Knights of Desire [Flights of Fancy 2] (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) (6 page)

"Same thing, actually." She hesitated. "Just enjoying your world."

Her talking box learned more with each passing day, and fewer misunderstandings cropped up. It even seemed to have a sense of humor, sometimes making jokes.

Clemmons managed to pull his gaze from her remarkable eyes. "We were just going back to camp to go to bed. Will you be able to take that tour of the area with us tomorrow?"

"Yes, I think so. I'm looking forward to it, in fact."

Landis smiled. "That's wonderful. We'll meet you at your camp about an hour after sunrise." Shane offered her hand to Landis, and he shook it gently. "Goodnight."

Shane offered her hand to him, and Clemmons leaned forward slightly, raising it to his lips. "Goodnight, Shane." He kissed her fingers softly. She blushed and mumbled a hurried goodnight before walking off toward her ship.

Clemmons licked his lips. Not only had he garnered a fleeting scent of what he was certain was Shane's pussy, he could taste the sweetness of her juices on her hand.

* * * *

Landis hung back a little, letting Shane and Clemmons take the lead on their tour of the area around the camps. He tried for a while to convince himself it was to allow Clemmons to use his verbal skills to learn more, but he realized some time ago he really wanted to watch her ass as she walked.

They had been moving for nearly two hours when Clemmons found a shaded area in the rocks and called for a rest stop. Shane was, as he'd suspected, in excellent condition and showed no signs of being tired, but she was, after all, a woman, and neither he nor Clemmons wanted to tire her. They sat in the shade of a large boulder and chatted.

Shane sipped water from the metal container she carried. "This is a beautiful world you have here."

"You'll have to be patient with us." Clemmons laughed softly. "Until a few days ago, we didn't know there were any worlds other than this one."

"I understand it can be a shock. For many years, the Empire held the position that we shouldn't contact worlds and civilizations that are—well, more primitive than we are. We learned that was a mistake." She shrugged. "The key is to be benevolent. We want to help other peoples grow and reach their full potential. There is a dangerous time in the evolution of every society we have ever studied, a period when the technology is great enough that the civilization can destroy itself, but the society is still primitive enough that they can't manage the technology. Many places we have studied have dead societies that destroyed themselves before they learned how to manage things. We almost did that to ourselves many thousands of years ago."

Clemmons nodded. "So you try to help people through that time."

"Yes, that's right." She smiled, and the day seemed a little brighter. "You're not in any danger yet, but maybe we can help you plan for the future."

Landis wondered about all of that. "Yet you have soldiers, like yourself, and you are armed."

"Yes, I'm a soldier, and I'm armed." She patted the thing she wore on her side every time he'd seen her. "It's foolish not to prepare for battle and be ready to fight if forced. That's at least as foolish as fighting when you don't need to."

"I can see the wisdom there."

Shane hesitated for a moment and then seemed to make up her mind about something. "That's good to hear, but I wonder about this war you fight. We don't understand what it's all about." She shook her head and frowned. "No, more important,
I
don't understand it. I've come to believe that, despite being soldiers, the two of you love peace more than war."

Clemmons pondered, nodding his head. "I'd like to think you've read us right. I hate war, even with the dragons, but I fight because I feel I must."

"Tell me why."

"The dragons have a long history of attacking men, killing them at random, stealing land and food and water." He shrugged. "They won't talk to our ministers or the king, so what choice do we have?"

"Perhaps you just don't understand them and what they say." Shane laughed and brushed her golden hair from her face. "Look at some of the misunderstandings we've had."

Landis shared the laugh with her. "Maybe you're right, but if the lizards won't talk with us, how can we stop this?"

"I don't know. I'm a soldier, not a diplomat, but I know you have to stop it. In a short time, the history of my people went from the level of your technology to things similar to this." She again patted at the weapon on her hip. Shane looked thoughtful, and then she stood up. "Let me show you something."

She pulled the weapon from its holster and worked at the controls. "This weapon can do much more, but let me show you one of things it can do. It can throw a projectile, a slug, with tremendous force, and you'll probably figure out how to do the same within the lifetime of some children alive today."

She pointed the weapon at a small boulder, maybe five times the size of a man's head, some distance away. A sharp crack rang out from the weapon Shane held, and a large part of the rock exploded into dust, throwing stone splinters in all directions.

Clemmons stood still except for his head swiveling rapidly to shift his gaze between the damaged rock and Shane. He worked his mouth a few times before any sound came out. "And that's only one of the things that weapon can do?"

"Yes, one of the least damaging things." Shane shook her head. "You have to know how to live in peace before you create such weapons."

"With weapons like that, we could crush the lizards."

"Yes, but at what cost? Is the extinction of the race of your enemies worth it? What about your own extermination?" She shook her head. "No, we've been there. It's not worth it."

* * * *

She'd been debating with herself all morning, but Shane couldn't decide what to say to the two men about the encounter she'd witnessed last night. She finally decided to say nothing at all, and that seemed easiest, despite the fact that she couldn't get the images out of her mind, to say nothing of the raging fantasies the images evoked.

One thing was certain, though—the reaction of the men to the demonstration of her sidearm triggered both fear and desire in her. Shane understood the fear part—Clemmons's face held hatred for the dragons, a need to kill them all and exterminate the species clearly showing on his expression. While somewhat more restrained, Landis too looked like he finally had found a weapon to destroy his sworn enemy. She wondered why the men hated the dragons so much.

She didn't understand the desire part at all. Like most soldiers she knew, Shane hated combat and despised all-out war. While Fleet members tended to be less warlike than the average Marine, she could count on one hand the number of jarheads she'd known who actually liked to fight. Why would the reaction of Landis and Clemmons affect her so? She felt the frown that came to her face as she considered her own feelings. Why did the urges of two men to kill off some species she'd never even seen, make her feel safe?

Landis and Clemmons exchanged a glance, and Landis tried to explain. "We have shocked you, I'm afraid. There is much to why Clemmons and I hate the dragons."

"I gathered there is something I don't know." Shane pushed her thoughts of the men down in her mind. "Why don't you tell me about it? I'd really like to understand."

Clemmons touched Landis's arm, a tender stroking more appropriate to lovers than to comrades. Despite her trying to focus on the matters at hand, Shane couldn't help thinking the men shared a touch even more appropriate to life-partners. When he spoke, Clemmons's voice was soft. "Let me, Landis. It's hard for you."

Landis nodded. "Perhaps that would be best."

A soft smile with a hint of sadness flowed easily over Clemmons's lips. "I think so." He turned to face her. "To make a long story short, this war is personal. About seven years ago, the lizards murdered Landis's wife. She was killed when the monsters raided a village."

In spite of expecting something like that in the men's past, the revelation still shocked Shane a little. She wasn't good at this sort of thing and wasn't sure what to say. Her mind flashed back to a young recruit she worked with ten or twelve years ago. She worked as the Assistant Company Commander of a group of new midshipmen, and the duty fell to her to tell one of the recruits his mother was dead, killed in an accident. She recalled telling the middy his mom was dead in very clinical terms, and all she could think of to say after that was that she was sorry for his loss. It wasn't as supportive as it should have been, and she knew it.

Shane looked at Landis, and his head hung forward, his black hair spilling to cover his face. She opened her mouth to speak, but no sound would come out, and that was probably good, because she still hadn't thought of anything to say that wouldn't sound stupid at best and flippant at worst.

She reached out and placed her hand on top of Landis's where it rested on his knee. His skin was warm, but he shivered. Her voice seemed to decide to work on its own. "I'm so sorry. I can only imagine how much it hurts to lose someone you love."

Landis looked up at her, and his gaze locked to her eyes. Wetness gathered in the corners of his eyes, but he blinked a few times, and the tears retreated. "Yes, it hurts, but time has eased it somewhat."

Shane regained some of her composure. "You can't kill an entire race for something one group did. We learned that long ago on Earth. Sometimes, small groups of people would do things, and the natural tendency is to blame all members of the larger group they belong to." She shrugged. "Pretty soon, no one is left."

"Again you speak wisdom." Clemmons sat beside Landis, his face a study in concern for his close friend. "But as we have said, the dragons won't talk to us."

"Maybe we can help you with that. Well, maybe Lieutenant Talbert can help. Like I've said, I'm no diplomat."

Landis brushed at his left eye with his fingers. "Perhaps you can."

* * * *

"I understand the problem fully, Captain, but we still need answers." Admiral Reeves didn't look too happy about things, but Elsa knew the man also understood command and the need to let her handle the situation. "What do you think is going on?"

"Talbert and Rawls think it's a communications problem." She thought for a moment, glancing over the report from the surface again. "We're still relying on electronic translations, and that misses the emotional side of the coin. My people on the planet think there's some kind of deep-seated emotional conflict between the people and these dragons."

"But you haven't even seen the dragons yet."

"That's correct. Well, other than some scans and long-range visual contacts of them flying overhead, we've had no contact with them."

"Exactly. Are they intelligent?"

"From what we've gathered, I think so. The dragons have their own loosely structured feudal society, and they have language, but as far as we've been able to learn, they don't make tools or build what we think of as cities."

Reeves sat quietly, staring out at her from the communications screen, his expression as neutral as thirty centuries of life could make it. Elsa could no more read him than she could Lord Admiral Q. He finally leaned his head to one side, and a small grin played over his face. "Tell me what you think all of this means."

Elsa had been asking herself that same question for several days now, and she didn't have enough facts to reach a conclusion. The memories of her meeting with the Emperor when he gave her this job came back to her. She recalled how he made no secret about the fact that he selected her to command
Daedalus
because she had good instincts and followed them. And her instincts were all she had to go on right now.

"I don't think the people down there are hiding anything from us, but we don't have all of the story yet. I think things could get more than a little tense before we get the full story, though."

Reeves nodded, his grin broadening. "Jim is right. Standby one." He reached for something on his desk, and the display switched to split-screen mode. The image of the Emperor swam into focus.

James the First, By Grace of God Emperor of Mankind, looked up from his desk and smiled. "Elsa, so good to see you."

"And good to see you, Your Majesty."

Reeves interrupted the pleasantries and outlined the situation to his father-in-law. "This is probably nothing, but since
Daedalus's
mission is your personal project, I thought you'd like to know."

The Emperor nodded. "That's just fine. Even with eighteen quadrillion people in the Empire, I like to have some clue about what's going on. On the other hand, I'm paying Elsa to make the decisions."

"Maybe you are, but we need another opinion on this one, Jim."

"That's what you pay me for." The Emperor grinned, the same grin his picture on the currency carried, as he looked out at her from the screen. "What is your gut telling you to do, Elsa?"

She swallowed. Despite the easy way he talked, she was giving advice to the most powerful man in the galaxy. Elsa knew he would follow her suggestions unless they were totally off the wall. She also knew if things went terribly wrong, he would take the heat. Yes, she'd get her lumps but in private. Any consequences from the Senate, media, or public would fall squarely on the shoulders of the men she now faced. It occurred to Elsa that she had, perhaps unconsciously, modeled her own command style after that of the Emperor.