Charlotte Boyett-Compo- WIND VERSE- Pleasure's Foehn (20 page)

ignoring the nausea and the way his head continued to spin—stuffing his shirt into his britches but not bothering to put on a belt. Thrusting his feet into a pair of worn but comfortable boots, he stalked to another armoire and took out a wicked-looking serpentine blade dagger, gathered up his scythesword and the shoulder scabbard that would hold the blade diagonally across his back. Shoving the dagger into the waistband of his britches, he trod heavily to the door, slinging the scabbard over his shoulder as he went and put his ear to the panel.

There would be guards on duty outside his chamber door, Cair knew. He could not hear them for his hearing was still slightly dulled but he had no doubt they were there. In order to get past them, he had to use a portion of the powers given to him as a Deathwielder and he knew that would sap a great deal of what little energy he had. But there was no way around it. He had to get out of Amhantar Keep and make his way to the docking bay.

Drawing in a deep breath, he willed his body to his command. It was imperative for him to be completely relaxed, emotionless and to allow nothing to break his concentration. He reduced the rate of his breathing, lowered his heart rate and then with his eyes closed began to charge his physical body with dark energy. Concentrating, he visualized his natural aura changing to indigo black for black is the invisible light. As his body became infused with the black aura photonic created clouds began to flow around him, enveloping his entire body with the indigo black color. He began to see his body dematerializing, his visual aura becoming invisible until he could no longer see himself. Gradually, he envisioned the clouds blocking out all light, hiding him completely from sight, concealing his energy in the indigo depths of the black aura. 112

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He touched the door, and the door disappeared within the secret ebony folds of his aura, he opened it, walked through, closed it quietly behind him and walked past guards who neither saw nor heard him.

A grim smile stretched across Cair Ghrian’s face as he walked purposefully down the winding staircase of Amhantar Keep and took the corridor that led to the spaceports and the docking bays where his own dragon-class fighter waited in its harness. He paid no attention to the people he passed who were unaware of his presence among them for he had but one thing on his mind and that was to board
the
Saoirse
. Though he had not stepped foot inside his personal craft since he had designed it at the Academy in an engineering class he had hated from first day to last, he knew the ship as well as he knew the back of his hand. He had incorporated speed and stealth into the dragon-winged black ship, sensor jammers and added enough firepower with twin pulse cannons to scatter a Skyraider into the Abyss in micro-pieces. Saoirse meant

“freedom” in Amhantarean and the sleek vessel had always been a source of independence for the young prince. This day, it would also be his liberation. Standing on the catwalk, he stared at the
Saoirse
for a moment, looked past it to make sure the external shield doors were open. He observed a ship taking off, another backing out of its harness in preparation for departure and a muscle worked in his jaw.

“You can send merchant ships out any time you feel like it but not one ship to go after my lady,” he said quietly.

With his hands clenched into fists, he stood there a moment longer and spread the black aura over the
Saoirse
, effectively hiding it from view. Concentrating as hard as he could, he caused the forward hatch door to swing up and the entry ladder slide out. Only a minute passed before he was in the craft and buckling himself into the formfitting pilot chair.

A quick run-through of the instruments and gauges told him the
Saoirse
was in topflight condition. The fuel cells were fully charged and all systems were a go. He engaged the engines and kept a close eye on the ship jockeying into position to leave port.

Looking up from his position on the lower docking bay where freighters, transports, and LRCs were harnessed, a maintenance worker heard the roar of a fighter engine but could not see from whence it had come. He counted five star fighters and two runabouts on the upper level but none showed heat from their exhausts. The sound of an engine going on line had lasted but a second before it became silent, but the maintenance worker felt the hair on the back of his neck move.

“Kullen, how many ships are docked up on the upper level?” he called out to a fellow worker.

“There were nine there this morning but one of the runabouts left just after daybreak. Why?”

The maintenance counted the ships again. “I see only seven. You sure there should be eight?”

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“Reasonably sure,” Kullen said. He leaned over the rail of the catwalk and looked up. “I don’t see but seven, either. Maybe one went to—”

The maintenance men were buffeted by a strong wind, staggering back as the heat washed over them.

Cair waited until the lumbering freighter was ready to depart through the external shield doors. He gave the
Saoirse
full power and slipped under the belly of the freighter and hung there as it got ready to pierce The Net.

“What the hell was that?” Kullen asked. “Was that a ship rocketing down from the upper level?”

The maintenance men stared at the freighter as it shot out into space and would later tell their supervisor they didn’t see another ship leave port but knew one had and had done so in full stealth mode, undetected by the controllers.

“That was the only way Prince Cairnan knew he’d be able to break free of the force field without being discovered,” the supervisor told Seamus. “He let the larger ship hide his heat signature until they were beyond The Net then shot past them. The captain of the freighter said all he saw was a black blur.”

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Chapter Fourteen

Davan had regained her sight quicker than her husband had but her hearing was still muted. A sharp pain plagued her left auditory canal from time to time, causing brief spurts of pain and brutal vertigo, for which she refused to allow the Saurians to treat her. She suffered the discomfort in silence and ignored all attempts made by the captain of the vessel to engage her in conversation. At the moment Cair escaped the gravity of his home world, his wife was sitting in Captain B’reith Avatás’ office and staring at him with all the hatred she could muster.

Avatás leaned back in his chair, his elbows on the chair arms, and folded his hands together over his flat belly. His plans for The Black Sun’s woman had been thwarted and he was enraged that it was so but until things changed—as he suspected they were about to—he could at least take a small portion of his revenge on Cair Ghrian’s bitch.

“I am told there have never been any women on Riezell Nine,” the Saurian commander said. “You will be the first.”

Terror shifted through Davan’s body but she kept still, not allowing one flicker of her eyelashes to give her away. She simply stared back at the ugly bastard across from her.

Avatás smiled and he flicked out his forked tongue to moisten his upper lip. “You are a brave woman, no?”

The sight of that long, slender tongue with the dual-tips sickened Davan. It was all she could do not to flinch.

“A woman befitting The Black Sun,” Avatás commented. “The Burgon enjoys brave women. They are more entertaining than frightened ones when he crushes their spirits.”

Davan knew little about The Burgon—the leader of the Aduaidh—but she had heard he was a powerful warrior who had risen brutally through the ranks. His enemies feared him for it was said he gave no quarter and took no prisoners who did not end up in the experimental labs on Riezell Nine.

The Vid-Com behind Avatás chimed twice and the Saurian sat forward. His elliptical pupils glowed with a forbidding light.

“We are arriving on Riezell Nine. I will have the guards escort you back to your cell in preparation for landing.”

Davan stood up and turned her back on the Saurian, smiling grimly to herself at his hiss of annoyance at her rudeness as she walked to the door and waited for the portal to open.

“If I had my way,” Avatás told her, “you would crawl from my presence on your belly!”

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A spiteful little imp did a hop on Davan’s shoulder and she turned to look at the Saurian, speaking to him for the first time since she’d awakened on his ship. “I’ll leave the belly-crawling to reptiles like you. Everyone knows you’re better at it than any other race in the universe.”

Avatás came to his feet in a bound, his face a mask of rage. It was a sore point with him that the Saurians were considered the lowest echelon of the Aduaidh Alliance ranks.

“You will pay for that insult, bitch!” he threw at her.

Davan laughed at his threat and would have said something else to him but the guard on her left grabbed her arm and dug his nails into it. He’d dragged her from Avatás’ office and halfway down the hall before he stopped, jerked her around to face him.

“The Burgon gave orders you were not to be touched but if you aren’t careful, the captain will disregard that order and you’ll be squirting skinks out of your cunt from now until you die like Ghrian’s whore did!” the guard told her. Davan’s face lost all color. “Amethyst is dead?”

“Dead and burned to a cinder,” the guard spat. “After delivering her third slither of nestlings she bled to death. Is that what you want?”

A hard shudder ran through Davan. The thought of the Saurian thrusting into her was nauseating. Just the thought of him putting his slimy, scaly hands on her made her gag.

“Aye,” the guard sneered. “I think you understand now, don’t you?”

Hurried down the corridor and into her cell, Davan could not stop thinking about the woman who had been her husband’s mistress. She hadn’t liked Amethyst—perhaps even hated her—but knowing she’d died such a horrible death made Davan tremble, wondering what was in store for her as a captive.

And as the wife of the future King of Amhantar.

* * * * *

Emperor Ryden Bakari had won his position as Burgon of the Aduaidh Alliance through a savage combat to the death with an opponent who once had been his friend and still wore the scars of that vicious contest. Though advances in cosmetic surgery could have erased the wicked disfigurement that ran from his right temple to the corner of his mouth, Ryden preferred to keep the mark. Because his opponent had been a friend and that man had fought gallantly—if dirtily—Ryden considered the scar a badge of honor.

Fingering the swath of dense fibrous tissue on his lean jaw as he watched his flagship, the
Sekkeen
, moving into position on the pallet that would take it along a rail 116

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system to its docking bay, the ruler of the Aduaidh was uneasy. This was his second visit to Riezell Nine since the border wars began thirty years earlier and he knew all too well what had gone on behind the gray steel and granite walls of the research center. He hoped never to set foot again on the planet known throughout the galaxy as a charnel house of torture and death and he especially had never wanted to see again the prisoner being kept in the farthest reaches of the center’s cells. Ryden Bakari was a newly commissioned ensign the year war had broken out between the Aduaidh and the Coalition of Federated Worlds. The dispute had begun at the borderland of small planetoids between the Aduaidh Quadrant and Amhantar, that green world from which had come greedy warriors intent on grabbing Aduaidh land at all costs. The hostilities had begun with a violent skirmish or two then had escalated rapidly to all-out warfare, bringing other worlds into the fray. No sane voices arguing for a settlement could be heard for the conflict had become a brutal contest for supremacy waged by both sides. The Burgon before Ryden had been a savage man intent on winning no matter how many causalities or how vast the destruction of lands it would take a hundred years or more to bring back to use. By the time Ryden took the throne, hundreds of thousands of men, women and children had died on both sides of the war. Thousands of acres of land would never be fertile again and plant and animal life had long since disappeared from those war-ravaged regions. Tired in spirit and weary of body, Ryden had long since given up all hope of there being a decisive victory on either side of the coin. He had lost ten of his brothers and three times that many sisters. Numerous friends and even more numerous acquaintances had lost their lives to a war that had ceased to have meaning for those planetoids that had been the cause of the war had been destroyed—blasted into so much space dust—long ago. The reason for the war was no more, yet the hostilities continued—in part—because of men like B’reith Avatás.

As that hated name passed across Ryden’s mind, The Burgon cursed. It was because of the Saurian that he had been forced to leave Aduaidh Prime and make the hated journey to Riezell Nine once more.

“Have you lost your mind?” The Burgon had shouted at the Saurian when B’reith had Vid-Commed to boast of his taking of Cair Ghrian’s bride. Avatás had looked genuinely surprised that his act did not please The Burgon. “It is a way to bring The Black Sun to his knees, Your Excellency. He will—”

“Move heavens and planets to get the woman back, you fool!” Ryden bellowed.

“Do you have any idea of what you have done?”

Avatás had tried to explain his actions and as he spoke, Ryden saw anger building in the elliptical pupils of the Saurian. His blood ran as cold as that flowing through B’reith Avatás’ veins.

“If you harm one hair on that woman’s head, I will take yours from your body!”

Ryden said through clenched teeth. “Touch her and I will lop off your hands one inch at a time. Do you understand what I am saying to you?”

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Fear had entered those reptilian eyes and Avatás had bowed. “I will make sure she is placed in no danger.”

“Take her to Riezell Nine,” Ryden ordered. “She will be safer there than on your ship or anywhere else in the Quadrant. Make damned sure our enemies know you have her for they will not dare attack a ship carrying The Black Sun’s mate.”