Spoil of War by Helena Maeve

Author:Helena Maeve [Maeve, Helena]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Erotic Romance Fiction
Publisher: Pride Publishing
Published: 2017-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Five

Dallan would be fine. What did he expect? As a traitor in a foreign land and an avowed killer of men, he’d hardly earned a right to sanctuary. And he had said it himself—the tribes took slaves and maimed them by way of retribution. At least the Federation was civilized about the way they dealt with their chattels. He had been placed in the care of trusted individuals and offered a portion of the rations allotted to every true resident.

Granted, the trusted individuals had given him away post haste and his rations were less than half of what he should have received, but at least he’d warranted some accommodation. No one would harm him now—unless he withheld information from his Int-Com case officers. No one would threaten his life—unless he was accused of double-crossing his new master, in which case an order of execution could be surprisingly easy to acquire.

Briar drummed his thumb against the center stick. The wind was already picking up, rattling the humble hovercraft as it zipped over the dunes. The air filters would be choked by the time he made it to Theta Compound. He’d have to spend his one day off cleaning it all out.

He couldn’t think that far. Every mile covered took him farther from Lambda Station and Ashai’s unit. Every passing minute was another opportunity for something to go terribly wrong.

Foot sliding over the pedals, Briar eased the cog to a deliberate stop.

He imagined himself on the radar screen of a Federation outpost, a single blip of light neither broadcasting a distress call nor powering down. Fierce gales shook the craft. On the center console, a weather warning alerted Briar to the necessity of finding shelter.

He was halfway to Theta already. If he pressed on, he’d be there before the storm truly became a risk factor. He’d have a little more time to concoct his excuses for Kai, in case he hailed from whatever undisclosed location he’d gone off to on his training exercise.

Even as he conjured the vision of an evening spent in blissful solitude, Briar knew he couldn’t do it.

He hit the console with both hands. “Gods damn it!”

A flick of switches was all it took to get the engines back online. Palms stinging, Briar spun the cog a hundred and eighty degrees and jammed his foot down on the accelerator. Thrusters roared, expelling dust and sand, and nailed his back to the frayed leather seat.

The weather warning flashed again, this time highlighting poor visibility and the growing possibility of collision. Briar shut it off and switched the windshield to infrared. He had a better chance of eyeballing any large objects flying past than his sensors did of picking up their jagged trajectories.

The cog rattled, protesting the abuse he was visiting upon the little craft, but shot across the flats like an arrow. Lambda Station materialized on his radar. A hundred clicks. Ninety. At seventy-five, Briar began to see the honeycomb pattern of the dome explode with light whenever the wind tossed a larger piece of debris against it.

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