Chapter Nine
Blake gasped and struggled to get to Davos when he saw him collapse, victim of a vicious blow on the back of his head by one of the huge Lycans who had come up behind him in the turmoil around them. The man was poised over Davos, ready to bring down his makeshift weapon again to Davos’s head. It was the hilt of a shank that had hit Davos, a long, sharpened piece of metal, the handle wrapped in cloth. For all that it was an improvised weapon they’d somehow made at the prison and managed to smuggle onboard, the thing looked lethal and wickedly sharp. Before he could land the blow, however, Rhaegar jumped on the Lycan, knocking his hand away and taking him to the floor. Derrick finished with his man and leaped over to help and the two of them made short work of the prisoner. Rhaegar turned back to kneel beside Davos and check his pulse.
“He’s still alive but unconscious. We need to get him out of here before this whole place comes down on our heads.”
Blake looked up and saw the entire overhead engulfed in flames and black, roiling smoke.
Rhaegar lifted Davos on one side, helped by Derrick on the other, and they began to make their way to the doors of the holding pen, which remained wide open. As they got to the door, they realized that most of the Tygerian guards were dead or dying, some in apparent mid-shift to their tigers. Their throats had been slashed in probably the same way the Lycans had tried on Davos. Some of the prisoners were still trying to get on a lift, but they’d all been turned off, apparently, and the prisoners were desperately milling in the corridors, panicky and badly frightened. There was no sign of the remaining Lycans.
“I’m beginning to get a really bad feeling about this,” Rhaegar shouted at them. “Those assholes went to the bridge, I’m betting and they’re trying to take over the ship.”
Blake turned to him in shock. “What can we do? We have to get off this deck!”
Before Rhaegar could answer, there was a sickening lurch and the ship began a sharp decline.
Blake grabbed the nearest bulkhead, trying to hold on and felt Derrick give him a supporting hand. “Hold onto me, omak. I don’t want to get separated from you.”
Blake nodded, telling himself sternly that panicking wouldn’t help a thing at this point. He held on tightly to Derrick’s arm as they made their way through the crowd.
“I think they’re trying to land this thing!” Rhaegar yelled. “I don’t know if it’s the crew or the Lycans, but either way, we don’t have much time. Follow me!”
He and Derrick, still supporting the mostly unconscious Davos and followed by Blake and some of Rhaegar’s men, began struggling to get farther down the corridor and away from the inferno behind them. “We need to get to deck where they disembark the cargo,” Rhaegar said. “Not up, but down! If they manage to land, we need to be some of the first ones off this thing in case it explodes!”
They found a ladder on a bulkhead near the port side of the ship and Rhaegar climbed down, holding up his arms to catch Davos as Derrick lowered him down. Blake followed and then Derrick and the rest of Rhaegar’s crew that was left, some eight to ten men. Here on this deck, the smoke wasn’t nearly as bad, and they made their way to a set of big doors about midway down the corridor. Derrick went to the control panel and managed to get the doors open, but the hydraulics weren’t working, so they had to manually push the doors apart enough for them to fit through. Rhaegar led them to a place near the doors along the interior bulkhead and crouched down, motioning for all of them to do the same.
“Everybody get as low to the deck as you can and try to brace yourselves! This is going to be a crash landing. Just pray to your gods that whoever is piloting this thing knows what he’s doing.”
Blake hunched his body over an unconscious Davos, and Derrick tried to cover both their bodies with his own. Blake glanced up as the ship careened toward the ground and saw that his face looked grim.
“I love you,” he called to him and saw him grin.
“Don’t worry, omak. We’re going to make it. I promise!”
He saw him reaching out to touch Rhaegar’s hand, and then they hit the ground so hard Blake was stunned by the impact. The ship’s pilot had to be good, because even though the landing was rough, the ship seemed to be skimming and bouncing across the trees that covered this planet, like a rock skipping across water. Each time they hit one of the treetops and sheared off the foliage, it was bone jarring, and the ship began to twist and shake violently around them. Blake was tossed halfway across the big room and he saw his companions flying around too. The pilot seemed to swerve the ship wildly just there at the last, and Blake could feel the ship straining against its stabilizers and heard the sounds of shearing metal. Then there came a hard impact, though amazingly, the ship didn’t at once break apart. After a few moments of shock at the abrupt landing, Blake struggled to sit up and crawl toward Davos, who was still unconscious. He got his arms around him and saw Rhaegar already on his feet, picking Derrick up off the floor. He had a look of panic on his face.
“We’re in the water!” he cried and staggered over to the panel to open up the doors. Again, they opened only a crack, but enough to let in a sheer torrent of icy water. Rhaegar and his men struggled against the rising flood and heaved against the doors to open them enough so they could escape.
“Can you swim?” he heard Rhaegar shouting at Derrick and then the water rushed over them, sweeping them out through the widened crack in the doors. The water carried Blake out as well, still clinging to Davos. If he drowned here and now on this planet, it wouldn’t be because he couldn’t swim, but because he refused to let go of his husband, and the love of his life. They would literally sink or swim together.
Blake began at first to sink like a stone, still desperately holding onto Davos, but as he kicked his feet, his descent slowed, and he began to inch up gradually toward the surface. He might even have made it, but Davos suddenly began to thrash his arms and legs, fighting the sensation of drowning. Blake was about to despair, when someone grabbed the back of his collar and lifted him, swimming upward toward the surface. It was Derrick, and Blake was relieved and panicked at the same time. He couldn’t leave Davos to drown! Then through the clear water, he saw Rhaegar beside them, striking Davos on the chin, knocking him out again to stop his wild struggles and then pulling him upward alongside him.
Blake sent up a quick prayer of thanks and to any god that might be listening and then looked upward toward the light filtering down, and kept struggling and kicking toward the surface.
****
It had taken them a while to finally make it to shore. Blake and Derrick had been on either side of Davos, helping to keep him afloat, so they were slower than the others. Rhaegar and one of his burly officers had to wade out to help them drag Davos out of the icy water. Immediately, Rhaegar had begun saying he wanted to get off the shoreline. No other survivors had surfaced from the wreckage, though Rhaegar left two men near the forest edge for a while, in case anyone did.
Still, it was Rhaegar’s contention that a rescue party would be coming by morning to check for survivors, especially considering King Davos had been on that ship. In the meantime, he thought it would be safe to start a small fire so they could get dry. He said he thought they had a few hours before search and rescue efforts would begin. Not to mention the fact that the temperature was already dropping as it got toward nightfall so a fire to dry their clothing was desperately needed. Rhaegar sent a few men into the woods to forage for any thing edible they could find and then worked on getting a fire started. The lake contained fresh water, so they had a ready supply.
In the end, it took Derrick using some techniques he’d learned at his training school to get a spark to start the fire, though, and keep that spark going long enough to ignite the dry deadfall. Rhaegar’s crew foraged for enough of it to keep the fire going for most of the night, because it looked as though the weather was taking a bit of a turn for the worse, temperature wise. They already had a huge pile of limbs and Rhaegar sent them looking for more, “so we don’t have to go in the middle of the night.”
Blake was worried about Davos, because he still hadn’t awakened fully. He’d been restless and was groaning a lot, but he was still mostly unconscious. The cut on the back of his head was deep, and though Blake had washed it as best he could and bandaged it with a piece of his torn shirt, Davos was becoming feverish.
“I think we have to get him to a doctor, Derrick,” Blake told his son as they sat beside him. “We don’t have any choice.”
“How, omak? We can’t do anything until morning. And Rhaegar says that even then, we’re probably a long way from any settlement.”
“They’ll come searching for him, and the lost transport, I’m sure. They would have tracked it to its last known location, even considering the captain might not have had time to get off a message, which he probably did. No, someone will show up in the morning. Or maybe even sooner than that. That’s why as soon as it’s first light, you and Rhaegar and the others need to go. Get as deep in the forest as you can and hide until they stop searching. Rhaegar knows what to do—this forest is vast.”
“But what about you? And Father?” Derrick sounded so agitated that Blake reached over to hug him.
“Don’t get upset, sweetheart. It’ll be okay.”
“How? How will it be okay?”
Rhaegar, who had just dropped another load of deadfall, looked over at them and frowned. He came to sit beside Derrick.
“Hey, what’s going on? What are you getting so upset about?”
Blake noticed how close he sat to Derrick and how his hand automatically went to Derrick’s back, rubbing a small circle in the center of it. Derrick leaned in to him, looking miserable. “My omak wants to give himself up to them.”
Rhaegar glanced up at Blake in surprise. “Is the king that badly injured?”
“I think so. I have to get him to a doctor.”
Derrick frowned at him. “How hard did you hit him anyway?”
“Not that hard. I will have to say it felt good, but he’s a tough bastard. I hit him on the chin, but that wouldn’t have kept him from waking up, for sure.”
“No, Derrick, he’s right. Leaving out the insults,” Blake glared over at Rhaegar who looked unapologetically back at him, “he had to keep your father from fighting us or we’d have all sunk to the bottom of that lake.
“But omak, what if…what if he d-doesn’t recover?”
Blake shook his head angrily. “Don’t even put that out there in the universe. He’ll be fine. And once he recovers, he’ll even be grateful that we saved him.”
Rhaegar laid his hand on Blake’s arm. “We can leave him on the shore of the lake where they’ll see him. Then try to get away before they land.”
“No, I won’t leave him.”
Derrick blew out a long, shaky breath. “But you’d leave us. Your children, and we love you too.”
“Oh baby,” Blake said, leaning toward him. “You know I’d never want to leave any of you. But you have Rhaegar now.” Rhaegar blinked rapidly and frowned.
Blake glanced sharply over at him. “What is it? Are you saying he doesn’t have you? Is that what that look is about?”
“No, I-I’m not saying that. Exactly.” Derrick turned to glare at him and he flushed. “Look, I don’t know! I guess I’m just surprised. We only just met, and-and, well, after all, I’m not the kind of person most parents would want for their son. Besides, I’m not one for settling down with a mate to take care of.”
“Who needs you to ‘take care’ of them? Don’t be insulting. I can certainly take care of myself. And you’d be damn lucky to have me.”
Rhaegar grinned at him. “I’m beginning to think you may be right. But still, I have no need for a mate. Not in my line of work.”
“Oh, is that what you’re calling it now? Work? You’re a thief and a pirate.”
Blake broke in, huffing out a sigh. “Rhaegar, we don’t have time for this. You and Derrick are already mates. Surely some part of you remembers that. I’ve seen how you touch him. How you respond to him.”
“Well, I…I am attracted to him, I admit, but…”
Derrick pulled away from Rhaegar’s hand and stared at him. “But nothing! Don’t feel you have to do this on my account, because I don’t need you. I don’t need anybody, and certainly not someone who doesn’t want me. I’m not desperate, you know. We told you we came through the wormhole as mates, but if you can’t believe that, then…”
“Wait a minute! Give me a second here to process all this
Derrick shook his head. “No. If you don’t believe what we’re telling you, then there’s nothing else to say, and I’ll stay with my omak. I don’t want to leave him anyway.”
“No!” The vehemence of Rhaegar’s reply seemed to surprise even Rhaegar himself, but he recovered quickly and pulled Derrick back closer to him. “You’re not delivering yourself back to them. And I didn’t say I don’t believe you. I said I need time to process it, that’s all.”
Rhaegar turned back to Blake, still struggling to keep his arm around Derrick and prevent him from shrugging him off. “This son of yours is impossible. You know that, don’t you?”
Blake smiled. “I think it’s one of his best qualities, actually. But Rhaegar, you have to believe us. We came through the wormhole and everything changed.”
“The Never Never,” he said, nodding his head. “Yes, I can believe that. If you go inside, you may never come out and if you do, you might never be the same. That’s how the hole got its name. It’s far too dangerous for me to fuck with. I want nothing to do with it.”
“Why don’t the people of Tveir know more about it? Davos told me there wasn’t any such wormhole or he’d know about it.”
“It comes and goes. And it always appears in the same area of space, but not necessarily in the same exact spot. Nobody knows why or how it comes, but it does. Some pirates and traders of illegals even go inside the edges of it to hide. But I tried it once and almost never got out. No, not for me. And maybe the Tygerians have seen the wormhole when it appears, but when they’ve investigated, it’s been gone. And that doesn’t make any sense to them. The Tygerians aren’t the kind of people who believe in something that doesn’t make sense. Something they can’t see or prove to exist. They would expect it—demand it—to follow the laws of physics and this thing just doesn’t do that.”
“All right. I can see that about them,” Blake said. “And then too, they haven’t been on this planet all that long and they’ve been busy trying to rebuild their world.”
“And that’s what they’ve done. Rebuild it, that is. Everything in the capital city is an exact replica of the way it was on Tygeria. They say the Tygerians think that what they had on their home planet was perfect, so why try to change perfection?”
Blake snorted, looking down at Davos and smoothing his hand over his hair. “That does sound like them. Well, I suppose it will make it all the more easy for me to adjust if I can’t get back home again.”
Derrick looked miserable when he said that and dropped his head. Blake leaned over to hug him again. “Darling, you have to promise me to try to get home and find Larz. Make sure he’s safe. And take care of him and-and my Nicarr for me. And Mikol. And Vannos and his baby. And Anarr and Mikos.” He choked up for a moment and couldn’t go on. Tears were streaming down Derrick’s face and Rhaegar began rubbing his back again.
After a moment, Blake started again. “I’m sorry. I can’t give in to all that or it might kill me. But I can’t leave your father, especially when he’s hurt.” Blake glared over at Rhaegar. “Will you try to get him back home?”
“Now wait a minute here. I…you’re asking a lot of me, you know. No, I told you I won’t go back in that hole. It’s the Never Never! It’s plain old suicide! I’ll keep him safe with me—that should be enough, right? I understand this is a tender moment between you and your son and all. And I don’t want to be insensitive…”
Derrick pulled away again. “But why stop now, right? He’s impossible, omak.”
“Rhaegar, don’t you understand? Your life here is not nearly as good as it is back in our world. There you’re a king. The Pirate King of your own planet. In our world, the pirates are called the Drex, and they have their own planet, Tresaria. And you were named king by acclamation of all the Drex and duly crowned.”
Rhaegar tilted his head to one side and smiled a little. “Now you’re just joking, right? Pirates with their own planet? And me as their king?”
“Yes, it’s true. The Drex are mostly a people called the Nilaniums. Do you have those here?”
Rhaegar nodded warily. “Okay,” Blake said, warming to his subject. “The way I understand it, some of the Nilaniums didn’t want to settle down, because they’re nomadic. That’s the story, anyway, though it never made sense to me, since they went out and found their own planet. I think they just didn’t like the idea of anybody who wasn’t a Nilanium telling them what to do.”
“Yes, I’m familiar with the Nilaniums.”
“So, some of them rejected the king’s offer to settle on Tygeria, and they became pirates instead. They founded their own planet, Tresaria, and they needed their own king. To be elected Pirate King, all the pirate captains of all the ships had to vote on a single candidate. This process was difficult, because it’s common for each captain to vote for himself. But the last king, before he died, nominated his own son—well, his stepson, Rhaegar. He was the only pirate captain that nobody had a real problem with, because he was brave and honorable and very handsome.”
Blake smiled at him. “And even honorable in his way. At least, he’d never been known to double-cross anyone.” He leaned forward intently. “So, let’s not start now, shall we? I need you to promise me you’ll take my son home to where you both really belong. I know you can make it, Rhaegar. You have to try.”
“With what? I don’t even have a ship anymore! Even if I believed this crazy story of yours. Which I don’t! No, I can’t such a promise.”
Derrick jumped to his feet, his face bright red with anger and hurt. “Forget you then! I’m staying with you, omak. And we’ll find a way to get back home again without his help!” He glared at Rhaegar, who snarled back at him and perhaps had plenty more to add, except that just then a strong, harsh light suddenly swept over them from the sky, and a loud voice, speaking in Tygerian, came down to them from the heavens.
“Prisoners! Stay where you are and don’t move! This craft is landing to take you back into custody. Resistance will be met with extreme force!”
That was the gist anyway, as far as Blake could tell. The voice was loud and menacing and definitely had a threat in there somewhere. Startled, he looked upward, shading his eyes. He could barely make out the outline of a totally silent craft of some kind coming in for a landing right on the shore of the huge lake, not nearly far enough away. Its motors had to be in Stealth Mode because even this close, they still weren’t making any sound. Blake and the others had been completely blindsided by its arrival.
“Damn it!” Rhaegar shouted. “I didn’t think they’d come this soon!”
“Run!” Blake cried, pushing at Derrick. “Go, now!”
Rhaegar was already on his feet along with his men, and he reached down to grab Derrick’s arm, but Derrick wrenched away from him and shook his head, looking savage. “No! Go without me! I’m not leaving my fathers. Either of them!”
Rhaegar gave him a desperate look, glanced back up at the sky where the voice from the aircraft was getting closer and still shouting out threats in harsh Tygerian.
“Just go!” Derrick shouted, giving him a strong push. He bolted for the thicker part of the forest, some fifty yards away by Blake’s estimate.
“No! Follow him, Derrick! Please!”
“I won’t leave you. Or Father. You might need me and I’m not going to abandon you now. After all, I got you into this. And we don’t need him.”
“Oh honey,” Blake said, putting an arm around him. “You do. And I would have always come for you, no matter where you were. You know that, don’t you? Don’t blame yourself for all this. And besides, your father is here. Where else can I be?”
The ship was landing nearby, kicking up the sandy soil and blowing it and the leaves and other loose debris right toward them. Blake hunched over Davos, trying to protect him from all the detritus coming at them and pelting their skin, while Derrick covered his face with his arms.
The ship landed and the motors cut off, though the lights still shone directly on them, blinding them with their intensity. Blake could hear the sounds of the Tygerian soldiers disembarking and heard them shouting orders at each other. He pulled Davos closer, put his arm tighter around Derrick and waited for what was coming.