Enemy Games (6 page)

D
AMEN traded a troubled glance with V’kyrri. His gut froze at the no-nonsense tone of Jayleia’s voice. He couldn’t read the smooth, emotionless mask she’d made of her face.

He studied her and knew that, in his own way, V’kyrri did, too.

“It’s not . . .” he began.

“Like that?” she finished for him. “Of course it is. Your commanders didn’t order you to kidnap me because they happened to foresee my messy death by kuorl attack.”

“No,” he replied. “Knowing what kind of death you’d suffer at the hands of the mercenaries brought us to yank you out of harm’s way. If it counts for anything, Captain Idylle’s first concern was for you.”

Mine, too
, he didn’t say aloud.

She flushed and shifted, but didn’t look away. “I’m a means to an end.”

“I was ordered to find your father,” he said, “and to ascertain the merit of the charges against him. I was not ordered to seduce you into treason.”

Her lips twitched. “You could.”

Had she meant for him to hear that? Want raked through his gut. Damen held his breath. What the Three Hells was happening to him?

He’d been physically attracted to Jayleia from the moment he’d helped Admiral Seaghdh hijack the
Sen Ekir
. Somewhere in the past year, simple attraction had grown damnably uncomfortable.

He felt V’kyrri’s questioning glance. Daring to draw breath again, he forced his mind back to their tactical situation and said, “It looks like we blew more than the Erillian’s defense generators when we hit them with our shields.”

“They’re limping,” V’kyrri agreed. “The Ykktyryk set down on the glacial fields in the southern hemisphere. No settlements within a thousand kilometers.”

Jayleia shook her head. “Their funeral. What that ice takes, it does not give up. There’s a reason the settlements on Chemmoxin are clustered in those miserable swamps.”

V’kyrri tossed her a shrewd glance. “The least of the miseries?”

“Very much so.”

“All right,” Damen said, releasing his restraints. “We’re clear and in the lane for Silver City. Let’s get you patched up.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Silver City? How do we know the mercs won’t follow us in?”

“Let them,” V’kyrri growled, relish in his voice. “They’ll find the Claugh battle cruiser
Queen’s Rhapsody
waiting.”

She looked between them, sudden awareness, and a tiny, unguarded smile blooming on her face. Her gaze settled on the telepath. “I see. And I am addressing?”

“Her new captain,” Damen supplied.

Jayleia grinned. Her brown eyes lit. “You’re leaving the engines for a command chair? Do you even know where to find it? Congratulations, Captain.”

Damen felt the answering smile on his face and spotted the grin on V’k. She had them in the palm of her hand. Did she know?

Damen cleared his throat.

Jayleia’s smile subsided. He thought he could spot the moment she’d brought her defenses back online, but her gaze still sparkled when she turned it on him. He felt her regard as a physical thing, an approving stroke that stirred his blood and sped his heart rate.

He spent a second shoring up his own shields.

“If you load my handheld with a translation routine to interface with your systems,” she said, touching the unit attached to her belt, “I’ll begin pulling information regarding my father.”

Damen studied her.

She’d spoken as if the data pull would be easy for a xenobiologist with no computer tech training.

“Something you learned from Omorle Lin before he died?” Damen asked.

Both from the way V’kyrri stiffened and from the way her expression closed, he knew he’d hit a nerve.

“No, Major,” she said. “Science isn’t all fieldwork and experiments. I am occasionally expected to do a bit of research.”

“Lin was your bodyguard, Jayleia,” Damen countered. “For a decade, he guarded you day and night.”

Pain spiked in the lines around her mouth.

“Yes, he did. We were aboard the
Balykkal
for the first mission to Ioccal,” she said, her tone flat.

He nodded. Six years ago, the Armada battle prowler,
Balykkal
, had escorted the
Sen Ekir
to a world on the edge of TFC space. The world had been colonized early in TFC’s expansionist history and then forgotten. When someone on Tagreth had finally uncovered records regarding the colony, the government had mounted an expedition to Ioccal, a habitable moon orbiting a gas giant in the Occaltus system.

Jayleia’s records indicated she’d enlisted in the Armada against her parents’ wishes just prior to the mission. The expedition, led by Dr. Linnaeus Idylle, had found the colony deserted. During digs meant to determine what had happened to the colonists, the expedition personnel had been struck by a deadly plague.

Of the 217 crewmembers on the mission manifest, five had survived. Dr. Idylle, Ari Idylle, Raj Faraheed, Pietre Ivanovich, and Jayleia Durante.

The scope of the disaster had altered science ship protocols, first contact procedure, and even ship design throughout the known systems. Damen could only imagine what it had done to the survivors.

“When the plague hit, we couldn’t leave the victims to die alone and in pain,” she said, her face pale and her gaze far away.

“Three Hells,” V’kyrri breathed.

The white edges of her lips and the fog of old nightmares in her eyes shook Damen. He’d reached for her before he could conquer the impulse.

Some of the tension left her frame when he settled a hand on her shoulder.

“Ari and I took turns holding the hands of the dying, trading off so we could sleep, though I don’t think either of us did. There wasn’t much we could do. None of us could, not that we knew at the time and Dr. Idylle and Raj had to try. Two hundred and twelve people died,” she said. “I talked to the ones I sat with, got them to talk to me. I wanted to know who they were, what had been lost.”

A piece at a time, Jayleia returned from her corpse-lined past. Sorrow lingered in the bleak set of her features, but Damen knew she saw him when the color began returning to her face.

She turned her gaze from his. “Omorle Lin, my bodyguard, was the twenty-second person to die on my watch.”

“Didn’t he tell you he was your father’s best computer espionage agent? Didn’t he teach you before you went to work for your father?” Damen pressed. He felt the shimmer of anger in the muscles beneath his hand.

“Of course I’ve worked with my father and his personnel,” she snapped. “In the course of our research aboard the
Sen Ekir
, we gather significant data on the Chekydran that might one day be of tactical use. Even the plagues . . .”

“You send your father copies of research data?” he interrupted.

She blinked. “What else would I send?”

He bared his teeth, enjoying the hunt. It distinctly wasn’t a smile. He saw her register that fact when she glanced into his face.

Her scent changed, giving away her ire.

“You’re telling the truth, as far as it goes, but there’s more.”

“It’s all the truth you’re going to get, Major,” she countered, her features a study in neutrality.

“How much did your father have Lin teach you about cyber-espionage?” he prodded. “Have I been chasing you through the Claugh nib Dovvyth’s computer systems for the past . . .”

“Stop it,” V’kyrri demanded aloud, closing a hand around Damen’s arm.

Jayleia shifted out from beneath Damen’s touch.

V’kyrri’s mental voice sounded in his head.
What are you doing?

Damen glanced at his friend’s hand, still on his arm, and mentally answered.
My job. Between what we suspect we’ll find in the Silver City data store and the information Jayleia’s father could bring us we . . .

V’kyrri’s expression hardened.
Damn it, Sindrivik, this is Jayleia. Not a tool. Not something you can use and toss aside. You’ve seen the signs. Someone has done a number on her. Conditioning, blocks, walls . . .

. . . and the defenses she’s erected lock us out and cut her off from her heart,
Damen finished for him.
If I can’t pry her free, V’k, I’ll have to break her open.

You want to shatter her
, V’kyrri accused, his face and mental presence twisting with rage,
just to see the pieces fly apart.

Did he? The predator at his core stirred, intrigued at the prospect. His heartbeat stumbled at the thought. No. Not like that. Too bad. This was war. He had a job to do.

V’kyrri peered at him, hard.

Damen’s head felt too full for a split second. He met his friend’s probing gaze without flinching, letting him read the resolve and determination that he’d do whatever it took to protect the Empire.

V’k’s grip on his arm relaxed.
She’s afraid to feel.

Damen nodded once.

You know her past. Take the time to gain her trust, Sindrivik, to unlock her. I like Jayleia
, he warned.
Do permanent damage, you’ll answer to me.

Damen held his eye for several seconds.
Which is why the admiral assigned her to me. Not you.

Maybe, but I hear that voice in your head saying you’re the last person in the universe she can trust. Don’t make me tell Seaghdh he’s made a mistake
, V’kyrri replied. His eyes narrowed and he smiled without humor.
Or do you not know what you feel?

Damen yanked out of V’kyrri’s hold, his lips curling in a silent snarl. He didn’t feel. He wouldn’t. None of them could afford it.

And Jayleia had watched the entire, silent byplay with the fascination of a child handed a new toy.

How much had she guessed? He’d made a mistake in letting V’kyrri read him.

“That was amazing,” she breathed. “You were arguing. Weren’t you?”

She glanced at V’kyrri. “You go away. Did you know? Your body was sitting here, but you weren’t in it.”

V’k blinked, looking startled by Jayleia’s observation.

“You.” She turned her keen scientist’s eye on Damen.

Awareness jolted him
. Keep emotion at bay with science and logic? Oh, no. I won’t allow that.

“What?” he urged, putting the slightest grit of want into the tone.

As he’d intended, the sound abraded her nerves, disrupting what she’d meant to say. Her scent changed again, the stir of arousal overpowering the lingering traces of anger.

“I—Your presence in the cockpit,” she fumbled, “intensified. As if . . .” She broke off, shrugged, and looked away, flushing.

Don’t rescue her,
Damen commanded mentally as V’kyrri shifted beside him. “As if?”

“You sensed something?” V’kyrri prodded.

She looked between the two of them, visibly gathered her resolve, lifted her chin and said, “It felt as if Major Sindrivik was everywhere all at once, almost a palpable pressure in the cabin.”

Damen smothered a smile at her attempt to distance herself from him—and what she’d felt—with formality. Maybe getting at her soft underbelly wouldn’t be difficult after all. The heady bouquet of her nascent desire and her obvious discomfort with her body’s yearnings suggested he had a potent weapon at his disposal.

Convenient.

Fun.

Locking a knife-edged gaze on her, he allowed himself a tiny smile and a nod of acknowledgment.

She raised an eyebrow, putting faint creases in her forehead.

How long to break her control? The scent of want, tinged by the first tang of fear lingered in the cockpit. Yet, she let him see none of it in her face, eyes, or body. The impassive ones usually shattered into the smallest pieces. All it took was skill and time.

Unfastening his restraints, he rose, wondering how many layers he’d have to peel back to get to her. He extended a hand. “Let me take care of that arm.”

She hesitated, tilting her head as if the perspective change would help her comprehend the shift from officer to predator and back again.

Damen couldn’t be certain what she saw in his face, but her lips curled in an alarmingly good parody of his smile that hadn’t been a smile.

His people had a saying. “The hunter’s existence is justified by one worthy adversary.”

Staring into Jayleia’s dark brown eyes, Damen’s heart stumbled. Elation tipped into his blood.

He’d just found his.

J
AYLEIA recognized that Damen had been trying to force her to admit Lin had taught her. It irked her that he’d been succeeding.

Thank the Gods for V’kyrri’s save. Much more and she might have punched the major in the nose.

Besides the fact that she’d hate to destroy a nose as straight and nice as his, she suspected he’d consider the blow little more than a love tap and an invitation to play. She’d never survive his notion of play.