Chapter 13
Chapter Thirteen
Samyra drifted through her home like a ghost for the next two days.
There were no new communications from the kidnappers.
The press besieged her compound, her social media and her coms network, trying to get a statement, hoping for more details.
It was being billed as a slave escape, or so Darryl told her on his periodic visits to her office to check on her state of wellbeing.
He was extremely solicitous, which she appreciated but his hovering began to get on her nerves.
She worked on packing a small duffle bag of items she wanted to take with her, understanding what remained behind would be lost to her.
At one point she was facing her wall of trophies, crowns and other reminders of her successes in the arena and she lifted a small golden pendant from its case and put the chain around her neck.
This had been her prize for winning her first arena combat experience so long ago and her father had been so proud.
She’d keep this one item to symbolize all the rest of it.
She folded a few of her favorite clothes and stacked them in the bag, as well as lingerie, travel size toiletries and other small necessities.
Her mother’s jewelry and the best pieces of her own went next, nestled in a pocket.
As she roamed the house, she took a few other small things that had meaning to her and data cubes with irreplaceable holos of her family.
It was depressing how little she wanted to take and how unconflicted she was about leaving the rest. That life was dead to her now and she resolved to think only of the future with Jamirr in the Five Systems.
There were a few things in her office she needed to take.
She spent the rest of her time with her animals, feeding them and grooming them.
She ran the ones which had learned to do ‘tricks’, which were actually natural behaviors performed on a cue, through their paces, to their enjoyment and hers.
The animals loved the treats and the praise.
Samyra wept when she considered having to leave Tazur behind, having raised her since she was a kitten, but she didn’t think Kyden expected her to show up at the flyer with a great cat in tow.
If Darryl thought any of her behavior was odd, he no doubt attributed it to the situation with Jamirr being missing.
Samyra was grateful Kyden was due to arrive so soon because she’d have had to revert to a more normal set of activities otherwise and act her way through all of it and she frankly wasn’t sure she could manage the charade.
When her handheld finally chimed late at night on the second day, Samyra startled and dropped the teacup she was holding, spilling tea on the rug. Ignoring the mess she answered the com.
“Is it time?” she asked breathlessly, adrenaline rising.
“Meet us at the tantorean enclosure. We’ll be there in five minutes,” Kyden said. “Don’t be seen.”
He closed the com link. She took a deep breath to calm her nerves and slid her feet into the sensible shoes she’d picked for this adventure.
Tonight she’d changed into casual clothes after dinner and waited in her room for the com so it only took her a minute to grab her duffle bag from the back of her spacious closet and sneak through the silent house to a side door off a little used corridor.
She disarmed the security features and slipped outside, closing the door as quietly as she could.
The compound was well lit at night of course and there were guards patrolling but Samyra knew where the blind spots were and what the sentry lines were since it was her home and they worked for her so she was able to avoid being detected.
The zoo was deserted, all the animals having been put into their night enclosures at sunset by the staff and Darryl. She flitted from shadow to shadow until she reached the tantorean corral and crossed into the wildlands adjoining her property.
A shadow blotted out the stars directly overhead and she realized Kyden had been hovering, waiting for her.
The flyer was hard to see even when she looked directly at it.
Descending to within a foot of the ground, the craft extended a ramp while hovering and she stepped onto it.
Kyden himself emerged from the hatch and took her hand to hurry her inside.
The craft was rising into the sky again before the door fully closed.
“Any trouble?” he asked, taking her duffle bag and setting it on a nearby seat.
“No one saw me,” she said.
“We’ve located Jamirr,” he told her. “He’s in a building at a compound on the other side of the city, maybe fifteen minutes flying time. How fast can you read?”
“What?” She was dazed by the question.
“Have a seat,” he said, handing her a folder of documents.
“I need these signed right away. There’s a contract to sell me your gladiators, which will get your House the funds to pay its bills for a short time and keep the servants employed to maintain the place.
I’m paying fair market value. My agents will arrive in the morning to get the men transferred and once they reach their new home, they’ll be freed.
I keep no slaves. There’s a cancellation of any and all authorizations and powers of agency you’ve ever issued.
There’s a document vesting your agency and authorization in the woman who’s going to come in and oversee the closure of the House and disposal of the assets. ”
“Who is Pandora Sheeran?” Samyra asked, finding the document in question.
“One of my mate-wife’s top troubleshooters. The woman is a ball buster and damn efficient. She’ll do the best she can for you on settling the debts and preserving anything she can.” Kyden directed her attention to a fourth document. “This is your letter of retirement.”
Dazed, Samyra focused on that one, reading it once quickly through a mist of tears and then again in more detail. She raised her eyes to Kyden. “It’s perfect. Hits every note and sounds just like me, or close enough. Who wrote it?”
“Elara, with a quick read through of the draft by Falayla our PR consultant. We’ll be releasing it in the morning as a House of Badari press release, to all the major media, assuming this extraction goes well, along with the other documents.
I’ll let you read but be ready to join the team when we land. ”
“You’re not going to fight me on the subject of my going along?” she asked in surprise. Nothing would keep her from being there to help rescue Jamirr but she’d expected fierce resistance from Kyden.
“You’re a fighter, maybe not specifically combat trained as we are but you have a cool head.” He pulled a blaster from his holster. “Can you shoot this?”
“I’m better with the sword but yes, I’ve trained with blasters.” She took it and checked it over quickly.
“When we go in stay close to me. We want a quick, clean in and out but if things go sideways we’ll do whatever it takes to bring Jamirr home safely.
” He stepped away to confer with Rennyr further down the aisle.
Talinn waited with Rennyr. They were all dressed in black combat fatigues, lethal and ready for battle.
She glanced at her own clothing, practical but not exactly combat ready and shrugged. She barely gave the documents a cursory examination before signing them. She was done being the Beast Lady, done trying to keep the House afloat and she trusted Kyden.
“Approaching the target,” said a voice from the cockpit. She recognized Benet as the speaker. “Sensors showing two people in there with Jamirr and a roving patrol of five on the grounds nearby. You’ll be deploying in five.”
She took the papers to Kyden. “Here.”
He checked the signatures and then scanned them with his handheld, keying up an interstellar com and transmitting them in a flash folder. “All right, time to concentrate on getting our brother out of trouble.”
“Where exactly are we, do we know?” Samyra asked as she followed the men to the stern.
“Over Tirion’s estate,” Rennyr told her.
“The bastard. I knew he had to be involved in this.”
“Up to his eyeballs,” Kyden confirmed. “We think he had help from inside your organization. Your man Darryl has a few suspicious contacts and credit flows lately but we haven’t finished the investigation yet. I will say he apparently has quite a gambling problem.”
Reeling from the information that Darryl, who she trusted implicitly for so many years, could have been corrupted by the mob, not to mention the news about his gambling, Samyra took a tighter grip on her blaster.
The flyer came to a stop, hovering, and the interior lights blinked off. The door slid open.
“Short antigrav descent,” Kyden said, wrapping his arm around her waist. “Hang on.”
She had no time to protest or be scared.
Her adrenaline was raging as it was, just as when she entered the arena, so Samyra was ready for anything.
The group descended about twenty feet to the pavement and she glanced up once, to find the flyer was still in stealth mode, not visible even to the naked eye. Sensors would never ‘see’ it.
The team landed in a tight group at the edge of a building, which was a garage by the smell of engines and fuel.
With Kyden at the point and herself directly on his six, Rennyr and Talinn behind them they made their way through the shadows to the next building, which stood next to the property’s force barrier.
It looked like a warehouse or a big storage unit to Samyra, not really appropriate for keeping a prisoner as deadly as Jamirr could be.