nothing compared to this. The man had murdered Carristan right in front of her, and she’d sat there and watched complacently. And Dieter had been behind it. No, nothing compared to this. She embraced the anger and let it fuel her hatred for the man.
They’d kept her locked in a small cabin for several hours. She’d searched it carefully and found nothing she could use as a weapon, though two gravity bunks against the wall and a lot of odds and ends told her it was the cabin of two crewmen. She’d screamed and raged and shouted for the first hour after the drug wore off, to no avail. She’d tried the intercom, but no one answered her. Finally, with her bladder bursting, she begged over the intercom for someone to take her to the toilet. There came no reply over the intercom, but a few minutes later the door of the cabin opened. Any thought she had of resistance evaporated at the hardened look of the two men who waited in the corridor beyond.
They escorted her to what they referred to as the head and into one of the stalls there, though one man held the door of the stall open and they both stood there looking at her and waiting.
“Won’t you allow me a little privacy?”
The shorter of the two said, “Look, Princess, you can piss with us watching you, or you cannot piss at all, but we ain’t letting you out of our sight.”
Del lifted her skirts, dropped her panties, sat down and, relieved herself. They escorted her back to the cabin.
She waited for a couple more hours, pacing back and forth in the small cabin. Then, without warning the door to her cabin opened. The same two men stepped into the small space, and before she could react they lifted her off her feet, spun her about, and clamped her wrists behind her back with some sort of manacles. She demanded, “What are—”
The smaller of the two slapped her hard. “You keep your mouth shut, sweetheart. Every little peep out of you gets a slap, and each time it’ll be harder.”
The big one, standing behind her, reached around her and cupped her breasts in his hands. He massaged them crudely, saying, “She’s awful pretty, yuh know. We got a little time. We could have some fun.”
Del tried not to let her terror show as the smaller one considered it for a moment, then shook his head. “Nah, Zsutaka’d kill us. We play it straight.”
They each lifted her by an armpit and her feet barely touched the floor as they half carried her through the ship. They lifted her through the open hatch of a small shuttle and deposited her in a seat. A few minutes later Zsutaka and Thraka sat down on either side of her. The three of them said nothing, and all Del could do was sit and fume as the shuttle pulled away from the freighter.
“Your Grace,” Matula said. “We just got an uplink message that Duchess Telka is within range of the relay buoys and wishes to speak with you. We’re in a position to do a quick down-transition.”
While in transition Charlie had been monitoring the battle by uplink, a situation in which they could receive, but not transmit. They were prepared to down-transit quickly if they did need to transmit. He knew his greater responsibility lay with the coalition, but he was torn, because to down-transit now might give Dieter the time he needed to escape with Del.
“Do so,” he said.
“We’re about ten light-years out,” Telka told him, once they’d established a conference link with her and Arthur and Roacka. “I have thirty warships, and we’ll be there in two days.”
Arthur said, “And there are another twenty-five warships coming in from Kinatha and the independent states, ten of which’ll be in nearspace within the next ten hours.”
Roacka added, “That basically gives us parity now, a decent advantage by the end of the day, and a significant advantage when Her Grace gets here. This thing is over.”
“No,” Charlie said sharply. “It’s not. We’re not leaving this to fester and come back and bite us again. It’s started, so we finish it here and now.”
Telka shook her head. “I won’t be part of a bloodbath.”
“I’m not planning a bloodbath. But we need to send Goutain back to Syndon with his nose badly bloodied or he’ll turn right around and come back.”
Telka smiled, clearly liked the idea. “What do you have in mind?”