Prince of Luster (25 page)

He’d previously only had to consider himself while undercover. Now, his entire planet and what was left of Delta Seven depended on this night going as the traitorous Forrell claimed it might.

• • •

“I don’t like it,” Darius muttered as he scanned Delta Seven’s dreary landscape from the
Titan
’s vid-screen. “I planned on taking five of you with me on a small transport and landing on the dock where Forrell is supposed to meet us. But something just doesn’t feel right.”

“When you get one of those urges, it’s best to yield to it, sir. I’ve never known you to be wrong about a hunch,” the second-in-command replied.

Darius rubbed his jaw thoughtfully and shook his head. “I want a long-range scan of everything within three days of Delta Seven. If you find the slightest anomaly, report it. I refuse to believe something has happened to Marcos. If he were dead, I’d know.”

“It’s possible his transponder isn’t working, Commander.”

“Let’s pray that’s so. This business with Forrell has the smell of rotting D’nubrian slime worms.”

“Scanning now, sir.”

Darius leaned forward in the commander’s seat and trained his eyes on the large vid-screen in front of him.

“Sir, we’re being hailed from the planet’s surface.”

“Open a view window,” Darius ordered as he stood. A scrambled vid-message as well as an equally garbled vocal message came through.

“Darius … it’s Marcos. This message is likely weak and may be blocked. You’re being set up for an attack. There are at least six Limaxian warships—”

“Get him back!” Darius barked out as his brother’s voice faded away.

“I heard the part about the Limaxian cruisers, sir.”

“All hands to battle stations,” Darius commanded as he took his seat in his chair again. “Keep trying that communication link again, and broaden the long-range scan.”

• • •

“I’m sure he must have heard you,” Forrell said as he watched the vid-screen go black.

“He’d better have,” Marcos said. “I’d say Prometheus doesn’t trust you, or he wouldn’t have attempted to block any transmission from the surface.”

“He’s a Limaxian. They trust no one and will even kill their own kind on nothing more than a suspicion. I suspected he’d try, but hoped he’d not be able to block a transmission entirely.”

“I’ll keep trying until I’m certain Darius got the message. It probably won’t work, but it’s our only chance.”

“Shall I go back to the healer?” Forrell asked.

Marcos adjusted the controls on the communication console in an attempt to boost the transmission signal. “Not without me. She’s safer where she is than out on the streets trying to get to us. And if this communication center is blasted in order to stop us from warning the
Titan
, I don’t want Nova anywhere near.”

“Y-you think that will happen, Highness? Is that why you insisted on leaving the girl at my residence?”

Marcos smiled when he saw the man start to sweat. “That’s exactly why I left her. And on the off chance that we survive an attack here, she’ll be there to tell my brother where we are.”

Explosions sounded in the distance. At least one Limaxian craft was strafing the surface, attempting to destroy the communication station but apparently satisfied to level every building on the way there.

Though Nova had glared at him when he’d ordered her to stay behind, she hadn’t put up any objection. His original intent was that they should stay together. Then, it occurred to him that this very thing might happen; that one of the Limaxian ships would head straight for them to cut off their communication. He didn’t want the only woman he’d ever loved anywhere near, just as he’d told Forrell.

“Th-they’re coming closer,” Forrell gasped as he grabbed his robes tightly around his body.

“What’s wrong, Forrell? Don’t want a taste of what you’ve been dishing out to these people for years?”

“If I’d known we’d be blasted, I wouldn’t have come with you.”

“Too late.” He grabbed the man’s cloak and hauled him into a chair beside the vid-screen. “You’ll be staying with me until this is over. Until the very last second. There was no way I was leaving you alone with Nova. You’re not going back to your residence now.”

“But if slugs show up there—”

“That’s the part I didn’t like. But as Nova has so often reminded me, she knows how to get in and out of buildings. I didn’t want to leave her behind, but this was the only way to make contact with the
Titan
and not put us both in danger to do so. Besides—I trust her. I have faith in her. Which is more than I can say for you.”

“When Prometheus believes I’ve betrayed him, he’ll strike my residence with a photon torpedo. That little healer will be dead before she can run a hundred yards. She’ll never get the chance to get far enough away.”

Too late, Marcos realized that Forrell might be right. He had the choice of staying at the console and continuing to contact the
Titan
, or warning Nova. He grabbed Forrell by the front of his caftan and hauled him closer. “Is there any safe place we can go?”

“Under my residence, in the tunnels. It’s the only place. I’ve had the underground doors reinforced to foil assassination attempts. There’ll be no food or water, but we can close ourselves off and survive a day or two if necessary. If those doors hold through the blasts and your brother’s ship isn’t destroyed, Prince Darius might be able to get to us. But we have to go
now
.”

Marcos glanced at the console once more. Putting the distress signal on auto wouldn’t boost it at increments necessary to provide the best chance for contact. That should be done manually. But every instinct now told him to get to Nova.

“Hurry up,” he commanded. “There’s no time to lose.”

• • •

On the top floor of Forrell’s home, Nova heard the explosions and knew they were getting closer. She grabbed Una, held her pet close, and eyed the door. “So much for us staying together, Marcos Starlaw,” she bitterly whispered.

She couldn’t wait any longer. Too many times she’d heard those ships coming, and knew what would happen to anything being strafed on the ground. She decided not to wait for Marcos, but take her chances elsewhere.

She took the lift down to the first floor and ran through the foyer.

Out on the street, people clustered then moved to the west, attempting to get away from the Limaxian ground craft. But if she headed east, where the ships had already fired, there might be a way to escape. The tunnels under the city wouldn’t help if Limaxians found survivors beneath wreckage and shot fire plasma in them to flush anyone out. That was what had happened the first time there’d been a colony-wide attack.

As several Limaxians stumbled past the door and shouted commands to their comrades, Nova hunched in the shadows and waited for them to pass. At the other end of the block, she heard their craft moving ever closer.

Parts of Forrell’s roof were already beginning to crumble beneath the ferocity of the blasts. She threw off her cloak, reached into her boot, and grabbed the governor’s small laser weapon. Marcos had given it to her before he’d left. She’d silently tried to refuse the sidearm, but her beloved enforcer had shoved it into her hands just before he told her he’d return.

Now, he never would. She realized these attacks were being employed to send the population into a panic, and in an attempt to destroy the buildings up to and including the communication center. The slugs must have heard Marcos’s attempts to reach his brother’s ship and were retaliating. That meant Prometheus had anticipated Forrell’s trying that very thing. And, as she always had, she found herself alone except for Una, surviving the best she knew how.

Her heart sank. Tears stung her eyes, but she quickly wiped them away. She’d mourn Marcos later. For now, she had to run. He’d want her to live and try to escape.

With at least one vessel firing on the surface, there might be enough energy released for the
Titan
’s scanners to read what was happening. If that were true, Darius Starlaw would mount a defense, even if he didn’t know who the enemy was.

A worse scenario came to mind.

The
Titan
’s crew might be under attack right now, or the enforcer ship might be destroyed. Whatever had happened in orbit,
her
only chance was far away, not in Forrell’s residence. It was now a target.

Outside in the darkness, she felt more secure. This was how she’d lived for several years, finding her way through dim, night shadows.

When slugs ran in different directions, firing lasers at any of the human population they could, she hid. Directly in front of her, one slug brawler was left alone as his brethren chased after families who’d emerged from their homes and stores to escape the onslaught. That single slug stood with his back to her.

She saw her chance and took it.

Without thinking another instant, Nova fired at the back of that slug’s head and watched him weave in a drunken fashion before he fell to the pavement. She held Una tightly against her body and ran. East was the safest place. People were running toward her, but she ducked behind columns, rocks, transport vehicles, or anything she could find to escape their stampede. And the Limaxians went after them. The foolish slugs on the ground either didn’t realize or didn’t care that their own ships would blast them along with the fleeing humans. But no one noticed her as she waited for the bulk of those fleeing to pass. Even as she ran, she blinked back tears. Marcos would have found her if he could. Or she’d have seen him by now if he’d escaped with others. But nothing resembling the tall, horribly scarred enforcer passed her hiding places. Even in the dark she’d have known him among hundreds.

One thing, more than any other, kept her moving.

If there were enforcer ships still fighting anywhere near Delta Seven, they’d surely send messages to Luster and outlying planets concerning the conflict. From now forward, unless all enforcer ships from any world were defeated, help would come. It was the only good thing to come from this night.

Marcos half-pulled and half-pushed Forrell toward his residence.

Crowds fleeing in their direction forced them to duck behind whatever protective barrier they could, but he was determined to get back to the governor’s residence. It was irrational to think she’d stand around, with explosives going off everywhere, and wait for him. But he couldn’t stand the thought of her going through this onslaught alone. She’d endured enough in her young life; he had to find her.

Blasts from a single Limaxian ship strafed buildings on the opposite side of the street where he and Forrell huddled. When he got a good look through the smoke created by dozens of large fires from burning buildings, he knew the ship doing the most damage was Prometheus’s own flag vessel. Bigger and better equipped than others in a fleet of Limaxian war ships, it hovered on the horizon destroying everything it could. And he wished there had been another way to warn Darius. But there was almost no chance Prometheus would have allowed this population of humans to go on living at any rate. At least they had the chance to run while Darius was hopefully engaging the other five ships in battle. And that was
if
the
Titan
had received any part of the message he’d attempted to send.

“There’ll be more slugs on the surface now,” Forrell croaked. “They’ll find us.”

“They will if you don’t move your butt and get us to the governor’s residence.”

“I tell you the residence has been blasted already. The girl is dead.”

Marcos pushed Forrell from behind a column when it was safe to do so. “You’d better pray not. Or I’ll have no more use for you.”

Forrell gasped as a whiff of acrid smoke filled the air. “You said you’d protect me. You’re an enforcer, sworn to—”

“I said I wouldn’t let the slugs get you,” Marcos said as he pushed the man harder to make him pick up his pace. He could travel much faster if the oaf wasn’t with him. But he wouldn’t put it past Forrell to find a slug and try to save his own hide by turning him and Nova over to Prometheus. That seemed to have been the way things had worked on this planet for years, with Forrell pitting himself against the slugs, and the people of Delta Seven lost in between their elected official and the invaders.

When he rounded the corner and saw the roof of the governor’s residence in flames, Marcos’s heart shattered.

“I told you. Prometheus wanted me dead for betraying him. The girl is gone. We have to get to safety before we’re blasted.”

“We can’t go into the tunnels now. Even if the slugs think we’re there, the building will collapse, and we’ll be caught under tons of wreckage.”

“But there’s no place else,” Forrell shouted.

“Yes there is. We can go back to the cave where you found me. Unless you lied, no one knows about it.”

“But if we use a transport, Prometheus will see it trying to leave the city. He could track any craft from his ship.”

“That’s why we’re going to run.”

“Run? I-I can’t … ”

“Pick up your feet or I’ll break your neck,” Marcos warned. When Forrell did as he was told and made for the city limits, Marcos stood for a moment and looked back at the residence. The roof collapsed, and the entire inside of the governor’s home went up in flames. “She got out. I know she did,” he whispered.

He had to believe that. Nova knew what to do. He kept telling himself that as he ran after Forrell.

• • •

Prometheus landed his vessel and keyed the communication device hanging from his uniform epaulet. “How fares the
Titan
?”

Nothing came back except static.

He cursed and lifted a hand to motion his crew forward. “I’ll have that bastard’s balls. Find Forrell,” he ordered. “Find his remains if he’s dead, and if he’s with anyone who’s still breathing, bring them to me. He couldn’t have possibly been so bold on his own. He hasn’t the courage.”

One of the warriors placed a hand on his leader’s shoulder. “Commander Prometheus, we should board our ship and join the fight in orbit. We can deal with this refuse on the ground later.”