The Healer (The Order of Intergalactic Peace #1) - Kelly Lucille Page 0,40

him, he was found along with the med aide Meg wounded and unconscious. My man tells me he is unable to revive them but one of the Cronos medical staff also informed him that there was another healer with them who no one seems to be able to find.”

Mal stood to his full height and took no notice of the soldiers around him who backed up carefully. His voice was jagged ice when he asked quietly and with each word coldly precise. “Which healer?”

“She was referred to by their staff as a miracle healer, but they didn’t know her name.”

Something on his face must have projected his rising rage because Tram, his aide and decorated elite phoenix shield, paled in the face of whatever he saw as he went on quickly. “I checked with our medbay and med aide Brin informed me that it was our new head healer, rather than himself, that accompanied the other two,” he swallowed visibly. “And is now presumed missing.”

Mal stood in a deep well of black silence for so long even his most powerful generals were shifting nervously by the time he had himself under control. Destroying the bridge in his black rage and killing everyone around him would waste time he didn’t have, but it was a near thing.

So he spoke with the chill of ice backing each word, his eyes boring holes into his men as he gave his orders. “Close the space port, now. No ships leave, none are allowed to land. I want a shield immediately placed over the entirety of Cronos. No transports to or from the spaceport.” When everyone still stood holding their breaths he barked. “Now! Make that happen.”

Bustling movement assured his will was being followed. “I want eyes on the skies. Any ships that were within transporter range or deployed a shuttle since our medteam landed I want to know about them. Where they are and who they are. Where they went. And I want to know five minutes ago.” He turned and looked at his Generals. “General Smoke, you are in charge of coordinating our troops from here.” He was already turning and heading away when he finished. “Have the phoenix meet me at transport.”

“Where will you be my Lord,” Smoke called after his back.

“I’ll be on Cronos,” Mal growled even as his aide fell in at his back. “Finding my healer.” And killing anyone who thought to take her from him, did not need to be added. Anyone who saw him at that moment knew someone was going to die horribly.

And if so much as one hair on his healer’s head had been damaged, they would be begging for it before the end.

***

Serenity woke up somewhere quite different than where she went to sleep. It was briefly disorientating to fall asleep in the well-lit disinfected hospital room on Cronos and awaken on a dusty cot in what looked to be no more than a dimly lit closet.

Worse, by the humming beneath her feet she was no longer on Cronos, but in a moving spaceship, going she had no clue where. But Serenity did not need to see who had taken her to know that she was not on an OIP spacecraft. Even the most insignificant of Mal Ryn’s fleet would be cleaner and better kept than this.

Serenity sat up and looked around and then assessed her own health. She had to have slept deep, because no drug would have kept her under long enough otherwise, but she felt fully charged and well rested despite the power she had used. She blew out a breath and stood, taking the two steps it took her to get to the door in the tiny room, and was not surprised to find it locked tight.

There was no com plate, but the manual lock verified, in her mind, that it was not Mal Ryn punishing her by confining her to a closet on his destroyer. She doubted even their supply closets were this small, and the feel beneath her feet was rough, rather than the smooth hum she had been getting used to.

But a manual lock was actually good news and for the first time she was grateful for all the drilling her father had forced on her when she was younger. She just needed something to use and she would be set.

There was nothing in the closet of a room to help her however. She was finally forced to work the wire out of the cot springs. After