Starkissed (6 page)

If he could not save them both then he would do nothing. As long as he lived he could keep Hancock away from her somehow.

Hancock led them out of the restraining area into the hold. Their steps echoed throughout the empty cavern. The cargo was gone, sold to the Crucians. He had sacrificed the precious jewels for nothing.

The
saàloh
recognized the path they took.

“The lifecraft? Steve, where are you taking us?”

Hancock smiled and kept a tight hold on her arm. He turned them toward another door and laid his palm on the identipad. He pushed them through first.

The small lifecraft took up most of the bay. At a nod from Hancock, Phillips lifted the door. Hancock motioned with his Blaser. “After you.”

“Not until you tell us where you’re taking us!” the
saàloh
exploded. “I’m tired of all this, Steve. Tell us where we’re going.”

“I was saving it as a surprise, but since you’re so impatient…I’m taking you to Paradise.”

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33

Paradise, Arreisan Neutral Zone

J’Qhir spent the greater part of the ride to the surface of the planet straining against the cuffs and fighting the pain that shot through his shoulder with every move. By the time they entered the planet’s atmosphere, he had given up. The cuffs were no looser and his shoulder throbbed mercilessly.

Hancock landed the lifecraft in a grassy meadow near the foothills of a mountain range. A herd of horned, quadruped creatures scattered in graceful leaps and bounds.

The whine of the engine wound down as the doors rose.

“Welcome to Paradise!” Hancock said and got out. The front seat swiveled aside leaving room for the occupant in the back to emerge—an occupant of smaller stature than J’Qhir. They’d had to remove the cuffs from his ankles for him to fold his large body into the seat. Now, he twisted himself out, fiery pain stabbing his thigh repeatedly.

When he straightened, the
saàloh
was by his side, the delicate arches of hair over her eyes wrinkled. “Are you all right?”

He wanted to smile at her—for encouragement?—but he thought he might scare her.

“I am…sssomewhere in the middle.”

Her brow smoothed as she smiled her understanding. Her smile did not scare him at all.

“Paradise is in the center of the Arreisan Neutral Zone,” Hancock explained. “It’s one of the few known Terran-class planets not colonized or plundered.”

Hancock hauled out a flightpack. He led them several meters away from the lifecraft and tossed the bag to the ground.

“You’re leaving us here?” the
saàloh
asked, a hint of panic in her voice.

Hancock nodded. “You and the Rep will be the only two sentient lifeforms on the planet. No one ever comes here, Leith. It’s under Arreisan protection. Every pirate, every rogue, every starman and starwoman knows better than to piss off the Arreisans. They’d www.samhainpublishing.com

34

Lanette

Curington

restrict access to Trader World in a nanosecond and no one wants that. So everyone leaves Paradise alone.”

J’Qhir felt her disappointment and anxiety. If no one dared to defy the Arreisans and visit this planet, then they were as good as dead. It must be true or Hancock would not chance leaving them here at all.

“How do you intend to explain our disappearance? The Commander will have an entire government looking for him. Dad knows enough people on the Galactic Alliance Board to get them involved.”

Hancock smiled chillingly. “After the Rep notified his ship the cargo was ready for transfer, another ship was stolen out of the port, and a message was sent to the Zi warship that the transfer had been delayed indefinitely. You see, Rep, I’ve been recording our meetings for a long time, preparing for this day. When you and Cameron spoke your primitive language,
excluding me
from the conversation, you made it so much easier for me. I had to ask Cameron to teach me so I could understand what you were saying and carefully cull the message from all those hours of recordings. At that time, my plans included your immediate demise, but things change.”

J’Qhir clenched his jaw. The Zi communications system was not state-of-the-art.

They simply could not afford the latest equipment in all areas and communications was not deemed an immediate need. The crackling static of the old and worn out system would hide any signs that the message was cut-and-spliced from other recordings.

“When we return to Arreis, the ship will release a statement, in the Rep’s own words, that he has renounced the Zi government and taken a human, Leith McClure, as hostage.

Demands to be given later. Of course, another statement will never be released. The stolen ship will fly straight into a sun, to vaporize without a trace.” He glanced back to make sure that Phillips was still out of earshot, then lowered his voice. “We’re supposed to rendezvous with the lifecraft in a few hours, but I think we’ll find the ship malfunctioned and poor Wiley crashed and burned with it. With Wiley gone there’ll be larger shares for the rest of us and fewer witnesses.”

“No one will believe any of that!” the
saàloh
snapped angrily. “You really have lost your mind, haven’t you, Steve? The Zi government will never believe their top gun has gone rogue. Dad certainly won’t believe it. He knows the Commander.”

“It doesn’t matter, Leith. The situation will cause so much confusion and accusation that by the time both sides, the Zi government and the Galactic Alliance, come to some kind of agreement, the trail will be cold. There will be no follow-up statement, no trace of either of you, and everyone concerned will assume you died in an unfortunate accident.”

Hancock shook his head sadly, but the smug smile remained on his lips. “I’ll be by www.samhainpublishing.com

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Cameron and Catherine’s side the whole time, grieving with them, consoling them. I’ll even express guilt because I was right there and should have seen it coming. I should have sensed what the Rep was up to.”

Hancock broke into laughter as he called to Phillips and waited for him to key the lock open on the
saàloh
’s cuffs. She rubbed her wrists vigorously. “It won’t work. How can you explain the fourteen-hour delay in reporting my disappearance?”

Steve sighed in exasperation. “You really don’t have the mental capacity for intrigue, do you? I’ll tell the GPs you and the Rep were gone when I came back from repairing a malfunctioning skid. You left a message—which, by the way, I thoughtlessly erased—

saying you and the Commander were going out for a while. Of course, I’ll tell the GPs how well you two were getting along and wink suggestively when I say it. So I went to bed, and when you were still gone after I woke up hours later, I went looking for you. But Arreis is a huge place and filled with so many people, I couldn’t find anyone who had seen you.”

J’Qhir nodded thoughtfully. “How will you explain the ssship’sss disssappearance for fourteen hoursss?”

Steve frowned. “I won’t. According to the spaceport log, the ship never left Bay 3.”

“It
can’t
work,” she protested with less conviction.

“Well, let’s find out, shall we?” Steve nodded again and trained his Blaser on J’Qhir.

Phillips keyed the lock open while both held their weapons at the ready. “By the way, I tossed a few things in the flightpack. There are enough protein packs for a few days plus a few other things that might or might not be useful.”

“Steve, this is insane,” she called out as they watched the two men step backward toward the lifecraft. “What is the point?”

“Wealth, power, revenge. I have a dozen Zi jewels which will be a fortune on the market, as well as the crysium, another fortune. With you out of the way and Cameron’s illness, McClure Shipping is as good as mine. I’ve been trying to convince Cameron to expand, but he won’t listen. He insists on staying strictly Earth-based. And revenge? I told you you’d be sorry for turning me down, didn’t I?”

“And the Commander? You could have easily sold him the cargo at an inflated price and kept the difference. Dad never would have found out.”

Hancock shrugged. “I just don’t like Reps. Good-bye, Leith. Who knows? You two might manage to survive, after all.”

J’Qhir watched as the two men jumped into the lifecraft then shifted his gaze to the
saàloh
. Her round eyes were incredibly large as the doors lowered and sealed.

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36

Lanette

Curington

“Steve!
Steve!
” Before J’Qhir could stop her, she took flight, darting across the clearing toward the lifecraft. J’Qhir ran after her, giving in to the searing pain with each limping stride. The foolish
saàloh
would get herself killed on the spot if the craft took off with her so near. She reached it and beat her hands against the gray metal. “You can’t leave us here! You can’t! Steve, there has to be another way!”

He scooped her off the lifecraft and threw her over his good shoulder, turned, and ran as if the sandpits of the Bh’rin’gha sucked at his heels.

The
saàloh
’s legs churned in front of him, and her fists battered his back. The lifecraft lifted, creating a gale that reminded him of the windy season except void of grit.

The force of it drove him to his knees.

The
saàloh
dropped away from his shoulder, but he could do nothing to soften her fall. He screamed as most of his weight landed on his bad knee, twisting it. He rolled to his side and doubled up, clutching the joint with both hands. Liquid filled his eyes as flames burned a path from knee to hip.

”””

Leith landed hard, her head snapping back against the unyielding ground. White dots sprang before her eyes. She thought she lost consciousness for a moment and dreamed the primal scream of a wild animal in the distance. When she opened her eyes, a flowing black mass obliterated the sky. She blinked and focused. Birds. A flock of birds moved across the sky in a rough V-formation. When they passed over, she rolled to her side and groaned. Her hips ached and her head pounded incessantly. She felt along her scalp and found the bump, as big and smooth as a Zi jewel.

Bruised and battered from the jarring ride on the Commander’s shoulder and their fall, she dragged herself to her feet, every muscle in her body aching. She shaded her eyes against the glare of the afternoon sun. The lifecraft was gone. Steve really had left them stranded on this empty planet. She heard the Commander take a heavy, limping step behind her and whirled to face him.

“
You!
Why didn’t you say something, anything?” she screamed at him. “Why didn’t you threaten him? Or promise to shower him with a thousand Zi jewels? Anything,
anything
to buy us some time until we could find a way out.”

She didn’t care how awful he looked, standing on one leg, the other bent at an odd angle. She refused to allow the expression of pain on his face to move her.

“Why don’t you answer me? I’ll tell you why!” She flew at him and beat on his chest as she had the side of the lifecraft, emphasizing each word. “Because—you—have—

no—excuse—”

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His hands moved in tandem with hers until he caught her wrists and raised her arms in the air. Her eyes flooded with tears, making her angrier.

“You just stood there, all big and inscrutable, and didn’t say a damn word!” Tears blinding her, she butted up against him, struggling to pull her hands free from his unbreakable grip. “Not a damn word!”

She slammed into him one more time, and they toppled over, crashing to the ground.

She landed on top of him, and his face twisted in agony. His crested brow furrowed, his eyes squeezed shut, and his mouth drew tight, but his grip never lessened. She couldn’t pull free, so she threw her body to one side. He rolled with her, and once again she found herself pinned beneath his long, heavy body, his hands holding hers above her head.

Her chest heaved with each breath, from the exertion, from his weight, from the tears that dampened her cheeks. With each breath she drew she smelled him, that unfamiliar alien scent that made her body react in a most peculiar way.

“Let me go!” she demanded hoarsely.

“Will you—ssstop fighting me?”

“Yes. No! I don’t know. Let me go and we’ll find out.”

His head sank to her chest, his crest resting on her shoulder. His breath came in sharp gasps, intermittent moans escaping his throat. His hands trembled against hers. Her panic had overridden everything else, but now she realized what had happened.

“You’re hurt!”

“Sssss,
saàloh—
”

“I mean, you’re
really
hurt.”

“If you do not ssstop fighting me, I will not have the ssstrength to fend you off.”

“Well, why didn’t you say something? How am I supposed to know when you just stand there and don’t say anything?”

“I…ssscreamed when we fell—”

“Oh. I hit my head. I thought I’d passed out and dreamed the sound.”

“I think I have torn a mussscle in my knee.”

“You can let me go now, Commander. I promise I won’t fight you any more.”

He released her hands and slid away. Slowly, he raised his head, his crest deeply furrowed. Shifting away from her, he fell back and held the knee at an angle. He gasped for air and closed his eyes.

Leith sat up and waited for the pounding in her head to subside. She noticed the slant of the sunlight, a thinner light than Earth’s Sol emitted. It was early evening as near as she could reckon. The air stirred around her, a breeze from the mountains. It was cool, almost chilly. The Commander shivered.

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Lanette

Curington

“I’m going to see if I can find the flightpack Steve left us. Maybe there’s a medkit in it.”

Ignoring the headache, she stood and scanned the area for the flightpack. She prayed Steve had been in a generous mood when he packed it and left them something useful.