King of Stars (Arcana Book 4) Read online

  “Where’d you hear that?” He decided to play it cool. He wouldn’t let her trick him into admitting anything.

  “I didn’t hear it anywhere,” she said, adopting a calm pose next to him. “I saw it. I saw you on Solaris Prime, and I was with you.” She was silent a moment before she put one hand on the table. “I admit, it’s just one of several possible futures, but it’s the one with the best outcome for you, me and the universe in general.”

  Son of a bitch. Julian did his best not to react, but this woman pushed every single one of his buttons.

  “Is it the possible future where I run my blade straight into that jit bastard’s heart?”

  He shouldn’t have said it. He knew it the minute the words left his mouth, but he couldn’t call them back.

  But she didn’t react the way he expected. She just watched him calmly.

  “Now that would be telling,” she said almost playfully, then withdrew her hand from the table again, her attitude more matter-of-fact than he expected. “Actually, you should know that there are certain ethical considerations with what I can and cannot tell people about what I see. In many cases, if you knew the totality of the future events that I see, you would do something to change them—usually in a bad way. It’s a delicate balance, but in this case, it’s safer for all concerned—especially you—if you don’t know everything about what I’ve foreseen.”

  “You just get to decide what to tell me, then? No discussion? No negotiation?” he challenged.

  “Well, I’m open to discussion, but ultimately, I reserve the right to use my judgment. I’ve lived with this gift all my life and I know from bitter experience how much is too much to know about the future.” Again her calm demeanor and response surprised him.

  She was unlike any other woman he knew. Well, except maybe for the rest of her family. Those Senna women were all a little loco. He decided to try a different tack.

  “Why do you want to go to the jit homeworld? Can you tell me that?”

  “There’s a man there…” she began, but trailed off.

  “Don’t tell me this is some silly romantic escapade.” He rolled his eyes.

  “Hush now,” she said quickly, sort of laughingly annoyed with him. “It’s nothing of the sort. The man is a holy man. A monk. I need to talk to him. It’s important.”

  “Important enough to sacrifice your freedom? Maybe your life? I can get you to Solaris Prime, but you may never come back.” He laid it out starkly for her, hoping to scare her off.

  She swallowed, obviously taking his words seriously, he was glad to see. But it seemed she was made of sterner stuff than he’d thought.

  “If that’s how this plays out, then yes. This is important enough to risk my life. It’s important not only to our galaxy, but to theirs. It’s a matter of nearly universal importance. And if I’m right, the monk will be expecting me. I think he’ll recognize me when I get there and I’ll be able to deliver my message in peace. What happens after that, really doesn’t matter. The message is the important thing. What happens to me after I deliver it, is secondary.”

  She was so serious. So willing to put her own safety aside for the supposed message she was so eager to deliver. It troubled him, though he couldn’t say why. It had been a long time since he’d cared all that much about what motivated civilians—even pretty, female ones.

  “Besides, you’ll end up on Solaris Prime sooner or later, the way you’re going,” she went on. “You might as well go now, get it over with, and help me accomplish my mission while you’re at it. Two birds, one stone, you know?”

  Julian thought about it for a long moment. He cursed under his breath and turned to her.

  “You can’t tell anyone of my intentions, you understand?” He would have threatened her if he thought it would do any good.

  “I have no intention of exposing your plans. It would be counterproductive to me getting where I need to go. That is, if you’re willing to give me passage. If you’re not, well… I’d have to think about it more carefully.”

  “Blackmail? Really?” This time he did curse out loud. “I can’t believe you.” He looked at the bar and saw Lila frowning at him. Great. He didn’t need to be subject to interrogation by the bar’s resident mother hen. “If I take you with me, you’ll keep your mouth shut?”

  Star nodded. “That’s about the size of it.”

  He was so screwed. He either went now—before his plans were finalized—and take a passenger, no less, or she would blow his plan sky high.

  She would tell Lila and Chip what he was up to if he didn’t agree to her terms. And then he’d really be sunk. Chip would stop him. No doubt about it.

  “Okay. How soon can you leave?” If he was going to be blackmailed into moving early, by heaven, he was going to move as early as possible.

  “How’s tomorrow? I just want to spend a few hours with Lila in case…” Star looked over at her cousin and a sad expression passed over her face. He was glad to see she was taking this seriously.

  “In case you don’t ever make it home,” he completed her thought. “Good idea. I have some accounts to settle up here on the station as well. How about tomorrow, at mid-shift break?”

  She nodded, swallowing hard. She was showing more emotion now that he’d agreed to her terms. Had she really thought he’d say no after the way she had threatened to expose his plans? Maybe this was a case of be careful what you wish for? Well, too damn bad. She’d put him over a barrel and he’d given in. Now she had to live with it.

  “I’ll meet you at your ship. Where is it docked?”

  “You mean you don’t already know? You haven’t foreseen it?” he quipped, not liking her much at the moment, though he couldn’t help being attracted to her even more, now that he’d seen her in action. The woman was sharp as a tack and not above blackmail. A female after his own heart, really, though he still didn’t like being forced into a corner.

  She rolled her eyes at him. “I don’t foresee everything.”

  “Well thank the Goddess for that,” he muttered. “Docking bay forty-two on Epsilon Concourse. You’re looking for the Matilda.” Damn. He hated the idea of sharing his ship with anyone. Especially a gorgeous woman with a taste for adventure, a body to die for, and a gift for seeing the future.

  “I hope you know what you’re doing,” Lila said to Star a few hours later, over dinner.

  Star was spending her last night aboard Madhatter Station with her cousin. She wasn’t sure if she would ever see Lila again and it was important to discuss what she had seen with someone who would understand. Lila, like most of the women in their family, had psychic gifts too.

  “You know how it goes. There are many possible futures where your pilot friend is concerned. If he has too much time to plan his revenge, it will succeed…and our galaxy will be plunged into even more chaos than we already have.”

  Star shook her head as she speared another bite of protein from the plate in front of her. They were eating in Lila’s private quarters behind the bar, which allowed them to speak freely. There was no better-shielded place on the entire station.

  “I’ve always admired your ability to guide your visions,” Lila said, surprising Star. “I’ve never been able to do that. They just come and I can’t direct them much at all.”

  “Well, it’s made me helpful to the General,” Star agreed, still enjoying her meal. “When he asked me to focus on the jit emperor, I kept seeing your pilot friend. And me. It was a bit of a shock. I’ve never really seen myself taking such an active role in the future before.” She put down her fork. “But no matter what, it’s clear I need to be there, with him, when he reaches Solaris Prime. I have to be on his ship. If not, we descend into an even greater war than the one we already have on our hands.”

  “There’s no other way?” Lila looked as worried as Star had been feeling since her visions of disaster had begun.

  “I’ve looked through all the possible futures and this is the only one with even a chance of working
out well. If I force his hand early—as I think we accomplished today—we might just be able to save this situation. Julian is too good a planner. Too good a soldier and strategist. If we wait until he’s ready, he’ll succeed in assassinating the emperor, no matter if I’m there or not.”

  “But what can you do? You’re not a soldier, no matter that you hang around with them all day long, working directly for the military. You’re just one woman—albeit a gifted one.” Lila was worried and Star loved her for it, but it didn’t change the facts.

  “I don’t really know,” Star answered honestly, a slight quaver in her voice. “All I know is, I have to be there.”

  Star spent the rest of the evening talking with her cousin about family and old times. They had all grown up together, a close-knit family unit of women with remarkable gifts. Early on, they had all tried different techniques to bring their gifts out even more, with only a few successes. Star was one.

  She was able to guide her visions a bit more than anyone else. She could direct them enough to be useful to others who might need her information. She could meditate on a specific thing—a person or event—and nine times out of ten, she would receive a vision that related directly to the thing she was trying to focus on. As a result, she had been recruited early on by the Special Operations branch of the human military. They had family there. Fathers, uncles and grandfathers had served with distinction.

  General Winters was her contact…and her relative. He had married into the Senna family, but he was well aware of the psychic gifts of the women of the Senna line, and used those who were willing, accordingly. Most were intelligence operatives. Deep cover operatives like Lila and Della. And Star.

  Only Star wasn’t usually sent out into the field. No, her ability to guide her visions made her a little too valuable to risk out in the real world. She spent most of her time at headquarters, behind a desk, or in her comfy, designed-to-order meditation chamber. That’s where she did her most valuable work, focusing on whatever the military brass said needed more analysis at any given moment.

  Meditating on the jit emperor was sort of a hobby. She turned to studying him whenever she was in between assignments. Usually, there wasn’t much to see. Endless state functions. The occasional war council. Personal events in his family. Arguments with his headstrong son, Tren.

  The war had been trundling along for years now with no major victories on either side. It was a constant in most people’s lives by now. Only a few alive today remembered a time before the jits had decided to expand into the Milky Way by trying to take it over for themselves.

  Only, the humans in the Milky Way had fought back harder and stronger than the jits had counted on. When all was said and done, the human military was a match for the jit armies. And the Enhanced soldiers who were on the front lines of the conflict, were humanity’s not-so-secret weapon.

  Oh, what the docs did to the men during the Enhancement process was a closely guarded secret. Even the men themselves didn’t know all the details of what was done to them, but the results were well documented. Faster, stronger, all-around better soldiers were the result of the voluntary Enhancement.

  There was just one catch. They were better in every way except one… Enhancement made them sterile.

  Chapter Two

  Julian was a retired Enhanced soldier, which meant he would never have children. As a young pilot being asked to volunteer for Enhancement, that hadn’t seemed like such a big deal. He’d had family then. Siblings to carry on the family name and interests.

  All that was gone now. An underhanded jit attack on Pacifica Station had seen the end of his family. When the station blew, it had taken every single person he loved with it. Julian was truly alone in the universe now, with no home, no extended family. Nothing.

  He couldn’t even have a child of his own, though he blamed himself for pissing that opportunity away. He’d been so eager to undergo the genetic Enhancement that would make him a better soldier and pilot. He hadn’t really considered the true cost of letting the doctors tinker with his DNA.

  All he had in the universe was his ship, and he treated her like the lady she was. Not necessarily the best looking broad in the shipyard, but she had it where it counted. She had heart.

  It was a lesson he’d learned the hard way with human women too. The knock-outs were nice to look at, but at the first sign of trouble, they took off. Tall and red-headed, Wendy Summers had been his girl for years, but when his family was killed and the family fortune—all based on Pacifica Station—went with them, she had run so fast, she’d left skidmarks. When he had needed her most, she’d been nowhere to be found.

  Since then, he’d been alone. Nursing his anger at the universe—and the jits in particular.

  Julian swore he’d have his revenge. He was laying plans to get it. He could be patient, but as soon as he had all the pieces in place…he would strike.

  Nobody knew what he had in mind. He wouldn’t consult his military contacts. This didn’t involve them. It was between Julian and the jit emperor. That bastard would pay for ordering the strike on Pacifica if it was the last thing Julian ever did.

  He fully expected it really would be the last thing he ever did, but he was okay with that. Without family, or even the prospect of building one of his own, Julian didn’t give a rat’s ass for his own survival. Being alone sucked.

  His family had been large and supportive. There had been a lot of love there—between his folks and him, his aunts and uncles, even his cousins. Everyone was gone now. And the only companion Julian had left was Matilda—his Mark 13 class cargo ship.

  He had christened her the Matilda soon after winning her in the courts, in honor of his late mother. He had even reprogrammed the voice interface, using samples of his mother’s voice from the many audio and vid files she had sent him over the years, along with the files that had been left for him in a bank vault far away from Pacifica Station.

  No one could scold like his mother, and he had allowed the ship’s Artificial Intelligence—AI for short—a little more leeway than he probably should have. He had programmed in his mother’s favorite exclamations from her messages, as well as a bit of her personality—or as close as the AI on the Matilda could come.

  His ship’s computer sounded like, and was modeled after, his dead mother. If any of the psych professionals in the service got a hold of that little fact, he was fairly certain it would disqualify him for future missions. It would also probably get him locked up in a padded room on happy juice. So he just let it be his little secret. Nobody came aboard his ship anyway. It was strictly a one-man operation.

  But now that had changed. He’d made an exception—he still wasn’t sure why—for Star Senna. The beautiful woman who had gotten under his skin, somehow, and knew his deepest secrets.

  She was punctual, he’d give her that. At the appointed time, Julian saw Star arrive on the video feed from dockside, looking uncertainly at the unassuming hull that had obvious—and not so obvious—weaponry scattered about its surface. The Matilda might not be pretty to look at, but she had it where it counted.

  Julian wondered idly if Star was the same. Did she have it where it counted, or would she freak out on him at the first sign of danger? Was she as tough as she seemed or was it all bravado?

  He had tried to get more information about her, but had run into roadblocks at every turn. Very familiar, very military roadblocks. Star was proving to be a creature of mystery, and he wasn’t sure if he liked that.

  Julian had sought out Chip, the man who ran The Rabbit Hole, a supposedly-retired Enhanced soldier like himself, to ask about Star. Chip was in truth, a highly-placed intelligence operative, but even Chip had been unable to say much about Star. He had passed along more of Lila’s reassurances about her cousin, but Chip had also been careful to point out that even he couldn’t get much more information than the basics out of his contacts regarding the lovely Star.

  Which said something all by itself.

  Julian w
atched her check out the ship before she presented herself at the dockside hatch that opened into the umbilical tube currently connecting Matilda to the station. He panned and zoomed one of the cameras to get a good look at her face. He wanted a moment to size up her expression.

  He read a hint of fear, a whole lot of resolve, and the swift glance over her shoulder told him she was concerned about something outside his camera shot. Julian was out of his chair before he knew it, racing down the passageway toward the hatch.

  “Matilda, open the dockside access hatch and allow the woman waiting there into the tube, then shut it fast behind her. Monitor the dockside at as wide an angle as you can get. Record any activity.”

  “Done,” came his late mother’s no-nonsense voice over the internal speakers placed all over the ship. “She’s in the tube. Do you want me to open the inner hatch?”

  “No, I’ll get it,” he replied. He was almost to the passenger access area that connected to the station. “Do you have anyone on camera or sensors on the dockside, watching her departure?”

  “Two people. One male, one female. They seem to be communicating via short range transmitters,” Matilda replied.

  “Can you tap into their comms? If so, record all their transmissions.” He was at the inner hatch now and bringing up the video display beside the door. And there was Star, in the umbilical tube, looking a little bewildered, a few feet from the hatch.

  “Recording,” Matilda reported a second later.

  Julian punched the commands that would cycle open the inner hatch. There was an airlock in place on this entrance, since crew could theoretically launch from here to do hull repairs even when in deep space. There were a few airlocks on the big ship, placed in strategic places for just that purpose, but this one was used most often, since it allowed him to dock easily to most station designs.

  Julian saw Star smile when the outer hatch slid open. She entered the airlock, a small bundle strapped across her back, probably containing her clothing and other personal items. She traveled light for a woman, which impressed him. He watched as she hit the switch that would cycle the airlock.