Enemy Within (5 page)

“Your father expected you to leave us to die of a sickness that can’t harm you,” he said. “We wouldn’t have known until too late. You could have had your ship back.”

“Unless I finish the command decodes, Captain,” she said, cutting off the assessing look he slanted her, “the only thing we have is a cramped, uncomfortable shelter sinking into the mud of this moon.”

He tightened his hand on her arm, then rose and spun her back to her station. “Get us out of here. Take sensors,” he ordered Turrel as he straightened.

Ari’s fingers flew over the keys, but she still saw Turrel’s face darken.

“Captain . . .”

“She’s on our side for the moment, Kirthin,” Seaghdh interrupted. “I need you on eyes.”

“Aye.”

“Awaken, sweet prince,” she murmured to the control panel. The discordant rumble of the atmospheric engines vibrated under her feet. “Lift in two. Secure all personnel. As soon as we shed the g’s, get your people to medical and then through decontamination.”

“I need to see what’s out there,” Seaghdh countered.

“You’re hijacking a science vessel, Seaghdh. We have not one single weapon and only one set of interstellar engines. If whoever’s hunting you sees us lift, you won’t have long to worry about that plague.”

He muttered a word in a language she didn’t recognize. Ari coaxed the engines into optimal harmonic. The vibration eased.

“Secure for liftoff,” Seaghdh commanded, his voice echoing over ship-wide. “Sixty seconds.” He switched off the com. “Can you single-hand this tin can, Captain?”

“Captain!” Kirthin Turrel protested.

“Stow it!” Seaghdh growled. “We’re going back alive!”

Better and better. They needed her. She nudged the throttle and felt the ship strain against the pull of the mud underneath them. No point assuring them she wouldn’t be alone on the bridge, since Seaghdh had already been through decontamination. Maybe she could still get the ship back without killing anyone. Divide and conquer. So much the better if they did the dividing for her.

“Lift in ten, nine, eight . . .”

“You could fly this thing blind . . .” Kirthin began. He didn’t finish. Ari assumed some gesture from Seaghdh cut him off.

“He couldn’t,” she interjected, watching her panels. She’d booby-trapped more than command codes. “No one could.”

“Just how deep does your distrust go?” Seaghdh said. “What the hell is between you and those scientists, anyway?”

She honestly could not answer. Some days, she couldn’t even trust herself and had a set of randomly selected traps she had to defeat each morning to release her from her cabin. If she wasn’t fit to pass those psych tests each day, she did not want to be let loose on her father’s ship. She caught Kirthin Turrel staring at her. He shook his head.

“Not Ice Princess,” he said. “She’s the damned queen.”

Ari thought she heard grudging approval in his tone. She couldn’t help herself. She laughed until she had to wipe her eyes, and heard the bitter edge in the sound. She couldn’t remember the last time that had happened.

She caught Seaghdh’s examination and wondered at the hint of surprise in his face. Had he thought her incapable of laughter? She had.

“I appreciate the promotion,” she said to Turrel. “Now let’s get off this rock. Give your captain the gun and report to medical. Decontamination will sting like hell unless you get that cut sealed up first.”

Seaghdh nodded at his crewman. He traded her pistol for Turrel’s rifle. The Shlovkur quit the tiny bridge.

“He’s wrong, you know,” Seaghdh said from behind her the moment the door slid closed. “I felt the fire in that kiss I stole. Pietre has misjudged you. Your father has, too, hasn’t he?”

She sucked in a shallow, damnably audible breath both at the observation and at the brush of Seaghdh’s hand against the nape of her neck. Cursing her body’s reaction, Ari snapped, “Strap down or I’ll flatten you against a bulkhead.”

His chuckle made it clear that he knew exactly how his touch affected her. Without a word he buckled into the nav seat beside her. She woke his panel and shunted data to his screens.

“I’ll take us out of atmosphere on manual. We’ll exit here,” she said, struggling to tap the plotter as increasing g-forces pressed her into her seat. “I need a thirteen-second brush with Occaltus’s sun.”

“A radiation bath?” he surmised.

Nodding, she cast covert glances at the data readouts showing on her panel, the inputs and results of his calculations. The man handled ships for a living, no doubt about it. But what kind?

“Were you in a shuttle?” she asked.

“No.”

“You put it down on the dark side, then.”

“No. It put us down on the dark side,” Seaghdh corrected. “Landing is too generous a word for our introduction to this moon.”

No information about his ship, nothing to tell her what weapons he might have had or what sort of enemy or emergency had driven him to crash on Ioccal, Occaltus’s eleventh moon. Still. If he’d had weapons systems on his ship, he didn’t deem them worth salvaging.

She opened intraship. “Clear six thousand meters. All personnel cycle through decon and report to medical for radiation exposure boosters. Shift to star drive in ten minutes. Thirteen-second skip, two hours out.”

Seaghdh glanced at her. “I’ll take it while you report to medical.”

“No need,” she said. “Raj will bring the shots to us after he’s been through decon.”

“Raj?”

“Dad’s medical officer and our local genius. The radiation sterilization was his baby. Saved us from having to fly into a star five years ago.”

Seaghdh’s brain stumbled and his fingers paused on his keys. Ari turned her silver eyes on him. He frowned and saw she wasn’t just pushing his buttons.

She shrugged. “Can’t fly an infected ship to an inhabited world.”

“Ari?” Her medi-tech’s voice sounded tinny coming over the intraship.

“Yes, Raj?”

“One dose of Ioccal IX, one full gamma dose, and one booster?”

“Affirmative. I don’t have a final destination yet, but is there any medical reason to postpone sterilization?”

“Not unless our ‘guests’ are symptomatic.”

Seaghdh cursed under his breath. How many more ways could a simple find and retrieve mission become such a group baxt’k?

Ari glanced at him. “How long were you on Ioccal before taking the ship?”

“Fewer than forty-eight hours.”

Speculation lit her eyes and softened the haunted shadows of her face. She caught his perusal and bristled. “How’d you get past my sensor array?”

Grinning, Seaghdh tucked a caress of power into his voice and said, “Trade secret.”

She crinkled her forehead and looked away, but not before he saw the telltale shiver run through her body and felt his own tighten in response. Gods, he should never have accepted this mission. From the moment he’d become aware of Alexandria Idylle climbing the Blade Ranks within TFC so many years ago, Seaghdh had harbored a secret crush. It hadn’t mattered that they’d never met, much less crossed blades before today. He shook his head. She had no idea she had him at such a disadvantage.

The medi cleared his throat. “We’re well within incubation limits. We’ll dose them and toast them.”

Derailed by the man’s tone, Seaghdh stared at the com speaker. “He sounded gleeful.”

Ari ducked her head but couldn’t hide her smile. “Hasn’t gotten to test his plague cure, yet.”

“What?” Even better. Not only were he and his crew infected, they were captive test cases to a shipload of righteously pissed-off scientists.

The door opened. Without so much as a greeting, the medi, Raj, strode up and popped Ari full of medication. She rubbed her arm.

“Thanks,” she said.

Seaghdh forestalled him when Raj turned to him. “My men . . .”

“We’ve been treated,” Turrel said from the doorway. “No one’s keeled over yet. Even if he poisons you, there’re too many of us for your commando, there, to take.” He gestured at Ari from his spot lounging against the doorframe.

“That’s all right, then,” Seaghdh said. He sat perfectly still while Raj administered both medications.

“Your man is quite right, of course,” Raj said. “There is the minor matter of my oath, that and I value Ari too highly to endanger her. You’ll test positive for Ioccal IX for a few days yet, but none of you should experience any symptoms.”

“You are a miracle worker, Raj,” she said.

“Always nice to have one’s work appreciated,” he replied. “Jayleia and I stowed your samples, Ari. Come see me when you’re ready to get started. I have a few tricks up my sleeves.”

Seaghdh frowned at the solicitude in the man’s voice. It bordered on condescension. Or pity. His information indicated that Raj Faraheed knew Ari well enough that he should comprehend the mistake he was making with that tone.

Raj quit the bridge with a wave, calling, “Must return to mending a broken arm.”

Turrel shadowed Raj down the companionway.

Ari turned back to the piloting console. Strapped in so close beside her, Seaghdh could hear her breath tighten. He shot her a covert glance. The lush, white curls of her hair were long enough to hide her eyes, but not the thin line she’d made of her lips.

Sympathy wrung through his gut, forcing him to turn his eyes front. He gathered she’d heard the same thing in Raj’s voice that Seaghdh had.

He’d seen her file. She’d been held by the Chekydran for three months, been accused of spying, and then, unaccountably, released. Another three months in a TFC military hospital hadn’t produced any evidence that she’d been turned or controlled by the aliens. Her people lauded the woefully thin woman as a hero while her commanders stripped her of everything but rank. Armada was hanging her out to dry.

From a tactical standpoint it made sense. She’d survived three months with the Chekydran, something that had never been done. Her commanders had to believe the enemy controlled her in some fashion—assuming she was still sane.

Rage and denial shoved hard against his insides, protesting the thought. Seaghdh let the instinct pass. He couldn’t afford to let his personal interest in her interfere with duty. If he found that she couldn’t be trusted, whether the Chekydran controlled her or not, he would kill her. Regardless of what it might cost him personally.

His cousin had warned him that the damage done to Ari extended far past the horrific physical damage he’d seen catalogued in the file he’d had his spies steal from her government. She’d been little more than skin holding together shattered bits of bone. He had only to look into her eyes to see the stain the Chekydran had left on her soul. It tore at some vital part of his gut. He’d felt sympathy for a subject before, not that he’d let it get in the way of doing his job. He’d never wanted to save anyone. Until now.

“Hey, Ari?” a woman’s voice hailed via the intraship speaker.

“You stowed my stuff,” Ari replied. “Thanks, Jayleia.”

“You’re welcome,” Jayleia said. “You want any sequencing help, make them let me out of my cabin.”

“Thank you,” she said.

“I’m going to cut all of the communications lines and lock the bridge door,” Seaghdh grumbled, noting the tension in her jaw. He eyed her. Intelligence data had indicated that Captain Idylle would respond if he used Raj Faraheed and Jayleia Durante as points of persuasion. Certainly, it had worked in cargo, but her inability to accept the concern in her friends’ voices made him wonder. “I have your coordinates for the radiation bath, Captain Idylle.”

When she signed off the com and glanced at him, he winked. The troubled light faded from her eyes and pressure he didn’t realize he’d been carrying eased in his chest.
Irrational
. He had no reason to feel like he’d won a blade match simply because he’d made the woman smile.

“Running out of blue sky,” she noted. “Bringing interstellar drives online. Watch the harmonic on the starboard atmospheric. We had trouble with it when we set down.”

Seaghdh let out a breath that whistled between his teeth. “I’ve never seen an engine config like this. You do the custom work yourself?”

Ari shook her head as she brought the star drive online to warm up. “The atmospheric engines are unique to the
Sen Ekir
. Dad demanded close-in maneuverability, slow speed, even hovering capability and station keeping, but wasn’t willing to sacrifice interstellar speed to get his samples back to his labs for it. He made enough noise, and consistently turns up such impressive results that Tagreth Federated Command had IntCom design and build this ship for him.”

“TFC handed you a science ship built by Intelligence Command?” Seaghdh echoed, stunned. How had his team missed that detail? Who knew how many taps and wires IntCom had on board?

“Not me, Captain. They handed it to my father.”

“You think the distinction matters?” he prodded.

She glanced at him, pushing a strand of hair out of those silver eyes, seemed to note his perusal, and looked away, flustered.

He watched her clasp her long, elegant fingers together. The precision and skill with which she’d handled the energy blade had him imagining her touch on his skin.

Cursing under his breath, he shifted, discomfited by the suddenly too tight fit of his trousers.

“What I think is immaterial,” she said, dragging his attention back to the ship and the question of who actually controlled it. Calculation shifted behind her eyes and she scanned the cockpit as if seeing it for the first time. “The question is whether the distinction matters to IntCom.”

Seaghdh nodded.

“And you’re manipulating me,” she said, her tone mild, “trying to make me question the integrity of my ship.”

He froze at her summation. Where had she learned the espionage techniques she’d so accurately identified? Nothing in her files indicated that she’d received training from IntCom, and his spies inside the Armada hadn’t been able to identify the manipulation when it had been turned upon them.