Whispers in the Dawn (6 page)

He sighed and clasped his hands together before he unclasped them again and ran his fingers along the hard wood of the chair’s arm. What exactly had happened? Was her passing out a ruse to get into his quarters? No matter how innocent she’d appeared, he’d sensed a strength about her that hadn’t registered during his first impression of her.

He pressed his lips together, then sighed. She was getting to him in a bad way, with her beauty and his lack of sex for months and months. He unbuckled his belt and unzipped his trousers. Good heavens, he wanted her…but if he couldn't have her in this moment, there were ways to take care of matters. He lay down against the seat and pulled his hardening cock from his pants. The tip was moist with pre-cum. Gently at first, he began to pump the shaft, starting at the root. Up and down with rhythmic movements. Then harder and harder. His breathing almost stopped, and he forced himself to gasp for air, but his hand didn’t stop. Faster and faster.

How his thoughts whirled around in his head. From Odessa’s beauty to her bared thighs to her inviting glances. She was shy, yet not so shy that she couldn’t make love to him. He was sure of that. The notion turned him on. The seconds passed as his muscles tightened with yearning. When his orgasm came, his ideas shattered and he settled down, spent, his mind eased of its torture. Wondering about her had turned him inside out. He refastened his clothes, raked his fingers through his hair…and now it was time for business. Wasn’t it?

His indecisiveness ended as he rose and slapped the ‘speak’ button on the screen on the dining table. He refused to lift the towel and allow prying eyes into his quarters. He hated to seek information this way, but how else would he find out if anyone knew what Odessa was doing on the space station?

“Ralph,” he said, without showing emotion. “Find out if Roland Baylon’s ship has been located yet and what his destination is.”

“Yes, sir,” the man replied with a hint of rebellion.

Harley nodded and shut off the speaker. If the Murrach were listening in, he wouldn’t think anything was amiss if Harley was searching for the woman. Minor things went wrong all the time on Romaydia. Harley hazarded a guess that the end result was still the same, in Pardua’s opinion. As long as the miscreant was caught, there would be no harm, no foul. Harley had been given several bonuses in the last year and had personally been congratulated but the end of the mission was still in the future.

He wanted Odessa to tell him where Baylon was, and not only bring down Baylon, but Pardua as well. All the pieces of the complicated puzzle weren’t yet in place. Pardua wasn’t a man who made many missteps. When he did, his underlings paid the price with their lives. Those were the men who usually spilled the goods on their Lord. However, dead men didn’t volunteer information.

Perplexed and agitated, Harley ran his hands over the sides of his head. He was alone here on the station, the only good guy among thousands and thousands who routinely trafficked drugs or stolen merchandise or pimped. He felt dirty and cheapened in his quest for revenge. Isolation wasn’t a bad part of his life, since he didn’t want to associate with non-criminals—that type of action alone would raise Pardua’s suspicions and Harley might be dead within the hour.

The minutes ticked by. Harley paced back and forth across the confines of his room. Twenty steps one way, twenty back. He counted them before he got bored, fell to his hands and knees and began exercising with a vengeance. One hundred push-ups. Two hundred. The exertion often relieved the stress of waiting. Sometimes it didn’t.

The speaker rang. Harley was at the table before it could ring again. Uncovering the screen, he barked, “Yeah?”

“Here’s the info you requested,” Ralph replied in a voice that lacked inflection. Obviously, he was on auto-pilot. “The
Drifter
was logged in as leaving the station at 1100 hours. The captain of the spaceship left alone, but did not log a destination. According to the monitoring sensors, there were two persons aboard the ship when it arrived this morning at 0800 hours.” He glanced down, scanning a printout he was reading from.

“Did the passenger take quarters here, or did he leave?”

“The passenger is a woman, whose name is unlogged, but I’ve been able to discover is Odessa Grante from the planet Earth. Did you wish me to keep an eye on her?”

Harley didn’t like the sound of that. A sudden protective urge, like the one he had experienced in the concourse when the bullets had been flying and Odessa had been in his arms, overcame him. “I’ll take care of that myself.”

He resisted the urge to run his fingers through his hair. It was a sign of nervousness, and he couldn’t afford his actions being misinterpreted in case Ralph was a double agent primarily reporting to Pardua. Ralph appeared harmless enough, yet on Romaydia, the term ‘harmless’ had a variety of meanings.

“By the way, sir,” Ralph continued, “the Murrach thought you should know that the man who was piloting the
Drifter
was Roland Baylon. The Murrach asked me to notify you that he stole a valuable cargo of Gr’iis. We are in the process of searching for the ship to bring Baylon back with his cargo.”

Irritation set in. “Why wasn’t I informed of this earlier?” Gr’iis was the deadliest narcotic in the galaxy, able to destroy brain cells in a matter of minutes after initial use. If the widespread use of Gr’iis could decimate the galaxy’s young people, who would be left? Only those who used less harmful substances, like the one the Murrach used to control his people. Was Pardua behind the trafficking of Gr’iis too? At this point, the idea made Harley’s stomach churn. Pardua had to be knocked off his seat of power, but with his guards perpetually surrounding him and watching his every move, most men never had a chance to get near him. If they carried weapons, they were dealt with on the spot.

“The Murrach was only informed a few minutes ago, sir,” the man said, his eyes darting back and forth from the screen to something on his left.

So that’s why Pardua was searching for Roland Baylon’s passenger. Odessa was now probably on the Murrach’s ‘most wanted’ list. He had to get to her before the Murrach did, or else his hopes of reaching Baylon first to exact retribution would fail. He sensed that whether Odessa Grante knew it or not, she was the key to this operation. There was no telling what cruel method the Murrach would use to extract the information he wanted.

The implications were staggering. Harley hit the screen’s ‘off’ button. The Murrach would hide her away and either break her body or her spirit if he didn’t get the answers he wanted. On the other hand, Pardua might also use Odessa as a hostage to force Baylon to return.

Harley changed his black leather jacket for a navy blue windjammer. Pardua wasn’t kind to the women he captured and that fact bothered Harley more than he cared to admit, especially when that woman was Odessa.

Chapter Six

Odessa had no idea where she was headed as she threw the door open and hurtled down the corridor. How dare Harley think he could take liberties with her? How had she ended up in his room and in his bed?

She slowed her pace once she’d concluded he hadn’t chased after her, and made an attempt to blend in with the crowd milling about in the public area. Where would she go? Where was a safe place on Romaydia? She had been trapped in a concourse with no hope of getting out when she had decided to take the initiative and run. Dodging bullets had been preferable to staying in the passageway and having the air siphoned out of her lungs. She recalled seeing a man, who was barely visible, aiming a gun straight at her midriff. She’d heard the gun go off and knew without a doubt that the bullet had been headed straight at her heart. Everything had happened so suddenly.

The bullet had definitely hit her. Excruciating pain had seared through her, numbing her mind. Did she dare lift her sweater to take a peek at where the bullet had hit? Shouldn’t she be hurting? Or worse, dead? Or was her soul caught in the station’s atmosphere, forced to continue on as a ghost? Was her soul committed to wandering the universe’s byways until the end of time? Odessa didn’t think that was a possibility, but the last twenty-four hours had been the strangest she’d ever experienced. She pinched herself and yelped. She was real enough, given how the skin on her arm flushed red.

Odessa ordered herself to stop thinking melodramatically. She placed her hand on her stomach and pressed. Her hand touched flesh and didn’t pass through the skin. Why hadn’t the bullet killed her?

She vowed to find Roland and string him up for leaving her stranded. She paused and wondered who would be able to direct her to the Air Controller’s office. Should she ask a human or an alien? She decided she felt more at ease asking a human and scouted for an approachable target.

Her glance fell on a man who had dirty blond hair and appeared to be laughing. But he was wearing one of those helmets that had caught her attention earlier. Should she stop him? He was about to pass by, his eyes trained on the floor. Odessa planted herself in front of him, forcing him to come to an abrupt halt. “Can you tell me where the Air Controller’s office is?” she yelled, thinking he probably couldn’t hear much inside the helmet’s thick padding.

He lifted his head and gave her a glazed look, perhaps gathering his wits momentarily, and pointed behind him in a wavering gesture. Lowering his head, he continued on as if he had never been interrupted.

“Um, thanks,” Odessa said to his retreating back. She hurried off in the direction the lacklustre man had pointed, hoping he hadn’t misled her. The effort to haul himself from whatever had been going on in his helmet had appeared gargantuan.

The air stank of rotten eggs and dead dog. The station certainly didn’t smell like a flower garden.

Odessa ambled by several aliens grouped together, who spoke animatedly with small clicks. She would bet she’d really have to hustle to learn their language. Maybe it was like Earth Chinese, and next to impossible to learn without investing half a lifetime in the process.

She read a pointer sign with interest. In at least four languages, the low-key colours pointed her to the Air Controller’s offices. It was the sole signpost she had seen so far on the station. She headed in that direction.

Four or five minutes passed before she saw another sign in different languages stated that a particular closed door lead to the Air Controller. Relieved, she pushed the door open, which was as nondescript as the rest of the station. A flurry of activity, muddled voices in different languages and the smell of electronics assailed her.

“Well, lookee here. What do we have here?” a gruff male voice asked. A being with eyes too wide-set, and ears too large, appraised her from head to toe. It was as if an elf had come to life in front of Odessa’s gaze.

“Why don’t you keep your eyes in your head where they belong?” Odessa responded, outraged at his possessive mannerism.

The being leered. “Come on now, sweetheart. That’s no way to talk to a big man like me, is it?”

Odessa marched up to the waist-high counter and levelled a searing gaze at him. “Cut out the ‘sweetheart’ stuff. I want some information.” Trying to soften the harsh words, she added, “Then I’ll get out of your hair.”

Other beings, all male, looked up from their work and examined her with more than passing interest. The fine hairs on the back of her neck rose. Could Violette have been right when she’d said this office was no place for a woman?

Throughout the vast room, countless screens had yellow, blue, red and white paths that looked like those on an electronic circuit board. Were they interlinked parts of the station?

“Is that right? Hey, boys. The lady is going to get out of our hair. Whatcha think of that?”

“I don’t need any of your attitude. Just give me the information I need and I’m outta here.” Her skin prickled with goosebumps. Bad odours lingered in the room. Every pair of eyes seemed to be undressing her and each mouth was set in a hungry snarl.

“Now I got attitude,” Wide Eyes jeered. He leaned closer. She could smell his breath. The stuff he had been drinking was likely more potent than earth moonshine. No wonder he was behaving as if almost none of his brain cells worked. “Look, little lady. Why don’t you get that pretty body of yours back to your owner and flaunt it for him? Or you can do that for us. We won’t mind.”

Odessa was so outraged, she didn’t know what to think or say. Was he propositioning her? Violette’s words rang in her ears again. Had the woman been right that men only wanted one thing on Romaydia?

From the corner of her eye, she saw Harley amble in behind her, lean against the wall, and fold his arms across his massive chest. The rat had obviously followed her. He certainly had nerve. Hadn’t he got the message that she didn’t want anything to do with him?

“Lookee here, the Bagdareen cat cut out her tongue, boys,” Wide Eyes taunted.

Odessa ignored Harley. She didn’t know how she’d deal with him, but she would. “I need to know where a ship called the
Drifter
went, and what means I can use to talk to the bastard pilot.”

Another being, this one with a long, flat face, peered at her. “We all know how you can talk to him.” He fixed his eyes on her chest and licked his lips, as if he were anticipating an expensive meal.

Odessa glared back at him. “Keep your eyes to yourself. Tell me!”

Wide Eyes demanded, “Describe the ship.”

“Now, why would I need to do that?” Were they mocking her? She had never felt so helpless before. Harley hadn’t moved since he’d entered. Neither did he offer assistance, but then, why would he when he had only one thing on his mind? More than likely, he was awaiting the outcome of her single-handed battle with these jerks.

“It’s procedure. That’s all.”

Now she
knew
they were making fun of her. “Shove your procedure up your ass.” Was there no one else who could tell her where the
Drifter
had gone?

“What identification number does it have?” Wide Eyes asked, crossing his arms on the counter and ogling her.