The Mandala Maneuver Read online

  After taking a sip of her own champagne, she asked, “Your own people have done nothing?”

  “Ambassador Trazhar has passed the information on to the Assembly on Zhoraan. At this point I can only wait to see what their reaction will be.”

  “Ah, and I thought you two would have had enough of each other on Mandala,” said Ambassador Castillo as he approached them, a champagne glass clutched in his left hand.

  “We just wanted to see how we both were doing,” Alexa said smoothly. “I haven’t had much opportunity for the past few days.”

  “True, I have been keeping her busy,” Castillo remarked.

  “Which is as it should be,” Lirzhan said, making sure his voice was formal and polite. Something about the man seemed to set him on edge, but perhaps that was merely resentment for his interruption. He turned toward Alexa. “Ambassador Craig, I am glad to see you well.” A bow then as he took her hand, and slipped the tiny data bead he held into her palm.

  Her fingers closed around it at once, and she said, as if nothing untoward had occurred, “And you, too, Ambassador Lirzhan.” She turned toward Castillo. “I suppose I need to make the rounds.”

  “It would be the hospitable thing. Here, let me introduce you to Ambassador Delas, from Eridani.”

  They wandered off, Alexa smiling and nodding at the various persons of importance to whom she was introduced. But because he was watching her closely, Lirzhan saw her slip the data bead into the side pocket of her tunic before she extended her hand to the Eridani ambassador.

  It would have to do.

  All though the reception Alexa wished she could excuse herself so she could go back to her rooms and crack open the data bead Lirzhan had given her. She knew that was impossible, however, so she put on her public face and greeted everyone with equal courtesy, even the scowling fierce-browed members of the Stacian delegation. Here they were supposed to be on neutral ground, but she could tell they were having a difficult time pretending to act even barely social.

  Well, she wasn’t going to worry about the Stacians now. She had no reason at the moment to be interacting with them directly, so they could be as rude as they liked. After all, she’d experienced far worse than rudeness over the past week.

  What worried her more was that she’d heard no whisper of reprisals, no sense that Melinda Ono and her cohorts were going to retaliate for the violation of their facility and its secrets. Alexa tried to convince herself that there was no real need to — after all, she still didn’t even know what they were hiding. Lirzhan obviously did, but he’d had no chance to speak to her in private. And when they would gain that privacy, she had no idea. Targus Station was a large facility, with diplomatic personnel numbering around one hundred and three times that many support and operations staff, but even so it was a very confined space, one with little opportunity for solitude.

  Eventually, though, the evening ended, and she walked with Chima back to her apartment, since Chima’s own rooms were just down the corridor. Alexa reflected that maybe she shouldn’t have had that second glass of champagne, as she was now…well, not even tipsy, really, but…elevated. Feeling just barely surreal. Perhaps it was the slightly higher oxygen content of the air on the station, combined with the alcohol.

  “I think the Ambassador will be all right with you coming in at 0900 tomorrow instead of eight,” Chima said with a wink.

  “Oh, no, I’ll be fine — ”

  “See you at nine, then.” She grinned and headed off down the corridor, the silk of her long side-slit gown swishing slightly. No, Alexa had definitely not been the only one to dress up for the reception.

  She let herself into the apartment, poured herself a cold glass of water, and then fished the data bead — which was really shaped more like a capsule — out of her pocket. The beads were designed as one-use items for transmission of sensitive information, and she didn’t want to wait any longer to see why Lirzhan had given it to her.

  After taking a sip of water, she set down her glass and grasped both ends of the bead, twisting them in opposite directions from one another. Immediately a tiny holographic projection appeared a few inches from her face, showing a schematic of…what? A series of lines that zigged this way and that. She blinked, regretting that second glass of champagne more than ever.

  As she squinted at it, she realized what he had sent her was a map — a map that showed a circuitous route through the service corridors of the station and ended up…well, she wasn’t sure where it ended up, but clearly it must be someplace where they could meet in private. And that was good enough for her.

  She dropped the two pieces of the bead in the trash compactor, then went to her wardrobe and grabbed the dark gray drape that Chima had included with the rest of the new clothes. The drape served well enough to cover most of the gleaming dark turquoise tunic and pants Alexa wore, and she hoped it would make her less conspicuous.

  Then she slipped out of her apartment, going the opposite direction from where Chima had headed, and found a service lift, one probably used by the station’s maintenance staff. She pushed the button, glad that this elevator didn’t need a key card or a code of some sort to operate it. The map Lirzhan had sent her indicated she should go down three levels, so she selected that floor and waited, hoping the service staff would be all tucked safely in their beds at this hour of the station’s standard rotation.

  The lift stopped at the designated floor, its doors sliding open. Alexa peered out and looked in either direction, making sure the corridor was empty. Yes, the entire station was under some sort of surveillance, excluding the private rooms of the delegations and the staff, but she thought there was probably at least a fifty-percent chance that whoever was watching the surveillance feeds was really not paying much attention. After all, there hadn’t been an incident on Targus Station in the sixty years since it was built.

  So she slipped down the corridor, found a doorway into an actual stairwell, and hurried down the steps to the next level. After opening the door there, she went on into another hallway, turned left, and found herself at a dead end with yet another door, this one guarded by a key card reader.

  Great, Lirzhan — so what do you expect me to do now?

  Feeling slightly foolish, she raised her hand and knocked. The door opened at once, and he pulled her inside, shutting the door just as quickly as he’d opened it.

  “What on — ” she began, but she didn’t get any further than that, as he drew her to him and kissed her, his mouth urgent on hers, as if he needed her kiss in order to breathe.

  It had to be the residual effects of the champagne that made her so dizzy. She wasn’t sure she wanted to admit how his touch made her head swim, how the entire universe seemed to swirl around the two of them when they embraced.

  Finally, though, he moved away from her. She blinked, forcing herself to focus on her surroundings. This was no forgotten storage chamber or access corridor. This had to be his apartment.

  The walls were a soft shade halfway between blue and green, the furniture upholstered in similar tones, only deeper. Where Ambassador Castillo’s office had a few carefully placed plants, here they seemed to be everywhere, falling from cunning little metal sconce planters on the walls, draping themselves over pedestals, proud and upright on the small round dining table and the lower one that fronted the sofa. In the corner a softly lit fountain burbled away.

  “You brought me to your apartment?” she asked at last. “Isn’t that…dangerous?”

  “We do not allow surveillance in our section here, so once you were past the service corridors, you were safe enough,” Lirzhan replied. “I thought it the safest place for us to talk.”

  Talk? She’d halfway hoped he had better things in mind. She could keep denying it if she wanted to, but after this last kiss it was pretty clear that her body wanted him, even if her brain still had a few reservations.

  “All right,” she said, not bothering to hide her reluctance. After all, he could probably read it in her emot
ions, even if she kept her tone as neutral as the one she used at the negotiating table.

  In response he pushed back his hood and shot her a wicked smile. “Well, perhaps not only talk. We shall see. But please — sit down.”

  He indicated the sofa, and she took a seat there. A pitcher of water and two glasses already sat on the polished stone table, so clearly he had been confident in her ability to follow the directions he had given her. He poured some water for her before sitting down himself.

  Although they had spent so much time together, had slept in one another’s arms and shared a few scorching kisses, there seemed to be something very intimate about sitting next to him like this, of having him less than a foot away, close enough she could feel the warmth of his body, sense how very solid and real he was…so different from the wraith-like appearance he presented while wearing his robes. Incongruously, her current position reminded her of being back in school, of making out on the couch with one of the boys from her advanced composition class, and how she had gotten in so much trouble when her foster mother came home from work early and caught her.

  She forced her mind back to the present, and away from such dangerous topics. “All right,” she said. “Are you finally going to tell me what you saw on Mandala?”

  “Yes.” Something around his eyes seemed to tighten. In that marvelously supple scaled skin, she could see no lines, no signs of age, but he did look suddenly older, and tired. She reached out and wrapped her fingers around his, gave them a small squeeze, giving him the encouragement to go on. “Alexa, it was someone on that facility who pulled us out of subspace. They are mining those blue crystals — you know, the ones we saw in the caves.”

  Somehow she managed to nod. She could see those crystals again in her mind’s eye, so delicate, so lovely. How could something that beautiful be used to do something so dangerous…so terrible?

  He continued, elegant planes of his face still and calm, but his jade-colored eyes cloudy and troubled. “I do not know how they are doing it, precisely, but somehow they’ve learned how to refine the crystals and use them in a device that can disrupt a ship’s subspace passage. I don’t suppose I need to tell you what the ramifications of such research might be.”

  No, he didn’t need to tell her. Claims over planets might be fought in the real world, or merely around bargaining tables, but space itself — and subspace, that odd non-reality which allowed faster-than-light travel — was sacrosanct. Any planetary authority giving itself such an advantage over all the other worlds and their governments was in effect declaring open season on all such shipping. And by doing so, the Gaian Consortium was only a step or two away from causing an intergalactic conflict so cataclysmic Alexa could barely begin to imagine its effects.

  “God damn them!” she burst out, and pushed herself to her feet.

  Lirzhan watched her carefully, but did not attempt to rise as well.

  Anger coursed through her, destroying the afterglow of the kiss, of the champagne, of the party’s pleasantries and laughter. What the hell had they been thinking? Surely those involved in the research had to know where such a thing might lead, once word of it got out. The Eridani Hegemony, the Stacian Federation, the Zhore Assembly — none of them could allow Gaia to have sole ownership of such technology. They would fight to take it away, even the peaceful Zhore.

  They would have no other choice.

  “No wonder Melinda Ono and her gang wanted us dead,” Alexa said at last.

  Finally Lirzhan rose to his feet. “Yes, it is a secret they thought was worth killing for. But I cannot help but notice that there have been no further attempts.”

  “No, they’re biding their time. My report was harmless, because I didn’t know what they were up to. And I was damn careful not to say anything too incriminating. But you” — she stared up into his eyes — “you said you told your own people?”

  “Of course,” he replied. “I had no choice but to tell them the truth of the matter. I have heard nothing since, however. No doubt they are examining the situation from every angle before filing a formal complaint, because of course once they do that, there is no going back. The secret will be out.”

  “And the rest of the galaxy will be clamoring for Gaia’s blood,” she finished heavily. “Lirzhan, what should we do?”

  “As we have done,” he told her, and stepped closer. He paused then, as if attempting to measure whether she would appreciate the overture or not. “We wait, and we see what happens.”

  Alexa stood very still, sensing that she paused on a knife edge now as never before. Maybe it would be better if she left now, before anything else between them could change. She could feel the tension in his lean body — his worry over what their discovery might mean for the galaxy as a whole. Yes, that was there, but it was more.

  They were alone in his apartment. No one had seen her come here. He was waiting to see what she would do, whether she would duck away once more.

  Or whether she would do what her heart had been trying to tell her for several days now.

  And she was so very, very tired of being logical and practical.

  She went to him then, let him wrap his arms around her, felt his lips brush against her hair, then move lower, sliding over her temple and down her cheek, under her jaw, and down the line of her neck, kisses slipping over her collarbone and onto the cool exposed skin of her chest in the low-cut tunic she wore. Heat was building in her, and she knew this was what she wanted, his touch on her, everywhere, just a few minutes or hours of necessary oblivion before the galaxy came crashing in on them once again.

  Maybe she said his name. Maybe it didn’t matter, because he could tell what she was feeling. He would know what she wanted before she did. Those arms tightened around her, lifting her up and carrying her out of the living room and into his sleeping chamber, where they fell onto the bed, mouths meeting in a desperate flare of heat, her hands pulling the heavy robes away from his body, pushing them onto the floor, then finding the little tabs that held his tunic closed and pulling that away as well. Such a marvelous flicker of those tiny scales all over his muscular torso as they caught the light from yet another fountain trickling away in a corner of the room.

  His hands were busy, too, finding the zipper at the back of her tunic and pulling it down, then lifting the garment over her head and tossing it away, perhaps to land on the pile of robes already lying on the floor. Those long, elegant fingers moved over her bare torso, found the clasp to her bra and undid it, then drew it away.

  He let out a low, ragged gasp. “Alexa, you are so beautiful….”

  She wanted to tell him the same thing, but the words were startled out of her as he lowered his head, mouth closing on her nipple, tongue slowly moving over it. A shocked little cry escaped her lips, and then she buried her hands in his long slick hair, felt it cascade over her skin as she held him against her, letting him suckle on her, even as the heat built between her legs.

  This was good, but she wanted more. More from him…more of him. She reached down and found the fastener for the trousers he wore and unlatched it, then pushed them down over his hips. His underwear was simply a wrap around his body, covering his privates, and was easy enough to pull away. Tiny shimmering scales there, too, and she let out a moan at the mere thought of him inside her, moving against her flesh.

  He must have caught the notion from her, because the next thing she knew he had undone the button and zipper on her own pants, was yanking them down, taking her underwear with them. His hands were on her, moving between her legs, touching, stroking. She was so ready for him. Had she ever been this wet, this aroused? She didn’t know, because it seemed as if thinking of anyone else besides Lirzhan was a foolish exercise. In this moment, he was everything.

  Although she had been expecting him to push into her, instead he moved lower, his breath hot against her belly, against her mound. And then he was tasting her, tongue sliding over her with insidious grace, the heat within her building to impossible levels.
His long, slick hair brushed against the insides of her thighs, and that was enough to drive her over the edge, to have the pulsing need finally explode outward, sending shockwaves along every nerve ending, along every muscle and vein.

  She bit back her scream, knowing that there must be other Zhore on either side of Lirzhan’s apartment. Or could they sense that rush of ecstasy as it raced away from her like ripples away from a stone thrown into a pool?

  “It is all right,” he murmured, his breath hot against her flesh. “All our chambers are specially muffled, to avoid having our emotions intrude upon one another.”

  If only he’d told her that a few seconds earlier. “All right,” she said, her voice hoarse, “then I suppose it won’t matter if I do this.”

  And she pushed herself up to a sitting position, then turned so she could grasp him in her hand, feel the tiny delicate scales against her skin as she worked her fingers up and down his shaft. He moaned then, slipping down against the pillows, letting her touch him, fingertips moving their way down to the small patch of sleek black hair at his base, going lower to fondle him, seeing how much he was built like any other man.

  But would he taste like one?

  She took him into her mouth then, letting her tongue slide over him, tiny scales tickling against her taste buds. His skin had a clean, almost metallic taste, subtle, not musky like the other men she’d been with.

  “Alexa.” His voice was rough as well, so different from the elegant, smooth tones she’d grown accustomed to. “If you keep doing that — ”

  Perhaps some other time she’d bring him to a climax this way, would truly taste all of him, but that wasn’t what she wanted right now. No, she wanted him in her, just as she’d imagined a few minutes ago. So she lifted her mouth from him, slowly, with one last tantalizing swipe of her tongue across his tip before she got up on her knees and then sank onto him, letting him fill her, letting the exquisite sensations of that delicately scaled shaft inside her tremble their way along every nerve ending.