Chapter Fifteen
Consciousness returned slowly. Rosamund was lying face down on soft, mossy ground. Her head felt fuzzy and there was a weird metallic taste in her mouth. She swallowed hard, several times, and forced herself to stay as still as possible while she assessed the situation.
Whoever had done this to them had used some kind of chemical weapon, from a distance. They could have killed them, but had instead chosen to immobilize them.
How long had they been there? Would Kodran’s clan come looking for them soon? Did they even know where Kodran was?
She couldn’t afford to panic. She took slow, steady breaths, and tried to think of reasons to be hopeful.
The skimmers could all be tracked, which was probably how Kodran had found her and Dot-R. So the clan could find them…assuming they were still in the same place…but would it be in time?
And were Kodran and Dot-R still alive?
She concentrated hard, opening her mind the same way she had when she’d first put her hand on Kodran’s broad, strong chest. Faintly, she felt him. He was near, and he was alive. Relief flooded through her. Her heart’s fire was still alive.
It was amazing how naturally the thought came to her. He was hers. She was his. If they survived this, she would not leave him.
Then she began to worry again. Where was Dot-R? Shouldn’t she be yelling and cursing and threatening?
There were men speaking. As the fog in her head lifted, their voices became clearer.
"Sekari better hurry the hell up. Kodran’s family’s going to be looking for him soon. I want to blast off,” Darfan said. "And I still say we should have killed him and his men while we had the chance. They’re dangerous.”
So Sekari was behind this. She didn't know what he had against Kodran, but she hoped to survive long enough to see him burn for it
“Not worth it,” one of the other men grunted. “If it were ever found out that we killed them without due process and without a proper death challenge, the entire Draell race would declare war on us. If Sekari wants them dead, he can kill them when he gets here.”
As Rosamund lay there, she heard someone’s boots crunching through the leaves as he walked towards her, and then she felt a hard kick in the leg. She stifled a cry of pain. “That’s for kicking me in the balls, you bitch.”
She climbed to her feet and glared at Darfan.
He had fifteen men with him. They were all armed to the teeth and scanning the grove with suspicious looks on their faces.
The Draell were scattered around on the ground, unconscious. Kodran was lying face down. Prenzal. Six other members of Kodran’s clan. And Dot-R, who lay flat on her back, arms by her sides. Dot-R wasn’t moving.
Rosamund stared at her in alarm. Why was Dot-R disabled too? A chemical attack shouldn’t affect her.
Darfan followed her gaze, sneering.
“Your little robot friend mouthed off to us, so we shorted her circuits with a pulse gun. Maybe she’ll recover, maybe she won’t.”
White-hot rage flowed through Rosamund’s veins as she stalked up to Darfan. “Lukan is going to fucking kill all of you,” she said with a cold smile, glancing at Darfan’s men. They looked away, avoiding her gaze.
Darfan snorted. “With what Sekari is paying me, I can run far enough that he’ll never find me.” He glanced at his men. “Us,” he added quickly. “He’ll never find us.”
One of his men scowled at him. “We hope he won’t.”
“It’s not like the Federation will help him,” Darfan said in a wheedling tone. “They might even support us. We’re helping Sekari capture a traitor who collaborated with cyborgs.”
“Oh, bull-pucky,” Rosamund snapped. “He would never.”
Darfan raked Rosamund with his cold gaze. “What do you know about the physiology of cyborgs? Their flesh is not self-repairing, so when they’re injured, there are only two ways to replace it. One, strip the flesh from living beings. Or two, grow the flesh in a vat, using highly specialized equipment. When your big scaly lover came to Agora, he was using Starcrossed as a cover. He knew that he could get the equipment on the black market there, so he signed up with us as a client to give him an excuse to be on the planet.”
“No.” Rosamund felt faint. Could that possibly be true?
“Sir,” one of his men said.
“Not now, Temra,” Darfan said irritably. “You want to know why Sekari is after Kodran?” he sneered at Rosamund. “Because a couple of months ago Sekari sent Kodran to Mining Outpost R-375 to save a group of Draell who were being attacked by cyborgs. And instead of saving the Draell, Kodran killed all the miners and collaborated with the cyborgs. And he’s hiding them out here, and repairing them.”
