Spiderdrive
Fourth in the Dark Horse series.
Commander Khyber settled into place in the maintenance shaft. He had brought a rollout pad in addition to the tools and handlight, since he anticipated a lengthy meeting. He jacked into the ship's security system at a junction point, where he could cover his tracks easily.
The Captain had cut him out of the loop. She had had multiple secret rendezvous with Rangers, and at the last one, a snatch of overheard conversation at the airlock implied she was taking tactical advice from a wet-behind-the-bone Minbari teenager. Instead of from Khyber, her first officer!
Now there was not one but three Whitestars hanging off the Medusa's bow, and all their command staffs were coming aboard for a conference. A meeting which, once again, did not include Khyber.
"That damned traitorous Jew is plotting something," Khyber muttered as he put in his earbud. From here, he could listen to the meeting without having to enter any room or use any computer. His eavesdropping would leave no traces.
"Of course, they're always plotting something. This ship should have been mine. It was Sheridan's mutinous fleet that killed Captain Pao. Did Earth reward me for my loyalty? No-o-o-o. They up and install that bitch Ivanova. The Voice of the Resistance! Next to Sheridan, she's the worst traitor of the lot. They cost us all our colonies, and killed thousands of people just like Pao and the others. And I don't believe for a second that President Clark killed himself."
Khyber finished his preparations and tried to relax on the rollout pad as he listened to footsteps and the swiveling sounds of bolted down station chairs. There was a general hum of low conversations which he could not make out, but that did not matter. It was likely just people introducing themselves to each other.
Whatever the traitor was planning now, he was going to catch her at it. Until Earth removed her, Khyber had to follow her orders. He always followed orders. That was what Earth Force officers and crewmen were supposed to do. Traitors like Ivanova and Sheridan wanted independence, fine, let them be independent where he could shoot them.
Well, Ivanova was his Captain, like it or not. Until he could prove she was betraying Earth again, he was stuck with her. But he swore if he ever got a shot at Sheridan he would take it.
The meeting began. At first, disappointingly, Ivanova was only talking about an anti-piracy action. Why that needed to be a big secret, he couldn't guess. The pirates' technology was disturbingly advanced, but why would Ivanova keep that away from him?
Khyber made a careful mental note of the targeting buoy frequency. The strategy seemed sound: lure the pirates with a fake target and then pounce on them. It was perfectly normal battle tactics. Something else had to be going on, too.
Ah. There was the connection. Wex Shipping. And Cedric Sands' newly announced candidacy for the Presidential nomination of the Regulationist Party. And Captain Ivanova's revelation of her mole at Cedric's elbow.
A masculine voice said, "Wait a minute. You're telling me that YOU put Major Sands up to – doing what he did?"
"Surely you were in on it," Ivanova said.
"No! I had no idea what was going on."
"But, the marks. Weren't they faked up for the broadcast?"
"Sure as hell felt real from this end."
"My God, sir, he didn't really—where would Sands get baltor mar anyway?"
"No, no, Lennier did that."
"Lennier?" Now there was real disbelielf in her voice, not just protest.
"Long story. So, OK, Major Sands was looking for a spectacular opportunity to get in good with his evil Regulationist relatives, I fell into his lap, and he took advantage of it. I get that part. Let's move on. I actually came out here because of the report that the Drakh might be involved. Tell me more about that. Has Sands actually sighted one?"
"Not yet, sir, but he's amassed all kinds of evidence that there's one living out at the Wex experimental shipyard. He's working on getting out there to confirm a live sighting."
"Make that his top priority. We've got to nail those alien bastards."
Khyber wished he had recorded that. He had not planned to record anything, just in case a recording might be found, which would tip off his traitorous Captain. But when Ivanova had mentioned Sands' broadcast and the baltor mar, he had realized why the man's voice sounded familiar. It was that murdering rat bastard Sheridan.
After all the hay Sheridan and Ivanova had made of Clark's "anti-alien biases" in their Voice of the Resistance war propaganda, a recording of Sheridan saying 'we've got to nail those alien bastards' would have gotten back a few points for Earth's side.
On second thought, Khyber dismissed media posturing as irrelevant. A recording was not worth the risk. In the age of telepathic scan, Khyber's own memories were just as admissible in court as a recording. Ivanova's interference with Earth's electoral process was probably not criminal enough to get her command taken away from her, though; not when she could legitimately claim her actions were taken to prevent pirate attacks on Earth shipping.
Khyber would wait, and be patient, and catch Ivanova when she showed her true colors. But there was no need to wait to get Sheridan. Khyber collected his tools and slid out of the accessway. He stowed the rollout pad and most of the tools in the maintenance closet from which he had gotten them, stuffed the earbud into a pocket, and proceeded to the forward airlock.
Just as he had hoped, Sheridan's personnel pod was unguarded. He used a maintenance keycard to open the lock. No point in going to all this trouble only to give himself away by using his own security code. When he was done, he would wipe the card clean and put it back in the maintenance locker too.
Khyber grinned as he entered the pod and went to work.
\
Ivanova came onto the bridge after her long, mentally exhausting meeting, and flopped into the Captain's chair. She noticed her first officer, Commander Khyber, eying her oddly.
Well, that was to be expected. The truth was, she could not trust anyone on the Medusa when the origins of this pirate menace stretched back to Earth. She had not managed to form any friendships on her ship, except with Major Sands, who was back on Earth now. And the credit for that friendship belonged entirely to him, for his stark honesty at that fateful first private dinner.
Ivanova had started off her Captaincy on the wrong foot, distant and heartsick, and prone to running out on conversations for fear of getting weepy in public. She had not known she loved Marcus until he died. Then she finally got command of a starship, a goal she had been working towards for years, when she could barely function. She was determined to do a good job, but there was no getting back those crucial first few months. She had no rapport with her officers at all, and no way to assess which of them she could trust with the truth about the pirates. Any of them might have connections to the Wex/ Regulationist / Drakh / Shadow-technology conspiracy.
The ensign at the sensor station shrilled, "Captain! President Sheridan's shuttle is emitting target frequency!"
"What? Get me a channel."
"To the personnel pod?" asked the lieutenant at nav and comm.
"Yes, to the pod!"
"Channel open."
"John, you're broadcasting target signal!"
"Shutting down comm.!" Sheridan's voice came back, and then his channel closed. But the signal continued after Sheridan turned off his comm board.
A jump point opened so close to the Medusa that the bridge rippled in the hyperspace nimbus.
"Weapons live!" Ivanova snapped. "John, goose it!"
But the personnel pod did not speed up. Sheridan had shut down his communications.
One of the Whitestars started to maneuver, and another one opened fire into the jump point as soon as the black legged ship hove into view.
"Target that ship and fire!" Ivanova ordered. The Medusa and a second Whitestar joined their fire to that of the first Whitestar, while the third continued to lumber around into firing position from a dead stop.
As the jump point closed and the attacking vessel streaked in on the personnel pod, Ivanova felt the terrible shriek of a Shadow vessel rip through her mind. That was not the Earth-Shadow fusion they had been expecting! It was all pointy legs and terror. It was a Shadow ship.
The Shadow vessel scooped up the personnel pod like a tarantula gripping its prey.
"Tractor beam!" Ivanova ordered. "Get that pod back!"
"No lock!" called the ensign. "It's got a leg over it, and it's interfering somehow."
Now all the Whitestars were firing at the Shadow vessel, but targeting its back side, away from the captured pod. One of its spiky legs sheared off and tumbled in space.
Then a jump point opened and the Shadow vessel went through.
"After them!" Ivanova ordered, knowing it was futile. The Medusa could not track a Shadow vessel in hyperspace. Even the Whitestars couldn't do that, unless they could follow it closely enough to engage in hyper before it went off the beacon.
The Medusa and the Whitestars followed the Shadow vessel into jump, concentrating their fire at its rapidly retreating back. But then it slipped away from them. The Shadows had always had the advantage in hyperspace.
"What now?" commed one of the Whitestar captains.
"Now we stick to our plan," said Ivanova. "We have to draw them out. Take the pirate ship, or at least take some of its crew alive. We'll never get anything from a Shadow pilot, at least not without Lyta's help. But only God and G'Kar know where she is now. Destroy any genuine Shadow ships we see, like that one. Capture the human-Shadow fusion ships. That's all we can do."
That, and hope Reginald Sands might find out the location of the pirate base. But that, she was not saying on an open comm.
Nor was she about to say it to her bridge crew, or anyone else on the Medusa. The target signal did not come out of Sheridan's personnel pod by accident. There was a saboteur aboard the Medusa.
\
"Damn, I wish I had stellarcom in this thing." The planetoid steadily growing bigger on the viewscreen had to be the pirate base. Now he knew where it was, but he was hardly in a position to do anything about it. "Who designed this thing, anyway?"
He knew the answer to that: Minbari had designed the pod. Worker caste Minbari; they designed and built everything on Minbar. And the Whitestar fleet had originally been built in secret from the military caste, as Delenn's personal project. Built by the workers, crewed by the religious, commanded by humans and Rangers. Not a single military mind had anything to do with the design of the Whitestar or any of its systems, such as this pod. Which accounted for the lack of stellarcom; the workers designed this pod for insystem short-range use, and never anticipated anything like this happening.
To be fair, Sheridan had not seen it coming either. His view of the attack had been blocked by the other ships. One moment he was trying to shut off the signal, the next black spider legs wrapped around the pod and carried him off.
He had not gotten a very good look at the attacking ship, but it was easy to tell that it did not include any of the squared-off Earth designs of the pirate ship. This was a real Shadow vessel. And what did that imply? Nothing, necessarily.
He had already known that numerous Shadow servants survived the destruction of Zahadum. The Shadows themselves were gone, but their technology kept popping up all over the galaxy. It was possible the pirates could have scavenged a Shadow ship.
"Possible, but not likely," he said. "Not when they also have a Shadow-human fusion ship. The Drakh are probably behind this. Continuing the Shadows' work, creating chaos and conflict. They're not quite up to starting another war, so they work with pirates instead. Yes, that tracks."
The ship was coming in for a landing. "That's enough grand strategy," he told himself. "Immediate tactics, now. What are my resources? Me. Unarmed. In an unarmed ship. I don't think a frontal assault is the way to go."
He had to be realistic. He was either going to die or be taken prisoner. He had had a very painful lesson in what happens when he tried to fight overwhelming odds, by himself, unarmed. He kept flashing back to the bar on Mars.
Of course, he had been tranqed then. So, it was impossible to go up against a whole pirate base by himself, wasn't the impossible his specialty? If only he had a tac-nuke in his back pocket.
He saw the Shadow-human fusion ship on the airfield below, with scaffolding around it, undergoing repairs. A dented Minbari fighter lay nearby, apparently where it had been pulled off of the pirate ship's hull.
The Shadow vessel positioned his pod at the pirate ship's airlock. It made solid contact and latched on. He heard the pirate ship's lock door roll back. If he was going to try to jump the pirates, this would be his best opportunity.
The pod was not configured to give him any place to hide behind the door. When the airlock opened, he darted forward and came out swinging. He managed to connect his fist with a Centauri jaw before he found himself on the deck.
Pain; dizziness; a feeling of disconnection from his limbs. Light stun. He blinked up at the pirates and spotted the stunners they all carried, except for one with a deadly long rifle.
One of the Centauri hauled him to his feet, and pressed a stunner against the side of Sheridan's head. The other pirates searched the pod.
"Where is the treasure?" one of the pirates asked in heavily accented Centauri.
One of the others said, "Maybe he is the treasure."
The first one asked Sheridan, "If you are crew, give the word and tell us where the treasure is."
"Sorry," Sheridan said. He squelched his impulse to say 'sorry, fresh out'; he could indulge in flippancy when he got out of this. His week's sojourn on Mars had completely erased any temptation toward meaningless defiance. He would only resist when it counted. He said, "The signal must have gone off by mistake."
One of the other pirates said something in Centauri. Sheridan caught the words Wex and Whitestar.
"He is right," said the first pirate. "You give the word, yes? Then we know you are crew, yes?"
The pirate that sounded like Londo was looking for some kind of code word, Sheridan realized. Wex crewmen must be given code words to identify themselves to the pirates. The crews of the pirated Wex ships were in on it, then. That insight did not do him much good right then.
The pirates argued with each other in Centauri. Then they marched him through the ship, gave him a filter mask, and escorted him across the tarmac to the buildings. In the building airlock, he was briefly tempted to make another escape attempt as he took his mask off, because the Centauri had to take the stunner muzzle off of Sheridan's temple. But the other pirates were still covering him, with stunners and with the long gun.
This was not a particularly good escape opportunity. He would wait for a better one. Of course, there might not be a better one.
Escape, escape, escape: it was a litany running in his head. But this was not like Mars. He was not a military officer captured by the enemy. He was the President of the Interstellar Alliance, taken hostage by pirates. It was a completely different situation.
They took him to a sumptuous office, crammed with wooden furniture that would have been tasteful if there had been a little less of it, and if it had not been piled high with silk and velvet throw pillows and gold knickknacks.
Sheridan was given a comfortable seat, while the Centauri gabbled with each other in their own language. They grew quiet as another pair of Centauri came in, a young one and an old one.
The young one stood in front of Sheridan and stared at him. At first Sheridan thought it was some variation on a staring contest, but then he started to get a headache, and realized what must be happening. He was being scanned.
Normals could not tell when they were being telepathically scanned, unless it was deep scan. Then it could hurt, and even kill. The Centauri telepath was not just reading surface thoughts, then; he was deep scanning him.
Sheridan was not tied to the chair. He could attack to stop the scan.
As soon as the thought occurred to him, before he could even start bunching up his muscles to sprint out of the chair, the telepath called out something in Centauri, and the other pirates all pointed their weapons at Sheridan.
He sighed and abandoned his abortive escape attempt.
The telepath turned to the older Centauri and spoke to him.
The old pirate said, "So, you are the treasure. How much ransom should I ask for you, President Sheridan? I'm sure you're worth enough to buy several new ships. Ones that are less distinctive that those already provided for us."
"The Interstellar Alliance does not negotiate with terrorists," Sheridan said.
"Terrorists," the old Centauri chuckled. "Terrorists have political aims. We only want money."
A female Centauri came in, rubbing her hands in delight. "I hear you have another prisoner who is not part of the agreement."
"He's far too valuable for you to touch, Inoja. We're expecting ransom."
"Oh please, please, I promise I won't leave any marks. There are so very many fun things I could do with a matched set of humans."
Sheridan objected, "Now just wait a minute."
The old pirate grunted. "Alright, you can play, but don't hurt him. The last thing we need is a plague of vengeful IA forces hunting us through the galaxy."
Inoja flitted to the old pirate and kissed him on the cheek. "Thank you, Uncle." Then she turned to the other pirates and said, "Bring him to the puppet theater."
This time Sheridan did not wait for a better opportunity, guns be damned. He leaped out of his seat and grabbed for the stunner of the nearest pirate. He would have preferred to go for the rifle, but the rifleman was out of reach.
Sheridan got the weapon away from the pirate, stunned him, and downed the rifleman before the world shorted out.
When he woke up in a dim room, his head pounding, he realized he had been hit with heavy stun, or possibly multiple stun blasts. There were heavy bands around him: biceps, forearms, hands; thighs, calves; a wide harness around his midsection, and a balaclava around his head and under his chin. Each part of the array was connected to a wire.
This was the puppet theater, he realized.
Inoja had a control device in her hands. She touched it, and Sheridan's right arm waved. "Hello," Inoja said in a deep voice, imitating Sheridan.
Then she touched the unit again, and a female form 'walked' across the floor of the puppet theater. "Hello," Inoja said again, in a tremulous high pitched squeak that sounded more like someone inhaling helium than any real female voice.
Inoja walked both of them toward each other until they were within four feet. The woman was about Sheridan's age, with light hair that might once have been blonde hanging lankly down. She was bruised and generally roughed up, dirty in places, recently cleaned off in others, and except for the puppet strings, naked.
In her own voice, Inoja said, "I don't know how you humans manage to mate at all. Look at you. You can't even reach her from there."
That was when Sheridan realized he was naked too. "Oh no."
"Sh!" the Centauri female commanded. She lowered her voice and said, "Hey baby, what's your sign?"
Then she pitched her voice up to its chipmunk-like soprano and said, "The sign says Authorized Personnel Only baby."
Sheridan struggled against the puppet strings. He could not get out of them.
Inoja deepened her voice and said, "Care to dance?" and then responded in her fake-female voice, "I thought you'd never ask, you handsome devil."
Inoja worked her control box and got her two humans into a waltz position, and started moving them around the floor. It was awkward at first, but Inoja got better at it after a few minutes.
Sheridan whispered to the human woman, "Are you OK?"
"I feel like I picked a bar fight with a dozen guys and then went home with a marginally compatible alien. Except I don't have a hangover, so I guess I'm doing alright."
Inoja stopped the dance. "So you are capable of witty repartee after all. You're just too daunted to direct any of it at me, is that it? Yes, I should have known."
Carla lowered her eyes to avoid Inoja's gaze.
"I see," said the Centauri woman. "I broke you too quickly. Or perhaps, you were already broken long ago. Yes, that's it, isn't it?"
Inoja moved closer to Carla and traced a finger up Carla's arm, where old, white scars were normally hidden by sleeves. "How did you get these scars? Have you been tortured before?"
Carla answered quietly, "I did that to myself."
"Scratch marks," Inoja murmured. "I would not have guessed what they were, except that the answer was suggested by the man's scars."
Sheridan's injuries from the Ritual of Endurance were all healed now, and most of the marks had faded. However, the distinctive V-shapes of the baltor mar would probably last forever. Because of the necrotic characteristics of the baltor mar, they interfered with healing, and their insertion points generally left permanent scars.
Inoja said, "You were tortured with the baltor mar, as he was. But they left you loose to scratch yourself into a bloody mess. Mmmm, what a marvelous sight you must have been." Inoja placed a hand over her own breast and sighed, gazing at Carla rapturously.
"You two really are a matched pair. You're perfect." She began maneuvering the control box again. "They say childbirth is a terribly painful ordeal for humans. Too bad he'll be long gone by then, ransomed for some pile of cash, but there's no reason I can't make you last, if I'm careful. I could make you last for years. And raise up your child as a slave."
Inoja completed her positioning of her two humans, and said, "Well, go on."
Sheridan said, "You can't make me co-operate with this."
"Oh, yes I can," the Centauri female said. She walked out of the lighted area, into the darkness of the room's edge, and returned with a metal probe with a button on one end.
Sheridan's eyes widened. "You don't know much about human males if you think threats will get you what you want."
"Ah, fear! That sweet delicate perfume! At last I have made you fear, human man. But you mistake me. This is not a threat. It's not even an instrument of torture. It's a medical device, in fact. Your people use these to collect genetic samples from corpses. Why you would want to sabotage your own evolution by breeding from the dead, I can't guess."
"No. No!" Sheridan grabbed the puppet strings leading to his hands and tried again to break them, but could not.
Carla hung quietly in the puppet suit, eyes down and to the side, not looking at either Inoja or Sheridan. She looked as if she had already tested the puppet strings and had given up.
"Don't do it," Sheridan said. "Anything you want, money, ships, weapons, I'll get it for you."
"This is what I want," said Inoja. "Besides, you're lying. Once you are ransomed, you won't have any reason to give us anything."
The pirate woman inserted the probe.
Sheridan shut his eyes tight and held his breath. He hoped he would pass out, like he had passed out during the Ritual. But not enough time passed for him to fall unconscious from holding his breath.
Inoja pressed the button. Electricity slammed into Sheridan. He heard himself cry out. And he was sickeningly aware that he had lost control of himself.
\
The sector was crawling with Whitestars. Their mission: find the pirates. Some of the Whitestars patrolled the space lanes, looking for the pirate ship. Others were searching likely star systems for the pirate base.
Each Whitestar was alone. The strategic tradeoff was volume for firepower: how much volume of space could be searched, versus massing enough firepower to take out a Shadow vessel if they encountered it again. But since the searchers were hoping to find the Shadow/human fusion ship or the base, and could not track a true Shadow vessel in hyperspace, Delenn had decided to go for volume.
There was one warship out here that was not participating in the search. That was the Medusa. Capt. Ivanova had locked it down tight and started an investigation into the sabotage of the pod.
She was in her office when her exec came in.
"Ma'am, permission to speak freely?"
"Granted."
"Captain, you've been at this for two days straight. This is turning into a witch hunt. Morale is at an all time low. How long are you going to keep beating the bushes for this saboteur of yours?"
"Until I find him, Mr. Khyber. And I don't like the implication that you think this is some kind of personal crusade. The safety of the Medusa is at stake. There is a saboteur aboard my ship, and I'm going to find him."
"The personnel pod could more easily have been rigged on the ship it came from. It was only here for a few hours. The window of opportunity on the other ship was much bigger. Also, the other ship's crew must have known about the target frequency for some time. Our crew only found out about it after you briefed us, after the pod was taken."
"The other ship's crew are Minbari. Why would they do this?"
"Why would ours?"
"Commander Khyber, I have no illusions about just what I walked into when I took command of this ship. I know the Captaincy was open because the previous Captain died in action against the allied fleet. As did other personnel from the Medusa, some of whom doubtless still have friends aboard. Placing me here was a political move, just like placing Lochley in command of Babylon 5 was a political move, both of them intended to send a message of unity. Look, we're all joining hands and singing kumbaya. That's how it's intended to play for the folks back home. But I know it isn't true. I know there's lingering resentment on both sides."
"And you don't think there could still be Minbari who hate Sheridan Starkiller?"
"That was a long time ago."
"Even humans have been known to hold a grudge that long. And Minbari live longer than we do. Maybe nearly two decades doesn't seem like that long to them."
Ivanova pursed her lips in thought. "You do have a point there, Mr. Khyber. Alright, I'm not going to abandon the additional safety precautions. But we can resume our patrol. Give the crew something to do besides eat their heads off."
"Thank you, Captain." Khyber sighed in relief. "I'll inform the crew." He had gotten away with it. And he would get that bitch Ivanova yet.
\
The Whitestar Fleet stood off in hyperspace, waiting for the signal to attack. The search had turned up nothing, and they had all gathered again for the trap. There was something flickering on the sensors, far off the beacon. It was probably the pirate ship coming to take the bait.
The near-derelict Wex Shipping merchant vessel made its slow way into the star system. It had been broadcasting target signal for nearly half an hour, and now it had just reached this blue-white star's cometary cluster.
The pirate ship appeared right where she was expected, in the heart of the ice cloud, where she had been lying doggo. She began a desultory run against the cargo ship. She stuck around just long enough for the Whitestar Fleet to arrive.
Then she turned tail and vanished into hyperspace. And at the same moment, dozens of jump points formed in crazy angles, coming from parts of hyperspace where only Shadow vessels could go.
Three Whitestars followed the pirate ship into hyperspace, hoping to track it back to its base or cripple and board it. The others turned to fight.
The Shadow attack did not last long, just long enough to delay most of the Fleet, and keep them from joining the pursuit of the Shadow/human fusion ship. Then they scattered and vanished.
From the viewing room in her Whitestar, Delenn watched the battle. She stood in the center of black space, and ships streaked all around her, firing, exploding, dying. One Whitestar wrecked against an icy comet with an iron core, sending glittery ice and living biotech parts breaking outward like sea spray.
"They knew we were here," she said aloud. "They knew it was a trap, and they trapped us in turn. They knew. They knew because John knew."
Sheridan had held out for a week on Mars. The pirates had had him for three days. Whatever they had done to him, Delenn swore she would take vengeance.
\
Inoja snapped off the recording of the battle. "Isn't it glorious?" she asked her humans. "Oh, I know, I know, those were your ships on the other side. But you set this up, Sheridan. It was your trap. We let our allies know, and they responded beautifully, didn't they? Ah… anger. So I can still provoke anger in you, how nice. I thought you were burned out of it after the last mating. Why don't you speak? I'm sure you could be very entertaining if you tried."
Sheridan and Carla were no longer in the puppet harnesses. Inoja had tired of that game. Now they were draped artfully across cushions in Inoja's richly decorated room, bound with cargo webbing into positions like a pair of faithful dogs curled up at the foot of Inoja's bed.
Neither of them bothered to struggle. Sheridan had tested the bonds and found them unbreakable. That was not surprising; the cargo webbing was meant to secure five ton pallet loads in the hold of a starship during maneuvering and reentry. It was the only completely undecorated, utilitarian thing in Inoja's sumptuous quarters.
"You're getting boring, you know, Sheridan. I was so excited when I found out who you are, after the first puppet show. I thought, surely he must be strong willed, and will be a delight to break. But you're just like Carla. You're compliant when it doesn't matter. When I say, sit here, drink this, hold still while I transfer you from one restraint position to another. But you still resist when I want you to do something you think is wrong, like mating with Carla. Someone taught you to be this way. Someone on Mars, perhaps? All the reports in the media say you did not break in captivity. But they were only half right, weren't they? You did not confess. But you did learn to submit. How I wish Uncle would let me carve you and pierce you. I'm sure I could take you the rest of the way, make your submission total, if only Uncle would allow me to sculpt you properly."
Inoja sighed, and settled down between her two humans in a rustle of silk, placing a hand on each. It began as a caress, and then she started to rake her nails across their backs. Then she stopped abruptly. "No marks, Uncle said. Not on you, anyway. But I like you as a matched pair. I won't start on the heavy play until you're gone."
Inoja's possessive fingers poked at her humans, claiming them both alike. The pirate woman invaded them, one hand to each human. "Well, now that the battle is over, no doubt they'll be making arrangements to ransom you. Ah, if only I had more time, and could bring all my arts to bear!" She sighed again. "At least I'll still have the female."
Inoja dropped her voice into her Sheridan-imitating bass register, and said, "I hate you, pirate bitch. But at least I know my greatest fear did not come about. I was always afraid I would enjoy this. But I don't. Even though the person doing it is a beautiful female."
Sheridan stared up at her wide-eyed.
Inoja laughed. "You forget, I am an empath. I cannot read your thoughts, but your feelings are an open book. Tee hee hee, that's what I call a penetrating analysis."
Then she pitched her voice up into her Carla-imitation. "I hate my submission. But I don't hate myself for it. Not anymore. And I'm surprised that I don't. This is a revelation."
Inoja returned her voice to her normal tone, and mused, "Yes, I will have to explore that further. Your state of mind reminds you of the obedience of the loribond, doesn't it? This state of submission had to be provoked in you before they ever gave you the drug. The drug merely cemented it, made it permanent. If you ever met your controller again, you would be helpless to resist his commands. You could be quite fascinating in your own right, Carla. But I'll have plenty of time to explore you. Sheridan will be out of my reach soon. I must think of something more I can do to him, without breaking my promise to Uncle."
Then Inoja pulled out her fingers and clapped her hands in delight. "I know! I will make you watch things done to the female. How delightful!"
The End
Dark Horse series continues in Yo Ho Ho and a Bottle of Brevari
