"I know you all have your own reasons for hating the Coalition," Dax went on. "As do I. I can only tell you that, in light of what is happening on Trios, there is no better way to strike back at them right now."

That much was true, Califa thought.

"The choice is yours," Dax said to them. "I expect no one to accompany me on a mission that will bring you no profit, and will very likely endanger your lives. I freely admit this is a personal mission for me. If you wish to leave, we will part friends, and theEvening Star will take you wherever you wish to go."

"And if we stay?" Hurcon asked.

"Then when it is over, theEvening Star will be yours." A chorus of gasps met that announcement.

"You may elect a captain of your own choosing, and do with her as you will."

"But what about you?" Larcos asked. "Suppose we pull this off, and rescue those few Triotians that may be left alive, and get them to Trios. Are you saying you will no longer fly with us? What will you do?"

He will either be back home, or dead, Califa thought, knowing that somehow this had to come to an end for him, and that those were the only two alternatives he would accept.

"I will...decide that when it is done. But in any case, theEvening Star will be my payment to you."

Raucous discussion broke out, until at last the taciturn Qantar got to his feet.

"I would speak."

That itself was such a shock that the room fell silent.

"Most of you know my story. The Coalition has taken all that mattered to me in life. My woman, my children...I would have welcomed death, indeed was courting it when Dax found me and convinced me to join you."

He looked around at them, his eyes lingering on Rina, then Dax, for a fraction of a second longer than the others.

"Yet of all the planets the Coalition has crushed, Trios, that most splendid of worlds, has suffered the worst of their viciousness. Her people are hunted down and killed with no more thought than slimehogs. Yet she resists valiantly. As my people never did." He shifted his gaze to Hurcon, "As Omegans never did." Then to Califa. "As Arellians never did. For that alone, she has earned my respect. And my help, if I can give it. I fly with Dax."

He sat down then, reverting into his stony-faced silence as if he'd never given the eloquent speech. The crew was nodding furiously; Dax looked a little stunned.

"A vote!" Larcos called out.

Dax held up his hand. "There is one more thing you have the right to know before you vote. The Coalition will not just be looking out for us. They will be actively hunting us down. If they discover what we are doing, they will throw all the forces they can spare into the chase."

"The way I look at it," Larcos said, "those Triotians who are fighting have done a lot to keep the Coalition off our backs. If we can pay them back a little, I'm all for it."

"I hear they're particular about their laws and such," Hureon said warily. "What if they decide to toss us in prison because we're skypirates, no matter what we bring them?"

"Trios has no laws governing the behavior of outsiders while not on Trios," Dax said, his voice carefully emotionless. "Only Triotians, or those guilty of an offense against the royal family, must pay the price for violating their laws, wherever the crime is done."

To Califa, his words sounded ominous. Not because of what he'd said of those guilty of an offense against the royal familywhich most certainly would include herbut because of what he wasn't saying. What would he do, if this chance failed, if they found his offenses too severe, and found it necessary to punish him?

Surely they wouldn't, she told herself. If he succeeded, if he found any survivors, and was able to bring them home, surely the councilor at the very least Dare would forgive him and welcome him. And perhaps, she thought, she could help make sure he succeeded.

When Larcos called for a vote this time, Dax nodded. To a man they repeated Qantar, until Califa thought the words "I fly with Dax" would ring in her ears forever. To an observer who didn't know, Dax would no doubt appear unmoved, but Califa saw the tightness of his jaw, the rigid straightness of his body. And she knew he hadn't expected this.

Purposely, it seemed to Califa, he left her for last. She was about to speak, to echo the others in their stirring pledge, when he spoke to her first.

"Since you are not by choice a member of this crew, if it is your wish, I will take you to wherever you wish and you may walk away."

Califa felt a chill start to creep up her spine. Why was he speaking like this, so formally? And after the night they'd spent together...True, the end result for him had been the same, but she had watched him carefully, and had come to believe that, despite the pain, he had spoken the truth about the pleasure.

"However," he said, still in that same, detached tone, "you may have information that would be helpful, such as knowledge of the location of the labor camps."

That was exactly what she had thought to offer him; she knew of three camps where it was rumoured Triotians were, or had been, held. But something in his tone made her hesitate. It must be simply that he was taking care before the crew not to treat her any differently, she decided. She would "I have a bargain for you. If you will share that knowledge as your part, if you will help where you can, I will swear to you that I will find someone capable of removing that collar."

Califa smothered a gasp. She felt as if she'd been slapped in the face, and more humiliated than she'd ever been in her days as a slave. He was bargaining with her. He felt he had to negotiate with her for the help she had been about to freely offer.

He was looking at her, his eyes reflecting a touch of puzzlement, as if he didn't understand what had stunned her so. "What do you say, Califa? Your freedom for the information I need?"

She had heard it said that when she was at her most furious, her eyes made glacial ice look warm. She guessed that was what they looked like now, as she raised them to his. Wariness flickered across Dax's face, and she knew he had seen the change.

"I say," she said with a precise enunciation that matched the frost in her eyes, "that you are a fool to bargain for what you could have had for free. But I will hold you to it, have no doubts."

She turned on her heel and strode out of the lounge, but not before she caught a last glimpse of Dax, who was looking very much like a man who has just realized the size of his mistake.

Dax was exhausted from battling the heavy gravity of Omega, but he had no choice but to keep going. The drugged guards would soon be waking, and they had to be long gone by then. He shifted his burden, and heard a softly voiced apology out of the dark from somewhere near his left ear.

"Sorry to be so much trouble."

"Never mind," he said.

She wasn't much trouble, really, this pale, broken woman who clung to his back. She'd been in the darkest of the dank, grimy cells, her ability to walk long lost to the torturous instruments of her captors.

She'd been barely recognizable as Triotian, her once golden hair now turned to silver, her golden skin turned sallow. But her eyes had given the truth to Califa's promise that there was at least one Triotian being held here; they were the deep, soft green of the Triotian forest.

Califa. She had been by his side every step of the way, as she was at this moment. She had spent hours forcing herself to remember any bits of hard information or rumor she'd ever heard about captive Triotians and where they were being held. She had given him detailed layouts of every labor camp she knew of, always with the caution that her information was old, coupled with the a.s.surance that the Coalition moved slowly to change.

While it had been Dax's idea to use Nelcar's potion to drug the guards, it had been Califa's for her to administer it, going blatantly into danger, flaunting instead of hiding the gold collar that marked her as slave, and her tempting body as well, masquerading as a new piece of Coalition property sent to provide food and drinkand perhaps morefor the guards. This was their third raid, and each time the result had been the same; the guards were so distracted they ate and drank what she brought without question.

His every instinct had screamed out against it when she had first suggested it.

"It is part of ourbargain, is it not?" she had said icily. "That I shall help where I can?"

He wondered if she would ever thaw. He'd known immediately that he'd said something very wrong that day in the lounge, when those eyes had gone icier than he'd ever seen them. Unexpectedly, it was Rina who'd made him really see what he'd done.

"Eos, Dax, you've been mating with her, haven't you?"

That blunt a.s.sessment from this girl he'd always thought of as the child he'd found made his face heat.

"I...er..."

"Do you think I'm blind?" Rina asked. "Anyone can see the crackle between you. Even Larcos noticed, and you know he's oblivious unless it's one of his blessed inventions. And Roxton said he'd never seen you look at a woman like that."

"Roxton," he muttered, as he had countless times before, "talks too much."

"So it's true, then. No wonder she was furious."

"No wonder?"

Rina let out a sigh of exasperation so quintessentially feminine it shook Dax's childlike image of her to the core. "Don't you get it? You've mated with her, yet you put securing her help on the same level as trading for coins. She's a slave, Dax. How do you think that made her feel?"

It had hit him then, hard. Had he been so long the skypirate then, that making sure that anyone who chose to accompany him on this fool's mission would be rewarded was the only way he could think of to entice them? He should have seen the truth after Qantar's moving, surprising speech; there were things other than profit that drove his crew, just as it was something other than profit that held them together. He hadn't had to bribe them, just to show them how what they would be doing would strike their mortal enemy.

He hadn't had to bribe Califa, either. And not just because it would be a blow against the system that had enslaved her. Because, G.o.d help her, she cared for him. She would have done it for that. But instead he had bargained with her, in a way trying to buy her as surely as if she'd been on the slave block at Ossuary. As Rina had said, no wonder she was furious. And the knowledge that even had she refused he would have done his best to see that she was freed from the collar that marked her as slave lay silent and unspokenand now, for her, unbelievablewithin him.

Now they had, at last, reached their destination. Dax stopped for a moment to catch his breath; a difficult task in the dense, Omegan air he wasn't used to breathing. Califa was a few steps behind, as ill-adapted as he was to this high-gravity world.

He should have taken Hurcon up on his offer, he thought. The short, muscular native of this planet would no doubt have found this an easy trek. But he would ask no one else to take this, the greatest of the risks on their fool's mission. And besides, he was still rankling over Hurcon's well-intentioned warning against taking Califa with him into the heart of Coalition strongholds; the Coalition wanted him so desperately now, she might well be able to buy her life back by turning him over to them on one of these raids. A few well-chosen words to the right Coalition officer, and Dax would be on his way to Legion Command in chains.

That the thought had occurred even to Hurcon, who had no idea that she could easily know exactly the right Coalition officer to make her deal with, was disconcerting. Dax didn't want to believe it, but she was so angry with him now...

He pushed away the thought. Gently, he lifted the fragile old woman into the c.o.c.kpit of the fighter. It would be a tight fit, he and Califa and the woman, but they needed the adaptability; it would take the fighter's wings, adjustable to a much greater surface area, to get through the soupy Omegan atmosphere. Califa ignored his proffered hand and climbed into the fighter without help, despite the p.r.o.nounced worsening of her limp on this world. Smothering a sigh he went after her. And as usual, the moment they were back aboard theEvening Star, she walked away from him without a word.

Nelcar was waiting for them, and took the old womanher name was Fleuren, she'd said on the flight up, which, unexpectedly, she seemed to take great delight inrather tenderly into his care. But not before she had held Dax back with a gentle touch of her thin hand.

"I never thought to see another flashbow warrior," she whispered.

Dax stared at her. How had she known?

"My grandfather was one," she explained as if he'd spoken. "I felt around him the same aura I feel now. And besides"her worn, weary face creased into a bright, dimpled grin that spoke of the beauty she must once have been"I saw the bow beneath your cloak."

For the first time since he'd begun this task, Dax laughed. She watched him, her gaze lingering on the dimple that creased his cheek.

"Ah, yes, my grandfather was a charming rogue as well. It seems to come with the bow."

Dax grinned, more from the change in this woman than her words; she was coming alive now, knowing she was a step closer to home. He'd warned her of the unlikelihood they'd make it, but she'd cared nothing for that. If she were to die, she'd said, at least it would be in freedom, trying to go home. It was a sentiment Dax understood very well.

"Perhaps," Fleuren said as Nelcar carefully took her from Dax, "you should use some of that charm on your woman. She seems a bit...vexed."

Your woman. The words struck some chord deep inside Dax; he tried to shake it off.

"It takes a woman of rare courage and love to stay by a man she's furious with, through such danger," Fleuren said.

"You are a very astute woman," Nelcar said as he settled her in the cradle of his arms. Then he gave Dax a sideways look. "Perhaps he'll get lucky and some of it will rub off,"

Fleuren laughed. "Oh, I'm going to like it here. Let's go, young man."

Nelcar laughed with her, and headed to the lounge that had been converted to a fairly efficient sick bay; Dax had foreseen that they would need it. Dax watched them go, then stood for a moment, rubbing at his gritty eyes.

"Vexed," he muttered, "isn't the word for it." Then he turned to secure the fighter. Three raids, and eight new pa.s.sengers. Only two had been Triotian, there were three now counting Fleuren, four with Rina, but when he'd found others in the isolated cells that seemed to be universally designated for the captives he sought, he couldn't bring himself to leave them behind. So their complement now included one more from Clarion, one from Zenox, a ragged Daxelian he'd ordered Hurcon to keep an eye on, and two Arellians.

It had been the Arellians they had found first, on the first raid. The Triotian who had been in the cell with them had been, they said, an old man who had died a week before.

"He was a tough old man," they'd said admiringly. "He never once gave in to them."

For a moment Dax had wondered if the entire mission would go like this, with them being just too late to save the few Triotians who had survived. It had been Califa who had made him look at the promising side.

"At least we know hewas here. My information was old, but still accurate."

"I never doubted that," he'd said, hoping to placate her somehow.

"Good," she'd said coolly. "Then there will be no argument about my having fulfilled my part of our bargain."

He'd winced inwardly, but said nothing, because just then one of the prisoners had come forward to the bars, staring at Califa.

"You're Arellian!" he exclaimed.

"Yes."

"Then you'll take us out of here?"

The urgent plea was more than Dax could resist. Besides, perhaps rescuing a couple of her fellow Arellians might warm Califa up a bit. So the twobrothers who had been coffee growers who had had the audacity to resist the Coalition seizure of their landshad been the first to board theEvening Star.

When they had discovered they had been set free by the famous skypirate, they regaled all with tales of his heroics, and stories of his generosity to victims of the Coalition, which they could, of course, personally attest to now. Dax had quickly vacated the lounge when that talk started. He was no hero, and what pittance he'd given others was nothing compared to what they'd lost.

Now, when he'd finished securing the fighter, he walked to his quarters. He'd slept little in the past week, and he knew he would be risking making mistakes out of fatigue if he didn't get some rest. Once inside, he verified with Roxton over the comlink that they were on their way to the next stop at full speed. Then he sat down on the edge of his bunk.

This mission had been hard on everyone. Speed was essential, and Larcos had spent many long hours coaxing extra power from the ship's engines, and Rina had mapped out some wild but effective courses that cut precious time off their travel. She'd used every available astral body with enough ma.s.s to inch up their speed, dipping into the gravitational field and then bouncing out, having picked up some of the body's own speed. He was d.a.m.ned proud of her. And of theEvening Star, for holding together through all this.

He guessed they would have one more chance to use the slave ruse. After that, it was too likely that the Coalition outposts would have been warned about a slave bearing wine, warnings that even theEvening Star's blasting through hypers.p.a.ce couldn't beat much longer. After the next run, then, they would have to come up with something else. He tried to think, but he felt as if he were still on Omega, fighting the heavy pull of the planet's ma.s.s. When at last he toppled over, he had already fallen asleep sitting up.

Califa crept down the dark byway, the familiarity of this place hammering at her from all sides. She sensed rather than heard Dax behind her; he moved with a silence that was amazing for a man his size. She remembered this outpost on Darvis II too well. She had postponed telling Dax of the rumor she'd heard in the slave quarters on Carelia, that there was at least one Triotian in the prison here, until last. She'd had no desire to return, and had thought, rather grimly, that if they were killed before reaching here, it would save her from it.

Besides, it made sense to come here last; of all the places she knew of that possibly held Triotians, this one was the closest to Trios itself.

She'd been surprised, when she'd brought it up at last, that Dax had remembered.

"That's where you were hurt, wasn't it?" "Yes."

"Then Qantar and I will handle it."

She'd been surprised at his words; he had to know, as she did, that her presence, her knowledge of this outpost, could make the difference between success and failure. She hadn't expected such sensitivity to her feelings, and in an odd way she resented it; it made it even more difficult to stay angry with him.

That was a task she was finding it hard to carry out, anyway. With every raid her admiration for him grew. He seemed to have a clever plan for every situation, from distracting the guards on Clarion with an explosion that rocked the entire outpost, to blasting the power plant and blacking out the city ofZenox until well after they'd escaped. They'd rescued three more Triotians, one of them so ill he was hanging on only so he could die on his homeworld, yet another from Clarion, and a Carelian, all almost without having to fire a shot, thanks to Dax.

Once aboard, the Carelian had startled them all by kneeling before Dax the moment she recognized him; Carelians were a fierce, proud breed, and knelt willingly to no one.

"Your name is sacred to my clan," she told the embarra.s.sed Dax. "It is my sister you gave the means to escape her captivity on our homeworld. She would wish you to know that all others held there escaped with her, as you requested."

While the others gaped, Roxton grinned. "Sothat's what you did with that code key!"

And Califa's admiration for him expanded yet again. And then there was the matter of his apology. He'd quickly realized he'd hurt her grievously. Her surprise at his apology was matched by her surprise that he understood just why she was so angry; she hadn't expected him to. But she wasn't quite ready to forgive him, not yet. That he'd thought he'd had to buy her help still dug at her painfully. But the realization that he'd a.s.sumed no one would help him on this chase without compensation because he felt he did not deserve such loyalty, also nibbled away at her anger, threatening to undermine it.