Athena's Ashes (20 page)

Its burnt-sugar scent mingled with the copper stench of blood. It clogged Renna’s throat and made her stomach convulse. And then she saw them.

Six of Wall’s men hung from the steel rafters by their ankles.

Blood dripped from where their heads used to be, and the floor beneath their bodies was a crimson lake that had already started to coagulate.

Acid burned her throat, and Renna swallowed it back as she turned away from the grisly scene. Viktis and Finn had already moved farther into the room, their guns at the ready.

Renna pulled her shirt over her nose and followed them toward the other end of the room where a wall of flickering holo monitors loomed.

As they cleared the last stack of destroyed crates, Finn flung out his arm. “Stay back.” His voice went hoarse, and dread curled tightly in Renna’s chest.

Viktis pushed past her, only to stop dead.

Oh, gods.

There was nothing Renna could do but step forward as well. And then she wished she hadn’t.

It was Wall. Or had been before whoever’d killed him had split him open from neck to navel. He lay prostrate, arms and legs extended in a grotesque mockery of how they’d found Myka back in Navang’s lab.

His face had been sliced off, leaving only a bloody skull behind. His insides spilled onto the floor beside him in a pile of pink, slimy mush. A single holoscreen had been inserted into the cavity to take the place of his heart and lungs.

The iron-rich scent of his blood mingled with the odor of decay already rising from his body. Renna pressed a hand to her lips, revulsion making her unable to look away. As she stared, the holoscreen in Wall’s chest cavity flickered on. Light glowed behind the streaks of Wall’s blood that dripped down the corner of the monitor, but it wasn’t enough to hide the horror of what played there.

It was Renna.

Lips parted, she watched herself hack into the MYTH computers and copy files to her optical drive. Oh, gods. Someone had recorded this the day Dallas had gotten her access to the MYTH files.

“I had permission to be there,” she protested. “Major Dallas knew about this.”

The scene continued with a list of files scrolling across the screen. Finn’s eyebrows drew together. “He knew you were accessing those?”

“I was searching for Pallas’s information. Of course he didn’t know. He thought I was searching for clues to find the
Athena
.”

On the screen, she furtively copied over more information, then bent down beneath the bank of computers before finally leaving the room.

The scene fast-forwarded several hours according to the time stamp across the bottom of the screen. And then the images slowed again. A spark of something burst from below the computer bank, creating a small puff of black smoke.

As they watched, the whole room exploded.

Renna gasped and stepped back. “I was picking up the holodisk that I dropped,” she protested. “I didn’t plant that bomb!” Her mind spun with everything that had happened in the last few days. Wall’s horrible death, Samil’s trap on Tartarus, the explosion in the MYTH facility that took down the defenses.

Dr. Samil had played them all.

Her gaze focused on the body holding the holomonitor, and a cry tore from Renna’s lips. She turned away from the man’s desecrated corpse, from the image of herself doing the unthinkable, from the questions in Finn’s eyes, from Viktis’s sick expression.

Finn grabbed her, pulling her face against his chest. “Shhh. It’s okay, Renna. It’s going to be okay.”

She sobbed against his shoulder. “It’s never going to be okay.”

Viktis gingerly removed the disk from the holodevice, then turned back to them. “Pull it together, Ren,” he said. “You need to get into Wall’s safe and see if your drugs are still here.”

Finn stroked her back. “You can do this. And then we can get the hell out of here and kick Samil’s ass.”

She took a shaky breath, still breathing through her mouth to avoid the scent of death, and tried to push away the horrors around her. She had a job to do. She’d seen things as bad as this before. They just hadn’t hit quite so close.

Renna nodded into Finn’s shoulder. “All right. I can do it. I’ll be okay.” Without looking around, she headed directly for Wall’s safe.

Her heart sank when she saw it was a state-of-the-art model, like all of Wall’s tech, but she squared her shoulders and crouched in front of it, concentrating as hard as she could on the keypad and electronics. Not the eerily silent warehouse of the dead around her.

Two minutes later, the safe cracked open. With a stifled scream of both anger and disgust, she kicked the door shut so hard it sprang back open.

Wall’s severed hand lay palm up on the bottom of the safe, an empty vial clutched between his cold, stiff fingers. Renna’s drug was gone.

“I’m going to kill that bitch if it’s the last thing I do.” Her voice shook, but this time it was fury, not horror.

Finn wrapped an arm around Renna and pulled her back toward the door. Viktis surveyed the warehouse one last time, letting his gaze drop to his former friend’s body. “When you do, I want to be there to watch.”

TWENTY-THREE

Renna crawled into the speeder, not protesting when Finn took the driver’s seat. As they drove off, she stared out the window, unseeing. Her skin crawled, and all she wanted was a hot shower and a stiff drink.

And some way to erase the images of the warehouse from her mind.

Samil had done some horrific things, but this attack had changed everything. She’d made Renna look like a traitor and tortured an innocent man.

Each scene in the warehouse had been specifically created to taunt Renna. The men hanging from the rafters mimicked a job gone wrong back on Baeno, where her team had been beheaded and hung when they’d been caught. Wall’s positioning had been the exact same as Myka’s. And the hand in the safe… She bit back a shudder. The Seralline Star Sapphire job on Treze.

Samil wanted Renna to suffer. To let her know that she knew more about Renna’s past than anyone. Every nerve ending in her body twitched. What else did she know about Renna’s life? Who else was in danger?

Finn pulled the speeder to a stop in front of the
Eris’s
hangar. He cut the power, but didn’t move to get out of the car. Instead, he shifted so he could look at her.

Renna’s stomach lurched. She’d never seen that expression on his face before.

“Renna, I need to ask this. What happened back at MYTH? What were you doing in that room?”

“You still don’t trust me?” She couldn’t hide the disbelief in her voice. Hadn’t they just had this conversation? Hurt made her lungs ache, but she forced herself to look him in the eye.

“I
do
trust you. That’s why I need to hear it from you.” He smiled. “MYTH is going to throw everything it has at you if Samil leaks this. I want to be able to protect you.”

Her tension eased a bit. “I don’t need your protection. I can take care of myself.”

“We all know that, Ren, but we’re a team.” Finn squeezed her hand. “Let us help.”

From the back seat, Viktis nodded in agreement. “Never thought I’d say it, but pretty boy is right.”

Renna took a deep breath. “Fine. Dallas got me into the archive. I told him I needed to look for information that would help me track the
Athena
down. I accessed all the personnel files for everyone on board, but before that, I did a sweep of the system for information on Pallas. Exactly what we discussed before I left you guys.”

“I remember,” Finn said. “But how did she get footage of you planting a bomb?”

“I told you. I dropped my OSD, but somehow Samil edited the footage to make it look like I was planting something. The bitch has more resources than the devil.”

“What game is she playing?” Viktis asked with a frown. “She doesn’t seem like the kind of woman who does anything without a reason.”

Finn tapped his fingers on the steering controls. “I have no idea, but whatever it is I don’t like it.” He pushed open the speeder door. “Let’s get back to the ship and meet up with the
Athena
at the rendezvous point. We have a lot to discuss.”

The trio boarded the
Eris
, and Commander Jayla met them at the CIC. She took one look at their faces and turned toward the comm room. “Inside. Now.”

Lieutenant Blake followed, closing the door behind them. “What the hell happened? You look like someone murdered your best friend.”

Renna let out a gasp, and Viktis’s hands curled into fists.

Blake’s eyes widened as he took a step back. “What the hell did you find?”

Finn raked a hand through his hair and sat down heavily. “Samil got there first. Wall’s dead. The drug is gone. She’s playing a game with us, but I can’t figure out what she’s after.” He glanced at Jayla. “We need to regroup with Aldani and see what else we can do. Renna needs that drug.”

Renna put out a hand to stop him. “Renna is fine. What we need to do is stop Samil before she goes any further. She’s enjoying herself too much with this. She thinks she’s smarter than all of us, and until we prove otherwise, her taunts will only get worse.” And she couldn’t live with herself if someone she cared about was the next target.

Finn slammed a hand down on the table. “I don’t care what she wants. She’s dead.”

“Captain, take a deep breath,” Jayla said, frowning at him.

“Sorry, ma’am.” Finn dropped his hands back into his lap, looking chastised, and Renna bit back a smile despite herself. Always nice to see someone else could get Finn to toe the line.

“I agree that the first step is meeting up with the
Athena
,” Jayla said. “We need to get Dr. Aldani working on a cure for Renna. Then we need to tell MYTH HQ what’s going on. If Dr. Samil wants to destroy us, I’d say she’s already got a good start. They need to start working on a plan to stop her. We can’t do this ourselves.”

Blake nodded. “Let someone higher up figure this one out. This isn’t on you, Finn. Or Renna.”

“What if Samil is still gunning for Myka?” she asked. “What if Dallas orders you to return to HQ? The kid’ll be in danger.”

Viktis paced between the table and the wall. “There’s no reason for them to know we have Myka or Aldani. Leave them at the safe house. They’ll be hidden there, and Aldani can continue to work. I’ll have supplies sent to him.”

“I think that’s the best bet.” Finn nodded. “I don’t want to disobey a direct order from the major if I don’t have to.”

Blake grinned at him. “Little too late for that, isn’t it, buddy?”

Finn narrowed his eyes. “Still think you’re a comedian, don’t you, Alistair?”

Blake smirked at him, and Renna cleared her throat. “I’m still not sure about this. We know Samil has spies inside MYTH. What if Dallas is one of them?”

“I can safely say that he’s one of the good guys,” Commander Jayla said. “But I understand your caution. Lieutenant, take Viktis to the comm room and set up a secure channel for him to use to connect with Dr. Aldani. We’ll set course for the rendezvous point immediately.”

Blake saluted and followed Viktis from the room, leaving Renna, Finn, and Jayla behind.

“You’re excused, Renna. I’m going to want to debrief the captain on his mission,” Jayla said. “I’m still his superior officer after all.”

Renna scowled at both of them. Why did the commander want her gone? Until this point they’d all worked together. “I’d prefer to stay if you don’t mind.”

Jayla shook her head. “I’m sorry. We’ll be discussing classified information. But I’ll have him back to you in no time.” She smiled, giving Renna no choice but to get to her feet.

“I’ll come find you when we’re done here,” Finn said reassuringly.

Renna didn’t bother to answer as she left the room. If nothing else, at least she could spend some quality time in her bunk. That hot shower was calling her name, and she had her own plans to make. As she cleared the area, she spotted a small, dark-haired woman bent over one of the consoles. Renna paused.

“Sergeant Gheewala?”

The woman looked and smiled. “Renna. Nice to see you.”

“Hey, you used my first name.” Renna grinned at the woman. It had been a joke between them on the
Athena
that Renna would only be considered part of the team when they remembered to call her by her first name.

“I’ve been practicing.” The woman’s shy smile made Renna’s heart glow.

“So why are you on the
Eris
? Did Finn reassign you?”

Gheewala’s gaze still darted anxiously around the space before she spoke, but when she finally focused on Renna, she seemed a little less stressed out. “Commander Jayla and Captain Finn agreed that my services would be most useful on the
Eris
where I could track your EMP signature if anything happened at Wall’s facility.”

“Oh.”

Gheewala nodded. “If we were walking into a trap, Jayla wanted to know the instant something went wrong, and reading your new signature is as good as a comm device. Did you know you transmit on the same frequency as the
Athena
? As most of the MYTH ships, actually.”

“Um. No. I did not.” Renna wasn’t even sure what that meant.

“I can pick you out of any electrical reading instantly. It’s quite fascinating to see. Your implant has a distinct subfrequency that seems to be in harmony with the
Athena’s
. I was able to recognize it when your implant took control of the ship yesterday. Luckily Captain Finn believed me.”