Lara opened her eyes and frowned. It was all wrong---the gray metal ceiling,
the bunk. She was not in her dorm room
on Velran where she went to sleep the previous night. She sat up slowly, her head feeling unusually
groggy. She blinked and willed her brain fog to clear and looked around the
room. Nothing looked familiar, except that it reminded her of the Sential
Trader, the star freighter that had brought her family to and from Velran when
she was a child.
Then she saw him.
She blinked a few times to be sure he was real. A young, dark haired man sat on a chair in
the corner of the room, watching her intently.
His arms were crossed over his chest and his long, muscular legs
stretched out in front of him crossed at the ankles. He had longish dark, almost black hair and
piercing green eyes like her own. He was handsome, almost beautiful, tall, with
perfectly defined musculature. Maybe too
perfect.
How could he even be real? She couldn’t feel him. His mind was total closed to her, a high
level telepathic psion. But he was
real. He gave her a half smile as their
eyes met and it was clear he found her attractive in her brief tank top and
shorts nightwear.
Lara glared back at him. He must be a Tregan she realized. They were the only humans a telepath like
herself couldn’t read. That meant she was in a bad place and this gorgeous hunk
of a man could not be trusted.
“Hey, don’t look at me like that. I’m locked in here same as you.”
“Why? Who are
you?” she demanded.
“The name is Xaver.
I’m a Federation Agent.”
“Liar! You’re a Tregan!”
“Well, yeah.
Second generation, born on Lux Fe.”
“A rape child?”
“Not my fault. Somehow, they missed my sperm donor
when they were passing out contraceptive implants. He was killed when the Federation took back
Lux Fe…probably deserved it too.” Xaver
admitted.
“I’m surprised she didn’t abort you,” Lara snapped.
“Yeah, me too---when I found out. She probably would
have had she known,” Xaver sighed. “She
thought I was her dead lover’s child. When she did find out, she already loved
me as her son. By then my sperm
donor was probably dead or off to Penta Prison world.”
“If you’re a Federation agent, why am I here---and
where is here?”
“We are guests on a Tregan held freighter bound for
Earth. I was undercover and they found
out I’m a double agent. We’re in the
brig.”
Lara shuddered.
“Oh, Goddess! Oh, Goddess! Why?”
“They want you for psi factor,” he said.
“But, I don’t have psi factor, and I don’t know what
it is.”
“You are psi factor---at least they think you are because
your parents are psi-mates.”
“Well, it won’t do them any good. It’s a genetically recessive trait.”
“They are going to use you to find out. Me, they will
probably execute---after a few days of torture to see if they can find out what
I know.” The last was uttered with a flippant bravado.
“Oh, no!” Lara was still unsure whether he was telling
the truth, had no way of knowing except the expression on his face and in his
eyes. The thought of this beautiful male, whatever his origin being tortured
disturbed her.
That he was a Federation agent could be true. Her father’s friend Delmran, chief of covert
operations on Oltarin, told them they had second generation Tregan engineered
agents. The odds that he was just a Tregan agent posing as a Fed were just as
great. If what he said was true, he might possibly be her only friend
here. If not, it probably wouldn’t make
any difference to her.
“How long have I been here?” she asked.
“Two days. They
kept you drugged until we got off Velran. We’re about two months from Earth.”
“I can’t go to Earth! Mom says that place is a hell
hole. I’m supposed to be in
classes. There must be a way out.”
“There’s a crew of fifty on this ship and even if we
could get to the shuttle bay, we are almost out of range to reach any planet.”
He explained. “We could die in space before anyone could rescue us, or the
Tregans could catch us before we could be rescued. That wouldn’t go well for either of us.”
“Zugham!” Lara swore.
“Sorry. Our
best bet is to sit tight until we’re groundside on Earth. Then maybe we could
get away and contact the Feds from the Starport.”
“But that’s two months! Two months and I will have to start the
program all over again!” Lara’s voice rose with each word. “Why the hell didn’t you stop them from taking
me, Federation agent.”
“I couldn’t blow my cover. I’m only one man against fifty. I’m sorry, Lara. As it was, my cover was blown anyway.”
Momentarily, the door slid open and four large men
stepped inside. One was carrying a tray
of food that he set on a fold out table by Lara’s bunk. The other three surrounded Xaver.
“On your feet traitor. Mendla has some questions for
you and you better have the right answers.”
Xaver didn’t say anything and Lara couldn’t see his
expression through the wall of Tregan flesh that stood between them. She saw
his feet move as he apparently stood.
One Tregan led the way and the other two flanked Xaver as the door slid
opened. It closed as soon as they exited.
Staring at the closed door, Lara shuddered, wondering
if she would be next. Now that Xaver was no longer a distraction, she looked
around the room. It was a Spartan freighter
cabin with one large bunk, a bathroom, and a small entertainment console. She
got up and crossed the room to check the storage cabinets. Empty. At least they could have brought some
of her clothes when they kidnapped her.
How inconsiderate! All she had
was what she was wearing. Two thin pieces of fabric between her and nudity.
She felt a draft as the air exchangers cycled, and the
smell of food wafted to her nostrils. It
smelled palatable, making her realize that she was hungry. With nothing else to do, she went back to her
bunk and sat down on the edge to eat.
There were warm protein bars and some kind of thick, green vegetable
soup. She ate the protein bars with her
fingers and drank the soup from the plastic bowl. No eating utensils were provided. They were
probably afraid she would try to use them as weapons.
She almost laughed.
A knife, fork, spoon against even one of those hulking Tregans. They
were twice her bulk. Even her expertise
in chackrin wouldn’t be much good
against them. Even a swift kick in the
genitals wouldn’t subdue them for long. She would need a real weapon to do any
permanent damage. Unless they landed
somewhere, she had nowhere to go even if she could escape the makeshift brig.
After she finished the meager rations, she sat down in
front of the entertainment console.
Before she turned it on, she closed her eyes and opened her mind to see
if she could sense any normals or psions. Nothing on or off the ship as far as
she could sense. They were already too
far from Velran for her to reach anyone except a psi mate there with her mind.
But she had no psi mate and probably never would. The odds were against it. She didn’t care anyway. There was a boy, now a young man, back on
Oltarin her first love. If they still felt the same way when she returned to
Oltarin in five years, he would be her mate---if she ever returned. Her eyes filled with tears, as she realized
she might never see her family again.
But she refused to cry and blinked them back. As long as she could stay alive,
she had a chance.
With nothing else to do, she turned on a holodrama,
and half watched as her mind raced.
About two hours later, two Tregans dragged Xaver into the room and
dropped him on the floor. He grunted as
he hit the floor but didn’t move until they were gone. He turned on his side
and moaned. Lara gasped as she saw his
face and his bare torso. His face was
beaten and bruised with a cut over his eye and his nose apparently broken. There
were bruises over his ribs as well as burn marks from electroshock sticks. Xaver started to get up but collapsed to the
floor.
“Goddess, Xaver!”
She hurried to him and squatted down beside him. “Let me help you.” She reached under his arm and gripped his
hand with her other one to help lever him up as she pushed up with her
legs. He was every bit as heavy as she
expected. Though not as bulky as the
full blooded Tregans, he was big and solid, head to shoulders taller than Lara;
and Lara was a tall woman. It took most
of her strength to get him into the bunk, even with his help. Even then he fell
heavily on to the semi-soft mattress with a painful groan.
She hurried into the bathroom, hoping for some first
aid supplies or pain meds. All she found
in the storage cabinet were a few course towels. She took out a small one and wet it in the
sink. She hoped it would be soothing. After
what they had done to him, she seriously doubted he was one of them. They didn’t
just rough him up to make it look good.
They had really hurt him. Lara
was pretty sure he had some broken or cracked ribs as well as his nose.
If he weren’t half Tregan with a full mind shield, she
could heal him. So she did the only
thing she could and sponged his cuts and bruises with a cool, moist towel.
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