Bringing Stella Home (20 page)

They ate together this way until the
platter was half empty and Stella’s once-empty stomach was
completely full. By the end, she found herself lying down with her
head in Qasar’s lap. How that had happened, she didn’t quite
know—but strangely, it didn’t feel as bad as she’d feared. His
clean hand ran through her hair and caressed her neck.

“
No more,” she whispered,
patting her stomach. “That’s—that’s enough.”

Qasar nodded and stopped caressing her
neck long enough to wash both hands on a washcloth and push the
platters away. From her vantage point in his lap, she watched as he
shed his robe, baring his muscular upper body.

Immediately, Stella’s body
tensed.

Without a word, he ran his fingers
through her hair, stroking downward across her neck and shoulders.
Where his touch met stiffness, he squeezed gently and massaged her
until she grew limp and relaxed.

Her heart raced as he shifted her off
his lap so that she lay beneath him. He scooted down until his eyes
were level with hers; in them, she saw a frighteningly potent
hunger, as if he were ready to devour her. His hands migrated
behind her neck, where he undid the clasp holding her top in
place.

I shouldn’t be letting him
do this,
she thought to herself as he
pulled the straps down off her shoulders and arms. His fingers
stroked her skin, starting at her shoulders and moving steadily
toward her breasts.

“
Stop,” she whispered,
stiffening once again. “Please, stop.”

To her dismay, he laughed.

“
Are you frightened, my shy
goddess?” he asked, pulling off the top half of her bedlah
gown.

“
Yes,” she whispered.
“Please—stop this.”

He slipped a hand inside her
underskirt. “It is good to be feared,” he said, “but it is better
to be obeyed. Kiss me.”

Before she could answer, he pressed
his body against hers. She drew in a sharp breath as her blood
turned to ice. All of her muscles instantly tensed, and she pushed
against him with all her might.

“
Stop,” she said,
struggling to get out from underneath him. “just—stop!”

The smile on his face turned to a
snarl, and he took her by the wrists and pinned her
down.

Stella struggled against his grip, but
couldn’t break free. Her panic grew, and she started to thrash
about with her legs. In one smooth, controlled movement, he
released her left wrist and struck her across the cheek with the
back of his hand, sending her reeling.

She opened her mouth and
screamed.

Her outcry caught in her throat as he
struck her again, this time with his fist. Tears of pain flooded
her eyes even as Qasar reached down and tore the underskirt clean
off of her. At the terrible noise of ripping fabric, panic filled
her. This was it—now, he would rape her.

“
Stop!” she screamed. Once
again, a hard blow landed against her cheek, but a surge of
adrenaline gave her the strength to wriggle out from underneath
him.

“
Foolish woman,” he
muttered. “Don’t you know your captain when you see him? Your life
belongs to me now.”

Stella scrambled to the other edge of
the bed and wrapped the tangled sheets around her naked body. “I’m
sorry,” she cried, “I’m just—I’m not ready!”

“
I’ll decide when you’re
ready!”

He glared at her, as if by the force
of his will he could make her submit to him. Instead, she felt
doubly frightened.

“
What more could I have
done for you?” he shouted with rage. “I fed you, clothed you, gave
you a home, gave you servants to take care of your every need—what
gives you the impudence to turn on me now?”

You invaded my home and
took me from my family,
Stella
wanted to scream.
Ben,
James, father, mother—what did you do to them?
The thought made tears well up in her eyes. She rubbed her
still-throbbing cheek and started to break down.

“
I’m sorry,” she stuttered
in between sobs, “it’s just—just that I—I’ve never done this
before—and I—”

“
Never done what before?”
Qasar asked, frowning inquisitively.

“
I’ve never done—never
slept with a man.”

His eyes narrowed, and he moved closer
to her. “Are you telling me that you’re a virgin?”

She took a shaky breath and slowly
regained some control. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, that’s
it.”

Qasar gave her a hard, penetrating
stare. “Don’t lie to me, woman. Why should I believe
you?”

Stella cringed with fear. “I—I don’t
know,” she said. “But it’s true—I swear!”

“
Why didn’t you tell me
this from the beginning?”

“
You—you never
asked.”

“
Of course not. What, you
expect me to ask every planetborn whore whether she has already
defiled herself?”

The contemptuous way he pronounced
‘planetborn’ suggested it was a derogatory term—though Stella
didn’t know why, because it didn’t make any sense.

“
What do you mean?” she
asked. “What’s ‘planetborn’?”

He scoffed. “What do you think it
means? You should know—you are one.”

“
If it means I was born on
a planet,” she said without thinking, “that’s not true.”

She cringed, expecting him to lash out
in some way for being contrary. Instead, his eyes widened with
surprise.

“
You are not planetborn?”
he asked.

“
N-no,” Stella said, not
sure why he’d stopped.

“
Then who are you? Where
are you from?”

She took a deep breath. “I was born
into a merchanter family. We’re from the Colony—that is, one of the
stations at the fifth Lagrange point of Kardunash 3.”

“
Truly?” said Qasar, his
voice completely changed. “So you are not from one of the planets
in this system?”

“
No,” said Stella. “I
wasn’t born on
any of Karduna’s worlds; I
was born on a space station in a trailing orbit behind the third
planet.
That’s my home.”

Qasar stroked his goatee with
fascination. “Tell me more.”

What does he want to
know?
Stella wondered.
And why?

“
My—my home is the Colony,
an old mining operation in Kardunash III’s Trojan
asteroids
.
My
family mostly transports processed durasteel from home to the ports
at
Kardunash IV
and
Kardunash VI
I.”

“
Not planetborn, then,”
Qasar muttered, mostly to himself. “But not shipborn
either.”

Stella frowned. Shipborn,
planetborn—she didn’t know what to make of it.

“
I wasn’t born on a ship,”
she said, “but I am—I was—training to be an astrogator. I’ve been
on half a dozen voyages to other star systems—piloted two of
them.”

Qasar nodded at her with respect.
Considering how he’d beaten her and ripped off her clothes only
moments before, the gesture left her shocked and
confused.

“
I apologize,” he said, his
voice surprisingly soft. “Please forgive me; I thought you were
planetborn.”

Why should that
matter?
Stella wondered. She didn’t dare
interrupt him, however.

“
If I had known who you
were,” he continued, “I would not have…behaved so badly. Since my
cousin picked you from the spoils of our conquest, I assumed you
were one of them.”

No mention of stripping the prisoners
and processing them like cattle. No mention of killing those who
resisted—or the senseless massacre of those deemed unfit to
live.

“
Please, forgive
me.”

Stella wasn’t sure what to think or
do. With her throbbing jaw and clothes strewn all about the room,
the entire discussion felt too surreal. Sensing her discomfort,
Qasar put on his robe again and passed the bedlah top and coin
dress back to her.

“
Thank you,” she said,
taking them gratefully. She turned her back and slipped them
on—without the underskirt, the coins felt hard against her skin,
but at least it was better than nothing.

“
You are not like my other
concubines,” Qasar stated, “and therefore, you should not be
required to do the things that they do. It is not your
place.”

Stella frowned. “So—”

“
So if you do not wish to
lay with me tonight, that is your choice. I will not force you,
though I do hope you will keep me company—as my guest.”

Stella hesitated. The bruise on her
jaw throbbed with pain—Qasar hadn’t apologized for that, nor did he
seem about to.

“
Yes, I-I’ll stay,” she
said, too afraid to refuse.

“
Good,” said Qasar, as if
the answer had never been in any doubt.

* * * * *

James walked down the dim,
narrow corridor of the
Tajji Flame,
searching for the captain’s quarters. The
mercenary warship was built from the hull of a standard mid-size
Tajji freighter, and the interior had been so radically rebuilt
that he had to read every sign and label to keep from getting lost.
It took him nearly twenty minutes to find the door marked
CPTN.

The door hissed open a few seconds
after James hit the chime on the access panel. “Ah, Ensign McCoy,”
said Captain Nova, still wearing the same dull gray flight uniform
from the bridge. “I’ve been waiting for you. Please, come
in.”

The moment James stepped inside, he
felt as if he were in a completely different ship. Unlike the drab
corridors, where exposed pipes and wires ran along the ceiling,
Danica’s quarters felt polished and refined. The floor was made of
genuine polished wood, while dark mahogany bookshelves lined the
walls. Directly opposite the door hung an old-fashioned canvas
painting depicting a dramatic desert landscape, probably from
Tajjur V before its fall. Though space in the room was tight, a
dark leather couch sat on an ornate Auriga Novan carpet, with two
comfortable armchairs on either side. A holographic display table
sat on the center of the carpet, the only fixture in the room that
wasn’t an antique.

“
I take it you’ve
transferred all your personal possessions to your new quarters,”
Danica said, motioning him to come in.

“
Yes,” said James, sitting
down on the couch. He’d taken only a duffel bag of essentials
before Sergeant Krikoryan had gruffly commandeered his ship, but it
hardly mattered. Right now, the
Catriona
was his only possession with
any real value.

“
Good. And I assume they’re
acceptable?”

“
Yes, ma’am.”
So long as I only sleep there.

“
Excellent. Then let’s get
to business.”

Danica tapped her wrist
console, and a giant hologram filled the space above the table. At
once, James recognized the image as a three dimensional map of
the
Karduna
system,
with the orbits of each of the seven planets displayed as
rings.

“
This is our current
location,” said Danica. A red light appeared almost directly over
Karduna prime, nearly three Gaian AU above the orbital plane. “Your
brother and sister were taken prisoner here, at
Kardunash IV, exactly thirty-eight days ago
.” A blue light illuminated a point along the orbit of the
fourth planet, slightly behind the planet itself. “Is this
correct?”

“
Yes,” said James. Staring
at the familiar image of his home system, he still found it hard to
believe that all of it was now under the Hameji
occupation.

“
That makes things very
difficult,” Danica continued. “Enough time has elapsed that our
targets could be halfway around the Good Hope Nebula by
now.”

James’s stomach sank. “Then what
should we do?”

“
Intelligence is extremely
limited, but I suspect that the Hameji have split their fleet into
multiple battle groups. Karduna is a choke point along the axis
connecting Gaia Nova with the frontier worlds, so if the Hameji
plan to launch a multi-pronged campaign against the Gaian Empire,
this is where they would split their forces.”

“
But Ben and Stella,” said
James. “Where are they?”

“
That’s our first order of
business—gathering the necessary intelligence. It won’t be easy,
though. Our only viable option is to hack into the Hameji fleet’s
network, and to do that, we’ll have to get close enough to one of
their battleships for a nearly instantaneous rate of data
transfer.”

James paled. “Hack into their network?
Won’t they shoot us down before we get close enough for
that?”

“
It’s a risk,” said Danica,
“but not as great a risk as you might think. I’ve studied the
Hameji for quite some time, and I think I see a weakness that we
can exploit.”

“
You do? What is
it?”