Heart of Stone (11 page)

But then an even greater fury exploded
through the door.

"
Get
down
!" Stone bellowed. Red flashed from his
weapon. The Jango jolted sideways, slamming into the
bulkhead.

The huge blade hit the wall and
ricocheted down. She cringed as it landed a few centimeters from
her legs. At another jolt, she peeped through her hair to see that
Stone had yanked the creature's body off the bed and thrown it
aside.

His face a mask of rage,
eyes blazing, he vaulted the length of the bed, crouching before
her. "Are you all right?
Did they touch
you
?"

# # #

Stone yanked Rose up onto her knees
before him and ran his hands over her. Ah, seven quarking hells,
she was naked, or near enough. So small and soft—so vulnerable. A
growl of molten rage rumbled in his throat. He had to touch her,
had to feel for himself that she was unharmed. He wished he could
kill Mobius again, very slowly. His betrayal of Stone was nothing
compared to what had almost happened here.

Rose fell against him, no doubt
exhausted by the surge and retreat of adrenaline. He'd felt it many
times himself.

His arms closed about her. He held her
tight, his heart still pounding, his blood seething in his veins.
He had almost lost her—and it would have been his own ego and
stupidity that killed her. Just like his mother.

He shoved that old memory back into the
recesses of his mind.

He wouldn't lose Rose. She
was
his
. Something
awry with that pinged his consciousness, but he was too angry, too
shaken to process it.

"She all right?" Jark rumbled from the
door. "Aww, quark, what a stench!"

"Aye. She's—they didn't touch
her."

"She got two of 'em. Damn good shooting
for an immi. Looks like both of you hit the third. Few new holes in
the cruiser."

"Doesn't matter." Stone shuddered. What
if he had not returned her laser gun to her? He clambered off the
bed, sweeping her up into his arms. "Get her clothes, or the
blanket, whichever is cleanest."

Rose struggled in his embrace. "She can
speak for herself." Her voice was shaky, but she lifted her head to
frown up at him.

"I know." His heart contracted
painfully at the shadow of terror in her eyes. "But let me take
care of you, lass. I just need to—to know you're all
right."

"I am. But … they were after
something."

"They didn't get it." More importantly,
they hadn't gotten her. He turned sideways to carry her out of the
room, making sure no part of her bumped the hatch or
walls.

"My brother. Branch isn't here, is
he?"

"No, lass. He's in Adamant. You'll see
him shortly. He's fine. Hell of a lot safer than you."

He carried her into the cockpit and
cradled her close in his lap, her head tucked under his chin,
covering her bare curves with his arms, and stroking her hair. He
could still smell Jango stench, but maybe that was the three
corpses piled in the galley.

"Masterson—they were going
to—"

"Ah, my brave one, I know," he said.
"You saved yourself, love, and it's over now. I have
you."

"Found her sweater clean, and her
boots." Jark entered, the garments in his hand, a folded blanket in
the other. "Other stuff is covered in Jango slime."

Stone helped Rose into her sweater.
Fortunately it covered her to mid-thigh. He wrapped her next in the
survival blanket to preserve her body heat and cradled her close
again as Jark gently pushed her boots onto her bare feet. He was
not letting go of her, no matter what. He had employees, didn't he?
Let them clean up the mess.

Yael and the small, burly Danno boarded
the cruiser, both of them with identical hangdog looks on their
tough faces.

"Sorry, Boss," Danno said wretchedly.
"There was a couple of Mauritians hanging around out back. I was
keepin' an eye on them. Heard the commotion on my link, but by the
time I got to the front, you were on the way."

"Where were you?" Stone asked Yael.
This debacle was as much, or more, his fault than theirs, and so he
would tell them all. But now he needed to understand the mechanics
of how he and his men had been tricked.

"Chasing a bunch of Jangos," Yael said.
"Decoys, and I fell for it. They drew me away and some others went
after MacNeil."

"Where the quark is he?" Stone
demanded. MacNeil was his lieutenant here, in charge of these
younger men.

"He's hurt bad," Yael said. "Found him
dragged into the alley by the hangar. Got an ugly gash where the
Jangos ripped his comlink right off him."

"So that's how they got aboard." Stone
nodded grimly. MacNeil's injury lay at his door too. "Get him on
here. We'll take him to the med center in Adamant."

The two practically leapt off the
cruiser, and a short time later MacNeil was lifted on board and
laid carefully in one of the beds. He was still unconscious, but it
was clear that he had been ambushed by the Jangoes and his comlink
stolen for the access codes to the cruiser.

Rose lay in Stone's arms, her face pale
as a ghost, watching the men come and go. Little shivers continued
to race through her. "Masterson, what is this place?"

Stone sighed. "Just a stop we had to
make, siren, to pick up some cargo. One of those old pirates I told
you about thought he might part us from it."

"The Jangos worked for him?"

"They did."

"Will he come after you when he
discovers they're … dead?'

He laughed humorlessly. "No, because
he's as dead as they are."

She thought about this for a moment.
"Good."

He fed her a cup of hot, sweet tea
dosed with moon-brandy, making her sip until it was gone, then
tucked her head under his chin and stroked her back, giving terse
orders over her head. But of course she wasn't through with her
questions.

"What was the cargo you had to stop
for?" she asked. "It must be v-valuable, if that pirate wanted it
badly enough to attack you and your men."

He might have known she'd figure it
out. "The sat-com program. The final key that will upload the whole
system. Had it stored here instead of one of my main warehouses, to
throw everyone off the scent. Didn't quite work out as I'd
hoped."

"How did he know it was
here?"

"He likely had surveillance on all my
warehouses, waiting to see which one I'd visit."

She nestled closer. "But he—his Jangoes
didn't get it."

He pressed a kiss to the top of her
head. No, but they'd nearly got her. And that he couldn't live
with, no matter how many of them he killed.

"I shot them," she said, a vindictive
edge in her voice. Taken aback, Stone tipped his head down to peer
into her face. She smiled crookedly at him over the edge of the
blanket. "I thought if I cornered them in the passageway, I could
hold them until you arrived. I got two of them."

He ground his teeth against the primal
urge to bellow at her. She was the one who'd opened the hatch, the
one who'd confronted the Jangoes?

"You should have
stayed
hidden
," he
gritted.

She frowned at him. "They would've
found me anyway. They were going to search the ship."

Stone growled, knowing he
had reverted to primitive man and unable to quell it.
She'd confronted pirates, in her
underthings
. She was going to be the death
of him.

The Bone Arch crew worked around them.
The precious cargo, still safe in the hold, was thoroughly checked
over. The dead Jangoes disappeared in toxic waste wrappers and the
passageway and bed area was given a thorough cryo-cleansing. No
biotic or smell would survive the flash-cold and
chemicals.

"What about the others?" Stone demanded
of Jark. "The rest of Mobius' crew?"

Jark slid into his seat and began to
fire up the cruiser's engines. "Some of 'em got away," he said. "On
that ugly ship. But they won't get far. The ISF finally showed up.
They're a little pissed at missing the fun and lookin' for some
trash to take out."

He saluted the small crowd gathered
outside and the cruiser lifted off. They banked sharply, heading
north to Adamant.

As they cleared the rugged peaks, a
pair of fast, deadly looking attack fighters zoomed overhead and
settled into formation in front of the cruiser. "And," Jark added
with satisfaction, "here's our escort. They'll stick around on
guard duty until the sat-com is locked and loaded."

Stone stared at the regulation dark
blue fighters with the ivory insignia ISF emblazoned boldly between
the rear exhaust ports.

"Quark me," he muttered. "Can't quite
believe we're here. I reckon we've switched teams for good,
then."

"Reckon we have, Boss. And y'know, if
you hadn't killed Mobius, the ISF would've had to. He wasn't goin'
down without a fight."

"No, I don't suppose he was." Stone
sighed, chilled and weary. He gathered Rose closer, wishing they
were both naked, so he could feel her heart beating against his. He
settled for kissing her hair again.

Their landing in Adamant was oddly
commonplace, after the battle they'd had to get there. The weather
in the high valley was sunny, warm enough that eaves dripped, and
the landing pad lay clear of snow and ice. The tall evergreens were
dropping their white capes as well, sudden showers of snow
cascading to the ground.

Stone had sent a message ahead for
Branch Thorne to rendezvous with them. The lean man stood waiting
outside the Masterson Enterprises hangar as they landed, his long
auburn braids blowing in the backwash from the cruiser's engines.
He bounded onto the cruiser as soon as Jark opened the
hatch.

Stone found he was strangely reluctant
to let Rose go, but handed her over to her brother's
embrace.

"Rosie, what the hell have you got
yourself into now?" Thorne asked, holding his sister close. The
relief on his face belied his tone.

"I'm sorry," she said, her voice
muffled against his jacket. "I didn't understand why you
disappeared, why I couldn't reach you."

"Ah, it's all right. Come on, I'll take
you to the lodge. Got some clothes and girl stuff for you
there."

Thorne's green eyes, so like his
sister's, met Stone's over her head. The emerald-hard light in them
promised a reckoning later. "I'll head back as soon as I get her
settled.

Stone nodded. "We'll be
waiting."

"He's plenty pissed," Jark reflected,
as the two men watched the sleek company hovie glide away, the
Thornes inside.

"He has reason to be," Stone returned
curtly. "She was nearly killed—and worse."

He started for the hangar, unable to
stand being inactive any longer.

"Come on. We've work to do. The
installation crew is on site, waiting for the delivery, and the
rest of the Space Forces squadron will be coming in."

He was a businessman, and it was time
to get back to it. Business he understood and could
control.

Within a short time, Thorne was back
and they were airborne, along with their impressive escort of
fighters. They flew to the highest peak in the mountain range. Jark
set the cruiser down on a flat area that had been blasted from the
solid rock of the mountain top. Two of the fighters landed with
them. The rest remained airborne, patrolling the skies above the
site.

Stone fetched the precious case of tech
from the hold and strode with Jark and Branch across the bright
snow, through the ranks of armed Space Forces troopers in dark
blue, to the hatch open in the side of the peak.

A Frontiera City news hovie zipped out
to meet them, cameras hovering around the beaming news anchor. Her
lavender egg-shaped head was encased in a fur-trimmed hood the same
white as her glittering teeth. She batted her heavily made-up eyes.
"The heroes have arrived," she chirped coyly. "Yes, Frontiera, the
long-awaited hour is here, and I, Llu Llu, am on the spot reporting
for you."

Jark and Stone ignored her.

Inside the site built especially for
the sat-com headquarters, the techs were waiting. The head
technician opened the cerametal case with reverent care. A phalanx
of assistants and armed guards watched as she took out the small
slim disk. As she slid it into the waiting sat-tech computer, a
collective sigh of relief sounded.

Stone had set up a conference with his
partners. Their static-laden, holo-vid images surrounded him. They
were a varied group: Logan Stark, the owner of a fleet of space
cruise ships with interests in several start-up businesses on
Frontiera; Creed Forth, a Frontieran miner who was rumored to have
spent years living as a martial monk; Elle Berybringer, whose
family farms supplied much of western Frontiera with the fresh
fruits and vegetables that grew so well here; Clyde Selkire, a
seaman who had made a fortune supplying settlers on this Western
frontier with his ships; and Masterson.