Enemy Within (14 page)

Authors: Marcella Burnard

BOOK: Enemy Within

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“Didn’t wake you again, did I?” she asked.

“No.” He took up position at the head of the weight bench as she lay down and placed her hands on the bar. He spotted her off the rack.

“Thanks.”

He watched her for a few reps. “Want to tell me about that psych lock on your cabin door?”

Her muscles froze, trembling. He’d seen her wade through the psych test. Misery and shame closed sharp teeth on her heart.

Seaghdh grabbed the bar and pulled it back onto the rack.

Did she want to tell him about the psych lock? Bastard. She sat up, breathing hard. “No.”

“Do it anyway,” he ordered. “What are you afraid of, Ari?”

“Damn it, Seaghdh. You’re kidnapping me, not treating me.”

Intraship chimed. “Captain?” Sindrivik said.

“Seaghdh,” he replied, turning to glance at the speaker. “Go ahead.”

“On approach to Kebgra,” Sindrivik said. “No response to hails.”

Ari stood up frowning. “No response?”

“None.”

“We’ll be right there.”

CHAPTER 9

ARI
showered and dressed so fast her hair was still damp by the time she bounded onto the bridge. Sindrivik vacated the pilot’s seat. Scrolling through the data, Ari glanced at Seaghdh. “Automatic beacons are online, just no verbal response from the depot.”

“What are our choices?” he asked, leaning back in the command chair, eyeing her olive-drab fatigues.

Let him. She needed to be in uniform. She stared at her panel. They could make Silver City, but the slightest emergency and they’d be running on one atmospheric unless they replaced the part. Doable, but it made the
Sen Ekir
fly like a garbage scow.

Swearing, she shook her head. Unacceptable.

“Running on one engine is a risk I’m not willing to take,” she said.

She saw V’kyrri look up at Seaghdh and nod once. Confirming her risk analysis? Maybe the uniform had been a mistake. It reminded her she had a job to do, but it had obviously prompted Seaghdh to recall he’d spent the night holding the enemy. Who’d slept ridiculously well and long because of his arms around her.

She scowled. “We stop at the depot.”

Her father had used the Kebgra settlement as a supply stop for years. The settlers weren’t big on formality. More than once, the crew of the
Sen Ekir
had put down in the middle of a festival or a street party that encompassed the entire population. They’d always gotten a hurried “yeah, put down anywhere!” from someone before, though.

“They are isolated. Could be a com failure. Land here.” She pointed to the depot a kilometer or so outside of town. “I’ve never seen another ship there, but we’ll scan before committing, just in case.”

“Agreed.”

They broke orbit and headed in on both engines. V’kyrri huddled over the engineering panel as if holding the starboard fuel feed valve together by willpower alone. The ship shuddered into the atmosphere. Turrel shook his head as they rounded into position for final descent.

“Nothing there,” he said.

“Initiating landing sequence,” Ari said.

“Acknowledged.” Seaghdh glanced at her. “Will we need your father for clearance?”

“On Kebgra? Hell no. Their notion of customs and clearance is to invite you to supper and ask if you’re married to more than three spouses.”

Seaghdh grinned. “Sounds like my kind of world.”

They set down with a thump. Still nothing from the locals.

“Ari, Turrel, with me,” Seaghdh said.

She led the way to the hatch and cycled open the air lock. Seaghdh stepped past her and sauntered down the ramp. She followed. It wasn’t until they’d set foot to the pale lavender dust at the bottom of the ramp that a breeze blew away the scent of metal hot from entry. She drew in an experimental breath and frowned.

“Do you smell that?” she murmured.

Seaghdh wrinkled his forehead in concentration and nodded. “Yeah. I do.”

“Back!” Ari ordered, instinct screaming. It was death she smelled. “Seal the ship!”

They backed up the ramp, Seaghdh coming in last to cover their retreat. “Sindrivik? Get sensors online and moving!”

“Recalibrating to read biosigns,” Sindrivik acknowledged.

“No farther than the outer lock!” Ari said. “If this is a pathogen, we’re exposed.”

“V’kyrri!” Seaghdh hollered into intraship. “Break open those weapons lockers. I need rifles.”

“There’s an equipment port, vacuum sealed,” Ari said. “Right beside the air-lock door.”

“Got it!” V’kyrri answered.

Turrel brought the rifles. Ari tried not to notice he hadn’t brought one for her.

“V’kyrri, bring two more rifles and report to the air lock.”

“Aye, Captain.”

Seaghdh leaned close, setting off a flutter in her belly. “Ari. Advisability of consulting your father?”

“Without some notion as to what we’re facing, I don’t know,” she confessed. “When I’m an officer of the Armada, I suspect incursion. Aboard the
Sen Ekir
, I think of disease first.”

He flashed her a grin. “Feeling schizophrenic, Captain?”

“Not according to the psych tests I completed this morning.”

He chuckled. “Point.”

She flushed.

“Ready to exit,” V’kyrri said from the air-lock com.

“Establish positive airflow, V’kyrri,” Ari instructed. “The panel beside the crew door has a command series for ship air and for atmosphere. Switch it to ship air and pull pressure up until the indicators read yellow. It will keep external air from contaminating the ship and it will be safe to exit.”

“Aye.”

Turrel glanced between her and Seaghdh. “We switched to atmosphere when we landed.”

“It’s scrubbed,” she said. “Until you open the air locks and cargo doors without positive air pressure on board, anything coming into the ship is automatically sterilized. It’s also why the water tastes like crap.”

“Let me install an oxygenator,” V’kyrri said as he slipped out the door and struggled to seal it behind him. “I’ll have your water tasting like a mountain stream.”

“My father would explain that the mountain stream you favor tastes the way it does because of the animal excrement contaminating it.”

“Charming.”

“Captain, the sensors were meant to be used from orbit. Range is limited planetside,” Sindrivik said via the com.

“By the curvature of the damned planet,” Ari countered, sudden fear making her heart tremble.

“Yeah,” Sindrivik said. She disliked his grim tone. “Nothing. Not a single humanoid life sign within range of these sensors.”

She’d started shaking her head before he’d even started talking. “No. That can’t be right. There’re two major settlements . . .”

“Nothing, Captain,” Sindrivik repeated, sympathy in his voice.

She sucked in a sharp breath, staggered, and stared at Seaghdh. “Can’t be an outbreak,” she wheezed.

He frowned and hefted the muzzle of his rifle higher. “No?”

“Every illness leaves survivors,” she said, choking back a curse. In trying to minimize the risk to her father and his crew, she’d dropped them straight into a body count. She’d run out of options.

Seaghdh spun to stare out the open hatch. “Sindrivik! Get me ships!”

“Already on it, Captain,” the man replied. “Nothing in range.”

“Keep those eyes on and this line stays open.”

“Mr. Sindrivik. Free the scientists,” Ari said. “Put me on ship-wide.”

“Captain Seaghdh?” Sindrivik prompted.

Seaghdh took one look at her grim face and said, “Do it.”

“Aye,” Sindrivik said.

Ari waited through a series of clicks and muted beeps as the young man in the cockpit patched her into ship-wide.

“You’re on,” Sindrivik said.

Ignoring the prickle behind her eyes, she faced the com so she wouldn’t have to watch the betrayal dawn in Seaghdh’s eyes and said, “Initiate Level Two Containment. Authorization, Captain Alexandria Idylle. Repeat. Initiate Level Two Containment.”

A flurry of voices competed for the com line.

“Medical emergency override!” Raj bellowed. “Clear this channel! All personnel, report, by the numbers!”

“Dr. Linnaeus Idylle, cabin.”

“Pietre Ivanovich, cabin.”

“Dr. Raj Faraheed, medical,” Raj said, a hint of annoyance in his voice. “Our doors are unlocked. Get out there and initiate containment!”

“Jayleia Durante, cargo.”

Ari resisted the urge to glance at the men behind her and said, “Captain Ari Idylle, Captain Cullin Seaghdh, Kirthin Turrel, V’kyrri. External. Kebgra. You’re next, Sindrivik.”

“L—Damen Sindrivik, piloting,” Sindrivik said, tripping over trying not to say his rank.

“Ari?” Raj commanded. “Report.”

“We’ve put down on Kebgra,” she replied. “No response to hails. Bioscans . . .”

“I see them,” her father interjected. He swore. “No biosigns?”

“No, sir,” Sindrivik replied on the open channel. “Scans are limited by the curvature of the planet.”

“Not a single survivor,” Dad mused.

“Not the hallmark of a plague, Ari,” Raj said.

Her chest tightened. What was worse? Hoping the people of Kebgra had been attacked and killed? Or sickened and killed?

“We won’t know until we finish recon,” Ari answered. “I’ll bring back samples if I can, but I want containment for them and for us until we’re certain.”

“Agreed,” her father said.

“Very well.” She sighed and rubbed a hand across her forehead. She felt Seaghdh’s gaze and glanced at him.

He lifted an eyebrow.

Longing raked her insides to bloody ribbons. In a different place, in a different time, she would have enjoyed succumbing to the teasing duels they’d been fighting since stepping off the blade grid. Enough.

Tapping into a sterile, dead part of her psyche, Ari slammed the door on feeling and forced herself to turn back to the com. “
Sen Ekir
, Captain Alexandria Idylle. Activation code 004-AA679-Idylle-Prime.”

“What the hell . . .” her father grated.

“Sen Ekir,”
an unfamiliar computerized voice droned. “Authorization, Captain Alexandria Idylle. 004-AA679-Iydlle-Prime, acknowledged. Course laid. Lockdown complete.”

“Oh, my Gods, 004,” Raj groaned. “That’s—Ari, you’re IntCom.”

She dropped her chin to her chest. This was not a conversation she wanted to have under these circumstances. She’d hoped to never have it, even though she’d wondered why it had taken a bunch of brilliant scientists so long to figure out why a career Prowler captain went on every single one of their missions.

“What have you done?” her father demanded. “We disabled all of IntCom’s . . .”

“No,” she said. “You disabled the packages IntCom left for you to find. What they did not want you to find, you didn’t.”

“The
Sen Ekir
is locked to a command set preprogrammed by IntCom,” she told her father. “If worse comes to worst and you are forced to lift without us, the ship will take you directly to Tagreth. You will go in broadcasting on all IntCom channels. If that happens, Dad, I ask that you see Sindrivik returned to his people as soon as possible.”

“Alexandria,” he growled, “damn it. Your duty . . .”

“The irony of being captured by the Chekydran and accused of spying,” she said, her voice sounding curiously dead to her, “is that it was true. My duty is to IntCom.”

“You’re a captain of the Armada!”

“I was. You’ll notice I’ve been relieved of that command. IntCom did not relieve me.”

“You know that was an oversight, you psychopathic bitch!” Pietre interjected.

“Was it?” she asked.

“IntCom doesn’t forget, Pietre,” Jayleia snapped, her tone sharp. She would know. Her father held an IntCom post of some kind. According to her, not even she knew what he did.

“Mr. Sindrivik,” Ari said. “If we encounter trouble of any sort, under no circumstances are you or the scientists to leave this ship.”

“Further,” Seaghdh said, pushing his way in beside her, his shoulder touching hers when the space in the air lock didn’t strictly require it. “We miss two check-ins, you lift. Do not attempt to aid or assist in any way.”

“Aye, Captains.”

Captains
. Coming from one of his men. She liked the sound of it. Loneliness melted away and the lid she’d closed on her emotions edged open. A tiny sliver of hope lodged in her heart. Seaghdh had chosen to stand shoulder to shoulder with her rather than fire a laser bolt into her back.

“Alex.”

Ari paused in turning away from the com as Seaghdh started down the ramp. “Yes, Dad.”

“What is your assignment?”

With a grim smile, she said, “You.”

Her dad swore.

She turned back to find Seaghdh blocking her path.

He studied her, his eyes bright, and his head cocked to one side and stunned her by offering his Autolyte. “You’ll want a weapon.”