Captive of Pleasure; the Space Pirate's Woman (The LodeStar Series) (30 page)

“Wait,” Haro said weakly. “Var—shit, I think he’s hit worse.”

“Hells,” Qala said. “Haro.
Var
!”

Joran whirled. He’d assumed the stoic, unflappable Var was behind him, backing his play and keeping quiet. “Check Haro,” he told Qala. “Keep the woman covered.”
 

“Right.”

“Boss?” Pede demanded. “You okay in there?”

“Give you an update in a sec,” Joran said.
 

“The IGSF are gone,” Pede went on, his voice harsh with anger. “Fuckin’ hells, stupid eppies. Said they thought this was just a routine mission—gonna kill ‘em myself.”

“Just give us a sec,” Joran repeated. He shoved a chair out of the way and dropped to his knees beside Var who lay in the shadows of the big table. The big man was prone, sprawled on one side.
 

“Var, you big lug,” Joran said. “You never could duck worth a shit.”

He pulled the flash from his belt, and shone it in Var’s face. He was pale, his eyes half closed.
 

Dread chilling his gut, Joran searched swiftly. Var’s broad chest was covered in blood, welling from a wound in the center, right through his protective vest. Shit, shit, shit! He should’ve made them all wear protective suits.

 
“Get a medtech,” he ordered, “And a medkit if there’s one here.”

“You there! We need a medkit,” Qala ordered over his head. “And a tech if you’ve got one—now!”

Joran rolled Var onto his back, yanked a clean bandanna from his pocket, and pressed it to the wound, leaning on it. Then he pressed his fingers to Var’s thick neck. “Pulse, faint and irregular.”

“Oh, God,” Qala choked. “His head.”
 

Joran looked up. As Qala shone her light on Var’s face, he saw that the side now revealed was covered in gore, from the top of his head to the middle of his cheek. Joran couldn’t see his eye, whether because it was covered in blood or just gone, he didn’t know.
 

He swallowed hard, forcing down the hot bile that rose in his throat. He’d seen wounds this bad many a time, but never on anyone he knew so well.

“Get me up,” Haro demanded behind him. “Shit,
Var
.”

Scuffling noises said Qala was helping him up.

“You sit,” she ordered Haro. “Move out of that chair before the tech looks at your shoulder and I’ll shoot you in the other one.”

“Yeah, babe. I’m fine, see to Var.”

Var was not fine. He was convulsing, as if choking. Joran rolled the big man on his side, and blood poured from Var’s mouth.
 

“Fuck,” Joran roared. “Where’s that tech?” He couldn’t trust anyone on this ship, but he knew how to use first aid tech himself. “Qala, link Riley, see if you can get him.”

“Right,” she agreed, her voice shaking.
 

“Here, here,” said a gravelly voice. An Occulan knelt at Var’s head, tech gear in hand, and two humans followed. “Move aside, let us work.”

”You move aside,” Joran ordered. “Give me that.”
 

He grabbed the medkit from the medic and opened it, then stared at the complicated apparatus inside. “Shit, what is this stuff?”

“It is fragile equipment,” the Occulan said, reaching out as if to keep Joran from touching anything. “Please. I am a medic, sworn to assist others.
All
others.”

“Vadyal’s dead,” Joran said. “You don’t work for him anymore—you know that, right? Doesn’t matter who this man is, he needs your help.”

The Occulan nodded. “Right. Now move aside and let me help him.”

“All right, but if anything happens to him, you’re space rubble.”

“Riley’s on screen,” Qala said urgently.
 

Joran glanced up to see his own medic watching via holovid. “Riley—is this right?” he demanded. “Are they doing what they’re supposed to?”

“Quiet,” Riley snapped. He began to speak rapidly in Occulan to the other medic, who answered in the same manner, too rapid for translation. The human tech assistants moved in beside him, and the three worked over Var with their complicated equipment.

But after a time, the Occulan swerved half of his eyestalks to focus on Joran. He shook his bulbous head even as he continued to work. “His heart has stopped.”

“Then start it again!” Joran roared, shocking himself and the techs with the force of his fury. “Now!”

“I concur,” Riley agreed. “Go!”

Var’s body convulsed, bowing up in a rigid arc. Then again. The medic waited, as did Joran, his fists clenched on the nearest chair so hard it groaned in protest.
 

The medic shook his head and Var convulsed again.
 

Several long, agonizing moments later, the techs stopped. “I am sorry. We can do nothing more. His wounds are too great.”

Haro groaned. “He’s—he’s dead? He can’t be dead.”

Qala clutched Joran’s arm. He stood there, everything in him rebelling. “No. He can’t be gone.” Not Var. Not the huge, tough man, solid as a Frontieran mountainside. “Where’s your regen unit? Get him in there.”

“It is too late. I’m sorry.”

They all looked away, waiting. Right. He had to think, had to stay in control. This was a battle, and he had more than one warrior.

“See to my other man here,” he said. “He’s wounded. See to him.”

“They did all they could,” Riley said. “Will you inform Ilya, or do you wish me to prepare her?”

“I’ll tell her.” Let her have another hour of blissful ignorance.

The redhead approached as they followed the techs from the room, Var’s body on a floating stretcher, Haro in a hoverchair.
 

She glided to Joran, her hands clasped before her. “Il Zhazid,” she murmured, her eyes luminous with emotion. “We must talk. Everything has changed. New opportunities...new horizons.”

Joran put out his hands and set her to one side, away from the door.
 

“I just lost a man,” he said. “A good man. You do what the fuck you want—we’re leaving.”

He strode out the door, following his crew, what remained of them.

There was a disturbance at the docking bay, with a party of drunk and belligerent Serpentians, one of whom had a weapon and managed to laser the power main for that area, and for the second time on the casino, plunge them into darkness.
 

When the lights came back on, Slidi’s slave was there, his eyes now alive with feverish intensity, his hand gripping Joran’s arm with suprising strength.

“The girl,” he said urgently. “The slave you purchased at the auction. Is she still with you?”

Joran stared at him, caught in the dull net of shock and disbelief. What the hells? The slave wanted to know about Zaë
now
? “Yeah, she’s with me. Why?”

“Keep her safe,” the man said in that same urgent tone. “You
must
keep her safe.”

One of the guards approached.
 

The slave bowed as he backed away. “Thank you, my lord. My lady wishes you a safe journey.”

Joran was done. “Tell your lady she can go fuck herself.”
 

Joran shrugged off the weird encounter and hustled the others onto the cruiser. He took the controls himself. Luckily he’d piloted the Hawk often enough that he could do it with his mind and heart plunged in shock and disbelief.

Haro was ensconced in one of the passenger seats, drowsy from gesics. He woke when they had just reached the river and were following it north.

“Where’s Var?” he demanded. “Where is ‘e?”

“What? Uh, he’s in the hold,” Qala said.She looked to Joran. “Isn’t he?”

“You sure?” Haro frowned woozily at her. “I dunno.”

Qala slapped her hands on the arms of her chair and rose. “I’ll go check,” she snapped.

A few moments later she was back, her eyes wild in her pale face. “He’s not there,” she told Joran. “Fuck, fuck, he’s not there.”

Joran linked the Pleasure Planet. “Get me your head medtech,” he ordered when one of the medtech assistants answered the link. “Now!”

 
“Sorry, he’s operating on a badly wounded guard—it’s not certain the man will survive. May I help you?”

“Yeah, you can help me. Where’s my man?”

The pasty-faced man blinked at them, apparently bewildered by their anger and distress. “But the body has been—er, incinerated,” he said. “In our waste system. We thought that’s what you would want.”

“No, we wanted to bring him home, you idiot,” Joran said. “And if I was you, I’d be looking for a new post, because if I ever see your ugly face again, I’m gonna smash it in.”

***

Ilya screamed when he told her. She tipped back her head and let out an inhuman wail that rose to the starred skies above, and then collapsed onto her knees, her blonde head bowed down to the earth.

Joran reached down to lift her up and she went wild, scratching and clawing, screaming at him.
 

“No! He trusted you—followed you everywhere. You were supposed to keep him safe! You cold bastard, you don’t care about any of us, don’t care that he’s dead. I wish you’d died instead of him, do you hear me?”

Pede came to take her from Joran. “We’ll give her gesics,” Ringi told him through her tears. “Calm her down until the worst is over.”

He stood there, feeling helpless and empty like a burned out craft as they carried her away to the tont she’d shared with her huge partner.

“It wasn’t your fault,” Qala said beside him.

“Yes, it was.”
 

But he also knew where to place the rest of the blame. A fire of rage burning in his belly, Joran turned and strode up the bluff toward the IGSF fighters, which were back and moored on the hilltop as if they were welcome. He heard her footsteps behind him.

Arc was waiting by his fighter, braced as if for trouble.Mecham ran forward from her fighter, her face pale. “Wait,” she said, holding out a hand to stop him. “Let’s talk this out.”

Joran looked from her to Arc. “There’s nothing to talk about,” he said. “Just tell me who gave the order for your ships to show themselves out there.”

“I don’t—”Mecham began.

“You don’t need to know that,” Arc said.
 

“Yeah, I do,” Joran said through his teeth. “And you’re gonna tell me.”

Mecham looked at Arc. The man swallowed, his face going pasty. “The duty of an IGSF patrol is first and foremost to maintain the peace,” he parroted. “We were on patrol. You threatened a civilian businessman, we were just making sure things didn’t go too far.”

“We were on a
clandestine
mission to do exactly as your commander demanded,” Joran said, his voice nearly soundless with his effort to control himself. “And you flew right into the middle of my op. You caused the death of a good man.”

Arc snorted. “Good man? In this camp? That’s hard to believe.”

“Shut up,” Qala said fiercely. “Or I swear to the great God, I will shut you up myself.”

The man’s gaze flickered from her to Joran. Joran shook his head once. “You think I’m gonna protect you from her, think again.”

Mecham looked to Joran, her face pale. “We’re sorry,” she said. “So sorry.”

“Good,” Joran said. “Now I wanna hear him say it.”

Sergeant Arc’s jaw quivered like a young boy’s. “I’m…sorry,” he muttered.

Joran took one step forward, all he could allow himself. “Good. Now get the hells out of my camp. And don’t come back.”

 
He looked to Mecham. “You can stay. But stay clear of camp, or I won’t be responsible for the consequences. You get me?”

Mecham nodded miserably. “I’ll stay out.”

Without another word, Joran turned and walked down the bluff, Qala at his side.
 

“You think it was his stupid mistake?” Qala asked. “Or did Cerul give the order; try to play us off against Vadyal so we’d all die?”
 

“I don’t know,” Joran said. “Arc is just stupid and arrogant enough to decide something like that for himself.” And he was stupid and arrogant enough to think he could taunt Vadyal and get away with it.

His immi had warned them the slavers were crazy, mad with power. And he hadn’t listened.

“You want to meet and plan?” Qala asked.

“No,” Joran said. “Not tonight. And let Arc go, for now. We don’t need the IGSF down on us tonight.”
 

He left her there and strode on to his own tont. He locked the door behind him, and headed for the carafe of Serpentian fire whiskey.
 

Then he dropped his ass on the divan and started drinking.
 

Sometime later he became aware that Zaë was curled in the corner of the divan. Not saying a word, just sitting there weeping silently, tears dripping from her blue eyes, now pink around the edges.

“What’re you cryin’ for?” he demanded. “You didn’ even know ‘im.”