore. “Boss! They fired! They fired
a freepin’ torpedo.”
Hells. “Decoys—now. Arm all guns and bring ’er about—hard starboard.”
Yarmouth turned so hard the ship shuddered. The torpedo kept coming, sailing right past the decoys. Useless, they soared off into space. The torpedo was coming in too hot to let go another salvo.
“Fire all guns,” Dake ordered. “Everything we got.”
The ship shook as booms echoed from the plasma cannons and the main guns. But trying to hit a torpedo that way was like shooting bullets at a fly. You needed a lucky shot. It wasn’t their day.
Kage was next to Dake, their fists lined up on the forward console. “We’re going to have to outmaneuver it,” his second said.
“Aye. Do it, Yarmouth.”
The man started flying like a madman. As they rocked from side to side, Merkury nudged Dake and tried to get his attention with a high-pitched whistle that signaled distress. “Merk, not now,” Dake snapped. The dog made one more disgruntled whine and sat hard on his rump.
The torpedo stayed on their ass. He couldn’t freepin’ believe it. A troop ship fired on them, and was going to make the hit. They’d be blown apart at the most, and at the very least disabled. “Brace! Brace for impact,” he roared. They took seats and buckled in.
The impact almost knocked him witless even though he was expecting it. The ship rocked violently. Alarms wailed.
“I about swallowed a toenail,” Kage muttered.
“Hull breach in lower cargo bay, after section four,” Yarmouth reported, his voice at a higher pitch. “Sealing it off. Pressure coming back up. Got a fuel leak at the number one nacelle tank. I…I can’t stop it. The shutoff’s busted. We’re going to go empty in seven minutes.”
Seven minutes. “Keep trying,” Dake ordered. “Where’s our Drakken friend?”
He looked even as he asked the question, finding out for himself the answer he didn’t want to know. The Drakken was closing on them, fast.
“They’re hailing us, boss. What do you want me to do?”
“Don’t acknowledge. They’re not going to fire any more torpedoes. Too expensive. They’ll only want to board us.”
Kage swore. “And if we let them, we’re all but agreeing to new careers in the Imperial Navy.”
A chill washed over him. “Doesn’t matter if we agree or not, they’re going to come aboard. Don’t mean we’re going to give them a friendly welcome.” He patted his dozer. “We’ll go down fighting if we go.”
Kage grinned. “There’s still a chance we’ll shake them down and see what booty they might be willing to share.”
“Aye.” Dake wanted to rail against what was about to happen; he wanted to plant his fist on the wall in frustration. A Drakken troop ship, of all blasted things, and here in the Channels, the middle of pirate hunting grounds. It was as if they were waiting for them. Or for you.
“This is an ambush,” Dake said, the horror dawning as all the pieces came together.
His father had supposedly died in an accident after advocating clan unity. Now Dake had taken up his cause and quite visibly. Was this ambush his punishment? His accident?
This is no accident. Nezerihm. Dake’s instincts roared the warning. He had not one bloody fact on which to base his charge but his gut, which had never steered him wrong. If he was already willing to believe the mine owner had a role in the tragedies that had rocked Dake’s clan and Val’s, it wasn’t that much more of a stretch to suspect Nez had tipped off the Drakken.
Not a stretch at all. Nez had no more loyalty to Dake’s people than he did the Drakken. His roots weren’t in the Channels. He was an outsider who had managed to dig in. Now he was poised to take over. Right or wrong, Dake had to let the clans know.
“Yarmouth,” he growled. “Get yourself in the one-man skiff. Now. Keep the lights off and get the hells out.”
Merkury fidgeted restlessly at Dake’s side, trying to do as Dake had asked earlier and not bark or whine. The dog sensed his unease as well as the danger they were in.
“You going with me, right, boss?”
“No. None of us are.” Kage and the others listened in, their expressions grim. The ominous hulk of the Drakken hunter ship was almost upon them. “Tell the clan what happened here. Work with my stepmother and the clan to choose a new captain to lead till I get home. Make sure they warn Valeeya Blue, too. Aye, tell her not to trust Nezerihm. He may have tipped off the Drakken.”
At that, Kage’s head jerked around. The man’s eyes blazed with the realization that Dake might be right. “Like when them fighters appeared out of nowhere when we raided that Drakken freighter Nez lured us to.”
Dake swore. Kage’s observation sealed the deal for him. They’d been set up.
Yarmouth’s expression turned flustered. “But why send me to warn them?”
“Your lucky day.” Dake looped a leash around Merkury’s neck. “Take care of Merkury.”
Merkury let out a sharp, distressed yip as Yarmouth pulled on the leash. The dog had been a fixture at his side. Their silent bond went beyond anything he could explain. Dake crouched down and accepted a frantic lick or two. Then he took his loyal friend’s head in his hands, making contact with a pair of urgent brown eyes, his voice tighter than he’d have liked. “You were always a good boy. This doesn’t change that.”
Then Dake stood. It was the best way, he told himself. The only way. “Now get out while you can, Yarmouth.”
Dake strode to the very bow of the ship. “Weapons ready,” he ordered. There was a terrifying grinding of metal against metal as the troop ship lodged alongside in preparation for a forced dock.
“The skiff’s launched,” Kage shouted over the din.
Dake nodded. Somewhere out there in the dark, Yarmouth and Merk were on their way. Home, he hoped. Parramanta. As he would be after a bit of a delay.
The intruder alarm screeched. Dake gave a silent signal and they took defensive positions around the bridge. He’d be shooting himself some stinking Drakken today, and he couldn’t say he was sorry.
Just as he thought the bridge was about to be boarded, a grenade spun over the floor, clattering up against the nav banks. Pinkish smoke billowed out from the grenade. Bastards. “Gas! Get your breathers on!”
Right away, dizziness unsteadied him. Holding his breath, he grabbed a ledge for balance, then went down on his knees, reduced to crawling to the spot where the masks hung. His head spun, his mouth was cottony. To the masks, he commanded himself. He tried to shake off the feeling of peace that urged him to lie down and take a nap. Reach…the…breathers…
He fought his fading body, struggling to think through a clouding mind. His ears rang, his lungs burned. His obligations as captain urged him forward. His determination not to fail his clan, or Val, wouldn’t let him stop until he reached the masks. The thumping of boots climbing the ladder from the docking area came ever closer. Drakken were aboard.
Must defend the ship.
Onward he crawled, his heart ready to explode, inching…inching…never stop…never surrender…
He paused for a breath before he realized he’d taken one. Mistake. His hands seemed far away from his body and the floor all too close. He stared at them, wondering. Then the floor jumped up and hit him with a single knockout punch.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
DEAR SWEET FATES. He’d descended into hells.
Consciousness found Dake sprawled on a filthy floor, chained by the wrists and ankles. The air was so dry and frigid he knew instantly he was on a hunter ship. And in a holding cell.
How long? Hours, days?
Weeks?
He swallowed hard, sensing that more time than what he was aware of had passed. They’d drugged him, kept him drugged, and brought him where? How far from the Channels?
He opened crusted eyes and peered around in the dark. The four walls threatened to close in on him. He sweated even though his gut was icy cold. Tight spaces. No air. No way out.
He grimaced, trying to pretend the cell wasn�
�t as small as his skiff. “Isn’t as small…isn’t as small…” he whispered, his chant a faint croak. Isn’t as small. He tried to believe it with everything he had.
The alternative was to go mad.
He sensed others nearby—but who? His clansmen, or Drakken soldiers? As silently as he could, he tested his restraints. Searing pain roared to life, burning from his wrists and ankles. He glanced at the clotted blood and torn skin where the metal rings had eaten into his flesh.
He must have been fighting like a madman to free himself but he couldn’t remember it. Drugs had suppressed his memory and his common sense. In his right mind he’d never have fought to the point of weakening his ability to fight back. A pirate knew better than to ruin his flesh for the sake of trying to free himself. The cell was filthy. An infection could kill him. He could lose an arm, a leg.
A fetid stink filled his nose. He hoped it wasn’t his body he smelled rotting. Panicked, he counted his appendages. All still there. Bones not broken, though a few of his ribs might qualify. He rolled his head back in relief, then sucked in a breath at the flare-up of pain. The beatings he didn’t remember but whoever was in charge had been thorough. There wasn’t a specken of his body left untouched, it seemed.
His stomach felt empty but hunger was far from his mind. His mouth was as dry as a Parramanta dust field in summer. His tongue was like old leather, his lips swollen and cracked. He could use a drink, a gallon of ice-cold water would do nicely to start, like the kind drawn from the deep wells reaching down to the depths of Parramanta’s aquifers…
Suddenly he was home, diving into the crystal-blue reservoir, his unbound hair streaming, the cool pressure of the water enveloping his body as he plunged deeper and deeper…
He snapped his eyes open, shaking off the hallucination. Something, a noise, had roused him back to reality—darkness, pain, a nauseating stench. How long was he out? Was it from the drugs or dehydration? Dehydration would kill him before anything else did. Where were Kage and the others? Couldn’t see; his night vision seemed worthless, filled with flashes of light. He almost blacked out again when a door slammed open. Floodlights blinded him.
