Nell Thorn (11 page)

Rowe snorted loudly and Angel glared at her.

“So who is the new permanent Sector Commander going to be?” Rowe asked finally. “Another Thorn?”

“I think the Fleet might be running out of Thorns,” Danyeo muttered under his breath.

Nell was momentarily struck speechless, for she had already committed herself to the post indefinitely.

“That will, of course, have to be decided by the IGW in due course.”

“Will it?” Rowe’s tone was hardly nice.

“Well, if that is all you wish to discuss with me…” Nell stood abruptly, acutely aware that she had done as much as she could today, and there was nothing she could do or say that would make Rowe and Angel feel better. They were here for revenge on Gordon and she had snatched him away from under their noses, because she had wanted to protect them from the almost certain conflict that would have resulted from their action.

It was an act that would probably mean she would never see or speak to them ever again as friends, certainly not as lovers. They were seething, furious.

She had cheated them out of their payback.

Nell paused and looked back at Rowe. “In removing Gordon, I believe I have probably saved the lives of a considerable number of Rim inhabitants, including your own and Angel’s. I never thanked you properly for saving my life, but I am thanking you now for killing the assassin who attacked me that night.”

Rowe frowned at her, but kept silent.

“What I didn’t tell you was that the assassin carried the mark of Gordon’s personal guard. As a Fleet officer, I could not let him remain where he was. The GEF executive had to act, so it is not a matter of your own personal vendetta going unfulfilled. Fleet intervention was always inevitable, a matter of correct procedure.”

Nell turned and walked out before she could say anything more. Maybe something really stupid—like, ‘Let’s forget all the crap and make love’—to the two men who she guessed would be staring at her back as if they wanted to stick a knife in it.

* * * *

She left the room and kept walking, back rigid, boots clicking on the hard stone floor. Her jaw clenched with anger.

Bastard, bastard fuckers.
Why couldn’t they just accept she was trying to keep them safe? And it felt good to call people names, particularly when they left you on the verge of tears.

A gasp to her left made her glance sideways, only to see an aide with a bright red face.

“Sorry,” she said. “Did I speak?”

“Yes, and don’t be sorry, Commander Thorn. I agree with your assessment completely.”

“Commander Thorn!” A shout echoed down the corridor as they continued to walk. “Nell!”

Nell turned to see Angel jogging to a halt beside her. He bent, his hands on his thighs, to catch his breath. Nell looked at him for a few moments, then turned to go. Angel’s hand shot out and caught her wrist. She stared at it for a few moments before waving her party on. “This better be good,” she warned him.

Angel pulled a face at her. “Nell, don’t be too angry at Rowe.” He recovered his breath quickly and went on, “He’s just cross because things didn’t work out the way he had planned in his head.”

“You’re joking, right? I thought no all-out war and Gordon gone might be a good solution for him.”

“Yes, it is, but it’s
Rowe
. The macho Rim thing means that, as soon as Gordon had him abducted and sold into slavery, Gordon was a marked man. Rowe has been dreaming about revenge for a long time, and in some pretty bad places.”

Nell thought of the first time she had met him, lying beaten by some mercenary slaver at the side of the road, and had to concede that revenge would feature pretty high on anyone’s agenda under similar circumstances.

She grunted to acknowledge Angel’s point.

“And then there’s this tiny, feisty Galaxy Elite Fleet officer that keeps riding to his rescue not once, but twice? That’s hard to take, for a man that was born to absolute power in a galaxy like the Eastern Complex. Riding to the rescue was
his
job before Gordon got to him.”

“That is not true—he saved my life,” Nell protested, “and the lives of my crew.”

“All I’m saying is please don’t give up on us just yet, Nell Thorn.” Angel leant forward and kissed her on the forehead. “Not yet.”

With that, he turned and walked away, breaking into a run as if in a hurry, leaving Nell standing, watching him go.

Chapter Sixteen

Whump, whump, whump.

Nell braced herself as another round of fire hit her ship side-on, making it buck and rock.

Pirates had attacked them just as they had made it to the edge of Rim space, coming out of nowhere to ambush them from the cover of an asteroid belt. There was no reason why they would not; the craft they were travelling in was not a GEF vessel, but a humble diplomatic transport barge with a fraction of the firepower of Nell’s usual ship. It was a necessary concession when crossing borders with the Rim. Any act that transgressed Rim Treaty law or could be construed as an act of aggression by the GEF was always contested by the Rim authorities.

The Rim pirates had obviously identified them as easy pickings.

Nell’s craft returned what fire it could, but it soon became apparent that they were being outgunned and outmanoeuvred by the Rim-class pirate ship. Nell made the decision to make a last desperate bid to get to Fleet space, and instructed her crew to take the barge off at speed through the asteroid belt, much to the surprise of her ship’s attackers. They chased her, firing at the barge as it went.

Then a larger, faster vessel joined them and Nell thought for a glorious moment they were saved, until it turned on them and fired at point-blank range as it made a pass on one side.

Whump, whump, whump
.

It was no good. Three direct hits to one side knocked the diplomatic barge sideways into the largest asteroid they had encountered so far. It damaged the ship’s systems and the energy packs responsible for lighting and life support.

Abandon ship.

* * * *

Nell could hear the air escaping through the damaged hull even as she lay there on the floor. The life pods had been discharged at her command. As ranking officer she had elected to stay until all the crew were evacuated, but as the last one made its bid for the Fleet boundary with the Rim the barge had been fired on, even as it lay immobile on the asteroid’s surface.

It had been game over for the ship’s hull, life support and, the way things were going, thought Nell, her, too.

It was only a matter of time. The lights were flickering out one by one as the power failed, and the air leaks were hard to ignore.

Nell had no idea how long she had been lying there, wondering when the air would run out, until a pair of booted feet appeared within her line of vision.

The owner of the boots crouched down and started to laugh.

“Why, Helena Thorn—how poetic! Well, if one is speaking of justice, that is.”

It was Gordon. So, somehow, he had managed to escape the trip back to the psych assessors of the IGW after all. He looked down at her with a nasty smirk.

“Tables have turned now, haven’t they, Commander Thorn?” He nodded, agreeing with himself before he straightened and walked around the bridge of her ruined ship, pretending to inspect the smashed panels, tapping broken equipment.

“You really do have a look of your father about you, Helena Thorn.” He returned to her side and hunkered down next to where she lay. “You really do. He was a handsome man in his youth…we both were. Saw a lot of each other, he and I. An awful lot, if you know what I mean.…maybe more than was proper for ambitious Fleet officers but that’s all in the past now. I loved him, you know, really loved him, but even that will not be enough to save you. Because you, Nell Thorn, are the daughter of the man that broke my heart…”

Nell stifled a groan and rolled her eyes up into their sockets.
Hell of a time to find out something you didn’t know about one of your parents.

So Gordon and her father did have a history, just not quite the one she had imagined. Her original assumptions had featured more in the way of competition than attraction.

“So you’re going to leave me here to die?” she asked him hoarsely. Nell could hardly draw breath; her chest was so painful it seemed likely she must have at least cracked a rib when the barge had crashed sideways into the asteroid. Then, as if that was not enough, she had been thrown across the damn command centre when the final three bolts had hit.

“Well, that might have been the case before you went and became the centre of attention at some Rim function a little while ago. You, Sector Commander Thorn, have something of a price on your head. Even without the mind wipe turning you into a convenient little sex toy, I do believe there are a few ‘collectors’ who would pay handsomely for the opportunity to have you in their power. All the more now that there are scurrilous rumours that feature you as Rowe’s ex-fuck buddy. It would appear that many find the thought of reaming an arse tagged by Rim Lord Rowe so attractive they are, as I said previously, prepared to pay for the pleasure.”

How the hell did Gordon know she hadn’t got round to getting the tag removed yet?

Nell shut her eyes against the pain in her chest as she drew breath. Shallow gasps were all she could manage, and she could have sworn she could hear her ribs clicking.

“Still keeping company with slavers then, Gordon?” she asked him.

“They deal in a commodity just like everyone else does, Commander. Do tell me what the difference is between the slavers you so vocally despise and your own role in ferrying people around, in a cage, from one part of space to another for Talbot and the Fleet. If one leads by example, the very fact you were ostensibly buying people for sex is quite reprehensible.”

“I was doing my job. I was saving their lives.”

“No, you were doing it to gain promotion, Commander, for personal gain. Not so different, then, are we?”

Talbot’s words about not growing a conscience on him echoed through her head. Nell shook her head, attempting to focus. “It was different. I was helping…”

“Were you, Commander Thorn? Were you really? How sure are you that that is indeed true?”

Was she? Had she really been helping the people Talbot had asked her to collect? Maybe Gordon had a point.

The man was a devil.

But the fact remained that she had never knowingly sent people to certain death. Gordon and the slavers had, and therein lay the difference.

“The slavers are scum, and you are scum for associating with them,” Nell hissed out from between gritted teeth. “And now you are just like them, on the run. Bit of a comedown, eh, Commander Scum?”

Gordon’s face twisted into a vicious mask and for a brief moment Nell thought he was going to kick her. Hard and in the right place, it would probably have been enough to finish her off once and for all, but instead Gordon put his mouth to her ear and said, “You think you can provoke me into killing you, Helena Thorn?”

His breath was hot on the skin of her ear in the rapidly chilling ship. “That is not going to happen, because I’m not about to damage the valuable merchandise.”

With that he seized Nell’s arm and pulled her up onto her feet with surprising strength.

As she was moved upright, Nell’s agonised scream of pain drew forth a long laugh from Gordon and left her fully vertical, but choking on excruciating sobs of air.

“Your precious Rim friends live in a society where the slave trade is alive and well, Commander Thorn. They buy and sell people for all kinds of reasons, no questions asked.

“And, best of all, when you drop off the face of existence, the other scum they call Rim pirates will get all the blame. And, as for me, I’ll get to go away with even more money than I have now.” Nell felt rather than saw him smirk. “That’s the Rim, baby. Nothing matters but money.”

Chapter Seventeen

It was an exclusive affair. The other men and women present alongside her made Nell feel like an old hag.

They were all, every last one of them, gorgeous creatures.

Exquisite.

And available for purchase.

What had alarmed Nell most of all was how civilised everyone appeared. Customers dined lavishly before the event commenced, and remained sitting at their tables as the sale started, the auction being the after-dinner entertainment.

Nell watched each one of her fellow participants go up for sale until it was her turn, shifting awkwardly in her seat whilst she did so. Her fractured ribs had been fused and treated, but if she sat still for any length of time they ached with a vengeance.

This is no worse than being a prisoner of war
, she told herself firmly.
Stay alive; stay alert; stay ready to make good your escape.

No one had been cruel, as such; it was the situation that was cruel. Unbearable, insufferable and inhumane.

“This next lot needs little introduction. Anyone at the recent Council gathering will no doubt remember the marvellous scrap between the GEF Commander and the notorious Woodson Rowe.”

She was shoved forwards. They had dressed her in a nasty, gauzy little shift identical to those worn by the other lots in the sale. She looked and felt ridiculous.

Nell balled her hands into fists. If anyone laughed at her, she would deck them.

“Has her mind been wiped?” It was a surprisingly cultured voice. Nell scowled in the general direction of its owner.

“That is a good point. Was the
mindelve
done?” another asked, in a rougher tone this time. “And has any tagging been removed?”

“No,” the auctioneer stated apologetically, “she is untouched. But, then, think of it as not only something to enjoy”—he pulled a knowing face and tapped his brow at the person who had spoken—“but a head packed full of critical Fleet information. To the right person, a fantastic package, I think you would agree.”