Burning Love [Flights of Fancy 1] (Siren Publishing Menage Amour) by Melodee Aaron

back against a column in the center of the room.
    As he slipped to the floor, he saw Harnlan charge into the room, but his chest exploded in flames, just as the grass in the garden had erupted. The alien collapsed, dropping the blaster, and rolled around trying to put out the fire that covered his torso. The heat made it hard for Spence to focus his eyes, but he saw the alien roll over the last of the flames, finally putting himself out, but then Harnlan lay very still.
    A voice spoke from the wall, and when he looked, he saw the image of a Hendri, but distorted by age and time, looking out at him from a video screen.
    "You fool. You could have simply accepted things and lived."
    Spence found some energy someplace, and he lurched to sit up and lean against the column. "Humans are curious. We want to know the truth."
    "Fools." The image on the screen changed, but the voice remained the same. "Now you will die." Again the view flickered to another face. "Even we will die. The Rangor will kill us, but not before we kill you."
    "That hasn't been decided yet." Spence smiled. "You may die yet, and well before the Rangor can come to kill you."
    He heard a soft moan, and looked around. Star was in a pile on the floor, her face fire-red and dry as desert sand. She looked at him with eyes that wouldn't focus, but she moved her lips. He read, 'I love you, too.'
    As he watched her dying, Spence realized he couldn't save her, but he had to try anyway.
    Using reflexes sharpened over more than a century of combat and muscles honed to perfection by countless exercises and real battles, he made one, smooth motion. Lightening fast, and without looking away from Star, he snatched the knife from its sheath on his hip and threw it directly at the speaker above and to the right of the view screen.
     
    * * * *
     
    Star couldn't concentrate, what with her body feeling like it was on fire as she'd seen Harnlan burst into flames. Somehow, though, she hung on to consciousness and had enough sense to wonder where Krell was.
    This is , she thought, how it all ends. Spence was right and wrong; right to be suspicious of the Hendri, and wrong for waiting till now to tell me how he feels about me.
    Maybe it was only her poor brain, addled once by a blow to the head and now battered by the searing heat, but she thought it suddenly seemed cooler. Her rattled neurological status may also have caused her to see Spence's motion flow like quicksilver as he threw his knife.
    The elder on the screen shrieked in terror as the knife reached the wall, throwing his slender hands over his face just before the knife buried itself in the speaker, sparks showering in the shimmering heat to come to rest on the floor, skittering about like living things as they slowly faded and died.
    As if he had all the time in the world, Krell stepped calmly into the room and picked up the blaster Harnlan had dropped as he burned. He pointed the gun at the screen, and she thought she saw a small smile play over his lips.
    "You will not harm this woman or her people." Krell pressed the trigger.
    The wall seemed unchanged for a moment, and Star wondered if the heat might have damaged the weapon. Then, in the slow motion some movie directors are so fond of, the wall slumped; it seemed to slowly dissolve, fading away to dust that ran to the floor.
    The sound from the remaining speaker came as cacophony of screams, the elders all speaking at the same time, but having only one voice to speak with. Without the images provided by the screen, she couldn't tell which of the elders spoke, but the sound was of all of them screaming at the same time.
    Behind the screen, Star saw a maze of electronics. It looked very much like the so-called brain core of Daedalus she was allowed to tour before they left the Jupiter Yards, consoles and displays everywhere showing flashing patterns of lights that must mean something beyond her knowledge.
    Still very calm, Krell nodded toward the room. "Major, these are