Moonstruck (15 page)

Propaganda, she thought. Utter crap.

Her PCD beeped. Her hand flew to her ear. “Bandar.”

“Admiral, we’ve got a problem down here—”

“What, what is it?” She winced, detesting the anxiety in her voice, making it sound as if she cared about the warleader’s welfare.
Damn him.
And Hadley…The girl was with him, also in harm’s way. It was dangerous, caring about others. Why did she continue to form attachments? Hadn’t she learned? “Report.”

“All seventeen inhabitants are dead.”

Brit’s pulse may have doubled but her outward appearance remained unchanged. “Noted.” She waved to Berkko, the chief watch officer.
Get her off the bridge,
she mouthed, jerking her chin at the virtual journalist who was now perusing a grid map of the settlement and probably cooking up more questions.

“I’m sorry,” she told the woman. “I must attend to the team down on the planet. We’ll finish this up later, yes?”

Berkko hit the signal disconnect. The journalist vanished before she could utter another annoying syllable. Then Brit turned away to take Rorkken’s incoming comm.

O
N THE SHUTTLE
,
Finn finished briefing Brit. “It’s not clear what killed them. The antenna array is down, and there’s debris. We’re going down to find out more.”

There was a prolonged hiss before he heard her voice again. It was controlled but softer. “Use caution, Finn.”

Finn.
She’d actually called him by his given name outside bed, and without him wheedling her into doing so.

That one, simple acknowledgment of their secret relationship turned him to putty in her hands. He’d walk to the ends of the universe for her if she asked. On the other hand, he was all too aware of the many ears listening to his end of the conversation. “Aye. I’ll resume contact planetside.”

Finn told Tango, “Put us down beyond the hillside.”

“Yes, sir.”

The shuttle’s vertical engines whined in the thick atmosphere—humid air, if the vegetation was an accurate indication. “Atmosphere still at safe levels,” Odin said.

“Confirmed,” Finn said, checking his readouts.

With a gentle thump, the shuttle touched down and went silent. “Shuttle secure, checklist complete,” Tango reported.

They took extra care donning their gloves and checking their weapons and comm systems before Finn shoved open the hatch. Pistol drawn, he started to step outside.

“Sir,” Rothberg called out at the same time Bolivarr warned, “Warleader.”

“What?” he said, anxious to take a look around.

“We go first. Me and Bolivarr. It’s why you brought us along.”

Bolivarr said nothing. He didn’t have to; the man’s dark, enigmatic gaze radiated both resolve and concern. Finn grunted his displeasure. Since when did his crew have to worry about him?

Since you got them real jobs on a real ship with real procedures.
On the
Unity,
blast it, the boss didn’t stick his head up first.

“No” almost slipped out of his mouth. Outside, the beach was deserted, but there was no telling what had happened to the men. If he got himself killed in the first seconds, the team would lose their leader, and Brit her second-in-command.

Use caution, Finn.
Aye, he would, but not at the expense of his team’s safety. Still, he needed to use the team members for what he’d brought them here to do.

“Go on, then,” he grumbled. It took everything he had to let the two men go out ahead of him; he liked being on-scene first, not last.

“Be careful,” Hadley told Bolivarr, her voice barely audible. Bolivarr’s attention lingered on her a few seconds longer than what Finn would consider normal for the man. Interesting. Until this point, the wraith hadn’t seemed to take much notice of anyone of either gender on either the
Pride
or the
Unity.
He’d noticed Hadley Keyren, however.

The wraith gave the lieutenant a nod before slipping silently and gracefully out the hatch behind Rothberg.

Nothing stirred on the beach but the breeze.

Before long, the men signaled it was safe to emerge. Damn embarrassing, Finn thought, having to wait for someone to tell him it was safe to stick his neck out. He strapped on his weapons and double-checked the fittings on his suit. “Let’s go,” he told the remaining crew. “Grab your equipment. Odin, you’ve got the medical kit.”

“Yes, sir.”

They took off in the direction of the bodies. It was the smaller items scattered along the beach that captured Finn’s attention: a hat, a light pen, a shoe. Wind and rain had erased most footprints, but a few gashes in the sand pointed to a fight. “There was a struggle,” Rothberg said, scooping up the pen to study it.

“Aye.” A piece of metal poked out of the sand. Finn picked it up. It was round, metal, silver in color.

“Found something?”

“It looks like a utility clip for a rifle, probably a plasma rifle by the shape of it. Not a model I recognize.”

“Coalition?”

“It must be. It’s not Drakken.” Finn turned the part over in his hand, studying it as he walked. It seemed unusual to find evidence of advanced weaponry on a backwater outpost, unless the Coalition had started arming scientist-settlers before the war ended. Having come from the other side, he wouldn’t know. “I’ll have Yarew analyze it back on the ship.” It paid to have an intelligence officer on board sometimes. He dropped the piece in his pocket.

Where the corpses lay, the stink was powerful. Insects buzzed around the putrefying flesh.

“Ah shit, that’s bad,” Rothberg groaned as Tango made what appeared to be a religious sign over his chest. Odin was back to filling a sick-sac.

“Goddess…” Lieutenant Keyren covered her mouth. At her side, Bolivarr observed the scene without a trace of distress. Like Finn, the wraith had seen his share of death and destruction, as had the rest of the Drakken on the
Unity.
This was an unpleasant discovery, aye, but nothing compared to the scenes of carnage he’d encountered in the past. Yet, to someone not accustomed to a massacre, it would be disturbing. Take these seventeen corpses and times it by a hundred or more. That’s when it started getting bad, when the bodies tangled together, and when the heads and limbs were no longer attached. Not that all Drakken were immune; their tolerance was simply higher.

Everyone had their limit. Some who witnessed the aftermath of atrocities never recovered. When the emotional damage was too severe, unable to be numbed by drinking and sex, suicide was sometimes the last, best escape. He’d seen it a number of times over his two careers.

“Put on your nose-breathers,” Finn ordered the team. “I don’t want anyone puking on the bodies.” He left his breather in his pocket—he’d long ago figured out how to tune out the worst of what life presented him without any help—and crouched by the first body.

At the base of the man’s skull was a blackened entry wound. He didn’t need to see the other side to know what the face looked like. Traces of gore on the sand told him it was gone.

He shoved to his feet and walked to the next body, and the next, until he’d seen every last one of them. The scientists had been shot, each one, execution-style.

Skulled,
he thought, dread filling him.

Finn stood, pushing his hand through his hair. Drakken battle-lords had long encouraged the use of mass execution-style killings to enrage and demoralize the Coalition. “Skulling,” it was called in Hordish slang used by both sides. Was that what had happened here?
After
the war’s end?

Millions had expired this way. The lucky ones were killed before anything else was done to them. Usually, though, something else was done to them first. The “something else” was the stuff of nightmares in the Coalition psyche, and Finn could understand why.

Yet, these were only seventeen men. Intelligence reports that Yarew had briefed already confirmed there were rogue ships plying these remote regions of space. Any passing raider could have done this.

Why use the methods of old, though, if not to incite terror? If only these men had died any other way but this.

It is what it is,
Finn told himself. It had happened, it was done, a senseless act that would serve only to perpetuate the centuries-old prejudices toward his people, making it more difficult for those born under the flag of the Drakken Empire to assimilate into the new Triad Alliance. He and his crew were so much more than their dark reputation. They weren’t the monsters their shipmates assumed they were.

That Admiral Stone-Heart thought they were.

In a twist of fate and circumstance—and dumb good luck—he was now the highest-ranking former-Drakken Triad officer. It gave him an opportunity to prove that the Drakken as a whole wanted peace—and a future that held infinitely more promise than the one they’d left behind. The skulling threatened to erase all the progress they’d made in the days since boarding the
Unity
.

And the progress you’ve made with Brit.

Finn rubbed a tired hand across his face. The battle-weary soldier in him wanted the galaxy to hold on to peace. The man in him wanted to hold on to her.

By avoiding war, he’d be able to do both, and he’d avoid war by not letting the skulling bring out the worst in those who hated the Drakken. Banked hatred existed throughout the Realm of the Goddess. It wouldn’t take much for a few brazen terror attacks to fan it into flame. Fire didn’t care who you were, or to what government you gave allegiance; it didn’t care if you were Drakken or Coalition or from the Shrine of Earth. Once started, the fire of hatred would consume them all.

“A
DMIRAL
,
the shuttle has docked.”

“Have Warleader Rorkken report to the bridge immediately after decon,” Brit said in answer to Star-Major Yarew’s statement. She kept her face pointed to the holo-vis where she’d been overseeing the team’s progress back from the planet below. Her hands gripped the edge of the table. Pretending to read the data scrolling past, it was composure she was after. Hers.

“He said Drakken ‘attack,’ not ‘raid,’” she thought aloud. Why? Unwilling or unable to elaborate, Rorkken had ended the call in the next instant, citing the need to upload the bodies to the shuttle before sunset.

“Rorkken chooses his words deliberately,” Yarew said. “If he said ‘attack,’ he meant it.”

“‘Attack’ means a military action.”

“Did we ever believe they’d actually obey the treaty, Admiral? Come now, Horde is Horde. They’ll never change. Their capacity for humanity is not what ours is. They’re animalistic, prone to violence, incapable of the most sophisticated human emotions and certainly not capable of love.”

As the officer rattled off characteristics of the Drakken mind that she’d always taken for granted were true, she thought of Finn’s seemingly tender kisses, and his gentle caresses. When it came to expressing emotion, compared to Finn, she was the one lesser evolved: she was so closed up and closed off, and he was so very open. Not sophisticated? Finn’s capacity for patience and warmth were undeniable, and certainly exceeded her own.

Was he not Horde?

Yes, yes he was! And yet…she wanted him. With the force of a plasma blast shock wave, it hit her that she wanted him as much for the affection he offered as for the sex—all while despising her weakness. Her betrayal.

A horrible sound of shame and confusion threatened to well up inside her throat. It took real effort to tamp it down. It was one thing having a meltdown in the privacy of her quarters. No matter how ill-advised her actions in her personal life, no one would ever detect her weakness on this bridge.

She pushed away from the holo-vis table, clasping her hands behind her back as she awaited Rorkken’s presence. Perhaps his news of the attack would drive the wedge between them that she’d need if she were ever going to escape his spell.

F
INN MARCHED OUT
of the shuttle as soon as it docked with the
Unity.
A medical team led by Dr. Kell met the craft to attend to the bodies stored in the cargo bay.

Rorkken tore open the collar of his expedition suit and stormed down the corridor to take the lift up to the bridge. Zurykk fell in step with him. “Word around the ship says it was an attack, Captain. A Drakken attack.”

“How in the freepin’ hells did that get around the ship already?”

“It’s Rakkelle’s shift. She’s on the bridge—pilot duty. She overheard Stone-Heart and Yarew speculating.”

“I can only imagine what was said. Anything in Yarew’s view is slanted against us.”

“Aye, I hear ya, Captain. Blaming the bar fight on us, almost getting sweef banned.”

“You know about that, too?” Finn could swear that conversation with Brit had been private.

The man shrugged. “Rumors. And a few good guesses.”

Finn groaned. Serving on the
Unity
hadn’t diminished his crew’s ability to spread news and gossip at light-speed.

“It was more than the work of rogue Drakken space pirates down there. They skulled them, Zurykk, the entire outpost.”

His former second-in-command swore. “Does
she
know about the skulling?”

“The admiral? No. Not yet. She will soon. I’m trying to think of a good way to break it to her.”
There is no good way.
He suspected that scene would be almost as ugly as the one on the beach.

The moment Finn stepped onto the bridge, he made damn sure that he stood tall and proud in his Triad colors. He wanted to send the right message to Rakkelle and the others. Whatever reasons the rogues had for skulling the settlers, Finn didn’t want her or any of the Drakken he’d brought aboard to feel shame for it. He’d bear that burden for them.

Rakkelle’s curious gaze followed him as he strode past. Rumors spread fast on a ship, but they were just that: rumors. She, like the other Drakken, was hungry to know what he really thought and saw while on Cupezikan. With all the speculation, the sweef would be flowing in the bar tonight.

Finn dropped the weapon fitting he’d found on the beach in Yarew’s hands. “This was near the bodies. If it didn’t belong there, I want to know.”