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  This waiting was killing her. Whatever destiny she faced on that pirate ship, whoever this Azar Xenelion turned out to be in real life, it was going to be a hell of a lot better than dealing with her own imagination out here in space. Any Guardian would tell you, battle came as a relief after a long flight in the deep black reaches. Out there the ghosts got real. Especially when you fly solo.

  Voices, not necessarily good ones, can drown out a person’s rational thoughts. Questions floating past your front grill, again and again, the answers never satisfying. Would she really be able to finesse this just right? A Guardian, a trained warrior pretending to be a damsel in distress? Being that she was the first female in the Service, it wasn’t as though Theryssa’s colleagues or even her superiors could offer much practical assistance.

  Her father had given her a long speech, recounting his role in the defeat of the Narthian Bug Nest on Tubos Minor and told her to remember the Guardian Code. That was all well and good, except her father did not have female hormones. He had no clue what it was like to fight that kind of primal urge. It was different being a woman, when you had the kind of biology that made you want to have the enemy inside you, making love to you, showing you what your body could do under the influence of a finely wielded cock. Part of her wanted to attack, but another part just wanted to get close enough to surrender, so she could feel what it was like to be the pirate’s prisoner. Or even worse, his toy.

  Oh, to be played with by the likes of Azar Xenelion.

  Theryssa wasn’t the only woman to feel it. Her mother had taken one look at the holo of Azar and turned stonily silent.

  “What now, woman?” Theron had demanded of his wife. She had sighed at her husband’s naïveté and left the room. Nyssa knew full well what her daughter was dealing with, and Theryssa was sure she didn’t envy her. But she had asked for this, hadn’t she? And she was about to get it in spades.

  As if it hadn’t been bad enough so far. Five days in deep space, resisting every urge to masturbate, trying to stay cold and hard and professional. All the while rehearsing her role as the proverbial fluffy female, easy pickings for sexual predation.

  She checked the clock again. Another minute had ticked off. Wonderful.

  Hurry up, damn you, Azar. Get here and enslave me, already.

  * * * * *

  Azar studied the small cruiser through the starscope of his pirate ship, his eye pressed to the lens. The cruiser at the other end continued its slow, aimless drift in space. Thus had it been for the last half hour, seemingly alone, and crippled. The damage to the engines was evident and quite severe. It looked to have taken a random meteor hit. A one in a million chance, but not entirely impossible out here in the space lanes between Earth and Beta Prime. The Navigation and communication lines looked torn up, too. Presumably, the courier ship was unable to call for help.

  A sitting duck. Likely laden with some sort of treasure. Ancient gold artifacts, perhaps, or antique artwork. Maybe even a first edition of a real book, with paper and ink.

  What a lucky day to be a pirate. How entirely fortunate.

  A little too fortunate, as far as Azar was concerned. Opting for caution, he held their observational position at a safe distance, the pirate ship’s invisibility shields still engaged.

  “Captain, what are we waiting for?” demanded Oleron, his bearded, increasingly insubordinate second-in-command. “There is prey right in front of us. Why do we not seize it?”

  This was Oleron’s problem—he had allowed his own short-sighted egoism to blind him to all other considerations. In order to score quick points by appearing bolder than his superior, he was surrendering the true judgment needed to lead. “If it is prey, Oleron, then it will wait…while we ascertain fully the nature of the situation.”

  “What is to understand? I see booty—all the men do. Too long have we waited, and too often turned away when we could have fattened ourselves and lined our coffers.”

  There were others on the bridge, listening, watching.

  “A fat predator does not make for an effective predator, Oleron. You must think of the long term.”

  “A pirate has no fear, Captain.”

  Azar turned from the scope to confront his accuser. “Nor does a fool, Oleron. Are you sure you can gauge the difference? Besides, we are not blind killers. We have objectives. We are at war, or have you forgotten?”

  Oleron scowled, his eyes darting back and forth. The others were grinning, chuckling. Knowing himself beaten, for the moment, he backed down. “I know nothing, sir but what I am ordered to do.”

  There was no missing the sarcasm, the intended challenge to his rule…and the cause, which was to defeat the Galactic Council and its cruel program of genetic mating. A program which had cost the life of the only woman he’d ever loved.

  “In that case, you will de-cloak the ship and apply the magnobeams,” he commanded, dropping the matter for the present. “Bring the cruiser into the lower bay. I will await its arrival there.”

  “Sir,” Oleron saluted, the tiniest bit of grudge showing through.

  Azar gave him a month, maybe less until he tried a mutiny. He had seen any number of men like this over the years, spineless and greedy. It ought to be child’s play to defeat him, and yet as Azar rode down in the elevator he felt, for the first time in his life, an overwhelming fatigue, bordering on exhaustion.

  He’d been at this so many years now, having single-handedly organized the galaxy’s worst outcasts into a fighting force capable of matching even the Guardians and using it with ruthless efficiency time and again.

  In exchange for their loyalty he gave the men plunder, and a cause. They were standing for free and natural humanity, for the right to mate with the person of one’s choice, and to have babies in the natural way. Imperfect, unpredictable babies who could marry as they wished.

  Not genetic slaves whose lives were fixed from before they were old enough to speak.

  Few of his pirate crew cared for politics, it was true, but they were better men for believing in something larger than themselves.

  As for the secret he was forced to keep about his own nature—that he was not in reality a natural-born rogue like them, but a product of the Council’s elite technology—this had caused him to lose many a night’s sleep and had aged him prematurely.

  But he had no choice. If the men knew they would run from him in terror.

  Or was he only justifying himself, manipulating those around him to maintain his own private vendetta against the Council?

  Could it be time to come clean?

  He had been wondering about this almost nonstop since receiving a secret communiqué from the Guardian High Command two days ago. It was an urgent request for a meeting, to discuss peace.

  This alone would have brought only his contempt, but there was with it a personal transmission, from General Theron himself.

  A handwritten letter of apology.

  This would have meaning to no other living person except himself. It concerned an event of long ago…the event. And he was not as yet decided as to how to respond.

  In the meantime, there was the cruiser.

  Why exactly had Azar agreed to take it onboard, anyway? Something was wrong with the situation, his gut told him that. Anything that came too easily always was. There were no Guardian ships in range, so he had decided to take the chance. Still, he sensed no good would come of this.

  As a precaution, he ordered extra men with heavy lasers, to the bay. If anything untoward was in that cruiser, it would be vaporized to the next universe. He took up position at the front of the storming party.

  Azar waited until the crippled ship was fully inside and resting on the deck, the bay door closed behind it. Raising his hand, he gave the count. On three they moved in fast and hard, surrounding the ship and blasting the outer hatch. They had the pilot down on the ground before he or they could draw another breath.

  “Don’t shoot, oh, please,” came the high-pitched voice belonging to the sm
all body—far too curvaceous to belong to a man. “I beg you, please don’t kill me!”

  Azar felt the blood drain from his face. Correction. They had the pilot down before she could draw another breath.

  By the Holy Raiders of the Arc Nebula, the pilot was female. No wonder his gut had been ringing the alarm bells. The last thing he needed with a possible mutiny on his hands was a woman for the men to fight over.

  “Captain,” cried Koros, a toothless, crusty veteran of a hundred campaigns. “We got ourselves a wench.”

  “Let’s strip her down,” said the stalwart Robo-Leg Jim, his cock suddenly as stiff under his breeches as his artificial limb. “And give it to her good.”

  By the gods, his crew was degenerating badly. His leadership must surely be lacking of late.

  “No,” Azar boomed. “We’ll have none of that. Have you men forgotten what we stand for? This is no willing space prostitute here. Since when do we abuse females?”

  “Perhaps, Captain,” said Oleron. “If you allowed them to enjoy female companionship as you do, they would not be so…impatient.”

  Azar turned on him. “Do you presume to question me?”

  “No, sir.” He bowed, avoiding a fight.

  Azar regarded him, even as his mind tried to recollect recent history. Oleron had a point, mean-spirited as he was. Azar had been neglecting his men’s needs in favor of his own. He’d been trying to keep them focused on work, even as he sought women for himself to maintain his flagging spirits. He would have to address this.

  “Are you the Captain, sir?” The young woman addressed Azar. She had risen to her knees. She wore a tight uniform, with a zipper down the front, the emblem of her company incised just above her left breast. She was about five foot five, with long black hair and piercing eyes.

  For a moment, Azar could not speak. She was that beautiful, that breathtaking.

  Hands down, in fact, she was the loveliest creature he had ever laid his weary, jaded eyes upon. “I am Azar Xenelion,” he confirmed. “Captain of this ship. By the laws of interstellar piracy, I declare your vehicle and all its contents to be forfeit.”

  The lovely, raven-haired angel shook her hair over her left shoulder and crossed her arms over her breasts, the very picture of feminine helplessness, and yet at the same time possessing of a playful, even bold nature. Such a strange contradiction.

  She made him feel energized.

  “Sir, I appeal to you…do not let these men take my clothes…or my…my honor. If I must be used, let it be by you alone.”

  The blood surged to his cock, as if on cue. What man in his right mind could refuse such an offer? A captured angel, offering herself for the price of protection. Conveniently on her knees, eyes seductively moist. How simple to ball that luxurious mane of hair in his fist, to put her immediately to his pleasure, making her swallow his throbbing, erect cock inch by inch while his men watched, licking their own lips, hoping against hope for their own turn with the beauty.

  Oh, to be an ordinary pirate, with no code or ethics.

  What fun he would have.

  On second thought, such a woman could not be shared, even visually. It would dishonor her high nature. Besides, she would probably find a way to fight back, making him sorry he’d ever tried to shame her.

  He suppressed a smile. Again, she was making him feel light on his feet. How long had it been since he’d stood in one place and breathed deeply, happy to be alive?

  How many starry nights had he gazed upon, how many fallen comrades, how many bottles of rum in a hundred space variations, how many soft lips, whispering his name in awe, master and captain in more languages than he could count.

  But none of those planets were Earth, and none of those women were truly his.

  Not like Solania.

  Azar pursed his lips as that feeling came rushing back. The one he’d had watching the ship out there a little while ago, drifting, and dangling. Like shark bait.

  This was all too perfect…too easy.

  “Search the cruiser,” he ordered Robo-Leg Jim, circumventing Oleron for the moment. “And have the wench brought to my quarters.”

  “Yes, sir,” said the obviously disappointed Jim.

  It was on his way out that Azar heard the whispering. He had his needle sword to the man’s throat in the span of a heartbeat. “Would you care to repeat that in a volume more suitable for a man than an old woman?”

  Oleron’s forehead beaded with sweat. “It was nothing, sir.”

  Azar knocked the man swiftly off his feet.

  The stunned Oleron clutched at his stomach. “What was that for, Captain?”

  “That,” said Azar. “Was my own version of nothing. Next time it will be far worse.”

  Azar’s heart thudded in his chest as he left the bay. He had made a mistake allowing Oleron to live. Mercy, given to the wrong people, inevitably came back to haunt one. Sometimes fatally. For some reason, though, he could not kill the man in the woman’s presence. It wasn’t that he thought she couldn’t handle it—he was sure she could. Under her damsel exterior, she was feisty as his beloved, lost Solania had been. Maybe more so.

  More than ever he felt an overwhelming drive to be with the dark-haired woman captive, to speak with her, to learn her name. She represented danger of a very different kind, one that at the moment he far preferred. To die at the hands of an Oleron, or in the face of nameless Guardian laser guns was tragic at best, but to die in the arms of a green-eyed angel, with an oval face like a goddess, a noble brow and the body of a virgin sea nymph, that would render an existence like his meaningful, as miserable as it might have been heretofore.

  Besides, there was a mystery to be solved. And Azar loved puzzles. The beautiful young woman had a story, an identity, and depending on what his men found on that ship, it was quite possible that her true identity would end up having as little to do with interstellar package delivery as Oleron had to do with being a real man.

  The trick now was to make them sweat a little. The woman, Oleron, all of them. Let him be the one with the answers, keeping them all off balance. To that end, he made himself briefly incognito, taking a detour into the ship’s kitchen.

  “Rum,” he told the robo-chef on duty. “Natural, not synth.”

  The machine floated by anti-grav to a metal cupboard to fetch the bottle.

  “Skip the glass.” Azar put out his hand. Experts had studies from here to the next system that it was impossible to taste the difference. But experts couldn’t quantify the really important things in life. Like loyalty and trust. And desire for a woman.

  “To life,” he toasted the machine.

  The rum went down like fire and molasses, like sweet memories, mixed with an unknown future. He took another drink. Images conjured, waking dreams, from the tips of his toes upward, through the heart, to the head where they could be interpreted. He was seeing the woman in the bright yellow flight suit with the green trim and the logo over her breast, the slick, glossy material hugging her every curve, the shiny metal of the zipper inviting a downward tug, inevitable and complete.

  Did female space pilots wear underwear? Something practical, made of clingy, see through absorbex, or would she be more daring, perhaps even donning some wispy, silky things, wickedly old-fashioned, a bra and pair of panties, black or red, barely covering her full breasts and sweet ass?

  As captain he had the right to see her underwear and any other part of her. Including her naked body. And it hardly ended there. He could see that body writhing underneath him, her legs splayed open as he pumped her warm, slippery pussy full with rock-hard cock. He could also see how she looked with stripes, the red marks of the crop or cane lining her soft flesh, inviting his touch, his conquest. Or perchance in bondage, hands behind her back, drawing emphasis to her outthrust breasts. Ankles, chained apart, too wide to cover her desire, the dripping moistness, the swell of labia, the glimpses of still pinker flesh, begging further examination. That look in her eyes as she realized what he already
knew, that everything would be done to her according to his will, male to female. Just as every man desires, looking at every beautiful woman, to take and chain and own her.

  Galaxy Shipping Pilot W45-76, according to her uniform. How much more he would learn reading her nude. Absorbing and studying, playing and teasing, holding him hostage to sex, hour after hour, taking such unfair advantage of her gender, reducing her to naught but a silent whimper, to yearning, reaching flesh, which will do anything, take anything, if only to be granted the smallest of male attentions.

  Such a lovely little jewel this one would be to dangle from his chain. It was not about the number of women, or even the act of conquest itself, so much as it was the thrill of unfolding the nature of each new flower. At the moment he was loving a female, there could be none before or after her. She was center of the universe. And he was its challenger, its explorer.

  The ultimate pirate.

  Azar knew of the stories of his prowess that circulated. His exploits with the fair gender. They had become a bit exaggerated, as were the other tales—those of his exploits against his enemies.

  If it was a matter of mere flattery, Azar wouldn’t be concerned. Unfortunately, his image had been converted by Earth media into that of a mere self-serving plunderer and not a freedom fighter.

  More than anything lately, he felt like a dinosaur, fighting for a forgotten cause, feeling a thousand years old and completely misunderstood.

  Would this young, voluptuous new female be the one to give him back his youth? Not if he played her game. The easy surrender she offered in the bay was false. A trap more than likely. But set to what end? This was no mere damsel throwing over her virtue. She had spoken her lines a little too boldly, moved with a little too much assurance. Not quite, but almost to the point of mocking.

  The one thing he did not smell on her fine, exciting little person was fear. A star courier, especially female, ought to have been terrified half to death. This one had a kind of deadly calm. An anticipation almost to the point of eagerness.

  There was only one sort of human being who reacted in such a way, and they were neither star couriers nor female.