"Excuse me?"
Fain stepped aside and flashed a grin at her. "Ryn's the one who helped Talyn apprehend Eriadne years ago when Cairistiona took the throne."
Heat stung her cheeks at the slight she'd inadvertently given someone she owed the universe to. Ryn had saved Talyn's life that day, along with their strike team they'd sent in to retrieve the queen who'd fled Andarion justice. A strike team that had comprised Morra and Qorach.
She owed this man everything.
"Forgive me, Lord Ambassador. I didn't realize that was you." Strange, she hadn't remembered that before now. The only thing she really recalled about that event was the danger Talyn had faced, his injuries, and that when the dust had finally settled, Cairistiona had been crowned tadara and Eriadne had been effectively quelled.
Ryn smiled without malice and in good spirit. "It was an exceptionally long time ago. Think nothing of it. I'm just glad I was there to help then and now.... Small universe, sometimes."
"Yes, it is. And I'd completely forgotten that The Tavali captain who helped them with their mission was related to the Caronese emperor."
Ryn gave her a playful wink. "There are days I'm sure my little brother would like to forget it, too."
She laughed. Handsome, refined, and suave, Ryn appeared to be an easy man to get along with. No wonder The Tavali had chosen him as their ambassador in dealing with the recognized nations and governments. Even though she knew Ryn came from a long line of Tavali outlaws and rogues, there was something innately trustworthy and honest about him. An air of jovial serenity that was quite contagious.
Ryn turned his attention back to Fain. "I do have shocking news for you, by the way. Guess who I have on board to join the confab at your Port StarStation..."
"No idea."
"Trajen Thaumarturgus and his vice admiral."
"You lie!"
"No, I swear on my father's immortal soul. I actually have him and his advisors heading in. Their ETA is seven days."
Gaping, Fain shook his head in total disbelief. "How?"
Ryn shrugged. "Sacrificed six goats and a virgin."
"That's all it took?"
Galene really wished she wasn't completely lost in this conversation. "Who's Trajen Ta...?"
"Tuh-mar-dar-gus," they said slowly and in a strange synchronicity, as if they were used to doing it for others.
Luckily, Fain elaborated. "He's a ghost."
Galene arched a brow.
"No, really." Fain held his hand up in an Andarion sign of honor. "He's the leader of the True Black Flag Nation--the first of the Tavali clans. They come out for no one and nothing. Ever. Total phantoms who operate under their own law code. By the time you see them, you're dead. Tray's more myth than reality. I honestly don't know of anyone who's actually ever seen him."
Wow ...
Like Fain, she was extremely impressed with Ryn's abilities to command such a person to their side. "How did you find him?"
"He came to me." Ryn grinned at Fain. "My grandfather's the one who fostered him into our Nation and he defected over to the Gorturnum a long time ago. I've known him all my life, but like you said, he's reclusive as hell. I haven't seen him away from his territories in decades. Apparently, his right-hand field admiral, Dagger, has a vested interest in this fight, and talked him into joining on."
"Damn, Dane. You are good."
"My mother is proud. Speaking of, I shall convey your news to the others. Have no fear, drey. They will know and none will be the wiser for it."
"Thanks."
Ryn struck his heart twice in rapid succession with a closed fist before opening it in a Tavali salute.
Fain duplicated the gesture then closed the channel.
"Feel better?"
He didn't answer her question directly. "You?"
"I'm not sure. You trust Dane?"
"More than most."
"Why?"
"I don't know much about him, and that says a lot in this community, given how high profile he is among The Tavali. He's kept his scandals down to none, and no one knows his business. What I do know, he's had several chances to move in on his brother's throne and never has. Same for his mother's Tavali chair and rank. He's a man of rare integrity who actually understands loyalty."
"You're right. That's a rare thing." Galene frowned as a strange expression passed over Fain's face. Even odder, a light seemed to flash behind his pupils, illuminating them and the iris of his eyes.
What the...?
"Buckle down."
While the female in her would have balked at a civilian male barking an order like that at her, she recognized a military command when she heard one. She obeyed without question as Fain went to the con and strapped himself to the command chair.
"What's going on?"
Before he could answer, the hailing alarm sounded. His ship answered for him.
"This is Storm Dancer. STA1-LY-8-GENC-NCOB-ORFC-Y."
There was a brief pause. "Serial and captain?"
Fain took over. "You have my UCC. I don't see why you need that, especially since you have yet to identify yourself or your business."
"We are a League cruiser on patrol in search of rebels against our nations. Now identify yourself or be arrested. You have three seconds to respond."
"Captain Chryton Doone. STA1-8LY-5831930-GENCX."
"Crew?"
"One organic copilot. One mecha."
"We need visual confirmation."
Galene's stomach heaved at that. There was no way they wouldn't know her face. She'd been prime commander of the Andarion Empire for almost a decade. Had dealt with The League more times than she could count.
We're captured.
Fain passed an evil grin toward her. "Trust me?"
"Have I any choice?"
He snorted, then hit the release on his seat. It shot back, suspending him in the middle of the control room in a thick plasma bubble.
Galene gasped as she realized what she'd seen earlier in his eyes when The League cruiser had arrived. Fain was the ship. Holy gods of Andaria. This was a technology every nation had been trying for centuries to perfect.
And The Tavali had it.
Stunned, she watched as he took absolute control of every part of the craft and went against The League cruiser and the fighters it launched against them. While the bubble he was in kept him cushioned, the impact was harsh on her, but she remained quiet so that she didn't distract him.
Fain cringed as one of the blasts got past his shields and struck his side. The bad thing about being hardwired to the ship was that he felt every strike against the hull as a physical blow to his own body. And in the back of his mind was the knowledge that Galene was with him.
She was in danger.
He was violating his oath to show her this technology. No Rogue was supposed to expose their neurobinders to any non-Tavali under any circumstance. But he couldn't maneuver the ship like this without a crew, and he wasn't about to let The League take her.
Laws be damned.
Life be forfeit.
The Tavali could take his Canting and his head if they wanted it. He wasn't about to surrender her to her enemies for anything. And honestly, he preferred to battle this way. It was much more personal. Like being in the Andarion Ring. Fist-on-fist. When connected to the ship, he was in space. He could feel the pressure of the vacuum pressing against the metal. It smothered him. And at the same time, it freed a part of his soul.
He saw all and nothing. The darkness and the light. It gave him an understanding of the vastness of the universe and how small he was in it. How extremely insignificant.
It was why most pilots couldn't pass the tests for Rogue. Why they cracked within a few weeks, or months.
Less than one percent of one percent could master the physical and mental stresses it put on the body. Never mind the synchronization process of bonding to the ship. It took a full year for the neuromapping of the brain and ship circuitry to merge into a unified whole. Another year b
efore a pilot could actually master the ship as part of the body.
Suicide rates were high among the Rogues, usually within nine months after that initial stabilization of pilot and ship--although a lot of them ended up as fatal "accidents" that were believed to be disguised suicides and not the operator-errors officially filed on the log books.
Eventual insanity rates were even higher. Rarely did they make it a decade before their brains frayed beyond repair, and most ended up in unresponsive comas. Fain was one of the few who'd managed to hold it together for any length of time. It was the only reason Venik had ever allowed him to live.
He'd thrown Fain into this as a joke, fully expecting it to kill him. He'd thought it hysterical irony to merge Fain with the very ship he'd been enslaved on. A cruel way to get back at an Andarion.
Yeah ...
It hadn't worked out quite the way Venik had planned. Never underestimate a Hauk's survival instinct, or the need to be the burr up the ass of anyone out to do him or her harm.
There was a reason Fain's family was legendary.
Fain turned and shot a blast at the League fighters as they closed rank around him. They had no idea what they were facing. They thought this was a divided crew.
Not a single living organism.
He skidded past them and headed back toward Tavali-controlled space. But it wasn't until he banked around the southern moon of Nebyla III that he realized something.
There were no Tavali reinforcements here. No patrols, and there should have been at least one.
He was flying dark.
Minsid hell. This had been a setup! Whoever had been transmitting those facts about The Sentella had done this to get Galene out here to contact them. They knew she'd leave the station to make a solo report to the Command where there would be no risk of her being overheard.
And like a fool, he'd headed straight into this trap.
Something proven as more League forces dropped in around him. They shouldn't have been here without a massive Tavali counterstrike. This entire sector should have been secured and locked down by Venik's troops. Only someone high up in their Nation could have pulled Tavali patrols back and cleared it for The League.
"Surrender your ship, Hauk. There's no need in dying today." The fact they knew his name further confirmed his suspicions.
He laughed at the order. "Haven't you heard? War Hauks don't surrender, giakon. We take our enemies with us to the grave." He dove under the cruiser.
And straight into a huge swarm of fighters.
Fain skimmed two and rammed a third. One of his engines sparked, causing his nose to bleed and his leg to go numb from the impact. Ignoring it, he twisted and dodged as another group came up on the side and from behind.
He turned to fire on them, then stopped.
For a full second, he couldn't breathe as he saw Chayden, Morra, Qory, and Talyn leading in a rescue team.
Galene finally made a noise of protest as she heard Talyn calling orders over his comm. "Oh good God, is that my embryo?"
Fain laughed at her term for her gargantuan son. "Yes, it is."
"I'm going to kill him!"
Fain fell back and let the others take over. Normally, he'd have stayed in the thick of it, but he wasn't supposed to be engaged in solo battle with a witherwin onboard. He could get into all kinds of trouble for this.
Even lose his ship and Canting over it.
And since there were Tavali in the mix, the best thing was to back off and disengage himself from the ship before someone realized he was flying Rogue.
As if Chayden suspected what was going on, he flew in to provide temporary cover and give Fain time to pull out from the neural connection. "Psycho Bunny to Blister, why don't you take your precious cargo back to camp and let the big boys finish cleaning house for you?"
Galene arched a brow. "Psycho Bunny?"
Fain snorted. "I have no idea why they call him that. I'm told he killed the last human who asked."
The lights on his console sparked before the hailing alarm went off.
Galene looked about nervously. "What's that?"
"Your embryo requesting landing clearance on my ship." Fain set the sequence for Talyn and Gavarian to enter the Storm Dancer's hangar bay, then freed himself from the psilinks so that he could manually control his ship.
The moment his seat righted and the connection severed, pain split his head in two. Agony sent him to the floor with a major nosebleed.
"Fain?" Galene rushed to his side to check on him.
He couldn't speak as he struggled to breathe. Damn, it hurt. That being said, he'd take the pain to feel her hands on his body as she rubbed his back to comfort him. To see the concern in her pale eyes as worry knitted her brow.
How sick was that?
"I'll be all right, Stormy."
She brushed her hand across his cheek. "You don't look all right. Are you sick?"
"I pulled out too fast. It happens whenever I sever the tie without the right sequence." He pushed himself to his feet. Honestly, he was shaky and weak. Sick to his stomach. Wiping at his brow, he was just getting his bearings when Talyn literally sprang through the flight deck door, threw his helm to the ground, and seized his mother in a fierce hug.
Talyn held her with her feet dangling well above the floor. "Are you okay?"
"You're crushing me."
"Are you okay?" Talyn repeated.
"I'm fine, but for the fact I can't breathe, tana."
Only then did Talyn loosen his hold. He took a step for Fain.
Galene grabbed him. "Don't."
"He endangered you. I think that requires a little limping on his part."
She shook her head. "I don't want to hear it from the likes of you, given how many years you've shaved off my life. Now behave."
The hostility in Talyn's eyes said that they'd be having words later.
Fain sighed heavily. Talyn was never going to accept him as his father.
Whatever. Familial scorn was what he'd been bred on. Nothing new there. He only wished it didn't hurt so much to see it on Talyn's face.
Ignoring it as best he could, Fain took manual control of the ship and headed them back to base while the others stayed behind to battle their enemies.
"Did you get a message through before you were attacked?" Gavarian asked as he moved to stand by Fain's side.
Fain nodded. "Barely. Why?"
"I don't know. Before we left, I heard something weird with The Tavali that I didn't understand."
"What?"
"Just another tail end of a transmission that said they needed to strip and bury Slag-wart's Canting. Any idea what they're talking about?"
"Yeah. It means to take my Tavali standing and remove me from citizenship."
Gavarian scowled. "Slag-wart is you?"
A tic started in his jaw as Fain gave a subtle nod. The term was one that instantly launched him to a level of violence he didn't often reach without Dancer or Darice being around and lipping off at him. If he knew who'd used it, he'd love to have their throat in his fist. "'Slag' is The Tavali term for a conscripted or enslaved member of a bound crew."
Or a whore.
"Then how do you know they meant you?"
How he wished he didn't. Unfortunately, there wasn't anyone else it could be. "Slag-wart is Venik's pet name for me, i.e., I'm the blister on his ass."
Gavarian arched a brow at the bitterness Fain couldn't keep out of his tone. "Then why do you fly for him?"
Acerbic memories surged as he tried to keep them buried in a place where they wouldn't hurt so much. An impossible task, really, but Fain was nothing if not a glutton for foolish endeavors.
"I wasn't given a choice." He wiped at the blood that continued to run from his nose. "When I was taken, Venik embedded a kill switch in my brain. One push and my head explodes like a melon. Either I do what he says, or I die."
Which, in effect, made him Venik's whore.
Galene gasped as those words horrified her. "Are
you serious?"
The dead earnestness in his pale eyes chilled her. "Last thing I'd ever joke about."
She couldn't believe his blase tone. "Who knows about this?"
He cast his gaze around the three of them. "You three, Venik, the surgeon who set it, and Syn, who tried once to burn or dig it out."
"And he couldn't?"
Fain shook his head at her question. "Had he gotten to it within a few days of the implantation, he might have been able to extract it. But it grew into my brain fast. Extracting it or burning it out now would kill me instantly."
So he was still enslaved to Venik, with no real freedom. That's what Jayne had hinted at when she'd said Fain's life hadn't been a picnic, either.
What else was he hiding?
"Why would Venik do that to you?" Talyn asked.
Fain let out an exasperated breath before he answered. "He thinks it's hilarious to own a member of the famed War Hauk lineage as his personal pet." He met Galene's gaze and the torment behind that blank expression made her stomach ache for him. "It seems Keris was right, after all. My only purpose in life is to serve as an attack dog."
Galene winced at his dry tone as those words took her back in time to when Fain had been accepted into the North Eris Medical Academy. He'd been so excited when their counselor had given him the news at school. Less than one percent of applicants were ever accepted into their prestigious program. It was the hardest medical school in the entire Nine Worlds to get into. And unlike her, Fain had done it without a prestigious medical family background to rely on.
He'd done it on his own, with no help from anyone. Just like Talyn's Felicia.
Ecstatic that his hard work and extra hours after school had paid off, Fain had run all the way home to tell his parents the incredible news.
When Galene had called him later, his happiness had vanished completely. He'd worn that carefully guarded, jaw-locked expression he always held around his parents, grandparents, and older brother.
"What's wrong?"
"Nothing."
His curtness had wounded her. "So what did your parents say about your acceptance letter? My father is thrilled to have--"
"I'm not going to med school with you, Galene."
"What? Why?"
"War Hauks aren't doctors. It was a stupid thought."
She'd scowled at him over the link. "I don't understand. You worked so hard to get in. You took all those advanced classes.... It's what you wanted to do. All you ever wanted to be."
Keris's bitter laughter had echoed in the background. "Don't be ridiculous. They only let him in so that they could brag about having a War Hauk on their attendance roll. Fain's an idiot. Only thing he's ever been good at is getting his ass kicked and being an attack dog. Last thing any Andarion wants is something as dumb as him treating them when they need a real doctor."