Fallen Star (25 page)

Fallon walked over to take his hand and he shoved her under the water. It was hotter than she expected. She flinched back, but he held her under the spray.

“Hold still.” Khan picked up a cloth from somewhere and proceeded to scrub the living daylights out of every square centimeter of skin she had. Foam sluiced down her body.

“Close your eyes.”

Fallon shut her eyes in time to have her head jerked back. His long fingers dug into her hair. In a very short time, he had her hair thoroughly washed and rinsed.

Khan tugged her backwards, by the hair.

Fallon winced.
He could have asked!

His hand slapped the wall and the water cut off. Half a breath later, the water collectors powered up, drying them both in seconds.

Fallon was pushed from the shower into the main facility room and subjected to one of the most ferocious hair-brushings of her entire life. She hissed. “I could cut it ...”

“Don’t you dare! Only humans ruin themselves like that.”

Fallon blinked.
Ruin themselves?

Khan tugged and scraped her hair back and proceeded to braid it painfully tight. “A Skeldhi’s hair is a measure of their personal attractiveness. Our women pride themselves on hair that can sweep the floor.”

Fallon’s mouth fell open.
Floor-length hair?
She couldn’t imagine having to deal with hair that long. It had to take forever to wash it all.

Khan snorted. “To have your hair cut is to be shamed.” He tugged sharply as he bound the end of her braid with a slender cord. “Only criminals have their pride shorn like a human.”

Fallon frowned. “Sounds like you don’t like humans very much.” She winced. “
‘Syr
.”

“Oh, Skeldhi like humans just fine.” Khan moved to the counter to brush and braid his own creamy mane. “They’re as much fun to kill as they are to fuck.”

Fallon froze. All of a sudden his earlier comment about humans living longer as
rehkyt
took on a completely different meaning. A shiver raced down her spine.

“You have nothing to fear, Isabeau.” Khan smiled as he watched her in the mirror, but his copper eyes were hard. “You are not human.”

His comment annoyed the piss out of her, but she was not about to argue with him. She
wasn’t
human. Not anymore.

Fallon followed Khan from the facility to discover a number of Skeldhi moving around the chamber. A pair in silver-gray robes assisted Sobehk out of the bed, while another two, far younger and in dark gray knee-length robes, pulled the blankets and sheets from the bed. Two more in floor-length black robes waited by the round table with clothes set out neatly across the dark, polished surface.

Khan headed for the two by the table. One lifted a long black kilt and the other a deep-red under-robe. Khan held out his arms and they proceeded to dress him with blinding speed and methodical efficiency. In a matter of minutes he was fully robed, bound by a scarlet sash and strapped into his tall boots. His black-handled daggers were handed to him.

Fallon caught the reflection of Sobehk and the two silver-gray-robed Skeldhi in the mirrors as they turned to enter the facility.

Sobehk stopped and looked up, staring straight into her reflected gaze. His nostrils flared, as thought he’d caught an interesting scent. His eyes abruptly darkened as his pupils opened wide, the black centers swallowing the blue.

Fallon suddenly realized that Sobehk was not looking at her reflection -- he was looking past her, at Khan.

Sobehk’s brows dropped, and his mouth tightened. He was clearly not happy about something.

Khan, for his part, was definitely, if not pointedly,
not
looking at Sobehk. He smiled slightly, his gaze locked on Fallon as he tucked the daggers into his sash. He gestured for Fallon to approach. “Hold your arms out and remain perfectly still.”

Sobehk closed his eyes and disappeared into the facility.

Fallon did as ordered and the two Skeldhi approached, holding a pair of short robes and a sash. They smelled utterly wrong and the hair on her neck rose. Her skin shivered under their fingers. Their scent wasn’t bad or foul, but the urge to bite increased the more she breathed their scent.

Khan’s gaze stayed hard on her.

Fallon held her breath to avoid smelling them even as panic made her heart pound. She couldn’t hold her breath for long and took small breaths with her mouth. She could not believe how ...
wrong
they smelled.

In swift order she was dressed as she had been before, though in clean robes. Fallon exhaled in a rush.

The two attendants bowed toward Khan before heading for the door, with the two carrying bed sheets and blankets close on their heels.

Khan lifted his chin. “We are breaking dock with the
Vortex
. As I’m monitoring the pilot during breakaway and the first jump, I thought you might like to sit with me and pair-view the flight.”

Fallon blinked. “You’re going to add me to your neural link,
‘Syr?
” She was going to see space -- as a pilot perceived it?
Great Maker ...!

Khan tilted his head to the side. “I believe your computational array is sophisticated enough to do so.”

Fallon bounced up on her toes before she could stop herself and grinned. “I’d love that!” She dropped to her heels, jerking her hands behind her, and felt her cheeks heat. She wasn’t a child. “I meant, thank you,
‘Syr
.”

“You’re welcome.” Khan smiled and lifted the black chain leash from the tabletop. “Shall we go?”

Chapter Twenty-Two

The corridor directly outside Khan’s private chamber was narrow and black with bright chrome handrails along the walls. The ceiling curved overhead and everything shimmered slightly, indicating the ship’s mimetic, atomic-level shape-changing nature. Fallon’s brows rose. She hadn’t realized that the entire ship was mimetic. A mimetic ship had to be a quite an advantage if someone shot at it. The hull could stretch to seal itself -- as long as the holes were fairly small.

Fallon ducked behind Khan’s back as Skeldhi in black skintight ship-suits or robes in differing shades of gray or black with the occasional bit of red trim passed to either side. Curious glances were sent her way, but their gazes retreated too quickly to be considered impolite.

The Skeldhi and their thing for manners ... Fallon rolled her eyes. On second thought, being polite all the time could be considered a good thing in a society that was as quick-tempered and consistently armed as they were. It was much harder to take accidental offense if everyone followed the same rules.

The walk ended at a lift that opened onto another passageway. The corridors they passed through and crossed remained uniformly black, but widened and held more foot traffic. Fewer robed Skeldhi walked these hallways; most wore ship-suits, with the occasional fully armored and sword-armed pair marching in perfect step.

Another lift, and they entered another, broader, passageway with oval windows that marched along the left wall.

Fallon frowned. The ship was a lot bigger than she thought. What in fury were they on?

The passageway ended at an open doorway with two fully armed guards. The men came to attention, heels snapping together, shoulders thrown back, and chins rising.

Khan nodded as he passed them with Fallon in his shadow.

Through the door, Khan halted.

Fallon peeked around his shoulder. A walkway opened directly in front of them, curving toward the right. A small four-step stairway was on their immediate right. She looked up the wall on her right. And up. The wall ended about two meters over her head, but there was a lot of open space past the wall. She’d seen a cathedral in an old holo-vid of Peter’s. The ship’s ceiling was about two stories away with a definite cathedral arch to it.

Whatever she was on was huge.

Khan led her up the small stair. His hand pressed on her right shoulder as soon as she cleared the last stair.

Fallon dropped to her left knee, setting her right hand to the floor and tucking her left hand in her lap, the way Sobehk had taught her. It was hard to make out much with her eyes kept no higher than knee level. She could see little more than the bottom of a long curving desk to her left and the bottom of three black leather command chairs on her right set before a black wall.

“
‘Syr
Khan, we are ready to release the
Vortex
on your command.” The voice was deep and belonged to a pair of armored boot-toes protruding from under a long black kilt. A scarlet robe, apparently left open, framed the sides of the kilt. The unmistakable bottom halves of two sheathed swords hung at an angle by his left thigh.

Khan shifted slightly, his leg pressing against Fallon’s side. “You may release at will,
‘Syr
Captain.”

Captain?
Fallon swallowed. They were on the ship’s command center. She was kneeling on an actual ship’s bridge. She frowned. But if he was the captain, why was he deferring to Khan?

The captain turned to the left and a second person was suddenly visible -- well, from the knees down. He, too, wore an open scarlet robe framing his black kilt. The toes remained pointed at Khan.

“At your leisure,
‘Syr
Khan.” The heels clicked together. The voice was youthful and soft-spoken.

“Thank you,
‘Syr
Commander.” Khan tapped Fallon’s shoulder and turned to the right.

Fallon rose to her feet and followed. From the corner of her eye, the captain appeared to be massive in size. His sleeveless robe of deep scarlet showed powerfully muscled arms with forearms riddled with active electronics. Both wrists blazed with electronic auras from the arrays embedded into his hands and forearms. Two swords were thrust through his black sash.

The other person was far more slender and dressed very much like the captain, with only one sword through his sash. His wrists were also aglow with active electronics. Fallon caught the hint of a smile on his mouth before she turned completely away.

Khan walked to the right, then along the back wall to the command chair on the far side. He turned to face the front of the ship.

Fallon turned with him, and had to remember to breathe. Just past the captain and the commander, and a little below, a nav-pilot sat electronically enthroned and haloed in shifting gold light, indicating an active piloting array. Linked directly to the ship’s sentience, the living mind of the nav-pilot created the quantum consciousness that folded space. Once jump-space was achieved, the ship would pierce through the vast forever of space in a blink of time.

Flanking the nav-pilot, two crewmembers in skin-hugging ship-suits were wired into chairs with holographic control displays spread out under their hands.

The view-screen that took up the entire front portion of the pointed oval of the bridge showed the
Vortex
, which appeared to be parked
on
the end of the ship. Beyond the
Vortex
was an ocean of stars that literally went on forever.

The silence was deafening. No one said a single word, but Fallon’s inner array hummed with interest as her programs responded to the signals from the active arrays all around her. She could almost make out what they were doing ...

The
Vortex
suddenly lifted from the nose of the ship and kept lifting.

The captain turned to look at Khan. He was ruggedly handsome with a massive jaw in a broad face commanded by bright yellow eyes. His mouth was full and his smile wide. “We are ready to proceed,
‘Syr
Khan.”

Fallon shifted her eyes from the captain’s face, barely in time to avoid his direct gaze.

Khan smiled just a little. “You may proceed, Captain.”

The captain nodded. “
‘Syr
.” He and the commander turned to face the front of the ship and held out their hands. Their wrists blazed, wreathed in halos of shifting blue-white energy.

Khan tugged at his robes and sat in the huge, heavily padded command chair. He leaned forward a bit and allowed the interneural link in the chair’s headrest to reach out and connect to his data port. He winced and sat back with a sigh.

Fallon winced. Sobehk had been adamant that
rehkyt
did not sit on chairs. The steel floor did not look comfortable. And the view from down there was going to suck big time.

Khan held out his hand and smiled. His copper gaze blazed with electronic blue radiating from deep within the pupils.

Fallon tilted her head in confusion but took his hand.

Khan tugged her into his lap, spreading his legs to let her sit on the seat with his chest as her backrest. His arms slid around her, and his lips pressed against her ear. “I trust you will not access anything in my head with that array and rather interesting collection of programs that is in yours?”

Fallon leaned into the press of his lips without thinking about it. “No,
‘Syr
.” She was not about to jeopardize her chance to view pilot-space. “You won’t even know I’m there.”

“Good.” His hands lifted to the back of his chair and retrieved a slender link jack. He gently pushed her forward and affixed the jack to her port. “Lean back and close your eyes.”

Fallon leaned back against his hard and warm chest.

“Ready?”

“Yes,
‘Syr
.”

Blackness, then ripples in the dark. The ripples became layer upon layer upon layer of velvety black cloth ... all around. Space, rippling like a frozen ocean moving in tides immensely vast with an incredibly slow elegance. Flows of color bloomed into being, indicating gasses, temperatures, and matter. Sprays of color she had no name for shimmered and sparkled everywhere.

She
bloomed into being, feeling the tides of space against her skin, tasting the different flavors of stars, and hearing the harmonies of solar systems as orchestras of incredible grace. Ever changing, ever moving, ever harmonious ... She could listen to it forever.

“Are you all right?”