The Star Queen
Susan Grant
(from “The Only One” anthology)
Prequel to “The Star King” series

Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength;
loving someone deeply gives you courage.

—Lao-Tzu

Prologue

Romjha B'kah rolled a dart fashioned from a spent rifle cartridge between his finger and thumb, squinting to clear eyes blurred by blood loss, fatigue, and painkillers.

Painkillers? He almost laughed. More like enough glasses of ale to make him forget about the bullet hole in his thigh. By morning all he'd care about would be the monumental hangover left from his overindulgence; but if he'd consumed what the healer had tried to push on him, the official knock-you-out-for-a-day-or-two pills that passed for medicine, he'd be flat on his back now instead of playing darts.

Priorities, he reasoned. A man had to have them.

Nearly all of the community's available women were crowded into a corner of the Big Room, the social heart of their community, to watch him and the other raiders wind down. He and his men drew female attention by being members of an elite group. Raiders. Who didn't love them? At great personal risk, they left the security of the caves to forage supplies from the surface: fuel, building materials, medical supplies—all left behind by the absentee conquerors who'd gutted their homeland three generations ago and still visited random terror campaigns upon them.

It didn't hurt matters that every man in Romjha's assigned cell of five was a bachelor in good health, or that at twenty-four he was the old man of the group.

Romjha took aim. A target hung from an unadorned wall of solid rock. The Big Room, unlike other parts of the surrounding cave, made no attempt to hide its origins: an underground munitions storage facility. The installation had served as home for Sienna's surviving population since they were driven underground by invaders who had exterminated everyone unlucky enough—or witless enough—to remain topside.

Romjha leaned on his crutch. The target wavered. Or was it his eyes? It almost felt as if his head were floating away from his body. He swallowed, his mouth parched, and put the bulk of his weight on the crutch.

"Looks like you'll need to put a bullet in your other leg to even out the load!" yelled Petro.

The raiders lounging nearby guffawed, slapping their legs with dirty hands. They hadn't cleaned much more than the sweat from their faces after returning from last night's mission, one which had nearly won Romjha a one-way trip to the Ever After. Petro had been crawling next to him when the catwalk they traversed gave way, causing Romjha's rifle to misfire. The bullet had passed clean through Romjha's leg, missing the artery. Had he not long ago lost his faith, he might have believed the Great Mother was looking out for him.

Since women were present, Romjha refrained from answering his friend with a rude gesture. There might not be much of the warrior's creed to which he still adhered, but showing consideration to females was part of it. "Maybe I'll put one in your leg next time we throw—to even the odds," Romjha suggested. The women laughed, and he flashed them his most charming grin. He enjoyed their company (he enjoyed women, period—the texture of their skin, their hair, their taste, their scent) but he'd showed so little interest in making any of them his mate—or interest in them at all lately— that they assumed he was still grieving for his wife.

He didn't know the cause of his disinterest to tell the truth. It had been years since Seri died. He was still a warrior, still fierce and proud. Although perhaps his fire had faded some. He'd been so helpless when Seri and their newborn son died from complications regarding the birth. All the weapons in the world couldn't have prevented their deaths, not when his people lived as primitives without modern medical facilities.

He let the women all imagine what they wanted about him, let them imagine that they knew him. But he didn't even know himself anymore. He certainly didn't feel like much of a man, a protector. Perhaps the others still did.

Flicking his wrist, Romjha threw his dart. It landed true with a resounding thwack. He shrugged to the sounds of whistles and the grumbles from the men who'd lost their bets—shares of their allotted portions of ale.

Hobbling to the target, he plucked out the dart, sunk deep and dead-center. As if he'd withdrawn a dagger imbedded deep in living flesh, the action brought about a blood-chilling scream.

And then another. Women's voices. Children's.

Romjha turned around, the dart hanging from his fingers. His pulse didn't even accelerate. He simply peered over the heads of those around him to view the latest mishap. Too much carnage, too much death—they had a numbing effect on the psyche.

Covered in gore, Taj Sai, Joren Sai's orphan, staggered into the Big Room. Her red-blond hair had come loose from its binding, thrashing about like blood-encrusted whips as she swung her overly bright gaze from one end of the room to the other. She waved off an army of helpers. "I'm unharmed," she gasped.

She stopped in the middle of the room, her hands fisted at her sides. At first glance, she appeared fragile, her amber eyes hollow and haunted, but the muscles flexing beneath the skin of her slender limbs indicated endurance and strength.

The silence as everyone paused was deafening. Taj Sai pressed one bloodied fist to her chest. "Pasha is dead," she said on a breath of anguish.

"Pasha . . . Pasha," came cries and murmurs around the room. The bombmaker fabricated the munitions they used on raids. Taj was his apprentice. It should have been many years before she had to take his place.

Should have been, Romjha thought. There were a lot of things like that.

Elder Patra, an ancient who'd known those who lived topside in prewar days, raised her voice. "What happened?"

"There was an explosion in the lab." Taj shook visibly but didn't shed a single tear. With contempt she spat out, "Another accident. And I have come here to tell you that this irresponsibility must end, or we will end as a people!"

Romjha's head spun and his leg ached, but he couldn't pull his eyes from Taj as she shouted, "We've met the enemy, and he is us! Should you doubt me, you can ask Pasha—for if things continue as they are, all of us will be making a trip to the Ever After to see him. Just yesterday a raider's rifle misfired." Her wild, impassioned eyes found Romjha's. The jolt of that brief contact rocked him to the core.

"Last week it was the fuel spill," she continued, dragging those appalled eyes from his. "What is next?" she beseeched the shocked, silent gathering. "Who is next?"

Romjha grimaced. Her accusation rang with a truth he couldn't deny. His misfire was a mistake that could have just as easily killed Petro or any of the children scampering underfoot. He'd loaded his weapon too early, kept it cocked. With their population in decline, could they afford such recklessness, such sloppiness?

"We have become lax," Taj charged. "That is what is killing our people. Laziness. Apathy," she growled. "These are the greatest dangers of all!"

Her scorn for men like Romjha emanated from her like heat from a blaze, melting his indifference like wax. Abruptly self-conscious, he cleared his throat and shifted more of his weight to his good leg.

Taj marched back and forth, as if the energy coursing through her wouldn't allow her to stay still. Romjha had been raised to celebrate and appreciate the differences between men and women, but this woman was unlike any he'd ever encountered. The black outfit she wore was utilitarian and unisex. It contrasted with her long hair and graceful body. She obviously relished her femininity, and yet she addressed her people with the confidence of a raider.

It roused his curiosity.

What was she—seventeen by now? Eighteen? He should know, but he didn't. He'd grown up with the girl. Joren, her father, had been a hero to him.

Joren was one of the few men who studied theology beyond the classes given them all as youngsters in an attempt to keep this small, cavern-bound civilization "civilized." He and Romjha had debated endless hours on religion. philosophy. and politics. If not for Joren, Romjha would not know as much as he did about the pre-Fall years of the Empire; he would not have known how to study the books—huge handwritten tomes created from what the original survivors of Sienna had remembered from the days of computers and historical databases. Joren had helped Romjha form opinions on what the ruined galaxy might be like now, who in it had perhaps survived, and who had not. And then Joren had died.

Taj had been a brave soul throughout the ordeal, but Romjha hadn't given her much thought since, or anything else much thought. He'd spent too much time drifting in his own personal hell.

It occurred to him now that Taj had lost her family, too, and here she was: so vital. So alive.

So angry.

"We say that we fight the warlord," she growled. "But I question who is the real enemy when all the casualties we've suffered of late have been at our own hands."

Several of the elders attempted to physically intercept her, presumably in consolation, but she thrust out two fists, keeping them at arm's length. Shaking and bloody, she admonished them in a tirade that covered everything from unreliable weapons and volatile chemicals to sloppy safety procedures. She swore they'd blasted well better fix things since she was taking Pasha's place. Things were going to change. "Destiny isn't a matter of chance," she concluded fervently. "It's a matter of choice. If we are to survive, you have to change your thinking. I have already changed mine."

Romjha regarded her, awestruck. He was no stranger to bitterness and sorrow in all its forms, but never had he witnessed anyone strike back at fate with such fury and intensity. This young woman had taken tragedy and turned it into opportunity, clearly working to effect real changes in the way munitions were fabricated and in the procedures for utilizing them.

What had he done after his wife's death? Absolutely nothing.

Shame crept into his gut, and Romjha dropped his gaze to his hands. Capable hands. Strong hands. A warrior's hands. But he'd kept them at his sides in cowardice.

Inaction was cowardice. Instead of doing something about the poor conditions that led to his wife's death, he'd become part of the problem. Careless. Apathetic. Negligent of the risks he took, as if his life meant nothing. He was one of those who vexed Taj.

To be honest, his life didn't mean much to him. But others' did. And when you ignored the peril you put yourself in, you risked those around you. He didn't deserve the rank of raider or the accompanying privileges. Especially not in comparison with Taj, who had put the entire community on notice that she intended to use her position as a means of making things better. Safer.

Romjha rubbed his stubbly chin. Could he not do the same? Wasn't a raider as capable of doing good? Couldn't he shore up their defensive installations? Tighten safety procedures? Improve weapons training? Not to mention what he might do to boost morale, which had been flagging lately. And as raider commander, he would have a real opportunity to change policy, to set examples and make their forays topside more than mere scavenging missions.

Raider commander?

Wooziness made the room spin. You're insane, man. Yeah, maybe he was. But he was good with a rifle; he could think quickly under pressure. And it just so happened that the current raider commander had been chosen because the man had been the only one absent when they held the vote! Nothing blocked Romjha from vying for the job. There, he could begin the slow process of helping his people reclaim their world. And more.

His bleary gaze swerved to Taj. The women were surrounding her now, wiping the blood from her face and hands. Anger and deep-seated shame boiled in his belly. Women and children, the weak and the sick—they should be safe from war, he thought, frowning.

Romjha's free hand balled into a fist. He would go after the warlord himself and take him out, if he could figure out a way. But there were a few minor details holding him back, such as not having a fleet of space-capable craft at his service—or any real tech at all, for that matter. Not to mention his lack of the few million soldiers that might come in handy in an attempt to trounce his people's enemies.

But he vowed to keep his goal.

With a surge of protectiveness, he watched Taj at last allow one of the women to take her hand and lead her away. He himself ought to be holding that hand; he should be the one to gently cleanse her, to calm her. To protect her.

The urge to follow was almost unbearable. But Romjha was not yet the man Taj deserved. One day soon, he would be. And then he would make his intentions known. Body and soul, she would be his.

Another grand goal, he thought. Moments ago he'd had none at all; now he was full of them, it seemed.

He drew in a deep breath, squeezed his crutch until he was sure it would shatter in his hands. "Destiny is not a matter of chance. It's a matter of choice." Yes, my young Taj.

Romjha B'kah would no longer wait for the future. No, indeed. From this day forward, he would achieve it.

Chapter One

The echo of a distant explosion rumbled through the vast underground network of caves. In the weapons lab where she'd worked all night, Taj Sai jerked her head up and listened. She'd never heard an outside—"topside"—blast from deep inside these caverns.

Her fingers clamped around a handful of bomb fuses she'd been cutting. Her heart thumped against her ribs. She aimed her good ear in the direction of the nearest passageway, but hissing burners and bubbling beakers on her worktable and walls of solid rock drowned out everything but the roar of her pulse.

By now, fear and curiosity would have sent the others rushing to the Big Room at the front of the cave. Every nerve ending in her body screamed for her to drop what she was doing and follow. But Taj didn't feel like pasting charred strips of her quivering flesh all over the walls of her lab.

No, thanks. Not tonight. It wasn't exactly her idea of redecorating.

Taj glared at the fuses in her hand and threw them into their box. Cooling in an ice bath on her worktable was a glass beaker filled with a solution of radic acid. She lifted it and poured a thin stream of the solution into a large spun-glass funnel filter. Delicate yellowish-white crystals collected at the bottom: a lethal harvest.

Her skin prickled with sweat. Radites. In this state the compound was extremely unstable. If it contacted anything but glass—boom! That little idiosyncrasy had killed her predecessor. Taj knew—she'd had to clean up the mess Pasha made. The mess Pasha became.

It had been four years since the old bombmaker had made that error and killed himself. But he might have killed someone else. That would have been worse.

Sweat gelled on her skin, suddenly icy cold. Five men were topside tonight, honored raiders all.

Her hand shook. Setting the beaker on its stand and wiping her knuckles across her brow, she swallowed thickly. The raiders had taken along her new shaped charges, miniature pipe bombs a hundred times more powerful than their bigger brothers. The men loved the idea: a minimum amount of explosive for a maximum amount of damage. "More bang for the buck," went the ancient saying that wasn't as outdated as most thought. Currency might no longer be in use but explosives surely were.

Yet the new shaped charges hadn't been tested. The explosive crammed in those tiny cylindrical casings could breach the strongest armor, including—Taj winced—the skyport's fuel storage facility: hardened underground fuel reservoirs. The explosion she'd heard could have been those reservoirs blowing sky high. Had they gone off at the wrong time in the wrong place? Had she combined ingredients in the wrong proportions, or had the booster charges malfunctioned due to some error she'd made? Great Mother! Had she made a blunder that killed someone? Why had she let those explosives be taken before they'd received more lab testing?

Her mind clouded with possibilities, scenarios. All the errors she'd ever made returned to haunt her.

She was mostly deaf in her left ear, her eyelashes and brows had been singed off a half-dozen times, and once, the year before, she'd been flash-blind for a week. Consequences of honing her art. If one could call mass destruction an art.

She, the legendary taskmaster for reducing accidents, had screwed up in that quest more than anyone knew. But the only one she'd ever injured was herself. People trusted her. Had her precarious track record just blown up in her face?

Taj stared at the sweat glistening on the back of her hand but saw bones poking out of scorched flesh, bloody fluid oozing from a socket where an eye used to be, violent convulsions driven by a fatally swelling brain, accompanied by the last hoarse screams of agony before death silenced the suffering.

Her mother had died silently, Taj was told, but the woman's battle with blood cancer, a disease curable in the long-ago days of tech and medical miracles, had gone on for the better part of a year. Taj had been two.

Her father—he'd died valiantly, too, his fight to survive far shorter but no less heart-wrenching. Taj had been fifteen when it happened, and his pointless death had changed her life forever.

Joren had been a raider—"the best of the best" according to Romjha B'kah, the current raider commander who had been then only a cocky recruit. The man's brisk, gruff statement at the death vigil had bemused Taj. All that had been required of him as a raider was to pay his silent respects to Joren's kin. But as a boy Romjha had idolized her father more than most, and so he must have felt obligated to console her.

The community had reached out to Taj, too, but their wealth of kind words had only exacerbated her awareness of her loss.

Grief. She hated it. More than that, she detested being afraid. Fear meant helplessness, and helplessness meant you had no say in your fate. But she'd found the antidote to that vulnerability—not in the protective arms of a mate, as was usual, but in her job: the manufacture of pyrotechnics.

Frowning, she blew several long strands of hair off her face and reached for the beaker. Her hands were steady enough to resume pouring acid and filtering radites.

There was another rumble, and this time the entire room shook. Great Mother. Another explosion. It sent stones and powder sprinkling down from high above, plunking onto Taj's head and worktable. She slapped her left hand over her beaker. A pebble bounced off the knuckle of her middle finger. Her stomach muscles clenched. Her pulse pounded in her throat. The beaker's cold rim bit into her palm. If she'd reacted a heartbeat later and the pebble fell into . . .

Don't think about it. She manufactured explosives; solids, liquids, powders, pastes, she mixed them all. She took on death daily, face-to-face, hand-to-hand. She wasn't supposed to care if she lived or died.

Sooner or later, she'd figure out how not to.

The familiar and oddly comforting red haze of anger returned. She let her temper smolder, let it stamp out the unwelcome signals transmitted by her raw nerves. With banked wrath, she forced herself to concentrate on emptying the beaker of acid. Her brain screamed at her to hurry, but she gritted her teeth until her jaw ached and took the time to clear her worktable of anything that might kill her, now or later.

At last, she abandoned the lab to see what horrific news awaited her in the Big Room.

Chapter Two

Sprinting, Taj moved blindly through the shadowy maze of tunnels she'd memorized so early in her life that she had no recollection of doing it. The inner passages of these caves were neat, swept clean. Dust had a tendency to congest the lungs of the elderly, making the final years a chore for those lucky enough—or unlucky enough, as the case often was—to make it to old age, and so such dust was eradicated now. She'd helped see to that.

An occasional torch lit her way. One mustn't waste precious fuel on illumination. In between the lanterns it was pitch-black, seeming to amplify the thumping of her boots over the unseen floor. Her pants were snug, allowing her full strides that a dress wouldn't. Her shirt hem fluttered with the pumping of her arms. Only high-quality fabric whispered over skin like that, left her free and comfortable to maneuver. But that was as far as her interest in clothing went. Weaving and sewing she left to those who had patience for such things. She made explosives. In exchange, the raiders' women made her clothing from the best synthetic fibers they had. It was a good arrangement.

Taj pushed her way through the people gathered by the entrance to the Big Room. It was a dead cave, old and dry. Natural columns imparted a feeling of stateliness upon the central meeting area. Farther in, the odors of perspiration, warm bodies, and stale breath thickened the air. Underlying the usual smells was the tang of fear.

Romjha B'kah, the leader of the topside raids, was easy to find in the crowd. Soon after Taj had found Pasha dead, the tall, broad-shouldered warrior had seemed to come out of nowhere and taken the position of raider commander. After four years working with him, side by side, Taj couldn't imagine her life without him. He was intense, driven, tireless. He always knew what to do when the others spun in circles. He never risked a man unnecessarily; he thought things through before he acted, and he didn't show off.

"Stay low, stay alive to survive," he always said. And, like her, he worked to eliminate the accidents that had at one time been eating away at their meager population. They'd made great strides.

When it came to making war, she and Romjha were in perfect alignment. But when it came to their philosophy on personal matters, they couldn't be farther apart.

His stoic, rugged features belied a tragic past. Long ago at seventeen, Romjha had lost his wife of six months during childbirth. And their infant, too. The baby had died in his arms, the women said. In all the time since, he'd never chosen another mate. Which, Taj thought, revealed more about his feelings on the matter than an open expression ever could. His broken heart had never healed.

For Taj, letting yourself love that deeply, choosing to take a spouse, having children, were all things asking for trouble. There was too much at stake as it was, day to day, too high of a probability of loss. One better stick to manufacturing explosives, where one could be the master of one's destiny. Well, mostly the master, Taj admitted, thinking of the pebble's near miss with the radites.

"Romjha!" she called out.

His head lifted at the sound of her voice. The dark blond hair bound at the nape of his neck gleamed in the torchlight. Already dressed in topside gear—black shirt tucked into black trousers and boots—the commander gripped a helmet in his hands. At his side was his most experienced raider, his second-in-command. Shorter than Romjha, Petro was built like a tank and had the endurance to match. Taj would bring him along, too, if she were commander.

Romjha answered the question she didn't have to ask. "We don't know what happened, Taj. The comm's out again."

Computers, comm equipment, leftover tech—they worked sometimes but more often not, leaving them unable to communicate reliably with anyone topside, let alone the worlds beyond.

Frowning, the raider commander shoved his fingers into a pair of gloves, one sinewy, battle-roughened hand after the other. "But we're going up to find out."

He was too careful a leader to allow apprehension for his missing men to show much, but the flicker of worry in his steely gaze was enough to set Taj's heart racing.

Romjha whipped his black-leather-encased fingers in a tight circle, a silent signal to Petro: Let's move out. Both men turned toward the exit.

Taj thrust an arm toward the group gathered around them. "Throw me a helmet, belt, and gloves." She was going topside, too. A gangly teenaged raider-apprentice tossed her the gear.

A few women who stood nearby observed the goings-on with disapproval. Taj had grown used to it. The community had never had a female munitions expert before she'd taken over the job. Her choice of career baffled many of them. "You're a woman, not a man," they'd scold—not that she had any doubts about the truth of that statement. If they saw the pleasure with which she used the smidgens of rich, scented lotions or soaps she created in her lab, the way she treated herself to stealthy water cleansings—a rare indulgence and her only vanity—they'd not make that remark anymore.

Yet, she doubted even then that they'd accept her choice to abandon the more traditional female activities of weaving, teaching, and childrearing. But creating weaponry was the only way Taj knew to influence her existence, and theirs. If one didn't control one's destiny, it controlled you. Didn't they see that?

In her heart she was a pacifist; she longed for peace. But until there was no more war—a day she doubted would ever come—she would ensure that the weapons her people used were the best and the safest that their limited technology allowed.

She buckled a heavy weapons belt around her hips. "Rifle, please," she said. Another apprentice shoved a gun into her hands, and she hastened after Romjha and Petro.

And nearly ran into the raider commander, who'd stopped walking. He towered over her, making the disparity in their sizes all too obvious. "What are you doing, Taj?"

"Suiting up." She aimed her good ear toward him as she casually fastened her protective vest. Her hands were sweating.

"Of my raiders, only Petro comes. We'll brief you afterward."

"I'm not asking to go as a raider." She'd enjoyed the few missions in which she'd been allowed to participate; the rush of adrenaline was addictive. But as a rule, women stayed behind, consigned to indoor activities— though those were often no less dangerous. "I'm coming as the munitions officer. You sent raiders to the skyport to siphon off fuel. By the sound of it, every one of those storage tanks has just blown up. Intentional? I don't think so. We need fuel too badly to waste it. My guess is that there was a premature detonation. An accident." She tried to work moisture into her mouth. "If so, I'll want to see the burn patterns and the ..." Body parts? Would there be torso-sized chunks of flesh or tooth-sized bits of bone? She swallowed. "The evidence."

"I doubt the bombs malfunctioned. You're better than that."

"No one's better than the unforeseen, Romjha. With your history, I'd think you would've learned that by now."

The mood chilled abruptly. A puckered burn scar on his chin stretched taut, like an elastic band as he regarded her, his mouth hard. She wondered how lips that unyielding could ever have softened enough to kiss a woman.

He turned and walked toward the front of the cave, where a fortified exit opened to a slope that let up to the surface. She followed, slinging the strap of her rifle over her back. "I've been topside with you before."

"Those were routine, low-threat missions, Taj."

"Low-threat? Since when is anything we do low-threat? You can break your neck taking a piss in the dark around here."

Romjha halted. His scar stretched to the breaking point. She could hear it giving way now: Snap! "Mind me, Taj. It's dangerous."

"Dangerous." She forced a breathy sigh. "What was I thinking? I could get hurt out there. Better I go back to my lab and make a few more bombs. Yes, that's what I'll do. And while I'm there, I'll try not to be so worried about your men that I accidentally spill the radic acid."

Those harsh lips of Romjha's parted slightly, the equivalent of a lesser man's mouth hanging open. She'd unbalanced the mighty warrior with her sarcasm. A small triumph, but still satisfying. "I have a right to go topside," she persisted. "A reason."

"Aleq?"

She saw Petro compress his lips and stare hard at the floor, as if he were fighting a smile. Romjha, on the other hand, was the image of neutrality. If he'd made the remark to throw her off balance, it worked. But if he thought to send her scurrying back to her lab, he was dreaming.

"Aleq? Pah! He wishes." Taj pulled on her battered helmet. It reeked of the man who wore it last, but it hid the blush heating her cheeks. The raiders squeezed endless enjoyment out of what they perceived as Aleq's pursuit of her affections, expecting that he'd declare himself as her protector: the traditional term for the male half of a permanent joining.

Permanent? Ha! Aleq hadn't once mentioned wanting to formalize their relationship, if the occasional nights sharing her blankets fell into that category. They didn't, in her opinion—whether or not he'd been her first lover and, fair enough, her only one. It didn't even matter anymore; Aleq and she hadn't been together in a long time.

Who said she'd wanted Aleq's promise anyway—or any man's? In the manufacture of explosives, she'd finally achieved some measure of control over her fate. Her expertise gave every raider who used her bombs the best shot at making it back alive, even though she knew in her heart that if the latest warlord ever returned, serious about finishing the job his ancestors had begun, it wouldn't matter how well she armed this defensive rabble. If the monster wanted to flush out the rebels who survived on the scraps left behind by his great-grandsire, he'd send his army to finish the job.

Army? Pah! She scowled. A militia of murderers, they were; a legion of loosely connected heathens.

But they hadn't come yet, and if something had gone wrong topside, Taj had to find out why, so her mistake wouldn't be repeated. And here was Romjha, thinking he could distract her from her life's work with talk of a man. Condescending bastard.

"Don't toy with me, Romjha. You know I don't like it." She lowered her visor with a loud snap and pushed past him.

The raider commander's heavy hand landed on her shoulder and spun her around. She caught his scent, potent and male, and it dizzied her. An involuntary step brought her closer to him, but kept her from stumbling. His fingers closed around her wrist. Heat raced up her arm.

He'd never before touched her. He'd never tried, always keeping his distance, emotionally and physically. She was a strong woman, capable, but she felt delicate in his firm grip. Yielding . . . no, weak! A rush of desire mingled with self-loathing.

A glint of perceptive male interest in his eyes boosted her anger to new levels. She wrenched out of his grasp. "I risk more daily in my lab than your men do in a month of raids."

"I know well the risks you take for our people. It doesn't mean I like it."

"I'm not asking you to," she replied, quieter.

Romjha stared unswervingly into her eyes.

"Grenades blew up in my father's hands," she protested. "Grenades our people made. It shouldn't have happened. The fuses were faulty, shoddily cut." She despised the sudden huskiness in her voice, raised her chin to counteract it. "And don't get me started again on Pasha. When it comes to making sure something stupid doesn't happen again, that our people don't die needlessly, my life means nothing."

There was a sudden softness to Romjha's expression. "It means something to me."

Warmth, honeyed and thick, swelled in her chest. Then she broke eye contact.

Fool! she accused herself. He didn't mean it like that, the way she would want him to mean it, the way she had too often dreamed he would whisper to her deep in the night when she was alone and afraid and wished she were lying snug and safe in his arms.

"Do us both a favor and get over it," she said.

Romjha's lips twitched with mild amusement. The raptness with which he studied her evoked the uncanny and unwelcome feeling that he saw through her anger, that he saw how scared she was inside. A frisson of both alarm and pleasure rippled deep in her belly. " 'Get over it,' eh, Taj? As simple as that."

"That's right. If it keeps you from making objective professional decisions."

Romjha's gold eyes were as penetrating as an expertly forged dagger. "And the memory of your father's accident doesn't do the same for you?"

She winced. He knew her too well. At the same time, he didn't know her at all. She spoke through gritted teeth, low and deadly. "We all have our reasons for what we do, don't we?"

Simultaneously, they both noticed that his fingers were still wrapped around her wrist. He dropped his hand. Although he'd gripped her gently, the feel of his touch remained. Her fingertips grazed over the warm place, lingering on her wrist, until she caught herself doing so and curled her hands into fists.

An awkward moment passed. "I know all you do in your father's name, Taj. But staying behind, staying safe—that doesn't mean you are forsaking him."

"Are you bringing me or not, commander?"

He didn't answer, but his look was one that assured her their discussion wasn't truly over and he intended to finish it. Well, he was welcome to try.

Obviously brooding over what she'd asked of him, he contemplated the rifle in his big hands. The weapon's battered appearance belied the fact that he treated it like a baby. It had been his father's and—ironically, considering this situation—his grandmother's before that. He came from a long line of fighting women, but Taj had the feeling he'd like to see them cuddled, coddled, and safe.

Sigh. The idea of being cuddled in his brawny arms was enough to make her knees go weak. And coddled? What woman wouldn't want a little pampering?

Taj made a face and stared hard at the floor. It wouldn't happen in this lifetime.

But what about peace? To be safe—to walk outside without fear, to raise children out from under the immediate threat of death—she couldn't imagine it.

No, she could imagine it; only she tried not to.

Craving what you didn't have meant you didn't appreciate what you did have. Every day that passed Taj saw as a gift. Granted, some of those gifts were dubious. Like tonight.

Romjha lifted his gaze from his weapon. He'd made his decision; she could tell. Quivering with impatience, she waited to hear it. To stay behind would be unconscionable, but she'd be forced to accept the commander's decision.

A heartbeat before he spoke, she sensed in him what she so often fought herself: frustration over the inability to keep someone else safe. "You'll do as I say out there, Taj."

She tamped down on a rush of adrenaline. "You know I will."

With a circular motion of his hand he again gave the signal to move out, then strode toward the exit. Petro fell in step, and the two men pushed briskly through the crowd.

Taj grabbed her weapon, hurried after them. It looked like she was along for the ride.

Chapter Three

"Hoo-ah," came the calls from all around, a traditional send-off cry of support for the raiders.

Romjha felt many people snatch at his uniform, saw them kissing their fingers afterward for good luck, for themselves and for him. Young boys rubbed shy hands across his weapons vest as he passed. Superstition said that those furtive touches might bring the youths the honor of being a raider someday. He knew; he had done the same as a boy.

Romjha rechecked his ammo and weapon a second time, and a third. He blasted well wanted everything perfect now that Taj had joined the mission. She was qualified to come, but he didn't like it. He viewed it as his failure as commander—and as a man—every time he saw fear light her eyes, or the anger she conjured to fight that fear. To place her in danger now ... he hated it as much as that Taj was forced to skip meals and work long hours to fabricate munitions for his men.

But what right did he have to keep her from seeing the destruction her explosives might wreak?

He had a good deal of respect and affection for the five men he'd sent out, and he prayed that any damage suffered was to brick and mortar rather than flesh and bone. But perhaps he ought to leave the prayers to Taj. Though he'd turned around his life, his relationship with the Great Mother remained patchy. He held few grudges, but the one he had with Her ran deep.

Through the long, steep climb to the surface, Romjha kept a brutal pace. He knew that only Taj's grit and long strides kept her from falling behind. "You never do anything halfway," she'd once remarked to him.

No, he didn't. Not anymore. He'd learned what apathy could do to a man. Unknowingly, Taj was the one responsible. She'd pulled him back from his state of oblivion. The night Pasha died would remain forever in his memory; it had changed the course of his life. It had also been the moment he first noticed Taj as a woman— a woman who affected him on a level several rungs deeper than sexual.

When she began a relationship with Aleq not long after the night he'd had that epiphany, he'd chosen not to interfere, though thoughts of their coupling stole rest from many a night's sleep. Yet from the beginning his gut told him that Taj and Aleq were poorly matched, that it was only a matter of time before she would be free. He wanted her, but he'd waited. When she at last came to him, it would be without reservation, without regret. And while he hadn't wished either Taj or Aleq heartache, he saw tonight in Taj's luminous eyes that the relationship had run its course. He would have her, body and soul. She would be his mate, and he her protector, though she professed not to need one.

His mouth twisted. With the risks that woman took, she needed a hundred protectors.

Romjha lifted his head, testing the air, warmer and drier here near the surface. He caught a faint, oily odor of burning fuel as his group emerged into the moonlight.

The night air was hot and still; it took an effort to pull air into his lungs. Fighting had left the cities in ruins, worldwide, and had turned the forests to ash. The once-fertile soil was glassy in patches where it had been bombed molten. The rest had powdered into desert as the climate deteriorated. Now the twin suns' blistering heat reached the surface almost unimpeded. Anything left moving had long since run, limped, or crawled underground.

With Taj and Petro walking alongside him, Romjha hiked toward a lookout atop a ridge, his pace slowing to allow Taj to catch her breath—-gallantry she'd surely resent if she suspected.

The woman was passionate, proud, and sometimes unpredictable. But when she was scared, she became downright volatile. After all the years working with her, he'd decided that Taj used anger to override fear. He had no proof, other than having spent entirely too much time thinking about the prickly little beauty. But, after their confrontation in the cave, he was damn certain she'd deny his theory.

Rifle at the ready, Romjha climbed to the top of the rise. A pockmarked moon glowed sullenly from behind a screen of smoke and mist, as barren as the landscape it illuminated. Two other moons would rise, likely after dawn, when they'd be invisible in the glare of Sienna's mismatched twin suns.

On the eastern horizon was an orange glow.

"The fuel reservoirs did blow," Taj muttered. "They're going to burn for days."

A spark of triumph sputtered to life in Romjha's gut, then flared. Silent, he observed the conflagration. For generations, the old skyport had served as a hated reminder that the warlord's army would someday return. Long ago, the Siennans had found out the hard way that robotic defense installations scattered and hidden within the skyport activated upon sensing intruders. For years, Romjha's people left them alone because the casualties were too high to do anything else. But when he rose to the rank of commander, Romjha had launched a campaign to methodically locate and map out the defense machinery, so there would be no more surprises. When that was complete, they'd even disarmed and dismantled several of the smaller guns and carried them back to the caves, but no one could figure out how to make them work. Still, Romjha had refused to give up. If he couldn't use the technology, then by the heavens, no one could! At night, the raiders had been destroying the landing pad and its defenses. They did so a little at a time, so they wouldn't attract the local warlord's notice—they had little in the way of defensive weaponry should their absentee conqueror return. But the rogue in Romjha that had never fully died, the shadow of the young man who'd hungered for vengeance, wanted an overt attack. It and more. And now here it was.

"It'll be seen from space if they're looking," Taj said. "Blast it! We're screwed."

Romjha hoisted his rifle. "At this point, I want only to find my men alive." Hiding his dangerous satisfaction, he struck out toward the rover that would carry them where they needed to go.

Chapter Four

With an easy, agile grace one wouldn't expect of such a big man, Romjha vaulted into the driver's seat of a rover protected by an overhang of rock. The vehicle's roof and sides had been blasted out long before the raiders had commandeered the terrain-following flying car.

Petro slid his bulky frame into one of the front passenger seats. Taj sat in the rear and strapped in facing backward, her long legs dangling. Always watch your tail. It was one of the earliest rules she'd learned about topside runs.

The vehicle lurched forward off the steep slope. Romjha killed the forward velocity and began the downward plunge. Taj's stomach flew upward. Negative g-forces pulled at her eyeballs. At the last minute, Romjha yanked upward on the controls. Taj hung on. The craft skimmed over the rocky dirt. Nice.

"That's some driving," she shouted over her shoulder.

In the wind, Romjha's black shirt rippled like a flag. "It's like breathing," he yelled back. "If you think too hard about it, you lose the rhythm."

"Maybe I don't want to know that!"

Petro laughed deeply, and Romjha gave a rare smile. At the sight of it, Taj's heart soared. Danger awaited them up here, but after days and often weeks cooped up in caverns, the wind and the sky were intoxicating, even to a man as serious as Romjha.

The commander pushed forward on the accelerator, as far as it would go. The rover took a few moments, but built up speed. Strands of hair escaped Taj's helmet and blew over her face. Thoughts of Romjha's smile lingered. Had he smiled like that when he made love to his wife? He'd never kissed his young bride in a hidden spring—of that she was sure. The secret location of her own spring, accessed from within her quarters through a long tunnel bored in solid rock, had been told to Taj upon Pasha's death, willed from one bombmaker to another. That indoor freshwater spring was just about the only benefit of her job. She'd never gotten around to bringing anyone else there, not even Aleq, always savoring it alone with her scented oils and lotions.

She conjured an image of Romjha bathing, tossing his head back under a cascade of water, his hair throwing droplets everywhere, water and soap sluicing over a muscled back, buttocks, and thighs. . . .

Sudden yearning heated a place low in her belly. She clenched her teeth against it and stared out at the horizon. He touches you just once and look what it does!

Reprimanding herself, she tipped her head back. The wind cooled her frustrated desire. After a while, her perspiration dried and left behind a band of dust and salt at her hairline.

The stench of fuel was strong. Taj hoped no one decided to smoke a cigar, something both Romjha and Petro treated themselves to from time to time: the rover had a leak. But at least the crap-trap worked. They had a fleet of three of the vehicles, several hundred years old and still going. That was a testament to the remarkable technology of Those Who Came Before.

Those who were now gone.

She raised her visor to scan the night sky. All around her, tiny lights danced, wavering in the rising heat. Beckoning, teasing, tempting. Had the stars been lovers, she would have followed them wherever they wanted.

Who still lives on your worlds?

But the stars didn't share their secrets. Pretty but irrelevant bits of light they were, just as they'd appeared to the primitives at the dawn of civilization.

In truth, the people of Sienna were no better. Isolated, they were completely cut off from the rest of the galaxy. They could only guess at how many others had been killed so far in the power struggle following the collapse of the interstellar government. Billions? Trillions?

She focused on the stars. So many worlds ... so many people surely dead. The technology that had once bound this empire together was incredible. Medical science could heal damaged nerves, regenerate skin, and cure disease. Starships traveled at faster-than-light speeds. Communication took place in instants over vast interstellar distances, the legacy of a fabled lost civilization predating the next by a million years. Marvels, all. But now gone. And this very technology that helped the next empire expand had brought about its collapse.

The more spread out worlds became, the more difficult it was to keep control over them. Some had decided that they didn't need what they saw as the interference of an undeservedly privileged central monarchy, ineffective and self-serving. Those planets declared independence, and the urge spread. Smaller groups formed. After a while, differences in philosophy bred hostility. Planetary factions split and split again. Worlds began to look for reasons to fight each other. Almost unnoticed in the turmoil, the Imperium fell. Power landed in the hands of warlords who used tech to invent weaponry that could ruin entire worlds. And did. History stopped being written after that—for Taj's people, at least.

"There they are!" Petro called out.

The rover dipped a few feet in altitude and Taj jerked to alertness, her fingers curled tightly around her rifle. Another rover sat camouflaged amongst forgotten carcasses of long-ago melted equipment. Yellowish smoke and sparks like dying fireflies obscured her view of the burning fuel field. Farther out, near the horizon, plumes of fire shot into the sky. Heat hammered her skin.

Romjha stopped the rover at the edge of heaps of copper-colored boulders—rocks that seemed not to belong to the barren landscape but looked, as if ancient giants had played with them, leaving them scattered in impossible piles. In prewar days, it was said the huge stones had been hidden under hundreds of feet of knotted, centuries-old flowering vines. There, too, creatures of every description had thrived; some lived so deeply within the layers that they never saw sunlight, having evolved past the point of needing it.

Taj shuddered. None of the people she lived with had evolved into sunlight-shirking, cave-dwelling creatures. Not yet. Give them a few more centuries underground before they wouldn't crave the feel of sunshine and open spaces and air that didn't burn its way down their throat to their lungs.

She, Romjha, and Petro jumped out of their vehicle and ran over the sterile, hard-packed dirt, taking shelter under an ancient, scorched husk of a tank. The darkness was thick, the heat crushing. Perspiration oozed out of her pores and trickled into her eyes. Taj blinked to clear her vision. Two raiders scurried out of the shadows. Jetter was the first to reach them.

"Report," Romjha barked.

"We're all still in the game, Commander! The others are finishing up and on the way."

Taj exhaled. A knot between her shoulder blades unwound.

The other black-uniformed raider hunkered down next to her. She grabbed his bicep. "Aleq!"

"Taj, you should have seen it—"

Her fingers pressed into his skin. "You're alive."

"Of course I'm alive." He grinned. Straight teeth glowed in the weak moonlight. "Why wouldn't I be?"

She shoved him. Cocky bastard.

Sudden fireworks of shrapnel and propellant made her squint. Her stomach tightened.

"Look at it, Taj," Aleq said, raising his visor. His eyes glazed over. Fire danced in them. "It's beautiful."

Taj had never seen him look at anything or anyone that way. Not even her.

"What happened here?" Romjha demanded.

Aleq's excitement burned brighter than the geysers of flame behind him. "We blew up the landing pad. The entire pad. It's gone."

Taj's heart thundered. Her mouth was almost too dry to form words. "The charges malfunctioned."

"No, they were great. They did just what you designed them to do. But give them most of the credit. They deserve it."

Taj followed Aleq's gaze to a smoldering hulk of metal she hadn't noticed before—the smoking remains of a fighter craft.

Romjha's helmet visor glinted. "A scout?"

Aleq shook his head. "Not the warlord's. They're resistance fighters like us. They saw what we were doing to the skyport and asked to finish it off. And they did!" He deflated slightly, adding, "Before they crashed."

Taj wasn't sure if she should be outraged that the skyport was destroyed on purpose, swamped with relief that her explosives hadn't detonated by accident, or stunned speechless that a starfighter had crashed on Sienna. She decided to let Romjha deal with it.

The way the muscles in his jaw bunched was ominous. "You were the leader of this raid, Aleq. Your orders were to take out the southwest corner of the pad with the new charges and to bring back fuel. You accomplished a bit more than that, wouldn't you say?"

Aleq scrubbed a hand over his bristly chin. "Yes."

"On whose orders, Raider!" Romjha demanded coldly.

Think fast, she willed Aleq. As reckless as he could be, as adolescent as he often seemed, she didn't want the commander to come down too hard on him. Even if what he'd done was wrong.

"We broke the raiders' vow. We acted independently. If you remove me from the ranks, I'll accept it. But, sir, would you have told them no?"

Romjha raised his visor. Rivulets of sweat ran down his cheekbones and square jaw. Hair that looked dark brown but was almost blond when dry lay wetly on his forehead. Gazing at the inferno, his expression brooding, he wiped perspiration from his brow with the back of a thick, grimy forearm. "No," he said at last. "I would not. I would have done the same."

"What?" Taj almost stuttered. This was Romjha, the cautious, by-the-rules commander, the widower who never stopped grieving, a man she admired for his restraint, his principles, his prudence. Either her good ear had gone bad or her lip-reading was off, because Romjha couldn't possibly have said what she'd just heard.

"We've lasted this long because we've lain low. We take only what we need—food, medicine—not airfields!"

"But, Taj, do we remain underground forever?" Aleq asked.

"If it's the safest option, of course we do."

Romjha crouched at her side. "Taj, you shouldn't have to make such a choice. You deserve to live without worrying about killing or being killed. Maybe it was time to strike a blow back. I'd like to see it where women don't have to—"

Not again. "I'm a soldier. I'm supposed to fight."

A shadow passed over Romjha's harsh, rugged features. "It's wrong that those who should be protected find themselves fighting—both here on Sienna and on the other worlds. If I had the power and the resources, like these outsiders had, I'd do something more. I'd change everything. I'd ban weapons of mass destruction. I'd bring back the freedom to worship, to reproduce, to prosper. I'd bring us peace."

There had always been something dead in the commander's gaze. Weary. Uncomplaining. But now those eyes had come alive. More than alive, they glowed.

Petro appeared as astonished as Taj was by his leader's speech, but he seemed understanding, maybe even admiring of it. Gah! Petro was crazy, too. Maybe there was something in the drinking water that had infected all the men. She prayed it wasn't contagious.

"Great Mother." She shook her head. "I cheat death in a hopeless life, but you dream. I don't know which is more futile—or more dangerous."

"Don't be afraid, Taj," Romjha said in a gentler voice.

The muscles in her back bunched. Her head throbbed. "I am not scared," she snarled. "I am incredibly irritated!" She wanted to wipe that knowing half-smile from his patronizing face.  "If I am afraid of anything, it is of your mental stability—or lack thereof."

He regarded her so intently that she grew warm. He didn't believe her; he didn't believe a word she'd said. "I want to take back our future, Taj. I don't want to sit here passively, waiting to see what will happen to us. Destiny isn't a matter of chance. It's a matter of choice. You yourself said that when Pasha died."

She searched her recollections of that horrible night. "You remember that night?"

"I have internalized it, my dear Taj." He leaned sideways, and his voice dropped to a private rumble close to her good ear. "I consider myself a patient man, but when I set my mind to achieving an objective, little can deter me. Often, a goal must be held close, buried deep, before it can be brought to fruition. I value most what I work hard to win, what requires time, thought, and careful wooing."

Oblivious to words that had become strangely charged with an undercurrent that left Taj breathless, Jetter broke in. "Romjha, the warlord's forces are on the run. They're pulling out of the area."

Taj could almost feel the jolt of interest that shot through Romjha. It matched the surge of dread that swelled coldly in her belly. If I ever have the chance to do more than dream, Taj, I will take it. What would he do?

"How did you learn this?" Romjha asked.

Jetter squared his shoulders. "The outsiders told us, sir."

"They communicated with you? How?"

"From the air. They transmitted their voices into our helmets. The static made it tough to hear, but we heard enough."

"It's been a long time since anyone's used those receivers," Petro stated.

In obvious appreciation of the technology involved, Romjha squinted at the demolished fighter. "What brought them down?"

"A missile. From a system in the skyport."

He glanced sideways at Aleq. "The skyport was auto-defended against an air attack? The robot guns were deadly against us, but..."

"It surprised them, too."

"All these years and I never figured that out." Romjha exhaled audibly. "It proves how little we know of our own home." His voice turned sorrowful, reminding Taj of the numerous funerals over which he'd presided. "This is a historic day. For the first time, we know for certain that others like us still live, that not all are dead or imprisoned by oppressive regimes. What we can assume about the rest of the galaxy has changed. These outsiders came here in good faith. Brave men they were. Later we'll hold a vigil for them, as if they were our own."

"A vigil?" Aleq blurted out. "A celebration's what we need. They're alive!"

Taj and Petro swung their rifles toward the sound of shouts, and Romjha rose to his feet as five shadows appeared from the smoke and darkness.

Chapter Five

Taj squinted down the barrel of her rifle. Three of the people running toward her were the remaining raiders. The other two were strangers. Outsiders.

Her lips pulled back in a snarl. Her finger flexed over her trigger. One shot, two, and these suicidal thrill seekers will no longer be a problem. They would bring no more attention from the warlords, nor would they make Romjha consider chasing off to fight a war he couldn't win.

Aleq laid his hand over the muzzle of her rifle and gently pushed the weapon down. She swallowed, saw that her hands were shaking.

"They're not the enemy, Taj," he said. "They're like us."

"They don't look like us." They were bigger, stronger, healthier than the men she knew, save Romjha and Petro, who were phenomena among their own people. Yet if these strangers had tech, then it followed they might have decent food, shelter, and medical care, too. Such luxuries would account for their size.

The outsiders wouldn't stay for long on Sienna, Taj knew. If they had the tech it appeared they did, they'd be rescued by their people and taken off-planet quickly enough. They weren't here to help the people of this planet; they were here to fight. But what if they seduced Romjha with tales of the worlds beyond, and he left with them on an idealistic, unrealistic mission to destroy the warlords?

Taj's back crawled with foreboding. Her hands twisted impotently around her lowered rifle as she watched the quintet approach.

The two outsiders wore dull-colored clothing that appeared to be uniforms stripped of identifying insignia. The larger of the pair bore his comrade on his back. His shirt was missing a sleeve, revealing a sweat-slick, muscular arm wider in circumference than Taj's thigh.

"That's Jal," Aleq explained. "The wounded man is Cheya. He took shrapnel in the leg."

Cheya would need an experienced healer's attention, Taj realized with a sinking feeling. She hoped he would make it. The healers were a rover's ride away. Like the raiders, she knew how to tend the usual injuries, but the healers discouraged amateur interference, claiming it caused infection and death more often than not.

"That's all there were, Romjha," Aleq continued. "Two of them."

The group tumbled into the shelter of the gutted tank. The odors of scorched clothing and overheated metal mixed with the tang of blood, sweat, and fear. The outsiders may not be familiar, Taj thought bleakly, but the scent they carried was. It was the smell of war.

The outsider named Jal fell to his knees and eased his comrade from his back as gently as one would lay down a child, though Cheya was nearly as tall as Jal. A hasty field dressing had been wound tightly around the wounded man's upper right thigh—Jal's missing sleeve, Taj realized. Blood had soaked through it, turning the grayish cloth brown-black. In full daylight it would have been gory red. Taj was glad it was night.

As the remaining three raiders reported to Romjha, hastily debriefing him, Taj scrutinized the outsiders. Their boots were made from real leather, she guessed, sniffing at a faintly exotic scent in the air. This wasn't footwear hand-stitched by women sitting around the fire, nursing babies and trading stories. Nor were their uniforms made of homemade cloth. Everything was machine-made; finely made, too. The wonders of technology she'd only read about, these men had experienced.

While the returning raiders boasted about destroying the skyport, Jal tended his companion. The outsider's breaths were ragged, likely from exhaustion and injuries hidden beneath his soiled uniform. He'd been in a violent crash, but he wouldn't realize just how affected he was until later. Shock hit you that way, Taj knew, a delayed reaction, like when she'd gotten flash-burned.

Jal raised Cheya's visor, making the lower portion of his face visible. His jaw was slack and his lips dry. Muttering softly, Jal dipped his head in prayer.

Taj bit back surprise. She hadn't expected such a show of faith from this hulking warrior. In her community, it was the women who prayed, and the men who were prayed about. She said, "I hope your prayers work. It looks like your friend could use all the help he can get."

Jal lifted his head, fixed her with a steady but glazed stare as if she'd called him back from a long journey. "He will be healed. And he will live." His accent was heavy, his tone aristocratic stopping just short of haughty. "Like his ancestors, Cheya will survive."

Jal's confidence made her angry. "If the bandage holds until we reach base camp," she retorted, "If infection doesn't set in. If the medicines we fabricate or steal heal the wound—"

Romjha's hand landed on her shoulder. Her body gave an involuntary start. His fingers flexed gently and communicated with alarming perception. Easy, they said.

"Doesn't he realize where he's crash-landed?" she argued under her breath. "We don't have fancy tech. We don't have miracles. After today, we likely don't even have a future."

"Taj," Romjha warned.

Thinking of how he'd seemed to see inside her when they were in the caves, she was afraid to look at him now and find his stare just as perceptive, just as penetrating. Under the perceived scrutiny of the commander and the other raiders, she struggled to keep her temper in check. To Jal she mumbled, "We'll do what we can for your friend."

"Yes. Stop the blood." Jal regarded her with cold bronze-gray eyes. "Work quickly, healer."

"I'm not a healer."

He looked confused. "But you are a woman," he stated, as if that explained it all.

She glanced down at her breasts. "Else I'm a very unfortunate man."

Jetter coughed to cover his amusement.

"You are a woman," Jal insisted. "You heal."

"I make munitions. I blow up things. I like blowing up things."

Jal's hands clamped hard around Cheya's thigh. Blood welled between his fingers, glistening on the sinews and knuckles. A crimson stream escaped the dam formed by the fleshy connector between his thumb and index finger, pooling in the hollows of one thick, corded wrist.

An image of her father's fatal injuries, his arms ragged, leaking stumps, splashed across Taj's mind's eye like blood from a torn artery.

Joren had died slowly, horribly. By the time he had staggered back to the caverns after that fateful solo raid, his body had been nearly drained of blood. No one knew how he made it back all those miles without a rover. But he'd not wanted to die topside, alone, without his loved ones there to hold a vigil, to play chimes until his last breath to guide him safely to the Ever After.

Sweat dribbled down Taj's temples. Her chest felt suddenly heavy. Maybe if someone had been topside with her father, had slowed the bleeding, he'd be alive today.

She dropped to her knees and crawled to where Jal crouched before his friend. "All right. Someone had better shore up that field dressing. And since none of you seem to be doing it, it might as well be me."

She thrust her arm at Aleq, her fingers splayed wide. "Give me your shirt."

After a fleeting moment of surprise, the man stripped. She snatched away the wad of damp homemade black fabric and caught his scent. It had been so long since he'd last visited her bed, she'd forgotten it.

Holding the cloth between her teeth, she tore Aleq's shirt into strips, then contemplated her unlucky subject with far more trepidation than she had her unstable radite crystals. Sighing deeply, she began her hasty repairs.

Chapter Six

What we can assume about the rest of the galaxy has changed. Had he really said that so casually? Romjha paced behind Taj and the outsiders. What a laughable understatement if what these men said was true.

They had told his raiders they'd defeated the warlord. He could almost believe it. When was the last time he'd seen a scout fly over? Months ago. In fact, the skies had been so quiet, he'd actually been considering organizing a daylight raid when autumn and cooler weather arrived—an unthinkable proposition at one time. He'd thought they had a temporary reprieve. But maybe it was more.

While Taj worked, Romjha scrutinized Jal. The man and his friend claimed to be pilots, but Romjha suspected they were more. If his limited understanding of aviation technology was correct, a starfighter's flight controls were computer assisted. Jal appeared an impressive, battle-hardened man, so he did more than fly— only frequent ground combat or hard labor could create such a physique.

Romjha wouldn't abandon the pair topside, but he wouldn't risk bringing them into the interior caverns. He wouldn't take them anywhere near the infants or the groweries—his people's insurance for the future— until he learned more about them through questioning and observation.

In a fortuitous development, however, Taj was fulfilling the role of interrogator quite well, unwittingly drawing Jal out as a result of her obvious aversion to him.

"Where I come from, women don't make explosives," the outsider ventured as she worked on his comrade. "They don't fight with the men."

"So, where you come from is primitive," Taj retorted, her long, pale fingers shiny with blood.

The pilot regarded Taj as if she were a baffling alien creature. Romjha supposed she was, to him.

To keep from cracking anything that Taj might perceive as a smile and provoking her further—no need to make the wounded pilot Cheya suffer needlessly— Romjha pressed a bent index finger to his lips as she glanced at him. She looked back at Jal.

"We have no choice," the man explained. "We have to protect our women."

"You stifle them," Taj corrected.

"We keep them alive."

"You don't put into hiding those you want to protect. Shelters can be breached. You should give your women the tools with which to defend themselves."

"Are you not. . . protected here?" Jal sounded more curious than critical.

"Apparently not as much as some would like," she said with a dark glance over her shoulder.

Obviously not wanting to fight with her, Romjha kept any record of their argument in the caverns from appearing on his face. "You say you have the warlord on the run, Jal. Tell me more about that."

"We assassinated him. He is dead."

Startled murmurs came from just about everyone.

Romjha raised his hand for quiet. "What of his forces?"

"His army lives on like a headless serpent, but we will bleed the creature until it too is dead. We'll find and destroy his caches, his skyports—"

"On any world you stumble upon?" Romjha asked. "Without investigating first? What of the risk to the indigenous populations? What about when the Warlord's men see what you've done and—"

Detonations rumbled distantly, creating flashes like the heat lightning that interrupted many a hot, silent night. A ripple of fear spread through the group, and the tank they huddled under suddenly seemed paltry shelter.

The headless serpent, Taj thought.

The stench of fuel and hot sand lodged in the back of her throat. Her hands twitched, cinching the crude bandage she'd made. Cheya uttered a hoarse groan. "I'm sorry," she mumbled.

Romjha studied Jal with an intensity that was chilling. "A battle over our heads will put my entire community at risk."

"We didn't know anyone lived here!"

The commander's voice turned quiet, deadly. " 'We didn't know' is not an excuse."

Taj piped up. "And now that you do know we're here, don't forget that we're only focused on our own survival, not the greater good of the galaxy."

Romjha gave her a long look.

Unrepentant, she glared back. "I'm pointing that out in case anyone forgets."

Jal lowered his head. He looked tired but not beaten. "I regret the risk we have brought upon your people. But I won't apologize for what we aim to do. I am Jal Dar, and for centuries my family has protected Cheya's family." He pressed his thumbs to Cheya's visor. It rose smoothly, easily, unlike those on the raiders' own battered helmets. "Behold. Cheya Vedla. Descended from the last king of the galaxy."

Cheya's features were refined but not delicate. His lean and handsome good looks were noble. Taj dropped her gaze to her bloody hands. A prince! She was bandaging a prince—or even a king—with Aleq's dirty shirt.

Petro murmured, "I thought the Vedlas were slaughtered."

Jal shook his head. "Not all. A few survived—the queen, the youngest prince and an unborn princess, several other relatives, cousins and the like. In secret they continued their bloodlines, and for generations my world has protected them, hoping to put them back on the throne."

As gray as Cheya's skin appeared, Taj didn't have high hopes of this Vedla surviving his injury, let alone regaining power. What a waste. But then, any life lost was a waste. "It doesn't appear as if you hold the prince's life in high regard if you bring him with you on raids."

"Cheya's a soldier first, a king's progeny second."

The raiders murmured approvingly amongst themselves.

Conversely, Romjha's expression was a study in disapproval. His distrust of these monarchists was palpable. Good. Taj didn't want him making friends with them.

Romjha hefted his rifle. "Leave the rest of the work for the healers, Taj. It's nearly dawn."

A faint, pastel pink-orange glow foretold the first of Sienna's two suns' rising. Taj's heartbeat jumped in her throat, and cold sweat prickled the back of her neck. "At dawn we'll be easy targets," she told Jal, finishing quickly her ministrations. "Roving in the open during daylight is suicide. My people have the casualty count to prove it."

Jal's jaw flexed. His visor was silver, completely opaque. Only a hard, square jaw and the chilly cast to his mouth were visible. Perhaps he hadn't liked the way the way she'd emphasized "my people," as in not his. Too bad. He was the stranger, the one who came here uninvited, bringing danger and recklessness to Sienna.

"Taj, Petro, Aleq—you're in my rover!" Romjha shouted. "Jal and Cheya, too. Everyone else take the rover that got you here."

Orders were bellowed back and forth. The group split into two. Jal bore the weight of his comrade on his shoulders. Aleq and Petro ran alongside to assist if necessary.

Thunder exploded from behind the boulder hills. "Incoming!" Petro shouted. The raiders darted closer to the protective shadows of the rocks.

A low-flying craft shrieked overhead. Its underbelly was sleek and black, decorated with blinking lights. Death clothed in finery. A warlord's scout.

"You never see the missiles at night," Aleq informed Taj. "But the tracers make for a pretty show."

Great. There were some things she'd rather not know.

A second fighter roared overhead, whooshing past so close that it kicked up a sandstorm. A sharp odor clogged Taj's nose and made her eyes water. She ran through clouds of dust, using her good ear to orient herself to the sound of her comrades' thumping boots.
 
Suddenly, more craft, silver and longer-nosed appeared in the sky. Were these ships loyal to the outsiders? She knew too little about the men to hope that they were ... or that they were not.

Light erupted, spreading a false dawn. Then a one-two boom seemed to rip apart the heavens, and the deadly scouts exploded, one after the other.

Taj's eardrums shrieked with pain. The ground shook. Silver craft, the newcomers, spun away into a vertical victory roll. Into the stars they disappeared as debris rained down from overhead. For an instant, she was alone, lost in a maelstrom of dirt and noise and terror with no one to rely on but herself. Then Romjha materialized at her side, clearly oblivious to his own danger as he sought to account for every member of his group. "Go, go, go!" he shouted. Raiders streaked past, black wraiths in swirling brown dust.

Romjha propelled her in front of him where he could keep her in sight, though it slowed his pace.

He'd die saving her; she knew it as surely as she breathed. Have that on her conscience? She would not! "Go, Romjha! Get the rover started. I'll get there."

He remained staunchly at her side, pushing her onward. Rage erupted, raw, white-hot, and welcome. "Blast you, B'kah," she gasped, seething. "Don't be so eager to sacrifice yourself, or the Great Mother might just take you up on the offer!"

Big hands curved around her waist as the rover appeared before them. Romjha tossed her into the back as if she weighed nothing, as if her protests meant nothing. He jumped in after her, dragging her with him to the front passenger seat like a bag of last year's seeds.

Sweat dribbled down Taj's temples. She swiped it from her eyes and yanked the safety harness over her shoulders. "Stop it," she warned him. "Stop protecting me."

"Strap in tight," Romjha said, shoving the accelerator full forward while she was still strapping in.

Swear words streamed from Taj's brain to her mouth at the speed of light. Her hands fumbled with her harness, fingers sticky with a prince's clotted blood. She still couldn't get over that.

The rover took off. Over the desert landscape it raced, darting between huge boulders to elude the star-fighters should they decide to make a second pass.

Directly behind the windshield, the wind noise was less than it had been in back. There was less breeze to cool her, too. Taj sucked in gulps of air, half choking on her sweat. "I'm trained. I can fight if I have to.

Romjha's big hands tightened on the steering wheel. "I know."

His mouth was a bleak slash above a chin smudged by grime and beard stubble, but his voice was a husky rumble that made her ache to be held by him.

Romjha startled her by reaching across the seat. His thumb brushed over her cheek. Her body reacted instantly with a flurry of tingles. Then, as if he realized he'd done something he hadn't intended, he dropped his hand.

Yet his gaze remained on her, as if he meant to say something more. That he has feelings for you. That he wants you as you want him. Her heart turned over. No! She turned away quickly, thwarting any. such confession. As much as she wanted him, desired him, it was better to keep Romjha at arm's length. It would make everything easier . . . when he died.

"By the heavens, I'm tired of it," she muttered. Tired of worrying whether the people she knew would die. Tired of all of it.

As if reading her mind Romjha said, "We will live, Taj. The others will live. We'll all make it back."

In her lap, her hands balled into fists. His confidence washed over her like a rush of water in her hidden spring. Given a taste of that comfort, she wanted more. She wanted to hear him tell her not to worry, that she'd be safe, that everything would be all right.

"Today," she said in a half-whispered plea. "But what about tomorrow?"

The commander went rigid. She felt rather than saw it, sensed the air around him chilling, his gentleness evaporating. "I can't promise you tomorrow, Taj," he said. "No one can."

Heartache she pretended she didn't feel thickened her throat. She hunched her shoulders, scowling while Romjha fixed his stubborn stare on the horizon. Seeing what? Thinking what?

Dreams, she thought contemptuously. Romjha B'kah would rue the day he ever had them.

Chapter Seven

Twelve hours passed. The women had decorated themselves and the Big Room as if it were a feast day, although Taj questioned what exactly they were celebrating. The door to their home had been torn wide open to the rest of the galaxy, where everyone else was still busily fighting away as if they hadn't learned a thing during these last long, dark years of war. It didn't sound to her like a reason to celebrate.

Yet she could understand the desire to make merry. Usually they had so little excuse; the arrival of outsiders for the first time in generations was a reason to celebrate, she acceded grudgingly.

In the short time since they'd arrived, the strangers and six others of their kind—the ones who'd shot down the warlord's fighters and come to rescue their friends— eight men in all, had entranced everyone. Everyone, it seemed, except Taj. She maintained her wariness.

In the Big Room, everyone was gathered for the main meal, eager to hear Jal's news from the worlds beyond. They brought their plates of food and their families to sit within earshot of the head table. Taj and Romjha sat there, part of the most diverse group imaginable: a bombmaker, the raider-"heroes," their commander, the community's elders and the high priestess, and seven foreign-born warriors and their sleeping prince.

Cheya Vedla had once again lapsed into drugged unconsciousness, prone on a many-times-mended mattress laid close by the table. A thick bandage covered his leg from knee to hip. He'd been sterilized and stitched, drugged and doted over—the latter evidenced by the dishes and bowls scattered around him, offerings of sustenance from the community, the best of their simple, forced-by-circumstances vegetarian fare.

He had been awake when Taj first arrived at the meal. His smile was wan, but she'd sensed the charisma behind it. "Ah, Taj Sai. The female fighter. The bomb-maker. I thank you for your efforts on my behalf out there in danger."

That danger you made worse, outsider, she'd wanted to say. "If your artery had been severed, you'd have been dead before I had a chance to touch you," she'd said instead.

She'd almost walked away then, unable to look at the man who held the power to bring her so much sorrow, should his visit here inspire Romjha to head off after vengeance. But when Romjha threw her one of those penetrating, perceptive looks that she was beginning to loathe, she'd softened her words. "Today you were lucky. I... am glad for it."

Despite Cheya's somewhat improved condition, Sienna's healers agreed that if better medical technology was available elsewhere, he should be brought to it as soon as possible. It was the best news Taj could hope for. Within hours, he and his guardians would be gone and out of her hair.

She returned her attention to the meal.

"Refugees pour into our homeland, seeking protection," Jal explained. "They tell us that warlords and self-appointed kings still rule their respective domains." Holding a stalk of fried karna in one hand like a wand, the man paused to tear off a strip of its tender flesh.

Jal might be an aide to a king's descendant, but his manners were crude, Taj thought. Food was precious to the Siennans. Over time, its preparation had become an art. Along with the women who had prepared the meal, Taj watched with vaguely appalled fascination as Jal and his kind consumed it.

"On those worlds, barbarism and cruelty take many forms," the foreign warrior continued, munching soberly. "Sexual slavery and reproductive control are widespread. And in some places ..."

As Jal described in sickening detail the outcome of massive antimatter weaponry detonations, Taj watched the emotions that played across Romjha's face. The raider commander had cleaned himself up, shaved, and exchanged his commando gear for typical, simple indoor attire in dark smoky gray. His hair was combed back from his face and gathered neatly at his neck in a snug band. Golden highlights in his hair glinted in the flickering light.

All of Taj's other senses had grown more acute since she'd damaged her hearing, smell most of all. She could pick out the scent of Romjha's warm skin from the others: clean male sweat mixed with a hint of something tartly sweet, reminding her of the small, hard red fruit her people produced in their cavern groweries, the extract of which she often used in her cleansers. One of the other women must have begun adding the ingredient to the community soaps.

Bachelors relied on the generosity of other men's wives for toiletries and food—and on widows and unattached women for more private needs. Secretly, Taj hoped that whoever had given him soap hadn't donated more. Romjha certainly fielded his share of female attention, but Taj had never actually seen him with anyone. Yet who knew what company he sought out deep in the night when no one wanted to be alone?

Her mood darkened, and she gathered her foul temper around her like a familiar, well-worn protective cloak. Seated between Aleq and Patra—a community elder—she ate quickly, refilled her bowl, kept her head low, and ate some more. She'd lost her appetite since returning from topside, had lost it for most of the day, but now had found it again. She was glad. The cooks had taken special care with tonight's preparation, and the karna was excellent.

Taj wondered what the outsiders thought of it. Karna was her people's staple food, a meat substitute made from a bland protein-rich bean that adopted any flavor added to it. Tonight the slices in her stew tasted of the aromatic, spiced broth.

Jal mopped up the last of his gravy with a piece of flatbread and pushed the soggy morsel into his mouth with three fingers. "Our battle to save our world was long and it cost us much. I believe it was the knowledge that we preserved the last of the monarchy that gave us the heart to rise up against the warlord when he invaded, and the stamina to persevere when we expelled the beast from our homeland."

Grumbles of admiration and hushed applause met Jal's statement. Romjha pushed away his empty bowl and rested his back against his chair, his fingers laced together over his stomach, one thumb stroking the other. They were the scarred, sinewy hands of a veteran fighter. But those same long, blunt-tipped fingers had loved a woman once—trailed over naked skin, sifted through long hair, caressed the most private places. . . .

Taj forced her gaze to her stew.

"I am a soldier from a small, out-of-the-way world," Romjha said at last. "I have seen nothing of the lands beyond Sienna. I have no technological skills, nor the polish of an extensive education. But I have read books. I have read many books. From them I have learned what the galaxy was like before."

Taj's heart skipped a beat. Romjha meant her father's books: Tomes on government, religion, science, and philosophy. They'd formed the basis for Romjha's ideas—she saw that now. She should have burned them while she had the chance!

"But now," Romjha told Jal and his men, "the galaxy is a dark and dangerous place. You say that disease, famine, and terror are rampant across the remains of the Empire. Worlds live in fear of weapons of mass destruction, created and perfected by those without conscience by those who embrace cruelty and worship soulless power. In some places slavery exists—even thrives. And sexual slavery, as well, you say." His expression darkened further. "Despicable. Civilization has surely reached an all-time low when such barbarism is tolerated. And toward women! From a woman's body comes life. Because of this, she must be protected, respected, worshipped .. . loved. I humbly believe that is what the Great Mother expects of us, has always expected of us. She is a female deity—overseeing the mortal world and that of the Ever After. From Her womb sprang the original civilization that spawned all humankind!"

Romjha's golden gaze swept over those seated at the table only to hesitate on Taj, sparking with something she couldn't define yet that made her heart flutter. For once she didn't narrow her eyes in challenge of his chivalrous views. His desire to protect her, to keep her safe, had taken on an entirely new significance. She'd often seen it as a need to control, or perhaps a lack of confidence in her abilities. But it wasn't that at all.

Taj thought he had lost his faith, but in fact he'd merely redirected it. Looking out for her was how he expressed his spirituality. The realization left her heart pounding.

But it didn't mean she was going to give up demolitions for kneading flatbread by the cooking stones, either.

Jal listened to Romjha, his hands curved around his drinking glass. Like Cheya, he'd seen his share of carnage; it took only one look in his world-weary eyes to tell that he agreed that women weren't meant for the battlefield. But Taj suspected Jal's reasoning was different from Romjha's: more of a basic instinct to protect those who were weaker than Romjha's worshipful view.

Romjha finished. "You have driven out those who practice such cruelties, Jal. For that, I admire you. I admire your people. But the peace on your world is a temporary one. To believe otherwise is a fool's fantasy. There are countless warlords and rogue kings. For every one you defeat, another will take his place."

"It's why keeping a low profile makes sense," Taj murmured to Elder Patra, loud enough for Romjha to hear. "Hide by day. Raid by night."

Romjha flashed her an unreadable look as Jal spread his hands and asked, "What would you have us do, commander? Lie down and let them roll over us? No! We will fight. To do otherwise is to lose hope, and to lose hope is to die. That is Cheya's creed. I will follow it to the grave." Jal slammed one bruised, scabbed-over fist onto the table. "This I vow!"

Taj's glass of root ale—a rare treat—splashed onto the table's stone surface. She watched the droplets quiver, mirroring the sensation in her belly as the two warriors resumed their argument.

"To the grave you will indeed go if you wish to restore the monarchy," Romjha said.

"We wish to restore stability."

"By installing Cheya as king! King Vedla saw to his own selfish interests even as the galaxy crumbled around him. Do you seek to repeat what history has already proved does not work?"

Taj perked up. Tell him yes, outsider, she thought. Yes! Then Romjha will want nothing to do with the monarchy or you.

Jal exhaled. "No."

Taj's shoulders drooped.

"We want to make a better future, Romjha. Better than it was before."

"Better? Better will happen only with strong leadership, sacrifice, and a willingness to change. We must build on what came before, make it different. The monarchy and its parliament stopped functioning properly generations before it fell. That path mustn't be retrod."

Taj took a long swallow of ale for courage. "The monarchy may have been corrupt, but it was unifying," she called out. "People believed in it. Who'll rule in your galaxy, Romjha? Will the Vash keep the peace?"

She'd meant it as a taunt, goading him with the ancient name of the mythical guardians of the advanced civilization of Those Who Came Before. Dreaded they were said to have been, warriors who approached combat with the strength of their religious devotion. But Romjha reacted with genuine excitement, as if Taj had somehow inspired him.

He leaned forward, his hands spread flat on the great table. His eyes flashed. "Those who pray and bleed to secure the peace will be more inclined to strive to keep it. A ruling council—a Nadah." he said, using another word from the ancient language, "comprised of warrior-leaders whose strength stems from the physical as well as the spiritual. Pious, honorable soldiers. Yes. A Vash Nadah. Brilliant, Taj."

She choked on her ale. Blast it, she'd been trying to discourage him, not arm him with more ideas that would send him off to fight for the galaxy. Elder Patra patted her on the back until she stopped coughing, and Aleq stared at her, eyes wide, as if he'd never seen her before. Ten-to-one odds her face had appeared the same way when Romjha confessed he would have destroyed the skyport, too.

Taj hunched her shoulders, sinking lower in her chair. "For the record, Aleq, I tried to talk him out of this." It was insanity, too great of a risk—all of it, and she wanted no credit.

"We will have to seize as many comm systems as we can," Romjha explained. "Your world and others with technology can help us repair the rest or make more. We will contact people like us all over the galaxy. We will spread the word of freedom. We will encourage them to rise up and take arms against their aggressors."

Jal rubbed his chin. "I will see that Cheya listens to your ideas, Romjha. Though he may not care for all of them."

"No, I may not," rasped the prince.

Taj's hand spasmed. Her spoon splashed into her stew. No one noticed. All heads swung to Cheya.

By the heavens—how long had be been awake? How much had he heard? Enough to perceive Romjha and her people as a threat, she was certain. They may have gotten rid of the local warlord, but there was no guarantee that these strangers and the forces behind them wouldn't turn out to be worse.

Weakly Cheya propped himself up on one elbow, regarding Romjha with coolly discerning bronze-gray eyes. "But your concerns cannot be ignored. Neither, apparently, can you, Romjha B'kah."

The two men sized each other up with a wary, incisive scrutiny that Taj could almost feel. A prince and an idealistic backplanet warrior. Or was Romjha just seen as a troublemaker?

He ventured boldly, "Kings come and go, Cheya, but the Great Mother is the overseer of us all. She is what gave your ancestors power long ago, and it is She who took it away. It is as Her servants that we must fight."

Troublemaker, Taj decided.

"The warlords are fragmented," Cheya remarked. "They war amongst themselves."

"They can thrive only in chaos," Jal agreed.

Cheya's pain-filled eyes burned with passion. "Without chaos, they will be powerless. By restoring stability to each world we liberate, we can weaken the holds of the others."

Aleq shot to his feet. Full of youthful bluster, he raised his glass of ale. "We'll yank the bastards up by the roots one by one!"

Laughter and spontaneous applause broke out.

By now, Taj's temper had risen to a boil. "The warlords and their soldiers outnumber us by hundreds of thousands. Maybe millions! They'll see what we're doing, they'll unite and try to exterminate us like they did in the past!"

"They failed," Romjha reminded her.

Elder Patra spoke up, her quavering voice reflecting her eighty-something years. "Are we willing to take the risk that they'll fail a second time?"

Romjha spread his hands on the table and stared broodingly around the room. "We will win where we failed before because we will fight back as one. Not one community, or one world, but all peace-minded people near and far. And when we are done, when there is peace, the responsibility of safeguarding our future must not be placed back in the hands of a single family."

The ensuing silence roared in Taj's ears.

Romjha met Cheya's forceful gaze unflinchingly. "If we are to stand a chance at securing peace for all time, the power must be distributed in such a way that it cannot be exploited or neglected."

"Your Vash Nadah." The Vedla heir let his head fall back on the pillow. "An army of zealots. I don't know if I like it."

"Not fanatics," Romjha insisted. "Virtuous, faithful, accountable men. Society has been destroyed. If we do not shore up the foundation as we fight, it will crumble again. All will be lost."

"We'd fight a war to end war," Jal murmured.

"Yes. To win peace." Romjha's gaze smoldered with something close to obsession. "Peace for all time."

The murmurs in the audience grew louder. Taj squeezed her eyes shut. Not only had Romjha shifted the emphasis from war to peace, he'd presented himself along with Cheya and Jal as one of the leaders of the coming revolution.

Cheya held out his hand. Romjha left the table and crouched by the fallen prince. They clasped their arms at the wrist in the ancient traditional warrior's handshake, their faces aglow with dreams of victory. Jal got up and joined them. Then Aleq placed his hands over theirs. Aleq? He'd never aspired to anything grandiose before, let alone galactic peace.

"It is what the prophecy says," Jal declared. "Eight warriors will join together, men who burn with the desire to fight. And those men will win."

What prophecy? And what did he mean by eight warriors? Taj saw four men. Four fools. The rest must be off-planet. All of them eager to follow each other to their deaths.

"Men," she huffed. Standing, she pushed her chair away from the table. "The more passion you take to war, the more body bags you make. And who will deal with the aftermath, eh?" Her chest squeezed tight. "The women," she whispered, meeting Romjha's eyes. "The very ones you claim to want to protect. The ones you should be focusing on instead of fighting."

A muscle jumped in his jaw. She'd struck him where he was most vulnerable—reminding him of the loss of his wife and child, and that he hadn't been able to save them. The shame of letting fly that remark stung. But anger boiled inside her, making an apology impossible.

Taj pressed her fists to her stomach, as if that could somehow keep her from letting go of the last shreds of her composure. Her people hadn't given her the job of munitions officer to see her fall apart over a man with a death wish—even if his ideas would likely bring death and destruction to her homeland; even if he was the man she'd admired for more years than she could remember. She was a soldier; she'd take life's blows like one.

"Excuse me. I must go." Spine stiff, she offered all the people at the table a calm, respectful nod.

Romjha stood, his stare pure fire, searing through the wall she'd erected in self-defense. Desperately, she tried to keep her private thoughts from him. She turned and fled.

Only after she was out of the Big Room and sight did she double over, hugging her arms to her ribs as if she'd received a direct hit to the abdomen. "Blast you, Romjha B'kah!"

She staggered to her bedroom, near the lab in the silent, rearmost area of the caverns. Her insides felt shredded, as if someone was thrashing open her heart. She fell near her altar to pray, as she'd done every morning and every evening for as long as she could remember. Her knees settled snugly into the well-worn hollows of a floor cushion. With a shaking hand, she lit candles under a half-dozen shallow bowls holding fragrant oils. The scents were said to please the Great Mother.

To be on the safe side, Taj gathered extra bowls of oil and lit candles under each. She'd need the Great Mother to be in a receptive mood. Then, eyes closed, Taj bent her head and prayed.

"May Romjha's death be painless and quick."

Chapter Eight

Taj remained in silent meditation for some time. When she was through, she tapped a wand against a metal bell etched with ancient Siennan runes, sending her prayers to the Ever After, where her pleas would be considered by the Great Mother Herself.

She'd done what she could. Now at least Romjha might be protected. At the thought of what the man intended, though, her ire began to grow. Gritting her teeth, she pushed past her heavy door and strode from her quarters.

As Taj's anger took over, the thick ache in her throat and behind her eyes subsided. Her blood heated, her stomach burned, and she began to feel more like herself. Not good but more in control. Less vulnerable.

"Ah. There you are."

She jumped, startled, and spun around.

Romjha's shoulders appeared to fill the entire tunnel as he walked toward her. "I feared you'd disappear to . . . wherever it is you go," he said.

The spring. No, she wouldn't be going there tonight. The spring was her sanctuary, a place for when she wanted to escape the world—not for when she wanted to fight with it.

He halted, looming over her. How did he do that? Men stood, they loitered, they even loafed; they didn't loom. "Go back to your dinner, Romjha."

His mouth spread in a determined line. She should have learned her lesson from their encounter the day before, when she'd first asked him to bring her topside: Romjha B'kah did not take kindly to being dismissed. "If I'd wanted to remain at dinner, I would have done so," he said.

"What, then? What do you want? Have you come for your apology?" She fisted her hands at her sides. "Here, I'll give it to you. I'm sorry I implied what I did about your family. I had no right. I—"

"You had every right, Taj." His expression didn't change, but his eyes gleamed strangely. She wasn't sure she liked the fire burning in them. It'd be an impressive show if he loosed his wrath, but he didn't.

She thought of stepping around him, but his tall, muscular body left little space to maneuver. "Please move aside. I have to work."

"I had a feeling you were going to your lab."

"You know me so well," she retorted contemptuously.

The answering heat in his stare told her that perhaps he did indeed know her well. Too well. "You haven't slept yet. You've been working long enough, Taj. It gets to a point when it's dangerous. You're at that point."

Her temper rose. "Dangerous?" she hissed. "Don't talk to me about dangerous. You, who praised the raiders for what they did yesterday. You, who dreams of taking on the entire galaxy."

With a visible tamping down of his frustration, Romjha exhaled. "Taj, I'd rather you didn't work tonight. In fact, I'm asking you not to."

His manner was careful. Almost gentle. Sweat prickled Taj's forehead. She was looking for a fight, and had thought she'd get one. After the wounding remark she'd made about his wife and child, she was surprised Romjha bothered speaking pleasantly to her at all. "I work when I need ... to think."

He started to reach for her arm, then let his hand fall. She couldn't pull her gaze from those blunt, long-tipped fingers. "Do your thinking in bed," he suggested.

His eyes glinted with what seemed a promise. Her skin heated; her breasts tingled. Crat. She was actually growing aroused arguing with him. Stop it. Her fantasies were getting the better of her. Again. This was neither the time nor the place.

"I'm not sleepy." She took a breath and pushed past him. "Good night, Commander."

He followed her. "You're relieved of duty. That's an order."

She turned around, walking backward. "We're not topside. Here you have no authority over me."

"The chemicals you use are hazardous; they require concentration. You haven't slept," he repeated.

She spread her hands. "Who has?"

"You're exhausted."

"Pah!" She thumped her fists onto her thighs and marched back to him. "I'll tell you what I am. I'm furious. I'm so furious I could tear you apart, limb by suicidal limb."

He raised a brow. "Suicidal?"

"Yes, suicidal. I can see it in your eves. You're going to leave with them." Her stomach twisted. "Am I right?"

His voice was both resolute and rueful. "Yes, Taj. I will be leaving when Jal and Cheya depart."

The blood drained from her face. It was one thing imagining the truth; it was entirely another to hear it confirmed.

She bunched up her hands and pressed them to her stomach. Frantically she tried to work up a good, seething rage, but for the first time since losing her father, she failed. She could only find hurt and fear.

"You're going to die and break my heart." She swallowed convulsively. "Aren't you?"

His eyes were suddenly so dark and profound that she feared she'd lose herself in them. "I have every reason not to," he said.

"By the heavens, I hope I'm not one of them." She marched close enough to him to feel his body heat. "You said you couldn't promise me tomorrow," she accused.

"A knee-jerk response! I was angry. I didn't want to contemplate losing you."

"Well, I'm angry, too." She reached for his collar and tried to shake him. "But one thing I won't contemplate is you not giving me tonight." She tugged him down to her and kissed him.

A deep sound rumbled in his chest. He tasted sweet, like root ale, and his lips were salty. Shyness didn't matter. That she'd wanted him like this forever didn't matter. What he thought of her audacity didn't matter. This was all she'd have. This moment. This night.

She wrapped the fabric of his collar around her knuckles and thrust her tongue deep into the dark, sweet heat of his mouth.

If he had any reservations about what she'd demanded of him. Romjha didn't show it. His arms folded around her, molding her to his body. The pressure of his lips forced her head backward, triggering a flood of desire that pooled low in her belly.

His kiss was ravenous, not tender; it was scorching and unrepentant. Taj's anger dissipated like so much ash, burned away by something even hotter.

It was clear, now, how badly they'd both wanted this—and that they'd waited too long for it.

Romjha's hands moved lower, stroking and kneading as they went. He found her backside and hauled her close enough for her to feel the proof of his arousal. If radite crystals were volatile, this was spontaneous combustion.

Taj kissed and caressed him frantically. They stumbled backward into the closest room. The lab door slammed closed behind them.

She tore through the fasteners on Romjha's shirt, yanking it down his shoulders. Her fingers raked over the swell of his hard chest, her palms dragging across his flat stomach, riding the muscles that rippled under taut skin there; they ruthlessly explored his warrior's body, the thick, rugged belt slung around his waist, and then lower.

Reaching between their bodies, Taj cupped her hand over the hard bulge in his trousers. He pushed her up against the wall.

Her needy moan seemed to encourage him. The scrape of his teeth on the side of her throat made her shiver as he fumbled with the fastener at her waist and shoved her pants to the floor.

His hand slid up her inner thigh. When he touched between her legs, her body gave an involuntary jerk.

Thick, callused fingertips explored her, found her wet and hot. His breath was harsh against her skin. "I've wanted you, Taj. Wanted this. Longer than you know." He kissed her again.

She moaned into his mouth, her legs suddenly weak. He found the small nub of her sex with breathtaking skill, rasping her gently with two slowly rotating fingers. Her hips writhed. A shattering rush of desire wiped her mind blank of anger and fear.

She grabbed his wrist, slowing him. They kissed feverishly as she worked to free him from his trousers. His erection was thick and hard, heavy with desire. Caressing, stroking, she took him into her hand. Her thumb circled over its rounded tip, spreading a hot bead of moisture she found there.

Something seemed to let go inside him then—an explosive reaction that she had the giddy feeling she wouldn't be able to control. He groaned her name, thrusting hard into her hand, stopping himself with a shudder, only to sweep her off her feet so fast she lost her breath. His arm muscles bulged as he slung her legs around him. Her shoulder blades pressed into the wall behind her.

The sensation of his hot flesh colliding with hers was almost too much. With a single jerk of his hips, he entered her, pushing deep, stretching her to a point of exquisite tension. She clung to him, muffling her cry of shock and pleasure against his shoulder.

Clutching her hips, Romjha rocked inside her with long, powerful, upward strokes, sending shock waves of carnal pleasure all the way to her toes. Pinned between his body and the wall, she could do little else but hold on to his heaving shoulders and make small, pleading gasps.

"Ah, Taj . . . don't make me stop," he teased gruffly, pretending to misunderstand.

She choked back a laugh of joy. "You're kidding," she gasped, running her hands over his biceps, feeling the muscles flex under his skin. Reaching around, she loosened his hair from its binding. It fell shaggy and free around his neck, and she reveled in the silky strands.

He bit her neck, thrusting deeper inside her. His blond hair was dark with sweat; his shirt, hanging halfway down his arms, was damp with it, too. He radiated the scent and heat of insatiable hunger, of the fierce desperation of a soldier leaving home, likely for good. With that realization, anguish and anger invaded Taj's mind, twisting together and sharpening her need.

She and Romjha were wild and rough. Whatever one hungered for, the other seemed to know how to supply. Taj's entire body trembled and ached from exhaustion, but it didn't make a difference. It didn't stop her from asking for more. All he had. All he could give her.

Without thinking, she clamped her legs tighter around his hips. Deep inside, she convulsed. She hovered there, at a peak so intense she was sure her heart had stopped beating, until at last she shattered, a cry of joy and astonishment exploding from her throat.

Ecstasy swept her away to a new and temporary sanctuary better than her spring, a place where there was only sensation, all of it pleasurable, where there was no fear, no sorrow, no pain. A place where there was only now.

Romjha threw back his head, hissing through clenched teeth, as if he'd only barely managed to hold back until that moment. His buttocks went rock-hard. His hips jerked once, twice, and heat pumped into her— a release as powerful as it was prolonged.

Taj clung to him, her lips pressed to the tendons straining in his neck. At last, with one last jolt of his pelvis, Romjha let his head fall forward and buried his lips in her hair.

He was still semi-hard and deep inside her. With each small movement of his body, aftershocks of pleasure rippled through her. Time seemed to stand still as they remained wrapped around each other. In unison, their breathing slowed. The sweat on their skin chilled.

Taj felt emptied out, for once too tired to be truly angry, too satiated to be terrified.

Slowly she became aware of the odors of chemicals she stored in the lab, able to differentiate them by scent alone. Over Romjha's shoulder, she glimpsed boxes of fuses, empty metal shells waiting to be filled, bullets, flamethrowers, dynamite—instruments of destruction, all. She might like to think she was a survivalist, but she was as much a part of this blood-madness as Romjha.

What if his brazen plan was able to bring a return of technology, of modern medical care, of living without the constant threat of attack? What if he did achieve peace for all time? Would he be satisfied coming home to Sienna, to a new and simpler life as a gentleman farmer or a shopkeeper, or whatever else men did during peacetime when every breathing moment wasn't taken up by the demands of survival or battle?

Something told her he'd never be satisfied with such a mundane life. He'd never be a man satisfied being tied to a hearthside. He'd always look to the stars and dream.

As if he sensed her escalating unease, he stroked her hair. A shudder ran through the tight muscles in his arms, and he lifted her and eased her to the ground. Her legs wobbled under her weight, and she clung to his forearm with one hand as she pulled her pants over her bare backside with her other.

Romjha said, "We're in your lab." He glanced around, blinking.

"It was the closest open door. Remember?"

"Actually, no."

She'd never seen him this bemused. She quite liked it.

Romjha dipped his head to brush his mouth over hers. His hand slipped under her shirt and cupped her breast, dragging his thumb back and forth over its sensitive tip.

Taj sucked in a breath, her loins heating all over again. Romjha made a soft, pleased growl when her nipple hardened.

"We rushed just now. Haste leaves many loose ends." He spoke quietly against her parted lips. "Let us tie them up in your bed."

She remembered her wobbly legs. "If I can walk there."

His mouth spread, a private smile, and he pressed firm lips to the side of her throat. "Who says you have to?"

Searching for the waistband of his pants, he pulled them up but left his shirt open. Shadows played across his powerful shoulders and chest, rippled over the ridges of his stomach like dark honey. His abs flexed as he buckled his waist belt.

"To your bed," he said then, with finality, and swept her off her feet. Taj wrapped her arms around his neck and let him carry her from the lab.

Chapter Nine

Romjha carried Taj into her room and laid her on the bed, joining her there. The candles had died down, but the chamber was still scented with the fragrance of the rich oils she'd heated.

"It smells good in here." Leaning over her, he nuzzled her neck. She hunched her shoulders and shivered, smiling. "You smell good, too," he said. "You always do."

"I make more than weapons in that lab," she admitted. "Scented oils, infusions, lotions, soaps."

"You'll have to show me."

"I might do more than that," she murmured.

He bent his head and kissed her thoroughly. His shirt was undone. Its fabric fell open, exposing his chest and stomach. She wound her arms around his bare torso. He smelled good, too. Musky and male. Like sweat and sex . . . and her.

When they finally moved apart, she traced the line of his jaw with her finger. "I'm not with Aleq anymore."

"I know," he said.

She pushed up on her elbows. "You do? That's good, I mean. I wouldn't think you'd be here otherwise—and neither would I—but" —flustered, she narrowed her eyes—"how do you know?"

"Aleq told me."

Oh, boy. She let her head fall back. "Let me guess: You revealed your planned mission, and he felt compelled to brief you on the hazards of the duty."

The ends of Romjha's mouth twitched. "You underestimate me. I simply made some inquiries under the guise of a concerned superior officer wanting to be involved in the lives of his men. We spoke this morning, when we were washing up after our return. Not surprisingly, you came up during the course of the conversation."

She groaned. "And he spilled his guts."

"No, Taj, the facts only. They were all I required." Holding her chin between his thumb and index finger, he forced her to focus on his face. "I learned that what I wanted, I could have."

His tone was half-teasing. But it was the half-serious part that troubled her. It was becoming very clear that whatever Romjha set his mind to do, he did.

He pushed to his knees and stared at her. The bed creaked under his weight. Shadows slashed across his handsome face as, crouched on all fours, he leaned forward.

He slid her shirt higher, exposing her upper body. Cool air washed over her skin. His hands smoothed up and over her ribcage to cup her breasts. Thick, callused fingers. Clever hands. She closed her eyes, relished the sensations, gasping softly when slick, wet heat replaced his touch.

His mouth closed over a nipple, and he suckled her gently, teasing her with deft flicks of his tongue, unleashing a fresh rush of desire. All on its own, her body arched against him. How was it possible? She was ready for him, all over again, and she was still recovering from the first time!

His hair fell forward, soft and loose, to tickle her face. She moaned, bunching her fingers in the strands. "Romjha?"

He lifted his head. "Hmm?"

"How long do we have?"

"Tomorrow evening is the planned departure. After sunset." His tone was careful. He shrugged off his shirt, bunching the fabric and tossing it to the floor.

"That means we'll only have this night, then," she said miserably.

"No. We'll have more, Taj. Much more." Romjha slipped her shirt up and off; over her head. It landed somewhere behind her with a soft sound. "A lifetime of nights."

He spoke with the same quiet conviction that had so angered her at dinner, conjuring the same familiar heat now.

As if they indeed had all the time in the world, he settled on his side next to her on the bed. With his head propped by one hand, he nudged her legs apart with the other, obviously ready to devote his full attention to pleasuring her.

She groaned—from her intensifying exasperation, or from desire, or both.

His fingers trailed down her belly. The muscles there contracted; he noticed, smiling wickedly with his eyes as that dangerous hand moved lower.

The reckless bastard was leaving, heading off to be slaughtered. She didn't want languorous love play, like they had all the time in the world, like they had a future; she wanted hard, hot, mind-numbing sex. She wanted to feel the full power of Romjha's body plunging into hers, stamping out her darkest thoughts, blinding her to reality.

She grabbed his wrist. Under her fingers, his pulse beat hard and determined. "There is no future for us," she said. "Do you understand? Just tonight. Play by those rules, or don't play at all." She lifted his hand to her breast, dropping it there. "Come on, time's wasting. Let's get on with it."

His eyes flashed with something almost frightening, and his free hand swept behind her head. Dragging her off the pillow, he seized her mouth in a breathless, punishing kiss, angling his firm mouth so that her lips were forced open by the pressure.

Taj gripped his biceps, trying to hold back the tidal wave that was her response to him. Within seconds, she knew this kiss had none of the warm passion of their wild encounter against the wall; it reflected only the coldness with which she'd made her demand. Then, just as suddenly, he let her go and she fell back onto the pillow.

He leaned over her, regarding her with that focused, knowing look of his. There had been no triumph in the act for him, she knew. And for her, no satisfaction in bringing him to it. "Is this what you really want, Taj?"

She touched the back of her hand to her throbbing lips. Then she shook her head. The sound of his belt hitting the floor startled her.

Just as efficiently, he plucked off her slippers and discarded them, one after the other. It occurred to her that he'd been steadily divesting them of their clothing the entire time they talked.

He loomed over her, his broad shoulders blocking the light. "I am going to make love to you. Now. Slowly. Thoroughly. I'm going to take my time. If you truly, honestly, do not want me to do what I have just proposed, tell me to leave, and I will."

His challenging golden gaze locked with hers.

Great Mother. Taj's throat tightened as sudden awareness flooded her of the fleeting nature of life, of this one night.

She drew Romjha down to her. "Yes. Make love to me," she whispered, "as if we had forever."

His expression changed to one of exquisite tenderness. His deep voice was a purr against her ear, and he began to caress her with his hands and mouth. "We will have forever. You don't believe me, but you will see. For now, take my gift to you, my beautiful woman. Take this gift of pleasure. ..."

The remaining hours until dawn blurred together in a haze of carnal bliss. As he'd promised, Romjha saw to her gratification with a focused, impassioned, almost religious reverence, alternating exquisite strokes with tender but relentless teasing. Taj wasn't inexperienced, but never had she realized there were so many sensations her body could feel.

He seemed to know just when and how to back off to leave her teetering breathlessly at the edge of climax. When at last he entered her, she couldn't prevent her sudden intake of breath or the moan that followed. But even then, buried deep inside her, swollen with his own arousal, he demonstrated his complete understanding of her body by holding himself entirely still.

She protested the exquisite torture with a soft cry, her hips writhing. "I won't break," she gasped. "Please."

Listen to me, she thought. He has me begging.

But Romjha shook his head, his voice strained by his own need for completion. "Not yet. Squeeze me. Use your inner muscles."

She attempted what he asked, and his breath hitched.

"Yes . . . that's it. Hold on now. Hold back." His eyes glinted wickedly. "I will make you glad you did."

Only when he appeared confident that she'd regained control did he lift her thighs, hooking her legs over his thick shoulders. His penetration was so deep that she cried out from the indescribable pleasure of it. Then, with swaying hips and expert, searching hands, he made slow and delicious love to her.

He lowered his mouth to her ear. Arousal had thickened his voice, making it deeper, sexier. "Your body I worship," he said on a half groan.

If that's what he called what he was doing to her, she had no argument. In her entire life, she'd never felt anything as good. Dazed, she clung to him, pushing into his thrusts.

"Taj," he said tightly. "Inajh d'anah."

Inajh d'anah. It was ancient Siennan for "Heart of my heart, flesh of my flesh." It was far too optimistic an endearment, considering his impending departure, but how many times had she dreamed he'd say such tender words to her? How many nights had she dreamed he'd someday hold her close and whisper sweetly in her ear? Now those wishes came back to haunt her.

Before anger interfered, she untangled her legs behind his back, pushed on his shoulders, and rolled him over. Balancing herself with hands flat on his stomach, she pressed her pelvis down, taking him inside her, as deep as he could go. Her inner muscles clamped down around him.

He made a deep growl in his throat, arching his brawny, scarred body upward, his fingers sinking into the flesh of her thighs, grinding her against him.

The memory of the loved ones she had lost, the heartaches she'd endured, the vulnerability, the helplessness those memories brought with them; those and her impending loss of Romjha lent a poignant, painful eloquence to their lovemaking. She'd almost reached her peak, both emotional and physical, when a choked sob escaped her.

Romjha rolled them both over and reared upward to a sitting position. Momentum kept her with him, and him deep inside her. Her thighs trembled, and she convulsed around his deep penetration. Their lips came together in a hot and desperate kiss.

He groaned into her mouth, and she understood. Melded to his body, squeezing him intimately as he'd taught her, their roles could be reversed. With a heady rush of desire she realized that she could just as easily set the pace of pleasure.

Now she was the one who gave, and she did so, joyfully.

The tension in their bodies built, the pleasure climbed, and at last, in one fleeting, blindingly perfect moment, lust and love and hope converged, and fear faded from Taj's consciousness.

Toward dawn, she woke Romjha from a drowse. "I want to show you a secret place," she whispered. "We can bathe there."

Her breasts bounced as she took his hand and pulled him out of bed. She'd never been shy in her nakedness, but with Romjha's eyes on her, she felt breathless.

Behind a thick tapestry was a narrow tunnel. It was so dank and dark within that she knew Romjha couldn't see her crawling in front of him until they reached the fissure that contained the spring.

The sound of splattering water echoed from the small chamber. The air inside was thick, laden with mist and the residual scents she'd used there.

Silent, she lit the wick she'd brought and touched it one by one to the candles she kept arranged, high and low, on glistening rocks all around them.

Candlelight danced in Romjha's golden eyes. The reflection of water danced across his high cheekbones and long, straight nose. He appeared almost boyish in his delight. "You have kept your secrets, haven't you?"

"No one else knows, save perhaps Elder Patra. Not even Aleq," she added, quieter. "This secret has been passed down, bombmaker to bombmaker."

Romjha walked to where the water pooled before it rushed away to the depths of Sienna. He knelt by the shallow basin, sluicing the water through his hand. Magnificent he was—a beautiful, vital male in the prime of life.

He was so passionate, generous. Alive. As a man. As a lover. She couldn't bear the thought of him ending up like her father, yet another sacrifice in a war with no end. Something needed to be done to end the warlords' reign of terror, yes—but, blast it, why did Romjha feel so compelled to sacrifice himself to the cause?

Yet wasn't it his innate sense of honor and duty that she most admired? The unselfishness that pushed him to want to see a return to a stable government and peace for all the galaxy? Most men wouldn't contemplate goals on such a grand scale. They would settle, most ordinary men. Romjha B'kah was anything but.

The admiration and respect she'd always had for him filled her again. He reminded her of a knight-protector, a benevolent Nash, a hero of the realm from the days of old. Or was he to be a hero of the years yet to come?

The oddest of sensations rushed up her spine, making the tiny blond hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. He is meant for something more, a purpose greater than this life he now leads. The voice came from inside her, and yet it wasn't hers.

She regarded Romjha with a new and horrified awe.

Suddenly water hit her in the face. "No frowning," Romjha ordered.

Grinning, he scooped more water into his dripping hand and splashed her. It trickled down her body, over her breasts and stomach.

His playfulness was contagious. He was right. No sense ruining what time they had left together.

On impulse, she took a pot of lotion off a nearby rock. "Don't start what you don't want to finish."

"Since when haven't I finished what I started?"

She joined him in a curtain of sparkling mist. "Let me reword that: Start anything you like, but wait until I am finished with you first."

He watched as if fascinated while she rubbed the cream between her hands to warm it. Then she knelt behind him and worked the scented lotion into his back. The muscles there bunched and then smoothed under the pressure of her fingers. He leaned into her ministrations and let out a deep, rumbling sigh.

She touched him everywhere before their time in the spring came to an end: the scars and healed-over wounds marring his wonderful body, as well as the parts of him that remained unharmed.

Private satisfaction curved her mouth. If he could give her the gift of pleasure, make a religion of worshiping her body, then she could surely do the same for him.

Sitting on the edge of the mattress, Taj watched Romjha gather his clothing and get dressed. The familiar sick feeling had returned to her belly. She tried to forget it was there, concentrated instead on the delicious twinges she still felt between her thighs.

Her gaze shifted to her altar, where the bowls of scented oil had long since cooled. She walked over and lit the candles under each, kneeling there because it brought her comfort, even now, on the day of Romjha's departure.

She heard him come up behind her. "Praying?" he asked.

A bad subject. She changed it. "Speaking of worship, you told the outsiders that women deserved to be treated along such lines. Well, you surely worship their bodies."

He gave a heavy-lidded half-smile and crouched next to her. His thick belt creaked with the movement, and she inhaled his scent, storing the memory of it to keep her warm during all the looming cold and lonely nights ahead. "I'm glad I could bring you pleasure, Taj," he said.

She gave a soft laugh. "A man of understatements he is," she remarked to the candles, which seemed to flicker with laughter. She gave Romjha a shyer, sideways glance. "I did always wonder about you."

He raised his brows. "I'm afraid to ask why."

"I never saw you with any of the women. I didn't know if you were, well, more or less . . . celibate?" she hedged hopefully.

He appeared taken aback. She was too mortified to wait for an answer. "But last night proved me wrong, so ..." She shrugged.

He pulled her close and softly bit the side of her neck. She shivered. "How so, exactly?" he asked.

She tried to appear blasé about the whole thing. "Your skill. It screamed practice. Lots of practice."

He laughed—actually laughed. She thought her heart would burst with joy at the beauty of the sound. "I've had a lot of time to think, Taj."

"Think? I have your imagination to thank for this?" She couldn't help but grin.

His eyes sparkled with roguish amusement. "Did you expect to have to thank a woman?"

She turned her embarrassed gaze back to her altar. "Or women."

He sighed and answered enigmatically, "I have had my moments, more or less. Mostly less. Either way, it's been a long time."

He rose to his feet and pulled her with him, stroking his broad hands up and down her back. "It was difficult to work up enthusiasm about anyone else when I wanted you, Taj. Only you. And for as long as I can remember, that's the way it's been."

She let herself melt against him. She'd never melted against any man or known one who'd invited her to. It wasn't frightening at all. It felt. . . nice. Very nice, just to be held in his strong arms.

There came a soft but insistent knocking at the door. Taj exchanged a surprised glance with Romjha. He held up one finger, asking her to wait where she was, and went to the door.

Through the open door, Taj saw shadows moving outside in the tunnel. Romjha's large frame prevented her from seeing more. She tipped her good ear toward the sounds of whispers, but could hear nothing. Then Romjha closed the door, his gaze focused somewhere else, not in the room. He simply stood there, grave and alone; silent, pondering thoughts only he could see.

"Who was at the door?" she asked.

"Two of Cheya and Jal's men. And Petro."

"And?" She gritted her teeth. "They must have wanted to find you badly to have come all the way to my quarters, way back here. Nobody dares tread here, lest they be blown to bits by the hard-hearted bombmaker," she joked.

He began walking toward her. With his hair already scraped back to its neat, soldier's style, restrained in a short clublike wrap at the base of his neck, he was the warrior once more, the raider commander, not the lover who had lowered his defenses and paid homage to her body all night long.

She held up her hands to discourage him from coming any closer. "Tell me what they said."

His throat moved as he swallowed. "They want me to prepare for an earlier-than-expected launch."

"How early?" she almost shouted.

He exhaled and replied, "They want me now."

Chapter Ten

Taj turned her head. She appeared unable to look at him. Romjha couldn't blame her.

"Launch," she mimicked with bitter disdain. The word was alien to him, too, evoking a world of incredible tech extraneous to anything either of them had ever known. "You're a small-time rebel from a backwater planet, Romjha. You don't even know how to use a computer, let alone fly a starfighter. Why are Jal and Cheya so anxious to take you with them?"

"They need soldiers," he explained patiently.

"Rocket fodder."

"Experienced leaders."

"Oh, I bet they need leaders." She made a face. "The wannabe prince and his loyal dog. They'll need all the help they can get. But from recruits who think the monarchy should die? I don't think so. You made it clear last night what you believe. They won't forget it. They'll use you to fight, and then when they no longer need you, they'll get rid of you."

"I may be a small-time rebel, as you remind me, but I know the ways of war. Battlefields are battlefields. The only things that vary are the weapons in your hand or your motivations for using them. You need not worry about me."

"Worry? Pah! I've already prayed for your death to be painless and quick." Taj sauntered to her bed. Perched on the edge of the mattress, she threw her folded arms over her chest. It was the closest to petulance he'd ever seen her. "If it comes to pass, you can thank the Great Mother."

"And you, too. Thanks."

Her eyes were molten gold. Unrepentant. "How dare you make me pray for such a thing, Romjha B'kah! And for who else will I have to pray for a quick death? Who else heads off with you to war? Aleq? Petro?"

"Petro will take my place here."

"Oh, sure. Leave him to handle the consequences of what was done to the skyport."

"I wouldn't leave this place unprotected and vulnerable." Hell! Did she think he would? It was clear she had little idea how deep was his desire to protect her. "Cheya will bring forces to run patrol in this area while I'm gone. They'll keep Sienna safe."

She mumbled something that he couldn't make out, but he suspected it was negative.

He cast his attention around her bedroom, searching for inspiration to reassure her, to lay claim to her heart, to prove to her he'd return. He had to know she was here, waiting for him and no other, until he did. Otherwise this would all be for nothing. Couldn't she see he was doing this for her as well as everyone else?

He would return for her—not in the Ever After, but in this world, this life. She would be his reward, his future, his life—just as he'd always hoped.

His attention shifted to her altar. He'd glimpsed Taj's quarters from the tunnel passageway from time to time but had never set foot in it. Her private domain's decor was minimal, the room unadorned, forthright and beautiful, like her. Candles burned low here, smelling of the oils she'd burned for prayers to the Great Mother.

To grant him an easy death.

Romjha sat heavily on the bed next to Taj. The men were waiting, but he would not go with them until he made things right with Taj.

Her lips were fuller, rosy from their kissing. A small pink smudge indicated where his shaven beard had abraded her chin. Not a gentle embrace, that, he thought, his loins stirring.

"Are you so sure I will die?"

She squeezed her eyes shut, opened them. Her pupils blurred behind a film of tears. In the next instant the moisture was gone, blinked away. It hit him that he hadn't seen her cry since Joren's funeral. "I don't know," she said. She sounded depleted, physically, emotionally. He was nearly there himself. They'd barely slept in two days. They'd spent most of the night engaged in vigorous lovemaking. Now he had to leave her, his remaining relatives, and the only home he'd ever known.

"I'm coming back, Taj. I will return for you." He knew it with a certainty he felt in his soul. "And when I do, I'll at last be able to give you the life that I cannot now. The life you deserve. A life of peace. Peace, Taj. We'll have a family, you and I—"

She pressed her fingertips to his lips, her expression forlorn, as if she wanted so badly what he described that she couldn't bear to listen.

He took her hand and pressed it to his chest, to his heart. "Our offspring will have a chance to grow old. We'll live topside—in the high plains, perhaps, where it will be cool enough to sit outside in the evenings. We'll listen to our children laugh and play while we watch the suns set."

Her eyes shimmered in the dim light.

"I will win that life for us, Taj." He gripped her hand. "I swear it."

A strangled sob exploded from her, and she yanked away her hand. Outrage contorted her features so quickly that words eluded him.

"Martyrdom is the choice of fools and fanatics," she hissed.

"Not if an individual's sacrifice is made for the good of the many."

"Pah! Don't delude yourself with inspirational proverbs, Romjha. There's nothing inspirational about dying. Ask Pasha. Ask my father. Ask your dead wife!"

His stomach muscles tightened. "Inaction is cowardice. We've spoken about that before, you and I, many times. Evil triumphs only when good men do nothing."

"Proverbs," she spat.

"No. Your words inspired me. Long ago. Remember?"

She watched him with dawning horror.

" 'Destiny is not a matter of chance,' " he recited. " 'It's a matter of choice.' If not for your influence the night Pasha died, I might have squandered the chance I had to change our path. To change the future."

She turned her head. "Don't make it more than it was. I just didn't want any more accidents. Preventable accidents. That was all."

"You didn't like the way things were, so you sought to change them. Don't you see? You chose." He took her chin between his finger and thumb, forced her to look at him. "You used tragedy as a springboard for action. But what did I do after I lost Seri and the infant? Nothing, Taj. Nothing."

Those bleak days, months, years played out in his mind as if he'd experienced them yesterday. Nostrils flaring, he waited until the demons sank back into his psyche before he spoke again. "I let sorrow get the best of me. I allowed loss to hold me back. Never again, Taj. Never again."

He smoothed his hands over her hair as he searched her face. "You don't remember the poor excuse for a man I was back then." When he was seventeen, she was only eleven, protected by a doting father who did his best to shelter her—as much as a child of Sienna could be sheltered. "We're seven years apart—"

"Six," she corrected, seething.

"Six and a half. I was an apathetic cynic. I drank too much. I didn't care if I lived or died, and I was dangerous to everyone because of it."

"You still grieved for Seri."

"That's what everyone thought. But that grief had run its course. Rather, I used Seri's death as an excuse— an excuse for indifference. It allowed me to avoid dealing with my failures as a man, because to tell the truth, at that time I didn't feel much like one."

Taj glanced away, her throat moving. "I curse myself for the remark I made at dinner last night. It wasn't your fault, what happened to your wife. How could it have been? She was ill; we didn't have the ability to treat her. Or the baby. There was nothing you could have done."

"Perhaps. But whose fault is it for what I let myself become afterward?" he asked a little too harshly. "I accept full blame for those wasted years. I could have taken concrete steps to help improve our lives, to make it easier, healthier, safer."

He took a breath that he suspected broadcast the intensity of his pain, and jammed his fingers through his hair. "Then Pasha died and you came into the Big Room. ..." He broke off and watched as many unnamed emotions crossed Taj's face.

"You bid for the position of raider commander soon after that. We started working together," she said. Her voice softened a fraction. "I was able to achieve so much of what I'd wanted with your support. Your philosophy, your plans—they were aligned with my own," she murmured. Her expression darkened again. "But not anymore," she finished bitterly. "Stay low, stay safe—pah!"

She lurched off the bed. "They're waiting for you, aren't they?"

Something inside Romjha wrenched with the heavy-hearted sound of her voice.

He sighed and went after her. She whirled on him. "No! No more stories about words I said, my apparent inspiration. How I changed your path! I will not be your personal rallying call to war, Romjha B'kah. I will not be the justification for this madness."

"You are my reason for everything. Everything, Taj."

She froze.

He closed on her. "I wasn't much more than a boy when I married. Sixteen, going on seventeen."

Clearly knocked off balance, she glanced at him askance.

"I loved Seri, yes, but it was a different love from what I believe I'm capable of now." Patiently, and yet with his heart pumping, he watched Taj absorb the implications of his admission. "Yes, Inajh d'anah," he said quietly, reaching up to smooth his thumb over her soft, suddenly parted lips. "I love you. I love you as the man I am now."

She made a strangled noise. Her entire body trembled, and she squeezed her eyes shut. He wasn't quite sure what it meant, but it wasn't the reaction he'd hoped for.

A wave of insecurity settled over him, self-doubt. What if she doesn't want me? What if my feelings for her are forever one-sided?But he refused to listen to those doubts. He would win her over, no matter how long it took.

"No. Don't. You can't love." She sneered the word as if it were a curse. "There's no point. The probability of loss is too high."

"We're not mixing explosives, Taj. We're talking about our future."

"Exactly. You have to control your destiny, or it will control you. That's the way I want to live my life."

"By not living it?" he demanded. "I've been there, Taj. You don't want to go down that path, believe me. I won't let you."

She took several deep gulps of air. Then the rage he'd seen building in her finally exploded. "No!" She thumped her fists onto his chest, pushing at him.

The force of her fury nearly knocked him over. He grabbed her arms as much to steady himself as to keep her close. She fought him, her long hair whipping around her shoulders.

He could smell her overheated skin, the fragrances they'd used in the spring, and the womanly scent that was hers alone. "I'm going to live," he said gruffly. "And I'm coming back for you."

"And what then? Even if you survive, even if you win your precious war, there will be years and years of turmoil afterward, especially for you—you, with your radical ideas about eliminating the monarchy, making a new form of government!" Her mouth twisted. "Your Vash Nadah. It might take years, and sooner or later poison will find its way into your drink, or a bullet will strike you in the back. Sooner or later someone is going to kill you, Romjha B'kah."

Her eyes filled with tears that she didn't seem able to blink away this time. "If I ever decided on a protector, it wouldn't be someone like you," she whispered. "You're destined to die in a blaze of glory. Your life is going to be as fleeting and brilliant as an oil-soaked rag thrown into the fire. I prefer a slower burn in a man. When death leers at you from every shadow, you look for someone dependable to hold the torch that lights your way. You, Romjha B'kah, want to wave it. You remind me too acutely of my own mortality."

Her chin lifted and she looked strong, but in that moment all she'd denied was revealed to him. He gave immediate thanks to the Great Mother, something he hadn't done in many years.

Taj loved him. And she feared that love with everything she was. Scrappy Taj Sai. Fear drove her denial now, just as guilt had driven him. She detested being afraid, and to beat it, she'd taken control of her life. Taken control of everything. No wonder she was loath to let him in. She couldn't control him. The realization hit him head-on.

He'd been a fool, battling for her heart from the wrong vantage point, and with the wrong weapons. Armed with his new knowledge, he launched himself into the final battle with his infuriated lover. This time he would claim what was his, once and for all.

Chapter Eleven

Romjha released her. Taj stumbled backward, made fists of her hands and pressed them to her burning stomach.

He watched her, his long, powerfully muscled legs set apart in a wide stance, his handsome face utterly determined, his eyes unconquerable. But she could see the real man he kept hidden behind the warrior facade. Her heart fluttered. She knew what lay beneath.

And she was in love with both men.

Taj sucked in a breath as the knowledge exploded within her. Blast it all to hell! She was in love with Romjha B'kah.

She'd fought it for so long, confining her feelings to such benign terms as "admiration" and "respect" and "affection."

Her pulse pounded; her hands shook. Fury sizzled out of every pore. She'd been in a bad mood for most of her adult life. But never had it been like this. Never had there been so much at stake.

Romjha's eyes were burnished gold, penetrating.

She scowled. "What in blazes are you looking at?"

He dipped his chin. "You."

Her frown deepened as his mouth curved inscrutably. "You use anger to defeat your fear," he said.

She felt her heart jerk in her chest. Crat. He knew. He knew she was scared. She took a swing at his face.

He caught her fist.

Snarling, she yanked her hand back. Her voice was low and deadly. "Get out of my head, Commander." She turned away, muttering, "Trust me, it's a place you don't want to be."

"What makes you so sure?" he asked.

Her throat tightened. She could barely speak. "Because most times I don't want to be there myself."

He grabbed her by the biceps, dragged her close. "I don't think you understand. I want you, Taj. Inside and out. Everything." He spun her around and his mouth came down over hers.

She groaned and gave in to a new and uncontrollable hunger. The exhaustion of the past few days, the tension, the revelations—everything proved too much. The walls she'd erected to protect herself crumbled.

Romjha's arms closed hard around her, and she came apart. The terror and helplessness she so hated gushed out of the place where she'd long-ago stored it. She pulled her mouth away, buried her face against his chest and wept.

Distantly, she felt Rornjha crushing her in his arms. She clung to him as the full force of her fear tore at her, trying to drag her back into the dark abyss in which she'd wallowed after her father died. But she wouldn't do it. She wouldn't let it take her.

"I love you," she blurted out. Saying the words was almost an act of defiance, her last stand against the fear that threatened to render her helpless. "And it scares me to death," she whispered hoarsely.

Romjha framed her face in his hands. The dim light seemed overly bright. It took a few moments to see clearly, so long had it been since she'd wept. But when she could, she saw love shining in Romjha's incredible eyes. And something else. Something she could not believe. The one thing she'd so hated in herself.

Fear. The great warrior felt fear, too.

"You're afraid," she whispered incredulously.

"You didn't know?"

She thought of all the times he'd stepped in, trying to keep her from harm. She'd seen it as chivalry and later devotion. But a good deal of it had been fear. He, too, was afraid of what the world would take from him.

"All the raiders I've known have felt fear at one time or another." He paused to watch her carefully. "Even Joren."

Even my father.

"You are no coward, Taj Sai." He shook his head. "I'd rather not count all the times I've sought to protect you when you've put others ahead of yourself."

"I'd rather not count the times, either."

Romjha said nothing more. He regarded her, his gaze brilliant gold, intense, his facial muscles taut as he waited . . . waited for her to understand. To see.

The air fairly vibrated, charged and expectant. Taj swallowed hard and closed her eyes, turning her thoughts inward as she so often did when praying. Only this time she looked inside herself for inspiration. For strength. And saw a warrior. A fighter with vulnerabilities, with fears. But. . .

"Courage is the resistance to fear," she whispered. "The control of fear." The realization exploded within her, and her eyes flew open. "It's not letting the fear rule you."

"Yes." Romjha's gaze burned into hers. If he could acknowledge his fear, as did others she admired, even her beloved raider father, then by the heavens she could, too. Without anger.

She'd long believed that courage was the absence of fear. But she'd been wrong. Knowing that made the terror she felt now more manageable. If only she'd tried talking through her secret shame with any of the men. It would have saved her a lot of suffering and self-doubt. But that hadn't been in her nature.

Perhaps her guarded ways were why her relationship with Aleq hadn't worked out. He'd loved blowing things up as passionately as she set herself to making bombs. His mischievous eyes and cocky grin could infuriate her as well as make her laugh. But she'd kept her soul hidden from him, and Aleq hadn't bothered to seek it out. She wasn't sure what made Romjha so able to draw her out, but thank the heavens for it. Having someone so intent on dismantling her defenses was a new and exhilarating experience.

Slowly, wanly, she smiled at Romjha. It had taken the determination of this amazing man to accomplish what she hadn't been able to do alone. "I'm so blasted stubborn," she said. "So proud."

"It was your pride that first attracted me to you. And your passion. Not to mention your unpredictability." Romjha's smile touched her heart. "I knew then as I know now—a life with you will never be dull."

A genuine laugh escaped her. "Nor will one with you, my dear commander."

She held out her hands. Arms outstretched, he met her halfway, taking her fingers in his strong, callused grip. He lifted her hands to his mouth, pressed his lips to her knuckles. Heat streamed up her arms and made her shiver. Tears pressed behind her eyes, and yet she smiled. On the day of his departure, she felt both more miserable and yet more alive than she ever had. It made no sense. But what did anymore?

In silence, she walked with him to the door, and into the dark and quiet tunnel outside the sanctuary of her room. Her stomach churned; her mouth was dry. She wanted to rail at Romjha not to go, to grab at his clothing and beg him to stay—to stay safe, to hide, to try to eke out whatever pleasures they could in the dark manner in which they had lived before the Vedla prince had fallen from the skies.

Romjha squeezed her hand, as if he sensed her thoughts. Taj's vision hazed over. Somehow she held back a second onset of tears. It came with practice. She'd had lots of that.

She would let him go; he had great things to accomplish, her protector. Her father, she thought, would be so proud of the man he'd treated as a son. As was she. And when Romjha returned home, completing the promise he'd made—to their people, to her—she would be there, waiting for him.

They kissed, slow and long. When they finally moved apart, he clasped her hand in his. Fingers twined, they made their way through the maze of tunnels to where she would watch him embark on his trip to the stars.

Epilogue

Romjha B'kah stood before the visiting members of the embryonic and still-struggling Galactic Council. While technology again allowed communication without having to meet in person, he preferred such interaction when lobbying his life's work to the people tasked with implementing it.

If nothing else, the travels of the men and women of the council to Sienna and the other seven homeworlds of the men who had fought for and won the peace would prove to a galactic population of trillions that the space lanes were safe to traverse once again.

Or so Romjha prayed. Five standard years after he'd first left Sienna, and now five more since the last of the warlords had been defeated, the galaxy could still be a dangerous place. But it was improving. And it would be even more so with the hoped-for passage of the Treatise of Trade, an enormous document encompassing a framework for economy and commerce, as well as a stringent moral code for all. Throughout were sprinkled Taj's so-called proverbs as well.

As he thought of them, a corner of his mouth quirked up with affection. They had written it together, practically, with what they'd learned from being together: "The family is holy; sexuality enhances spirituality, and is to be celebrated, for sacred is the joy found in pleasing, consensual relations between a man and a woman." His wife had as much of a hand in the document's creation as Jal, Cheya, Aleq, and the rest. If they, the eight warriors, formed the body of this new Federation, Taj was its conscience.

Taj. . . Warmth filled him. He ached to end his speech and return to her. She didn't care for politics, never had, and stubbornly left it to him. Pregnant with their second child, another beautiful daughter, she waited for him now, protected and safe in the gardens of their sprawling home under construction in the desert highlands of Sienna. At the rate they were adding on to accommodate the constant influx of guests, it would someday be a palace! Kings, he and the other warriors were often likened to—a term Romjha disliked, but if anyone deserved to be a queen, it was Taj Sai B'kah.

He inhaled deeply and faced his audience. "The Treatise of Trade is unlike anything the civilized galaxy has seen. It will help stabilize the new federation, allowing it to mature. A worthy foundation for our society, it will someday, I hope, be an integral part of our culture, and our faith."

Quietly he concluded, "It is difficult to imagine a war so terrible, comprised of acts so heinous, that its psychological aftermath impelled warriors bred for battle to lay down their weapons. But we have seen that. And we have seen something better—the possibility of peace for all time. It is my goal, and that of the other warriors, to incorporate this intent, codify it in the proposed Treatise of Trade, so that we will never forget." He paused, took a breath. "I humbly ask the Council to see the importance of approving this holiest of documents."

All were silent at first. Then one man stood and went down on one knee. "You are Romjha, our light in the dark. Blessed be the Eight!"

Others followed, and bowed their heads. The silence was eerie. Applause he had expected; not this. But as he began walking amongst the kneeling council members, coaxing them to their feet, he saw tears in the eyes of many, and understood their passion, their appreciation. It had been a long and agonizing road for many, this path to peace that now seemed to be coming to an end in a good place, a safer one.

His shoulders heavy with the weight of a newly born civilization, Romjha left the council chamber behind, but the responsibility he bore lightened with each stride that carried him closer to the gardens where his family awaited. Soon he'd be transformed back into the man he was at heart—a private man with simple needs; a protector, a loving mate and doting father. He was no king there, in private with his family.

A high-pitched squeal indicated his daughter had sighted him in the shaded garden. As the child ran forward, Taj also stood, the flowing hem of her over-blouse undulating in the highland's unceasing breeze. Her smile told him everything. Nothing would ever break the bonds they'd forged through war and hardship, made perfect at last by tenderness and trust. Back in the council chamber was everything he'd dreamed of, but here in this garden of resilient desert plants was everything he ever wanted.

Romjha B'kah no longer waited for the future. No, indeed. He had achieved it.