His Fire Maiden - Michelle M. Pillow Page 0,17

too clean. Dev didn’t stop to question his initial instinct as he turned to run back into the ship. His hand lifted to the security scanner on the hatch. As he pressed his hand flat, a sharp pain radiated from his stomach, and then another. The feeling of electrical current ran through him. His vision blurred as the plank beneath his feet moved. He swayed violently. Someone had shot him with electric darts. They seared his clothing and flesh, burning hotter with each passing second.

Dev’s knees trembled, but he kept his footing long enough to hear the ship’s security system beep as it armed itself to protect the child. The sound was the last he heard as his body tumbled backward. His head struck metal, and he rolled off the rising plank into darkness.

Chapter 8

Violette stared at the holographic image of her father in a shiny white suit. He looked a lot younger than she remembered him being though this particular recording was as familiar a childhood memory as any. Tapping her finger on the holo-box, she drew her hand back. She’d played it nearly twenty times in the last hour, yet found herself listening again to the well-known voice. She missed her father, missed seeing him and hearing him. Nevertheless, the words were as unbelievable to her now as they were when she was eight.

“Josselyn, I’m glad you are well.” Jack’s image said. Violette ran her finger over her scar as the recording played. “It’s what I’ve hoped for these last, long years. By this time and because you are still alive after the term of your imprisonment has ended, we have probably spoken. Knowing the temperament of your family, we have not spoken kindly. So much has happened and changed since that day long ago, and I have to force myself to remember that you don’t know the good I’ve tried to do. All you know is my sins. I cannot take back that which was done, but I can give you a new life. With these papers, you will never have to explain your age or your past. As my daughter, a general’s daughter, you will have the freedom to pass by Federation ports unhampered. I cannot leave the life I have chosen. The Federation has granted me the home, which I so longed to be a part of in those years you knew me, as a reward for my services. I know it is not the land it once was, but all it is, I give to you.”

Her father continued on to explain modern space life as if talking to…well, to a woman who’d missed the last hundred years of technology. He walked through how to use space credits and identification papers. He gave Josselyn directions to a mostly automated personal vessel with navigational guides to assist her in flying it. On the ship, the woman would find clothing and a machine to download knowledge into her brain to help her function in the new time. The general had thought of everything, even supplied a list of possible new home worlds and directions to them, should she decide to relocate. Violette listened to all of it with a stone in her stomach, lump in her throat, and a heart that ached so badly she wanted to cut it out of her chest.

“If, by some miracle, you can forgive me, I would welcome you back into the family,” Jack continued. “Though it remains my greatest wish, I fear you will never take me up on this offer. What you might not have discovered is that your mother was my wife. I will not presume to call myself your father-by-marriage though legally speaking I am just that, which is why the papers I give you call you my daughter. Do not toss those papers aside. You will not be able to survive in the current world without them. I want you to know that I took care of Lady Craven, but she was never the same after our world was destroyed. I did not tell her about your fate. I did not want to give her false hope.”

A tear slipped over Violette’s cheek.

“From our union, you have a sister. We named her Violette after the moonflower petals your mother dearly loved. Our Violette is strong willed and smart. She reminds me of you as a child, rebellious to a fault, but with a heart bigger than the entire universe. Lady Craven did not survive the birthing. Please, for