Page 7 of The Intergalactic Duke's Inconvenient Engagement
Chapter 3
Would’ve been easier to feel like a conquering hero if the hostages hadn’t been hiding from him.
Raz had let the security-officer second in command take point—he had to establish his leadership but he wasn’t going to be stupid about getting in the professionals’ way—but the crewman controlling the scans announced the interference from the singularity’s emanations was worse and they’dhave to split up to continue their search.
“I’ll take His Grace to the last pinpointed location,” the sec-off second said. “Rendezvous at the shuttle on my mark.” They synchronized their dat-pads while Raz watched impatiently.
Not that he thought anyone was coming to steal his station or His Grace’s glory, but…
With the second in his wake, he strode toward the location they’d last seen thehostages’ life signs. Not all space stations had atmospheric filtration enhancements—life support conservatories—since the cold and vacuum of space was decidedly unkind to most living biomatter, but Blackworm had apparently wanted only the best for his hostages. Or accomplices, depending.
Raz grimaced. It didn’t really matter which these Earther females were. His only task was to send them backto their closed world to face whatever justice or compassion they deserved while he claimed the station by right of interstellar salvage.
His Insolvent Grace, the Reluctant Pirate. What a larfing mess. Irate, he slammed though the gate to the central conservatory, the security officer scuttling on his heels.
The conservatory was only partially planted, leaving wide empty swaths. No hostageshiding there. He canted one eye toward the singularity hovering over them, theGrandiloquenceshining off to one side. Maybe Captain Nor would fire on the conservatory, vent them all into space, and end this last-ditch effort to preserve the duchy.
The black hole pulsed silently, and Raz sighed. No such luck.
As he turned his attention away from those mysteries, a flash of white caught his eye.
He spun toward one of the thicker patches of purple-leaved wood. “Come out,” he called, pitching the universal translator in his head to English. The exotic sounds made his tongue itch. “I’m here to rescue you.”
Or throw them into theGrandy’s brig, if they were Blackworm sympathizers. Whichever.
He strode between the large empty planters toward the scant purple forest. “We scanned your presence,so there’s no use hiding,” he continued. “Blackworm is in prison and not coming back. If you want to keep eating—and breathing, for that matter, because this station is going to be pieced out for salvage—you need to show yourselves.”
He supposed he could blast the little forest to purple kindling—that would get them moving.
“Who is Blackworm?”
The voice that rang from the trees was an uneasyharmony of fear and defiance.
He remembered those twisted feelings as he’d watched the Azthronos homeworld recede into his childhood.
Savagely squelching the pointless reminiscence, he took a few more slow steps forward, not wanting to spoil this first contact. “Blackworm is the one who took you from your home and brought you here,” he said gently. “He is being punished for his crimes, and nowyou are free.”
While he would never be free again.
“How do we know you’re telling the truth?” A slight figure peeked between the purple fronds. “How do we knowyou’renot this…Blackworm?”
He tilted his head, his patience starting to fray. “Because I’m saving you,” he reminded her. “Unless you’d rather stay here.”
Earth was a closed world, deliberately kept in ignorance of the wider universe’ssentient, spacefaring civilizations until the more primitive planet could be trusted with the knowledge of millennia’s worth of advancements. But at leasttheyweren’t intergalactically in debt.
The Earther female who hesitantly edged out from the leaves couldn’t appreciate his predicament, of course. She had her own problems. The wariness of her barefooted step and the way she clutched the too-shorthem of her smudged white shirt to her thighs as if she could make it cover more told him she was innocent and desperately wishing she wasn’t here, not one of Blackworm’s converts.
He eyed her. Although she was barely dressed and obviously distressed, her brown hair tangled in a cloud around her wan face, she didn’t seem in any immediate danger of collapsing. Which was a good thing since he alreadyhad a collapsing duchy. Her wary dark eyes glittered in the invisible wavelengths of light beaming from the singularity, making her look like some wild creature from the myths his mother had read to him as a child before sending him away.
He hadn’t known anything about the planet Earth—so called by various of its indigenous populations with truly remarkable unoriginality—before he’d receivedthe rescue call but he’d quickly reviewed the available information. And this Earther female appeared to be a typical specimen: bipedal, bilaterally symmetrical, mostly smooth-skinned except for that snarl of hair on her head. And maybe elsewhere?
Not so different from Thorkons, if lighter boned and shorter. Almost delicate compared to him. His impatience faded. It wasn’t her fault his systemtour was a disaster so far and the ghost-mead he’d downed last night was so strong.
To play down his stature, he brought his shoulders together and ducked his head. “It’s all right, soonyili,” he said soothingly. When his translator fumbled the Thorkon word, he tried again. “I’m here now, little honey-bird.”
She blinked at him. “That does make it easier to take you down.”
He frowned. “Takeme down where?” He was already practically kneeling so as not to intimidate her with his superior size and status, and he wasn’t going to debase himself any more. The space station probably had sub-levels below the conservatories, but he didn’t think she meant that. His universal translator hummed in his head, rapidly trying to decipher her meaning from her simple native language. Togo downonsomeone was apparently a sexual act on Earth, although he hadn’t reviewed courtship rituals on her planet, and anyway that seemed injudicious considering the very recent nature of their introduction—