Skyla knotted a fist at her side, feeling foolish in the scintillating bejeweled battle armor. Worse, it reflected like a broken rainbow across the banks of computers. "Keep at it. We've got until tomorrow to get him down here to entertain that pus-gutted buffoon." Turning, she stalked out into the central corridor, caught a shuttle, and sent it streaking to her quarters.
She palmed the latch and stormed into her rooms with a boiling anger stewing in her heart. As the door snicked shut behind her, she allowed the other thoughts, the unthinkable ones, to surface. What if one of the assassins had finally gotten him? What if somehow, some way, someone had penetrated his security and. Rotted Gods, no! Her anger ebbed to be replaced by a fear she hadn't experienced in years.
She took a deep breath and held it, counting slowly until her racing pulse slowed. She unsnapped the helmet collar and ran her fingers along the sharp-angled jewels to release the suit. She peeled out of the lower half and glared at a pink welt of scar tissue running jaggedly down her leg. The healed wound had finally begun to lose the reddish tinge. Close call, that one.
To cover a budding fear, she forced herself to inspect her body in the reflective
surface of her suit rack. Not bad for thirty-five years of war and mayhem — and not a little battle damage in the process. True, some of the more damaging scars had been surgicaly corrected. And she kept herself fit — as if Staffa's Wing Commander could conduct herself otherwise.
Staff a. Where in hell are you? She moved to the comm and tried his quarters again. Worry fermented. "Damn you, Staffa. What are you doing? If this is another of your training drills…"
She dropped on the sleeping platform and laced her long legs into a lotus position. Back straight, she closed her eyes and slowly reviewed each conversation she'd had with him. Her unrest grew as she remembered his preoccupied expressions; the underlying tension in his body and posture; and the dissatisfaction in his voice.
The Praetor. It all goes back to that damned hospital room. Staffa, you can't see it because it's all in your mind. You think you're acting normally, but your thought processes are all screwed up.
She placed those thoughts to one side, called for a computer access. She scanned the medical records and cursed. She made another patch through.
"Psychology department, Andray here."
"Has the Lord Commander been in, Andray? Has he taken any of the prescriptions we talked about?"
"Negative, Wing Commander."
She cut the connection, patched through to security, and traced Staffa's every movement since she'd seen him last. She split the screen and noted each instance where Staffa had come in contact with people, asking for an update and security clearance for those personnel present. Two hours later, she'd drawn a negative. She had traced his path up to the time the Ashtan CV had left from a pharmaceutical
supply drop. Thereafter, no one had seen him. He hadn't accessed comm.
Could he have been abducted on the CV? She called up the records and watched the security files. Not once did the pilot leave the craft. Prom each of the cameras she watched the entire drop, never seeing the slightest impropriety, not even a hint of breached security.
Besides, unless they knocked him cold, not even a group of men could take the Lord Commander without a considerable disturbance. That gray combat armor could absorb a small blast. Only his head would have been vulnerable to a dart or gas.
Next she cataloged the arrival of the Sassan delegation with the same attention to detail. She even went so far as to monitor their conversations in the executive quarters she'd provided. The Legate, Myles Roma, talked nervously about Staffa's failure to meet him. She sneered when the Legate began talking about her, and shut it off when he got to the graphic details.
"Terguzzian maggot," she whispered. Unbidden, her mind formed an image of Staffa, gray eyes clear, body spare and lean. She remembered the intelligence in his eyes, the slight quivers at the corners of his mouth as he hid his humor from the others. Curiously, she recalled the way his face had looked when she had awak&ned in the hospital unit that last time. Idly she rubbed slim fingers across her palm. It came to her suddenly that he'd had his armored gloves off. His skin had been pressed against hers. How warm it had been.
She growled to kill the sensations the thought roused.
A wry smile curled her lips. Staffa — no matter how perplexing — was at least a man! Rotted Gods, am I going to have to pander to that Sassan pollution for long? If he tries to touch me, I'll break his maggot-eating neck.
"Get your thrice-cursed ass back here, Staffa!"
The Praetor… the Praetor… it all started with the Praetor. She stood and walked to her kit. The plastic cartridge felt cool as she pulled it from the bag. Turning, she walked to the dispenser where she drew a bulb of Myklene amber ale. She tapped the cartridge against her hip as she settled on the bed and cupped the ale. As she drank, she studied the gray plastic record chip in silence.
An hour later she continued to stare at the enigmatic cartridge. "If he hasn't shown up by this time tomorrow," she promised. She adjusted the gravity on the sleeping platform and ordered the light out.
Skyla stared into the darkness, rethinking each of the potential explanations for Staff a's disappearance. Aware of the tape, she realied her fingers were tapping anxiously against the fabric. Efforts at sleep proved fruitless, images of Staff a in danger drifted out of her subconscious. A deadly foreboding rose from the primitive depths of her mind:
visions of Staffa dead, his gray eyes popped from his head, blood spiraling, crystallized in decompressed corridors.
"Rot it all!" She sat up, the lights brightening at her movement. "Fantasies of the mind, Skyla. You're batty as a ring-nosed teenager!" Angered at her irresolution, she took the cartridge and slipped it into the comm. Her finger hovered over the button that would run the tape.
Before she could act, a voice from comm startled her. "Wing Commander Lyma? This is Comm Central."
"Thank God, you've found Staffa? Is he all right?"
"No, ma'am. We still haven't located the Lord Commander. We've just received communications from the security monitor beacons, ma'am. A Regan Imperial cruiser has emerged from light jump and is decelerating. They are asking for docking permission. They report they bear an official envoy from Tybalt the Imperial Seventh, and request an audience with the Lord Commander at his convenience."
"Holy Rotted Gods," she sighed wearily. "First the Sassans and now Rega." Her fingers knotted as she considered the ramifications. "Very well. Grant them permission. Let's see. Put them in at dock 16-A. That should couple with their lock design. Have staff make a blood-and-thunder preparation of the quarters — as far as you can get them from the Sassans. By the Etarian heretics, I hope they don't murder each other. If you can find any of the Companions still sober, we need another honor guard — and detail some of them to patrol the guest quarters. I don't want any trouble from either Sassa or Rega — and they'll have plenty of spies with them."
"We're on it Wing Commander. We'll keep in touch."
"Never mind. I'm getting dressed. I'll be right down."
She slipped into the jeweled armor again, pulling the tight
cloth over her legs and sealing it. Her worries about Staffa built. The two empires had reacted faster than even she had suspected. Both sides, reeling from internal strife, were anxious — unprepared though they might be — to plunge into a cataclysmic final confrontation.