Bianca D'Arc (17 page)

Lisbet realized she had no choice. Hitting
the
CATASTROPHIC FAILURE
button, she checked herself out of
her ride split seconds before it blew into a million little
weightless bits. Out in the nothingness of space near the galactic
Rim, she was in no man’s land where rescue was hard to come by. She
had either a long wait or a slow death to look forward to in the
next few hours.

The enemy jits had won this battle, though
hopefully not the war. Skirmishes on the Rim had escalated in
recent years as the jit’suku empire looked for ways to gain a
foothold in the Milky Way galaxy. The expansion from their home
galaxy was fueled by the comparative ease of travel via an
inconvenient wormhole and several jumpoints that had been created
before humans had realized how the jit’suku truly viewed the human
race.

Inferior. That’s what the jits thought of
humans. Inferior in every way to their war-mongering race. Though
they looked very human in appearance – if built on a bit larger
scale than most humans – jit’suku society was one that most humans
had a hard time understanding.

They prized warriors and seemed to scoff at
diplomats or anyone who wanted to negotiate peaceful coexistence.
The only thing the jits understood was conquest, it seemed.

Which was why they’d been fighting so long
and so hard out here, on the Rim of the Milky Way galaxy. Lisbet
was just the latest in a nearly endless rotation of human fighter
pilots who had drawn the dreaded, but vital, duty of patrolling the
Rim.

Vast reaches of emptiness between nearly
lawless stations, dangerous jumpoints, and the occasional star
system, Rim duty was enough to drive anyone crazy. But she welcomed
the emptiness of space and the loneliness of her own thoughts after
this humiliation.

She’d been on this patrol for over a week
with nothing to report. Then this.

A jit’suku battle cruiser had appeared as if
from out of nowhere, and blasted her before she could even get a
message out. He’d been lying in wait behind an asteroid. Lisbet had
known to be cautious, but honestly, her thoughts had been
elsewhere. As soon as she spotted the giant ship lumbering out from
behind cover of the asteroid, it had already been too late. Her
signals bounced back – jammed. A moment later, a blanket of weapons
fire appeared on her screens – sent the distance between the two
ships in all her possible trajectories. She was blown already, and
she knew it.

Popping her canopy and stranding herself in
the middle of nowhere in the emergency pod had been her only
choice. Not a great one, but there’d been no other way to get clear
of all the incoming fire. The bastard giving orders on that battle
cruiser hadn’t been taking any chances that she’d get clear and
report back. He’d thrown everything but the kitchen sink at her and
she hadn’t stood a chance.

“Human, this is Captain Fedroval of the
battle cruiser
Fedroval’s Legacy
. Warrior to warrior, I give
you the choice. Would you prefer the fast death of missile fire or
the slow death of suffocation when your air runs out?”

For a moment, Lisbet thought of ignoring the
short-range communication from the cruiser. He was still blocking
her long-range transmitter, but he’d allowed her enough bandwidth
to broadcast to his ship. Big of him. Damned jit’suku bastard.

“How do you know I’m not the advance scout of
a much larger force? Could be my battalion is on my heels and will
pick me up after they blow you to kingdom come.” Oh, how she wished
that were true. She’d get a lot of satisfaction right now at seeing
the jit’suku ship blown into a million pieces.

There was a slight delay in the answer she’d
expected would come back right away. He probably knew she was
bluffing. If he’d been hiding out behind that asteroid for any
length of time, he had to know hers was merely a patrol craft on a
regular route.

“Who is this? What is your name, rank and
gender?”

He sounded mad now, for some reason she
couldn’t imagine. And why would he ask her gender? That seemed odd
in the extreme. But she’d play along. She’d be alone out here for a
long while – if he let her live after this encounter – and she was
going to have a lot of time, alone with her thoughts, before her
air ran out. Might as well talk to someone while she had company,
even if he was a damned jit.

“Lieutenant Lisbet Duncan of Earth. And I’m
female, not that it should matter to you. I’m a qualified pilot who
graduated top of my class from pilot training.”

While there had always been a lot more males
drawn to military life than females, Lisbet wasn’t too much of an
oddity. Many women had the natural skills needed to fly shuttles
and other spacecraft. She was unique in that she’d requested
fighter duty. She liked shooting at things and would’ve tried for a
gunner position on one of the big battleships if she hadn’t
qualified as a pilot.

“Prepare for retrieval.” The order was
brusque and his harsh voice sounded even angrier.

“Now just wait a damn minute!”

A moment later she saw two small craft launch
from the battleship and head straight for her. The bastards were
going to pick up her pod. She was going to be a prisoner of
war.

Dammit!

Although… it was probably better than dying
alone in the vastness of space. At least if they picked her up, she
might have a chance to do some damage to them before she died. She
didn’t like the idea of being tortured, but she’d trained for it,
like all the other pilots, and thought she was mostly prepared. She
didn’t know much anyway. She wasn’t privy to any battle strategies
or troop deployment information. She only knew her current mission
and those she’d been on previously. Not much of value to the
jit’suku empire.

Sure enough, the two craft flanked her and
deployed sturdy microfilament netting that encompassed her pod. As
soon as she was secure, they flew her back toward the cruiser. The
ship was even larger than she’d thought. It had the latest in jit
technology, from what she could see of its outboard arrays. This
was no battered old warhorse. This ship was battle ready and
gleaming, though she could see a few spots where repairs had been
made after engagements with human forces, no doubt.

The two patrol craft deposited her inside a
gleaming hangar bay, bumping her only once as they set her down.
The nets retracted and they parked on either side of her ship. She
waited patiently inside her pod, gathering what little information
she could. Her instruments told her the hangar bay was pressurized
with a breathable atmosphere, and she saw big jit’suku men working
on various craft parked nearby without breathing gear.

The hangar bay had a giant force field at one
end, keeping the air in. Nice. On human battleships, the hangar
bays were kept at zero atmosphere. Pilots loaded into the canopies
above and were dropped down and secured to the fuselages below via
a small chamber that was sealed and then evacuated of its precious
air before opening to the hangar deck below.

The pilots who had caught her pod climbed out
of their cockpits and moved closer to investigate. One made a sign
for her to pop her lid and she shook her head, refusing. They went
on like this for a few minutes, arguing via sign language through
the window until suddenly everyone on the flight deck jumped to
attention.

At the far end of the long deck, Lisbet could
see a giant of a man – even among the very large jit’suku warriors
– coming toward her at a fast pace. He looked absolutely furious.
And handsome.

Damn. Why did she have to notice how handsome
he was? She should be completely immune to men after what she’d
been through. But this guy – this angry guy – flipped her switches
in all the right ways.

He grabbed a piece of equipment as he went,
nearly tearing it out of a tech’s hands. It had to be magnetic
because it clamped onto her canopy the moment he touched the device
to her hull. He held something on a wire up to his mouth and
suddenly his voice boomed through her internal speakers.

“Stop playing games and come out of there now
or I’ll have you cut out.”

Lisbet sighed. She’d have to open the hatch
sooner or later. She admitted, if only to herself, that she was
scared. These jit’suku were all massive and everyone she could see
so far was male. She had no idea what they had in mind for her, but
she wasn’t looking forward to finding out. Still, she couldn’t hide
in here forever. The time had come to take her punishment. Whatever
that might entail.

Releasing the hatch, the canopy popped with a
hiss of equalizing air. Whirring gears indicated the hatch was
rolling up and back the way it had been designed to do. As it
cleared, she got her first really good look at the glowering man
with the captain’s insignia on his uniform.

Oh, boy. The captain himself had come down to
get her. No wonder the crew had all jumped at his entrance. Lisbet
wondered what she’d done to rate the captain’s attention.

Pushing herself out of the seat, she stood
within the canopy. She should have been taller than anyone on the
deck from where she was, but she hadn’t counted on these giant
jit’suku.

The captain’s eyes met hers and time stood
still for a breathless moment.

His eyes were dark. The dark of space with a
hint of golden brown that made them somehow warm. His molten gaze
would have been inviting in another setting. As it was, she could
see the flare of gold in his gaze as his expression tightened.

He held out one impatient hand and she took
it before she could think better of it. He assisted her in the big
step over the canopy lip and down onto the deck of the cruiser. She
was truly in enemy territory now. Goddess help her.

We hope you’ll enjoy this excerpt from Bianca
D’Arc’s first book set in the critically acclaimed, award winning
Dragon Knights
series…

Belora tracked the stag through the forest.
Carefully chosen for this hunt, the stag was older, past the prime
of his life, and would feed her small family of two for more than a
month if she and her mother used it wisely. On silent feet, she
followed him down to the water, a small trickle of stream that fed
into the huge lake beyond.

Taking careful aim with her bow, Belora
offered up a silent prayer of hope and thanks to the Mother of All
and to the spirit of the stag that would give its life so that she
and her mother could live. She loosed the arrow, watching it sail
home to her target, embedding itself deep in the stag’s heart. Her
aim was true.

As expected, the stag ran off, pumping away
the last of its life in a desperate attempt to escape. She
followed, saddened by the poor creature’s flight but knowing it
must be so. The old stag ran into a clearing, flailing wildly. He
was nearing his end, she knew, and again she prayed to the Mother
of All that it would be swift.

The stag faltered in its running stride, a
shadow seeming to pass over from above. A moment later, the stag
was gone, clasped tightly in the talons of a magnificent dragon
winging away toward the far end of the small clearing.

Belora took off as fast as her tired feet
would carry her, following the dragon who had stolen her prize.

Coming out of his swooping dive, the dragon
pinned the stag's quivering body between the long talons of his
right foreleg. He’d made a clean kill, stabbing the beast through
the heart with his sharp-edged digit even before lifting it into
the air. It struggled for a few moments more, then lay dead in his
grasp. The dragon rejoiced in the skillful kill, chortling smoke
into the air above him.

He came to a neat landing at the far end of
the small clearing and dropped the dead stag to the ground with
satisfaction. That was when he noticed the little stick protruding
from the other side of the beast. It was an arrow. Drat.

"Oh no, you don't!"

The irate, high pitched human voice made the
dragon shift his gaze upward to look quizzically at the small
female now facing him with her hands perched in tight fists on her
hips. A longbow was slung over her shoulder.

"I shot that stag well before you swooped
down and picked him up. He's my kill. What's more, he will feed me
and my mother for a month or more. For you, he's just a snack! You
leave him be. He’s mine."

She shook with indignant anger and it was
truly a sight to behold. Luminous green eyes sparkled in her
pretty, flushed face. She seemed to have no fear of him, mighty
dragon that he was, with blood on his talons and fire in his belly.
She clearly had courage, and it impressed him. Few humans, much
less small females, dared to deal with dragons directly.

He could feel her anger, and a rudimentary
channel of thought opened between her mind and his. She was one of
the rare humans then, who could communicate with his kind. This
intrigued him even more, and one thought kept running through his
mind—Gareth had to see this.

“
What's your name, pretty one?”
The
dragon spoke directly into Belora’s mind, surprising her a bit, but
her mother had told her stories about the dragon she’d known as a
child. Belora knew dragons communicated with humans mind to mind.
It was part of their ancient magic.

"I’m Belora." She renewed her forceful
stance. She could not let this dragon sense any fear. She needed
that stag. "Will you yield the stag to me?"

“
Why are you not afraid of my kind? Do
you know dragons?”

That wasn’t an answer, but she supposed she
should at least be polite. Her mother had taught her the etiquette
required when dealing with dragons.