Dream Called Time: A Stardoc Novel - By S. L. Viehl Page 0,1

the design of which wasn’t Jorenian, but League.

I tried another signal, this time opening the relay so it could be picked up by the other vessel. “League transport, identify yourself, and your reasons for approaching my vessel.”

A harsh voice responded with only four words. “Prepare to be boarded.”

“Prepare my ass.” I swung around and crouched over the console, taking it off auto control and changing course to evade the League transport.

I dodged them for a while, but their engines were working perfectly, as was their pulse array. They fired twice and took out what was left of the Rilkens’ propulsion system, then used a third to destroy my transceiver.

I couldn’t see the CloudWalk on the viewer, but I knew they were out there and monitoring my progress, as was the ship belonging to my adopted family, HouseClan Torin. They’d definitely pick up the pulse fire on their scanners. Any attack on a member of a Jorenian HouseClan resulted in a declaration of ClanKill, which meant my adopted kin would devote themselves to hunting down my assailants and subjecting them to an instant and painful death by manual evisceration.

“You guys are going to be so sorry you did this,” I muttered as I looked around the cabin for weapons.

The Rilkens had a couple of pistols and rifles, but they were too small for me to handle comfortably. I settled for a dagger I took off one of my unconscious abductors, although I had to wrap the hilt with some plastape until it was large enough for me to grip. I staggered as the deck rocked; the viewer showed the transport’s docking clamps engulfing the little ship.

I put my back against a wall and watched the upper access hatch. Energy crackled through the air, and then something knocked me away from the wall and threw me to the deck.

I crawled, my teeth still chattering from the power surge they’d sent through the hull, but there was no place big enough for me to hide. A pair of League boots appeared in front of my nose, and I raised my head to look into the business end of a pulse rifle.

“Colonel Shropana sends his compliments,” the soldier said just before he reversed the weapon and slammed the stock into my face.

PART ONE

Today

One

Into whatever houses I enter, I will go for the benefit of the sick.

—Hippocrates

Hippocrates never had to deal with a patient like mine, or he’d have said to hell with his oath and run for the hills.

As I was currently on the Sunlace, a Jorenian interstellar star vessel, I didn’t have hills or that luxury. What I did have was a body on the exam table in front of me: Terran, adult female, petite, thin, pale-skinned, and dark-haired. Uninjured but unconscious, waiting to be awakened, to be healed, to be saved.

Standing there in the cold, sterile brightness of the medical assessment room, dependent on the kindness of a bunch of strangers, I could relate.

Visually speaking, the patient did not appear to be a sterling example of her gender or her species. I’d never call her pretty, shapely, vibrant, or attractive. She didn’t have the benefit of physical symmetry; her long-fingered, narrow hands appeared overly large for her bony wrists; her long torso seemed at odds with her short legs. Her translucent skin didn’t have a mark on it, which made it look like a too-tight envirosuit, and displayed in outline a bit too much of her skeletal structure. Although I knew her to be in her midthirties, at first glance I’d have guessed her to be a moderately undernourished adolescent.

I picked up her chart. “Not much to look at, is she?” The herd of tall, blue-skinned Jorenian interns and nurses gathered around the table didn’t respond. “Until we open the really boring package, and get a look at all the prizes inside.”

“Healer, what say we summon your bondmate?” That came from a gorgeous female nurse whose name I didn’t know. She wove her fingers through the air as she spoke in the eloquent hand gestures her species used as part of their language. “He would wish to be present.”

I watched her white-within-white eyes, which were not at all as blind as they appeared. “Do you think I need my husband to hold my hand while I assess this patient, Nurse?”

She was two feet taller than me and a hundred pounds heavier, and could probably snap my neck with one jerk of her beautiful blue wrist, but she shuffled her feet and ducked