Oath Forger (Book 4) Page 10

  That was the Emperor’s standard procedure. Take a territory, kill the ruler, make the queen his concubine, or, if there was no queen, take one of the princesses—or all of them. Father some children. That usually settled the local population. The conquered didn’t mind being part of the empire so much, if their noble bloodlines were represented among the Emperor’s heirs.

  The Emperor was an absentee landlord, for the most part. He’d enjoy the spoils of his conquest for a month or so, then leave again. The people of the planet could almost pretend that things were like before conquest. Except for the satrap left behind to govern them, and the bloodletting of the Emperor’s enormous taxes.

  Lukar tried to picture it. Stranded on-planet. Indefinitely grounded. Politics. And the rest...

  “I can’t fuck a fucking queen.”

  He might be one of the Emperor’s warlords, but deep down, he was nothing but a dirty gutter kid, a mine rat.

  “Trust me, friend. She’s got a pussy, you can fuck her. Has it been so long that you need me to draw you a diagram? There’s a hole. It’s right between the legs. If you—”

  “You’re a regular help and comfort to me. Dickhead.”

  “I’m your captain.” Selep flashed a self-satisfied grin. “I get paid to solve your problems.”

  Lukar cursed at him. Then he fell silent for a few seconds before adding, “We’ll land with two other fighters outside the city gates.” The two extra fighters in addition to his ship would provide a force of roughly sixty men. “The rest of the fleet will stay in orbit. I’ll assess the situation on the ground before I make any further decisions.”

  “A dozen fighters would be better.”

  “We’ve annihilated their army. I don’t think we need any further demonstration of power.”

  Gaining the local population’s goodwill might be more useful in the long term. Not that Lukar knew fuck shit about long-term governance.

  He tuned out Selep as the captain issued the necessary commands to the fleet, then notified the surface of the imminent landing. Instead of watching his men initiating the landing sequence, Lukar closed his eyes again. If he went to his bed, the walk would wake him up. But right now, right here, sleep was just a blink away. A catnap in his commander’s chair would be enough.

  By the time he woke, his ship was sitting on the planet’s surface right outside the city gates, the city-state of Tembria up on the display screen.

  Selep saw him awake, and said, “Nice of the inhabitants to name both the planet and its single city the same. Easier to remember.”

  Lukar cleared the sleep from his throat. “Their practicality is to be applauded. Let’s hope they’ll take to a new ruler with the same pragmatism.”

  Selep returned his attention to the screen. “You know, we could have landed at either of the two spaceship ports within the city limits. Refueling and restocking would be much easier there.”

  Lukar rubbed his eyes. “Why give some fool who fancies himself a freedom fighter a chance to do something stupid? A lone-wolf attack would still have to be responded to, and retribution would start the power transfer on the wrong foot.”

  He assessed the sight before him. The entire city was built from the red rock of the planet in some ancient style, but exaggerated beyond all comprehension. A thousand-square-mile fortress, as elaborate as the royal architects had been able to conceive.

  “I think King Laz had serious delusions of grandeur.”

  “Maybe the place will grow on you.” Selep’s tone said he expected nothing like that.

  “Like space mold?”

  Selep snorted as he went through the system shutdown. Their friendship went back to their misguided youth when they’d been working in various mines instead of conquering entire mining planets. They understood each other.

  “You don’t believe in space mold.”

  “Because it’s a myth. No med test ever found it.”

  “It’s invisible.”

  Lukar shook his head. Space mold was an old superstition. Sometimes grizzled old fighters who went from one battle to the next, never touching down on any planet, but staying in space decade after decade, developed a mysterious illness that couldn’t be diagnosed. Many went raving mad. Some blamed it on ‘space mold.’ Right. Whatever.

  Selep finished the shutdown then glanced at the screen again. The enormous titanium city gates stood open before them. “At least the citizens of Tembria know when they are beaten.”

  “There is that.” Lukar rubbed a hand over his face to brush away the cobwebs of sleep. “Could be worse. We could be facing a closed gate and ground troops.”

  He was relieved that Tembria chose the easy way at long last. And yet... “We should be at a waystation by now.”

  “You do know that the Emperor didn’t mean this appointment as a punishment?” Selep raised an eyebrow. “It’s supposed to be a reward. You could try to enjoy it. Most people would prefer being pampered in a palace to being shot at in space.”

  Lukar snorted. “What’s wrong with those assholes? Must be damn cowards, the lot of them.”

  Selep shook his head. “You did too good of a job. The Emperor had to reward you. You took out the enemy fleet without destroying the city, which makes the Emperor happy. The cerium mining can go on unimpeded.”

  “So, next time, destroy the city too?”

  “No city, nothing to govern,” Selep said in a sage tone, tapping his index finger to his temple.

  Lukar rolled his eyes at the captain, then turned his attention to the display screen again. Some mining planets had nothing but machines, but others, like Tembria, had frequent and large sun flares, which regularly knocked the machines off line. In places like this, miners were a necessity.

  Because a large number of miners were present, others had to come to manage and supply the miners. They formed a middle class. Then that middle class needed more goods and services. They hired security to keep them safe, bureaucrats to keep track of the planet’s affairs, and an entire class of personal servants.

  Eventually, a handful of the richest men of Tembria had decided they were now nobility and elected a king from among them, some three hundred years back.

  Lukar kept his eyes on the screen. Some kind of reception committee milled around the ceremonial city gate—a dozen or so men and women dressed in long blue robes. Beyond them stretched a jumble of streets, crowded with houses that held the planet’s five million inhabitants.

  He caught as Selep’s gaze switched to the screen, too, and immediately snagged on a tall blonde who looked to be the youngest among the delegation, only a few years older than Selep, as opposed to the rest who looked to be grandmothers and grandfathers.

  The captain looked smitten on the spot. “Are you going to talk to them?”

  “I hate grandstanding and ceremony. If I wanted that, I would have become a politician. We’re going straight to the palace. Get the unpleasantries over with.”

  Lukar shoved to his feet and headed to the transport pod, his twenty-man crew behind him. “We’ll go low over the city. I want to get a better sense for what we have here.”

  He ended up flying the pod, which made him miss his fighter pilot years. These days, he spent most of his time coming up with strategy and issuing commands, managing the sizable fleet under his command: one-thousand airships, nearly fifty thousand of the best soldiers the Emperor had. The Emperor had other warlords. The man never met a planet he didn’t want to invade. Still, he was better than the space pirates who would strip-mine a planet and either kill or sell the inhabitants.

  Lukar watched the city pass below him, all that red rock coaxed into pretentious shapes that tried to look soaring to make up for the fact that they were stuck to dirt instead of flying in space. And yet for all the architectural bravado, everything looked heavy. Tembria was just as strange from close up as from far away. The apparent obsession with rock made little sense; there were more modern materials available.

  The miners’ sector was even
worse. Here the homes were little more than corrugated steel.

  Selep noticed too. “Looks like their king didn’t want to spend much on the miners.”

  “He did have a good fleet.”

  Selep flashed a cocky-as-shit grin. “Shame it’s now just a debris field.” Then he added, “Which needs cleaning up.”

  “Not today.”

  Lukar rolled his shoulders to try to ease the aches of his body. His ship had taken a number of heavy hits; the crew had gotten banged up. They were battered, bruised, and tired. The last battle had been drawn out, non-stop fighting for over a week. None of them had had enough sleep. He wanted nothing more than his small, familiar sleeping quarters on the ship.

  Yet tonight, he would have to sleep in a strange bed, and fuck the dead king’s queen. He cursed the Emperor under his breath.

  He landed his transport pod in one of the larger palace courtyards to give himself and his men room to maneuver should they be attacked. His instincts didn’t signal danger, but that didn’t mean he would let down his guard.

  He watched the screen.

  If he’d been in a better mood, he would have laughed at the stir the landing caused, people running from every palace doorway. He exchanged a semi-amused glance with Selep before stepping out of the transport pod. “Let’s get this circus over with.”

  Courtiers were knee-deep on the ground, reminding him how much he hated cities and grounded life in general. He stopped on the top step to survey them. No weapons in sight. Even the palace guard stood disarmed in their flashy silver uniforms—they clearly wanted to offer no provocation. Maybe the people of Tembria weren’t a stupid people. That bode well for Lukar. And also for the continued health of the Tembrian citizenry.

  He started down the metal grate stairs, but a flurry of movement at the double doors straight ahead caught his eye, and he stopped again.

  Behind him, Selep let loose a low, appreciative whistle and said in an even lower voice, “That’s some queen. Holy fuck. If you’d rather sleep tonight, I’ll volunteer to sacrifice myself for the greater good.”

  The queen was tall and regal, in a low-cut gown that left little to the imagination, the design emphasizing her sheer feminine perfection. Her golden hair was piled on top of her head in an artful crown studded with jewels. Half the treasure of the kingdom seemed to be sewn onto her dress in precious gems—technically, all Lukar’s now. And so was she. Her slow, coy smile certainly sent that message.

  “Lucky fucking bastard,” Selep muttered. “I hate being captain. I want to be warlord next.”

  The gaggle of ladies-in-waiting surrounding the queen wore voluminous silk dresses in every color of the rainbow, clothes that would have been impractical in the tight quarters of a spaceship. What material they wasted on the billowing skirts, they saved on skimpy bodices. The same was very much true for the queen. Her royal nipples were one move away from popping free. A couple of Lukar’s crew members groaned with appreciation. Lukar figured there probably wasn’t a soft cock behind him. He drummed down the stairs.

  The queen, too, began moving again—gliding was a better word—along with her ladies-in-waiting, all high-born, aristocratic beauties. Lukar was used to camp women at the various waystations throughout the galaxy. They were a quick fuck and mostly interchangeable. Every once in a while, on longer military campaigns, he’d take a couple on his ship. At those times, the women would serve the rest of the single men on the ship as well, and usually returned home with bank accounts full of credits.

  His own mother had been a camp woman. He’d been born at a waystation. He had never known his father, a nameless soldier. When his mother had died, Lukar had been too young for the military, so he’d been sent to the mines on Purip. He had no experience with the average citizenry, especially with the kind of women who became wives.

  As far as noblewomen went, he’d only seen them from a distance. By the time things progressed this far, the Emperor usually took over. For all that Lukar could relate to them, the women before him might as well be an alien species.

  He stopped about a dozen feet from them. Taking her cue from him, the queen did the same. Then the queen, the ladies-in-waiting, and the courtiers all bowed their heads, except one lady right behind the queen, but Lukar only caught a brief glimpse of her, just the top of her dark hair. Maybe she thought nobody would see her back there.

  He didn’t know shit for protocol, had no idea what he was supposed to do. All he knew was he bowed to no one, so he kept to that.

  A fat little man scurried forward, pushing through the courtiers, wearing an elaborate green robe shot-through with gold thread. He bowed deeper than all the rest, his forehead beading with sweat.

  “Greetings, Warlord. I’m Councilor Brun, at your service, as we all are. Forgive us for the hasty reception. The reception committee is at the Ceremonial Gate. They’re hurrying back.”

  Lukar said nothing, his gaze still on the queen, on generous lips that curved into a knowing womanly smile, issuing a clear invitation. A grieving widow she was not. She had considered the roles available to play and picked the one most likely to succeed. Lukar appreciated her acumen for strategy.

  Councilor Brun scraped and bowed again. “Please allow me to introduce Queen Belandra of Tembria.” He swallowed painfully, as if his throat was dry. “And the Princess Meela.”

  A younger woman stepped forward from behind the queen. The one who hadn’t bowed.

  Lukar tried to draw a breath, but, for a couple of seconds there, his lungs wouldn’t expand. Because now, next to one of the most beautiful women in the galaxy, stood an angel.

  Her white dress was simple, concealing, the neckline high. Her ebony hair was in a braid, lying over her left shoulder, the end caught with a plain blue ribbon, almost the exact color of Lukar’s uniform.

  Her eyes were as black as deep space, as endless, and as mysterious. She met his gaze head-on and didn’t flinch. Neither did she use feminine wile. She looked at him as if she could see through him. As if he was less than the dirt under a miner’s fingernails.

  She was dressed like a noblewoman, but stood like a warrior. Some sixth sense told him he should be grateful she wasn’t armed. He shoved the odd thought aside. While the queen seemed to be cloaked in an invisible force field of seduction, the aura of innocence around the princess was so obvious, Lukar thought he might be able to feel it if she stepped closer and he reached out his hand.

  He tightened his fingers into fists at his sides and remained where he was. Like hell was he going to let anything or anyone affect him this much. He just needed to find his balance. He’d spent his youth underground in the mines, and most of his adult life fighting in space. He was out of his element here. Not for long. He would conquer the task of governing as he had conquered his enemies.

  “We have prepared a feast for you, my lord.” The queen flashed another inviting smile, gesturing toward the door in a way that pushed her breasts out, making it clear to Lukar that more than one thing was being offered to him to feast upon.

  Behind him, Selep cleared his throat.

  Lukar snapped to, suddenly aware that he hasn’t said a word yet. “Let’s go to the feast.”

  His voice sounded rusty. His first step was downright tentative. That had to be the end of that. He hardened his expression, slapped one hand on his weapons belt, and strode forward like the warlord he was.

  The entire Royal Tembrian Fleet hadn’t been able to defeat him. One raven-haired princess wasn’t going to be his undoing, dammit.

  ...

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  Heat rating: Scorching (Contains a variety of explicit adult situations.)

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