Enemy Games (20 page)

“Did the Claugh assign you to recruiting, too?” she asked, humor in her voice.

“Are you suggesting you can be turned?”

“Don’t you have enough TFC personnel on your side of the zone?” she countered, a smile in her voice.

His heart lifted.

J
AYLEIA glanced at Damen.

He played the lockout programs with the same concentration and virtuosity he’d displayed at the controls of the
Kawl Fergus
. He was easily as good as Lin had been. Maybe better.

She’d had years of watching TFC’s star computer-espionage expert, yet she found herself admiring Damen’s skill. It looked like Tahem had been a good teacher.

Jay straightened. “Damen? What are the chances that this lock is Tahem’s handiwork?”

“Why do you think I asked you to follow me in?” he asked, tensing beside her when the lock code flared in response to his tinkering. “Damn it! The man taught me everything he knew about running code. What the Hells is his key phrase? I can’t get into the heart of Silver City’s data store unless I can break this lock.”

“The heart?” she echoed, frowning. A niggling buzz at the back of her head caught her attention. “Try Ioccal.”

Damen went dead still beside her and breathed a laugh. “Based on the notion that this phrase is the key to Tahem’s heart? Nice.”

It didn’t work.

Jayleia breathed a curse and checked the security feed. Nothing. And that felt wrong. Surely it wouldn’t take any great brainpower to work out where they were holed up.

“It’s a good theory,” Damen said. “Try again.”

“Omorle Lin.”

A security breach alert buzzed under her hand. She jumped, shut it off, and said, “Security’s on the way.”

Another failure. The code lock glow intensified. The glare looked threatening.

“Jayleia Durante,” Damen typed.

Her heart lurched to think she’d be the key to breaking Tahem’s heart, but she nodded. It made sense.

It, too, failed.

In her VI headset, it looked like the lock exploded. She knew it was nothing more than the defense mechanism alerting out, notifying security of the intruders attempting to break into the system. The visual assault hit before she could shut her eyes.

Damen felt Jayleia flinch, heard her pained gasp, and slammed a fist down on her panel, cutting her link.

She cried out. Her hands clutched at the headset, then fell limp as she crumpled in her seat.

Damen severed his connection by yanking the power supplies to each of the console systems.

“Jay?”

He removed the VI set.

She groaned.

“On your feet,” he said, dragging her upright. “We’ve got a few minutes, but we have to get moving.”

That snapped her out of her daze enough that she rasped, “Erase your system.”

“What?”

“Power your boxes up and fry them so that no one can trace you.”

“No time,” he countered. “Get out of here. Go to the ore freighter. It looks dead. It isn’t. Get off station.”

“I’m not leaving you to face espionage charges,” Jayleia snapped, her eyes clearing as she rubbed her forehead. “And I’m not leaving without that file on my father.”

“How are you going to get it without the key?” he demanded.

“Never let what you are frame your data,” she quoted. “Omorle said that. If you can’t download it, I’ll steal the hardware.”

Steal the data by brute force? He blinked. Had he really come to identify himself so thoroughly as Admiral Seaghdh’s computer expert that he’d blinded himself to all other means of data retrieval?

Jay twisted out of his grasp, grabbed the power cores, and slammed them into place. “Stow the argument and boot the damned systems. Your culture isn’t the only one with rules, Major.”

He glared. Rules? She wanted to throw rules in his face? After lecturing him about Vala?

Growling, he brought the nearest systems to life.

“You requested the truce. You’re under my protection,” she said as he worked the waking panels. “Not while it’s convenient. Not until I’m in danger. You made your safety my responsibility up to and including my death. Don’t like it? Don’t ask for a truce from a Swovjiti. Want someone to follow orders blindly? Pick another damned scientist.”

Ire drained out of him. She’d die to shield him? The burn in his chest intensified until he shifted, trying to break free of the discomfort.

“Done,” he said, straightening. “Simple data destruct cascade.”

Damen touched her cheek.

Her gaze searched his face.

He didn’t know what she saw, but her expression softened, the tension and anger draining away.

“Thank you,” he said, forcing the words past the boulder lodged in the spot where his heart should be. “I’m not accustomed to being protected.”

She smiled wryly. “Our cultures seem specifically designed to offend one another.”

“I don’t give a damn about your culture,” he murmured. “Just you. I have no practice in accepting care with grace. Help me.”

Her smile died. She cupped his cheek in her hand, her brown eyes darkening. Uncertainty fired in her eyes, but she battled it down and pressed her lips against his.

Damen fought back the urge to yank her to him and consume her. In time. Time.

He pulled away. “We have to go.”

Nodding, she asked, “Which way?”

“We split up and give security two targets to chase,” he said. “You’ll go out the back door. I’ll go out the front.”

She grimaced and her hold on him tightened. “I can’t protect you if we’re separated.”

Her reluctance to leave him sent a rush of pleasure through him. Savoring the sensation, he replied, “And I can’t protect you unless we do.”

She eyed him, her face drawn in grim calculation. She nodded.

“Trade me,” she said. “I’ve seen the lay of the deck out the front door. If I can get out without being shot, I’ll be invisible in short order.”

“Done. Make for the ore freighter.”

She ran to the door.

Damen followed and opened it. In the outer room, he flattened himself against the inside wall and decoded the door lock.

It opened.

Nothing happened.

Jayleia threw him a troubled look. “Be careful,” she muttered, then she strode into the corridor.

The door shut.

Was it a shout he’d heard as the door sealed and locked? Heart in his throat, he returned to his office, knowing something had gone wrong. That security hadn’t been positioned in the corridor meant they’d come up with a plan he hadn’t foreseen. He glanced at the secret door Tahem had built into the back room decades ago. He’d said that a spy always had more than one exit.

Damen suspected he’d had more than the few Damen knew about.

Pushing aside the rack of whips and other implements, he cursed in a steady monotone. He’d failed to steal the data store. He’d risked Jayleia and turned her loose on a hostile station. He brought out his handheld, tapped it to life, and unlocked his escape hatch.

Time to begin sorting the mess and see what could be salvaged. He stepped into an empty, dark shuttle bay.

The hair at the back of his neck stirred.

The barrel of a gun pressed against his temple. Lights flared.

Damen squinted, hands raised, and hackles up. He knew the scent of the woman standing before him.

“Guild Mistress,” he said.

“Dear, sweet Damen,” a sultry, feminine voice drawled. “Members of your own family came to me with tales of your spying and sabotage aboard this station.”

Damen knew better than to answer the charge.

“Sindrivik,” the chief of security said, locking a set of neural cuffs on first one of his wrists, then the other. He activated them.

Damen’s arms went dead.

“You’re under arrest for treason.”

“You’ve betrayed your own kind,” the guild mistress said, “and endangered every man, woman, and child on station. Get him out of my sight.”

J
AYLEIA examined the dead-looking hulk from the shadows and shifted, not at all comfortable with how simple it had been to give station security forces the slip.

Either they were laughably understaffed and undertrained, or she and Damen had miscalculated. Badly. Sitting alone in a freezingcold docking bay with few working lights, no running water, and from the smell, no sanitary pump out, an oily tendril of fear slid into her gut.

Shaking, she crossed to the freighter, went up the stairs to the personnel door, and used the unlock Damen had given her.

A click and whir and the door cracked open. Jay slipped in, then closed and locked it.

“Damen?” Vala called, footsteps coming closer. They stopped with a clump on the deck plating. “You! You weren’t . . . Where’s Damen?”

Jayleia’s breath constricted as her head completed Vala’s sentence. “You weren’t supposed to make it.” She spun on the woman, ice stabbing into her chest. “Damen left the same time I did. Find him.”

Vala caught in an audible gulp of air. “Which door did he take?”

“Back.”

“No!” Vala rasped. “No! It wasn’t supposed to happen like that! You were supposed to use that door! It’s the rules!”

Jayleia stared at Vala, her heart hammering against her ribs. “What have you done?”

Vala choked back a sob. “He’ll think . . . oh, Gods.” She sank to the floor, her hands clenching fists full of her curly hair.

“Where is he?”

“Nothing you can do.”

“Where!” Jayleia shouted, turning her back on the woman and sprinting for the cockpit.

Vala followed.

Boots clumped down the companionway in their wake.

“Station lockup. It’s secure,” Vala whispered. “The guild will accuse him of treason. They’ll kill him.”

“How?” Jay demanded.

Vala’s tears ran faster. “They space traitors.”

A surge of horror struck Jay to silence. She dropped into the pilot’s seat.

“No,” she grated and realized her denial was likely true.
Think, Jayleia.
“They won’t kill him right away. They’d want every scrap of information they could rip from him first.”

Bellin skidded to a halt inside the cockpit door and stared at Jay, then at Vala.

“Vala?” he quavered, looking back and forth between the two women. “What’s wrong?”

“Damen’s in trouble,” Jayleia answered in Vala’s stead.

“I know you,” Bellin said as Jay connected her handheld into the ship’s systems, and began trying to find a way into the station’s prison computers.

“My mission was to find you and lead you to him,” the kid said, “wasn’t supposed to get stung.”

Jayleia blinked at the turn of phrase “my mission,” then recalled Damen’s statement that he’d been recruiting spies from among the station’s populace. She glanced at the boy. Damen’s gray eyes peered back at her. She smiled. “Does Major Sindrivik have you run missions for him often?”

“All the time,” Bellin said, pride in his voice. “When I’m old enough, he’s going to recruit me. Here. I’m supposed to give this to you.”

He held out a metal tube.

Jayleia took it, recognizing the container that Damen had given to Tahem with the crystal inside. She frowned. “Who gave this to you?”

“Not supposed to tell,” the boy said. “He said, ‘You’re going to need it. It’s the key.’”

Jayleia stared at the tube. Damen had given it to Tahem, who had obviously given it to Bellin. Was the crystal the key? Or was Tahem delivering yet another coded message?

She tried to open the tube. Locked. Damen had coded the mechanism to Tahem. Who would Tahem code the lock to? Her heart stumbled.

Of course.

She input the unlock code Damen had given her for the freighter. The tube opened, spilling the crystal into her hand.

Damen.

The key to Tahem’s heart and the key to the Silver City data store.