Crown of Slaves

* * *

After the private meetings which followed, Rozsak ended the long day with a short and final conference with Habib. The commander had been with Rozsak almost from the beginning of his career, and whatever specific title the woman had held since, she was always 'the XO.'

'What do you think, Edie? Is there a chance in hell that Cassetti's oh-so-clever scheme isn't going to come off its wheels before we get halfway there?'

Habib shrugged. 'That mostly depends on how well we do our job. And look on the bright side, if you'll allow me to swipe one of your favorite expressions. We don't want the complicated contraption to get all the way there. Just far enough to grind Cassetti under the wheels when it all comes apart. We can walk the rest of the way, easily enough. After that wreck, the Governor'll greet us with open arms.'

Rozsak grinned coldly. 'You have a way with words, XO. Did I ever tell you that?'

'No. Maybe I could get a career as a poet, after you go down in flames.'

They shared a chuckle. There was indeed quite a good chance that Rozsak would wind up going down in flames, sooner or later. But if he did, it was as sure as anything that Habib would go down with him.

'Butchering hogs instead of cattle,' Habib murmured. 'You have a way with words yourself, Luiz. I like the sound of that.'

'I thought you would.' Rozsak looked at the window beyond whose curtains lay the Suds Emporium. 'For that matter, we'll be killing off a fair number of snakes and scorpions while we're at it.'

'Amen to that.'

Chapter 9

As she walked into the suite in the hotel where her special unit was quartered, Lieutenant Thandi Palane was also thinking about snakes and scorpions. Walking into that suite reminded her of walking into a nest of the dangerous creatures.

But, as she closed the door behind her, she forced the analogy out of her mind. It was unfair, she knew, and more a reflection of her own dark mood than anything about her…

Ah, 'ladies.'

Rozsak's clever quip brought a little smile to her face at the same time that it darkened her mood still further. One of the many things she liked about the Captain was his sense of humor.

Oh, give it up, Thandi. You could spend an hour listing all of Luiz Rozsak's fine qualities, come to the conclusion-again-that he's the sexiest man around, and wind up going to bed-again-alone and frustrated.

The worst of it was that she knew Luiz Rozsak found her sexually attractive also. The captain was very good at keeping it under wraps, and the Marine lieutenant was pretty sure that no one else, except possibly the XO, had noticed. But Thandi had no doubt at all that she aroused the man. She was not what anyone would call an experienced femme fatale, but neither was she a naive virgin. Such creatures did not exist on her home planet of Ndebele.

After closing the door and making sure it was locked, she leaned back against it, crossed her arms, and sighed heavily.

Actually, that wasn't the worst of it. The real worst of it was that she also understood-was fairly certain she did, anyway-why Rozsak was making no attempt to pursue her. Which only increased her attraction to the man; since, in essence, he was looking out for her own best interests.

His too, of course. Thandi knew perfectly well that Rozsak was extremely ambitious and quite capable of being as ruthless as need be to advance that ambition. Some other young woman-probably most other young women- would have found that knowledge repellent. But those young women hadn't been born and raised on one of the worst hellholes in OFS territory. Men on Ndebele were either cold-bloodedly ambitious or, as was true of ninety percent of them, they were beaten into a lifetime of what amounted to serfdom. The same was true for women, except the percentages were even worse. By the time she was sixteen, Thandi had come to the conclusion that whatever else happened to her, she would not settle for being an OFS helot.

So, seeing no other option, she'd enlisted in the armed forces. The Solarian armed forces, not one of the auxiliary military units the League maintained, like the Frontier Forces. She wanted no part of OFS, despite their easier entrance requirements. Besides, Thandi was smarter than average and had applied herself in school, so she was angling for a career as an officer, not simply a grunt. The Solarian League's regular armed forces would accept officer candidates from protectorate planets readily enough, even if they rarely enjoyed much of a career. In the OFS, that would be impossible.

Even with her intelligence and grades, that hadn't been easy to swing, for someone coming from her background. Not to her surprise, she'd had to settle for the Marines rather than the regular Navy she'd have personally preferred. Not to her surprise also, she'd had to provide sex for the SLN recruiting officer during the weeks the process had required, before he'd agreed to make sure the thing went through.

She hadn't minded, particularly. It wasn't the first time she'd had to perform that service, since it was a common practice on many of the protectorate worlds under OFS jurisdiction. Certainly on Ndebele. And at least the recruiting officer had been a fairly pleasant man, who'd tried to be gentlemanly about the whole thing-quite unlike the brutish factory manager who'd made her one of his concubines as a teenager in exchange for allowing her to attend school at night instead of working. He'd also had her boyfriend beaten senseless when he tried to object.

Remembering that old boyfriend, Thandi's crossed arms tightened and, with an effort, she pushed the memory away. He'd been a sweet kid, true enough. And, by the time he was eighteen, had been hammered into proper helotry.

She'd left all that behind her along with everything else. There was no way a man like Luiz Rozsak could be described as 'sweet,' whatever his other fine qualities. By the same token, he was neither beaten down nor bore any resemblance to a helot. Thandi could accept the man's cold-blooded ruthlessness easily enough, since the alternative was far worse.

The problem was that the captain wasn't simply ruthless, he was also smart. And smart in a way that-at least in Thandi's admittedly limited experience-few ruthless men were. He could think like a chess player, not simply like a human shark. And for all his obvious self-assurance, he was even smart enough to understand that he could only rise so far on his own. So, he was one of those very rare people who could apply ruthlessness to himself as well as others, and made sure that he built a strong team around him instead of lessening them for his own narrow and immediate purposes.

And so it was, she sighed, that she'd spend another night alone. It was too bad, but…

Grow up, girl. It's just a crush, so forget it. If you're that frustrated, it's not as if you can't find other outlets.

Plenty of them, for that matter. The captain was by no means the only man in her vicinity who'd found her tall and athletic self very enticing. He was just the only one who didn't make any advances-and, alas, the only one she was interested in herself.

'Moping again, are we? Must be man trouble, comrades.'

'Stupid, then. If you want a man, kaja, just take him.'

'If you need help, we'll hold him down till you're finished.'

Thandi looked up, scowling. Sometimes she appreciated the rough humor of her charges. Other times-this being one of them-she didn't. Not in the least.

Seeing the fierce scowl, the women who'd entered the suite's central room from their sleeping chambers backed up a step or so. The quickness with which they did so brought some good cheer back to Lieutenant Palane. Partly, because the grace of those steps illustrated their own athleticism, which was something any ground combat officer liked to see in her troops. Mostly, however, it was because the quickness of those steps was proof positive