Briannas Prophecy (2 page)

He pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. He was getting another headache. In fact, he should be used to them by now. This trip had been nothing but a headache since they’d left
Terrna
.

Niklas bent his head forward and back, then side to side in a futile attempt to relieve some of the tension in his neck.
Interesting,
he noted. If he bent his head to the left, he heard faint strains of music. If he bent to the right, he more plainly heard the crunching sounds from his neighbor at a nearby table, eating something that looked disgusting. He wrinkled his nose and looked away. Whatever it was, it had still been moving. “Damn!” He cursed softly, shuddered, then looked around to make sure no one heard him. He didn’t want—or need—more trouble than he already had at the moment.

He couldn’t wait to get off this new hellhole, in a long line of hellholes. But he had to wait. His ship needed repaired. Again. Bowing his head over his unappetizing drink, he swore to himself and watched disinterestedly as the scantily dressed women gave welcoming smiles to dirty
Conque
miners. Some unfastened their tops, displaying their wares as they danced around the tables. They had given Niklas an abundance of attention when he arrived—because he was clean, no doubt. They soon returned to competing for the attention of the locals when they found he wasn’t interested.

The only woman he was interested in right now was The One. She was out there. It had been predicted by Morwyyn, so no matter how farfetched, it must be true.

Shifting in the hard, straight-backed chair, he checked his communications link. What was taking so long? Niklas pulled a few coins from his pocket and tossed them onto the table. He couldn’t stand it in here any longer. He needed some air. Which world was this again? Ah yes,
Carn
, number fourteen. All of this traveling was getting on his nerves.

He glanced back at the interior of the bar. He really wouldn’t have minded some exercise between the sheets, but had decided against it after one look at the women. He liked his women clean and didn’t like sloppy seconds. Besides, empty mindless sex just didn’t appeal to him anymore. Niklas shook his head and sighed. He must be getting old.

The street bustled with activity. People ran about in different directions. Two men dressed in black stooped over two men lying in the middle of the road obstructing traffic. The two in black looked at each other, then shook their heads. Each grabbed the arms of a man to drag the two out of the thoroughfare.

There had been a duel. This was a frontier town, they weren’t developed enough to have the technology they possessed. Off world visitors willing to share technology had given them phase pistols. Too bad they hadn’t shared sonic baths as well.

Niklas tried not to breathe too deeply as he strode through town. He avoided the muddy, dung-filled street. Instead, he walked down the mud-caked wooden sidewalk. He watched as odd beasts of burden pulled carts and walked listlessly around turnstiles. He shook his head. How glad he would be to leave this place.

A movement in a window caught his attention. Glancing up to see a large bearded man in women’s lingerie gazing at himself in a giant mirror and caressing his own nipples, Niklas stifled a laugh and kept walking. It was a long walk back to the ship. But he could honestly say he’d seen everything the town had to offer—and it wasn’t much. After leaving the town behind him, Niklas walked through the country, enjoying the scent of sweet clean air. The trees, not unlike
Terrna’s
, had leaves of a bluish-green color instead of deep green. The grass was tall and lush, not green, but a strange tawny-color.

With just a few farms on the outskirts of town, the odds of finding The One here were too low to make the trek worthwhile. He would leave and go onto the next world. Niklas stopped, wanting to feel that this was the right decision. He raised his hands to the sky, closed his eyes, and cleared his mind.

Look toward the blanket of stars called the milk of the Goddess. Her people know it by another name. Look there, and you shall find what you seek.

The voice washed through him. Made him feel weak, yet strengthened him in such a way that he felt invincible. It had been a message from the Goddess. Her power humbled him. Niklas looked to the sky and gave thanks. Digging a silver coin from his pocket, he buried it in the soil at his feet, waiting as the power drained from him into the ground where it belonged. He straightened, feeling much better. Even his headache was gone, for the moment at least.

When he reached the ship, he found that all hell had broken loose. The crew bustled about with phase pistols in their hands. They seemed to be looking for something…or someone. “What’s going on here?” He placed a restraining hand on the arm of one of the ship’s engineers.

“It was Ornos, Your Highness. He has been caught sabotaging the ship. Cholo found him in the engine room setting a bomb. He intended to strand us all here. Or kill us. I have to help them search.” She indicated the nearby woods where just about every one of his crewmembers milled about searching the underbrush.

“Minra.” Niklas called her name, drawing her attention. She turned, her expression distressed. “Has anyone checked the rest of the ship to make sure there are no other hazards on board?”

She nodded absently, scanned the woods looking for Ornos. “Yes, Your High—”

He interrupted her impatiently. “You know not to call me that, Lieutenant. I am your Captain, nothing more. You should call me Niklas.” When she looked ready to disagree, he added, “Sir Niklas if you must, but we cannot afford to frighten away the very person we seek, can we?”

Minra shook her head, her mouth twisted in a wry grin. “I suppose you’re right, Your…Sir Niklas. But I am going to be horribly uncomfortable with this.”

“Not any more uncomfortable than I am with marrying a woman I have never met,” Niklas said with a chuckle that he knew didn’t reach his eyes.

Minra conceded his point then excused herself to help the others search for Ornos.

Glancing around, Niklas frowned. There didn’t appear to be anything out of order on the ship, but one could never tell. “Damn it!” To be on the safe side, he was going to have to use the security device. Niklas hated that irritating voice that was constantly telling them all was well. Still, it was a small price to pay for their safety, he thought with a sigh. Striding to a console that controlled the security device, he immediately felt he should be far away from that particular station. He looked at it for a while, perplexed, but the peculiar feeling persisted.

Never one to ignore his instincts, Niklas turned and headed to his quarters. There was a twelve level security lock on his door, a habit that had stood him in good stead throughout the years. He always locked his cabin with a complex pass code he changed often. Entering the code, he approached the security console at the opposite end of the room. He eyed the sonic bath wistfully for several seconds. He really wanted to wash away the layer of filth that covered his skin, but something prodded him away from it and told him this was more important.

 
Sitting in front of the console, Niklas waited as the air in the seat adjusted to his body’s tensions. The cushion infused with heat to ease the pain in his lower back. Niklas typed the pass code to access the security system, hearing several warning beeps as soon as the program was activated. A female voice announced over shipboard speakers.

“Warning! Warning! Explosive device found! Sonic bath, location High King’s quarters. Warning! Warning! Explosive device found! Security console one, bridge. Warning! Warning! Explosive device found! Storage compartment three, storage compartment seven, storage compartment nine.” There were a few moments of silence before the computer added in a calmer voice, “Explosive devices disabled and extracted, transported and detonated. Risk to ship is now zero. All is well.”

Niklas heaved a sigh of relief. He still wanted to wash, but he now eyed the sonic bath with suspicion. Hadn’t his crew said they searched for more signs of tampering? Why hadn’t they used the security device? Why the Sonic Bath and not the Security console?

He thought for a moment, then knew. The bath had been acting strangely. He’d asked Ornos to take a look at it. When Ornos came to repair it, the other man had made it clear he would rather work alone. Niklas never left his rooms while Ornos worked. A situation had never come up to take him away from the maps and charts at his console. Ornos couldn’t have gotten in at any other time with the magnetic locks in place. He set the explosives in the bath because he couldn’t get to the console. Ornos had probably installed timers on the devices, so they would explode after he left the ship. Either that or he hadn’t considered that Niklas would use one of the crew baths to cleanse himself before calling for the repair.

Pacing the perimeter of his quarters, Niklas couldn’t help but wonder if others were sent to stop him. He sat on the bed and felt the familiar comfort of the soft air cushion and his
Carboda
quilt. His mother had commissioned the quilt from the witches of
Nasha
when he was a child. The witches had constructed it to protect him while sleeping and give him comfort. It was not unusual for a family member to purchase such a quilt for a loved one. The power of the witches of
Nasha
was legendary.

He fingered the soft material, needing some sense of comfort, of safety. The soft velvety feel beneath his fingers relaxed him. The soft muted colors brought a sense of stability and of security. He looked down to the swirling pattern and felt himself drawn into the moving tapestry, his anxieties floating away.

Slowly, he undressed, looked down at his smooth yet muscular chest marred by only one scar, and smiled as he remembered how he had received it. His cousin had been angry about something. They had been wrestling when Niklas accidentally pushed him into a large outcropping of rock. Haron received a large gash on the side of his face and grabbed a sharp rock, plunging it toward the left side of Niklas’s chest. Niklas’s father had found them then and pulled them apart.

After instructing the crew to give up their search for Ornos and concentrate on getting back into space, he stepped into the sonic shower. “Clean.” Groaning with pleasure, Niklas put his hands on the opposite wall, leaning across the width of the small room. Delighted to feel the dirt dissolving to nothingness, he reveled in the fact that the next thing he smelled would
not
be the body odor of the person at the next table. His entire body tingled as the dirt lifted from his pores, leaving a sensation not unlike gentle hands softly skimming up and down his bare body.

After his shower, Niklas dressed in a flight suit. He wanted to leave this planet as soon as possible. Resetting the magnetic locks, he strode toward the bridge, nodding to the people he passed and acknowledging their gestures of respect with a smile. He bumped into Cholo, the chief engineer.

“Ornos has been sabotaging the engines as well, Highness. We found broken engine parts, along with new in his rooms. He has been undermining us the entire time.”

Niklas shook his head. Would they never remember to call him by his given name or even Captain? “Is the engine repaired?” He needed to know. They couldn’t afford to stay here much longer. Time was running out.

“Oh yes, Sir! We are about to bring them back online any minute. The repairs took no time at all when we found the good parts in Ornos’s quarters.”

Niklas laid a hand on his shoulder and gave him an encouraging smile. “Very good, Cholo, I knew we could all count on you.” He left Cholo smiling proudly in the corridor.

The large bridge held several consoles. Niklas sat in the seat at a security console and brought up the star maps. Looking toward the star system called the milk of the Goddess, he found one inhabitable planet.

He checked the information. It was old but most likely still accurate—after all, the first fourteen planets hadn’t changed much over the last hundred years. Why should this one be any different? He punched the codes to get subliminal programs and set the disks aside.

Niklas looked around the bridge. Everyone was at his or her stations. Reba, the communications engineer, sat with her back to him, headphones against her ears, listening for who only knew what. Occasionally she would reach across her console to adjust the frequency of the long-range radio.

Rodel, his pilot, sat at the flight controls. He’d had a rough night by the looks of it. He was about to fall asleep. Rodel looked toward Minra with bloodshot eyes. She was running a diagnostic program. He caught her attention and winked. Minra smiled and blushed.

Niklas bit back a smile. There was no guessing at what
they’d
been up to last night. He leaned back, watching the large viewscreen and admired the beauty of an endless expanse of space. Stars streamed by, lengthened by the sub-light speed. Niklas had three weeks before they reached the planet. It wasn’t a lot of time. He snatched up the subliminal disks and headed for his quarters. He had a lot of work to do.

It would take the next few weeks to make sure he was ready to go to the surface as soon as they arrived at the planet. Niklas knew he was running out of time and had very little to waste. He devoured disc after disc, listening to the music while he showered, while he ate, dressed, worked and slept. He lived and breathed the Earth languages—all of them. When he arrived, he would be ready to go to the surface to search for his bride.