Liandra laughed, “I doubt that will be a problem. I’d love to clue you in, just to see the destroyed look on your face, but we don’t really have time. Do we.”

  She cut the signal, even as his mind spun in circles at what all that implied. Sure, the mercenaries should’ve expected they’d be coming eventually, but Liandra’s smirking words had implied they had much better intelligence on their attack coming now than just common sense. He couldn’t imagine the arrogant bitch sitting on her duff for weeks waiting for him to arrive, for instance.

  Then the firing started.

  “Call a retreat, I want all ships retreating, and if they follow scatter. We can’t win this, not anymore, and we’ll need two more fleets to take on Wilde and Lincoln.”

  The king wouldn’t be happy, but he wasn’t going to throw thousands of lives away, and the thirty-two surviving ships. If the enemy pursued them, they’d be lucky to escape with half the fleets as it was.

  Daisy’s voice was alarmed, “Get to engineering, now!”

  He froze for a split second, then was on his feet and running, while his mind wondered just what the fuck was happening now.

  The tableau he ran into made no sense whatsoever. Well, nothing had made any sense at all since the shit hit the fan, so why start now?

  Daisy had activated the level ten forcefield around the large fusion reactor, and Breanne was attacking it with force magic.

  “Breanne!”

  She smirked as she stopped the spell, and turned to him.

  He felt her magic build and raised a shield of his own, but her power hit him like a runaway cargo ship, ripped through his shields, and sent him flying into the wall.

  He felt like his head was split open, and his bones were broken in many places. He barely had the magic to keep himself conscious and alive, much less any to fight her with. He started to slowly and painfully build a teleport spell, but it’d take time if he didn’t want her to notice. He had to keep her talking.

  She snorted, “Fucking idiot, always being the damned hero. It was a shame I had to sacrifice the space stations, but I knew you’d react the way you did. Too immature by half, and easy to manipulate. What kind of idiot exhausts their magic at the beginning of a battle? You fell for my plan easily, and now you’re too weak to fight me.

  “I wished you’d have been the same shallow man of the past as well, it would’ve been easier and far more pleasant if you’d just fucked me.”

  It hit him then, Breanne’s specialties were mind magic and universal forces. Two things he wasn’t so good at, manipulating gravity and kinetic energy, among others, as well as the mind stuff.

  “You betrayed us all, you’d have mind controlled me, and had me blow up my own ship. What, did you fuck some engineers?”

  He was really glad he hadn’t fucked her at that point, but he also felt like an idiot. He had been showing off, taking on three space stations on his own. Sure, it would’ve been worth it, if not for all the reversals that had happened it’d saved a lot of lives. But his intentions didn’t matter.

  He’d just led two fleets to their destruction.

  She shook her head, “Weak and powerless men that fell under my spell’s thrall easily, and they created an overload in the reactors for me. You however, I didn’t think I could easily overpower. I planned to hit you with a mind spell while you came in me, and your mental defenses were weak. Still, it all worked out, you’re helpless in my grip, and about to die.”

  “Why?”

  She shrugged, “The king is a despot and his regime corrupt and falling apart around him. Your blind obedience and faith in him is a joke. You always were rather too grateful to them for lifting you out of poverty and punishing your father. I saw an… opportunity.”

  He shook his head, “Why aid pirates and corrupt mercenaries?”

  She snorted, “I assume you’re talking about Megan Wilde?”

  He nodded.

  She shrugged, “I guess I can tell you, just for my amusement. In truth, her name is Megan Wilde, but she is no mere mercenary. She is Vice Admiral Megan Wilde, of the Leshien Confederacy, and destroying these two fleets and you, is just the first step in the war. As were the raids and pirate attacks. Her mission was to help soften up the kingdom in a way that wouldn’t be traced to the confederacy, and she hasn’t been the only agent of the confederacy that’s been busy lately. The kingdom you love so and serve is doomed. Half the aristocracy is already in the confederacy’s pockets with just a few bribes and a few well-placed threats of blackmail.”

  He grunted, “And you judge me? What was it for you when you threw your honor away? Money, or blackmail?”

  She laughed, “Opportunity. You see, I caught their spy in our courts, and when I learned just how close the kingdom was to being doomed, I decided to change to the winning side. A logical step, one to preserve my life and even gain in standing. What you call honor, I call false pride and stupidity. There is only power and survival, and I will survive.

  “Even as we speak the traitors in the palace prepare to kill the royal family, and the last loyal knight. The kingdom is about to break out in civil war, and the winner will be happily bowing down to the Confederacy and serve as a regional governor instead of a king. The kingdom will fall, and this is the only battle where they’ll actually be fighting for it. If a slaughter can be considered fighting.”

  He frowned, “Five out of seven of us, will betray the king?”

  That didn’t sound right, he wasn’t that naïve, and he knew that couldn’t be true.

  She smirked, “Nope, I was only able to seduce four of the other five, their will and beliefs are now mine. Unfortunately, Christa is straight, and doesn’t play with the girls.”

  Daisy started to read numbers into his head through his comms implant, and he started to finish up the teleport spell.

  At that moment the rest of the crew rushed into engineering, Leanne and Gia blasting her with plasma, while both Allison and Riesa hit her shield hard with a wizard spell device that shot a plume of fire.

  Breanne was powerful, and it would hardly phase her, but it did distract her for a pivotal moment, and she wasn’t prepared to counter his spell.

  The teleport spell gathered the five of them up, and it sent them to god knows where. He hadn’t known what coordinates Daisy had given him, just trusted that it would be a good place to be.

  They appeared in an empty bay, and he cried out as he fell to the floor. The pressure of Breanne’s spell holding him to the wall had been helping in a way. He felt immediate relief however, as Gia moved to him and applied a device to stabilize him and steal the pain, as she got to work on fixing his broken and crushed bones.

  “Where are we?”

  Daisy said, “You’re on a frigate, the Bastian. I love you son. I’m sorry our time is over. I’m proud of you.”

  He lifted his head slightly as his eyes widened, and the open channel was cut off.

  That last shock hit him hard, on top of everything else, and his eyes filled with tears. The rage was… potent, and it took all of his control not to strike out with what power he had left. He’d recover, it wouldn’t even take that long to recoup his magic, but not if he wasted it or started to leak.

  Daisy was gone, and it was so hard to breathe.

  Leanne said sadly, “It was her plan, and the only way. We all wanted to rush in to save you, but she wouldn’t let us, said it would be suicide. Breanne sucks at teleporting from what Daisy said. As soon as we were gone, she started the reactor overload to take out the traitorous bitch, and from what Daisy said it took Breanne almost thirty seconds to teleport, when it only takes you about two.”

  He nodded in agreement, as the warmth of Gia’s healing spells accelerated his healing and patched him up. He really needed a rest, but the fleet was being torn apart, and he needed to get to the bridge.

  Breanne was dead too, but he felt no satisfaction in that. She’d destroyed way too much, before she was stopped.

  “Bridge, help me stand.”

  Gia scowled, “You need sickbay.”

  He shrugged, “I need to get us out of here, and get started for home. It’s going to suck leaving the fleet behind to escape on their own. I doubt half of them will make it, but the royal family takes precedence, as does saving Christa. No arguments, you can heal me anywhere.”

  They started for the bridge.

  Allison asked, “What about the other knights, can’t you deprogram them?”

  He shook his head, “They weren’t conditioned like a sex slave, where we can bring their true personalities back. What she did erased the honorable and moral people they were, and she made them like her. They’re enemies now, heartless and coldly calculating opportunists like Breanne. The people they used to be are dead already. That bitch killed them.

  “It’s an illegal spell for just that reason. A good person could cast the same spell, and give them their conscience and morals instead, but that would make them like that person. Not like their old selves. It’s forbidden.”

  He also understood Liandra’s smirking confidence now too, and it wasn’t just because she was entitled, cruel, and crazy. There was no way the kingdom would send more fleets to take out Lincoln, or even Wilde. Not if the kingdom was really on the verge of civil war, rebellion, and losing the royal family to traitors, programmed or otherwise. All with the confederacy poised to move in and reap the rewards, take out the last bit of resistance, if there was any left. The king and his family would need all the loyal warships he could muster to put down the insurrection and then protect their planets from invaders.

  But there would be an accounting, when the kingdom got its feet back under them. He wasn’t sure how long it would take, but Liandra and Wilde would pay.

  He just hoped he wasn’t too late, or his nascent plans overly naïve.

  Goddess, he hoped Daniella was okay, just the thought of her being hurt made him feel like his chest was being squeezed hard and made his heart pound in a panic. It was even worse on top of the wounds his heart already bore for Daisy, and the hundreds who must’ve already died in the battle.

  His fault.

  “Thanks for the rescue,” he croaked.

  Leanne said, “I love you, sir.”

  He looked at her in surprise, and she smiled tremulously, “I was waiting to tell you, but I thought you needed to hear it.”

  He smiled, “You’re a wonder, gorgeous.”

  It didn’t lighten his heart one iota, but it was comfort of sorts.

  Allison said, “I love your cock, sir, and how you know how to use it.”

  He snorted. It was completely inappropriate, but it helped too. The humor an obvious shield, against the tragedy of the moment.

  Fuck, he couldn’t believe Daisy was dead, and she took their enemy with her so he couldn’t even get vengeance.

  His anger and resentment for how he was raised had stopped him from telling her about all the good things. The positive things between them, which were legion. Now he’d never have the chance.

  Between that, the fleet, his fear for Daniella’s life, not to mention mourning for the four knights who he’d probably have to finish off as enemies. It was all too much, yet he had no choice but to go on, and if Daisy had taught him one thing, it was how to push it all down, suppress it, and complete the mission. He could break down later.

  The bridge door opened, and Captain Grant looked his way in shock as two of his four beauties carried him inside the room.

  “I’m sorry captain, you’re really going to hate my orders. Especially since I’m the one that got us all in this mess. But we have to move. Status?”

  Grant frowned, “We’re escorting out two destroyers and six corvettes. The fleet split apart into small groups, and we’re barely holding our own, but I believe we’ll make the FTL line and escape. The other groups aren’t doing so well.”

  Of course, Daisy had sent him to the ship with the best chance of escaping the battle. Another wave of loss hit him, and he took a seat gingerly as Gia continued to pour healing magic into him.

  Twelve ships, out of thirty-six, would survive this fiasco. And for what? To return to a kingdom being ripped apart from the inside while it was threatened from without. It was all the Confederacy’s fault, they’d found and planted seeds in the corrupt of the kingdom, and they were about to bear that fruit.

  He wondered if the king was already aware. It was possible, the king didn’t tell his knights everything, and he’d never been the spy type.

  He also got the captain’s point, if the frigate left the party now, then the destroyers and corvettes would die too, and the ship he was on would be the only one to escape.

  He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t trade almost a thousand lives just to get to the royal family two and a half hours sooner. If things were that dire, he probably couldn’t fix it anyway. He wouldn’t throw away his morals and his oaths just to save a doomed royal family, but he would save them if he could.

  He just wasn’t willing to kill a thousand people to do it.

  He closed his eyes, and thought, “Hold on Daniella, I’m coming.”

  “Give me ten, captain, and we’ll clear the chasers out. We need to head straight for Bright Star. The king… will need to know the situation devolved, and other information that you aren’t cleared to know. Information that I don’t feel will be secure enough in our FTL network.”

  The captain saluted, “Yes, sir. Do you know what happened?”

  He nodded, “Breanna was a traitor, and a collaborator with the Confederacy who is behind all of this. The piracy, raids, all of it, to weaken the kingdom, and it worked too damned well given our losses. She informed the enemy of our plan, numbers, and time of attack. She also destroyed our flagships through magical subversion. She’s already paid with her life.”

  The captain swallowed, “Yes, sir,” and got quiet as he read between lines. The kingdom didn’t put stupid men or women in charge of running a frigate.

  He also learned something new about himself.

  He really hated losing, it was his first major loss, and he hadn’t even seen it coming. Each man’s death felt like a spike in his heart, and the anguish of Daisy was testing his focus and control.

  It seemed like the more Gia healed him, and the stronger he got, the more it hurt. He knew one thing, if he was too late, then the traitors on Bright Star better run and hide. He had no ship, but he still had a kick ass crew who were also his lovers. With their strength he was truly a force to be reckoned with.

  He’d just have to make sure he wasn’t caught with his pants down again. That wasn’t Leanne’s fault, she hadn’t spent nearly enough time at court and the palace to start picking apart the intrigue, much less discover the existence of traitors.

  Hold on, Daniella. He’d be there soon, but four days in a space fold would really test his patience.

  “That’s enough time, I think. I feel strong enough. Let’s join again, and we’ll give those chasing ships a really bad day.”

  Riesa and Allison said, “Yes, sir,” the latter a little too breathily for his comfort, given they were on a bridge filled with other people.

  Well, his Allison was worth the trials, and for far more than her insatiable and aggressively wild talents in bed.

  Epilogue

  Princess Daniella frowned as she looked through the spy reports. Her personal network wasn’t very large yet, she’d only been developing those contacts for two years now. Her father’s network was much larger, but she’d learned long ago not to depend on others for a good picture of what was going on, least of all her father.

  She wasn’t sure if the king kept her in the dark to coddle her, or to prevent her from getting good picture of things to make her confident enough to try to… inherit early by speeding up his death. Not something she’d ever do, she didn’t think, but their relationship had been strained of late because of her father’s paranoia. She still loved him, but she didn’t really like him anymore, if that made sense.

  She mainly used her spies to keep an eye on the peers and the knights. She did care about the people, but a realistic view of their commoners’ lives wasn’t hard to see. The various dukes ruling their worlds were another matter, if she took their reports at face value then she’d believe the other kingdom worlds were nothing short of paradise.

  The barons could be even worse, as they were the ones that actually did all the work and ran the fatted bureaucracy that kept track of everything. She’d come to accept a certain level of graft and corruption were inevitable, despite her young years she was not naïve, but there were limits to her self-imposed blindness.

  Ironically, the lowest in authority among the peerage were the most powerful magically speaking, if not temporally with authority under the crown. Although they did enjoy a rank that put them over any military unit, be it ships or ground troops, save the royal guards of the palace. The seven Celestial Knights were the only magic users in the kingdom that could match the royal family. If anyone was going to attempt a coup and replace the royal family, she figured it’d be them.

  She kept a close eye on them, which was why she was so disturbed. Breanne had gone missing, and she was almost positive father hadn’t put her on a secret off-book mission of his own. Four other of the knights had started to act… differently. New habits, and not all of them even close to upstanding, and there were reports of abuse of power which had never taken place before.

  Save Dacen and Christabel, it was like they’d all had personality transplants, and not for the better.

  If that wasn’t enough to alarm her, and it was, the seneschal had started to increase the royal guard numbers and there were an unusual number of barons in palace residence, along will all their guards who were being assigned to barracks on the castle grounds.

  She wondered if she was being paranoid, but that seemed a lot like preparing for an insurrection. Lots of guards, almost more than the royal guards which secured the palace and royal apartments, and who knew if some of those newer additions were even loyal? That sounded crazy. No number of guards could overwhelm the five knights currently inside the palace.