11
They’d flown hard and without stopping except to refuel. Every time they did, they heard the same grim and hard news. The Federation had embarked on a legacy of utter ruthlessness. Their campaign was cruel and their retribution unchecked.
The Federation had gathered all of its ships and those ships were dropping neutron bombs on every system that had denounced the Federation. Entire systems had winked out of existence.
Lornia stood in the small chamber she’d been assigned with her face turned toward the cleansing chamber and her heart heavy. She’d wanted company for so long, and now that she was constantly surrounded by people, she often felt weary and confused.
They thought she was carrying the weapon with her. She had yet to tell them that she was the weapon. She had yet to decide if she truly wanted to be that weapon, and while the weapon as it had been had had no choice once commanded, she did.
She was still a being with a heart and a mind and a conscience. She still didn’t trust Drake either.
He was so charming and kind when he chose to be, but he was also a man endowed with an ambition that oozed out of him. She started a bit as a knock sounded on the door. She had not yet undressed for the chamber, so she called out for whoever was on the other side of that door to enter, and immediately regretted that as the door slid open to reveal Drake standing there.
His handsome face always sent flutters racing through her belly, and that happened again as he said, “I haven’t seen you today and wondered if you were all right.”
The door still stood open. He had not crossed the door to enter her chamber. Common sense told her to tell him to go away, to leave her be. Her body cried out for her to ask him in.
She cleared her throat, trying to fight back that raw and powerful attraction that lay between them. That he felt it too was no secret to her. That neither of them had done anything about it spoke volumes about how little she trusted him or wanted to know him.
He was the man who would cause her to kill millions—and even if those deaths were necessary, there was another purpose she must serve as well, and that purpose was one she would never tell him because she did not trust him—or any of his kind.
Drake stepped into the room. His head tilted to one side. “Lornia? Are you all right?”
She looked away fast. Dammit, he was too close. Her body was betraying her. That dream came rushing back as it did every time she was in his presence, filling her mind with vivid images of the two of them entwined on the narrow bed that lay just to her right. “Yes, thank you. I’m just…I don’t know how to be near so many people yet, I guess.”
“I understand. If I were you, I would have probably run screaming the first day.”
The words caught her off guard. “You would have? You don’t strike me as someone who would run from anything.”
He didn’t. Drake shrugged, “I sort of feel like running away from this war. To be honest, I didn’t imagine the Federation would start blowing up entire systems and now that I know that they will, and are, it’s…I can’t believe they’d be that ready to destroy so much just to hold onto that power of theirs.”
She drew a little closer even though she knew that was a dangerous thing to do. It was like being a light gatherer, one of those tragic and doomed creatures that always flew too close to the flames, and died as a result. “You seem to want power.”
He didn’t look away. His gaze was forthright and open. “I don’t know that I want power that much. What I want is to be recognized.”
His eye contact broke. She knew then that he had said something he had not meant to say, had never said to anyone. Her hand came out of its own volition and touched his arm. Little shocks ran through her system. “Because?”
He drew a breath in. His hand came up and rested on hers. The heat of his skin warmed hers and sent little shivers running up and down her body. She knew she should move away, right then. But she didn’t. She didn’t because she didn’t want to.
What she wanted was him. She wanted to know if that dream of hers had any basis in reality; if she had seen something that would be or should not be.
He said, “Blade’s my brother. You know that. He’s my half-brother. Our father was a general in the Federation and Blade was on his way to being a high-ranking officer until the Federation did something that turned them against them. That’s his story to tell.
“But he left, and my father arranged it so that it seemed as if he had died. I thought that then I could rise in the ranks of the Federation. Bastards, illegitimate children, are not allowed rank. It’s Fed rule.”
She saw the pain in his eyes, and it hurt her to the core. “I see. Even with him supposedly dead, that did not happen.”
“It could not happen. All my life I have been the bastard. I had to go to the academy as a bastard, which meant I would be an officer due to my birth, but always a lower ranking one no matter how hard I worked or succeeded. I saw those with less aptitude get the promotions that I wanted so badly simply due to their births, and myself passed over because of mine.”
How unfair. His race had some odd notions of what was right. Children were a blessing, no matter their lineage; at least they were in her race. Her race did not often bear children though, and from what she knew of humans, they had the ability to reproduce almost wildly. Perhaps that was the difference.
“You felt lessened by your birth.”
His smile was bitter. “I was lessened by it. There was no feeling that way to it. Blade was a top-level student. I always had his record to live up to. I always had him to live up to. Not in the wider world, that thought he was dead…”
“But in your father’s eyes.”
The words lay between them. Drake nodded. “Blade was one hell of a criminal. The best in the universe. Assassin, thief, rebel. He was larger than life and even as my father hated the things that he did, he admired the man who had done them, and I always seemed to fall short somehow.”
