Broken Vision (21 page)

But had he?

What should have been certain suddenly wasn't.

Morgon implied knowledge he shouldn't have. What was his access to the Council?

"If this is true, who did they think would stop the priests?"

"There are Taragon clans whose elders are committed to the Vision. We were counting on
them. We didn't understand until recently that the loyalties of some were compromised by the fate
of their children. The hope was that a nation could devise its own solution."

Morgon had used "we". He was becoming less careful in his speech. Deliberately so?
Alerik didn't think Morgon Trion made many mistakes.

"If it's true, and I'm not saying I'm convinced, their failure and our lack of action has
brought the galaxy back to the brink of war." Sharm swung around and strode off across the control
room. He acknowledged no one. At the end of the room past the consoles, he began to pace in a
small tight circle, his head bowed, hands locked behind his back.

Tempted to do the same, Alerik forced himself to stand with Morgon. Sharm was fighting
a savage internal battle. The post-Conflict beliefs on which they'd been raised were being put to
severe test. The Coalition Council had seemingly failed a key challenge and, worse, turned a blind
eye.

The Vision was crumbling.

Bound to duty and, by nature, loyal to his core, Sharm would resist acknowledging these
apparent failures with everything in him. Part of Alerik desperately wanted to stand guard over the
same beliefs, reluctant to relinquish the convictions of a lifetime and the future his parents had
worked so hard to help build for a galaxy.

But a part of him was increasingly persuaded. When had he crossed over from skepticism
to this budding acceptance? When had the first doubt even set in?

Maegan, of course, had shaken those beliefs ever since he had arrived on Grogon. But if he
were truthful with himself, the doubts had surfaced long before his assignment as governor. And
been firmly repressed. His training, position, and charted future demanded it.

"He's a good man," Morgon said. "With understanding, he'll accept the right choice."

"There is no choice. I cannot leave Maegan at their mercy. I see only one option."

Morgon nodded, an almost imperceptible movement. He stood two steps closer to
Alerik.

Alerik hadn't been aware of him moving.

"Commander Foster is right. Their demand is unacceptable and, without question, will set
us on a path to war. The children have become irrelevant to them and perhaps always have been.
It's possible they sought something else when they came here. What do you know of the Taragon
priests?"

Suddenly impatient, Alerik shook his head and turned away. "Very little. Does anyone
really have knowledge of them? Their origins are obscure. What is known is that they controlled
the Taragon armies during the Great Conflict."

A stray memory suddenly blotted out other thought. Priests had taken his mother once, a
long time ago. Before he was even born. They had almost destroyed her. But they hadn't been
Taragon. They had been from a rogue clan of Soron.

A chill chased down his spine. Why had that memory surfaced now? There was no
connection. Soron and Taragon had been enemies in the Great Conflict. Taragon had stood alone.
They had had no alliances.

He forced the memory aside, and stared through the plexiwall at the Taragon vessel, trying
to convince himself that Maegan was faring well enough, because he couldn't bear to imagine
anything else.

"She's right." He felt as if an enormous weight bore down on him, crushed the breath out of
him, and shattered the beliefs of a lifetime. "Maegan's right and you're right. They don't want to be
integrated, do they?"

"Not the priests, no. I believe they have psychic abilities, Alerik, beyond anything we
recognize. They're symbiotic. Their power feeds on power. And that is why Commander Foster is
right. Give them an heir to the Mariltar nation, and war not only is inevitable, but I fear the impact
on their abilities."

It was an outrageous theory and one that Alerik couldn't force his mind around. "I want her
out of there now," he snapped. "I don't care how it's done, as long as it's done with no harm to
her."

"Then negotiate. They're not ready for war. Their armies aren't ready. Let's see if they'll
settle for something less than a Mariltar heir."

* * * *

It felt like someone had taken a jaghammer to her skull. Maegan cracked open her eyes,
but even the dim light in the room was too much to take and she closed them again before she could
make out where she was.

Someone murmured, "Sleep". She felt a pinch beneath her ear and then, blessedly, the pain
began to recede.

She awoke gasping for breath. Her heart pounded. Some part of her consciousness
screamed at her to run, but couldn't tell her why; shrieked at her to escape, but couldn't identify
from what.

She jerked upright. A shard of pain pierced her skull, but it wasn't nearly as bad as before.
The room was pitch dark. She threw off the light cover that was tangled around her legs. She was
naked.

Something moved beside her. Panicked, she rolled, desperate to get away. A hand clamped
down on her thigh.

"Maegan."

She knew that voice. It penetrated through fear and desperation and made her pause,
although every instinct still clamored for her to run.

"I can't see," she whispered.

"The light hurt your head. One moment." A hoarseness roughened the familiarity of the
voice. The hand on her thigh was warm and heavy and somehow soothing.

The thudding of her heart calmed. The rushing in her ears diminished. A low glow
appeared and gradually brightened.

"That's enough for now. How's the pain?"

She turned her head. "Alerik?"

He sat behind her, just visible in the low light, large, solid, a haven from fears she couldn't
quite grasp or understand. She flung herself at him.

His strong arms closed around her and she pressed her face into the crease of his neck. His
scent, the scent that was uniquely him, tiug leaf and a light musk, enveloped her.

"Shh, my love, it's all right. I have you. You're safe," he whispered in her ear. His hand
stroked her back and he pulled her more tightly against him.

She realized she was sobbing, great gasping sounds, but shedding no tears. Her body shook
uncontrollably. His hand continued to stroke and he murmured nonsense in her ear.

"Where am I?" she choked out. "What happened to me?"

"We're on Pallas Five. You're safe in our habitat."

"Alerik." She pushed away from him slightly, and it seemed to take all her strength, but
she wanted to see his face. "What happened to me?"

His eyes gleamed in the low light. He brought a hand up to lightly stroke her cheek. "Do
you remember the Taragon priests?"

"They came for the children," she whispered, and the terrible panic beset her again, rushing
in like a bellian wind from nowhere. Pain stabbed through her head again. "Where are they? Are
they safe?"

"The children are safe," he said. "The priests don't have--"

"Why...why am I like this?" she asked. She held up her hand and tried in vain to hold it
still against the tremors that shook it. "I've never, never felt such a terrible...fear before."

Alerik growled deep in his throat. He covered her hand with his and gathered her back
against his chest. "The priests took you for a very short time, love. But you're safe now. I have
you."

"What did they do to me?"

"They used a form of psych control. They--"

"Mind control? Why? What did they make me do?"

"We don't know. Perhaps nothing. They didn't have you for very long before we negotiated
your release."

Maegan closed her eyes and tried to relax against Alerik's warm body, tried to absorb his
strength and calm. But an urgent, throbbing sensation shouted something was wrong, horribly
wrong.

And even more disturbing was the great gap in her memory. She remembered nothing of
which he spoke, yet she knew something was missing. Her last memory was of her habitat on
Pallas Four and Makiee's concerned face as he watched her...do what? What had she been trying to
do?

Alerik's hand stroked through her hair and massaged her nape, bringing a too brief spurt of
pleasure.

"How's the pain?"

She sighed and rubbed her cheek against the soft hair of his chest. "It comes and goes. It's
not constant."

"The medtech said it might take a few days before it's completely gone." His hand
tightened on her nape briefly. "Something that would please me greatly is that you try to stay out of
clinics for a while."

"I don't do it on purpose," she protested.

"That's a matter of debate."

He shifted his body underneath her, and she realized with a tiny thrill that he was as bare as
she.

"Let me rephrase that. Try to avoid doing the things that keep putting you under a
medtech's care. How about that?"

"Sounds like a very boring life." A huge yawn took her by surprise. Her tremors had
subsided. The urgent, hammering fear had calmed but, although the sharpest edges had been
blunted, a sense of dread still lurked. A sudden exhaustion swept like a wave through her
body.

"Got to sleep," she murmured.

"And here I was hoping for a round of hot, uninhibited sex."

Another thrill shot through her, but her body was without energy, drifting rapidly toward
oblivion.

"Later."

* * * *

When she awoke again, natural light filtered through the partially open screens at the
plexiwall. She recognized instantly that she was in the governor's habitat on Pallas Five.

She was alone.

She sat up with slow care, the memory of the awful stabbing pain all too clear. Her body
felt rested. The pain was absent, but from the recesses of her mind crowded the sense of something
not right, a simmering fear, an indefinable threat.

It sent a shudder through her body. She pushed herself off the sleeping platform and
hurried into the bathing chamber. Only when she was in there did she pause. What did she have to
do today? Alerik was no doubt off performing his governorly duties. It was equally likely she was
confined in the habitat.

A wave of paralyzing terror left her gasping for breath, reeling and leaning against the wall
for support. The fear was all-consuming. It invaded every pore of her body and raised the tiny hairs
on her skin. It screamed for her to run to the safe room and barricade herself in.

Gritting her teeth, she pushed away from the wall and marched into the cleansing unit
instead. She would not be afraid of something she couldn't even remember. Fear would not defeat
her! She slapped at the control panel without checking and was hit by an ice-cold deluge.

Her shriek was answered by a deep chuckle. Alerik's hard body pressed behind her and
prevented her escape, but his hand made quick adjustments to the controls to replace the icy stream
with a soothing flow. He curved his arm around her waist and drew her back against his nude body.
Fear was vanquished in an instant by a rush of pure, heated lust.

But she wasn't ready to give in that easily. She stiffened her body. "What kind of
masochist," she stuttered, "uses ice water to bathe?"

He nuzzled her ear and slid his hand up her torso to curve it around her breast. Her knees
struggled to maintain their stiffness.

"The kind," he murmured, as he tweaked her nipple gently, "who had to wait hours for you
to wake up."

Her head tilted back against his shoulder of its own accord. She couldn't force it away. "I
thought you were off doing governor stuff."

"Governor stuff? Governors don't do stuff." His fingers were working the hard nub of her
nipple and sending streaks of fire throughout her body. He slid his other hand down to the vee of
her thighs. "We make important life-altering decisions. We direct our universe. We arbitrate our
neighbors' squabbles. People look up to us." He slid his finger into her.

Her legs buckled and she collapsed into him. "I didn't realize you were that important," she
gasped.

He bit the side of her neck. The small pain speared straight to her groin. "That's been your
problem all along," he complained. "You don't look up to me."

"That's not true." She tilted her head and slitted her eyes open. Warm water caressed her
face in a gentle shower. "I'm looking up--oh!"

A second finger had joined the first. Her entire body shuddered. It would be so easy to give
in, to go along with whatever he wanted to do, but a tiny voice of sanity kept banging around inside
her head. Part of her wanted to slap it away, but the part of her that made the logical decisions was
more persistent.

He could have read her mind, or perhaps her body language changed because his fingers
withdrew from her body, although his other arm stayed locked around her rib cage. He reached for
the control panel. A bench slid out from the wall.

"Sit," he urged. "Let me take care of you."

Logic and sanity vanished. She couldn't fight this. She sat, lifted, opened, bent, turned at
his soft commands. Her inhibitions seemed to have vanished. Her body did what he requested
without hesitation. Her skin absorbed the pure pleasure of his touch and demanded more.

And he gave it. He seemed to know exactly where she wanted his touch, when she needed
it. As his strong fingers massaged gel into her scalp, she closed her eyes against the exquisite
sensation.

Firm lips feathered across hers, and sent spikes of ecstasy racing through her body. She
moaned deep in her throat. He cradled her head with one hand while, with the other, he urged her to
her feet and turned them both into the full spray of water. The scent of sweet plumani swirled
around them in the steam-laden warmth as the gel washed away. Her knees had no strength.

He demanded entrance to her mouth. She opened and shivered as his tongue slid along hers
and then back along the sensitive roof. She could feel the rigid length of his penis against her belly.
Suddenly desperate to have him inside of her, she clung to his arms and pushed and rubbed herself
against his water-slickened hardness.