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  “You are Terran?”

  “We are from many planets,” Caitlin responded. “Earth is our home base. From where do you come, Captain?”

  Chakai lifted her chin in pride. “We are Amazeen!”

  “Amazing?” Caitlin questioned, deliberately mispronouncing the name. Had she seen the look of horror pass over Iyan McGregor’s face, she might well have lost her nerve. “You’re a new race, aren’t you? An amazing race of beautiful women. From where do you come, Captain? I’ll bet you’re from Scorpio Five, aren’t you? I’ve never been there. Tell me: Is it true what they say about Scorpion women? Are they really-?”

  “Amazeen!” Chakai snapped. “We are Amazeen!”

  “Guess that’s one of the mining colonies I’m not familiar with.” Caitlin sighed. “Do you-”

  “Why did you wait so long to answer our hail?” the Amazeen captain shouted.

  “You are an unknown entity, Captain. We had to ascertain whether you were friend or foe. We are a vessel of women and as such prey to those more powerful than us.”

  “How many males are on board your vessel?” was the waspish challenge.

  “We are an all-female crew,” Caitlin answered. “How many males are you carrying in your crew?” Chakai’s eyes widened. “We have no males on board our ship!”

  “Just out for a turn about the sector, are you?” Caitlin drawled. She sat forward in her chair. “Wanna come over and play with us, Captain?” She licked her lips. “You look like a woman who could use a little fun.”

  It was as though Caitlin had reached through the vid-link screen and slapped the Amazeen captain. The woman recoiled, horror filling her dark green eyes. With her chin even farther in the air, the tall woman looked down her regal nose and pure venom filled her voice.

  “We,” Chakai emphasized, “are not of that bent, Lady!”

  “Oh,” Caitlin said, disappointment rife in her voice. “We were so hoping you would transport over and we could have a little, ah, party. I am especially fond of redheads. I could show you some tricks I learned on Venus that would-”

  “You are disgusting!” Chakai proclaimed and the link between the two ships was terminated.

  “So much for the ol’ boldly going where no man has ever gone before, huh, Cait?” Helen quipped as she closed their end of the connection.

  “They’re speeding away like someone put a firecracker up their butt!” Barb laughed. “They’re at warp 4

  and climbing!”

  “That was a very dangerous thing you just did,” McGregor said as he walked up to Caitlin’s chair.

  “Did you want her to board us, Captain?”

  “How did you know she wouldn’t blow you out of the sky?”

  “I didn’t.” Caitlin sat back in the chair and let out a long, nervous breath. “But if what Khiershon tells me is true of the Amazeen, I took a chance they would not harm a crew of other women.”

  “I pray to the gods that bitch and her crew do not take a swing by Montyne Vex.” Caitlin hoped so, too.

  Captain Chakailooked at her second-in-command. “I feel as though I should take a sonic shower to rid myself of the slim of that Terran’s lewd suggestion.”

  “I, too, feel disgust, Captain,” Lieutenant Cirolia Sern admitted. “Such sinfulness is most distasteful.”

  “Increase our speed, Ensign Deon. I wish to put as much distance between our ship and theirs as possible.”

  “Do you think they were heading for the wormhole?” Major Akkadia Kahmal asked.

  Captain Chakai shook her head. “The Terrans do not know of the anomaly.”

  “But would they know of Montyne Vex?” Major Kahmal asked.

  “It is on their solar charts, but that part of the Sinisters, as they call it, is strictly wasteland.”

  “Do you think they will have explored the planetoid?” The Major’s voice seemed filled with concern.

  “Ventured into the caves on the plateau at Deckle Point?”

  “Unlikely,” Chakai replied. “The caves are vast and unless you know exactly where you are going, you will become lost quickly. As for Terran exploration of the planetoid, there is nothing there to mine and the soil is not conducive for growth. If it can not be used, abused, and disposed of easily, the Terrans want no part of it.”

  “I am surprised they are this far from their normal trade routes,” Lt. Sern remarked.

  “They were a Medivac ship,” Captain Chakai reminded her second-in-command. “My thoughts are they were heading for the mining operation on Gemini Prime. Terran vessels do not venture into the No Man’s Land of Sector Nine.”

  “Perhaps we should raise the planetoid and check on our sisters,” Kahmal suggested.

  “And take a chance the Terran ship will intercept the hail?” Captain Chakai demanded. “That would be a foolish mistake!”

  “We are not that far from Montyne Vex. Let us journey there and make sure...”

  “And lead that loathsome crew of degenerates to our sisters?” the captain gasped. “Most assuredly not!”

  “The Captain is right Major,” Lt. Sern put in. “The Terrans are sitting right where we left them, no doubt watching to see where we go. If we tack toward the planetoid, they will want to know why.”

  “They will think we have a base there,” Captain Chakai stressed. “We dare not let them know there is something on Montyne Vex we wish to keep hidden at all costs!”

  “What do you think she meant about the women of Scorpio Five?” Lt. Deon asked. “Isn’t that where they mine plutonium?”

  “Perhaps the women there are mutants!” Captain Chakai chuckled.

  “Aye, perhaps they have six teats each!” one of the crewmembers joked.

  Major Akkadia Kahmal tuned out the conversations on the bridge of the Aluvial, aggravated by the joviality. She was distinctly uncomfortable about leaving the Terran ship in their wake. She was worried about whether or not the Terrans had reconnoitered Montyne Vex and if they had, what they might have found on the desolate planetoid.

  “Our sisters will have sealed the entrance to the containment cell as soon as they began to question the young Reaper, Akkadia,” Lieutenant Melankhoia Chanz said as she joined her friend.

  “I believe they would have unless in their excitement at capturing him, they were lax in their security.”

  “They would not have been so foolish.”

  “I know. It’s just that I am worried about Kaelia,” the Major said softly. “She is the last of my family.”

  “My only sister is there, too,” Melankhoia reminded her.

  Akkadia Kahmal nodded.

  “They will be there waiting for us when we return from our mission to Terra,” Melankhoia insisted.

  “They will rejoice with us when they see our fugitive in chains just as we will rejoice with the information they will have to give us.”

  “I pray they have been able to extract that information from the young Reaper,” the Major sighed. “I dread going home to Amazeen without being able to tell our Queen the whereabouts of her errant daughter.”

  “We will have the location of the Resistance’s home base, my friend, and we will have eliminated the last remaining obstacle to total supremacy of the female race before we fly triumphantly home,” Melankhoia encouraged. “This I know to be truth.”

  Akkadia shivered. She wrapped her arms around her. “I hope you are right, ‘Khoia.”

  “I know I am. Now, come. We must get ready to enter the E.S.U.” She reached out and took Akkadia’s arm. “Just think, Sister! When we wake, we will be within six hours of Terra!” Akkadia smiled. “Aye. That is all that sustains me, ‘Khoia.”

  “Then dream of the glory that will be ours when we return to Rysalia Prime with our tribute to the Great Lady!” her friend said.

  “Aye,” Akkadia agreed, her green eyes flashing fire. “I dream of nothing else.” Part Two

  Chapter Twelve

  Kamerone Creedug his hands into the pockets of his black jeans and hunched his sh
oulders. The wind was brisk and blew his shoulder-length sable hair across his face. Tossing his head to rid his eyes of the obstruction, he caught sight of the woman in the gray sweats again.

  He frowned and a low growl of anger from deep in his throat turned his amber eyes to molten gold.

  To the jogger passing Cree at that moment, the growl was enough to make the running man veer completely off the gravel pathway and into the pine thicket rather than come any closer to the scowling man in the black leather jacket.

  Cree was oblivious to the male jogger, but the woman walking behind him was another matter. He stopped, turned to confront her, and was not surprised to find she was nowhere in sight. He turned in every direction, but saw no sign of her.

  “Gods-be-damned hell,” he spat. His amber gaze swept the vista before him, missing nothing.

  To his left there was a family of picnickers seated on a tartan blanket. To his right were two college-age men throwing a Frisbee to their dog. Just ahead was a vendor peddling his wares to a young couple with a baby stroller. Nowhere did he see a tall young woman in gray sweatshirt and sweatpants.

  But she was here, he thought as he felt once more the quiver of expectancy travel down his taut spine.

  Just as she was each time he came to the park.

  Or walked down by the river.

  Or left the house he shared with Bridget and their son.

  Within the confines of his jean pockets, his hands curled into fists. He clenched his teeth, squinting with the force, in order to keep from howling with frustration.

  He turned his angry stare to a park bench and stomped over to it. With a snort of disgust, he sat down and braced his arms on the back, thrust out his long legs, and crossed his booted ankles. As though he had no cares in this world, he let his head fall back and seemed to be gazing at the bright azure sky overhead. In fact, he was scanning the wooded area behind him, searching for his shadow.

  He did not see her.

  Once more, she had simply vanished.

  With a long sigh of frustration, he raised his head and stared across the park knowing she would not return now that he had seen her tailing him.

  He clinched his hands and repeatedly rapped his knuckles on the park bench hard enough to bruise the flesh: the only outward manifestation of the rage building inside him.

  What was happening around him did little to calm his fury.

  He took absolutely no pleasure in viewing the scene before him. The commotion the Terrans made as they went about ‘having fun’ always managed to depress him. Here and there, families gathered at the picnic tables. Couples strolled hand in hand, stopping now and then to steal a kiss. Children played on the swings and seesaws and built castles in the sandboxes. Swans and paddleboat enthusiasts slipped gracefully across the glassy surface of the pond.

  It was just an ordinary day at an ordinary park in a little Southwest Georgia town full of ordinary people doing ordinary things to amuse themselves.

  And Kamerone Cree was just an ordinary shapeshifting assassin from a galaxy far, far away who could tear these ordinary Terrans apart with his bare hands and not think twice about the destruction.

  The man the Rysalian Empire knew as The Iceman wondered what the people milling about would think if he went into Transition right here before them. Unaware he was smiling nastily, he remembered a scene from an old Japanese sci-fi movie he’d caught on television a few nights earlier. His active mind envisioned the families stampeding in horror, trampling the picnic baskets and overturning the tables; the couples shrieking, the children being grabbed by their terrified mothers as the S.W.A.T. teams and National Guardsmen arrived in tanks and armored personnel carriers. He looked up through the lacy branches of the live oak and imagined the dive-bombing helicopters and the loudspeakers transmitting a warning to the park’s inhabitants to “Take cover immediately.” He laughed out loud.

  “Reapers don’t laugh, Cree.”

  Cree looked up. “This one does,” he stated with an arched brow.

  “Laugh and you’ll lose your edge.” The man sat down. Reaching into his coat pocket, he withdrew a crumpled bag of boiled peanuts. He offered Cree some.

  “Not on your life.”

  Tylan Kahn shrugged. “No accounting for taste with you creatures, is there?” He shelled a peanut and popped it in his mouth then sucked on the salt shell. “Betcha don’t eat chitlins, either.”

  “No more than I ate Diabolusian warthog steaks back home,” Cree commented in a droll tone of voice.

  “Grits?”

  “Wet sand?”

  “Collard greens?”

  “Grass clippings soaked in brine for a few hours?”

  “Fried okra?”

  “Oh, delightful,” said Cree. “I’d rather eat fried Serenian tuber worms!” Kahn grunted. “Okay, you didn’t call me down here to discuss Southern cuisine. What the hell was so urgent you had to drag me out here in the middle of nowhere, Lieutenant?” he demanded.

  Cree ignored the deliberate insult. Cree had been a Captain when he’d left what was left of Rysalia. “I’m being followed.”

  “By whom?” Kahn shelled another peanut, not looking at his companion.

  Cree shrugged. “My guess is an Amazeen bounty hunter.”

  Tylan Kahn’s hands stilled and he turned his head and stared at Cree. “You’re joking, right?”

  “Reapers don’t joke. They may laugh, but they never joke.” Kahn let that pass. “Tell me,” he ordered.

  Cree drew in his legs, lowered his arms from the bench back, and leaned forward, his clasped hands dangling between his spread knees. “I’ve seen her eight times in the last month and every time I turn to confront her, she disappears.”

  Kahn was watching Cree as the Reaper stared at the ground. “You’re sure she’s not a Terran?” Cree shook his head. “She was here awhile ago. Same woman. Tall, muscular, mean-as-hell look in her eyes.”

  The peanuts having lost their appeal, Kahn folded the top of the paper bag and stuffed the addictive treat back into his coat pocket. “Have you mentioned this to Bridie?”

  “I didn’t want to worry her.”

  “Wise decision.”

  “Glad you approve.” There were issues left unresolved between him and Kahn. Bridie was one of them.

  Neither man spoke for a few minutes then Kahn turned so he was facing Cree. “You knew this could happen.”

  “Aye,” Cree agreed. “I knew.”

  “I had hoped they would not follow us here. I had hoped calmer heads than my surrogate mother’s would rule and they would realize you had helped their cause, not hindered it. You never harmed one of their gods-be-damned women!”

  A muscle in Cree’s jaw tightened. “That isn’t true.”

  Kahn’s eyes flared. “What do you mean it isn’t true, Cree?” He had not told anyone about what had happened on board the Khamsin. Not even Bridget knew Konnor Rhye had not been alone on the starcruiser. She had been unconscious when the Keeper had placed her in the Khamsin’s E.S.U. so she had no way of knowing there had been four Amazeen warrioresses on board the ship with her and Rhye.

  “Cree?” Kahn questioned, an icy chill weaving its way up his spine. “What don’t I know?”

  “He would have killed her to keep her from me,” Cree said softly. “He was evacuating the oxygen supply in her E.S.U.when I beamed on board.”

  “And you killed the sonofabitch. I know all that.” Kahn remembered the blood splashed across the Reaper’s torn clothing when Cree had carried an unconscious Bridget onto the Vortex. It was obvious Konnor Rhye had not died an easy death. But then you did not steal what belonged to a Reaper and survive the theft.

  “He deserved what he got.”

  “Aye, but he wasn’t alone.”

  Kahn drew in a shallow breath. “There was an Amazeen on board my ship?” He hoped that wasn’t the case. If Kamerone Cree had slaughtered even one of the Multitude’s Elite, there was nowhere in the universe he could go to escape their wrath. />
  “Three were in the E.S.U.s and one was in the engine room when I beamed on board.”

  “Oh, sweet merciful Alel,” Kahn gasped. “Four of them?” The blood drained from his face. “Four, Cree?”

  “The one in the cargo bay came rushing in and tried to stop me from taking Bridget from the ship,” Cree said, his gaze wandering to the pond. “I knocked her out and put her in the E.S.U. in which Bridget had been sleeping, then I took my lady with me back to the Vortex.”

  “But not before you punched in the destruct code to destroy the Khamsin.”

  “Aye and the Amazeen along with it.”

  “By the gods, Kamerone, didn’t you realize you’d just signed your own death warrant?” Cree shrugged. “My death warrant had been signed two years before, Tylan. If I had allowed those bitches to live, they would have come after us. The Khamsin was equipped with plasma missiles capable of blowing The Revenant and The Vortex to space dust. I couldn’t take a chance the Amazeen would hesitate killing me because Bridget was on board one of the ships.” He turned his face to Kahn. “And you and the others as well.”

  Kahn closed his eyes. “You did what you had to do,” he acknowledged. “I understand that, but did you have to slaughter a quartet of Amazeen? We could have beamed them on board and brought them with us. Stranded them somewhere on Terra. Did you have to kill them?” Cree pushed up from the bench. “At the time, all I could hear were the screams of the Reapers who died in that cage, Kahn. My nostrils were filled with the stench of their burning flesh. Mercy was the last thing on my mind.” He shrugged. “At least they were asleep when they met the Gatherer. They were not burned alive.”

  Kahn shook his head. “This was not what I was expecting when you called this morning. You really know how to screw up a guy’s day, don’t you?”

  “They are out there,” Cree said, watching a Terran child skipping rope. “I can feel them although I’ve not been able to pick up psychic waves from any of them. They’re being careful to shield their thoughts from me.”

  “Them?” Kahn questioned, also standing. He probed the ether around them, his own advanced psychic powers coming into play, but felt no vibrations. “How many are we talking about here?”