Enemy Within (38 page)

“
TWELVE
Gods,” Ari rasped. How long had he been there? How much had he heard?

“Dad.”

“Alexandria,” he said at the same time. He shook his head. “Disappointed? Is that what you think I am?”

She slumped.

“Of course, you would,” he murmured. He squared his shoulders and looked at her. “Rest assured, nothing could be further from the truth, but that’s not why I’m here. Alex, give me a few hours. Raj and I will have the key if not to the plague, then to the nanotech delivery structure.”

“No, you won’t,” she said, amazed that he could say such a thing. “We both know it will take days to crack the full code, much less begin attempting to formulate a response. How long did the Chekydran give Eilod to make a decision about handing me over, anyway? We’ve run out of time.”

“You have done enough!” he said, his fists clenched. “I don’t understand why you have to be the one—”

“I don’t expect you to understand,” she interrupted. “You’ve never approved of my career.”

He drew up short and cocked his head. “What gave you that idea?”

“You’ve made it very clear over the years how much you hated my involvement with the military.”

“Yes!” He nodded. “I hated it. Because it frightened me.”

“Frightened you?” she echoed, taken aback. Her father hadn’t been afraid of anything in his life.

Her father sighed and stared into the distance. “You have no idea? Every morning, I got up and acknowledged that this could be the day the honor guard knocked on my door, your ship’s flag in hand and the words I couldn’t bear to hear on their tongues. ‘We regret to inform you.’ Do you know how I cringed every time I saw an officer in a thrice-damned dress uniform?”

The wobble in his voice renewed the burn behind her eyes.

“Then six months ago, Admiral Angelou knocked on my office door. Captured, he’d said. Prisoner of war. Accused of spying.” Her father shrugged. “That was it. You were dead. I knew it. We all did. Your brother and sister took turns, sitting with me while I waited; waited for the honor guard, waited for it to finally be over. Day after day. And they never came. I wanted you dead.” He buried his face in his hands. “The Twelve Gods help me, I wanted you dead because every day you lived, I knew those monsters were hurting you. And I couldn’t stop them.”

A fist seemed to close around her throat. “Oh, Dad.”

“I wanted you safe. I hated your career, yes, and maybe I hated how good you were at it.” He sighed and rubbed his hands down his face, smearing moisture from his cheeks. “My reasons were entirely selfish.”

Gasping for breath, Ari smiled. “You wanted me safe beside you in a lab working with deadly pathogens?”

He barked a laugh. “Rational to the last, aren’t I? I know I haven’t been good at showing it, much less at saying . . .” He broke off, struggling for words. “I’ve always been proud of you, Alex. Always. Annoyed, confused, scared, all of those things, but always proud.”

She let the words sink past the defenses she’d always erected against her father and shifted. “Even when it felt like I was rejecting you, your way of life, and everything you stood for by running off to join the Armada?”

Her father’s gaze turned inward and he frowned. “Perhaps not at that exact moment, no.” He looked at her again. “But then something happened to you. You didn’t just survive the academy and your training. You thrived. You grew in ways I couldn’t begin to comprehend.”

“And even that was frightening?”

“No parent is perfect, Alex,” he said. “I wish I could have been more, for your sake. It was galling to discover that I could not give you what you needed. It took a set of heartless strangers turning you into an automaton to do that.”

“They hardly turned me into an automaton.”

“I know that. Now,” he said. “From the day Admiral Angelou showed up at my door, I thought about all the things I’d never told you. When notice came that you’d be released alive, I vowed I wouldn’t waste the opportunity to tell you how much you mean to me.”

She pressed the heels of her hands against her dry, aching eyes. “And then someone handed you a broken shell and said, ‘Here’s your daughter, Dr. Idylle.’ ”

“I barely recognized you.”

“I barely recognized me,” she assured him, letting her hands fall back to her sides. “I . . . couldn’t respond. I am sorry.”

“No. Don’t be sorry. It wasn’t something you could change. I vacillated between hope and despair. We all did. I’d never experienced such rage in my life as when I saw what those bastards had tried to do to you. Even though you’d been brought back alive, I wasn’t sure I would ever have you back. To this day, I don’t know how you survived.”

“I survived because of you,” Ari replied.

He blinked, a stunned look in his eye.

“When they tried to rake my mind, I recited the table of elements, or some other bit of arcane science trivia you’d made me memorize. I mentally practiced energy blade work in the
Sen Ekir
’s cargo hold on the floor you’d encouraged me to set up. I reminded myself that if I gave up and died, you’d have to find another pilot with immunity. I reminded myself that you’d insisted on the extra cabin for me when the
Sen Ekir
was built. I remembered how you emptied those two lockers for my energy blade gear in cargo. It was the one time you’d sided with me against Pietre. And I focused on the fact that when you were finally awarded the TFC Founder’s Prize in Science, I wanted to be there right beside Hieronomus and Isolde cheering.”

Her father’s gaze turned inward, a tiny smile lightening his features. “And no one knew you’re a telepath with the power to make those distractions work.”

“Not even I knew,” she replied.

Her dad nodded, then eyed her and Seaghdh, the two of them still standing as if preparing to take up arms against one another. “Captain Seaghdh,” he said. “I believe it is long past time I inquired. What are your intentions toward my daughter, sir?”

Ari boggled, the fear that Seaghdh no longer wanted or needed her burning a hole in her composure.

“I warn you. If you hurt her,” he went on, his eyes sparkling with fierce light, “so help me, I will make you my vaccination test case. I assure you there will be side effects.”

“Dad!”

“If your test vaccines can cure this so I make good my intentions, Doctor,” Seaghdh replied, “bring it on.”

Ari choked on an involuntary laugh.

Her father’s eyes narrowed, but he nodded slowly before smiling. “Very well. Alexandria? I presume you have a plan.”

“Yes, sir.” She opened a broad-beam channel, trusting that Hicci would be monitoring everything he could reach. “You can’t get something for nothing, Hicci. Transfer the plague genetic sequence to this channel,” she said. “I’ll come out in a shuttle and hold station at the shields. You’ll transfer the code. Upon verification from my people, I will complete transport.”

Ari closed the com and turned to her father. “Teleport me to the
Dagger
. I’d rather not compromise containment on this ship.”

“I understand.”

“I’m going with you,” Seaghdh said.

She looked at him. Anger glittered in the hard shine of his eyes. Hurt and confusion showed in the creases around his mouth. They hadn’t worked anything out. It looked like they wouldn’t have the time. Regardless. It was his right. She nodded.

“That is acceptable,” her father said. “Dr. Annantra can administer . . .”

“Come now,” Hicci’s voice, made tinny by the translator, rasped over the com.

Ari clicked open the channel. Terror spilled, cold and greasy, into her gut. He hadn’t made any counterdemands. What in the Three Hells did he need from her?

“No shuttle on this ship,” she countered. “Teleporting to the
Dagger
. Transport in ten.”

Hicci hesitated. “Game you play, I wonder. Come, my plaything, you talk much.”

Icy sweat beaded on her forehead. Bastard. She’d talk? She had something he needed. What? She wracked her memory for a hint of what it might be. If she could work it out, her ability to stall for time would be that much stronger. “Acknowledged.”

Her father activated the intraship com. “Pietre, advise the
Dagger
and prepare to teleport Captains Seaghdh and Idylle.”

“Damn it,” Pietre growled. “Can’t we send you in with a weapon, Ari?”

Ari blinked at the discomfort in Pietre’s voice. Twelve Gods. It sounded like it bothered him that she was going back.

“I’ll be stripped when I arrive,” she said.

Her father blanched. When she looked away from the horror in his face, she stared into Seaghdh’s rage-reddened expression.

“I’ll have to be weapon enough,” Ari said, “until the strike team gets what they need.”

“Baxt’k,” Pietre and Seaghdh grumbled in unison.

“
Dagger
acknowledges, Doctor,” Jayleia said. “They are standing by for teleport.”

“On your mark, Doctor Idylle,” Pietre said. “Kick their asses if they have them, Ari.”

 

 

EILOD
teleported them directly to the shuttle bay. She and Turrel met them at the door. The young queen slumped against a wall, her eyes red and her face wan.

“Captain Idylle,” she rasped and flinched.

Ari grimaced. Brilliant. She’d infected the queen. After Eilod’s plotting to kill Ari at some point, did it mean anything that the two of them had managed to kill one another without meaning to?

“We’ve prepped the
Lughfai
’s sister shuttle, the
Lamfeida
, for your use. We are at eight minutes and counting. Auhrnok Riorchjan, I put you in command of the strike team. You are needed in tactical. Get me an extraction plan for Captain Idylle.”

“Five minutes, Eilod,” Seaghdh countered.

She looked between them, her expression twisted by unhappiness. “Five minutes,” she acknowledged. Her gaze rested on Ari for several seconds. She looked like she wanted to say something but didn’t know what. Finally, she pressed her lips tight, turned on her heel, and walked away.

“Seven minutes,” Turrel said.

Seaghdh swung on Ari, desperation behind his hard expression. “I never asked you to die for me.”

“I’m not interested in dying for anyone,” she replied, the emotional strain of his hurt wringing her dry. “This is my best and only chance to save your life.”

“Damn it to all Three Hells, Ari!” Seaghdh swore. “It’s not worth it!”

She stared at him, uncomprehending. “You brought me back to myself. You reminded me that feeling something didn’t have to be bad. I think you saved my life.” Warmth and sympathy twisted through her as she registered what he was really saying. “Hwe vaugh. You are more than worth it.”

He caught in an audible breath. Unresolved grief and a bottomless pit of suffering echoed in the sound.

She cupped his cheek, trying not to notice how her hand shook.

His gaze found hers. Something broke behind his eyes and Ari caught a glimpse of the wounded man who’d crouched beneath his rank and ruthlessness for so long. Moisture gathered in his eyes. He blinked rapidly and swallowed hard.

Choking down the sudden prickle behind her eyes, Ari stepped back, into the shuttle.

“At least let us sedate you,” he said in a trembling rush.

The quiver of panic in her middle spiked. She shook her head. “No.”

Turrel, grim-faced, nodded. “Going to take a few of ’em out?”

She saw unhappiness in the hard, professional veneer he’d pasted on his face, but no hope. It looked like Turrel’s expectations were as realistic and as pessimistic as hers. “That’s the plan.”

Seaghdh swore.

The door slid shut. Her heart fluttered and she stood, fists and teeth clenched to keep from pounding on that door and shrieking for release.

“Getting yourself killed renders our strike team useless,” Turrel noted via com. “Factor that into your mission parameters, Captain.”

She had to force herself to walk to piloting to switch open the line. “They can’t kill me until they get whatever it is they need,” she said as she strapped in.

“You think,” Turrel bit out, his tone severe. “Fact is, Captain, you got nothing but assumptions. For all you know, they need you in pieces.”

“Colonel.”

“Yes, Captain?”

“Stop helping.”

Silence. Or at least the occasional pop of static that passed for silence on a closed com channel.

“Ari,” he began.

“You don’t have to distract me, Kirthin Turrel,” she said. “I appreciate the effort, but I’m okay.” It surprised her to find she didn’t have to lie to him. “Initiating launch.”

She’d have a few peaceful moments, at least. Seaghdh would sprint to tactical where he’d be too busy to hound her. Ari sent a mental thank-you to Eilod for putting him in command of the strike team. Both women knew he needed diversion. Ari just hadn’t known how to provide it.

The young flight officer sounded tense when she gave Ari clearance.

Ari lifted as the bay doors opened. No point delaying. She nudged the shuttle into space.

“Captain Idylle, you are clear hangar doors and the
Dagger
,” the flight officer said. “Clear skies, Captain.”

The channel closed.

Ari blew out a shaky breath. Five minutes to shields. It wasn’t long enough. Nothing would be.

The com panel chirped a melodic series of tones. Frowning, she leaned over to peer at an indicator flashing. Two amber, one green. The sequence repeated. She activated the control.

“Ari, listen. Do not respond.” Seaghdh.

Her chest tightened. She closed her eyes and spent a moment longing for his arms around her. Forcing her eyes open, she sat upright and paid strict attention to piloting.

“I am sending on a closed channel, tight beam, scrambled,” he said.

She raised her eyebrows. He didn’t want anyone to know what he was going to say, not even his cousin. That she’d know about the communication Ari didn’t doubt. But it would at least take her a few minutes to decode it.