Pirate (LGBT - Sci-Fi - Romantic)

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Thirteen 

The Zeron was hovering several kays above Aykut, invisible to all observers thanks to the cloaking device. As soon as Nowak returned with the shuttle, bearing a few important last minute supplies, the Zeron would leave for Mayia. Everything else was prepared, ready for an immediate departure. 

Mars couldn't stop thinking about Conn or Connell, whatever his name was, which was annoying because it made it hard for him to concentrate on anything else. He simply couldn't leave things like that between them. He needed answers. 

Connell had just finished his afternoon meal when Mars returned, this time with the set of Mahjong pieces in his hand.  

"I thought we might as well have a game," he said resolutely when Connell looked up at him in surprise. "Unless you have other plans?" he added with a polite smile. He unfolded a chair which he had brought with him, setting it up on the opposite side of the small table. 

"Have you decided yet, what's going to happen to me?" Connell asked in bemusement as Mars set up the game. 

"You're coming with us to Mayia," he replied. "The nanobots should be out of range there." He made the first move, before adding with a straight face, "I haven't completely decided, but at this stage I'm favouring leaving you in a container somewhere with a wristband and asking Rice for 10,000 credits ransom." 

Connell snorted, Nick couldn't be serious! Could he? 

"Your move," Mars prodded. He proceeded to win the first game, to his smug satisfaction. "There, I knew you weren't as smart as you were pretending to be!" 

Connell looked sideways at him. He knew what Nick was trying to do, he was trying to get him to open up. To find out what he was like when he wasn't acting. 

"I'm twenty four years old and I was born in Mitra. I have a mother and a sister still living," he set up the pieces for the next game, aware that Nick had stopped still with surprise. "My father passed away when I was five, he was one of the first colonists to get the V298 virus and he died before they developed a cure. I joined the Patrol when I was eighteen, moved into undercover work a couple of years ago. How about you?" 

"I'm thirty, more or less," Mars offered. In actual fact he was twenty eight, but those extra two years were nobody's business but his. "No family, been a pirate pretty much for ten years." He couldn't help grinning. "And when I grow up, I'm going to be the governor of Bast." 

Connell couldn't stop his lip from twitching in response. "That'll be the day! Seriously, how much longer do you think you can keep going? What'll happen when they catch you?" 

"They won't catch me!" he boasted. "Well, not alive in any case. I'd rather die than go to prison." He shuddered at the thought, then smiled again, shaking off the momentary seriousness. "Did you know I joined the Patrol once too?" 

He then proceeded to entertain Connell with horror stories about his two weeks in the Patrol. If even half of them were true, Connell thought he might have discovered why the Intake sergeant, who'd been in the job for ten years, was so strict with the new recruits.  

As Connell listened to Mars, several pieces which had been nagging at his subconscious suddenly fell into place. "Nick?" he interrupted. "Can I ask you a serious question? How many men have you actually raped?"  

The pirate Captain dropped his eyes suddenly. "Ah. That would be telling. I never kiss and tell." 

"In fact, let me rephrase that. Have you ever raped anyone at all?" 

Mars stared back up at him, an arrested expression in his eyes. "What makes you say that?" 

"It just doesn't fit. Even leaving out my own experience, everything I've seen of you, heard from you ... it just doesn't fit." Connell held his gaze, increasingly sure he was right. "Seducing now, that's different. I can see you seducing men, even men who might never have expected to find themselves saying 'yes'. But violence? Force? I don't see it." 

"Just as well you aren't in a position to tell anyone else that theory," Mars smiled, sidestepping any admission that he'd hit the target. "You'd destroy my reputation overnight." 

"What did you do? Bribe someone to back you up?" 

Mars was silent for a long moment and Connell thought he wasn't going to answer. "What would you think, if you saw a man tied naked to my bed, who was alone with me, my prisoner, for two maybe three days and nights? Even if, when they were released, they swore black and blue that they hadn't been touched?" 

Connell spoke slowly as he worked it out. "I'd think they were lying, that they were too embarrassed to admit the truth." 

"Mind you, there have been a few who were quite happy to be touched by me, and not all of them were oms," Mars smirked. "It would probably surprise you to know just how many men I was able to persuade to try something a little 'adventurous', on the condition no-one would ever know they were willing of course." 

"Of course," agreed Connell rather dryly. 

"The very first man I took prisoner, not the Patrol officer Janssen, he was just a test run you might say, but Walsh, he was actually disappointed when I untied him and told him he could get dressed, that I wasn't going to touch him." Mars smiled at the memory. "We came to a rather satisfactory arrangement, for both of us. He got what he had fantasised about for years and I got a reputation!" 

The not so young man lay spreadeagled, face down on his bed. His wrists and ankles were tied to the bedposts again with four pieces of what had been his second favourite red sash. Mars' eyes devoured the way his muscles bunched and twisted beneath the smooth brown skin as he struggled against the bonds, the way his firm curved buttocks arched up invitingly towards him. Oh yes! Moments later he was covering that strong body with his own, thrusting hard and fast as the hoarse sounds of pleasure coming from the man beneath urged him on.  

Dai had been very vocal in his moment of release, Mars remembered, his scream must have been heard by half the ship. No-one had seemed to realise it was a scream of pleasure rather than pain, in any event it had sealed his reputation as a captor to be dreaded for years to come. 

He shifted unobtrusively on his chair, that was still one of his hottest memories ... He must have been more obvious than he'd thought, Connell was giving him a funny look. Time to turn the tables again. He smiled knowingly at the other man, "And exactly how many people do you think are going to believe that you and I haven't had rather rough sex?" 

Before he could reap the full enjoyment from the look of horrified dismay on Connell's face, the intruder alarm went off throughout the ship. What the-? 

In a second Mars was out through the door. He took a second to lock it behind him before disappearing towards the bridge, moving fast, his stunner already in his hand. How on Earth had anyone breached their security? With the cloak activated? 

Then he smelt the first whiff of nerve gas and realised in that split second before he passed out that someone had betrayed them, and the one person who he knew was innocent, was Connell.