The Alpha Prime Commander (10 page)

He said something in a
language she knew very well, and the unexpectedness of it had her stumbling
before she could return to her usual grace, and face off with her fellow
assassin.

He said, “Even an
immortal needs a head,” in old Pesilian, the language of the Black Hand.  Lena
was suddenly fighting for her life again.

***

Jackson had never before
been so thankful that his old sword master was partial to blind fighting to
keep a man sharp, until now.  He dispatched a merc and tried again to contact
Lena through the bond.  Still nothing, though he could feel her nearby – something
was still blocking their communication.  Something in the moon itself, because
in this place he was cut off from Cordan as well.  He heard the flurry of
fighting and knew in what general direction to go to find her.  Both he and
Cordan moved in that direction, killing as they went.  They ran out of mercenaries
long before they got close enough to Lena to hear more than the lightning fast
clashing of swords.  Cordan stopped and Jackson listened beside him, his head
canted while he tried to understand the fight he was missing.

“Lena?” he asked, wondering
why they had stopped.

“She fights.”

“Mercenary?”

Cordan watched Lena flip
over the head of a small quick man; he could not make out his face in the
almost total dark of the moon’s belly, but he could see outlines. He watched
the man move with a wicked fast back arch that turned into a high kick.  Lena
avoided it by misting one way and then the other, and it occurred to Cordan
that whoever she was fighting was no ordinary mercenary, not if he was fast
enough that Lena had to mist to avoid him.  Cordan had seen her fight. 
Normally she was quick enough, there and gone before her opponent saw her
coming and that was without the misting.

She misted again in time
to keep her head, when a slice of the other man’s blade went through where her
neck had been a moment before.  When it happened again, Cordan growled.  This
man was bent on removing her head from her body.

“No, this one is more
skilled.”

“How more skilled?” 
Jackson gritted out the words, obviously not liking what he was hearing.

Cordan did not answer.  Beyond
the fight he heard a yell of triumph that could only be The Collector.  The
yell distracted Lena just for a second, and the other man lunged.  She managed
to get out of the way, but he left a thin trickle of blood across Lena’s pale
neck.  Even in the darkness it shown red against the pale glow of her skin. 
Cordan no longer cared that his mate liked to fight her own battles.  This
creature had drawn blood.  Cordan leaped forward with a roar.

Lena cursed her
stupidity, but had no time for anything else when Lo suddenly decided he had
enough of her fight and charged the Black Hand assassin.  The man turned with a
triumphant smile to face the beast that came at him in a full-on charge, his
sword positioned perfectly for Cordan to fall on the blade.  Normally, it would
not kill a Prime, especially this one, but he was Black Hand and his blade was
more than steel.

Lena swiped her hand
against the blood smeared across her already healed neck and brought it to her
lips.  Just that fast, she spit and yelled her own roar of fury.  Poison, the
kind that would kill most anything, and at the very least decapitate her mate
so that the assassin could finish him cleanly.

Even an immortal needs a
head.

Damn it
,
Cordan thought he was invincible.  He had no idea what he was up against.  She
had no time for thought.  She did none of the things her training dictated. 
Instead, she jumped forward and grabbed the man’s shoulder and misted,
something she had never even tried before.  Cordan went right through the
sword, the man, and her to land on the other side and turn with another roar.

 Lena took the assassin
down through the stone beneath their feet. When he turned with a panicked
scream to grab at her, she pulled back, releasing him deep inside solid rock. 
His scream cut off instantly.  She misted back to her men.  Cordan grabbed her
with a snarl and pulled her into his blood-coated chest.  Lena only grimaced at
the squish briefly, then she was hugging her mate back just as fiercely.  The
light orbs came back on.  More than that, it was as if every embedded gem in
the cave walls lit up at the same time.  Both Lena and Cordan needed a moment
to adjust to screaming daylight.

Jackson heard Cordan and
Lena both curse when the back of his eyelids lit up.  He opened his eyes to
find the place beaming from floor to ceiling with colored lights.  He saw Lena
with her head tucked against Cordan and everything else faded back to black. 
He was beside her faster than he had ever moved before.  Cordan grumbled but
let her go reluctantly while he blinked.

Lena found herself
crushed up against her second mate’s chest.  She pressed her face into his neck
above his bloody leathers and breathed him in.  Past the scent of blood and
death was pure Jackson.  She closed her eyes against the dancing white lights
seared on her brain and wallowed in her mate for just a moment.

A sound had Lena turning
her head and looking for the man who had started all of this.  She kept her
cheek pressed up against Jackson while she studied The Collector.  Both of her
mates were doing the same.  He was paying no attention to them; instead, he had
his eyes on the blood stone at his feet.  His hands fisted.  He barely held
himself in check from grabbing the stone.

Lena might sympathize
with the feeling, but never the man, not after everything they had been
through.  Without speaking, the three of them moved towards the scene.  Cordan
took the lead, Lena and Jackson right beside him.  Jackson had his hand on her back
as she walked, not to assist, but because like her, he could not bear the
separation.  Lena understood; she had her hand in Cordan’s for the same reason,
because she needed them all to be connected.  From the squeeze he gave her hand
before placing it on the naked skin of his side, Lo felt the same.  She
wondered fleetingly how long the need would last, and hoped not long.  She
always craved their touch, but walking around constantly attached was a bit
much.  It would help if she could speak to them, but even touching, all she
received were vague impressions.  After cursing Cordan countless times for
being in her head, the irony of missing him there was not lost on her.

Jackson studied the area
around the black-eyed bastard and the glowing stone he hovered over.  The
Collector looked up as they approached.  Considering the cavern was littered
with bodies and the three of them were armed, bloodied, and pissed, Jackson was
not sure what the man had to smile about.  But he could not give one fuck if
the fucker was happy now, so long as he died screaming.

“I see I should have
brought more men,” he said conversationally, and Jackson blinked at hearing the
man speak directly to them.  “Where is the Black Hand assassin?  I must say, he
did not live up to the price I paid.  I had heard they were harder to kill.”

“We are,” Lena said
mildly.  The Collector blinked, and for once actually looked surprised. 

Some of his arrogance
leached away at the meaning behind her words.  “I see.”  He looked Lena over
carefully, as if he had never seen her before.  “A Cascian trained as a Black
Hand?  Now that is rare indeed.”

Jackson growled at the
same time Cordan snarled.  Lena laughed.  “For a man about to die, you seem to
have kept hold of that annoying arrogance.”

“You will find, like
yourself, I am not so easy to kill.”  He turned his eyes to Jackson.  “Extraordinary
that he would survive.  I would not have thought it of him.  There must be more
there than I see.”

Jackson gave him his own
version of a toothy smile, his hands caressing the knife hilt at his belt.

This time it was Cordan
who laughed.  It was a not a happy laugh, more mocking, with the sear of anger
at its core.  “You seem to have miscalculated at every turn where my mates are
concerned, Collector.  I had heard you were an intelligent man, but this?” 
Cordan motioned all around them.  “This smacks of foolish desperation.”

Jackson saw the arrogance
fueled anger heat The Collector’s black eyes and smirked, fanning the flame.  “Taking
on the Alliance, a Black Hand assassin, and the Commander of the Alpha Prime. 
Fucker’s a moron.”

“The Alliance?” The smirk
returned while he looked Jackson over.  “I approached the Alliance to acquire a
book of significant value that was said to contain a map to a rare blood
stone.  It was the Alliance that set the auction as the terms and brought in
the Black Hand, or didn’t you know your precious Alliance had them on retainer?”

Jackson felt the hit in
his gut and turned to look at Lena.  She looked back at him, her face
shuttered.  “Lena?”

She sighed and he could
see the truth in her sympathy before she spoke it.  “All of my jobs were
Alliance sanctioned, including the last one.”

“The Alliance hired the
Black Hand to kill the Alpha Prime Commander?”

The Collector laughed,
but Jackson found nothing amusing.  Cordan was conspicuously silent.  He looked
into Lena’s eyes and saw more.

He ground his teeth.  “What
else?”

“Jackson,” she started
only to have him yell in her face.

“What else?!”

Lena flinched but gave it
to him all in one swoop, the cold returning to her face as she recited the
damning facts.  “It was the Alliance that sold me to the Black Hand when I was
a child.  An Alliance jail where they found me, and an Alliance general who I
killed when he tried to rape me.”

When Jackson could speak
through his rage he asked the question that was searing his brain.  “How old?”

Lend did not pretend she
did not know what he wanted to know.  “I was ten.”

“The Alliance arrested a
ten-year-old for killing a child molester who attacked her, and then sold that
child to the assassins?”  His throat had closed so much the words barely
registered through the sick feeling swamping him.

“She was not in jail
serving time,” Cordan finally spoke, his voice as soft and ragged as Jackson’s,
anger leaking out his pores.  The Prime revered children.  Even enemy young
were never considered acceptable losses in battle.  “She was bound for
termination.”

Jackson locked his jaw
down or he would have screamed.  His whole life he had been Alliance.  Every
man he killed, every order carried out in the name of keeping the peace was now
called into question. 

Lena moved into him and
he let her, wondering how she could stand to touch him.  He had judged her for
something his people had forced on her, and she had never said a thing against
him.  Never even fucking thought it.  He knew.  He had been in her mind enough
to see that.  Now he looked into her eyes and expected to see disgust and
censure.  All he saw was sympathy.

“Jackson,” she said again,
shaking her head at the look in his eyes.

He wrapped his arms
around her and pulled her close, his eyes going to the smirking Collector over
her head. 

“Fuck it,” he forced out
a breath and concentrated on what was important now.  “We deal with the here
and now.”  Then he narrowed raw angry eyes at the other man.  “What
the fuck
do you have to smile about?”

The Collector’s smile
only got bigger when he moved his cloak and showed them the bomb strapped to
his chest with the timer already counting down.

Well, fuck.

Lena turned and stepped
out of Jackson’s arms while he moved up to her side.  They both studied the
bomb, all emotions immediately banked behind cold precision.  Cordan studied
the man.

“Subatomic,” she said
mildly enough.  “Hair trigger and a secondary ignition.”

“Back up switch,” Jackson
added.  They were not going to be able to disarm it within the time allotted,
not without specialized tools and a containment team.  Lena turned and met his
eyes, and he grunted shaking his head.  If that bomb went off, they would be
scraping bits of moon rock off the next solar system.  They had three minutes
on the timer.

“Let me guess,” Lena said
with irony strong in her voice, “you want me to pick up the stone and hand it
to you?”

“According to my research,
only a Cascian can claim the power of a true blood stone.  But they can give it
into the hands of another and the power is there’s to keep.”

“A Cascian?”  Cordan
asked mildly enough, which meant the same thing to Jackson as when The
Collector said it.  Absolutely nothing.

Lena tilted her head
beside him, and saw a faraway look in her eyes.  If Jackson didn’t know better,
he would say she was talking to someone in her head, but he tried again and was
still blocked.

“Fine,” she finally
said.  “I will give you the blood stone and then what?  You teleport away and
take the bomb with you?”

His smile turned
appreciative.  “Unless I can persuade you to join me.  A Cascian trained by the
Black Hand is no small thing to have.  If you come with me, I can free you from
your bonds easily enough with the ancient knowledge at my fingertips, and I
would compensate you well for your loyalty.”

For a second Jackson’s
heart stopped, and then restarted just as fast when she answered.  “I think I
will stick with the controlling dictator I am currently serving.  Homicidal
megalomaniacs are not really my speed.”

This time it was The
Collector’s turn to snarl.  “The stone then, and I will leave you to your
paltry existence.”

Lena stepped forward and
picked up the stone.  She gave no reaction and Jackson breathed a sigh of
relief, expecting something else.  “You know,” she said, her hand with the
stone, hovering over The Collector’s, “this is not going to end the way you
think it will.”

Then she dropped the
stone into his palm and The Collector screamed.

Jackson and Cordan both
reached for Lena at the same time, pulling her back and away from The Collector
and sheltering her between them.  The man had lost his smirk at last and seemed
trapped in some nightmare.  He did not fall to the ground, though he seemed to
have lost control of his body.  Light began to appear in tears across his skin;
then as fast as it started, with a final scream of agony, he flashed into a
ball of light that gave off no heat and was gone.  His clothes and the bomb
dropped to the cave floor where he had been standing moments ago.

Jackson looked at the
bomb and cursed, knowing they would never make transport in time.

“No, it’s fine,” Lena
said, patting his chest.  “The stone took the energy out of the bomb when it
took The Collector.  It’s now a subatomic dud.”

Jackson and Cordan both
looked at her.  “And how do you know that?” Cordan asked mildly enough.

Lena shrugged.  “Would
you believe the moon told me?”

He looked from her to the
empty cavern glowing with light all around them.  “Actually, I would.”

Jackson looked around him
with a new wariness.  “Can we discuss this back on the ship?”

“I think that would be
best,” Cordan agreed, keeping as tight a hold on Lena as Jackson was doing on
her other side.  “The old places are not meant to be disturbed.”

There was something in
his voice that had Jackson and Lena turning to look at him.  “You have seen
something like this before,” Lena said and it was not a question.

Cordan shrugged.  “Alpha
Prime has such places.  They are sacred to us.  No one but a vision seeker
dares disturb the old places.  And few have the courage to undertake such a
journey.  Even fewer survive the quest.”

“A vision quest,” Lena
asked.  “Like the one you did to see your future mate?  You’ve seen places like
this yourself?  Not just heard of them?”

“And found out I would
have to share her with a cocky human, yes.”

They all felt the warmth
of the room expand and then contract, like something alive was breathing.

Jackson heard Lena take a
breath beside him.

“They thought they were
the last,” she whispered, and a second later the blood stone misted back into
existence, hovering before her.  She licked her lips and looked at Cordan.  “They
want us to take the blood stone to your sacred spaces.  They do not want to be
alone any longer.”

Cordan looked from the
hovering stone to his mate.  “Then that is what we will do.”  Lena grabbed the
stone.  Cordan his communicator.  Jackson would just be glad to be elsewhere.

***

Alpha Prime had its myths
about blood stones, but they were thought to have been lost.  The immortal stone
was less a myth and more a legend among his people, so it was no surprise that
when they returned to the
War Bird
, the Prime warriors all assumed his
Pletar carried the immortal stone rather than something far more dangerous.  He
let them believe it.  In a race of people who were immortal, a stone that
granted immortality at a touch was a sacred thing, because it meant that to take
a mate not of their own clan was not an eventual death sentence for both, when
the Prime tied him- or herself to his mate’s mortality.  But it was not
dangerous enough to warrant the movement of their enemies.  So, having his
Pletar step off the teleporter carrying such a stone instantly elevated her
status to legend among his people.  That it was obvious both his mates had
survived the judgment of a blood stone meant those that might have questioned
his judgment in mating two obviously inferior species would be forever
silenced.

If they had guessed that
Lena carried with her a sacred stone of power, thought lost forever, things
would be different.  They would know she was more than the legend she was fast
becoming.  And some would know what The Collector knew, and whispers of Cascian
would eventually fall on ears that recognized the name.  They would come for
her.  They would die for it, Cordan knew, but they would come.

He did not realize his
thoughts were joined by his mates’ until Jackson spoke in them.

What happens when the
people want to get a touch of the stone for their mates?
he
asked, following the logic to the same conclusion as Cordan.