Enemy Within (6 page)

“Your attempt to undermine and switch my loyalties does not negate the validity of your observation. If IntCom has the
Sen Ekir
in its clutches, I can’t trust the
Sen Ekir
,” she finished and then slanted him a sly smile. “Point to you. One to zero.”

She’d heard and accepted the invitation to play he’d issued with his last use of power on her. The two of them seemed uniquely susceptible to one another, though he prayed she didn’t know about his weakness yet. Savoring the want dancing through his blood, he answered with a lazy grin. “What does my point get me?”

Every inch of her exposed, pale skin flushed in reaction to his innuendo.

The visible rush of her reaction drew him. He shifted, wanting closer to test the heat of her skin with his lips.

She opened her mouth, but a single, urgent beep from her panel snapped her attention away from him.

He mirrored her move, scanning his panel. Time to switch from atmospheric engines to interstellar drive.

“We’re on,” she said, her voice all business. Ari opened intraship and nudged the star drive output higher. “Secure for transition. Change over in five, four, three, two, one. Mark.”

He focused on procedure and drew down power on the atmospherics.

“Atmospherics at eighty,” Seaghdh said.

“Acknowledged. Cut by fives every ten seconds, mark.”

“Seventy-five.”

“Seventy.”

The ship trembled.

“Damn it,” she muttered. “Cut to fifty percent. That starboard atmospheric is coughing. I knew it wasn’t tuning.”

Alarm drove through him and he grimaced. She’d corrected their angle of ascent and balanced engine output without so much as blinking. He admired her gifted piloting, but cutting power like that was flat risky. Against his better judgment, he shook his head and did as she asked. “Atmospherics at fifty percent. Altitude gain decreasing.”

“Aye. We’ve got a little arc. That’ll give us enough momentum to make escape velocity,” she said as she worked on starting the interstellar drive. “Come on, you radioactive hunk of tin. Wake up.”

“You spoke so nicely to the atmospherics,” he said.

She flushed. “You weren’t supposed to hear that.”

The rumble of the interstellar drive gave him a much-needed distraction from watching her every reaction to him. “There it goes.”

The starboard engine gave up the ghost. They lurched sideways. The two of them swore in unison as she fought the controls.

“Restart?” he demanded.

“Negative. Cut the port engine. We’ve got enough thrust in the star drive to clear atmosphere.”

She hadn’t even glanced at the nav or engine equations.

“No margin for error,” Seaghdh warned, scanning both panels and running a rapid set of mental calculations. She was flying the ship by feel. He shook his head and bit back a grin. Damn, she was good. Why the hell had her career been stalled piloting this piece of scientific space debris?

“I suspect we’ve got a fuel interrupt on the starboard side,” she said. “It’s not going to restart.”

Seaghdh scowled and eased the port engine back. “A bleed?”

“Twelve Gods, I hope not,” she replied, her attention pinned to velocity readouts, “or this will be one short trip.”

He punched the intraship. “V’kyrri?”

“V’kyrri, here. Feels like a fuel supply issue in your starboard atmospheric, Captain. Arm’s all healed up. Want me to go have a look?”

“You’re a mind reader, V’k.”

“Not on purpose, sir.”

“Go practice your magic on the machinery, V’k. Turrel?”

“I heard,” the Shlovkur answered. “We’ve secured the scientists in their quarters.”

“Acknowledged. I need you and Sindrivik up here.”

“Transition complete. Port atmospheric off-line in three, two, one, mark,” Ari said.

“Affirmative,” Seaghdh answered. “Laying in course for the radiation bath. Nicely done.”

She reddened and made a show of studying the nav numbers as Turrel and Sindrivik hustled onto the bridge and strapped in at the life sciences and geo-scan stations.

She couldn’t accept commendation. Was that a relic from her captivity? Or had her entire life been bereft of praise? He frowned.

“Clearing ionosphere in three, two, one, mark,” she said, then scanned her panels while the rest of them stared at the view screen.

Seaghdh cursed. She was right. Instruments were far more sensitive than humanoid eyesight. He’d obviously been away from the pilot’s chair too long if he’d fallen back into bad habit.

The sky darkened from indigo to black. Stars leaped into view. The arc of the gas giant warming the moon they’d left lit the lower quarter of the screen and silhouetted a sharp-edged moon where there shouldn’t be a moon.

Ari swore as sensor alarms blared. She shut them off.

“Friends of yours?” she snapped.

Seaghdh uttered a single, vile oath and joined her in demanding identification from the computers.

She froze, her fingers still poised in mid-command.

He glanced at her. Recognition stood out in her wide-open eyes. Terror lined her lips in white. Seaghdh felt a tremor move her. It didn’t look like she was breathing.

“Ari.”

Nothing. Not even a muscle tic to indicate she’d heard. Turrel turned from glaring at the view screen, his face grim, and eyed her.

From her file, Seaghdh knew she suffered flashbacks, and when she did, she hurt people. Touching her could easily trigger an episode, but damn it, he couldn’t abandon her to the nightmare of her memories. He didn’t know that he could help; only that he had to try.

He unbuckled his restraints, turned, and put a hand on her shoulder. She jumped. He knew the moment she saw him and registered that he peered into her face, seeing the horrors of her memories in the hard shine in her eyes. Defenses slammed into place shuttering her expression and locking him out.

“Chekydran,” she rasped. “You escaped a Chekydran cruiser?”

Seaghdh met her gaze, his own searching, seeking assurance that she could perform. “That’s up to you, now, isn’t it? Get us out of here.”

She uttered a harsh laugh. “This boat has two speeds. Slow and slower. We will not outrun a Chekydran battle cruiser. They’re on us.”

Turrel spun back to his readouts. “Confirmed. They’re changing course. Coming around to intercept.”

Seaghdh saw her lips moving as she stared at the ship growing on the view panel. When he finally made out what she was saying, a chill of foreboding gripped him.

“Any other ship, any other ship.”

He turned front. The iridescent yellow script that comprised the ship’s name resolved. He recognized it. The Chekydran’s premiere soldier-ship. It had found and fired on his ship as if laying in wait for his arrival. Fury swept him. He’d lost his ship and most of his crew in that fight. Because the Chekydran hadn’t followed Seaghdh’s disabled ship into Ioccal’s atmosphere, he’d figured they’d assumed the ship had been destroyed. Yet here the Chekydran were again.

He shot a glance at her. Were they after him? Or her?

Beside him, Ari started to shake. Seaghdh shoved aside his questions and swore. He’d run afoul of the ship that had captured and imprisoned her. She’d have to face her demons because he’d led them to her. Twelve Gods.

“No,” she whispered, clenching her fists.

“They’re hailing,” Turrel yelled.

She gulped in an audible breath and survival mode seemed to take her over. “Get off the bridge!” she ordered.

“We . . .” Turrel protested.

“If they know you’re on this ship, they’ll blow us out of the sky. And if they want you alive—” She stopped and swore, tossing Seaghdh an unsettled look.

Seaghdh forced his expression to neutral.
Another in a long line of tests, Captain Idylle
.
Prove to me that the Chekydran don’t control you
.

“Damn it. I won’t give anyone up to those bastards. I don’t care what you’ve done,” she said as if tasting something sour.

Triumph spread through him. Despite everything she’d been through and everything that had been taken from her, she still had a heart. The fact obviously bothered her, but she let herself be guided by it all the same. First, she’d refused to let the plague kill them. Now, she’d allied herself with him and with the men who’d hijacked her father’s ship. She’d justified his decision to disobey the order to neutralize her, but more than that, Seaghdh realized, Alexandria Rose Idylle was salvageable, and it would be a crime to not try.

“Go!” Seaghdh snarled at his crew. He shoved Turrel and Sindrivik to the door and slammed it after them.

“If they see you or hear you, we’re all dead!” she hissed at him.

He dashed across the tiny cockpit and hunkered down with his back against the view screen in the one position the bridge camera lens couldn’t cover.

Ari gaped at him, questions and assessments running rapid-fire behind her eyes.

Seaghdh choked on the realization that he’d blown his cover.

THE
console beeped. Ari jerked her attention back to her controls. Second hail. Force a Chekydran cruiser to call a third time and it typically used a missile to get your attention. Hands shaking, Ari drew a deep breath and keyed open the com, hating that Cullin Seaghdh sat there watching her every move, her every fear. Even though she knew who hailed, even though she thought she’d prepared, she flinched when the Chekydran who’d tortured her for three months came on the screen. Thank the fates her father and his crew weren’t here.

“Dear Captain Idylle,” the creature droned, his translator rendering his words in a mechanical voice. “Do you have still your rank, I wonder. Hmmm. Why are you here, in this place, where I hunt spies, I wonder.”

“Science expedition X9-57J3,” Ari replied, trying not to let the buzz of his voice get on her nerves. She wanted to crawl out of her skin. “All notifications and communiqués regarding this ship’s activities are on file.”

“Hmm. With answer like this, you make no answer.” He leaned forward. The tentacle ridges on his hunched shoulders shifted. “Like old times.” He uttered a series of sounds in his own language, something his translator didn’t attempt to define.

She knew what they meant. “My plaything.” An abyss of despair opened within her. In one turn of phrase, he’d assured her she was nothing more than a toy for his amusement and that he wasn’t yet done with her.
Damn it, Ari, stick to the business of survival
.

It took a moment to find her voice. “We missed our scheduled lift by eight hours due to repairs on a faulty atmospheric.”

“Bridge empty. Not standard, I wonder.”

“You know damned well I can fly this thing solo,” she replied. “We established that early on, didn’t we? Course it’s normal. Everyone else is running experiments.”

“Poor youngest,” the Chekydran crooned. “Too stupid. Fly alone.”

“Baxt’k you, Hicci.”

“Hmmm. Much suggested. Never try, I wonder. How lonely, desolate is my poor ship without you.”

“Is that what this is about?” she demanded, her heart pounding so hard she thought it would burst through her ribs. She could barely breathe. “If you want me off this ship, say so.”

The Chekydran captain eyed her. “You come? I say? Hmm.”

“Swear on your swarm to let the
Sen Ekir
and its crew go, and I’ll come across myself.”

Seaghdh shifted, the movement barely audible. It took every effort of will not to glance at him.

“I say. You come. I hurt.” He sucked in a breath that churred.

She fought back nausea and the shrill of terror growing in her head. Cold sweat trickled down the side of her face. “Swear.”

“No shuttle.”

“I’d walk out the airlock.”

Silence.

“Extra-Vehicular Suit?”

Ari twisted her lips in a grim smile. “No. No space suit. I’d rather breathe vacuum than give you the satisfaction. Ever. Again.”

“I blow you out of space.”

“No, you won’t,” she retorted. “If you meant to do that, you would have already. You want something, Hicci. What is it?”

“Data.”

She heard the pause before he answered. He hadn’t killed her when he’d accused her of spying. She’d never understood why not. She’d been free for three months and she understood it even less now. He hesitated to bring weapons to bear on the
Sen Ekir
. Why? Because she was aboard? There could only be one reason for that. He needed her alive. It meant the Chekydran had done something to her that they believed would pay dividends at her expense. It made her blood run cold.

“You have free access to all of the scientific data gathered by this—”

He cut her off with a garbled hiss of sound. “Ship! Twelve men! You see!”

Ah. There. Seaghdh and his crew. Twelve? And only four survivors. Interesting. “No.”