Enemy Games (36 page)

She choked on a bitter laugh.

She eased her hands out of his grasp and straightened. Ignoring the sudden flexing of the muscles in his jaw, she said, “Not running. Cultivating a series of loyal undercover agents. Their missionaries and CRU fact finders are scattered across Tagreth Federated. They’re viewed as harmless crackpots. Dad realized years ago they represented an invaluable source of information. One thing led to another, I gather.”

She blew out a slow, steadying breath, trying to ease the sense that she’d maxed out synaptic capacity for sorting and rebuilding data matrices. “I need to send a message to the nearest CRU ship or facility. How long will V’kyrri take to achieve orbit?”

What did Damen see in her face to soften the hard edges in his expression as he moved to a control panel? “A few hours. At least he’s in com range. Here. Recording.”

Jay nodded. “Jayleia Durante for Augustus Ortechyn. Augie, New Scripture. The Book of the End Times. Chapter, the last. Verse, the last. Judgment. May the Gods bless the righteous.”

The muscles in Damen’s jaw flexed and thunder threatened in the glint of his eye. “What does that code phrase accomplish?”

“What I presume you’ve wanted all this time,” she said. “Dad had more than IDs on the traitors. He’s spent the past decade infiltrating the network. It is the command that will start the takedown.”

He rocked back on his heels and growled, “You shared research data with your dad?”

“You never asked what he shared with me,” she muttered.

Damen swore. “I am required to notify Admiral Seaghdh of your father’s suspected whereabouts.”

“Why? I’ve given you what he would have. Are you going to send the message?” she asked.

“It’s away. Anything else I should know?”

She considered as he narrowed his eye at her. “I’m not certain this was the right thing to do. Nothing in my training ever accounted for this circumstance.”

“Being marooned on a planet full of Chekydran?”

“Considering you an ally,” she corrected. “Common opinion among TFC citizens is that the Claugh covets our territory and our resources.”

“I certainly covet your—resources.”

A flush burned her cheeks.

His roguish grin died. “You didn’t expect to be in enemy hands.”

She shook her head and rose. “Not even when I like those hands and what they can do.”

The smile returned. “Where are you going?”

“Into the field,” she said. “I have a complex, sentient species and no data in the scientific literature about them.”

“Chips are in!” Pietre called. “Go!”

Damen glanced at where Pietre crouched, then back at her. “What is the
Sen Ekir
’s standard field op protocol?”

“Depends on the field,” she quipped, heading for the door. “Ten-minute check in?
Sen Ekir
coordinating?”

“I will take command at the first sign of threat,” he countered.

“Good,” she said. “That’s worked out well for me so far.”

He winked.

She strode down the ramp, aware she’d have to follow her several-kilometer trail back to the queen and to the nest chamber where her genetic daughter developed. Dr. Idylle would be fascinated.
If
she told him.

“Powering up!” she heard Damen yell as she angled for the
Sen Ekir
.

On board, Dr. Idylle and Raj’s voices drifted to her from the labs. Still dealing with the bloodworms, she assumed.

She headed for her cabin, intent on changing to a set of clothes that hadn’t been sliced clean through.

“Jayleia,” Dr. Idylle said from behind her as she opened her cabin door.

“Sir?”

“I won’t have you blaming yourself for the accusations made against the
Sen Ekir
and its crew,” he said.

“I don’t. I blame my father.”

His brow furrowed. “Speaking as a father who has born both his fair and unfair share of blame, I can point out the deficiencies of that strategy.”

Jayleia smiled. “The foremost being that it impacts my father not at all?”

“Certainly not at the moment.”

“No, sir,” she corrected, old sadness stirring behind her breastbone. “Not at all. It’s the price of being what he is. Other people’s opinions can’t matter to him. Not my mother’s. Not mine.”

“I hope for his sake that isn’t true,” Dr. Idylle said, leaning one shoulder against the door frame. “If it is, he will be a bitter and lonely man. I would like to think it isn’t too late for him.”

“I’d like to think it isn’t too late for me,” Jay breathed, staring at her closed closet door.

“You will always have a family here, aboard this ship,” he said. “I apologize if this is inappropriate, my dear, but I have thought of you as an adopted daughter. Perhaps I’m guilty of treating you . . .”

“A-adopted?” Jay choked. Heat flooded the backs of her eyes.

“I didn’t mean to distress you,” he said, straightening, the lines around his blue eyes deepening in alarm. “My apologies.”

She rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands and barked a laugh. “No. I’m honored and pleased. Ari has so much going for her. Looks, brains, strength of will, a really bad temper, and yet the one thing I most envied her was that she had you for a father.”

A delighted smile lit her boss’s face. “Does this mean I might succeed in persuading you to use my given name upon occasion?”

She nodded. “Yes, Linnaeus. Thank you.”

“Then, if I may go on presuming to treat you as one of my own,” he said, still smiling. He left the doorway to put an arm around her shoulder. “About Major Sindrivik. Am I losing yet another of my family to the Claugh nib Dovvyth? Or gaining a new crewmember?”

Jayleia’s heart kicked hard. “Neither.”

He said nothing for a moment. “Of your possible answers, I admit that was not the one I’d hoped to hear.”

She blinked. “My government may have kicked me to the airlock, but I won’t give up on TFC. There’s too much worth preserving. Damen can’t carve away the part of him that belongs to the Claugh, not without cutting away who and what he is. There’s a vast expanse of increasingly unfriendly space between our two worlds. I can’t bridge that.”

“Do you love him?”

She sighed. “I’m running for my life, ruining everyone else’s lives, failing to find my father, and now I’ve been changed in some fundamental way by the Chekydran. I can’t even begin to contemplate love.”

“It hadn’t occurred to me that my xenobiologist would be afraid of love,” he said.

“Not of love.”

“Loss?”

She nodded.

Dr. Idylle’s arm tightened around her shoulders briefly. “My dear, life is a risk in and of itself. Isn’t the act of loving someone an enriching enough experience to sustain you through the pain of loss?”

“Not in my experience,” she said.

“Ah. Your parents,” he said, pulling away and returning to the doorway, his head down and his hands clasped behind his back.

“They were so unhappy, so hurt, using me as a weapon against one another. The gulf between them was so wide,” she murmured.

“And you spent your childhood trying to close it?” he asked.

She nodded. “I couldn’t, of course. I swore I’d never get into a situation like it. And here I am. I’m not enough to bridge the divide between Damen and me.”

“If you will accept unsolicited advice from an old scientist,” he said, looking back over his shoulder, “I’ll say this—only you can decide if what you feel now is worth the potential for pain.”

“Do you regret your wife?” The words were out of Jay’s mouth before she could stop them.

He turned, a wistful look in the shine of his eyes. “Not for a moment.”

Stillness settled inside her. Even knowing that his wife had broken the law and genetically engineered his youngest daughter, knowing she’d lied to him up to the day she’d died, he had no regrets about having loved her?

Jayleia drew a deep breath as her heart seemed to settle into place inside her. “Thank you.”

Dr. Idylle smiled. “Of course. Another unsolicited piece of advice? You might change that shirt before your cousin sees it and realizes you’re carrying three new scars.”

“Would you be willing to meet the reason for them?” she asked.

His expression darkened.

“These aren’t the same creatures that hurt Ari,” she said. “They don’t look like the Chekydran we’re accustomed to seeing. They certainly don’t behave the same way. I have assurances that you will not be infected or modified.”

Curiosity won past the distrust and remembered rage in his gaze. “I can’t see that it will matter at this point whether the Chekydran keep their word in that regard. I’ll gather my equipment.”

“
F
ASCINATING!” Linnaeus Idylle breathed as they stood beside the nest chamber of the Chekydran infant bearing Jay’s DNA. He glanced at the nursery attendants working nearby, and then at the queen. “Splicing DNA from three parents indicates a level of sophistication and control that we cannot yet match. Have you been able to determine the purpose of the changes they’re making?”

Jayleia shrugged. “Vision is the obvious outward manifestation, but I suspect the primary purpose is to diversify immunity.”

Frowning, Dr. Idylle backed away from the nest chamber as the nurses began covering it with fluffed web.

Jay activated her badge. “Damen? Do you have a complete data set?”

“Yes,” he replied.

“It’s stunning,” Pietre said. “With the right hardware, you could walk through the records on this crystal as if you had been there when the files were captured.”

“Reliving history?” Jayleia asked. The notion both tickled and repelled her.

“Another non-humanoid species’ history,” Damen answered, “as experienced by them.”

She shared an avid grin with Dr. Idylle, who immediately tapped his badge to join the channel.

“That data may be priceless,” he said, “from both a scientific and tactical point of view.”

Jayleia gasped. “We could define the progression of Chekydran biological warfare if it’s encompassed in the time frame covered.”

“I don’t have the time for speculative searches through the Chekydran material,” Damen said. “We’re combing the Silver City data store.”

“We already have confirmation that the United Mining and Ore Processing Guild made first contact with the Chekydran long before they admitted they had,” Pietre said.

“Any mention of what happened?” Jay demanded.

The Chekydran-ki queen warbled. “Death.”

Dr. Idylle jumped and spun to face her.

“She says, ‘Death’,” Jayleia translated, frowning. “Whose?”

A memory that wasn’t hers unfolded inside Jay’s mind. Bodies. Blood. Terrible, wracking pain. Everyone and everything she’d ever loved, dead. The music of life dimmed and fell silent over the nest plains.

She staggered.

Dr. Idylle grabbed hold of her arm. “Jayleia?”

“It’s okay,” she rasped. The sense of loss struck open the memories of her first trip to Ioccal, when an entire ship full of her friends and crewmates had fallen ill and died.

The queen hummed. It registered as a caress of comfort.

Grappling for control, she gasped, “The UMOPG introduced humanoid illnesses into the Chekydran. It devastated them. They’re on the brink of extinction.”

“Of course,” Dr. Idylle said. “The hive model upon which the population appears to be based results in a nearly homozygous genetic profile of the species.”

“What?” Damen demanded over the com line.

“Millions of siblings,” Jay translated. “They are all one family with only the genetic variation to be had in the process of recombination. Their immune systems were so alike that what harmed one Chekydran harmed them all. We’ve seen this before in first-contact situations.”

“But they survived,” Pietre protested. “Didn’t survivors breed with other survivors?”

“If the Chekydran reproductive cycle follows other insectoid hive models, the queen and a single male who is her son are the sole breeding pair,” Dr. Idylle said.

Jayleia nodded. “That is the case. Under duress, a Chekydran queen can and will create more queens, but they are her daughters and the drones are her sons.”

“Inbreeding,” Raj finished.

“Outcrossing was their only hope,” Jay said.

“It also suits a sense of justice to use the species that precipitated their population crisis in the first place,” Dr. Idylle added.

“It is poetic, isn’t it,” Jay agreed. “I can’t know whether that played into the decision or if humanoids were simply the only available, remotely compatible, resource.”

“If humanoids transmitted disease to the Chekydran,” Raj essayed, “it suggests our species have enough genetics in common for the insectoid/humanoid outcross to work.”

“Do you know,” Dr. Idylle said, glancing around the nest plain, “I’ve seen larva and adults. Where are the pupae?”