Victorious Star (13 page)

Victoria followed Ravnos to his appointment chamber, silently cursing the damned stockings and the minuscule skirt she had to wear. At least her hair was properly restrained, though Seht had taken great delight at tying a huge bow at the tail end of her braid.

Ravnos held the door to his chamber open for her, allowing her to step past him. “Take off your coat.” He unbuttoned his own.

Victoria unbuttoned her long coat and couldn’t help but feel exposed. Once again he had refused to let her wear a brassiere. She slid the coat from her shoulders and her ringed nipples rubbed against the silk of her shirt within the confines of her brocaded waistcoat with alarming intimacy.

Ravnos handed her his coat. “Go hang these on the coat rack by my desk.”

Victoria went to do as he asked.

Ravnos brought the velvet chair from the other side of the chamber to his desk. “Sit here.” He angled the chair so that it faced his chair.

Victoria sat gingerly in the chair. It was soft, but her entire nether region was still more than over-sensitized. To add insult to injury, the skirt was so damned short it rode up practically to her crotch, and neither male had let her put on panties.

She eyed her location from her seat and noted that the angle of the velvet chair to Ravnos’s chair allowed for a clear and frank view straight up her skirt. She crossed her legs primly and immediately regretted it. The position made her ringed clit throb. She set her jaw, determined to ignore the pulsing in her crotch. She was not in the mood to accommodate Ravnos’s need for a cheap thrill.

Ravnos dropped into his desk chair and activated his data-com. The holographic display bloomed in the air above it. “You’ll need all our current information on the
Mordred
station.” He uncoiled the interneural data-link and held the multi-pinned plug out to her. “I’ll direct-feed all the data to you.”

Victoria moved her hair to the side and plugged the data-link into the jack set in the base of her skull. Her holographic halo bloomed dimly around her head. Determined to ignore Ravnos’s stare, she closed her eyes, accessed and integrated.

The ship greeted her with a comforting flow of information.

Victoria sighed and released herself into the ship’s welcoming bath of pure information. She presented her query and the ship replied with the complete schematics of the
Mordred
station.

For a mercenary-owned operation,
Mordred
station was immense. Despite being a traveling space station, the
Mordred
contained a complete class-four gravity-enabled biosphere encasing a small city ten miles across with residency levels just about that deep. The center three levels were registered as being purely machine access only.

Three docking rings encircled the biosphere at twenty-degree angles from each other. Altogether, the rings were capable of holding up to five hundred medium to small craft. The very top and the very bottom of the station could each direct-dock one capital-sized ship, though a ship that large would dwarf the station badly.

One entire ring was dedicated to the mercenary troop that owned the station. The ring contained docking for the entire home fleet complete with ship repair and manufacturing operations. The ring also housed permanent quarters for their troops with a training facility and a state-of-the-art augmentation hospital.

Victoria frowned in concentration. The
Mordred
was closer to a heavily armed capitol dreadnought than a mere space station. Destroyer cannons bristled from all three rings, representing enough stationary firepower to defend itself from a medium-sized Imperial attack fleet. Once you added the fighter squadrons docked there, the anti-missile laser array, and the laser deflection field, you were looking at one hell of an impossible target. The
Hellsbreath
wouldn’t stand a chance against it. They would have to resort to stealth to get anywhere near it.

“Have you accessed the
Mordred’s
data?”

From far away, Victoria heard Ravnos’s question. “I have.”

“Can you get me a list of who is currently docked to the station?”

Victoria focused on Ravnos’s request. “I’ll need to tap the station to get into the individual ships.” This was going to take some tricky maneuvering. The
Hellsbreath
was on the far side of the moon, and the station was on the far side of the planet. She was going to need some way to relay the data.

“I have an SP series Katherine stealth communications relay drone.” Ravnos turned to his holographic monitor. “You can use that to jump-relay data from the station to the
Hellsbreath.”

Victoria raised her brow. “You have a Katherine drone?”
Now that’s interesting.
The Katherine drone was supposed to be exclusive to agents of the Imperial intelligence agency.

Ravnos shrugged. “Amazing what can be found on the black market.” He typed at his keyboard, accessing data. “I also have a few carrier codes to make our tap look like a routine maintenance inquiry, so we don’t set off any alarms.”

Carrier codes too? Oh that’s right, he’s a programmer.
Victoria decided quite firmly that she really did not want to know any more of his secrets than she had to. She sent her request to launch the drone to Seht on the bridge. He didn’t question her odd request, merely relayed the command to engineering.

The drone rocket launched from the
Hellsbreath
in under five minutes and it slid from the quantum reality field without incident.

Victoria smiled. The Katherine drone flew with old-fashioned rocket fuel; no engine to knock offline.

Less than two minutes later it became a tiny dot silhouetted against the vast surface of the other side of the moon.

Victoria applied Ravnos’s codes and slid into the communication network for the
Mordred
station. “Intercepting communications. One moment, please.” Everything she intercepted was encrypted, of course. Victoria smiled.
Not that big a difficulty.
Interestingly enough, the
Hellsbreath
possessed a vast store of decryption codes. “Proceeding with download.” She sifted the intercepted communications through the codes and began sending a list of ships and personnel to Captain Ravnos’s desk display.

Victoria’s brows rose. The names and designations of the crew for the Imperial ship were pretty damned obscure for Admiral Moraine’s personal shuttle - except one, his nav-pilot.

Kazi Sakata was the most war-decorated nav-pilot in the Imperium. It was said that to cross her in battle was nothing less than suicidal because she would win at any cost. She had won two of her battles by spearing her ship right through the enemy command ship. They called her the
Kamikaze,
the Divine Wind.

Victoria shivered. Although they had never met, she had a strong suspicion that Kazi “Kamikaze” Sakata might prove to be a problem, should they run across each other on the station.

Combining her creative talents with the ship’s mathematical expertise, she was able to decrypt several more ships and add them to the list. Unfortunately she could get nothing more than a planet designation on fourteen of the ships currently docked, and four of those were
skeldhi
.

“That’s all I was able to get, sir.” Victoria resifted through her information then opened her eyes. “There was no trace of any communications from or about the
Arcane.
Are you sure it’s there?”

“It’s there,” Ravnos turned to look at her. “You just gave me a complete list of every ship docked, with registries on 227 ships and planet designations on the rest. Are you always this thorough?”

Victoria’s brows shot up. “It’s my function to be efficient.”

“Your function.” Ravnos snorted and humor made a brief appearance, though his lips did not even hint at a smile. “You’ve been spending too much time with machines and not enough time with people.”

Victoria raised a sarcastic brow. “Machines make sense, people don’t.” She closed her eyes and slid back into the data flow.

Time was not a consideration as Victoria processed and relayed data for the entire ship while investigating and downloading the data she needed. She multi-tasked without thought or effort, barely registering Ravnos’s other queries and Seht’s requests from the bridge for ship-wide status reports. Communications buzzed throughout the ship, some encrypted, some not, but nothing to cause alarm. Everything moved through her array along the proper channels with the proper access codes.

“Victoria,” Ravnos’s voice was barely more than a whisper.

“Yes?” Victoria’s awareness surfaced from deep within the flow of data and shifted back into her own body. She opened her eyes.

Ravnos was lounged back in his chair with his legs spread wide, displaying an impressive erection straining at the seam of his trousers. “Hungry?”

“What?” Victoria tore her gaze from his blatant display and suddenly realized that she was slouched in the velvet chair with her own legs splayed wide. Painfully mortified, she jerked upright to cross her legs. Fate only knew how long she’d been providing him with a no doubt entertaining view.
Perverted bastard.

He eyed her efforts to recover herself and his lip curled briefly in obvious amusement. “The yeomen will be bringing the mid-day meal in half an hour.”

Victoria frowned. “You brought me out half an hour early?”

“Go ahead and disengage the link.” Ravnos tilted his head toward the door. “Seht is on his way down. He says he has a plan to get you on board the
Arcane.”

“Oh.” Victoria uncoupled the interneural link from her skull-jack and held the plug out to Ravnos.

A knock came at the door.

“Come,” Ravnos called out. He coiled the link and set it on his desk.

Seht walked in carrying a box wrapped in black cloth. His shoulders were slightly hunched within his long coat and his mouth was set in a grim line. He was clearly uncomfortable about something.

Ravnos rose from his chair and sat on the edge of his desk. He motioned for Seht to take his chair.

Seht shook his head in refusal. “I’ll stand.” He looked over at Victoria. “How many
skeldhi
ships are docked at the station?”

Ravnos crossed his arms. “Four.”

“Four.” Seht closed his eyes. “Damn.”

“I couldn’t break their communications encryption to get their names or the crew list,” Victoria added.

Seht dropped his chin. “It doesn’t matter. I can guess who they are.”

Ravnos tilted his head. “You said have a plan?”

Seht sighed. “I do, but you won’t like it.”

Ravnos’s mouth thinned. “Go on.”

“As
Deshryt
Seht of Skehldor, no one will think twice if I attend the auction; I’ll be just another
skeldhi
noble. In fact, the
skeldhi
party will likely be expecting me.” Seht flashed a brief, tight smile. “Under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t miss an auction like this one.”

“Good idea.” Ravnos nodded. “Your personal barque is jump capable, so you can pass through the ship’s camouflage.”

“Yes, however.” Seht visibly swallowed. “You know as well as I that there is only one way that a human can be in the company of a
skeldhi
prince.”

Victoria started.
Seht is a prince? What the hell is a
skeldhi
prince doing on a ship commanded by a human?

Seht put the box on the desk and pulled away the cloth. The box was about a foot by eight inches long and only a few inches tall, sleek, black, and unornamented in any way.

Ravnos slid off the desk and his eyes narrowed to frigid slits. “What exactly is that?”

Victoria’s senses went on alert. Something was very wrong here.

Seht placed his hands on the desk to either side of the box and held Ravnos’s icy stare. “It is exactly what you think it is.”

Ravnos’s voice deepened with restrained fury. “That is a
shen?”

“Yes, it contains a
shen.”
Seht nodded at the box. “In fact, this is a complete procedure kit.”

Ravnos spoke with venom. “And what do you intend to do with -- that?”

Seht frowned at the box. “If Victoria is to get past the guards and into the
skeldhi
enclave, she will have to go through the procedure and wear the
shen.
There is no other way.”

Victoria frowned.
Procedure? And what the hell is a
shen?

Ravnos shook his head firmly. “That is unacceptable.”

Seht released a breath. “Good. Let’s blow the ship and leave.”

“No!” Victoria came out of the chair. “You can’t blow the
Arcane!”

Ravnos glared at her. “Do you even know what Seht is suggesting?”

Victoria balled her fists. “He’s suggesting that I accompany him as one of his staff.”

Ravnos leveled a cold stare at Seht. “He is suggesting that you accompany him as his slave!”

Victoria swallowed. “What?”

Seht shot a narrow look at Ravnos. “We call them
rehkyt.”

Ravnos focused on Victoria. “A
shen
is the obedience collar a
rehkyt,
a slave, wears.” He turned his glare on Seht. “I’ll let you explain the
procedure.”