Enemy Within (37 page)

“And it self-destructed before you could lock a tow on it,” Ari surmised.

He nodded as if he’d known she’d be able to finish the story for him.

She offered him a lopsided smile. “From what I managed to overhear, there’s a double feedback mechanism. Kill enough Chekydran soldiers and the aural net changes to such an extent that the brain array initiates an auto-destruct. Disable the brain array and that kicks off auto-destruct.”

“Then a sonic disrupter will just blow the ship,” Raj protested.

“Not necessarily,” Sindrivik replied. He turned to her. “I take it the hum you describe is variable? Pitches, tones, volumes, and amplitudes all change, thereby differentiating meanings?”

“Yes.”

“What happened to the hum when the ship entered a down cycle?”

Ari turned inward, searching for the memory, shoving aside the remembered pain and fear. “Pitch lowered. Tone . . . I can’t describe it. Amplitude lengthened, I think. If that makes any sense.”

“If we can override the natural hum with something of our own, use the entire ship’s hull as a resonator,” Sindrivik said, his voice rising in excitement, “we might disable the crew and the brain array.”

“It isn’t a sure thing,” she cautioned. “I can’t be certain there’s not a fail-safe for that as well, but I think the key is making our hum so pervasive that it disrupts the entire network. It’s the only shot. Leave even one soldier or one larva functional and all you’ll have is space debris.”

Sindrivik cast a sidelong look at her. “It can’t be an approximation.”

“I know.”

“What?” Seaghdh growled.

“We have to record the real thing, bring it back here, modify it to spec, then find a way to embed a playback device in just the right location on the hull of the target ship,” Ari said. “And the only way to do that is to put me on board that ship, tie into my transponder, and record everything around me.”

“They’ll kill you!” her father protested.

“I don’t think so. They want something or I’d be dead already. The mercenaries must have been Armada sent. My commanders seem to think I’m a security risk. The Chekydran have the firepower to destroy both the
Dagger
and the
Sen Ekir
, yet they haven’t. It follows, then, that they need something. Thing is, if they don’t kill me, I may have to.”

Silence.

Seaghdh slanted her a searching glance.

“They made you into a carrier,” Raj finally surmised. “You’re asymptomatic. The illness won’t kill you, but it will infect everyone you come in contact with.”

“Want to find out the hard way whether or not you’re part of the immune thirty percent?” she asked.

The holographic projection of her father pounded the table in his office with a fist. “There has to be a way!”

“Ari,” Seaghdh rumbled, “you can’t . . .”

“There is a way,” she replied. “Trade me for the structure and delivery mechanism of the plague.”

Seaghdh dropped a tight grip on her shoulder.

A light fired in her father’s eye, then he shook his head. “No. This is unacceptable.”

Seaghdh spun Ari’s chair to face him. He stared, disbelief and anguish stark in his face. “Don’t make me give you to them.”

Her heartbeat faltered. Hard. She gasped for air.

“Cullin. Dr. Idylle, I sympathize,” Eilod said. She sounded weary, beaten down. “I do not, cannot, countenance the sacrifice of a woman’s life for a sequence of code our own medical staff could uncover, given time. The loss of life might be significant before that happened, but it would be limited to these two ships. The Empire would endure without me if it comes to that. However. Other concerns take precedence.”

“The soldiers, like Tommy,” Ari’s father murmured.

“Yes. And the alliance we believe has been made between the Chekydran and someone in your government,” Eilod said. “We are duty bound to uncover the identities of those involved. If we don’t . . .”

“The entirety of Tagreth Federated Command could fall to the Chekydran,” Linnaeus finished.

“Yes, sir.”

He sighed.

The resignation in the sound made Ari’s heart hurt.

“No,” Seaghdh ground out. “We make our own family, Eilod, you said that. I can’t do this again.”

Ari blinked. Again? She took his overly warm hands in hers and half turned so she could address everyone. “I’m sworn to protect the citizens of TFC. This is my job,” she said with a calm she didn’t at all feel inside. She hoped none of the turmoil showed in her face. It might be her job. Everyone knew she didn’t have to like it.

Seaghdh stared as if he didn’t recognize her. It drove a jagged blade of sorrow beneath her sternum. She might die. It was beginning to look like a necessity, but at least now, she’d die for a reason. She’d die protecting millions of lives from the Chekydran. From her.

Gods damn the advances that had been made in holographic and video-display interfaces. She saw tears gather in her father’s blue eyes. His lips trembled, but he pressed them tight and sat up straight, outrage replacing fear.

Ari turned to Seaghdh. “Make the trade.”

He pulled his hands from her grip, leaned across her, and cut all com connections. “No,” he said, his voice cold, hard, and immovable.

She stared at him. Sure, she’d seen him become Her Majesty’s spymaster, the dangerous, impassive statesman so feared by Armada and IntCom personnel alike, but never before had she glimpsed the sharp edge of rage, or was it pain, barely contained by his shuttered expression. Ari discovered she couldn’t read the fever-flushed, Isarrite mask he’d hidden behind.

Uncertain, she retreated. She couldn’t be counted on to sort out her own feelings. How could she hope to pry open the lid to whatever had shut him down so hard? Especially when she had no idea what had triggered him. She needed something to go on, some clue. Her thoughts stopped her. Triggered? Was he, in his own way, having a flashback? She peered harder at him, trying to catch a glimpse what might be going on inside the defenses he’d slammed up.

Her eyesight dimmed and a cutting, ripping sensation grew behind her solar plexus. Loss. She sucked in a breath and realized what she was doing. Cheating, by reading him. Twelve Gods. How long had she been taking advantage of an ability she didn’t even know she’d had?

Stark, echoingly empty pain lay at the center of Seaghdh’s shutdown. She hesitated. It would be kindest to walk away from it rather than probe the wound. She shook off the feelings and waited until her eyesight cleared. She hadn’t the faintest idea how to help him, but his life and the lives of his family and crew depended on nudging him into action.

That’s when she remembered. He’d said to his cousin, “I can’t do this again.”

“What can’t you do again?” Ari asked, the words out of her mouth before she could debate the wisdom of uttering them.

Agony flared within him, a sensation so overwhelming, she sat back hard in her chair. He started to turn away.

Hurt all her own flared in her heart. She leaped to her feet and reached out but didn’t quite dare touch. “Don’t. Please, don’t pull away.”

They both twitched, hearing the words he’d used on her turned back at him.

He drew a shuddering breath and cast a look over his shoulder at her. The depth of torment in those gold eyes ripped at her gut.

“They massacred my family,” he said.

“Your family?” Ari echoed. “But I thought . . .” Dawning awareness halted the words. Horror exploded through her. “Chekydran.”

“They captured my parents and my sister. Accused them of spying,” he said. “I survived because I wasn’t there.”

She closed her eyes, biting back a groan. She couldn’t begin to comfort that kind of torment. Three Hells. She couldn’t comfort her own. “I’m sorry.”

He didn’t respond.

She opened her eyes, bereft of an appropriate response. How ironic. Now that she gave a damn about someone outside herself and wanted to help, she had no idea of how to go about it. Needing to do something, anything, she set a tentative palm against the rigid muscles of his back.

He didn’t flinch or pull away.

Emboldened, she moved closer and folded her arms around his waist, pressing tight against him and resting her cheek against his shoulder. “I am sorry, Cullin. How old were you?”

“Fourteen.”

She bit her lip, saddened for the boy on the threshold of manhood. He’d had his innocence and his loved ones ripped from him just when he’d most needed them.

“From the accumulation of damage in their bodies, our specialist told me it had taken them two weeks to die,” he went on.

Her heart stumbled in her chest.

“I couldn’t even recognize them when the bodies were recovered.”

Ari choked on a curse.

“My mother’s sister took me in, gave me the best of everything,” he said. “She arranged state funerals for my parents and a service of the innocent for my sister.”

It hurt her physically to hear the suppressed ache in his level tone, but she could not stop him. As much as she needed to forget what had happened to her, he needed to talk, to air the wound she suspected he’d left too long unexamined. Pain had become a close, personal friend. She could bear its company a little while longer.

“I still have the medals awarded to my parents for acts of valor.”

“Medals?”

“The irony is that they were spying,” he said.

She caught in a breath and tensed. “Your sister was part of their cover?”

“She was seventeen,” he said, “and already invested in reclaiming the Aubbary System. She was a recruit.”

“Twelve Gods,” she breathed. “You must have been furious.”

He froze. Concerned, Ari straightened and drew away to peer over his shoulder at him.

He rounded on her. White lines stood out around his mouth as he stared, rage and disbelief warring for space on his face. “Furious? They were my family. I loved them. Especially Anwen.”

“Your sister?”

He awarded her a curt nod and then shifted his gaze from her. The muscles in his jaw worked. She rested fingertips against the ridge of tension. He looked at her, anger stark in his eyes.

“Do you imagine I don’t love my father?” she asked.

He blinked.

“He makes me so mad.” She shook her head. “And I love him with all my heart. Despite the fact that he disapproves of what I do and he seems to resent the fact that I’m not as smart as the rest of the family. He must love me, too, or he’d have disowned me long ago.

“My point is that your parents took your sister into a dangerous situation and left you behind. Of course you were angry and hurt and betrayed by the people who were supposed to be there for you. None of that changes the fact that you loved them and that you love them still.”

“You’re in no position to act as psychologist,” he countered.

Ari shrugged. “Why not? After weeks of passing psych tests to unlock my cabin door, maybe I have a new career option open to me.”

He dropped his chin to his chest and sighed. “I was pissed as hell.”

He spoke so quietly she had to lean in to hear him.

“I still am.”

It hit her then. “Is that why you’ve encouraged me to talk about what happened to me?” she asked, not sure what she should feel. “You wanted some confirmation that they were better off dying, even if it took so long? You hope that by hearing what I went through for three months it will make their deaths bearable somehow?”

Hurt burst through confusion. She pulled away from him.

“I’d thought you’d asked because you cared about me.” The words came out before she could stop them.

He struggled for something to say, bewilderment conflicting with guilt in his face.

She’d wanted so badly to matter to someone that she’d misled herself. Of course he couldn’t care about her. It was too soon. His insistence on knowing the details of her imprisonment was purely selfish. Granted, he’d lost loved ones and he had a right to know . . . Ari halted the thought. Did he? Did he have a right to know what his family might have suffered before they’d died? Did it matter? It wouldn’t change anything. Except him. It could only feed the rage and his thirst for revenge. Like it did for her.

Her father had said she’d changed. Well, small wonder. But maybe he wasn’t talking about what the Chekydran had done. Maybe he was talking about the fire of vengeance she’d fed every moment of every day since she’d been released.

“Ari . . .” he essayed, his voice sounding raw.

“No,” she said, backing away. “They died. I lived. I have no reason for that, no comfort to offer. The Chekydran robbed me of almost everything that made me me, but I survived. I’m broken, maybe beyond all hope of repair, but I survived. I can still fight with my father. He can still be disappointed by me. They may have taken everything else, but they didn’t take that. Your family died, Seaghdh, murdered by creatures that do not recognize us as living, thinking, feeling entities. I can’t make that all right for you.”

Ari spun away, her heart a cold, shivering lump in her chest, and gasped.

Her father stood at the containment shield, misery in the lines of his face.