Hers To Cherish (Verdantia Book 3) (27 page)

“Time?” Ramsey huffed, holding DeAlbero balanced on one shoulder as he ran.

Steffania held up her wrist and steadied it with her other hand so she could read the digital display on her timer.
Shit.
“Four minutes.”

When the trio reached the portico overlooking the broad green expanse of Narr’s southwest lawn, bright orange tracer fire illuminated the black outline of the small transport
broken by a loading ramp extended onto the ground like an enormous tongue. Beside her, Ramsey labored for breath, sucking in air like a marathon runner. Steffania admitted that last all-out sprint had her gasping, too, and she wasn’t carrying one hundred and sixty-five pounds of dead weight. Only Tok was his normal self.

“No time. You must run for the ship. Tok and I will cover you to keep the wolves off. We don’t have time to argue, DeKieran. Get DeAlbero on that transport,” she hissed urgently.

Ramsey grabbed a fistful of her suit collar and jerked her to him, planting a savage kiss on her mouth. “I’m not leaving you here, vixen. I’m coming back for you. Do you hear me? I’m coming back for you.”

She smiled into his grim eyes.
Her lips still pulsed with the ferocious imprint of Ramsey’s. “You do that.”

Ram
shifted Alessa to a better position and looked at her, intense emotions she couldn’t identify twisting his face. “Ready?” He looked toward Tok. “Ready?”

The colossus grinned
and nodded. “Run fast, Verdantian.”

And all holy hell broke loose.
Narr’s security forces were everywhere.

Steffania
and Tok laid down a furious barrage of cover fire as Ramsey darted and dodged in a broken line to the spacecraft.

“You stay with me, small female.” Scooping up Pansy again, Tok separated from Steffania to give them a broader field of fire. Steffania almost cried with relief when she saw the outline of Ramsey stagger and fall up the loading ramp and then scramble into the transport.
He made it.

Immediately, the ramp retracted and the
ship’s doors closed. A blast of energy from Narr’s pulse cannons lit up the area around the vulnerable transport with explosions of brilliant light. Dazzling phosphorescent flares broke in cascades around the invisible barrier protecting the ship as the ground opponents fired frantically at their departing target. Steffania prayed they got out of there soon. Their shields would not withstand many of those direct hits. As if in sync with her thoughts, the transport’s thrusters lit up the night with an orange/blue burn and it thundered slowly into the air, gaining speed and altitude until it was only a speck. Narr’s pulse cannons ceased their ear-splitting detonations as the ship climbed out of range. The villa grounds took on an eerie quiet. The shouts of the security forces seemed almost muted in comparison.

Slinking back into the night’s shadows, she sought a place to hide until the LFP arrived in full-force. She snorted inwardly. She wouldn’t put it past Lord Ramsey Melborn DeKieran to force the LFP transport captain to come back for her. And the passion in his last kiss – gods –
that
had shaken her. She swiped at the tears she couldn’t keep from forming.
Damn, I love that man.
But it just didn’t seem permanency would happen for them.

The low snarling growl of a
fell
wolf spun her around in a crouch, weapon at the ready. The wolf wasn’t alone. Four of Narr’s security force flanked him.

“Put your
gun down,” one of them said as he held her in the sights of his own weapon.

With a grim sigh, Steffania laid her
88K on the grass in front of her. “So...now what? You kill me?” She waited while one of the men spoke through a communicator and then murmured in the ear of their leader.

“No, Veacon Narr
wants you in the ‘quiet room’.” The man motioned with his weapon. “Rise, slowly.”

She swallowed back her sudden nausea. D
eath might be preferable.

Ram tripped up the loading ramp and sprawled into the small transport. He could feel the heat of bare misses scorching the area on either side of him. A scrambling crawl got him inside. The inert body of Alessa DeAlbero rolled off his shoulder into an undignified heap at the base of a small command console.
We’re moving! Gods, Steffania! I can’t leave her there.
He whirled to plunge back out the craft’s doors only to smash into slick steel. The doors were closed.

Ramsey
screamed at the crewman closest to him. “Open these. I must go back. I left a woman behind. I must go back.”

“You’re
too late,” the ship commander snarled. A heavy explosion shook the small craft and the
whoop, whoop, whoop,
of a warning claxon had crew scurrying for the fire controls and backup systems. Another detonation rocked them and blackness enveloped the interior, broken only by the green glow of the console displays, the spitting arc of sparks and the sudden dim glow of red emergency lighting. In the darkness, the lieutenant yelled, “Full vertical thrusters, full auxiliary shields. Get us the hell out of here while we’re still in one piece.”

“No!” Ram screamed. “Fuck you! No!” Scrambling for balance in the bucking ship, he
stumbled toward the commander and grabbed him by the shoulder, jerking him around. “Land this thing. Go back. Gods damn you, man! We can’t leave her.” In desperation, Ram wrestled his 88K from its holster and held it to the captain’s head. “Land this gods damned ship!”

Tok followed the squad of men escorting Steffania until he was certain their destination was the ‘quiet room’. He found stealth difficult, but when required, he could manage to move without making the ground tremble. He spoke over his shoulder to the female who adhered to his back. Her tenacious hold put him in mind of the infant arbor-glider clinging to its mother as she swooped from tree to tree in the towering forests of his planet.

“
Wee female, how long before permanent brain damage in a CP bed?”

“It depends on the programs
used,” Pansy whispered. “Narr runs a modified personality wipe that affects the
prefrontal cortex with a side program that alters the limbic system, both of which…” She sighed. “Too technical. That’s not what you are asking, is it?”

“How long before the Verdantian’s woman is beyond
recovery?”

Pansy
didn’t answer for a moment. “We have four to six hours before we must get her out.”

The Khlossian grunted. “I need to find somewhere safe to put you, little female. Then I go
hunting.”

“Get me into the ‘quiet room’. I know a place to hide.”
Her voice trembled.

He stopped for a moment and
with a crackle of protesting gristle, craned his neck to look at her. Even out of one eye, he could see her distinct pallor. “You would go back there, little female?”

Pansy took a deep
, shaky breath. “Yes. It is the last place Narr would expect a
slaaf
to hide, and I might be able to help Steffania.”

Tok could feel the tremors in the small body pressed close to his and in the delicate arms that wrapped his neck. “You are
certain?” Feeling her nod, he reached back and patted her with great care. “You have the soul of a Khlossian in that miniscule body.”

A soft whisper tickled his ear. “Angelica. My name is Angelica.
Just...promise not to leave me there.”

Tok grunted. “
I will not, Angelica.”

Steffania would be damned before she let that piece of slime see her fear. She stood in the ‘quiet room’ restrained by two of Narr’s security as Narr eyed her. A man decked in a white lab coat holding an inoculation gun and a datapad stood at his side.

“
You have made a mess of my lab, my dear, and it seems my pet, Alessa, is missing. Did your barbaric
dominus
take her?” Narr smiled pleasantly. “Was that what this evening’s hubbub was about? Get the Verdantian woman, DeAlbero? Curious that he left you behind.” Narr walked up and stroked her cheek. “I wager that was unplanned. He seemed...enamored.”

Steffania gathered the saliva in her mouth and spat in his face. Her head r
ang from his return blow. Her eyes streamed involuntary tears. The bastard had held nothing back.

Narr pulled
a pocket linen from the inside of his jacket and with icy composure, wiped his face. “Strip her. Put her in a bed.” He turned to the white-coated man at his side. “Nissler, I want her wiped. Don’t bother with the niceties – just leave her alive enough to know fear when I fuck her.”

In her violent struggles,
Steffania barely felt the pressure of the inoculator against her shoulder. A melting lassitude overwhelmed her and her muscles no longer responded to commands. Unfortunately, her mind remained all too aware. Crude hands roughly fondled her naked body, pinching her nipples and finger fucking her as the men stripped her. Coarse comments accompanied by lewd laughter assaulted her. Narr barked at them and she was lifted and arranged in a CP bed. The white-coated man wired her in with dispassionate calm. Steffania had never felt terror like that spawned by the multiple pricks of the probe needles as they entered the flesh of her skull – needles that would strip her of personality and intelligence. Tears leaked from eyes she could not close as she watched the lid of the clamshell descend and entomb her in silent terror.

Tok noted with satisfaction that Narr left the ‘quiet room’ together with his doctor and the security team. Ramsey’s woman remained behind.
Just the quiet before the storm, Dominus Narr.
He chuckled to himself.
The heavens are going to fall on you
– Tok checked his timepiece –
in one hour and fourteen minutes
.

He waited until silence cloaked the empty hallway and carefully lifted the lid on the CP unit he had been hiding behind in the corridor. No one had bothered to return
the CP beds to the lab and they provided an excellent vantage point for hidden observation.

“Come
, little one.” He assisted Pansy from the interior of the unit. She shuddered as she delicately tried not to smash the unconscious woman already occupying the majority of the space. “Good thing you are a small female.” He grinned at her shudder of revulsion and shrugged. “You have an hour, and then I will come for you and Ramsey’s woman. Be ready. We must be well away before the warships of the League of Federated Planets descend on Veacon Narr and the heavens rain fire on this hellhole of a planet.”

She nodded her understanding.
She tested her bad ankle but gasped in pain and resorted to wiggling her way on her hands and knees into the ‘quiet room’. Tok closed the door behind her before he followed Narr.

Tok made little effort toward stealth, knowing his presence in the tumult above in the household would remain unchallenged; he was an honored guest, after all. While Narr’s security forces were well organized, the rest of his household retainers milled in uncertain disorder. Most recognized him only as the Dominion Games’ champion and allowed him unfettered passage, unaware of his role in the disruption of their household.

The firefight on the southwestern lawn had raised alarms and dignitaries and their entourages thronged the villa’s passageways with luggage. Narr’s distinguished guests completed the confusion and chaos already rampant as they scurried to depart. Gods forbid they become embroiled in something distasteful.

Tok made his way into Narr’s inner chambers with relative ease and scanned the opulent room with disgust. Narr had created a sadist’s heaven. Tall bondage racks of every conceivable shape and size dotted the space. Tools, stretchers, whips, hooks, knives—some articles he could name no function for, thank the gods—hung arrayed for ready use. And women. At least a dozen naked women knelt motionless in submissive poses, silent but for their breathing. He heard the voice of Narr
in an adjoining room and walked toward the sound. Not one of the living female statues slid even a glance his way.

Tok slid his over-sized handgun from its holster. With a deep breath, he steadied himself then stepped into the room and sprayed fire in a deadly arc. In seconds, every man in the room but Narr lay dead. For once, Narr looked discomposed
.

“You.”

Tok grinned and nodded. “Me.” He motioned with his gun toward the room he’d just come from. “In there.”

Tok stepped back to let Narr through the door, then pressed his gun into Narr’s back. “There, that rack.” Tok shoved Narr toward a massive X and watched as the man pressed his back to it. Narr lifted his gaze to Tok, once more the self-possessed, congenial host.

“What can you hope to accomplish, Khlossian? Obviously, your Verdantian friend got what he wanted and abandoned you. Your limited intelligence cannot possibly devise a way off my estate. Your best hope is to release me.” Narr smiled benignly. “You have my word of honor I’ll let you leave unharmed. I could not allow anything to happen to the champion of our games. Could I? I’ll sweeten the offer. Take any of these women you want. Take two. My gift to you.”