Enemy Games (9 page)

V’kyrri pinched the bridge of his nose as if pained. “Biofilters for all vessels in the fleet are updated via broad dispersal burst on an as-needed basis. The only delimiter is distance and the speed of the carrier wave. Since the
Rhapsody
was recently in contact with the
Dagger
, the filters should be no more than a few hours . . .”

“Thirteen hours, sir,” Parqe interjected.

“Excellent,” Jayleia said, relief easing the tension gathering in her shoulders. “The markers for the Chemmoxin pathogen were released a month or more ago. The
Rhapsody
should have them. We’ll synch the biofilters and teleport you to your ship, then, Captain.”

“If he’s infected the teleport won’t go through?” Damen guessed. He matched her nod. “Then we each teleport.”

“What?” V’kyrri demanded. His cautious tone and the way he eyed her told Jay he’d picked up her hesitation.

“Primary symptoms are setting in,” she said. “I doubt I’ll teleport.”

The muscles of Damen’s jaw knotted. “We’ll try.”

“We could decontaminate the ship the way we did aboard the
Sen Ekir
last year,” V’kyrri suggested. “Wouldn’t a radiation bath work? The
Kawl Fergus
would handle a slingshot.”

“Undoubtedly, on both counts, but we wouldn’t have the pre-exposure vaccine to shield us. We’d take a full dose of radiation,” she said. “You’d both be sterile, even after months of gene therapy.”

They cringed.

“The
Rhapsody
could send three doses . . .” V’k began.

“It’s radioactive,” she said.

“Then it won’t teleport,” Damen concluded, his tone grim.

“Captain, if I may?” Commander Parqe interjected.

“Go ahead, Commander,” V’k said.

“I’ve taken the liberty of briefing our medical officer,” she said. “Jowun suggests stasis for your infected passenger.”

Something dark and cold gripped Jayleia’s chest. She couldn’t draw a full breath. She didn’t comprehend the sensation and grappled for control of her runaway heart rate and blurred vision. When her eyesight cleared, she found herself on her feet, staring at the companionway outside the cockpit door.

Confusion and deep uneasiness swept her.

She drew a slow, purposeful breath, just to be certain she could. Air slid easily in and out. Frowning, she turned back.

Damen half stood, one hand braced on the back of his chair, the other on his panel, as if she’d caught him in the act of rising. He eyed her, his gaze searching. Whatever he saw drew him to her side.

He slipped an arm around her waist, pulling her against him.

“Easy,” he murmured. “It’s okay.”

Was it? Resting against the solid warmth of Damen’s chest, she relaxed. The last remnants of cold fled her body. A sense of safety crept over her and she sighed.

“What happened?” Jayleia asked. Her voice sounded thin and scared. She focused on V’kyrri’s dazed expression. “Did you do that?”

He turned his head toward her, though his eyes didn’t quite focus.

“He didn’t do anything,” Damen said. “What happened?”

Panic spiked into her chest. Her vision hazed.

“Breathe,” he commanded at her ear, tightening his arm around her. “I’ve got you. You’re safe. Breathe, Jayleia.”

She sucked in a ragged breath.

Her vision cleared in time for her to see V’kyrri grimace.

“Are you sure you aren’t trained in telepathic ambush, Jay?” he grumbled. “Cause that hurt.”

She gaped at the telepath. The pounding in her head made her queasy. “What? No. You did something. Are you telekinetic? Or did you influence me mentally? Take over and drive me out of the cockpit? Why would you do that?”

“Explain this if you can,” Damen said to V’kyrri as he led her to her chair. “Or I’ll refuse you painkillers for that headache you’re broadcasting.”

V’kyrri sat upright. “Am I broadcasting? Sorry.” His gaze turned inward.

“Sit down,” Damen urged, his voice pitched to soothe and reassure.

It worked. She obeyed, embarrassed by how badly she’d needed his arms around her.

“Thanks.”

“Is that better?” V’kyrri asked.

The ache in Jay’s head had diminished. She blinked. How could she, a non-telepath, have been picking up V’kyrri’s physical pain?

She wished his ability accounted for the entirety of her discomfort. She distracted herself from the throb in her head by mentally cataloging a set of experiments to define how much a non-telepath could sense from a telepath. Could she pick up other physical sensations? What about thoughts? Or feelings?

“I’m sorry, Jayleia,” V’kyrri said, calling her attention back to her aching body. “I had nothing to do with your run from the cockpit. As far as I can tell, you reacted to the suggestion of stasis . . .”

“Stasis?” she interrupted, startled. “No.”

“It certainly seemed to be the trigger,” he hedged.

“It isn’t stasis specifically. I don’t like dark, enclosed places,” she admitted, ignoring the sour bite of fear on her tongue.

Damen and V’kyrri traded a doubting look.

“You blasted me with a bolt of pure little kid, middle-of-the-night, terror,” V’kyrri said.

Had she?

Concern stood out in the tightness of Damen’s lips.

“One thing at a time,” he said. “We’re minutes from teleport range. Let’s get V’k aboard his ship and en route to protecting the
Dagger
.”

Jay nodded, relieved as much by the change of subject as by the logic of the suggested course of action.

“Agreed,” she said, forcing herself to shift out of a reactive, feeling state and into cool, rational thought.

The best way to conquer an unfounded fear was to face it. With her pulse hammering in her temples, she forced herself to ask, “I assume the
Kawl Fergus
has a stasis chamber?”

“It won’t be necessary,” he said. “We’ll route straight to the
Dagger . . .”

“Negative, Major,” Commander Parqe replied. “Admiral Seaghdh asked me to relay the following: ‘Silver City objective critical.’ He said you’d understand.”

“Message received and understood,” Damen said. He glanced at Jayleia, disquiet in the depths of his eyes. “I’ll push our pace. Silver City medical will treat you.”

“It doesn’t sterilize the ship,” she said. Had her mindless reaction been so disturbing?

Rubbing her aching forehead, she sighed. He didn’t have to be logical. She did.

“While stasis cannot cure me, it would slow the infection,” she said. “You could teleport to the
Rhapsody
after V’kyrri, and blow the airlock remotely while I’m under sedation in stasis.”

Damen grinned without a hint of humor in his face. “Leave the TFC spymaster’s daughter alone aboard my ship?”

She gaped at him. “What do you expect me to do while I’m in a medically induced coma, locked inside a thrice-damned, airtight coffin?”

Amusement glittered in his gray eyes. “Did you know one of the Autken’s primary senses is scent? I don’t need V’k to be my lie detector. I won’t leave you alone aboard my boat.”

Three Hells. Could he really smell a lie? What about omission? She blew out a shallow breath. That both explained and complicated everything. It also reinforced her determination to escape Major Sindrivik’s custody. Once she’d found her father, or could prove his innocence or lack thereof, she could offer her dad the option of using the Claugh nib Dovvyth in an end-game maneuver. Assuming that’s where his plans were and not locked in stasis of another kind.

“Is there reason to resort to drastic measures for something curable?” Damen asked.

“The pneumonia outbreak last year,” Jayleia said.

Damen frowned. “When the plague the Chekydran had seeded in Captain Idylle went hot.”

“You didn’t even get a sore throat,” she said. “V’kyrri nearly died.”

“How happy I am to remember so little of that stay in the
Dagger
’s medi-bay,” V’kyrri interjected before fixing her with a keen eye. “You’re afraid of finding a race susceptible to this disease?”

“Every race has adapted to handle different illnesses. The danger is combining a low-risk illness with a population that has no natural defense to it. You’d be horrified, assuming you survived, by how swiftly a benign disease with low morbidity can change its stripes and become a killer. How many species live and work on the
Queen’s Rhapsody
? Or on Silver City for that matter?” she asked.

“If you’re treated, and the ship sterilized upon docking, what’s our exposure?” Damen asked, frustration darkening his expression.

“With this disease, minimal,” Jay replied, “but greater than zero.”

He blew out an audible breath, shot a glance at V’kyrri, and said, “Given the admiral’s message, my decision stands.”

V’kyrri nodded.

“Stand by to teleport,” Damen ordered.

“Medical personnel standing by,” Commander Parqe said over the open com line. “Biofilters confirmed online.”

“Initiating teleporter diagnostic,” Damen replied. “System online. Biofilter compatibility confirmed.”

“Acknowledged.”

“System is warmed and ready, Captain,” Damen said to his friend. “Let’s get you to your ship.”

V’kyrri strode out of the cockpit, down the companionway, and into the bay with the door where Jayleia had entered.

She turned her chair to watch.

V’kyrri glanced at Damen’s back, then grinned at her and mouthed, “Good luck.”

That he seemed to feel she needed it troubled her. She bit back the urge to plead with him to stay. She didn’t know how long she could withstand the full-on assault of Damen’s persuasion.

Considering the determination she’d seen in Damen to complete his missions, he wouldn’t find out until too late that breaking her wouldn’t help him locate her father.

“On your mark, Commander,” Damen said.

“On my mark, aye,” Commander Parqe said. “Three, two, one, mark.”

“Mark, aye,” Damen replied. “Teleport in progress.”

She felt the
Kawl Fergus
slow and could only guess at the immense power required to blink a person from one point in space/time to another. One moment V’kyrri stood in the entry bay, the next he vanished as if winked out of existence. The engines surged.

Good. V’kyrri was safe.

“Teleport complete,” Damen said behind her. “Confirm you have Captain V’kyrri aboard.”

“Confirmed,” V’kyrri replied over the com. “Nice job. Jay? Your turn.”

She levered herself to her feet, ignoring the pounding in her head and the trickle of sweat tracking a chilly path down her spine. Great. Fever. Another symptom. She stumbled to the point where she’d watched V’kyrri disappear then turned to face the cockpit door.

Damen’s gaze tracked her, his features set in tense lines.

“Ready,” he said, misgiving in his face and in his voice.

“Three, two, one, mark.”

“Mark, aye. Teleporting.”

Alarms erupted.

The noise touched off a wave of dizziness. Jay folded her knees and sat where she’d been standing.

The alarms went silent.

“Jayleia’s down,” Damen said.

“Standing by,” V’kyrri replied.

The fever heightened her senses. She caught a whiff of rain and green, growing things before Damen crouched beside her and drew her against his side. Rather than exacerbating the pain in her head, the odor seemed to mitigate the symptoms.

His scent?

“I don’t want to put you in stasis,” Damen said in a voice pitched only for her ears and rough in a way she’d never heard before.

“I have reason not to open the ship to vacuum, but if it’s the only way to keep you safe, I will.”

A moment of clarity burst through her. Of course. It wasn’t concern for her nameless fear. He was running more than one mission at a time.

E
VEN with a fever addling her brain, Jayleia realized that if she was merely a distraction from Damen’s true mission in this part of space, her options for escape broke wide open. Once she was well.

Damen was a spy with a job to do. Possibly several. At least one of which precluded using vacuum to sterilize the ship. That meant cargo that could be damaged or killed without atmosphere and heat.

By confiding that detail to her, he’d offered her a good-faith gesture. She’d return the favor.

“Another option,” Jay breathed. “I’ll sleep. Eighteen to forty-eight hours. You won’t be able to wake me.”

He shook his head, the portion of his face she could see clouded by wariness. His voice sounded tight, terse. “Explain.”

She closed her eyes. Conditioning against disclosing more information than necessary argued with her desire to ease the troubled lines from Damen’s face. If only momentarily.

And that wasn’t rational.

“It’s a racial ability,” she whispered before she’d reached the conscious decision to do it anyway. “I’ll go into a healing trance. Think of it as a voluntary coma, save that it isn’t, strictly speaking, a coma. Body functions slow, allowing for reallocation of resources to immune system activity. While I’m under, my immune system will mount a massive assault on the infection. Unlike stasis, which would freeze me and the illness in time, when I wake from the healing trance, I’ll be cured.”