Rystani Warrior 04 - The Quest (18 page)

THE NEWS WAS bad. Horrible. After making love, eating, and sleeping in the mansion, Kirek let the real world back in by flicking on the vidscreen. Gripping pictures of devastation coming from the planet Zenon had both Angel and Kirek putting their own difficulties aside.

Zenon, the pride of the Federation, was a smoking hulk of a planet. The famous architectural cities that resembled masterful works of art had toppled. The giant spaceport that had been capable of landing thousands of ships simultaneously had melted into a lava sea. One moment billions of beings had been going about their lives, working, loving, and learning—and the next, every facet of civilization had ceased to exist.

Federation scientists speculated that someone had activated a geothermal explosion that had tapped the planet’s core heat and melted the crust. Nothing could survive the tremendous heat. Billions had lost their lives, and almost every Federation world had lost diplomats, visitors, families. The devastation of the Federation’s capital planet threatened the stability of the galactic organization.

“The Zin are behind the massacre.” Sickened by the devastation, Kirek had no doubt who was responsible.

“How do you know? Couldn’t this have been a natural disaster?” Angel asked, her face ashen.

Kirek’s tone was grim, his emotions bleak as he checked the computer system and collated data. “Just before that geothermal weapon ignited the core, a wormhole opened up, the same kind of wormhole the Zin used to send a virus to Earth less than a decade ago. Besides, who else would want to take out Zenon?”

“Are you certain about the wormhole?” Angel asked.

“Several starships in the area took readings during the attack. Since the first wormhole attack, many planets installed warning buoys to set off alarms to detect wormhole activity. Those alarms went off, but they didn’t give enough warning to evacuate an entire planet.”

Angel’s face paled even further. “Even ships in orbit melted.”

“Who else but the Zin would give no warnings?” Kirek checked his data. “The disaster wasn’t natural, and no other race in the Federation possesses the kind of technology necessary to open a wormhole and heat up a planetary core until the crust melts.”

A drone flew over Zenon and sent back images. The great cities were no more than smoking slag heaps. Gigantic parks, precious art, a proud people, and their history had been wiped out as if they’d never been.

Angel stared at the vidscreen, her eyes full of shock and anger. “There’s nothing left. Why would even the Zin do such a thing? The crust won’t cool for thousands of years. The planet is now just as useless to them as it is to us.”

“To the Zin, a thousand years is the blink of an eye. The virus they tried to spread through the galaxy would have killed every living plant and animal. They are relentless, ruthless. If not for the Sentinels—the giant machines the Perceptive Ones built and left behind long ago to keep the Zin from invading—we would not have lasted this long.”

Angel’s voice dropped to a whisper. “It’s hard to comprehend so much destruction. So much evil.”

“Zenon may have been a test, and now that the Zin have succeeded in taking out the Federation’s capital, they will strike again.” Kirek rubbed his jaw. Although his home world was nowhere near Zenon, he ached to contact his parents. He wanted to see his father’s face, look into his mother’s eyes, and make sure they were safe. He wanted to go over plans with Tessa and Kahn, but now more than ever, he needed to maintain a low profile.

The Kraj were still on Dakmar, and after he and Angel left the safety of the mansion, they would once again become targets. In the two days they’d hidden here, they’d slept, made love, and rested. Only the utmost self-restraint had kept him from showing Angel his true feelings. Although she readily came into his arms, she remained touchy about her emotions, and he had to face the fact that she might never admit she wanted him for more than just a fling. Clearly she didn’t feel the same connection to him that he did with her.

Angel needed space, and he would give her as much as possible. So he forced himself to curb his natural tendency to pursue, to insist, and to demand that she recognize she had feelings for him.

With the Federation capital a slag heap, Kirek might have to rush his plans. He had most of the pieces in play, but he was still waiting for one item of essential equipment to reach Dakmar.

Kirek had also pulled every string he could to expedite the
Raven’s
repairs. Without Angel’s knowledge, crews had worked day and night, with specialized teams on each section, and thanks to skilled workers and the greasing of many palms, the
Raven
was almost ready to go.

Kirek wished that Angel would never find out what he’d done to her ship. So far her crew had assumed the repairs were what she’d ordered and hadn’t contacted her. But when she returned to the ship and learned what he’d done, she would see his act as a betrayal. Yet he’d had no choice. He could not go up against the Zin without every advantage he could muster—even if that meant testing his relationship with Angel to the limit.

That he knew she considered the
Raven
her sole responsibility couldn’t alter his decision. However, after she learned that he’d gone behind her back and altered her precious ship, he’d be lucky if she didn’t shove him out the nearest airlock and leave him in deep space.

He should have found a way to tell her. But the mission was too critical to take a chance that he’d be able to change her mind. Besides, he hadn’t wanted anything to intrude upon their rest until necessary. Their lovemaking meant too much for him to detract from it, and although she might see his choice as dishonesty, he’d seen too much hardship during his life not to want to steal moments of pleasure and happiness when he could. He’d hoped their lovemaking and time together would bridge the emotional chasm between them.

But his plan hadn’t worked. He supposed once she’d learned what he’d done, she’d hold that against him, too.

He would cope by keeping his love for her to himself. Telling her would likely send her running away.

And while this time they’d spent together hadn’t turned out as he’d planned, it might have still forged a bond between them that she couldn’t so easily break. Although he hadn’t again used his psi to show her the emotions she usually repressed, he could see by the gleam in her eyes and the curve of her lips that she was softening toward him.

Angel stared at the news coming out of Zenon, her blond locks messy and adorable in contrast to the tense lines in her shoulders, her eyes narrowed in fierce resolve. Kirek would enjoy nothing better than to place his hands on her shoulders, to rub out the knots of tension, and kiss her until they both lost themselves in pleasures of the flesh. Too bad he didn’t have a month, or a week, or even a few more days to spend alone with her without other obligations.

Within the hour his contact would land on the darkest quarter of the moon. As distracted as Kirek had been by Angel’s lovemaking, and now by the catastrophic news about Zenon, he made himself focus on his mission and called up three-dimensional holomaps of Dakmar’s nightclub region. Residents called the nasty quarter of the moon “The Peel” after one notorious knife fight where the victor had skinned his opponent in the street in front of a mob. No one was safe in The Peel—not without bodyguards, heavy armor, and lots of credit to pay one’s way out of trouble.

Angel glanced at his vidscreen. “Why didn’t you pick a more reputable place for the meet?”

“It wasn’t my decision.” Kirek’s psi itched at his nape, a sure sign of trouble, but his contact had been reliable until now, and his information credible
…
if expensive. Kirek didn’t mind paying for accurate intel, but in this quarter of the moon, a man had to go in with the expectation of encountering attempted murder, robbery, or at the very least, a brawl.

“I’ll watch your back.” Angel picked up a stunner from a cache left by the mansion’s owner and strapped it to her gorgeous thigh, handling the weapon as casually as some women donned jewels.

The leather holster against her shapely legs made his mouth water. He recalled those long legs wrapped around his waist, her nails digging into his back as she urged his hips to move faster. The idea of a beautiful woman like Angel going into that den of misfits caused every protective instinct to flare into the hot zone.

He folded his arms across his chest. “You aren’t going anywhere near The Peel.”

“Of course I am.” Her tone remained matter-of-fact as she shoved a knife into her boot and altered her suit to hide her tan legs with a skintight black that outlined every curve. “You’ll need my connections to get past the outer sector.”

“You’ve been in The Peel before?” Kirek frowned at her. The combination of a thigh holster strapped over the too-revealing black pantsuit was an image of feminine curves and lethal weapon that repeatedly drew his gaze. Kirek would have objected to any woman who looked as sexy as hell walking into the grittiest, nastiest section of Dakmar, but Angel had just made love to him, and by all Rystani moral codes that made her his responsibility.

Too bad she wouldn’t see it that way. Although he knew she could handle herself, he wouldn’t let her go into danger to watch his back.

She strapped a second stunner on her other thigh. “The Peel is not my favorite place for a date. The food bites, the men are slime-sucking slugs, and the women are body-sculpted predators, mercs at their worst.”

“Mercs?”

“Mercenaries.”

Angel would be tempting every bad element. “You’re staying. I’ll get there on my own.”

She lowered her neckline with a psi thought, revealing enough cleavage to make his mouth go dry. “And here I thought you had more intelligence than a sand flea. Didn’t you hear the part about the
female
predators?”

“Excuse me?”

“You need me.”

“I don’t.”

“Fine. Go get yourself killed and let the Zin take over the galaxy because you don’t know the secret handshake.”

“Secret handshake?”

“You don’t know the culture here. You don’t know who to pay off and who to slug and who means business. You won’t take five steps into The Peel before you’re marked for scraping.”

“Scraping?”

“A local custom where two gorgeous women pin the mark so a third can take him down. After the scavengers finish with you, there won’t be much left for the botcops to scrape off the street.”

“I think I can defend myself against a few determined females.”

“Oh, really?” She advanced, her hips swaying. “You can’t even defend yourself against me.”

“I can’t?” He raised an intrigued eyebrow.

But Angel wasn’t coming on to him—she was challenging him, and he didn’t understand why. She might be in shape, but her muscles were no match for his. Neither was her psi. But unless she was bluffing, she believed every word she’d spoken. Kirek had known women warriors with extraordinary powers. Skilled in ancient Terran martial arts, Tessa could take on most men with her bare hands and her psi. There wasn’t a man alive who could match Dora when she linked to a computer.

Angel stepped closer, and he breathed in her citrus scent. Her chest rose and fell enticingly with every breath, drawing his gaze to her breasts. “I suppose you think these babies are lethal weapons?”

When Angel’s hands dropped to caress her gun grips, he realized his mistake. He refocused on her guns and noted they shot projectiles and weren’t stunners as he’d first assumed. “What are they?”

“HGLs. Hypnotic Grenade Launchers. All I need to do is pop one off anywhere in your vicinity and you go to la-la land.”

“My suit’s filters—”

“They don’t require air and they only take out
men.
We
could both take a hit, and you would go down, and I wouldn’t notice a thing.”

“Really?” He’d never heard of such a weapon.

“The techno-geeks have created an electromagnetic wave that fries male neural networks. I don’t know exactly how it works, but the major principle has something to do with a male chromosome that makes you vulnerable.”

Kirek had faced death many times, but the idea of the grenade damaging his mind made him uneasy. If the women on Dakmar could so easily render him unconscious, he
would
require Angel’s help, although he wasn’t quite ready to admit it.

“What exactly would happen to me if a grenade goes off?” he asked with a frown, wishing she’d move her hands away from the weapons.

“Some men dream sweet dreams or wake up with a raging headache and there’s no damage. Others don’t remember so much as their name or their past, including families and friends. Some don’t wake up at all. Apparently, the geeks have yet to fine-tune the grenades. Either that or they react differently on different species.”

“What’s the detonation radius?”

“Ten to twelve feet. About three meters.”

He set his psi shield to register an alarm if a grenade penetrated the critical area. But while he might evade one or two grenades, if they encountered trouble, he might face dozens of HGLs.

He considered her statements. “If I agree to let you accompany me, I could still get hit by a grenade.”

Angel rolled her eyes at the ceiling, then released a heavy sigh. “Women on Dakmar won’t mess with me. If we’re together, they’ll leave you alone.”

“Why don’t they mess with
you
?”
he asked, suspecting he really didn’t want to hear her answer. As much as he admired a woman who could take care of herself, he preferred she’d never have to defend her life. Angel had implied quite clearly that she’d placed herself in dangerous situations, ones that might give him nightmares.

“The time before the
Raven’s
last landing, a man by the name of Jaz tried to switch in shoddy materials on the
Raven’s
repair work for the top-quality
bendar
cannons I’d commissioned. Petroy and I tracked Jaz into The Peel. He got word of our arrival and set up an ambush. He lost. I recovered my cannons. Word got around.”