Daughter of Destiny (34 page)

The other one moved just as
fast and was beside the tall one in an instant, trying to crowd her
out. "Father, what's wrong with her?" The taller one, intent on
Katarina, didn't respond.

The other faerie spared her
an annoyed look. "Move out of my way, human."

"Whoa, buddy. I don't care
if you're Dark Lord Tinkerbell, I'm not leaving Kat."

He narrowed his
eyes.

"Don't even think about it,
buster. You try any funny magic mojo and Kat will fry your ass." He
cocked a brow and recalling that she wasn't entirely helpless, she
added in a rush, "Harm me or mine, though powers divine, three
times three back onto thee. As I will so mote it be." A tingle of
electricity surged through as the spell wove around her.

"You're a Mage?"

"No, but I learned the
rudiments of spell casting from Kat's mom. She did a lot of
paranormal research."

That news didn't seem to
endear her to him. In fact from the way he clenched his jaw, she
was glad she thought to cast the protective spell.

"Do you know what's wrong
with Katarina?" the faerie asked through clenched teeth.

"Emotional overload. She
has superb blocks, but she isn't superwoman. She has her limits. I
forgot about it at first because she was acting so normal, but she
usually avoids closed in places with a lot of people, especially if
those people are likely to be emotional. I'm going to take an
educated guess that a war zone with people dying up there is just a
bit more than she can handle." She glanced at the tall faerie and
Katarina. Whatever he was doing seemed to be working. Katarina no
longer gripped the table's edge and her breathing
slowed.

"She was aware of this
weakness?"

Naia rolled her eyes. "Of
course. She's had to deal with her empathic abilities all her life
and the telepathy for about half that. She told me once that the
empathy was far harder to deal with because of the emotional
element which triggered physical reactions. " She jerked her thumb
toward the faerie assisting Katarina.

"Who is he and what is he
doing?"

"I'm Finn, Katarina's
father," the tall blond faerie answered instead of the one in front
of her.

Naia stared at him, looking
from Katarina to the faerie. He brushed the hair away from
Katarina's face and then cradled her face between his palms.
"Better,
iníon?"

Naia breathed a sigh of
relief. Given the things she heard about the Fae from their mom,
the last thing she expected to see was a man this attentive and
caring. The other definitely fit the tactless and rude description,
but Finn, not so much.

Katarina nodded. "Thank
you."

He put a finger under her
chin and tilted it up. "You are my daughter, Katarina. If I could,
you would never feel a moment's pain or unhappiness."

The other faerie leaned in
and added, "I'm Kat's twin brother, Kieran."

Naia eyed him, wondering if
Kat minded if she taught her brother a few lessons in manners.
Before she could craft a nice sarcastic reply, an alarm screeched,
interrupting the introductions.

“
Incoming!" A voice
announced over the chaos. Lights blinked out as the room shook with
a series of vibrations. The floor bucked and Naia crashed to the
floor. The table toppled over, barely missing her hand. A cacophony
of noise and curses told her she wasn't the only one who hit the
floor. The whole episode lasted mere seconds before orange tinted
emergency lights kicked on.

"They hit the power relay
station. The generators should kick on...." The lights came back
on. "Now," announced a young man in a rumpled uniform, sprawled
half out of his chair.

"Kat!" Naia looked up at
the sound of the Finn's strained voice. A stream of blood trickled
down Katarina's brow from a cut on her forehead. She and Finn
crawled to Katarina's side at the same time.

"Are you okay?"

"I'm fi—" Katarina broke
off on an indrawn breath.

Something warm and wet
seeped under Naia's hand. She looked down. Clear amniotic fluid
streaked with blood spread beneath Katarina.

"Oh, God!" Naia looked up
to meet Finn's horrified gaze. "Can you heal her?"

She knew her expression
must match his when he answered, "Child birth is not something with
which I can interfere. The balance is too delicate."

Zane streaked into the blue
sky, dodging dogfights and snarls of ships exchanging fire. He
banked to the right so that he saw the desert floor in his right
view screen. He leveled out after clearing the heaviest of the
fighting and upped his speed and altitude to escape velocity.
Katarina's pain hit him low in the back and abdomen, like some
tried to wrench his intestines loose while they squeezed him in a
vice.

"Katarina!"

"I’m okay,
Zane."

"Don't lie to me. I’m
coming back right now."
He started to slow for
descent.

"Don't you dare turn that
ship around. Keep me safe. Keep our children safe."

Zane’s hands trembled on
the flight controls. He needed to make the attack now, but every
fiber of his being screamed at him to go back to
Katarina.

"I’m in labor, Zane, not
getting tortured. I'll be fine. Finn and Naia are with
me."

Zane wanted to scream. He
should be down there with her, but instead he was flying into
battle. He straightened his vector.

"I do this for you, my
love."

It was the hardest thing
he’d ever done, harder even than leaving her the first time, but he
broke the connection and let his mind fall into the ultra-aware
mode that served him so well. The sooner he finished this, the
sooner he’d be back.

His sleek ship sliced into
the black depths of the thermosphere and beyond. He didn’t let his
mind dwell on the flames of downed ships and burning buildings
below. Zane activated the cloaking device. The thing was a little
temperamental, and wouldn’t do him any good when it came time to
shoot, but at least his approach would go unnoticed.

Five enormous
Trapqert
t
roop carriers loomed over Earth, spread out, bombarding the
planet's largest landmasses. The largest, most heavily armored
vessel loomed over North America. His gut told him that particular
vessel belonged to Karglock. His vanity wouldn't allow him to
occupy any but the best ship in the fleet.

He zeroed in on the command
vessel, avoiding the streams of fresh
Kekkes l
eaving and
battered ones returning to the carriers. With deft adjustments, he
flew low over the enormous ship, skimming the surface to further
mask his presence. He would have to veer away at an impossible
angle after shooting at near point blank range, but Zane had
confidence in his ship and his skills.

Trapqerts w
ere
constructed in two sections and then carefully fused together. The
larger horizontal diamond shaped section housed the bridge, crew
quarters, cargo holds, and hangar bays. The fin shaped section that
rose from the dorsal side of the ship held the engineering portion
of the ship as well as specialized sensory equipment.
Theoretically, this was done so that the main structure could be
mass-produced and then different lines of frigates could be tailor
fitted with appropriate engineering sections. Their weakness, as
he'd discovered, lay in this design. The power core was housed only
a few feet inside of the ship near the juncture where the two
sections were put together. If he had stronger torpedoes, a direct
hit would snap the ship in two. The most he could hope for from his
load was a hull breech and the loss of the power core. The damage
wouldn’t be bad enough to destroy the ship, but without power, if
IGCF didn’t arrive soon, the situation would be fatal for the crew.
The steady stream of fighters entering and exiting the hangar bays
required the frigates to keep shields lowered. It gave him a
tactical advantage. He wouldn’t last long against one ship, let
alone five, if they raised shields.

The
Mi’ica Praepa
c
overed the distance quickly, even with his constant
adjustments to avoid protruding instruments and sensors. The route
took every iota of his concentration, but he couldn’t allow them to
get a target lock on his energy signature. Approaching the
juncture, he deactivated the cloak and fired one of his missiles.
With one hand, he banked away from the carrier and the other
reactivated the cloak. A huge explosion erupted behind him, the
flames flaring brightly and then dying a quick death in the vacuum
of space. He executed a roll to avoid flying debris from the
frigate that careened across his path. Zane jetted toward the next
carrier, making a beeline for his target instead of following a
stealth approach as before.

He repeated the same
procedure on two more of the remaining ships.
"They’ve got to be
blind not to catch on!"
Praying that his luck held, he went to
attack the next carrier. A squad of fighters lay in wait for him
when he reached the fourth carrier. Not particularly surprised, he
weaved and dodged, but finally had to drop his cloak to return
fire. He strafed a trio of small
Kiwir c
lass fighters with
his laser gun, managing to hit each one. The middle ship exploded
into a fiery ball of debris that engulfed the other two damaged
ships before consuming all of the oxygen available. Two more
explosions followed the first. Zane winced as the debris slammed
into his shields, but it gave him cover to disable the fourth
frigate.

He reactivated the cloak,
but a swarm of
Kiwirs s
tayed on his tail. Apparently, they
were picking up enough sensor information to track him through the
cloak. His ship was a few
kilicks f
aster and managed to
outrace the swarm even while dodging laser fire. Just a few seconds
from reaching his last target, another squadron of
Kekkes
a
ppeared from the opposite side of the ship in between him and
the target.

"Kraghak!"

They moved to box him in.
If it weren’t for the need of a direct hit, he would just shoot
through the squadron with his remaining battery of missiles and
hope one got through. Since that wasn’t an option, he laid down
heavy laser fire. He didn't care if he even hit anything, as long
as their formation broke enough to give him room to maneuver.
Weaving, diving, and rolling through spaces that opened up in
between ships, he worked his way toward his goal. He aimed every
ounce of his focus on getting the ship in close enough to drop that
last missile. He barreled through the enemy fire, oblivious to the
unavoidable hits on his shields. As the ship rocked and quaked,
absorbing the impact of incoming shots, he dropped the last
missile.

He hit the button to
reinitialize the cloak, but it blinked red and refused to
cooperate. "Wasn’t doing a damn bit of good anyway." Careening at
breakneck speed away from the ship, he managed to dodge the enemy
fighters also attempting to get out of range of the resulting
explosion. A second before the generator blew, one of the carrier’s
shots hit home taking out the last of his shields.
"Shit!"

At the same time, the
ship’s computer announced, "Unidentified ships entering
system."

Zane glanced at the
electronic signatures as he pushed the accelerator to full speed.
They were IGCF sloops dropping out of warp. It wasn’t exactly a
fleet, but it was better than nothing.

"It’s about damn time," he
growled. His ship’s armor couldn’t take many more hits before the
hull breeched. Desperation and instinct guided his hand at that
point more than fancy technique. As he hoped, most of the fighters
broke off to confront the new threat. The rest he managed to evade.
Just as he cleared the field of debris, a fighter he thought dead
in space came to life and pelted him with laser fire. The ship
shuddered as the armored hull absorbed the heat and power of the
lasers.

"Kraghak!"
He
swooped around the ship, returning fire. His shot hit home and the
fighter exploded. As he fell more than flew into Earth’s
atmosphere, alarms blinked and beeped in a deafening display of
lights and noise. System after system shut down.

By the time he reached the
troposphere, the guidance controls stopped responding. He had no
time to try to evacuate the ship. The escape pod wouldn’t get clear
of the ship quickly enough to avoid an explosion, and judging from
the way the ship’s systems refused to respond, he wasn’t sure the
pod would even launch. He tightened his harness and braced for
impact with the hard desert ground rushing to fill the forward
window.

***

"Stupid human conveyance."
Finn growled as he lost patience and shifted space with Katarina in
his arms.

A doctor and nurse rushed
to meet them when he entered the medical facility.

"Put her on the
bed."

As he laid Katarina on the
bed, Naia raced into the room. "You know, you could have zapped me
in here too."

Finn ignored the little
human and scowled at his son who lingered in the doorway. "Get over
here and help me."