"You already know what the red system is for, and how it works. The yellow system works similarly. You just change the indicator"she gestured at the b.u.t.ton on the end of the controller, just below the yellow light"there, set the level of pain with the same registers as the red system, and push the crystal."

"What in Hades"

"The blue system is more complicated. It is the brain wave synchronizer."

"I don't care what"

"Listen, please," she repeated, still in that same flat, emotionless tone. "The blue system produces a kind of hypnosis in the slave, an adjusting of brain activity that is directed entirely by the holder of the control unitprogrammed for that slave."

She knew she sounded odd, talking as if the slave in question were someone other than herself, but it was the only way she could get through this without breaking down.

"The holder of the unit literally controls the slave's mind, including what the slave says, does...or thinks."

Dax didn't protest this time, he merely stared at her in undiluted, unmasked shock. "Are you saying this...thing is programmed to the specific brain waves of the slave it was designed for, and whoever has it could alter those waves in any way they wished?"

"Very good," Califa said, as if complimenting a student on a correct answer.

"And they call us pirates," Dax muttered.

Califa went on as if he hadn't spoken. "You merely set the system for whatever level of hypnosis is necessary, depending on how deeply against the slave's own wishes your commands will be. The blue crystal will blink. When it comes on steadily, you relay your commands to the slave, and your commands become their thoughts. Synchronized."

Dax glanced at the controller, then back to her face. "You could not only make a slavedo anything you wanted but actually think it, as well?"

"In certain areas, mating in particular, willing partic.i.p.ation is more...desirable than pa.s.sive cooperation. With the blue system, your slave will not only do and say what you wish, but will think it is their own desire. Afterward, if you wish, for your own privacy, you can erase all memory of your encounter from the slave's mind."

"My G.o.d," Dax whispered, clearly shaken.

She could see what he was thinking. It was one thing to order a slave to clean your boots or serve your meals, quite another to use a machine to turn that slave into your dream lover for the perfect mating, subjecting them to whatever was your pleasure and making them think they wanted it that way.

His gaze fell to the collar around her neck. Then it shot back up to her face. She knew the question that was coming before he ever voiced it.

"Have you...?"

"It is the lot of all Coalition slaves."

"d.a.m.n them to Hades eternally," he ground out savagely. "No wonder you were dismayed when I said I would put this in my quarters. You must have thought I would use it on you."

For a moment, she slipped out of her professorial detachment. "I did...wonder. I am, after all, your prisoner."

"I don't make a habit of raping women, and this would be no less," he snapped.

"Then you see why I was so desperate to get it back?"

"Yes." She saw him suppress a shiver as he bit out the words. "Anyone would be, who had been forced to...to wh.o.r.e against their will, been forced to believe they had wanted-"

He broke off, and Califa shivered in turn as she realized he had made the final, utterly d.a.m.ning connection.

"Dare?" he asked hoa.r.s.ely, his fingers curling around the controller until his knuckles were white. "Dear G.o.d, you used this system on Dare?"

"Idid not." She knew it would save her from little of his fury. "But I was ever...generous with my slaves."

"Others? Others did? You allowed it? He was subjected to...such degradation? Made to...act the wh.o.r.e, at the command of whoever you gave this to?"

She didn't answer; there was nothing to say. For a moment she thought he might strike her, but at the last second he whirled away from her.

"G.o.d, how did he survive it?" Dax walked over to the small viewport over his bunk, and stared out. "With all good reason. Dare is one of the proudest men I've ever known."

"As I have learned, pride is one of the things the Coalition takes greatest joy in destroying." When he looked back over his shoulder at her, she flicked the collar with her forefinger. "They obviously think nothing of enslaving one of their one."

Dax laughed, a loud, grim sound that held nothing of humor and everything of a harsh, biting hatred.

"One of their own? They enslaved aking ! They murdered the rightful leader of a neutral world that never raised a hand against any other people, and then enslaved his son."

He spun on his heel then, giving her a look that chilled her very blood. He held up the controller, and for an instant Califa fully expected him to activate it before her eyes, and blow her to pieces.

"Why did you give this to me? Why did you explain it, that perverse hypnosis system?"

She swallowed tightly, wondering where all her fine Coalition courage had gone, and why it always seemed to desert her when she had to face this man.

"It was the only way I could try to show you...to prove I'm...not that woman anymore."

He gave a short bark of disbelieving laughter. "You mean you've found you don't like being on the receiving end of what you've been dispensing, and now claim a metamorphosis, hoping for mercy."

She nearly stepped back from the rising wall of his hatred. She wondered how much of his fury could be credited to that night in his quarters, when he had yielded to a need she'd never expected him to have and kissed her. Now that he knew the truth, that memory must disgust him.

"I should throw you to the men, as they wished. Or perhaps use this wonderful hypnotic device. Shall you dance naked for my crew, Major? Or simply service them all?"

She felt herself go ashen; the sudden chill of her face was an odd sensation. With her pale Arellian skin, she must look unto death now. And perhaps, she thought as she forced herself not to cringe from Dax's rage, she wasn't far wrong.

"Or maybe I'll keep you to myself, chained here, to my bed," he spat out. "Oh, I forgot, I won't need chains, will I? You'll stay here of your own free will, and cast loving glances at me as I beat the Coalition conceit out of you before I take you. Shall that be it,Major?"

She drew herself up then. If this was the payment demanded of her, then so be it. And oddly, that image rose in her mind again, of the man she'd known as Wolf, shaky and weak after a night of Marcole's discipline, yet refusing to give in. Could she do any less than the man Eos, than the kingshe had once thought she owned?

She lifted her chin, and held Dax's furious gaze. "If that is what you wish," she said quietly.

He swore, low and fierce. "No, thank you. It would require me to touch you, and right now I don't think I could endure that." His expression changed to one of rank distaste. "How could I have ever thought"

He broke his words off, but the memory of that instant when his fingers had brushed her palm, and those quiet moments when he had stood at the top of the observation deck stairs, simply watching her, made her think she knew what he had been going to say. The skypirate was wondering how he could ever have been attracted to the woman who had helped to degrade and debase his best friend. The woman who had let others do the same. The woman who, for a brief, foolish time, had thought she owned a man who was a king.

Dax lay in his bunk, staring at the slight glow coming in through the viewport above his head. Distantly, he could hear the sounds that told him shipboard activities were proceeding as usual. He didn't know how long he'd been in here, how long it had been since he'd told Roxton to get the esteemed Major Claxton out of his sight but not to kill her just yet. And to keep quiet about what had happened.

Roxton had grumbled a bit, but his thirst for immediate blood seemed to have waned, and Dax was reasonably certain Nelcar could keep him from slitting her throat the moment they were out of sight. What he wasn't certain of was why he gave a d.a.m.n whether Roxton did or not. He told himself it was because, as a former Coalition officer, she might have knowledge that would be useful to them. He told himself that she had some worth of her own, as a salable commodity, trying to ignore the fact that that thought, no matter who the person was, made him sick. He told himself that she could be a bargaining token, should they have a run of bad luck and wind up in the clutches of the Coalition.

He told himself everything except the one truth he was avoiding; he wanted to know how the woman he'd admired for her spirit, who had tugged at him in ways he'd never known when she'd seemed defeated, the beautiful woman who had roused in him sensations he'd thought long dead, whose kiss had stirred him to a fire he'd never felt, could be the kind of woman to do the things she'd admitted to. By comparison, the fact that she'd been a Coalition officer paled.

What do you want me to say? That I've learned my lesson? That a year as a slave has taught me the pure injustice of slavery? That now I know better, that no one should be able to own someone else?

Her words rang in his ears. Could it be true? Was she truly not that woman anymore, the woman who could callously own anotherdear G.o.d, Dareand abuse him in ways Dax couldn't bear thinking about?

You are a d.a.m.ned, stupid fool, he thought, nearly snapping it aloud. You're just looking for an excuse for the fact that you went to afterburners the minute youlaid eyes on her after Rina had cleaned her up. You want her not to be what she is because you can't stand the thought that you were attracted tono, admit it, plain l.u.s.ting aftersuch a woman.

So take her. She's a slave, and now you own her.The thought floated up out of nowhere, created, no doubt, by the string of restless nights he'd spent trying to drive her out of his dreams. The thought also repulsed him; no Triotian of blood would ever accept the idea of owning someone. Even a Triotian as tarnished as he was.

He stifled a desolate laugh. Tarnished wasn't the word for it. Once the name of Silverbrake had been an ill.u.s.trious one on Trios. Now, all who had carried it with pride were dead, leaving only he, who didn't carry it at all. He didn't deserve to. This ravening, growing need for Califa proved it.

He groaned inwardly. How in Hades had he gotten so tangled up, that his nightmares of the women he'd loved dying in agony had been traded for erotic fantasies featuring a woman who had been part of the instrument of their deaths?

He lifted one hand, to look at the controller. He'd barely been aware he still held it. He could use it, he thought. Use it, and make every one of those heated, erotic dreams a reality. He could begin with kisses that would make that one in his quarters seem tame, and then go on to every kind of sensual pursuit he'd ever heard of. His snowfox would become his dream lover, acceding to his every wish. Even now, after all she'd told him, his pulse began to speed and his body began to heat at the thought.

Dear G.o.d, why had she given this evil thing to him, and why in Hades had she told him how it worked? If what she said was true, he could have her in any way it was possible for a man to have a woman, and she would seem to revel in it. If what she said was true, she was his to use at the touch of a b.u.t.ton. If what she said was true...

He would take no pleasure in any of it. If he couldn't take pleasure with a willing woman, he doubted very much that he could with one he knew was forced to seem willing, no matter how she fired his blood. And even though forcing her to submit in the way she had once allowed Dare to be forced seemed a more than appropriate revenge, he questioned his ability to coldbloodedly carry out that revenge. Perhaps it marked him as weak, but he didn't think he could take his anger out on a woman in that way; rape was a subject that hit too close to home, too close to his nightmares.

Maybe he should just turn her over to the crew. They would have no such qualms, he imagined, except for Qantar, still frozen by the brutal murder of his woman, and perhaps Roxton, who had always declared himself as having better taste than to indulge in Coalition women. Now that, indeed, would be fitting punishment for what she'd done to Dare.

Dare.

G.o.d, he was alive. Or had been less than a year ago. The boy he'd grown up with, the youth he'd gone to school and trained with, the man he'd still called friend, even when the weight of royalty came between them.

The man who no doubt hated him now, as must any other Triotians who had perhaps been fortunateor unfortunateenough to survive the Coalition a.s.sault. At least none of his family were alive to hate him, to call him coward, to tell the tale of his desertion. He would never have to face them.

But he was going to have to face Rina. To tell her what she had heard was true. It would deeply wound the girl, he knew. She had come to care for the Arellian, to enjoy having a female to talk to, to make a confidant, something that had been sadly lacking in her life. It had been the knowledge that this was the one thing he had never been able to provide for Rina that had kept Dax from cautioning her against becoming too close to the unknown woman.

And now it was too late. Far too "Dax!"

The comlink came alive with Roxton's voice, his tone urgent. Dax rolled out of his bunk, dropping the controller unheeded. He crossed the room in two swift strides and punched the b.u.t.ton below the speaker.

"Here. What is it?"

"You'd better get up to the bridge, Cap'n. Seems we've been picked up by a Coalition warship. We're under attack."

Chapter 10.

"Is it true?"

Rina's words echoed Dax's, and Califa felt the same sickness in the pit of her stomach. The girl had somehow found her, and managed to open the small storage room they'd locked her in. She stood in the shaft of light cast from the companionway into the dark room.

And now, Califa knew, she was waiting for the miracle the young always seemed to expect, the miracle that would tell her this was all a mistake, that the woman she had come to like and trust, the woman she had confided in, was not her mortal enemy.

"All I can say, Rina," Califa said quietly, "is that I am the same person I was yesterday. The same person I was this morning. I felt we had become friends. How I feel about you hasn't changed." Nor, pitifully, has the way I feel about Dax, she added silently to herself.

"Then it is true?" Rina demanded.

"I am a Coalition slave," Califa said. "That is now the sum of my life. But I wasoncea Coalition officer."

The girl drew back, staring at Califa with those eyes so like Dax's, even down to the pain and anger that glittered now in the green depths. She could see that the girl was torn between running away and shouting her rage. At last, the need to vent her fury won.

"You lied to me!"

"I never lied to you."

"But you never told me"

"I told no one, Rina. I didn't dare, in fear for my life. Everyone aboard theEvening Star made their feelings about the Coalition clear from the moment I came aboard."

"Because we trusted that a Coalition slave would feel the same as we do!"

"What makes you think that I don't?"

The girl considered that. Califa felt a trace of hope; at least she was listening. "But you were an officer"

"I can't change my past, Rina, no more than you can, or Dax. ButI have changed. I swear that to you, upon the graves of your parents."

Rina paled at the uncompromising words.

"Yes, I know what that means to you. That is why I chose that oath, to prove to you the truth of my words."

"But you're one of them." The girl's voice was laced with a bitterness far beyond her years.

"It is true," Califa answered slowly, searching for any words that would make this girl she had, so unexpectedly, come to care for, understand, "that I once belonged to the forces that made you an orphan, that took away your world. But those same forces have done the same to me, Rina. They've taken from me all I've ever known, they've made me wish for death as I suspect you must have when you realized you were all alone."

Rina's quick, shocked glance told Califa her guess had been accurate. "I...wanted to go with them."

She had the girl's attention now, and Califa pressed her advantage, without ever stopping to think why it had become so important to her to have at least one of the Triotians on board this ship not hate her.

"Do you remember yourself, Rina, before your parents' deaths? What you were like at twelve?"

Slowly, Rina nodded. "What did you like to do? To play? Did you have a best friend, or a pet?"

"I was a silly little girl," Rina said sharply. "I thought everyone kind, my world beautiful, and that my parents would be with me forever."

"And now?"

"I know there is more ugliness than good everywhere."

"So do I," Califa said with heartfelt sincerity. "And I was as foolish as you to believe otherwise."

Something in her tone reached the girl before her. When Rina looked at her now, Califa could see a longing to believe that was poignant on her young face.

"So," Califa said, a little urgently, "you are saying you are not the same person now that you were then? Before your parents were killed?"