Hers To Cherish (Verdantia Book 3) (25 page)

Tok held
up Ramsey’s infamous “black bag”. “We found this outside the door. I’m afraid you must leave it behind, Verdantian.”

The knock
had drawn Ram from the bathroom. His hand scrubbed a towel over his head, drying his hair, another towel wrapped his waist. “Thanks. I suspect you are correct. I’m afraid there is much we must leave behind.” Ram gave Steffania a long, enigmatic look. “If you want to clean up, do it now.” He nodded toward the bath. “Leave the door open so you can hear us.”

His
hoarse, flat orders hurtled her back to the brutal reality of their mission with painful abruptness.

“Right”
She pushed the one word through a throat thickened by regret. Ignoring the curious looks of Tok and Pansy, Steffania gathered the case with her clothes and walked into the bathroom. She listened as she soaped and rinsed, removing all traces of Ram’s lovemaking.

“Wait, Verdantian.” Tok’s
warning rumble made her peer around the doorframe into the room. The hulking Khlossian unpacked a small case. He set out and activated what she recognized as an audio warbler. “Now we can speak freely.”

A
frigid harshness pervaded Ramsey. It was the only sentiment he could acknowledge and still be able to function. He could not dwell on Steffania nor what he wished could be, so he embraced emotional austerity. Its isolation surrounded him like an old friend. He narrowed his focus to Tok’s words.

“I reached APS.” Tok eyed him and frowned – at least Ram thought
he frowned – with Tok it was hard to say. “The League is already here. Your Verdantian High Lord has had three heavy destroyers and two light cruisers in stationary orbit for three days.” Tok studied Ram intently. “So who does he know in the League, Verdantian? Only someone
very
high up would dare hold such a large contingent of League military on standby, picking their noses in space.”

Ram’s eyebrows rose.
“This must be LFP Admiral Cherise Lockwood’s influence. She was DeTano’s lover for several years.”

Tok grunted an acknowledgement of the information.
“They will wait six NT solar hours for you to get Alessa DeAlbero to safety before coming in with full battle array.”

“Where and when is the pick-up?”

“The League will have a transport craft on the southwest lawn, inside the perimeter fence at NT 2000 hours this evening. They will come in after dark for maximum cover. The transport will remain on the ground precisely fifteen minutes—it takes that long for Narr to override their full-spectrum disrupter and another minute to bring his interphazar pulse cannons online. The small transport’s shields cannot sustain a prolonged barrage. You must be there with Alessa DeAlbero. Make no mistake, they will leave without you.”

Ram held Tok’s
humorous stare. “I get it.”

Tok chuckled. “Wanted to make sure, Verdantian. You can be stupid.”

“Oh!” Pansy released a pained exclamation. “He’s not...stupid . . .” She faltered and her objection tapered off. She cast her glance downward, looking uncomfortable as Tok regarded her with an arched eyebrow.

“It’s all right, Pansy,” Ram muttered. “I need to know this shit.”

“I certainly underestimated you.” Steffania stood in the doorway and addressed Tok. A deadly mercenary dressed in a black, curve-hugging skin-suit had replaced the former
slaaf
. Ram could see the outline of a ring on one nipple. She still sported a charm – his gryphon? The pain at that thought was exquisite. His gold collar was missing – that hurt, too. Flexible boots climbed mid-calf and each slim, muscled thigh carried a holster – the right holding a Razor 88K, the left, a large blade. An array of gadgets that performed the Goddess-knows-what climbed her forearms. Some complicated braid confined her cloud of flame hair close to her skull.

Tok swung around to face Steffania and grinned. “
Ramsey’s woman, you look different. Underestimate me? Yes. A common mistake. Makes me a good field operative.” The low rumble that passed as his chuckle filled the room. He jerked his head toward Ramsey. “He didn’t.”

Ram
rubbed at the dull ache in his chest that had become a physical manifestation of the devastating void in his gut and turned to include Steffania in the conversation. “You heard?”

Her eyes raked him coolly before she
nodded. “Yes. We have a twelve-hour window for extraction.”

From her crisp response to the b
risk competence that radiated from her, nothing remained of the woman he had adorned with rope in the Azure Patio this morning or made love to in the hour thereafter.
Just as well.
His mind no longer shied from the word
love
but Ram still had nothing to offer her but himself...and she deserved far, far better than being dragged down into his gutter.

She continued her measured appraisal of him then snapped, “Plan on wearing more than a towel, DeKieran?”

He shot her an icy glance and dropped the towel banding his waist. A small shard of satisfaction pierced the cold in his center as her gaze dropped downward momentarily.
Good. You merely pretend indifference – as do I.

W
hile Ram recounted for Tok and Pansy what he had seen and overheard on the Azure Patio, he dressed in the matte-black combat gear he’d worn to Narr’s estate.

The plan Ramsey hammered out between the four of them was simple.
“Captain Rickard, you will disable all the security devices, and Tok and I will disable those who try to stop you. Pansy, how long do you need to disconnect Alessa from the cerebral probe bed?”

“I won’t know until I see her, but perhaps ten minutes?”

Ramsey grunted his agreement then surveyed their faces. “Rickard, you and Tok hold the entrance to the lab until we can clear. Then the five of us will rendezvous with the transport vehicle.” Ram’s gaze swung to Tok.

The behemoth shook his head
and his low rumble filled the tense silence. “I report to GAPS, not the League of Federated Planets. I have my own ship and crew, Verdantian. They wait on my signal to pick me up.” Ramsey held Tok’s gaze steadily. “With the destruction the LFP plan to rain down on Narr, it will be easy for me to slip away in the confusion. I’ll not be joining you on the LFP ship.”

Ramsey shrugged. “As you wish.
Rickard, how much time will you need to get us into the lab?”

Steffania
rubbed her forehead. “Without opposition...probably thirty-five, forty minutes. But, as soon as their system goes down, Narr’s thugs will come running.” She raised her gaze to Ram. “Don’t forget about the lock-down doors around the ‘quiet room’. Narr can seal that lab off and flood it with
dormirse
gas. You and everyone inside will be unconscious in seconds.”

Ramsey nodded. “Yeah. I hadn’t forgotten.
The trick will be getting out again. We will need to exit the same way we came in. It’s by far the fastest route to the pick up point. We can go out the security door at the other end of the hall but it will add several minutes to our exit time.” Ram shrugged and looked at Tok.

“I think
everyone will be dead by then.” Tok grinned at Ram’s grim expression. “Merely target practice for Khlossians, Verdantian.”

Ramsey bent his head over the physical map of the grounds that Tok had furnished. Steffania joined him
, staring down at the chart spread on the bed.

“I don’t like this. I don’t like it at all,”
he growled. His finger circled an expanse of solid green separating the southwestern lawn and the possible rendezvous point. “Too much of this area is exposed. We cross at least one hundred feet with not even a bush for cover.”

“There’s no help for it, DeKieran.
The pilot of the transport needs that much clearance to land.” Steffania held Ram’s glance steadily. “You’ve gotten out of worse.”

Yes, he had, but
back then, he didn’t care if
he
survived, much less those around him. Now, with the exception of himself, he cared about all of them – too much. “Yeah.” Ram just left it at that. How he felt about the situation didn’t matter a rodent’s whisker.
It is what it is.

Tok’s voice interrupted his morbid thoughts. “So
by my count, we have ninety minutes to extract DeAlbero and get her to the transport.” Tok caught Ramsey’s gaze and Ram nodded.

“
Sounds right.” Ram looked at his watch. “It’s now fifteen hundred hours. We begin at eighteen-thirty hours.”

Pansy looked perplexed and Steffania whispered in her ear,
“Six and one-half of-the-clock.”

Ramsey turned and surveyed all of them in silence. “We have three and a half hours to fill. I s
uggest we run over this a few more times.”

“Ah, sorry.” Tok’s grating voice filled in after Ramsey. “You and I have somewhere to be.”

“How’s that?”

“Tonight is the big reception and dinner given to honor me as champion of the XIV Dominion Games. I can’t miss it.” Tok grinned widely. “That means you cannot miss it
, either. The women can stay here.”

Ramsey
shook his head. “No. I’m not going.”

Tok playfully punched Ram’s arm
, and he staggered back two steps. “It’s free food and drink, Verdantian. You’ll enjoy it. Besides…” Tok winked. “We won’t be staying long.”

The hustle in the huge banquet hall buzzed around Veacon Narr but he remained oblivious.
His discussion with Strom Kella and Vittal Lontz tested his temper, though he revealed nothing and conversed in his normal, congenial baritone.

“So
, you are certain there were upper-atmospheric communications originating from my residence this morning, but you don’t know who transmitted and you don’t know what was said?” Narr smiled and nodded at the diplomats who crossed the large hall a few feet from the trio.

Lontz addressed him in a low undertone.
“My men said the origination point kept shifting. Every time security pinned it down and mobilized, it moved. And whoever was sending that signal used an audio warbler to garble the transmission. But it was the Verdantian,
Dominus
Narr. I am certain of it.”

“Sure enough to bet your life on it?
Explain how the man could be two places at once. All three of us stood here and watched him truss that flame-haired
slaaf
six ways to Triton. One of the better shows I’ve seen lately, by the way. I thought he’d take her there on the floor. Besides, you said you removed his electronic devices.”

Kella’s arrogant tones interrupted. “It was the Verdantian. Someone helps him.”

Narr swung a frigid look to the Enforcer. “Who? The tiny
slaaf
you are so anxious to seize? You expect me to believe that a
female
would have the intelligence to elude us? One whose mind was wiped so thoroughly she barely remembers how to clean herself?”

Lontz interceded. “
Dominus
Narr, I have always questioned how much of her mental loss was real and how much was faked. She was seen in the halls surrounding the guest quarters. Our champion, the Khlossian, accompanied her.”

Narr rolled his eyes and sarcasm dripped from his voice. “Wonderful. You suggest a mind-wiped
slaaf
and a behemoth whose intelligence reaches to attain the level of a Kretonas pit-slug set up a sophisticated audio transmission and jamming device while eluding detection by my select security forces.
These
are the critical threats to my security?” He shook his head in disgust. “Fine. Take out the Verdantian when he leaves the banquet.” Narr caught and held Kella’s gaze. “He is to disappear. Understand me? No traces. None. Or you will disappear with him, Enforcer.”

Narr almost laughed at the frozen rigidity of Strom Kella. He supposed the slight jerk of the man’s head was an affirmative.
Self-important prick
. Still, the man was useful. Narr sighed. “I want that red-haired female. Kill DeKieran, but I want his
slaaf
. Are we understood?”

Narr turned on his heels and joined a group of dignitaries without waiting for a further response.

Ram brought his goblet to his lips and sipped, marking time. Dignitaries approached him but the hostility
he radiated turned them around quickly and he continued to slouch against a wall in the banquet hall unmolested. A few feet away, Tok interacted jovially with the beings attending the banquet, his loud, grinding voice easily heard over the hum of conversation.
He’s playing the dumb alien, and they’re buying the act.
Ram rolled his eyes and straightened. He turned his wrist to check the hour and caught Tok’s glance with a significant nod of his head.
Showtime.

Ram put his goblet on a low occasional table and began to make his way out of the hall. Tok would follow a few minutes later and join him at a preset meeting point.
Once clear of the assembly, Ram moved rapidly through Narr’s residence, slipping in and out of corridors where Steffania had blinded the security vids and jammed open access doors. He was close to the rendezvous point when a slight crackle of sound sent a warning crawl up his spine and he slipped behind a wide, square column and flattened himself. His sense of hearing attuned to the slightest sound, he heard it again – the distinctive, snapping hum of a stim-whip. Strom Kella. The Enforcer’s raised voice carried well. “I know you are here, DeKieran.”